Halfway through our road-trip, a thunderstorm blew in from the sea.
"OH MY FUCKING GAWD, BELLA!" Rosalie yelled, as she opened the passenger side door and dived in. A flurry of rock and grit blew in after her, before she hurridedly pulled the door close behind her. The next few minutes Alice, Rosalie and me sat in complete silence as we pondered our empty fuel tank.
The radio was a noise in the background.
"Drivers, we recommend you stay in tonight. There's a nasty wind blowing in, that's gonna fell trees quicker than a chainsaw. In fact, this is perfect tornado weather."
"We're dead," Rosalie slammed her head back into the seat. "We're so, so dead."
"How did our trip turn so far south?" Alice was miffed. "I swear we're meant to be in San Fransico by now, lapping up the sun in our bikini's."
The gale, as if hearing our treacherous intentions, whipped past the car in a 100mph rush. Further along the road, a baby sapling flew into the air, uprooted from it's mother who waved her branches angrily. "Holy shit," I said as the baby sapling landed on our windscreen with a crack.
"I'm outta here," Rosalie said, throwing the door open again. Minutes earlier, she had been the one to exit, to see if there was a cellphone signal nearby here. We were stuck on a man-made road, carving through acres of decidious forest. It was safe to say, there was no gas stations for us to roll up in. What a place to break down.
"Rosalie! Come back!" Alice yelled, clenching at the steering wheel real hard. She was the firm believer out of us, that splitting up was a sure-fire way to being killed by a mad serial axe-man. But Rosalie wasn't listening. She stuck up two fingers in the air, and vanished into the trees either side of us.
"We should stay here," I said nervously. "Wait until she comes back."
A few seconds later, Alice and I were racing each other after Rosalie. "Rosalie! Don't leave us!" Alice cried. "You're the only one who knows how to fight!"
"I'M SORRY, OKAY?" I bellowed. "YOU WERE RIGHT. I WAS WRONG. WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN THAT LEFT A WHILE BACK!"
There was no sight of the damned girl. Through the dense picket of trees, I caught a reflection of a window pane. I squinted through the mud, and saw a rickety old house looming over the treetops. Dark and menacing, it cast a sinister spell over the grounds. Alice saw the house the same time as me, and stopped to gawp up at it.
"Is that a...?"
"Lifeline? Yes it is, Alice! We've found help! Halla-fucking-lujah!"
As we were sprinting up to the porch, I thought I caught a ghostly face in the upstairs window. But a second look told me I was imagining things. Alice was besides herself, when she vaulted over the railings and grabbed the knocker. Before she could let go, I grabbed her arm and shook it, for her to read the writing. Just above the door, was a wooden plank nailed to the rim. The writing was spidery and ancient. It looked like an omen.
Ye who enters here, shall be prepared for the end.
"Alice!" I shook her arm again. "That's a warning! We're going to get murdered if we go in there!"
"This house looks abandoned," Alice scoffed. "There's a major storm blowing in, and I know which side of the door I'd rather be shielding behind. But good luck with toughing it out by yourself, Bella. You're going to need it."
Without a second's thought, Alice turned the door handle and stepped in. I closed one eye, half-expecting a brutal slaying on the spot. But when nothing happened, and Alice ventured further in, I found my worst fears unfounded. Nothing popped up from the woodwork. An ominous shadow didn't flit across the walls and strangle us to death. The house was...dry. We had finally found a haven from the wreckage outside.
My mouth dropped open, when I discovered who was waiting for us in the lounge.
"Rosalie!" I squealed, launching myself into her arms with Alice close after. It was a tight fit, but pretty soon we separated with a twinkle in our eye.
"Pretty neat dig, huh?" she smirked, pointing up the sweeping staircase. "There's about five rooms up there. I call the room closest to the bathroom. Even though there's a dubious red stain on the floor. Shall we meet up back here in five?"
Alice and I looked at each other, before scrounging towards the staircase. There was no lighting, so we had to make do with the dim light outside filtering in through the window panes. "And here I thought this was the scene of an infamous massacre," she joked, as the fifth stair above us gave a Crrrr-eaaakk. It almost sounded like someone was coming down the stairs towards us.
The stair creaked again, as we reached the landing. This time it sounded like the person had a change of heart, and was following us back up. But I shook that eerie thought from my head, and stepped into MY room.
It was gorgeous.
