The wanted murderer L.S.

Primary School.

"I know, my baby, I hear you." Harry said, stepping down the stairs and over the ginger tabby cat who whined for her breakfast. Louis followed behind him, daydreaming about frogs and how the tadpoles swimming in his bathtub would soon be old enough to be released into his garden pond.

"Do you like frogs?" he asked, "I like frogs. Frogs are my favourite animal."
"Not particularly." Harry replied, "And I know they are."
"Why? How can you know what a frog is and not think it's the best? Glass frogs are see-through.
That's so wicked."
"What's your favourite breed of frog, Louis?"

Louis stopped at the bottom step and cracked his knuckles, thinking about all of the types of frog he knew. Harry smiled at him and he could barely contain the excitement around the conversation's topic.

"Ah— my favourite is the tomato frog! They're round and red, it's so wonderful. I like frogs from the rainforests— they're always colourful and they all have something wicked about them. I really, really like frogs."

Harry laughed, kissed Louis on the forehead, and swept a hand down to grab the post that had been slipped through the front door's letter box. He flicked through it, set it on the kitchen table, and pulled a chair out for Louis to sit on. Louis didn't sit. He stayed with his back against the wall, watching Harry feed the cat, and still did not move after the man had placed a jelly baby and banana sandwich on the table for him.

"What's the matter?" Harry said, "Come. This is for you."
"The pan's on the wall."
"What?"

Louis pointed to the pan hanging on the wall.
Harry looked and took it down, placing it on the counter. He glanced back to Louis, wondering if that was the issue, but Louis still gave the same look of discomfort as before.

"It was there last time you ate here, Louis. It's always been there."
"It wasn't there last night, was it? You and I both heard it fall. It even cracked the tile, see?"

Harry's face seemed to turn a shade paler. He swallowed and looked at the pan with somewhat of a distant stare, before hanging it back on the wall.
There he stayed for a few more seconds, before smiling at Louis,
"The ghosts from Hillside House must have followed us back. I promise that you're safe here."

He returned to making breakfast, humming a lullaby as he did so; yet Louis-who sat at the table
-picked up on the slight stiffness in his frame and the way his mind couldn't quite stay with him.

There was someone else living at Number 18
Butterscotch Lane.
There was someone uninvited in the house.

Someone who'd been there the entire time.

"The past owner of this house went missing, you know." Harry said, sitting opposite Louis at the table. Louis watched him silently, observing the way that Harry gripped his dining utensils with an unnerving amount of force.
"This was back when I was about sixteen, mind you. No one wanted to live in this house after that incident-not until I moved in, at least. They all said the same as you, that it felt cursed in a way."

Louis didn't speak. He just watched. Harry cut through his toast, gripping the utensils so tightly that they shook in his hands and turned his knuckles white. Still, he spoke calmly as though nothing in the world was out of the ordinary.

"Rosemary Johnson and her dog lived here. A chihuahua type-nasty little bugger, always yapped.
Rosemary had a habit of emerging at seven A.M. to sweep the yard; one day, she didn't. No one paid mind to it on the first day, but a second day passed and she didn't come out either. The dog was heard yapping inside. The local vicar and the verger came
'round, but there wasn't anyone home. Everything was in its rightful place but the dog hadn't been fed. The only strange thing was a strong smell of cooked meat. No one saw Rosemary after that. It's like she'd never even existed in the first place."