Do Not Look

Chapter 3

She had been driving for over twenty minutes now and there was no sign of anything except pine trees. The road was beginning to get worse.

"Where could Amy have gone?" She was starting to get worried. The sun was down and the dense forest was not helping. Just then her headlights started to flicker and her engine stopped. Stopped just like that!

"What the! Why? How? Oh nooo!"

She took out her phone with a million prayers, but obviously there was not a single bar of signal.

"Great! Should I walk back? What should I do?! Help me God please pleeease!"

She turned the keys again in hope, nothing.

"Awesome!"

Sandra was about to tear up when she noticed the lights on her right. It looked like the Inn, though there were no directions pointing to it, except for a rarely used, grass grown, narrow walkway leading from the road.
She got out of her car and crossed over towards the Inn. It was a two storeyed building, looked old but surprisingly well maintained. There were lights on the porch and in one of the rooms upstairs, she could see the shadow of someone moving around in there.

As she closed in, Sandra saw the door to the Inn was open, out of the corner of her eye she also noticed that the person upstairs had moved the curtains aside to see her.

" Phew! Atleast I'm not the only tourist around! Could it be Amy?"

Just as she looked up smiling,
"Welcome to Casper Inn! May I help you?"

Momentarily startled she looked down to see a man, probably in late thirties, greeting her with warmth. He looked well built and healthy, and genuinely happy to see a customer. He had brown hair and deep black eyes. He smiled like Alex, with the dimples and all. He did kind of look like Alex, a bit older, but....

"Excuse me ma'am?"
Pulled out of her daydream she realised that she had been oggling him!

"I.. I'm sorry! My car broke down. Could you help me? Could you please come and check?"

"Oh.. Sure! Why not?"

Saying so he closed the door to the Inn and followed her to the car. Sandra just had a glimpse of the room upstairs and she saw that the person was still standing there, behind the curtains.

"How come you are here at this time? It's not safe you see."

" I know. I came here looking for my friend, she is on trekking", Sandra explained.

"Didn't you check with the office?"

"I did. But there was no one there to enquire to."

"Hmm.. Not many people come here anymore. The authorities stopped funding them since a long time. Trekkers just come here on their own, noone bothers to go through the office. I am barely managing the business myself. Occasionally maybe 1 or 2 tourists per month. That's all."

" So you have an alternative source for income?"Sandra enquired.

"Yeah... You'll probably make fun of me. But I make dolls. Big ones, like the ones in Anabelle." He winked.

"Dolls? Haha! I wasn't expecting that!"

They had reached her car, he lifted the bonnet and started pulling at different parts.

"This doesn't look good. I can't understand what's wrong, it looks perfectly alright."

"But it just stopped and won't budge an inch. It's like a dead car!" Sandra whined, "What do I do?"

"Well, you could stay at the Inn for tonight. And I'll try and get a mechanic tomorrow morning. What say?"

Well, there wasn't much of a choice left for her. Besides it wasn't like she was alone, there were other tourists in there, probably Amy too.

"Okay. That sounds cool," Sandra smiled.

"Good. I'm Michael." Michael extended his hands.

"Sandra." She shook them.

"Well Sandra, let's not stay out longer shall we?"

"Oh yeah. Let's go inside. Hopefully my friend is in there too."

"Oh no no. There's no one staying there right now. I told you it's poor business. It's just been me and my poor Inn for the past one week now." Michael smiled sadly.

Sandra stood frozen. She watched Michael collect her bags from the car, while she turned to look at the Inn. There were no lights upstairs.