Chapter 5 – Chap 5

“So how was your morning, honney?”

“It’s been…interesting.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh,I’ve made a friend…on MySpace, I mean…”

“That’s ok, but trust everyone on the Internet, you never know who could be lurking in the murky depths.”

“Yeah,tell ne about it! Anyway, I’m grabbing a few cookies and locking myself in my room, gotta study for a test I have tomorrow.”

That wasn’t a lie, by the way, I really did have a test the next day, but I wasn’t going to study, I didn’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a bad student, but a simple piece of paper meant nothing next to the mystery. I entered my bedroom and locked the door.

“You can come out, It’s just me. I’ve brought some food, want some?”

Cloe came out from under my bed, grabbed some cookies and began devouring them like Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster.

“Your food just keeps getting better and better!”

“Glad you like it, but don’t talk with your mouth full!”

“Sorry! But why do I have to hide?”

“So my parents don’t know you’re here.”

“Why, are they bad?”

“No, of course not! I think…”

I then stopped and thought about Cloe’s question. Did my parents know about the bunker, about Primal, about Cloe? How would they react if they saw her? I couldn’t decide wich was scarier, the possibility that they didn’t know a monster and a poor little girl were living under their house, or the possibility they did, and had just left Cloe and the other kids to die down there. It was best to keep Cloe hidden, at least until I could think of a better idea .

“Listen,my mother comes to my room all the time, if you stay in here,you’re gonna be found pretty easily, but don’t worry, I have a plan.”

Cloe managed to stay hidden until nightime, after checking my parents were asleep, we decended into the basement, where I crafted a little hiding spot for Cloe, complete with a bed I made with a matress,a pillow and a blanket.

“Alright, are you happy with this bed?Come on, try it!”

” Wow, the rectangle on my head is so soft!”

“Yeah, it’s called a pillow. Anyway, I have to tell you something important, I have to go somwhere tomorrow, it’ll only be a few hours, but…”

“Where are you going?”

“To a place called school, you wouldn’t understand.The point is, you’ll be home alone for a while, if you’re hungry, there’s food in the fridge…

” That cold, white closet, right?”

“Yeah, but please try not to make a mess, oh, and when you hear someone return, do NOT come out of your hiding spot until you know for sure It’s me, understood?”

Cloe nodded.

“Awesome, you’re pretty smart! Anyway, good night!”

“Jessica, come on, the school bus is here!”

“I know! Bye mom,bye dad!”

Bye Cloe! I said inside my head.

“We should get going too, Robert!”

“Hold on, Vanessa, my coworkers and I are gonna throw a party today, to celebrate the boss’s retirement, so I thought I should give him my old Stethoscope, I think It’s somwhere in the basement, I’ll go get it.”

For the entire bus trip to school I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened the day before, so much so that I almost completely ignored my best friend:Susan, who was sitting next to me.

“I called you yesterday, but you didn’t pick up the phone.”

“What…oh, sorry, I-I couldn’t,I…was babysitting a little girl… the daughter of my father’s friend.”

“Were you at her house?”

“No, we were at my house.”

“Why didn’t you pick up the phone then?”

“At what time did you call?”

“At 10 AM”

I was at the bunker I thought.

“I was…taking a shower with the girl.”

“Whatever, have you studied?”

“No, I had… better things to do.”

“That’s strange coming from you…You can always cheat, not sure if it’ll work with this teacher, thought…she’s been teaching for many years, pretty sure she’s an expert at catching cheaters!”

At first I just nodded without giving it much thought, but then it hit me, my teacher: Mrs. Joan, like Susan had said, she had been a teacher for years, so she could’ve been…No, she HAD to have been my sister’s teacher at some point. Maybe if I asked her I would get more information. So after a test that I gave up on after 10 minutes (an event that baffled classmates and teacher alike) I Impatiently waited for the class to end so I could speak with Mrs. Joan in private.

“Hey, ma’am, I’d like to ask you something…”

“Hi, Jessica! Of course, is it about the test…because that’s not normal for you…is something wrong?”

“Yes, I mean, no…not exactly. You see, I’m trying to find out what happened to my sister.”

“Oh, she was a student of mine since preschool, up to when she…you,know, died.”

“Speaking of that, do you have any information you could share with me?”

Cloe heard soemone opening a door upstairs, loud footsteps followed soon after, someone was coming,was it Jessica? She wasn’t sure, so she decided to stay hidden. She couldn’t see who it was, but she could hear them. Whoever it was stopped moving, she could tell they were near the door that lead to the place she came from. Was the person staring at the door? They then began shouting, some words, Cloe could understand, the word NO, to be exact, but there were other words that were new to her.

“NO! NO, NO,NO,NO! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK,OH, SHIT!”

The person then began flashing their flashlight frantically all over the place, as if they were trying to hunt someone down. The light hit Cloe in the face, dazzling her, she instinctively walked backwards, knocking over a few boxes that were behind her.

The person had hear her, they began to walk towards her position, getting colser…and closer…and closer. She felt the light again, this time right in front of her.

“Well,well,well…What do we have here? It looks like a little vermin managed to crawl out of its hole…”