Barging In

"God, you'd think they'd learn how to keep it down." Hilary Barton snapped plopping down on the couch in the living room her sister was sitting already, she tossed her slightly longer then should length brown hair out of her face and turned her blue eyes to the television sitting on the entertainment center leaning on the wall.   She turned up the volume on the movie they were watching in an attempt to drown out the arguing filtering in from the apartment next to there's.

"Honestly its not like there are other people living around you or anything." She stated smashing some of the popcorn she had just made into her mouth.

"Shut up, I'm trying to watch this." Hailey snapped glaring over her shoulder at Hilary. She swished her dyed dark brown-layered hair over her shoulder and fixed Hilary with a glare made even worst coming from the partially green partially brown eyes.

Hilary stuck her tongue out at her, the older girl rolled her eyes and turned back to the sounds blaring out of the television.

"Why did you make that? I told you mom was going to bring us something home to eat."

"Well, that's not going to be like for o whole hour, I'm hungry now."

"I swear you and Hanna are like bottomless pits."  Hilary chose that moment to belch loudly, "and ever so lady like."

"Just watch your show alright? And I'll eat my popcorn." She snapped glaring at the back of her older sisters head and contemplating chucking some of her popcorn at the back of her head. "I would through some of this at you, but I want to eat it, so I'm not going to."

"Wow, what a threat."

"What ya watching?" Hanna asked bonding down the stairs her curly brown hair brought up in a ponytail bouncing along behind her into the room. Her murky brown eyes swept over the scene and she grabbed a handful of Hilary's popcorn plopping down onto the floor.

"I don't know, some boring thing that she picked out." Hilary grumbled glaring out the window.

It was another wonderful day in the middle of nowhere town she lived in in Nevada. It was the 21st of April and to look out the window you would never be able to tell. It was snowing, again. All week it had been a mixture of that sort of weather, snow, rain, and hail.

Bored, Hilary stood up and walked across the room and turned on the computer. She was twirling in the chair waiting for the damn thin to load up when the door to there apartment slowly started opening.

Hilary glanced down at the clock in the computer corner and it was only slightly past four, their mom wasn't due home for at least another hour, and the sounds of their cheerful three year old sibling was nowhere to be found.

An old woman was walking into their house mumbling to herself. Hilary sprung to of her chair and to the door holding it where it was so the old lady couldn't open it nay farther.

The lady looked up at Her and a look of faint surprise filtered across her eyes she glanced past Hilary and to the apartment,

"Can I help you?" she asked the woman. The women looked terrible, blood was congregated under her nose, she looked to be at least eighty years old and was bobbing around in her skin like she want' sure exactly how to use it any longer,

"I…" when the woman opened her mouth most f her teeth were missing and it looked like there was more blood pooling in there as well.

"What?" Hilary questioned slightly confused and nervous. The woman mumbled softly but Hilary couldn't make out any of what the lady was tiring to say.

"Did you need something?" Hilary asked as the woman slowly backed out of their doorway. The woman seemed confused about what was going on. Hilary looked closer at her and noticed that her entire chin looked blue, as if it had recently been hurt and was slowly healing.

"They wanted to take a nap." She mumbled walking out of their doorway and onto the step. Hilary watched her go and shut the door.

"What the heck was that?" Hilary gasped turning and shaking locked the door.

"Did you see her nose?" Hanna asked walking over to the window and looking out it watching the woman walk past towards the neighbor's apartment.

"Of course I saw it." Hilary snapped, "She was standing what two feet away from me."

"Calm down," Hailey snapped walking over to her. "She's gone now, its not like anything happened."

"Who the hell walks up to someone's house and just walks in?"

"She seemed confused to me." Hanna remarked moving away form the window, "Almost like she thought she was somewhere else."

"I think I saw her coming out of the red truck." Hilary looked at her confused, "you know, the one that the people next door have every few days show up."

"Oh, well that kind of makes sense at least. Especially if they are drug dealers." Hanna said walking into the kitchen and grabbing the jug of water out of the fridge. She pulled a cup down and poured the clear liquid into it.

"Honestly Hilary, if your that nervous look the damn door."

"I did." She snapped turning from where she had been staring at the door to glare at her elder sibling.

"You'd so pathetic."

"Thank you for telling me what I already know." Hilary snapped.

