((there might be some odd spaces in here since the assignment included pictures to make the story more interesting but I don't have them so yee yee))

I watched as the leaves in the trees around me shuffled with the wind, listening to the sounds of the breeze as it rushed through the bushes and past buildings, messing up my hair and sending leaves flying. The dark clouds that slowly flooded the sky were a dead giveaway to the rain that was to come soon.

I sighed as I adjusted my black beanie and sped up my pace, not wanting to get caught in the rain without a jacket.

I lightly whistled to myself, trying to ignore how uncomfortable the silence outside made me.

Living on the edge of a small town means not a lot of traffic sounds and often means walking alone.

I could ride the bus so I didn't have to walk so much but I occasionally enjoy having some time to myself to think and appreciate nature. But, the silence does sometimes make me a little anxious.

This small town can feel so empty and scary sometimes. This area of town is so empty. It's only a couple houses and some old run down buildings out here. As somebody who's easily scared and paranoid, living in a small town does tend to freak me out more than a busy city would.

"Liria~" I hear a small voice whisper to me.

I abruptly stop, my whistles going silent as I slowly turn to look at the building I had just stopped by.

That old, burnt building stands before me.

I see it every day. I hear students from my school saying it's haunted or something. I don't even know what it was though. Some say it was a hospital or clinic, some say it was a library, some a hotel. No one is too sure. Not many people that live here were born here. Except for me and a few others that is. Most people either move away to find more opportunities for jobs and college while older people move in to find a quiet place to live and rest.

This building has been here for so long. The windows are busted in, the brick walls are scratched up and scuffed, showing several years of wear. Weeds and foliage flood the land it rests on. It just looks terrible. Even with all the broken windows and broken doors, no one dares to enter. Some of the doors are boarded up to keep people out but not all entrances are blocked. I don't blame anybody for not wanting to go near that place. It really gives me the creeps.

I twist around on my feet, trying to find where the whisper came from.

It wasn't often I saw anybody out here so hearing a whisper like that was very unsettling.

As much as I tried not to, my eyes kept hopping over to the sketchy looking building.

I couldn't help but feel drawn to it, even if my anxiety was currently through the roof.

I listened to the small crunches beneath my shoes as I stepped closer to the building, crushing old weeds beneath my converse.

I placed my hand against the cold, rough bricks and leaned around the edge, trying to take a look inside the old, run-down building.

The inside looked dusty, ashey. It was dirty but you could see a few handprints and footprints in the dusty stuff that coated the walls and floor. I inhaled shakily before stepping inside, just a few steps.

"Liria~" I heard the voice whisper again.

I felt my skin cover with goosebumps at the sound. It sounded so odd. It had like an echo to it. It sounded faint but also up close. Like someone whispering in my ear when I have headphones on. The sound made my stomach churn yet it pulled me further into the dark, dirty structure.

"Hello?" I called out, listening to my own voice echo around me.

The floorboards beneath my feet groaned and squealed obnoxiously yet that didn't stop me from venturing further.

I glanced around the large room, clutching my satchel bag strap tightly in a way to try and ease my anxiety.

I heard small sounds echo around the room, similar to whispers but not clear enough to be deciphered as actual words. I felt as though the sounds were mostly coming from the stairs so I aimed my wandering towards the ricketing stairs at the far end of the room.

I grabbed onto the stairway rail and tried to look as far up the stairs as I could but it was rather hard to do that when they weren't straight stairs.

"Hello?" I called once again, listening to the whisper like sounds suddenly cease, leaving me to listen to my own raging heartbeat and nothing more for a few mere moments.

Suddenly, the sound of creaking filled the room above me, making my breath catch in my throat.

The sounds got louder and louder until they suddenly stopped.

Before anything could reveal itself, a loud crash of thunder made itself present outside, sending me running as fast as I could out the busted door, scraping my hand against the splintering wood.

With that I ran all the way home, not once looking back.

"Liria!" I heard my grandma's deep voice call from downstairs. "Powers out!"

I sighed as I rolled off my bed, opening up my dark tinted curtains to see the raging rain storm outside.

Well, there went my much needed afternoon nap.

I rushed down the stairs, hopping down two at a time before reaching the living room, watching as my grandma lit some candles as well as the fireplace.

"Liria, dear, could you open up some curtains for me? We don't have enough candles to light up the whole room." She hummed, her light french accent slipping through her words.

I nodded and walked over to the large windows in the kitchen and around the living room, throwing them open and letting in the light of the clouded sky. Definitely wasn't as bright as it could be but better than nothing.

"Ah, there. Much better." My grandma hummed, settling back down on the couch, her pink knitted blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"What are you up to, grandma?" I asked, walking over and sitting criss cross on the chair by the couch.

I would have sat next to her but the couch was currently filled with small boxes and books of old vintage photographs.

"Well, I was organizing my closet and found a bunch of pictures from when I was a teenager like you and decided to sort through them. Wanna look with me?" She asked.

I figured, I have nothing else to do so why not search through old photos with her?

