Shadows of the Mind: A HubNugget Suspense

I sometimes still wake up in the middle of the night, my heart wildly fluttering in my throat like a frightened bird trying to escape. I look wildly around the room expecting to see...well, expecting to see them, hovering in the dark shadowy corners of the room just waiting to pounce.

How long must I spend my nights afraid to sleep, afraid to dream? How long must I spend my days fearing the coming of night? When will these nightmares end?

The day started out pleasantly enough, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, all seemed right with the world. The Hub crew decided, since it was such a beautiful day, to get together for a picnic and work on the HubNugget Nominee list together. After all, 6 heads are better than one. Make that 7 heads, we certainly couldn't leave out Ripplemaker, our official cheerleader.

Anyway, we all planned out who would bring what and where and when we would meet. I got in touch with Jason, Maddie, Simone, and Fawntia to let them know where we would all be so they could get the HubNugget Wannabe's Hubs to us. Even though we had a day off, we really didn't have a day off, if you know what I mean. We still had the deadline to meet. You know, we had to choose the HubNuggets Nominees out of the hundreds of HubNugget Wannabe's. And that's no easy job.

Anyway, the whole group decided to meet by the lake and have a picnic with everyone bringing their favorite dish. RedElf brought her specialty, Blackened Salmon; enelle lamb brought her delicious Grilled Tuna; Patty Inglish came a terrific Chef salad, Zsuzsy Bee brought her tempting Honey Roasted Chicken, ladyjane1 came with a delicious Three Bean Salad, Ripplemaker decided to bring her refreshing Sweet Tea, and me (KoffeeKlatch Gals), well, I decided we needed something sweet so I brought Strawberries with whipped cream, fat free of course.

Well, there we were minding our own business, pigging out and enjoying the view when all of the sudden a giant gust of wind blew over us.

Papers were flying everywhere, the air was thick with our only copies of the HubNugget Wannabe Hubs. Now, I know you must be wondering why all of those Hubs were in hard copy, well, I'm going to tell you. You see just the day before there was a gigantic power surge that knocked out everyone of the computers in the world. Luckily Jason Menayan, our illustrious leader, had a feeling something was going to happen, so he had Simone Smith and Fawntia Fowler, our hub specialists who keep us straight, make copies of all of our new hubbers hubs. Maddie Rudd, our hub cop, reviewed them, made sure they were eligible, and got them to us so we could make our picks for the week.

So when they blew away into the sky I'm sure you can imagine how panicked we became. They were the only copies we had of those hubs. Unless someone somewhere figured out how to get the computers up and running we would, for the first time in Hub History, not get the Hub Nuggget Wannabes Hubs out on time. I (KoffeeKlatch Gals) was particularly panicked because it was my week to do the HubNuggets Hub.

So, there they were flying all about our heads. It was the strangest thing, they would hover about flying towards us and then away again, just out of our reach every time we tried to catch one. Suddenly, they formed into a group and fly off, looking like a swarm of bees. Unfortunately for us, they flew towards the part of the woods that everyone knew was haunted. We didn't know who or what haunted it but we had heard so many stories that we just knew there had to be a grain of truth in there somewhere. Needless to say we didn't want to go in there but we knew we had to.

But, I digress. We were pigging out, looking at the great scenery and discussing the new hubs when this gigantic wind, I'm talking about monsoon type wind, came rushing through and scattered our papers to the wind, literally.

As we stood there watching the papers flying away the skies opened up and began to shower us with a torrential rain. So...we looked at each other took a deep breath and began to run for the cover of the trees. Maybe they would help shield us a little bit from the rain. Wrong thing to do. As we hit the line of spooky, dark, gnarled trees the first blindingly bright flash of lightening occurred. It was followed so closely by the loud clap of thunder that the hair stood up on our arms.

What was going to happen next. We couldn't keep running though the trees with the lightening following us, we needed some kind of shelter. Suddenly there it was, right in front of us. Wait a minute, it wasn't there a few seconds ago. Where did it come from? It seems to have just appeared. Not at all sure they we should trust it, after all, weird things had been happening, we approached it slowly. But the threatening thunder and dangerous lighting, and rain that threatened to drown them convinced us to at least seek cover on the porch.Carefully picking our way up the front porch steps Patty said the first word spoken since the wind blew away our papers. "I don't like this place."

"It gives me the creeps", said ladyjane1.

"I think I'll just stay out here on the porch. I really don't want to go inside." said RedElf

"I'll stay with you. There's something weird about this house." agreed enelle lamb.

Meanwhile, Zsuzsy Bee had opened the door and was peeking inside. "Look guys, it doesn't look too bad inside. At least we'll be out of the rain."

Looking into one of the windows Ripplemaker said, "Hey, there's a fireplace, maybe we can build a fire and get warm."

