Finding Willow

Prologue

Sweat, blood, and tears. Three things that slick my body from head to toe. Gleaming off of my forehead, oozing from my arms and legs, and staining my white cheeks - which now have a cote of rosy red underneath my freckles. Heat radiates off of my body as a fine layer of ash and sweat rests against my forehead, my palms, my ears, and the back of my neck. I try to control my breathing, take everything in and out little by little, but it's like caging a mouse in with a cat and telling the cat to leave the mouse alone.

I clasp my hand around the doorknob and I hesitatingly turn it to the right - clicking the door open. I languidly push through the entrance and step into the darkness that awaits me.

I scan the room from left to right, up to down. I pace cautiously through the darkened area ahead. My petrified, battered friends followed close behind me. We, as a whole, had been put through the ringer today. Cutting through dark valleys, darting across quiet hallways, hiding in rooms that carried deep silence - such silence, that you could hear one another's thoughts, much less their heartbeat. It doesn't take the mind of a genius to guess how each and every one of us feels. Believe it or not, those were only the easy tasks. It became much more complicated a little while afterwards; not going into much detail. But we've been bruised, battered, and sliced to the bone.

I continued to pass through the hallway, with shredded strips of dark wallpaper hanging loosely from the hole-crowded walls. Antique portraits of unknown women dangled from the edges, and cobwebs sprouted from the nooks at the top of the ceiling. The oak floorboards cracked like eggshells under our feet as we took each and every cautious, hesitated step. The interior carried a dark, spooky silence and an eerie glow at the end of the hallway. A small, yellow flashlight, our cell phone screens, and a small candle at the end of the hall provided the smallest amount of light.

A strong, musky scent creeps its way into the hall and it stings my nostrils. I wrinkle my nose and curl my eyebrows upward. It's driving not only me, but also my friends, well over the edge. Where did this sudden odor originate from? Something tells me that I don't want to know. I inhale the terrible scent and then I exhale it back out. I decide it's better off that I breath through my mouth from now on. Due to the smell, my friends and I double our pace through the hallway.

"She was definitely here." claimed Brooke.

"Sure looks like it," Madelyn agreed.

"Do you think she knows we're here, Amber?" Brooke asked, turning to me.

I hesitated at this for a second; putting together the puzzle pieces. It dawned on me that maybe she did know we're here. I balanced my options, but after a long pause, I knew that she couldn't. "Don't think so," I assured her, "we would have been caught by now."

"She's got a point." Madelyn followed, "even if Willow was here at one point, she's more than likely long gone by now. I think we're just fine."

"I think so too." I nodded half-heartedly. The truth is, I'm honestly not sure whether or not Willow knows we're here. I can't make that call, I wish I could. But I couldn't tell Brooke and Madelyn that. They would completely flip out. Even though I don't know, I'm pretty sure. I mean, if I know Willow, which I do, then I should know that if she's trying to hide from us, then she won't sit and wait for us. She'll keep moving, like it's a wild-goose chase. However, if she were here, then what would she do? What would she say? How would she get out of talking to us? If Willow is on the run... then she is going to keep running.

We continue to walk down the eerie hallway. Brooke, with a flashlight in hand, is keeping a steady lead on the right of me, while Madelyn is on my left. She turns on the flashlight setting on her phone and shines it on the ground to keep us from stumbling over anything in the way and Brooke shines it in front of us. I carry a small lantern, with one light bulb burned out and the other barely lit, encaged in a clear glass container with a wooden tile pattern, that I found hanging from the door when we arrived here. It's really not of much use, but every little thing counts.