Dancing with the Dead ✔

Chapter Twelve - The Red Dahlia

"So let me get this straight," John says, putting on a serious face. "You think there's a dead body hidden somewhere inside this house?"

"Uh-huh." I give a firm nod.

Drawing his brows together, he puts his thumb beneath his chin and begins to walk in circles. "And you think this," he squints and gulps before he continues, "missing girl everyone's talking about is the same girl those kids are talking about?"

"Yep." I nod, putting my hands on my jeans' pockets.

"And why is that?" He gazes at me in between circling around me—something which begins to annoy me.

Raising my brow ever so slightly, I take out the phone I found earlier from my pocket and wave it in front of him.

"See this?" I point to the charm strapped on the phone. "This definitely belongs to a teenage girl. Plus, what's the odd that there's a missing girl in town at the same time as the boogeyman killed—"

"Nah-ah." He waves his finger in front of me to my annoyance. "They didn't actually say he killed her."

With a frown upon my face, I continue, "Fine. Allegedly killing a girl."

"Wait a second." He finally stops moving and turns his gaze upon me. Cocking his head a little, he continues, "they said a lady. That doesn't necessarily mean a girl, right?"

I scoff. This man has definitely got on my nerves. "Yes, but then again, how reliable are two ten-year-olds?"

His eyebrow twitches, pausing for a while to make sense of my theory. "Well, I suppose you have a point. So, you're suggesting we search for the body, then?"

I flash a wicked smile. Finally. "Let's split up!"

***

"Argh!" I scream at what jumped to my face when I opened the cupboard a few seconds ago.

"Hey! What happened?" John comes running from across the hall, probably thinking I've already found the dead girl's body.

With a clearly disgusted look upon my face, I gulp and use two fingers to carefully grab the dead rat on my face. I quickly throw the damn rat far away from me.

"This is officially the worst investigation ever!" I cry.

Not that you've investigated much anyway.

Argh! Shut up, Evil Me!

He chuckles. "So? Anything other than the dead—"

"Nope!" I shake my head quickly as I raise one finger to close his lips. Just the thoughts of the dead rat on my face makes me want to vomit.

"What about you?" I ask, my hands still busy patting—or more like slapping—my own face to clean whatever traces left of the dead rat.

"Nothing so far." He shrugs. "I'll go check the bathrooms, okay?"

I nod, giving him the approval to dash to the nearest bathroom. This is already the tenth—and final—room, and so far there's zero dead, human body in here. The only place we haven't searched are the bathrooms, in which there are five or so in this house, all of which are larger than my whole apartment.

While still imagining myself living life like a princess in this mansion, I drag myself out of the room. As I head downstairs, I begin to think to myself; maybe there aren't any dead body anywhere, maybe all these craziness are just stupid, idiotic Evil Me acting up again. I mean, what am I doing here, really? I'm supposed to search for John's identity! Yet, I got caught up with Evil Me's horrendous scheme and probably jeopardize the whole investigation.