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13

13

Lauren ran the towel through her hair then patted it gently against her scalp.

She stared vaguely at the wall as thoughts filtered through her mind, each thought more confusing than the last.

God, that journal…that journal!

Its existence was making Lauren uneasy and worsening it was the fact that she had no idea what her mother was talking about.

Lauren sighed and drew her robe tighter around her body as she stalked back into the bedroom. She couldn’t sit back and let herself become more and more confused about this. There were things hidden...Lauren knew that now. She could no longer ignore it. Secrets, just as Selena had said. Secrets she had to find out.

Everything had to tie together at some point, didn’t it? Montgomery Huston’s appearance at her house for a reason that turned out to be false, her meeting Aaron on the road without even realizing it, Selena speaking to her about a girl Aaron saved from monsters, her overhearing Mayor Stanford saying all these strange things on the phone and now her finding this journal that belonged to her mother! It all seemed like absolutely random occurrences that had nothing to do with each other, but somehow, Lauren just knew!

There had to be a tie to the whole mess.

She paced the bedroom floor, her hair hanging damp around her face. Her gaze gravitated toward the journal on the bed and she turned to it.

Picking it up, Lauren sunk onto the bed and opened it again, this time turning for the second page.

She braced herself, but still the words written on the pages sent shivers racing down her back.

“Saw him watchin’ my baby today...if my blood ever boiled. Abby says to let it be…it’s God’s will, she says…I say she’s cursed and blind...he’s a monster and sure as God’s my witness, if he touches my baby…”

The words abruptly ended, leaving the unfinished thought hanging in the air. Lauren stared down at the words, her skin turned pale. If she could only discover who the ‘he’ was. Surely somebody was trying to hurt her mother, but who? And why hadn’t pops done anything to protect her? Or Aunt Abby?

Lauren bit her lip and tapped her foot.

She needed to understand. She had to know what the hell was going on.

Throwing her hair over her shoulder, she tried to figure things out. Okay, the house was empty until about ten o’clock the next morning when they’d do the walls in all the rooms. Lauren thought of going in early when nobody was there yet and looking through pops’ room properly and maybe the attic too, before the roofing company blew it right off.

Nodding, she stood and began pulling off her robe. She’d go to sleep now, but dammit Lauren knew she’d be tossing and turning the whole night from this. She couldn’t get it out of her mind, God it was driving her insane!

She huffed angrily and threw open her closet doors before she could change her mind.

Lauren quickly pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a t-shirt, throwing on some All-Stars and a dark hoodie.

She left her hair to air-dry, glad it wasn’t prone to frizzing and quickly she slipped out of her room.

Her phone sat snug in her back pocket and Lauren was glad it was fully charged because she would need the flashlight.

She hurried quietly down the stairs, throwing a glance behind her to make sure no one was watching. When Lauren turned back to the door, she froze, a frightened shriek escaping her.

“Going somewhere, dear?” Martha questioned, standing near the front door.

Lauren laid a hand across her chest as she tried to calm her speeding heart. She hadn’t even heard Martha approaching. What the hell?

She quickly composed herself as Martha’s assessing eyes studied her from hair to toe.

“Just to Natalie’s…” she said quickly. Damn, she should have said Samantha’s. “I didn’t want to bother you in case you were asleep.”

Martha’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Natalie Dannison?” she asked and Lauren nodded.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Being in Grandfather’s house so much has got me a little down so she and Samantha suggested a little Girl’s night.”

Martha nodded, satisfied with the response. “Alright then, dear. Go on and be safe, mind you,” she called as Lauren left the house.

“Night,” Lauren called back.

She sighed as she left the yard, tugging her hood over her head.

She was going back to that house tonight. If there was anything to be found she would find it!

Lauren enjoyed her sleep- usually- and she was not going to lose sleep over this.

The sky began to get darker and she quickened her steps then began to jog lightly.

As long as Martha believed she was at Natalie’s, she had as much time as she wanted.

She let her eyes drift up to the dark sky and regretted it when a shiver of apprehension ran through her, but biting down on it, Lauren pressed on.

As the wind began to pick up and whip her in the face as she ran, Lauren pushed the puzzle pieces around in her head.

Her mother spoke of a monster.

A monster who had been close enough to Lauren to watch her as her mom mentioned. Lauren’s skin crawled at the thought of it, but she pushed that aside for now.

Then Selena, Aaron’s mom had also spoken of a girl that Aaron saved from the monster.

It tied up somehow, it just had to! Dammit, Lauren would find out how.

She soon reached the house and ran up to the brand new door James and Grayson had put in. There weren’t any lights yet, so the place was a little dark- well, quite dark, but somehow that didn’t bother Lauren.

She turned the knob and pushed open the unlocked door, immediately whipping her flashlight out to illuminate the place.

It was clean and empty, just as they’d left it.

Lauren went first into her mother’s room. Silence filled the house and all you could hear was the sound of soil crunching against the floor beneath her Taylors. The wind blew outside, making the night feel colder than it really was.

