The Last Curator

The Household Helper and Friend

Chapter 4: The Household Helper and Friend

Back at Lauryn's house, we all change into cozy, oversized clothes and go outside to the fire.

We're all shaken up, it's 9pm now and we're roasting marshmallows.

Her parents are asleep, but knows that we're here. Her backyard is huge, and the furniture around the firepit is so comfortable that if I was Lauryn I'd sleep out here every night.

There's a pergola over us, and hanging from one of the beams is a swinging chair. It's like a flattened out bowl with the most plush cushion inside. Christopher and I are in this, he's sitting and I'm curled up on his lap, there's a blanket around his shoulders, that drapes over me too.

Next to this is a pair of two lounge chairs, soft and reclined so that your body melts into it comfortably.

Alex is on one, and Zyler takes the other. Lauryn is on a beanbag she brought from her living room.

Zyler and Lauryn have marshmallows over the fire, while Alex, Chris and I just relax.

"What even happened to him?" Lauryn asks, "One second he was normal and the next he was trying to kill us!"

"I remember something." I gulp, "I was looking behind him and saw." I sigh. "And saw what?" Alex asks.

"The same figure from your house. A man in a suit. Joseph turned around and saw him too. And then when he faced back to us, he looked inhuman." I say, shaking my head with confusion.

"I remember his expression too. He was as pale as a ghost, and he had no emotion left. It was like looking at a corpse." Chris adds.

"And then he was attacking us. It's just so bizarre, it wasn't normal. It's not like he had the intention of doing that when he arrived. Because he did tell us what we paid for, he did find something." Zyler points out.

"Let's just ignore the fact that he tried to kill us, what in Eden's name was that police report about?" Alex asks.

"An empty police report? With only the date and location? They don't do that, a report never goes incomplete." I say.

"Then maybe the information had been tampered with? Like someone erased parts of the file?" Chris suggests.

"That would make sense, unless he works for the police himself or knows someone who does, which is highly unlikely considering that he would sell or give 25

away important data. Then the only way he'd be able to access that information is through hacking a database." I think out loud.

"But even so, how would the police not know that it had been messed with or erased?" Zyler chims in.

"The case was 30 years old, maybe they just hadn't checked in in a while?" Lauryn asks.

"But you'd think they'd have some sort of hack checker, or... system. Just anything that would tell them if something was wrong." Zyler says.

"Wait guys, I just thought of something." I say. "What?" Alex and Lauryn say in unison.

"If this case is 30 years old, then they obviously wouldn't have had the technology to upload it onto a database that's good enough to use today. This was either originally an older file or an actual concrete, paper report. That means whoever uploaded this to this newer database either purposely left out over half of it, or it was updated recently."

"So what are you suggesting?" Alex asks.

"If it was a concrete report, my dad would have it. Remember? He's a crime statistic analyst, all these files should be in his office if you think about it."