"What?"

I pointed at the empty knife rack.

"Chill, they are in the sink."

I had to make sure of that myself.

I scuttled to the steel sink, and found only two of them above the other dashed utensils. Returning them into the rack, there were four still missing.

Digging through the utensils, dropping them recklessly on the floor, I found another one. Now two were missing.

"Here," Isabella found another one in another hip of dirty utensils.

One more.

That one knife could be the one to butcher us.

It was nowhere to be found. Not in the broken cardboards, nor the old steel sink, nor on other heaps of utensils, nor below the sink or anything around it. Not even lighting the flash light of my phone assisted enough to find it.

My breath was either becoming heavier or the air around me becoming denser and scarce, but the speed was definitely not matching up to the lung's pace.

Working my hands hastily through the remaining heap of dirty utensils, wishing it was there, I didn't find it. It was not in the kitchen.

"Let's get out of here," I uttered in a voice barely above a whisper.

"No__"

I had no time nor energy to argue with her. I turned for the door.

"Here," before I had left the kitchen, Isabella found the last knife cloaked under the pan I had earlier stepped on. "There is nothing to worry about," she placed it in the rack and smiled insinuating that everything was okey. "We should go upstairs."

There was nothing to worry about was what she thought, but my super loud insecurities contradicted on the same. I didn't have a reason to call off the mission, so I agreed and lead the way.

The left side of the stairs the was a handrail, and on the other there was a wall mounted with same ugly peoples pictures. Some crushed, some still standing.

The family seemed to be getting uglier, like their faces were a complete misfit of its own. If people like them existed then there would be no need to name anything uglier, coz there wouldn't be any.

The stairs treks were weak and creaked even louder by a step.

Strongly grasping the handrail, I took my steps in wary.

Abruptly, I heard a crush behind me and swiveled my head at bolt speed.

Isabella had just been swallowed by the stairs, only her hands left clasping a cracking trek.

"Taylor," she called in agony.

I took a stair downward towards her, stretched my arm and tightened my clasp on the handrail. Summoning my energy from every other inch of my body, I grabbed her hand and started pulling her. She was way heavier than I thought.

Below my feet, I heard a squint followed by a cracking sound. I was about to go down to.

I closed my eyes, as if it would help increase my body's energy, and pulled her halfway out. The crack insidiously spread across the trek below my feet like a deadly virus pacing up a feeble body.

Pulling her up, she crawled herself as the trek below my feet shattered into sharp pieces. I flung myself away as swift as I could to the edge of the floorboard at the top of the stair case.

I gasped as much air as I could my heart thudding itself out of its cages. I was a second to getting swallowed by the stairs to down below where utter darkness ruled.

I switched my glance to Isabella who was laying next to me. "Isa," I noticed the peculiar body movement.

Scanning her body, I noticed a deep wound cutting across her shin to her calf. The bone was almost visible through the red liquid cascading out. Red blood oozing like a rivulet, she seemed scalding in pain.

I felt nauseous immediately I set met eyes on it, and my eyes got tear filled.

I tore a piece of my light top like I used to see in movies, navigating my hands towards the wound. I felt more nauseous the closer I got to it and even worse when I my hands got in contact with her worm blood. We both grimaced, her in pain, I in disgust, but it was worth it.

I wrapped the wound and tightened a knot at it. It momentarily stopped bleeding recklessly.

"We should go back," I suggested.

"No its nothing, we are almost there, something is telling me that."

"Did that something tell you you would fall of the stairs?"

She sighed and went silent.

Switching my glance towards the stair case, I noticed how wrecked it was. Seventy percent was down, making it impossible for us to cross. The incident brought down a great part of the staircase. There was no way go down.

We had to find a rope especially for Isabella because she couldn't jump. A place where a rope could be found at the top side of the house could be the attic.

"I'm going to the attic to get a rope, you should stay here."

"You know I won't," I knew that the moment I suggested it.

She hoisted herself up with the wall and got to her foot, the other on the air.

"No!"

She didn't argue, she toddled for the first room which was definitely not the attic. Turning the door knob, she pushed it open.

It creaked louder than the others, some dust from above it falling on her blonde hair. She flicked it off and ajerred the door even wider.

Squeaking rats raced out others disappearing inside the room.

Seemingly, it was a bedroom. It had an unmade bed, like that of one who woke up one day and never came back, at the far right corner if the room, a vast broken window with torn curtains straight opposite us, a bed side lamp on a bedside table, a small bookcase filled with books that had lost their chlorine content to pale brown, and two wardrobes one at the right and the other on the wall against it.

The walls were frilled with black, flowery drawings. It was also dingy like all the other rooms we had met.

Isabella limbed towards the wardrobe. I walked for a book that had stolen my attention, on the top of the bedside table.

