A Murder of Crows

2. Trap

Without another word, Alice turns and starts walking back out the door.

"You coming, kid?", she calls out. "Whatever your name is."

"L-Luna. And I'm coming." I stumble after them, still a little nervous. Alice and Victor are talking, their voices low and almost impossible to hear from behind. It feels weird to just walk there, so I try and talk to Darius.

He makes for good conversation, even if he does seem to have some serious trouble hearing. After a while I've found out that Alice is pretty much the leader of the group. They've taken an old hall as base. That's where they keep their things. The house has running water, probably from a well, but they haven't found any food yet. I'm already hungry, and it feels like this is going to be a long stay. Damn it.

When we reach the hall, I expect it to be as old and dusty as the rest of the house. But it seems they've tried to clean it up a bit. I can see why they've chosen to sleep there. It looks almost like a living room, with couches and armchairs.

"So.", Alice tells me. "This is where we live right now. But we'll pack up and leave it as soon as we've found our way out."

A thought crosses my mind.

"Are there cameras in here too?"

"They're everywhere. We've covered up the one in here with an old jacket."

I look around until I spot it. It looks like the jacket's hanging on to thin air. Why do they put cameras everywhere? I remember the letter I found when I woke up. They don't want us to escape, that's for sure.

The others have letters too, and apart from the names they all say the exact same thing, with the same squiggly-looking signature at the bottom. V.A.

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We split up in groups, deciding to keep searching for as long as we can. Me and Alice go one way, and the guys take another. They haven't been able to cover this much ground at the same time before, since we still don't know how safe it is to go alone. One good thing about me being here, according to Alice.

We walk in silence at first, hardly saying anything except for where to go and where they've already been. But I almost feel more lonely when I walk next to her without talking than I did when I was actually alone.

"So", I begin. She looks at me curiously, like she hadn't expected me to start talking. Considering how little I had actually said since we met, she probably hadn't either.

"When did you guys find each other?"

That's the best subject I can think of. I can't exactly ask about her life story.

"Well, we think I woke up first. I managed on my own a while, then I bumped into Darius. Literally. We crashed into each other in a doorway." She gestures to her head. "Hurt like a bitch."

The way she says the last sentence makes me have to stifle a laugh.

"And Victor?"

"Well, we'd just started setting up the hall, and-"

She stops dead in her tracks and spins around rapidly, looking behind us. I open my mouth to ask her what she's doing, but she clasps a hand over my mouth and gestures at me to move.

She all but drags me into the next room. She had just pointed it out as one of the rooms that had already been searched, and that makes me even more sure that something's really, really wrong.

In there, she finally gets her hand off my mouth.

"What is going on?", I whisper.

"Didn't you see him?"

I shake my head. She looks me in the eye, and I find myself a lot more unsettled than I want to admit.

"I thought we'd shaked him off.", she continues. "When we moved from the last place, I mean."

"The last place?"

"Nah, it's nothing. I'll see if it's clear. If it is, we'll go to the meeting spot. We're done for now."

She turns, and I grab her arm.

"Alice, what the hell is going-"

"I'll explain later. Just stay there."

She looks out through the door, and then she nods at me. I follow her out through, and we make our way back to the hall.

Victor and Darius are already there. Just before Alice goes through the doorway, Darius stands up as if he's about to say something. Then Alice trips over something. I can't see what it is at first, and assume she just lost her balance. Then, when I go through, something pokes at my ankles. I crouch down and see that someone's put a line of string across the door. The fuck?

Alice stands up, rubbing her temples. "What the hell was that?"

"I tried to tell you.", Darius says. "Victor put that up. He said it was a good idea."

Victor puts his hands up in defense. "What? It is. If someone comes here, they'll just trip and we'll know they're here."

Alice gives him a strange look. "Or we have, you know, eyes. If anyone comes here, we'll probably see them. Just take it down."

"Why would anyone come here?", I ask. "Is this about that guy you saw before?"

She nods slightly. "He's been here all along. He's not like us."

"How can you know that?"

"He's never said anything. Just watching. We've seen him fixing up the cameras too. Sometimes he wears some creepy-ass mask over his mouth."

"That's fucked up." I can't come up with anything else to say.

"Yeah." She goes to check on the camera. The jacket's still there. "He's moved this a couple times too. We found it on the floor."

I feel cold. Since I came here, I've always thought of the people behind the cameras as foreign and far away. The thought of them coming here had never even crossed my mind. But here they are.

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A small, blonde girl runs to take cover behind a large bookshelf. As she ducks her head and tries to move her feet out of sight, one of the old books falls out and hits the floor with a loud thud. She lets out a small gasp, and I feel her fear as mine. Footsteps, just in front of the tiny girl's hiding spot. Menacing. Slow and irregular. Then, as soon as they had come, they seem to disappear.

"Wha- Get up. Get up!"

Victor's voice awakes me, and I'm back in the hall.

"This better be important.", Alice croaks from the other side of the room. Darius looks like he'd never fallen asleep at all.

"I told you guys it was a good idea!"

It takes me a while to understand what he means. Then i see the figure laying on the floor. The lamp is broken, so I can barely even see their silhouette in the dark.

Someone walked into his trap.