She toddled back into the house. In not more than a minute she walked out with three differently colored umbrellas. Guessing she noticed how soaked we were. She took one for herself and gave us the remaining two to share.

"I can give you a ride out of town, if you don't mind. It's not safe."

Well, no. We knew there was danger, but we needed answers and there was no way we were getting out of the town without them. Getting soaked for a day was more than worth it for many guys lives in the future.

She waved us goodbye through her driver's window as she drove off. We waved back.

Isabella shared an umbrella with you know who. Noodles. While Camilla and I shared a vast bluish one that enveloped us from shoulder to shoulder.

"Should we go in and just ask him to give us the information?" Camilla suggested out loud, " I mean if he is still alive."

"Yeah, sure. Then we would walk out headless," Isabella remarked skeptically. It was comical but the headless part sent chills cuddling my spine.

"Let's do it the bad girls way," Isabella plagiarized a line from a movie, I couldn't recall which one but it sure meant torture the old guy, with a devilish smirk plastered across her face.

We borrowed a duct tape from a nearby broken into hardware store where we found nobody but a corpse. Glad it wasn't butchered. It was a male figure and had bluish fingers. Meaning that the person was suffocated to death.

I almost threw up. Noodles threw up.

We couldn't stay there and draw a plan from there. We were not safe, not in a hardware store where someone had been murdered by nobody knows who. Who knew what lurked out there or in the store somewhere watching us silently?

We didn't need much, just the duct tape and we were out.

A plan was hatched by the worst planners. Noodles and Isabella, they couldn't let us talk as we walked for the old guy's place. For a moment I had confused it for a movie. One with six hundred soldiers versus one old grandfather with a shot gun. It was the most suicidal plan I had ever heard of in my entire life. It was like confronting the devil in his own premises and expecting to get away with it.

The door was still wide ajar, exactly like we had left it or at least that was what we thought. Peering in, we could see the fallen chandelier still on the spot in the middle of the parlor, the broken ceiling as we had left it, but the old fella was nowhere to be seen.

We slunk in. Others like me tiptoeing slowly by slowly, animatedly taking a step after the another. The shot gun was also nowhere to be seen so the old fella might have been knowing that we were back.

The thought of sprinting away from there and never to appear again hit me like a construction truck, but I couldn't leave my friends. They were doing it for me. I sighed, and gave myself hope of making it out alive.

Isabella gestured using her hand, like soldiers, for us to split up. That was definitely not going to happen. Neither of us wanted to be murdered one after another alone silently.

She could have argued, but the fact that we needed not to be heard she kept quiet and groaned.

I gestured for us to start by checking him out in the kitchen. If he wasn't there, then we would take some knives with us for safety purposes. If the knives were not there, then we were toasted.

Camilla and Isabella snatched some antique wooden sculptures from the mantle shelf, for safety.

So far we hadn't seen or heard a sign of him. All we could hear were the muffled falling rain drops crashing on the roof of the house.

The kitchen had no sign of him either but crumbles and half eaten food stuff all around the room. That must have been Noodles. Apart from that, it seemed like a normal human's one. Though the dirtiest and unkempt one. Dirty dishes here and there, dirty floor, unlatched oven, dish washer, and fridge, and a stinking stale rotten food ordure.

I started by briskly checking out the knife rack. Luckily, it was full. All knives were present in it.

Suddenly, we heard the padding of his feet from up the stairs growing louder.

We swiftly hid at different positions to take cover. I hid under the kitchen counter with Camilla besides me Noodles disappeared and Isabella hid somewhere under the sink next to the fridge.

"Stupid teenagers," he mumbled to himself.

I could hear his steps past the parlor and into the kitchen. 

He was still in his baggy white socks and an over sized t-shirt. He had no gun nor anything to fight against us.

He added a sticker that he had on his palm to the fridge door, plastering it with his palm. It seemed like a rubber carrot.

At my point of view, I could see Isabella seated under the sink next to it. One step mistake and the guy would see him.

Yanking the fridge door open, he pulled out an ice cube rack.

He had a rag with him which he placed all the ice cubes on, wrapped it and gently placed it on his bruised crimson bald head. He then took a turn back to the parlor pressing it against his head.

Isabella thought of something stupid. Something very stupid. I could tell by the way she winked at me. I shook my head rapidly in total contradiction but I couldn't convince her to stop.

She flung the duct tape at me. As soon as it left her hand she sprinted for the old man. Apparently, I was also a terrible catch. I missed, and it fell somewhere next to Camilla.

Isabella dropped a glass plate on the floor, unanticipatedly, before she could catch up with the old guy. It fell with a loud crash breaking into small small uncollectible fragments. She hid behind the kitchen door as soon as she noticed how loud it was.