"I'm about to freeze out here." I said, beginning to shiver.

"Shaking off her doubts, Patty said, "Come one, lets gets inside. We certainly can't keep standing out here."

So, inside we go, each of us feeling the strangeness of the house in different ways. It wasn't too bad, at least it wasn't leaking. But there just was that feeling that something was not quite right. The prickling at the back of the neck that let you know there was something watching you. The strangeness seemed to make everyone draw closer together in a little group.

Standing there listening to the quiet, the only sound was the muffled rain on the roof and the thunder following the still threatening lightening, one by one the group began to relax. Nothing had jumped out at us, nothing had threatened us so far. We began to look around at the room and moving slightly away from each other.

Then it happened... There was a slamming of a door somewhere upstairs, followed by a scurrying sound. The group froze in place for a moment, stunned. Patty finally said "It looks like we might not be the only ones in here."

Zsuzsy yelled out "Come down, we won't hurt you."

We listened and were met with complete silence. "I guess it was just the wind blowing a door shut." said RedElf matter-of-factly.

"Well, what was that scurrying sound?" Asked enelle lamb. "I don't think it was the wind."

"Oh, I'm sure it was just a little animal." said ripplemaker

"I really don't want to do it," KoffeeKlatch Gals said, "But I don't think we have any other choice but to go and see what it was."

So...up the creaking stairs we went. At the top of the stairs was a door facing us. Patty reached out, turned the know and tried to open the door. It wouldn't budge. Inside there was a scurrying, moving sound as though something was locked inside it. We decided it must be a small animal trying to find shelter during the storm.

We moved on to the next door. As we moved down the hall the sound became louder. It was beginning to sound as if it were trapped birds trying to escape. The fluttering of their wings beating against the windows in their effort to reach the outdoors. The sound became louder and louder as we tried each door and found them locked. It had now become so loud that it completely drowned out the sound of the rain and the thunder.

Finally we reached what looked like the door to an attic. "Oh no, I have such a bad feeling about this. Please don't open that door." cried Zsuzsy Bee.

As she was saying that Patty reached over and turned the knob. When she dropped her hand from the knob the beating increased ten-fold. It sounded as though whatever was inside was trying to beating it's way through the door. We backed away, all of us unwilling to have a part in letting whatever was inside out. The door flew open and a rush of papers flew out directly at us. They were dive bombing and rushing at us in furious little bursts of speed. They were trying to hurt us. We tried to protect ourselves but couldn't. Our hands and arms became bloody, full of paper cuts. Even our faces were not exempt from damage. Then just as quickly they all began to fly off separating themselves into three distinct groups. Three previously locked doors flew open allowed them own group inside than slammed shut again, locking themselves up tight.

"This is ridiculous. We all know those are our hubs we need. I don't know what happened to them or why they are attaching us but we need to take control." Patty had taken control. Looking at our bedraggled little group she decided what to do.

"Zsuzsy and I will take the first door. RedElf and Enelle Lamb you take the second door. Ladyjane1 and KoffeeKlatch Gals you take the third door. And Rippmaker, you stay in the hall just in case one of us need help."

Patty and Zsuzsy cautiously approached the first door. As they reached out to turn the knob the door flew open. They stood their waiting to be attacked, when nothing happened they walked into the room and looked around.

Reaching out and grabbing the closest one Patty and Zsuzsy looked at it carefully. "Why, this is one of the Health Hubs." exclaimed Zsuzsy.

Reaching out for another, Patty cried, "So is this one. And this one. Girls, I think they divided themselves up into hub subject groups. Go find out if yours did the same."

Opening up their door RedElf and Enelle Lamb found their papers still flying around but they no longer seemed eager to escape. Reaching up and picking one of them out of the air Enelle Lamb looked at it for a few seconds then said "RedElf, this one is from the Books, Literature, and Writing category.

RedElf, busily looking at a paper herself, said "So, is this one." Looking up, "They're seem to be waiting for us to just pluck them out of the air."

They began to quickly gather up their hub papers.

In the third room Ladyjane1 and myself (KKG) were grabbing papers out of the air as quickly as we could. Our subject group was Travel and Places. By now we had all figured that somehow these hub papers had found their way inside this spooky old house, waited for us, and perfectly divided themselves into their own subject groups.

We didn't know how this all happened but we were thrilled. We would be able to get together that important HubNugget Nominee list in time. It was worth all of those paper cuts.

Ripplemaker, our resident cheerleader, kept us going through that long night. We had to work around the clock to make sure we read each hub that was eligible and pick out the nominees. It wasn't an easy job, especially after our day. However, we've never let you down before and would not do so this time.

Oh, by the way, we never did figure out what all of the weird happenings were all about. Just after we finished getting the list of HubNugget Nominees together the computers began to work - it was a miracle. It was a happy ending for a very strange day here in Hub Land.