Handprints

Chapter 6: Discovery

At first Dee couldn't see anything on the other side, it was too dark to see much more then the faint outlines of the furniture.

Then something moved just across the room from Dee's vantage point. It looked like a person was slowly walking across the room, heading towards the kitchen.

Dee stepped back again, glancing around their room for anything that could be used as a weapon. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything in the room that would fit that description. The closest Dee could think of is if they broke the nightstand to use one of its legs like a club.

Dee resigned themself to possibly having to fight off an intruder with their fists and pushed pas the curtain to the living room.

There was no sign of anyone there anymore. The room was completely empty.

Gathering their courage, Dee snuck into the kitchen, careful to move as quietly as possible as they crept through the dark room.

Dee paused just to the side of the kitchen door, having to brace themself for what they might see on the other side of that door.

After a moment of hesitation, Dee finally let themself peek around the door frame, just in time to see someone slip out the window.

A burst of anger coursed through Dee's blood. How dare these mystery people come in here and do who knows what only to slip away into the night.

Without thinking the actions through first, Dee rushed to the window, searching for any sign of where the shadowy figures had disappeared to.

There! A shadow was just slipping around the corner of the building, heading for the back where they wouldn't be visible from the street.

Dee looked down, judged the distance, and proceeded to carefully lower themself out the window before letting go to fall to the rest of the way to the ground.

The fall was jarring, causing pain to lance up trough Dee's knees into their hips, but they couldn't stop to focus on that. They needed to catch the people who had broken into their home.

Dee stayed close to the wall of Doc's shop as they followed where they had seen the mystery people disappear to.

The fear was quickly overpowering that anger they had felt in the kitchen earlier even as they pushed onward.

Dee didn't much time to focus on that fear though, they were only ever so slightly behind the people moving ahead of them. They were so close that they barely dared to breath too deeply for fear that the others might hear them and come after them.

Dee peered around the corner, careful to stay as out of sight as possible in the process.

Dee watched breathlessly as the shadowy people, two of them as far as they could see, stopped near the middle of the wall, glancing from side to side before one crouched down and started moving something on the ground that Dee couldn't quite make out.

A moment of complete silent stillness and then the one on the ground stood and both seemed to melt into the shadows themselves.

Dee couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was like the pair had simply vanished into thin air!

Forgetting caution, Dee ran forward to inspect where they had been.

The ground was clear of any obstacles or signs of movements or disturbance. Dee turned to the space they had seen the two disappear into.

That was where they finally found a clue. There was a thin seam in the side of the building there. Dee was only just able to wedge their fingers into the seam and pry it open.