It All Started with a Sticky Note

Chapter 7: A Town Worthy of Adventure

******yesterday's chapter was pretty short so i wrote another one for today, thanks!**********

As we were neared the dimly lit town, I shook Stefani out of her much needed sleep. For being in the middle of nowhere, the town was fairly large. It contained all the basic stores such as a supermarket, drycleaners, car repair and gas station, an abandoned looking karaoke box and an old ice cream parlor that had seen many years and had the rusty sign to prove for it. The town also had a few small neighborhoods; along with the shops it didn’t seem like it was missing too much, but nowhere did I see a detective office or a Sherlock Holmes shop.

Mac paid the cab driver a generous amount, did not schedule a return pick up, despite the fact that there was poor phone service in the sleeping town; and motioned for us to haul our bags and follow him along a faintly lit street. 

Right as I was beginning to think Mac as crazy to drag us out here at two in the morning, he walked up to the old ice cream parlor, knocked four times and walked right in.

“Avery. He is officially crazy. I will under no circumstances sleep in that run down shop when I have money to afford a motel. I don’t care if it’s run down too, I’m going to the motel.”

“Personally I want to be adventurous and sleep here, but if your going to the motel, I have to go with you. I mean, I couldn’t sleep here with Mac.” I made the excuse up on the spot, though I was reluctant to sleep in the building not because of the other choice, but because I didn’t want some homeless person barging in on me when I was sleeping.

Mac poked his head out of the bug eaten screen door. Right as he was, we saw a pair of headlights coming up the main rode. He shot me an urgent glance and pulled us inside. Looking at the unfinished floor, the skeleton furniture and the moth eaten window drapes, I concluded that the outside of the house was not so bad off.

Mac waited until the car passed down the rode before he walked over to the old broken soda bar. He set aside a stool with cracked red…or was it brown… paint and motioned for us to come near. As we stood closer, I realized that there was a dark shape that looked like a hole. Before I knew what was going on, he had his lower half of his body under the rotting floor. The same car that had passed earlier came driving down the street again, this time it was slower. Again, Mac quickly motioned for us to follow him. Stefani looked unsure more then I did.  

“Do you expect me to go under there with you? There are probably rats in there and it smells like a damp sewer.”

I was unsure why Mac would know about this secret passage, especially in the middle of nowhere, despite my instinct I followed him disappearing figure. I was about to start crawling when Stefani spoke up with a shakily.

“Avery, the car stopped in front of the house. Someone’s coming up the walk.”

Suddenly, the rats weren’t a high priority on Stefani’s fear factor. Mac overheard us and crawled quickly next to us in the narrow tunnel to pull the suitcases in the tunnel and the stool back over the hole. Right as he sat down and motioned us to be silent, the door quietly opened.

Our sight was handicapped because of the dark tunnel and the stool lingering over us, but we could hear what this man had to say. Unfortunately.