Who to Trust?

Prologue

"Mom, I'm home," she said stepping inside her house.

No one answered.

Shrugging, she walked into the kitchen. The back door was slightly ajar. She gulped at the oddity.

"Mom? Gregory?" she asked cautiously. 

Her backpack landed on the ground with a thud. The feeling that you get after watching a scary movie swept over her. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She was breathing slightly heavier than usual. She's sure she had nothing to worry about, though, right? But just to be sure she made her way to the kitchen, taking the sharpest knife out of the wooden knife block. It made her feel safer—plus she'd seen people in scary movies do that before, too, so it felt fitting.

As she walked closer to the back door that was cracked open, her heartbeat increased. Something was wrong. It was just too strange. Holding the knife firmly by her side, she opened the door and peered outside. 

Nothing was there.

She stepped onto the ground that was still soft from the rain that had fallen earlier that day. It still smelled like that musty damp smell that comes with the rain. Looking up at the sky, a single raindrop hit her cheek. The clouds weren't done with their job yet. They looked like they were swelling up, creating a second storm just for her—to add to the scary movie effect.

She began to wipe the water droplet off, when she noticed drag marks on the ground. Her breath hitched and her mind raced with all the horrible possibilities as to what happened. It was just like a real-life horror movie. It suddenly hit her just how much she hated those films now. She made herself a mental note that, if she survived this, to never watch those again.

Following the drag marks, she walked into the woods by her house. It was the middle of fall, so the leaves were starting to fall off the trees—covering the ground with shades of reds and yellows. Fortunately, that meant being able to see the drag marks more easily.

She walked in the forest for a good five minutes, feeling only a few raindrops along the way. The trees still had enough leaves on them to shelter her from a majority of the rain. She was in what she thought was the middle of the woods now.

The leaves began to rustle. She stopped in her tracks and looked around. The leaves rustled again, but this time louder. It was the wind—queuing the huge storm about to come. She took a step back out of caution and maybe even fear, but her foot got caught causing her to fall backwards. As she turned around to get up she noticed something that resembled a door placed in a mound of dirt. Slowly, she got up and walked toward it. It certainly looked like the kind of place a serial killer would hang out in, but she would have to go inside—for her mom, for her brother. She pointed the knife out in front of her firmly and slowly opened the door with her other hand.

The light still left outside illuminated what was behind the door—stairs—stairs leading into darkness.

She took a deep breath in and placed her foot onto the first step. She walked all the way down, finding a lit torch at the bottom. The lit torch led her to believed that somebody had to have been down there. She grabbed the torch from its holder and continued her journey through the dark ominous tunnel.

She was surprised she made it this far. Usually, people in horror films would be dead by now. Maybe it doesn't work that way in real-life. She guessed she would find out soon enough.

As she continued to walk, she saw a dim light at the end of the tunnel. It grew as she got closer. It began to open up into a dome-like room with more lit torches. There was a large center post holding the dome up and attached to it, her mother and brother. They looked unharmed, but unconscious. She was just about to run and get them when a man entered the dome. The man was skinny and scrawny. He certainly didn't look like he dragged her family all this way.