I listened to her humming as I dug through a small box nearby, shifting through the old, black and white photos. None were too particularly interesting. Most of them were just my grandmother out in parks or by water, her with my mother when she was young. All the types of pictures you'd expect to find in your grandma's photo collection.

However, while scrolling through the seemingly endless photos I found one that caught my attention.

A tall building that seemed to be a school or a hospital maybe. It looked oddly familiar. The placement of the windows, the shape and size of it all. It seemed so familiar.

"Hey, Grandma, what is this?"I asked, crawling from my chair over to the couch to sit next to her.

She grabbed my hand and shifted the photo closer to get a good look at it before smiling.

"Ah, that was my old school." She said. "Nancy Eastwick school." She sighed.

"Where is this school?" I asked.

"It's that school a couple streets away. You walk past it every day, don't you?" She asked.

I looked at the black and white photo again and almost couldn't believe my eyes. It was that building! That run down building that freaks me out so badly.

"That building? What happened to it?" I asked. I don't know why but it never really occurred to me that I could have asked my grandma about that building. She's been here longer than I have. She was bound to know what happened to it.

"Oh it burnt down a long time ago. I was a junior when it happened." She hummed, calmly scrolling through the stack of photos in her hands.

"How'd it burn down?" I asked, holding the photo of the old building in my lap as I waited for her to respond.

"Well, it was an all girls school, yeah?" She started, throwing me a glance before continuing to look through the pictures she held.

"Well, this girl moved here. Her name was Grace I believe." She hummed.

"I was a part of the school council in a way so I have lots of pictures." She hummed.

"Well, the ones that made it out of the fire that is." She added, digging around through another box. Her eyes lit up as she found another picture and handed it to me.

"Here. This is her. Grace." She stated, placing the photograph in my hands.

"She was a very beautiful girl. She was very shy and, to most, a little weird and you know how cruel some girls can be to girls like that." She said, giving me a somewhat sympathetic look.

I definitely am aware. I have dealt with bullies before.

"Yeah." I hummed, lightly rubbing my thumb over the photo, feeling the cool texture beneath my finger as I examined the girl in the photo.

"What happened to her? I imagine something bad if you're including her in this story." I asked, leaning forward as I spoke.

"Well, you must be patient for that. But, she is very important to this story." My grandma explained, trying to settle my impatient behavior.

After taking a deep breath and ceasing my fidgeting, she smiled and continued.

"Well, this girl Grace was very shy and kept to herself. Until she met these two." She said, handing me another photo. This time it had two girls in it. Probably sisters based on how similar they looked.

"Jaysus and Jadis. Sisters." Yep, I was right.

"These two look like they'd be popular." I said.

"Yes, they were." She replied. "But, not in the way you'd expect." She hummed.

"These two girls were popular but in the more infamous way. You see, these girls were witches. Everyone seemed to know but it also seemed to be rumors at the time as there was no full proof. Just odd suspicions that everyone had. I don't think anybody would have expected them to actually be powerful witches like everyone assumed." She said.

I gave her a look.

"Witches?" I asked, unable to keep the deadpan tone out of my voice.

"I know it sounds odd but yes, witches. The real kind of witches. Not the ones with odd noses and big hats." She chuckled, making me slightly smile.

"Okay. They were witches. What happened?" I asked, trying not to be too impatient.

"Well, these girls met Grace and brought her into their little group. That photo I showed you was after she met them. She had been beautiful the whole time but you can see she held herself with more confidence afterwards." She explained.

"They were best friends. They were those friends that no one could imagine being apart. They were always together." She chuckled, smiling as she handed me a photo of one of the girls dressed up with some old sunglasses and a dark wig. I could picture it already. Those three girls having a sleepover in their dorms and playing dress up.

"These girls taught Grace how to channel the power of their god. To channel her energy into magic. It originally was just small things. Little party tricks, you know?" she said, shrugging her shoulders again.

"These girls didn't scare anyone at the time. Some were unsettled and preferred to stay away while others admired the magic they possessed."

My grandma sighed, seemingly deep in thought.

"Well, Jadis, Jaysus and Grace started to change. They all started to seem more aggressive. More mean. They were suddenly just as bad as the school bullies that used to taunt them. Some just brushed it off as the popularity getting to their heads. No one really thought that maybe this magic they were dealving into was starting to affect them."

The tone in the room felt a lot darker as she continued on with the story. I could feel it going somewhere bad. I couldn't fully imagine what could happen but that only made me want to pay even closer attention.

"Well, one night, I believe it was some sort of celebration, we all were hanging out in the main commons area. I remember being with my best friend, Sarah, at the time. We were minding our business, just talking when suddenly a fight broke out between those three girls. I wasn't close enough to see or hear why they were fighting but there was a whole lot of yelling." She sighed, playing with her long braided hair as she spoke, her eyes somewhat unfocused, as if she was in a trance almost.

"The three girls all ganged up on her and somehow, in mere seconds, they had lit the whole room on fire with some chant." She sighed.

