Drowning(Hiatus)

Chapter 4

I didn't expect to sleep so soundly after the dinner tonight but it seems I was more worn out than I thought. I slept like the dead. I woke up the next morning to an open window and a chilling cold creeping up my spine. I'm not sure I remembered leaving the window ajar but I was too drowsy to probe much deeper. I lazily rubbed the back of my head as I got off the bed to close the window. The curtains curled under the cold wind seeping in and I stared out into the thick mist overlying the forest. It was eerily dark, not to mention the cold was biting into my skin.

I closed the window, went to the bathroom and got into a hot shower .That's where I recollected everything that happened so far (because a hot shower is all you need to get your head straight). The creep in the woods, Edvin, Old man Robert, Diana's response to that shed yesterday and Oeric. In the end the one thing that bothered me the most was Diana's reaction to my request from last night. It was far too exaggerated. She even left her dinner as it was and I had to clean up. That was cruel to the ham and I personally dislike doing chores at night.

I got out of the steaming shower and went downstairs to the kitchen to grab a glass of milk and noticed a stick-note on the fridge saying that both Diana and Dave were out at the Bolt residence.

"What..?" I mumbled. Isn't it like 4 in the morning right now? Strange.

I was trying to make sense of their incoherent departure to the Bolt's. What could they be doing so early in the morning? Surely not something as tedious as knitting. Then what? Gossips? Animal slaughter? Witchcraft? Hiding a dead body?

A headache kicked in and I decided to stop thinking about the subject entirely. Only weird thoughts kept popping up in my head. A more productive thought came to me and I decided to go and check out the shed in the back while they were still gone.

I pulled on a jacket, grabbed a chain of keys hanging by the door and a flashlight from the drawer then went out into the cold. Crossing my arms over my chest to shield myself from the cold, I trekked towards the shed. Skipper joined me along the way. It seemed like he got up quite early as well. We both made it to the shed together and I tried to open the door with the keys I brought along. None of them worked so in the end I had to go in through the window.

I pushed the window open and sifted in through the bottom. That also reminded me I had to cut back on the calories because it was much harder than I thought to play detective with your butt covered in all that fat. Panting, once inside, I pushed off the floor and dusted my clothes. The smell inside was literally nauseous. I held back the gag reflex kicking in and almost turned back but then paused, thinking about the hard work I put into just getting inside. It would be a waste to go back out without at least looking around for once. I switched the flash light on and began examining my surroundings.

There was nothing inside but junk.

Junk.

And more junk.

To be honest, I wasn't even sure if what I was looking at was really rubbish with all those layers of filth covering it. I was lucky that I managed to land at a clear spot after shoving myself in through the window otherwise most of the floor was smothered with moldy, discarded trash.

The workroom was a single cabin studio with perhaps an attached bathroom behind the door half hidden beyond a crooked shelf on the right. There were a pair of large windows on the wall opposite of where I stood and the window next to the door through which I came. The glass was plastered with old newspaper and magazine covers and the parts that weren't were either cracked or were clouded with mist.

The room in itself was suffocating with stories of boxes piled one above the other. The walls on either side of me were capped with shelves carrying books and frames that were too hard to identify so I gave up trying.