Every fiber of my body cuddled with fear, I hoped the old guy wasn't going for the shotgun. I couldn't see whatever he was doing at my point of view, but the silence insinuated nothing good.

Unexpectedly, he did not walk back instead his foot steps proceeded up the stairs. He is going for the gun? No.

The speed of his feet padding was relaxed like one that had not yet sensed trouble yet and the way he hummed as if he was alone, I got completely bemused. Either he was ignoring us for some reason or he was up to something. Everything but good.

Camilla and Isabella somehow telepathically communicated and both sprinted for him. Across the parlor and onto the stairs.

He was half way through the staircase when he noticed both of them catching up with him.

He dropped the rag with ice cubes and galvanized himself. Camilla was swift, and jumped for his left leg making him tumble into a fall and topple drastically down the stairs. Isabella quick-limped to assist pull him down the stairs.

He scuffled with his feet and made it to push them away. From nowhere Noodles appeared, with one of the antique sculptures from the mantelshelf, and slammed the old man's head with it. Black out he went.

Camilla took in huge gulps of air standing with the others beside her, making sure that the old guy was in no position to get up.

"What did you do that for?" I quizzed Noodles. I was sure there would have been a rather better alternative, than hitting him exactly where the chandelier had.

"Would you rater let him blowoff your head," she answered with a brow risen.

Camilla took a dining chair, and placed it against a wall.

Collaborating, we hauled his heavy body. I took his left leg, Camilla on the right, Isabella and Noodles on the left and right hand. He looked kina skinny but he had some kilos with him. Kilos that would make me stumble and almost fall at some point towards the chair.

We sat him on it like they do in torture movies and duct tapped him around his wrists attaching both his hands, legs, and mouth.

"Why are we covering the mouth? We need him to talk."

"He will shout."

"Yeah, what's the point if the entire side of the town is deserted," for once in a hundred years, Noodles had a point. We untapped the guy's mouth.

Isabella got water and shot spritz on his face to wake him. It didn't take long. He shook his head rapidly waking up, and squirming in short uncomfortable spaces.

"Are you trying to kidnap me coz you forgot to cover my mouth you fools," he sneered.

"No, we want some information from you."

He did not respond. After a moment of silence and giving him confused looks he answered. "What?"

"I said we need your help."

Once again he didn't respond instead he gave us a blank look.

"He can't hear us," Noodles was holding something on her hand. Something she had gotten from the floor where the chandelier had fallen.

"What is that?" I quizzed.

"A broken hearing aid."

That answered why he never heard Isabella crushing a plate earlier.

Noodles was terrible at sign language she looked like she was dancing. Instead of the old guy understanding what she was trying to pass, he guffawed.

"We should get new ones in the supermarket we saw earlier."

"We don't have time for that," it was almost lunch time, and we had promised Alma that we would be back at school in time.

The thought of writing whatever we wanted to ask him, on a sheet of paper, amplified itself across my head.

"So, any body with a pen?"

We had five sheets of paper to write on but had no pens. Non of us had a pen.

"And you call yourself students."

"Not me," Noodles contradicted.

Camilla and I decided to go up the stairs and see if we could find a pen. Noodles would search the rooms on the ground floor, and Isabella would keep an eye on  the old guy. Make sure that he wouldn't try to act smart.

It didn't take us long before we found a book and a pen on it in his bedroom. The book was a diary and on its cover was the old guys name, Neptune. I borrowed the pen.

I felt like going back and creeping on the diary, but Neptune didn't seem to be involved in the cold murders taking place. They didn't involve guns.

We need some help from you. Camilla scribbled at the second sheet of paper after Isabella's ugly, unreadable handwriting on a sheet was crumpled and trashed.

"What kind of help?" He could talk but he couldn't hear a thing.

We need to know about a house in the middle of downtown with a cock shaped wind vane at the top.

Isabella shoved out the black and white picture she had stollen from the house, showing it to the old guy.

"You mean the one that ugly family."

Exactly.

"What do I get in return?" The deal making tone sounded like in no bargainable position.

Freedom, and we can get you out of here in time before the storm.

"I wanna die here...Where my wife died, find me a better deal"

He couldn't talk. Why was he so hardheaded. We exchanged glances among ourselves for a while after scribbling millions of 'please' to a guy who literally read two of them and gave them a deaf ear.

Noodles sighed, and removed a necklace that she had recently purchased with all her savings. She showed it to the old guys face, who darted his eyes on every inch, corner, curve, frill, and edge then smirked.

Putting it around his neck, she winked at Isabella. That could only mean one thing, the necklace would somehow find its way back to the owner after the story time session.

"Now you are talking," he sighed.