Little Footsteps

Epilogue 1:

A long time passed, it would soon be a year, since everything that happened in the small town triggered a catastrophe with the disappearance of the Parker's niece. No one had yet been able to forget the events surrounding her disappearance. Nor of its consequences. The rumors awakened that fateful day were no longer heard as before, they had been lost in some corner of time. However, it had not been forgotten. Paula lived in the minds and hearts of those who loved her. And although her search had long since been abandoned, her loved ones had not yet given up hope of finding her.

Daiana:

The memory emerged from the depths of her mind, it was so clear! Paula had been her best friend and she missed her. Although a year had passed, she could not forget her. Her memory refused to leave her alone. Daiana remembered the day of her disappearance with incredible clarity, down to the smallest details. At the time it had seemed very important... to remember. Any detail that she might have missed could be the key to finding her. But she hadn't been able to find her... she hadn't been able to understand what had happened to her.

And a disturbing question frequently inhabited her head... Was Paula dead or was she still alive? The police had investigated with absolute competence, and if they couldn't find anything, how would she do it? But Daiana had a very clear advantage, and she knew it very well, she knew Paula intimately.

The police had finally concluded that Paula had simply escaped one night from her relative's home. But her relatives did not believe it, it could not be that one day they she simply want to leave, without saying a word to anyone. Paula was not one of those who run away from home, her friend knew it.

However, there was something that surprised her quite a bit, Daiana knew about Paula's past, and that left her so perplexed that she did not know what to think. Nor how to act. Had she really met her friend?

Back then, when the case was still ongoing, she had concluded the same as the others. Paula had had some kind of psychotic break and had run away to get away from her dear relatives. That was what that pompous doctor had said in questioning. Paula had understood her illness and had believed that she was a danger to those she loved the most, fleeing at last.

But when time passed Daiana began to doubt, why had Paula chosen precisely that moment to flee? In the middle of the morning and only with the clothes she was wearing. That was too strange to hold the belief of some kind of escape. She could have planned it, taken her savings, she had the freedom to take the bus that passed through town every day. But not... Paula had chosen to escape like that. So strange! something bad could have happened to Paula. The theory was more credible than an escape.

Time passed without any change and the memory of her friend was put aside, in the darkness of her memory until that day, a year later, where it re-emerged. Diana had begun to see things differently.

It was always like that, but she began to see it clearer since then. And all because of the incident last night...

She had suddenly woken up, in the darkness of her room, feeling very strange, as if someone was watching her from the darkness. She could feel a breathing. Daiana wanted to turn on the light of the lamp that was on the table, next to the bed, but suddenly she stopped her outstretched arm... at that moment she saw it... In a corner of her room the darkness itself was thickening forming a small figure. Then... he moved. It looked like a little boy playing. She was terrified and stood up abruptly to turn up the lamp... There was no one there.

She sighed in relief and lay back down but didn't turn off the light... She was scared, her heart pounding in her chest. Daiana had remembered something, it was a memory that until then had slept in her mind, the sound of Paula's voice telling her: «the child!» The boy had started it all... With a frightening certainty the idea invaded her mind. Perhaps there was already there, deep in her unconscious, a sleeping thought that had just awakened.