The silver key

The Lake

Nicole woke up next morning to her phone blaring, "What time is it?" She thought to herself, her phone showed 8:00 am, the old alarm she had kept was ringing. Switching the alarm off, she got off bed and plodded her way downstairs.

"Oh Nicole , I was just about to come up to wake you" said Mrs. Theodore frantically fixing her hair.

"I am off to work, if you need anything ask Clarisse" said Mrs. Theodore, tying her shoe laces before rushing off.

After freshening up, Nicole went back upstairs only to hear music playing, puzzled she went to Leo room where she found him siting in front of the TV playing video games with a large packet of potato chips next to him.

"What are you doing here? don't you have school?" she asked.

"No, I hate Mondays" he replied, his eyes still stuck to the screen.

"What kind of a reason is that??!!"

"It's the best reason I have ever heard of! " Leo said acting offended.

"Does your mom know your here?" Nicole asked.

"Yeah, obviously now stop asking questions, do you play super smash bros. brawl?"

"Yeah played it tons of times at my friends place" she said siting down next to him.

"Then let's brawl!" .

After playing for a couple of hours, they were finally bored.

"I can't believe you beat me with KIRBY! " Leo whined.

"Live with it"Nicole said smirking.

"Oh I wanted to ask you,what's in the room opposite to yours?" She asked.

"It's just an old closet " Leo said standing up "What do you wanna do now?"

"I went to forest for a few seconds yesterday, we could check that out"

"It's been a while since I went to the forest myself " he said "Let's go"

"How big is this anyway?" Nicole asked as they were entering the forest.

"It's pretty small actually, used to be a lot bigger" Leo replied.

"Where exactly are we going?"

"To the lake" he replied.

The lake was stunning, the sun reflected perfectly off of it,there were little fish swimming around, as birds sat from trees ready to catch them.

"I am gonna catch a fish!" Leo announced and rolled up he pants.

"With your bare hands? I tremble at your supreme talents" said Nicole placing her hand on a tree.

"Watch and learn, you human!" He said ready to catch the fish, if that was possible.

Nicole's hands touched something wet,scared that it might be something gross, she immediately took her hand from the tree, only to find it covered in blood.

"What the? Leo!!" She called out.

"What?" He asked jogging up to her.

"tthere is blood on this tree" she said inspecting it "wait, there is blood flowing from the top" She said pointed to the thing stream of blood.

"Maybe a bird is hurt or something" Leo said calmly and moved around,trying to find the source but all he could see were a bunch of leaves "the tree is too dense, you can't see anything from here " he remarked.

"I'll climb up wait here" said Nicole as she got onto the first branch.

"Careful " said Leo.

"Yeah" said Nicole as she continued upwards, the tree was quite tal ,but as she got half way to the top, she could see a figure, a man leaning on the tree, covered in deep dark blood, his hands were tied behind the tree which stopped him from falling, shocked Nicole started hurriedly climbing down, only to stubble and fall. Hitting branch after branch she landed on the floor with a big thud. Her elbows and knees were scraped and her face was horribly bruised

"Oh my god Nicole!" Leo exclaimed.

"C..call the p...police " Nicole stammered.

"What? why?"

"T..there is a...a dead man up there"

"What?! are you sure?!"

"Yeah, very"