The Fire

Chapter Five

Present

I went home and left Millie to it. She said she would come over as soon as she found anything. I wasn't expecting much: finding anything would be a miracle. Knowing her, she wouldn't stop until she found something, no matter how small, and that was confirmed when I heard a knock on the front door at near enough midnight.

I ran downstairs and swung open the door. I would've looked weirdly eager if it wasn't who I thought it was, but thankfully, it was Millie standing on the doorstep.

"I found an address," Millie said dramatically, with a huge grin on her face.

"From the message?" I asked.

"Yes, 193 Farfield Road, it's about a ten-minute drive away."

Wow, she was amazing.

"So, are we going to go there?"

"I don't think we have a choice if we want to find out who this creep is."

Millie was right, it might have been a stupid idea to walk straight into his arms, but we didn't have a choice. We had to find who this person was, and fast. Despite the consequences.

"Tomorrow morning, first thing?"

"Sure, here's your phone, call Josh and tell him to come too."

I thanked her and shut the door and hesitantly looked at my phone, but luckily, The Hooded Man had kept quiet.

I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to my room, collapsing on my bed; I was absolutely exhausted. I clutched my phone to my chest. I could put on a brave face, but I was terrified. Deep down, I knew he would stop at nothing to get me.

I messaged Josh to let him know about the address and to meet at mine the next morning, before falling asleep, hoping the nightmares would stay away for the night.

***

The following morning, I got up and ready as quick as I could. I was nervous, but I'd actually slept well so I didn't feel too bad. I met Millie and Josh on the drive. We got in the car and I let Josh drive; he said he knew where it was.

We drove down Farfield Road for a while until we found the door with the number 193 on it. It was small, semi-detached, and there was no drive or a car in front of it. At first glance, the house seemed vacant. All the curtains were closed upstairs, but there was a gap between the curtain's downstairs, I saw a shadow cross the room behind it.

"Someone's inside, I just saw them," I said.

"Come on, we have to go," Millie said, "what's the worst that could happen?"

I shivered when she said that. I didn't know if it was just the early morning breeze or a bad feeling, I hoped dearly for the wind.

We got out of the car and wandered up the short path to the front door, it was too late to back out now because Millie had already rung the doorbell.

We waited for a while, but no one came to the door, Josh went to turn around when the click of a lock sounded. The door opened, and we were met with the disturbed face of an elderly woman.

"Who are ya?" She said in a heavy northern accent while looking us up and down.

"Um..." I said looking around to my friends for any help. "Is it okay if we come in? We have some questions we need to ask you." The woman looked at me with a blank expression, so I continued. "Uh, I'm Sophie, and this is Millie and Josh, we had a message recently from an unknown sender and it was sent from this address. We thought we could come and check the place out if that's no problem?"

I couldn't blame the woman for being confused. I would be if I were her. But surprisingly, she opened the door wider, inviting us in.

The others nodded and I led the way into the small living room which simply consisted of a small television, which looked like it was about twenty years old, and one little sofa with an armchair placed at the end of it.

"Just so you know, I'm the only one who lives here, so I don't know 'ow much I'm going to be of help," she explained.

"That's okay, we just wanted to see if there is anything here that helps us, at this point anything will," I joked, hoping to lighten the mood, but the silence that followed was so painful even Josh had to say something.

"Um, so where were you on the 27th of February at around 1:00 am?" Josh asked.

"Well, I think I was still in 'ospital. I collapsed that night, me son found me on the floor when he came to check on me and called the ambulance."

I thought I could see what had happened. "Was the house locked?" I questioned.

"Unless either my son or a paramedic did, no because I certainly didn't lock it."

We all shared a glance before I asked my next question. "Can we check your phone?"

A laugh escaped the woman's lips. "The only phone I 'ave is my landline, I don't have any of these 'iPhones' or anything like that."

We thanked the woman quickly and left the house with more questions than we came with. We got in the car and sat in silence for a while, thinking through what had just happened.

"I'm pretty sure we've all come to the conclusion that that woman isn't a murderer," Millie said.

"Yeah," I laughed a bit at the thought, "whoever it was obviously decided to go to a random address to send the message, suspecting that we would track it."

"Remember our deal Sophie, we said we would have to go to the police if we didn't find anything conclusive," Millie reminded me.

"Right, I guess we have no choice."

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