“No ma’am,” Jesse replied
feeling his heartbeat intensify. “The last time I saw her she was leaving my
house. But that was around half an hour ago.”
“Oh…” Olivia’s mother sounded defeated. “Olivia got home
a little while ago, but she and I had a fight. She stormed off to her room, and
when I went to tell her it was time for dinner I realized she wasn’t in her
room. Her window was open…”
Mrs. Sandoval began to cry. “I figured maybe she would
have gone to see you since the two of you are so close.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Sandoval. She didn’t come back here.
But, I’ll start looking for her.” Jesse opened the top drawer in his desk and
fished out a small, red flashlight that he kept for when the power when out.
The area where he lived received more than its fair share of thunderstorms
strong enough to knock down powerlines.
“Thank you so much, Jesse.” Mrs. Sandoval began to weep. “My
poor baby…”
Mrs. Sandoval hung up. Jesse got dressed and went into
his younger brother’s room. Maybe Izzy would be willing to help Jesse—and presumably
various others—to look for Olivia.
“Hey, I—” Jesse began to speak, but stopped when he heard
Izzy’s light snoring. Jesse was tempted to record his brother, remembering that
Izzy refused to believe that he snored in his sleep when Jesse mentioned it.
Instead, Jesse walked over to his little brother, pulling the comforter up over
Izzy’s shoulder.
“Promise me you won’t leave,” Jesse whispered, imagining
something unfortunate happening to the younger boy given the circumstances that
had recently arose, as well as some from the past. “I don’t think I can take it…”
Jesse silently walked back to the bedroom door, closing
as quietly as he could behind him. He then headed downstairs intending to tell
his parents about his missing best friend. However, they were nowhere to be
found. ‘Maybe they went out back.’
Jesse went into the living room, seeing—and hearing—his parents arguing on the
deck just outside the sliding glass door that led to the back yard. Deciding
now would not be a great time to interrupt their argument, Jesse walked out the
front door to begin his search for Olivia. ‘Fuck
it. I don’t have time do deal with their crap, right now.’
It wasn’t dark outside, yet, so Jesse put his flashlight
in his front, right pocket for safe keeping, until it got dark out, and began
walking. It didn’t take very much walking to find his first clue. After only going
about a block and a half away from his house, tracing Olivia’s rout to her
house, Jesse found his friend’s golden watch on the sidewalk, the glass of the
face cracked in three places; all of the cracks joining near the middle of the
clock face. Jesse noticed that the hands had stopped. ‘5:37 pm… That was about twenty minutes ago. She can’t be too far away,’
Jesse thought. And then his stomach sank when he had a horrible thought. ‘Unless someone pulled her into their car.’
Jesse looked around for other clues to see which
direction she could have gone. If Olivia had already been home and her watch
was where Jesse found it, chances were that she didn’t go back in the direction
of her house. There was always the possibility that Olivia could have calmed
down and gone back home, but she was known for holding grudges for at least a
few days.
“What the…?” Jesse said quietly. Looking toward the woods
that was behind the row of houses where Jesse found Olivia’s watch, he noticed
there was a spot just behind the tree line that was much darker than the
surrounding areas. Taking a few steps off of the sidewalk and into the grass,
he realized that the spot had a shape; the shape of a tall man with antlers. It
had no features other than its silhouette. Just when Jesse thought he might be
seeing things the figure turned and began walking deeper into the woods.
“I should’ve brought a knife, or something,” Jesse told
himself as he began to run towards the woods. He felt that Olivia’s disappearance
had something to do with the shadows that had been plaguing him recently. ‘This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have told
her about them.’
The anxiety built up in the nervous teen more and more the
further he ran into the woods. He had a feeling that something bad was going to
happen. Or worse, that he’d find Olivia in less than good condition. And then,
he saw something orange a few more feet ahead through the trees. Upon getting
closer, Jesse realized he was looking at the outside of a cave that must have
been made of clay or something similar. He stopped in front of the cave entrance,
staring into the darkness thinking that there would be many places for the
shadow figures to hide.
Something about the area was a bit confusing to Jesse.
The danger was most likely in front of him, but he felt like the someone was
behind him, watching his every move. Knowing he could be attacked if he turned
his back on the cave, he slowly turned around to see what could be behind him,
other than the woods he’s just run through. Standing in a semicircle was a
group of those cats that Jesse saw in his hallway at home. Something about
these shadow animals was different, though. They didn’t have any actual
features, but Jesse could see that they were in a position as if they were waiting
to pounce on him. He felt a wave of energy that somehow didn’t feel right. The
cat directly in front of Jesse began to make a motion moving the dirt under it’s
paw; A scratching motion.
“Aw, hell…”
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