The next time I woke up, there was a police officer next to my bed. I groaned. "So now you're questioning me, huh?" The officer nodded and pulled a chair over to sit down in. "When did you first meet Brian?" "Last week," I rubbed at my eyes and sat up. "I was walking home from volleyball practice, and he bumped into me on the sidewalk." "Did he talk to you?" "Yeah." I said. "He told me his name, Brian, and asked me if I went to the same school he did. I do, actually, but at school I could never find him-" The officer lightly touched my arm. "Stay on focus, Samantha. What did you talk about after you talked about school?" "Oh right. I mentioned a party at someones house this past Saturday, and he said that he was going. They he left." The officer jotted some things down on his pad of paper. "So, did Brian tell you his last name?" "N-no." I said. "What did he look like?" I closed my eyes and thought. "He was tall, several inches taller than me, and he had really pale skin. His eyes were a pale blue, too. And he had blonde hair." The officer jotted several things down on the pad of paper, and got up to leave. "Officer," I said suddenly. "Nobody believed me before, when I talked to my dad and the doctor. Why do you believe me now?" The officer sighed. "I had hoped I wouldn't be the one to tell you this. But yesterday, Wednesday evening, there was another murder." I gasped. "Really?" "Yes," he replied, "and the daughter of the woman killed remembers talking to a person that matches your description of Brian." "The daughter?" I asked, my head starting to whirl. "Yeah," the officer said. "Her name is Julia."
On Friday, I was released from the hospital. I immediately asked around and discovered that Julia was staying with her grandparents. Her dad had died when she was five, in this huge house fire. I went over to her grandparents house and knocked on the door. An old woman- I guessed it was Julia's grandmother- opened the door. "Can I help you?" she asked. "I'm Samantha, a friend of Julia's. The police told me what had happened while I was in the hospital." Julia's grandmother sighed. "Yes, it's terrible. Her mother was our daughter in law, but since Johnny's death, she was more like a real daughter. Come in." I walked into the house. "Julia is upstairs." Her grandmother said. I went upstairs and found Julia. She was laying on her bed, crying. "Hey." I said. "Hi." Julia sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "I guess the police think it was the same person." "Yeah," I sat on Julia's bed next to her. "But I don't think they're going to find Brian." "He told me his name was Nick. And he kissed me." "He kissed me too." I said quietly. Julia burst into tears again. "I should have remembered what you said about him. If I had, maybe Death wouldn't have killed my mom." My eyes widened at the word Death. "So he, well, you guessed too?" Julia nodded. "Yeah. Mom was killed with a curved blade, like a scythe, and Nick showed up in front of my window in this house in a black cloak, and I guessed, then I fainted and I heard his voice in my head." I got an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach. "What did he say?" "Because you're special, Julia." I got up off of the bed. "That's what he said to me. Except, my name instead of yours." "Why would he?" Julia asked. "Why didn't he kill us?" "Because you two are special." A voice came from the doorway and we whirled around to see who it was. It was Brian. It was Nick. It was Death.