Recipe for Disaster

3 miles from home

"How about starting with who was trying to kill us!?"

"They weren't trying to kill us." Daryn said. He paused for a moment. "Well, at least I don't think they were."

He sighed. "Look, I've been on the run for a few months now and your house has served as my base for, well, up until tonight. It was a good hiding place for quite some time."

The chilly night breeze blew his bangs into his eyes. He brushed them away before continuing.

"Those people chasing me, well, I guess chasing us, have been searching for me for a while now." He hesitated a second before continuing his story. "I may have heard something that wasn't meant to be heard and am now being targeted for it."

I looked at Daryn and blinked, trying to process everything he's said so far.

He shook his head. "Look, I'm sorry for wrecking your house, and putting you in danger. If you'd like, I know someone who should be able to hook you up with a place to stay?"

I mean, if my only other option for the night was my house with a broken window....

"I'm in."

Grabbing his bag in one hand, he stood up, and with his free hand, reached down, smiled, and pulled me up to my feet. "Well then Grocery Girl, your new castle awaits."

***

Despite us having put some distance between ourselves and the mysterious people in the van, we still ran quickly and used many residential buildings as coverage, occasionally hiding in the driveways of some, whenever a car drove by. The experience itself was insanely stressful and it was hard to make much progress when at any sign of movement, Daryn would pull me behind car and we wouldn't move, until he was sure it was safe to continue.

That was our Mode of Operation until we had arrived at a darker side of town that I didn't know even existed in Adelwood. Houses—I mean what I assumed were once houses—surrounded a few alleyways. These buildings were falling apart at the seams. Hardly any of them sported any roofs. The doors, surprisingly, were well intact, but some had whole sections of the wall missing. Holes the size of people marred these walls, and their stone bricks were littered unceremoniously around these buildings and even in the streets.

We kept walking until we seemed to be at the heart of this ghost town. Daryn looked around for a bit, inspecting the inside of each structure, until stopping at the second-to-last one on the street.

This building couldn't even be qualified as a building. Among the rest of the somewhat house-like structures, this building stood out like a sore thumb. It had two walls that were barely holding up and it didn't even have doorframe unlike the rest of structures on this street. The inside looked even worse. Stone slabs and wooden planks were littered all over the floor. The place looked awful. If Daryn was referring to this place as my temporary home away from home, he had another thing coming. I definitely would not be staying here.

Daryn must've noticed my look of disgust. "Don't worry!" He laughed. "It gets better."

It had better.

He led me into the structure, towards the far corner, where the two walls met. On the floor, lay tons of stone slabs and spare pieces of wood. However, there was one strange array of wooden planks that after taking a closer look, seemed to be covering a small hole.

Setting down his grocery bag, Daryn began to start moving the wooden planks to the side, revealing a ladder leading down deeper into the hole.

After removing the final plank Daryn brushed his hands together, dusting off any dirt. He looked over at my shocked expression and smiled. He held out his hand, showcasing the entryway. "After you, my lady"

I crept closer to the hole and looked back up at him. "This better be worth it."

I then began my decent. Looking up, I watched as Daryn, now with his grocery bag in hand, began to cover the hole back with the planks before following me into darkness.
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Authors corner: Thanks for reading. Have a blessed day!

Hopefully Daryn will be able to shed some light on this dark situation.