Present

"W-what could be happening to us?" Toni asked, holding her head.

"There is no way that every one of us are having these experiences." I looked at Kete and Caleb. "What did you see?"

It was a while before either of them responded but it was Kete that went first. "Ma called me to make her tea but before I went I noticed I had painted a head in the landscape. It was creepy but I just turned the painting away and went. When I came back the head had...moved."

"Great, moving paintings." Caleb grumbled and rubbed his face, mask and all. "Zake paid me a visit during the night and he happily brought his huskies. It was about how we were forgetting him and somehow my older sister knew that."

"Moving paintings, dog nightmares and phantoms." I mirrored Caleb's actions.

"Phantoms?" Caleb raised a eyebrow. I recounted what happened in the class and at home. Let's just say it didn't lighten the mood.

"Look," Tshepang took a heavy breathe. ", Kete said it. This isn't America but I've seen videos of stuff here too like Kempton Park Hospital. It's real. So let's try and understand this."

"Understand what?" Toni screamed. "How a boy who isn't confirmed dead magically disappeared from the face of the planet and is now haunting us?"

"Okay when you say it like that it doesn't make sense." Unathi growled. "None of this makes sense!"

Students passing looked at Unathi strangely as she shouted at the sky. Though it looked crazy, her reaction was exactly sane.

"Why us?" Caleb asked. "Why not the other guys? Why not his family? The ones not missing."

"Because we were the ones he cared about." Toni said as matter of fact. Tshepang looked out over the overcast sight.

"Or we were the last ones." She begrudgingly said. What?

"What? What do you mean the last ones?" I questioned.

Unathi and Tshepang shared a look, an unspoken message passing between them. This was not the first time they've spoken about this.

"Zake had a hard time during lockdown. Harder than most." She started. "I don't know if it's true or not but in the end he felt that many of us were not his friends. That we had abandoned him. I called a few days after school started and I felt it. I felt his anger, his hatred towards many of us."

"That's it? You couldn't have told us this sooner?" Caleb shouted.

"What was the use? I'm not his babysitter! You guys shouldn't have forgotten about him!" Tshepang yelled back. Caleb stumbled back as if punched in the gut.

"Forgotten..." He whispered. "You seem to forget that you are one of us. That means you abandoned him too."

"Enough." I ordered. "We need to start looking for situations like this in the past. Something about a unexplainable disappearance and weird activity that followed. In South Africa or anywhere else. I don't think I can handle another day with this crap happening."

They all nodded in agreement. Nobody wanted this to keep happening so the sooner we stopped it, the better.

The sky rumbled, flashing in occasion.

"We need to get Shay." Toni admitted. "I don't know if she fits in the abandoned theory nor what she experienced."

"It's fine I'll go." Caleb volunteered. "I need some time to think."

Thunder roared repetitively, booming in a pattern that sounded like slow laughter.

The bell ripped me out of my thoughts