The book seemed fresh unlike the surrounding. It had a brown, plain, hard cover which had no wordings on it. Grazing my fingers on it, it was soft and well made not a point higher or lower than the other. The edges were equally well curved.

I starred at the cover for a while not sure whether to open it or not.

Open it, took the better part of me.

I slowly flipped open the first page and noticed how lively it was. It was not old and discoloured like every other book in the room but white and seemingly not very aged.

It was a diary. No owners name or something to identify the owner. It didn't seem like Wades since the first dates were in 1984, Wade wasn't that old. I riffled the pages knowing that I did not have time to go through someone else's life experience. Not when the clouds were getting thicker.

I riffled and riffled and riffled before my eyes caught some scribbled wordings, somewhere in the middle of the book.

From wade to you. They were written in red. If I didn't know better it was blood.

He knew I would come, he knew I would find that book and maybe he was watching us. Just the mia thought made me assess the room and peer through the window. There was no one, or maybe there was someone but well hidden.

I started taking in heavy breaths in, fear and panic both striking like lighting in my belly. I returned my glare back to the book to see if there was more.

At the bottom right of the page there were more wordings scribbled in the same sinister manner. Turn to page 35.

I didn't want to, but curiosity took a better part of me. I riffled to page 35 and there were more wordings. People are so inconsiderate about how other people feel until you reciprocate the feeling or make it worse. I knew what that meant. My skin was yet to run out of my body, I could feel my body hair insidiously erecting each after the other in fear. Turn to page 63.

Still curiosity took a better part. I riffled to page 63. I personally killed Noah. You don't trust me, I have a surprise for you under the bed.

I swallowed lumps of fear my hands hardly able to work properly. I took the book in my hand and decided to peer cautiously under the bed. Jitters cuddling my spine.

The floorboard creaked every step I took even besides the bed making me think that I would sink any second from then, even after toddling with utter cautiousness.

I slowly lifted the vast bed cover that had curtained whatever was under the bed and bent down slowly.

I could hear my heart thud harder than an elephant's feet trembling the ground, my breath getting heavier and heavier. Hyperventilating like one that had seen a ghost.

As I slowly bent suspense built up complementing with the tense music playing in between my ears.

I was met by a head, without its body.

I shrieked and sprang backwards falling on my butt, releasing the bed cover and dropping the book besides me.

"Taylor, are you okay?" Isabella enquired jolting towards me from the book case.

I was swift to point under the bed. In the same slow suspense-building way she lifted the bed cover and shrieked but not for long. She skimmed the head and realized that it was a mannequin head.

It was a male-figured, eyes popped out filled with smeared blood, in the middle of its head it had a serious damage like one that was being used for sparing by throwing axes and its head was the bullseye and someone got a phenomenal headshot, and its lips were wide torn.

"Serious Tylor! You had my heart on my shoes."

She flung the mannequin head down in relieve.

"I had no idea that it was a mannequin," neither did she so she apologized for shouting at me.

There was something else glowing in the dark under the same bed. It seemed whitish or something.

I crawled for it.

I clasping it, I swallowed a dollops of fear, before clasping it struggling to steady my breath. It could have been another trick or threat so I was ready for anything that would come my way.

It felt like a clothing, a hard fabriced one. Pulling it closer, I hopped that it wouldn't pull me back like in horror movies or do any other creepy damage. I did it abruptly.

It came out softly without any creepy actions like my mind was picturing and on it I noticed a lollipop wrap. It was a short, a white and blood stained one.

Immediately I noticed it was a short, I was struck by a vivid memory of what Noah had told me the other day in the party, that Wade was in a white short, but when I saw him jump in the pull he was in a greyish short.

This was evidence that it could have been him. I knew it but I still failed to believe it, now I was begging to. How? Why? When? Were the questions circumnavigating my head.

Isabella noticed the lollipop wrap and said that it was an exact replica of one she had seen at the scene where Noah was killed. Some part of me wanted to think that he was being framed by a character behind everything, but another part knew clearly that it could be him.

I wanted to know more from the book so crawled back towards it. It had closed itself so I riffled back to page 63. I was a little reluctant to turn the pages. I wasn't ready for another semi heart attack or a confession that would wreck my already hurting heart.

Turn to page 145. I sluggishly turned page by page still doubting my conscious. I framed Dave in order to be the school president. I had suspected that Dave was framed and now I was being proven right.

Turn to page 27. There wasn't evidence for that. I turned my hands shaking almost tearing up the pages yet to meet another cold confession.

I am right behind you.

It was complemented with sheer silence. There was no pattering of Isabella's boots, no wind howling through the broken window, no squeaking of rats or the wind vane on the roof top, no creaking of the floorboard, and no leaves rustling from the tree outside. There was more silence built than a grave, and it was getting louder by a second.