The Witch's Doll ⚢

Chapter 28

It has been merely a few minutes after Evonnie's departure and Isla had felt the coldness and the bleakness of her absence.

Isla thought her a delightful curiosity. The girl seemed to be leashed to another girl who seemed just as trapped by her. Isla knew exactly why Evonnie bewitched Alessandra Adams. No person of sound mind carried such obsession. And it cannot be love. No person capable of love acted the way Alessandra Adams does. Isla had only a small glimpse into the Filipino's heart, and they are enough to know that her heart is dead.

Evonnie appeared like an everlasting source of knowledge and mystery; when the enigma of life would be long revealed by humanity, her heart would still conceal the secrecy of her nature, for Isla knew that something as pure and nonesuch as she was could never run out of puzzles that needed to be solved.

This was not love-at-first-sight, she reckoned, albeit not having a clue about what it meant or implied. Isla was rather intrigued by Evonnie's manner of behaving, as it offered her a perpetual subject of debates and speculations. Isla saw Evonnie as the epitome of all the wild-goose chases; it nurtured her appetite for adventure and flow of adrenaline, stimulated her mind and it allowed her to solve an enigma in times in which every day threatened to stain her existence. Evonnie was just another jigsaw whose pieces she had to put back together to understand what she represented. Or was Evonnie more than that?

What was it to this girl that attracted her so much? Isla guessed that it had to do with the aura of secrecy that always seemed to convey her.

"...Minister of Defense's son died of a heart attack this morning along with twenty other boys who died of various diseases. All of the young men were believed to be a part of a reformist group..." Amani played the UKN news on her phone as they all huddled close together.

"Can you turn it off?" Harper asked as she flipped her cards. "The news is so depressing."

"Did you not hear what they said?" Isla asked, looking up from the card game she did not even want to play. "Graham Galloway has died. One of our schoolmates."

"Probably deserved more than that," Monica said she put down her cards.

Isla sent her a surprised look.

"Yes, Harper told me everything," she added. "He's still a poor thing though. With more students dead, this means another assembly when the new semester comes."

All these recent deaths merely intrigued her. It was not natural, especially because most of the victims were healthy young people. Then it was quite hard to conceal murder as heart attack or any other diseases, Isla knew only of one serial killer that had ever managed to pull it off, and that on a massive scale. But it could not be.

Other diseases were easy. Exposing them to a deadly virus or bacteria and cultivate them, but could take years for it to work, given a person's immune system and healthcare. There were no outbreaks to boot.

Whatever dirty tricks she could conjure to give people heart diseases was unheard of and might not be possible. Unless the victim has a pacemaker.

"I would insist that all of you would treat it as white noise," Isla said, as she listened intently to all the names of the dead people.

"On another news, an English woman is missing after a plane hit the water while trying to land at the International airport in the Philippines archipelago on Sunday, December 26. The airline had said all passengers and crew had managed to evacuate the sinking aircraft safely, but they confirmed that one passenger was unaccounted for. Her name is Dr. Ophelia Adams."

Isla's eyes widened when she heard that. Unaware she spaced out until somebody threw candy at her. She shot the American with a heated glare. "What?"