The Girl With the Icy Hair

10

The following morning after Jared had been heartlessly murdered by that freak Aura, Chad had left the campgrounds in search of help. He’d tried to call the authorities, but there was no cell phone service, and there wasn’t a phone inside the groundskeepers’ station. He’d driven all the way to Stoverton to get the local police, but by the time he’d been able to return it was almost dark. The police had come out to the same clearing where Jared had been killed along with Chad, but the body was missing. The police had their dogs search the entire area, but even they couldn’t find where they body had gone. They’d put police tape up around the entire area, and blasted searchlights all over the premises, but the body was still unaccounted for. Chad could tell that some of the police thought that he was the one that had killed his partner, and had gone to get the police as a cover up based on the looks that they gave him. None of the officers believed his wild, far-fetched story of some girl about the age of 17 who had come out of nowhere, killed his partner, knocked Chad unconscious, and then fled. Why would they? Chad had a crazed deranged look on his face the entire time, he was sure, while trying to convince the officers that what he was saying was the truth.

“You’ve got to believe me,” wailed Chad as the officers gave him looks of contempt. “I didn’t kill my partner. He was one of my best friends!”

“Sir, calm down. No one has accused you of murdering Jared,” replied one of the officers that was standing nearby. He ran a hand through his dark hair as he shifted his weight from his left foot to his right.

“You didn’t have to. I can see the disbelief in your eyes,” Chad replied. “They say more about your opinion than you think.”

“Well did my mouth say anything about my opinion?” The officer countered quickly. “I’m pretty sure that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You talk as if I’m worthless and insane!” Chad was fully shouting now. “I know this sounds made up, but it was real. It happened. My friend and coworker is dead. I’m not crazy, and I’m not on drugs. What I saw was real.”

“If it was so real, why don’t you have any real evidence?” The officer’s face was turning red as his full temper showed. “Why can’t the police dogs that are trained for this line of work find any evidence? Why can’t you provide a clear, concise description of what the perpetrator looks like? These are very serious unanswered questions, and they all point to you as being wrong, mentally unstable, and wasting our time. If I was you, I’d think long and hard about what happened here yesterday, because you’re the only surviving eyewitness. We need answers, and you’re the only one that can provide them to us, and acting like a mental patient isn’t earning you any points.” The officer huffed angrily and stormed away, his navy blue uniform helping him to disappear into the darkness surrounding the area outside of the spotlights.

After standing, open-mouthed for a few moments, Chad sat down on the ground to think about the events of the previous day. He remembered talking with Aura for a while before Jared was killed. What was it that we were talking about? Chad wondered silently. With his brow furrowed in concentration, he remembered talking about the mysterious happenings at the Grand Echo Caverns. Suddenly it all came flooding back to him. That was where she said she was going. Bolting upright off the hard packed dirt of the forest floor, Chad ran over to one of the officers that was standing near the base of an oak tree.

“I remembered something,” Chad said while trying to catch his breath. “The girl, Aura, she mentioned something about going to the Grand Echo Caverns.” The officer looked surprised for a moment.

“Do you know if that’s where she is now?”

“I assume. I don’t know where else she could possibly be, and that was the only place that she mentioned visiting,” Chad replied calmly now. He could see the wheels in the officer’s head turning. After a moment, the officer called to a couple of his comrades, and told them what new information had been discovered. Each shared equal looks of surprise or confusion, but ultimately helped spread the word. Within a few moments, another team of officers was being created to go with Chad to search the caverns for any signs of the mysterious, murderous girl.