Burgundy satin curtains fell from the ceiling, in a cascade of style and beauty. They crowned a pair of windows, that overlooked the forests for as far as I could see. From here, there was even a clear view of the stretch of road we broke down in.
I shivered.
This was the room, I saw a face at the window.
"Everything all right?" Alice cheerfully popped her head into my room, breaking the tense ambvience. For a creepy second, I felt like I was being watched. But that feeling vanished as quickly as it had come by. Now I focused on Alice, discussing our unbelievable luck. "My room's great. It will do me nicely until we get the hell out of here tomorrow. We should meet up with Rosalie now. I bet she's wondering where we are."
Rosalie couldn't care less. As we traisped back to the lower floor, we found Rosalie stretched out on a couch. She was snoring slightly, so we decided to leave her downstairs for the night. There was nothing to eat in the kitchen, except for a few rings of mould.
"Should we call it a night?" Alice gloomily asked.
"Beats sitting down here all day. Maybe we can think with fresher minds."
As we parted in opposite directions, at the head of the stairs, Alice left me with a worrying remark. "Try not to get murdered in your bed, Bella."
"Thanks," I narrowed my eyes. "Exactly what I want to hear in a creepy old house."
I watched Alice walk down the landing, and close the door to her room with a click. Not for the first time, I felt unease. Having walked up and down, and all over the house, I was pretty sure it was deserted. But why was there no dust on the beds? The sheets seemed freshly laundered, and ready waiting for us.
I shook my head.
Don't be paranoid.
I chose not to draw the curtains tight, because the lack of light would keep me awake. There was a note under my pillow. Well, more like yellowed parchment written on by biro?
Get-
It said, and the rest was ripped away and I would never find out what was next. Get the children? Get out? Get some cucumber pickles, I'm starving?
Laughing away the possibilities, I settled down on the bed and let sleep take me. I fell relatively quick, considering I was in a strange habitat, and usually needed a night to acclimitise. I was dreaming about nice things- Lemon tarts with yellow drizzling, when somewhere in the distance, a girl screamed.
"Alice?" I said in my dream, and woke up.
It was Alice. And she sounded like she was being murdered. I threw back my sheets, and ran down the landing to Alice's room. It mirrored mine, except the curtains were magneta. Alice was sitting upright in her bed, looking like she'd seen a ghost. In fact, she was garbling rubbish too.
"He was watching me!" she pointed at the foot of her bed. "He was holding a knife!"
A bolt of pure fear went through my bones.
"Don't be ridiculous, Alice," I said, edging away from the spot. "It's not nice to call Rosalie a man."
A loud snore downstairs, told me it possibly couldn't have been Rosalie standing at the foot of Alice's bed. The next viable explanation was that Alice was imagining things. Much like yesterday, when I thought I saw a face in the window. But maybe this wasn't the best time to bring up that knee-jerking ancedote.
"What did he look like?" I asked, not helping my shivers one bit.
"I don't know, Bella! He was like a shadow, blurred and out of focus. But the knife lept out at me."
"You mean, he was trying to slash you?" I asked, feeling sick.
"No! No. I just meant I caught every detail of that knife. It was more like a dagger. Wickedly sharp, and set with a pumice hilt. Every inch of that blade was splattered in blood."
"Shut up," I said, extremely weakly. "I don't want to hear this."
"Well, you asked-"
"Hello, girls."
Both of us screamed, and lept into each others arms when the third voice joined in. The deep baritone broke off into a series of high pitched giggles, which made us realise the culprit was someone we definitely knew. "Rosalie," we said at the same time, as she emerged from behind the door, cackling like a bonafide witch.
"You guys are too easy."
"Alice had a nightmare," I said dryly.
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Your scream could've woken the entire neighorhood," Rosalie yawned. "If we weren't in the middle of a fucking forest. That's the last time we listen to you, Swan."
"Give it a rest," I said, annoyed. "I fucked up, okay? I won't ever play sat-nav again. Just help me get out of this hellhole, and I can phone Charlie to help us. He's a tracker. He'll find us in no time."
"Yeah, yeah," Rosalie rolled her eyes. "Just go to sleep, girls. We aren't going anywhere this time of night. Or should I say morning." The sky outside was milky dew, but it was still dark enough for us to dive right back into bed. I didn't want Alice to sleep alone, and I don't think she wanted to sleep alone either.
In the end, the three of us huddled into Alice's bed, and waited for dawn to break.
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