"I know, it sounds terribly cheesy but I swear that was what I heard." She said.

"The room was filled with screams and panic as the other girls tried to escape the building before the whole thing burned up.

She leaned forward and lifted the bottom of her white dress to show me her calf where a large, faint burn scar laid.

"I got this when trying to get away. A piece of wood fell from the roof and landed by me while I was writing and the fire got me pretty bad." She hummed.

She had been holding one photo in her hands for quite a while but after a few moments of silence she handed it over to me.

"This was the last photo taken in that building before the fire. This was just a couple hours before." She said. That simple thought made the innocent picture suddenly hold a lot more weight.

Seeing all the girls in the image just minding their own business, going about their day without a care in the world. How sad is it to think that these girls would be caught in a terrible accident in just a few hours? How many of the girls in this photo died in that incident? How many were left with scars like my grandma? The thoughts made my heart slightly ache.

"They say that those girls' spirits still lurk around that building and around this town. Some say they might even potentially be connected to any pictures of them." She hums.

"Some even believe that they reach out to people now. People who have power in them to be witches. Like some type of calling or nudge towards that direction." She said. She seemed to be at a loss for words based on her lack of smooth explanation.

"Why would they do that? I can't think of any reason for them to try and get more people to be witches." I said, feeling slightly baffled at the thought.

She shrugged in response.

"Who knows. Maybe they're just trying to spread the messages of their god or whatever they followed. Maybe they want others to learn as much as they did. Although what they did was wrong, they were very powerful and intelligent because of it. Maybe they're trying to spread those experiences onto those who have the power to do so." She explained.

I nodded before looking over the photos one more time. It was hard to believe that something like that happened right here in this tiny town.

"Well, I believe that is enough storytelling for one day. I'm in the mood for tea. How about I start on the tea and you go put these boxes back on the shelves in my closet, hm?" She smiled at me, putting the photos back in the boxes and handing them to me.

I silently nodded and took the boxes upstairs to her bedroom, stepping into her walk in closet and sliding the boxes up onto the high shelves.

I stopped and looked at the photos of the three girls one last time.

These girls looked so average. So normal. It's hard to imagine them getting into something as controversial as witchcraft and doing something so crazy as lighting a building on fire.

I sighed as I put the photos away and placed the final box on the shelf.

I stared up at the boxes for a moment before turning to leave, stopping in front of my grandma's tall mirror to adjust my beanie, just out of habit.

The bright lightning that flashed outside my window, along with the aggressive clap of thunder made me flinch. I stared at the window for a moment, watching the rain as it poured down.

"Liria~" The whisper made my muscles tense and my breath catch in my throat.

It was that whisper again!

I turned quickly on my feet, looking around the room frantically.

If anyone saw me freaking out like this they'd probably think me a freak.

I looked in the mirror again and sighed.

"Liria, you're going crazy." I sighed to myself, tucking a strand of my bleached hair behind my ear.

Another blinding strike of lightning flooded the room with light, making me shut my eyes.

When I opened them again I couldn't believe my eyes.

Those girls. There they are. They're in the mirror.

I gasped as I stumbled back, turning around to see if they were behind me only to find they weren't really there. I turned back to the mirror to see them all staring at me. They looked exactly the same except their eyes were dark. The colors were so dull their eyes might as well have been fully black. Their skin had flecks of ash all over and their hands were covered in burn scars.

I felt my heart pounding in my chest, my breathing picking up along with it. They seemed so real and yet they were still, almost like statues.

I felt a scream in the back of my throat but as soon as it tried to slip out, it suddenly felt like I couldn't breathe. Like my voice had been completely cut out.

With another flash of lightning, the image changed. The girls were still there but one of them was right behind me. Grace. Her dainty, harshly burned hands were wrapped around my throat and they all had one finger pressed to their lips, the sound of a whispered, shhhhhh, filling my ears. These sickening grins crossed their faces. Under normal circumstances the smiles would look genuine and normal but right now the simple sight of them made my stomach churn again.

The image only lasted a few seconds but it felt like hours as I struggled to breathe. With one more flash of lightning and loud crash of thunder, they were suddenly gone and I was gasping for air again.

I stumbled back so I was sitting on the floor, staring at the dusty pink carpet as I let my heartbeat slow down before looking in the mirror again.

Nothing. No black and white girls covered in ashes. No intense whispers or scary smiles. Nothing. It was like it never happened.

"Liria! The tea is ready!" My grandma's faint voice called.

I placed my hand over my heart to feel it as it slowed.

'They say they try to call out to those capable of such power.'

That's what my grandma said. Is that what these girls are doing? Trying to pull me into some witchcraft thing? Am I really capable of magic?

These thoughts overwhelmed my mind until my grandma called for me again.

With a deep breath, I pushed myself up off the floor and looked in the mirror one more time before rushing downstairs, unaware of the small pile of ashes that was slowly piling onto the carpet from my grandma's mirror as I rushed downstairs.

The end (for now I guess)