She pushed open the room and ran the flashlight aimlessly over the walls and wardrobe, feeling her spirits sink.

Of course. The guys already sent the furniture away to the storeroom from where they’d have a garage sale, even though Natalie assured them nobody would buy.

Lauren sighed and pulled the door slowly closed. It creaked awfully, splintering the silence and Lauren felt goose-bumps rise along her skin.

Ignoring the butterflies slamming themselves frantically against the walls of her stomach, she turned back to the empty living room and tried to ignore the little voice whispering in her mind to remind her that that was where pops had been murdered, where his blood had flowed.

Lauren closed her eyes tightly and turned away from the living room, hurrying up the stairs to pops’ room.

She reached it and immediately threw open the door. Her flashlight illuminated the whole room from her angle at the door, so she lowered it.

She couldn’t risk anybody with a view of the house seeing the flash through the window and sounding the burglar alarm. Not that there was anything to steal in this place, an actual thief would have had a hard time.

Lauren went to walk into the room when suddenly, she froze. An ice-cold chill ran down her back.

She gasped and jumped to turn around, flashing the light right where she’d expecting to find someone.

But the hallway stood empty.

Lauren stood, wide-eyed and breathless, scanning the hallway and shining her light at every little corner.

She sighed and turned back into pop’s room. There was nobody there, she was paranoid, was all it was. Taking in shaky breaths, she fought to calm herself down.

Sadly, despite the breathing exercises, her heart remained in her throat. The next best thing to do was to ignore its fast beating and to move on.

She walked slowly to the wardrobe, glad that the guys hadn’t had time to move out this furniture. She shone the light everywhere inside it and found not one thing. Perhaps a few spider webs, destroyed by her earlier rifling, but not much else.

Lauren sighed and turned back to the desk and pops’ bed.

She remembered the photograph she’d found earlier and hope soared that she’d find another one.

She started moving the chair aside and stopped when something...a sound...a sound reached her ears.

Something or someone in the house, besides herself, was making some sound.

Lauren turned herself into a statue even as her insides quivered like jelly-o. She listened, straining her hearing to the highest of its capacity.

Scraping.

A scraping sound reached her ears. Like a cat was trying to crawl out of something.

Lauren shivered and her eyes rose to the ceiling. Was it coming from the attic? Or downstairs? Outside?

All the possibilities rang through her head as clearly as a Sunday church bell, but she couldn’t bring her feet to move in order to check any of those places.

Suddenly the scraping stopped. Lauren’s eyes got teary, but she blinked them back. There was nothing in the house! Nothing, she just needed to calm herself down.

Slowly she sank to her knees by Rev. Burns’ bed and tried to catch her breathing.

When Lauren shifted her knee, she heard another scraping sound, but this one came from directly beneath her knee.

Lauren shone the light down at her knee, plunging the rest of the room into heavy dimness. Her eyes were delighted to see the white corners of what looked like a photograph sticking out from under her knee.

“Finally,” she breathed.

Lauren’s mouth curved into a relieved smile as she removed her knee from the photograph…

It was that same smile that contorted into a mask of horror when the photograph was fully revealed.

Lauren screamed, throwing herself back as far away from the gruesome image as she could. Her phone went clattering underneath the bed, plunging her into darkness as she continued screaming and scrambling away from the image that was ingrained into her brain, bright as it was from her phone's flashlight.

Suddenly, a cold hand closed roughly around her mouth and Lauren’s eyes widened as an arm wrapped around her thrashing arms, lifting her off the floor.

She kicked and thrashed, but the person who, hidden by darkness, seemed to be a big sinister shadow, held tightly onto her.

He jerked her face violently around, trying to shut up her muffled screams.

“Shut up, you nosy little bitch!” came a dark growl and Lauren felt her heart physically hurt from the fear that arrested it.

The hand over her mouth lifted and a sharp slap was delivered to the side of her face, whipping her head to the side. Lauren saw stars.

She might have blacked out for a second and the hand reached back again, but this time before more pain was delivered to her face, the arm surrounding her was suddenly wrenched away.

Lauren felt her body fall to the floor, released from its captor. She crawled back against the wardrobe and stared into the darkness before her where she heard the sound of a struggle.

Heavy grunts could be heard along with the painful sound of breaking bone and a man’s scream.

Lauren whimpered, pushing herself deep into the corner and praying for rescue.

Suddenly, the man stopped screaming and Lauren heard a heavy thud. The floor thumped beneath her butt and Lauren knew one of the two invisible men in the room had fallen.

Who were they and what did they want from her?! What the hell were they doing here in the first place?

She struggled to control her breathing as it dragged painfully from her lungs, labored by the cold fear that had wrapped its icy fingers around her heart.

There was silence. The darkness was so thick, Lauren felt like she had gone blind as she blinked hard and still saw nothing. She wished hard for the big dark clouds to clear and the moon to appear at the window, but no such luck.

She remained plunged into the dark with the pair of eyes she could feel fixated on her from somewhere in the darkness.

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