The Tree House Mystery

Chapter 6

We start retracing the steps we'd taken during the afternoon to go to the forest. I check my phone for the time--00:00am. Wow! Nice number.

"So, slept well?" I tease Ned.

"Couldn't sleep better." He replies sarcastically.

"By when do you think we'd we back?"

"Hey, it's not as if the ghost is waiting for us to arrive and then it'll begin its show. How could I  know when the ghost will appear! Or, even if it will." He answers me.

"What do you mean?" I ask slowly.

"I just saw it once, and that was a day before yesterday. So we might even have to wait for a few hours. Or could be that it won't even come tonight."

"I don't know if it comes or not, but I'm telling you I'm not going to come once more like this, however adventurous this may be. You don't have to climb down the wall of your house, finding spaces to rest your foot on, while going down."

He suddenly looks at me with wide eyes.

"You did what?"

"Climbed down the wall of my house. From the window of my room, which is on the first floor."

"How--How did you do that? I mean, why? Doesn't your house have a staircase or something?"

"Silly, if I came down by the staircase, which is a wooden one, my parents would have heard me. Plus, I could even have done that, but then the front door of the house would be open when I left so if someone woke up before I returned, they'd know I'm not in the house."

"Okay, okay, got it, smarty-pants!" He grins and holds his hands out in front of him, in defense.

"And now about the 'How', what do you mean, 'How?'?" I mimic the way he'd said that.

"Well, I mean, 'How?' as in--How did you manage to climb down a wall?"

"Umm, I don't know. I just did. That's why I'm here right now." I shrug before saying, "And anyways, I'm a rather adventurous girl, you know. So it wasn't even that difficult."

"Wow. I'm impressed." And he does look like it, as well.

Somehow, that makes me blush a bit. Thankfully, it's too dark for him to notice.

We arrive at the entry to the forest, and Ned takes out a flashlight from a small sling bag hung across his left shoulder, which I didn't notice earlier as I'm walking at his right side. Our eyes are well accustomed to the dark, though not such darkness as the forest is cradling, so when he switches the torch on, we squint and cover our eyes with our hand, and then blinking, start moving forward.

"Why didn't I think of bringing my  flashlight?" I wonder.

We walk slowly into the forest, going deeper and deeper into the darkness, guided only by the small beam of our flashlight. Even Ned is slow and cautious this time, as it is night time and there could be nocturnal wild animals all around us, for all we know! So after about ten minutes of walking, we finally come to a stop and Ned whispers, afraid to shatter the silence of the night: "We're here. The Tree House must be somewhere around, try if you can spot it above us."

"Okay." I answer and look up to find any big structure in the trees, darker than the rest of the forest. No luck.

I turn around in a full circle slowly examining the tree tops around us for any signs of a tree house, but to no avail.

I'm about to tell Ned that I think we're at the wrong place, because the tree house couldn't have disappeared in just half a day, when suddenly we notice a faded yellow-ish light coming from somewhere behind and above us, between the trees. Noticing it, I look at Ned with alarm when I see that he's also looking at me with the same expression, and then, nodding to each other, we carefully and silently start moving toward the source of light.