 It was a well-known fact to the Barton's and everyone who knew them that Hilary was very easily scared. Not only with movies or books, but also on many occasions even if the girl new for a fact someone else was somewhere in the room she would look up and see them and jump, or scream slightly startled.  One of her uncle's would always walk up behind her and grab her sides when he entered the room, Hilary once asked why do you do that to me and not Hanna or Hailey?

"You have the best reaction."

One thing her sisters would never let her live down was when she was about eight or so they had gone for Halloween to a haunted house, there mother had paid for there tickets. Hilary was refusing to go rather abundantly but her mom and sisters it convinced her it would be fun.  Not only did Hilary not enjoy the tour, she also ruined it for her sister. The monsters that were supposed to jump out and scare the children were pointed out to her. Instead of springing to life, they slowly gained in energy as they three walked through the exhibit.  Finally to exit they had to crawl through a small opening. By the end Hilary admitted that it wasn't real that bad when asked by their mom.

"Of course it wasn't," Hailey bit out, "They didn't do t like they were supposed to because you had to go and cry before we even got in there."

"I'm sorry." Hilary mumbled.

"That's what you always say. You always ruin everything."

Five o'clock rolled around, and not soon after the sounds of a car pulling in to the carport were heard through the door.

"No Leslie, you can't play. You haven't been feeling well lately."

"But mommy, I'm not coughing." The little three-year-old girl replied, her dark brown eyes staring up pleadingly into the hard green ones of her mother.

"Besides, its to cold out today."

"I'm going to go knock on their door?"

"No, now come on." Mrs. Barton called leading the little girl inside.

"How was school?" Kathy Barton asked pulling off her coat and shoes. A chorus of 'fine' came for m around the room.  Kathy walked behind Hilary playing on the computer. She stood over her for a moment and cleared her throat.

"I know, hang on." Hilary said closing her window and getting up. 

Kathy sat sown and played her daily 'relaxing' game, as she liked to call it.  Around six-thirty she went up stairs and changed into a skirt. It just so happened that Mrs. Barton was in a play that was going up in a little under two weeks and so she had to get used to acting it out wearing a skirt, as it turner out that was what her character was going to wear.

The evening progressed as they tended to do and soon Hanna and Hilary were talking quietly in there shared room while there mom shouted down the hall for them to shut up and go to sleep.  Eventually the two did conk out.

"What's going on?" Hilary asked, as she was being viciously shock into wakefulness.

"Come on honey you need to wake up." Kathy said. Hilary grabbed her glasses off her bedside table and saw the clock flashing 3:23.

"You're kidding." She grumbled pulling on her robe and glancing over at Hanna's bed to find it already vacated.

Hilary yawning traveled down the stairs to where she saw two men dressed in suits standing with her mom. Hanna and Hailey were both standing, not talking, a few feet away from each in the kitchen.

"What's going on?" Hilary asked most of her sleepiness evaporating due to the serious expressions on all of the faces now focused on her.

"Don't worry honey." Kathy said.

"Miss, if you would please stay where you are and sit and do not listen to what your mother here is saying. We will talk to you in a few minutes." Hilary nodded stiffly sliding down the wall and sitting stalk still.

Soon the men were finished talking to Kathy who went upstairs to check on Leslie. The men talked to both Hailey and Hanna and finally called Hilary over to talk to them.

"What's going on?" Hilary asked shaking like a leaf.

"Don't worry, you have nothing to be afraid of." One of the men said. He was wearing a dark navy suit and had wavy sandy brown hair. The other was in gray with jet-black hair and a pad of paper and a pen poised at the ready.

"Can you tell us if you heard anything odd happening around her earlier this evening?"

"No,"

"Did anything strange come form outside or possibly one of the neighboring apartments."

"Not, not that I can think of." Hilary said. "What's going on?"

"Sorry miss, but were not at liberty to say." The blue suited on replied.

"Well, I'm not sure if this is what your asking, but and old woman walked into her earlier today. It was really freaky. I had no clue who she was and she simply walked right in."

"What did she look like?"

"Um… about 5'4", white, like in her eighties of something close, but what was really weird is she seemed to have like been in a fight or fallen down or something because her face was bruised looking and slightly bloody."

"What time did you see her at?"

"A little after four I think."

"Had you ever met this woman, or seen her before?"

"No, why?"     

"Because I believe the woman you saw was the same one we found about an hour ago in the arrogation ditch behind this lot of apartments, she's dead."