Alice

Chapter 6

Alan got home quicker than he expected and immediately swooped to his room. No "hi's", "hellos"  or any verbal input whatsoever, to his aunt who was sleeping on the couch waiting for him. On the contrary, who knows whom she's waiting for? She was soundly snoring and Alan didn't have any plans on waking her up.

He dropped his bag on the floor and slumped to his bed in front of him, face down.

What a day.

His best friend had problems believing him, and to make it even worse, the demise of his parents had to keep lingering back to his head. What more could he ask for? This was a perfect example of how a bad day should be like. Alan sighed and feebly walked to his desk. He grabbed his bag and took out the first chapter of his book. He stared at it as his eyebrows furrowed into the words. It was obviously not his. The writing.

The words were intricately curved at the ends, neatly arranged without even a need for a line and the allignments of the sentence fit in perfectly in every paragraph. Could it really be his aunt who did it?

Alan tip-toed out of the room slowly and went to the living room where his aunt was snoring louder than a polar bear. Alan flinched and slowly trudged to her desk. There were some pens and paper. Notes of important dates and invalid meetings were written on it. Well it wasn't really that much of a surprise since his aunt is one of the respected elders in that town. They even have this whole 'Elders Council' thing, to add more to all the ridiculity.

But Alan snapped out of it and focused on what he came for. He took a note and started examining it. The letters, the words, the writing, everything and anything that could help him deduce perhaps it was his aunt after all who wrote that chapter for him.

However, all he found was this shabby writing that had wriggled line and countlessly bad spelling along the way. It was clear his aunt certainly didn't spend most of her time reading books. "No this is not it. It's got to be someone else," Alan told hinself.

"Yes. Yes it was," a cold voice whispered in his ears and Alan bounced back. "Who said that?!" Alan shrieked.

"Alan? What's wrong dear?" Aunt Rose's voice filled the room as she woke up, rubbing her tired eyes.

Alan breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh Aunt Rose, thank god it was you. For a moment there I thought someone else was talking to me. I'm... I'm fine! Just came to grab a pen. Okay, back to finishing my homework," Alan replied quickly and rushed back to his room.

Aunt Rose sat up, confused. "When did I talk to him earlier?"

**************************************

Rick paced back and forth in his room, rubbing his chin. He was... thinking.

School earlier was surprisingly dull for him. Well, he hurt his best friend's feelings so it couldn't get anymore worse than that. Nothing else really mattered anyway, so Rick decided to exclude all the other thoughts that probed his mind. What really mattered to him now was making things right with Alan.

He didn't want to lose him. They've been bosom mates since Elementary and Alan was more like a brother to him. He wasn't just going to let some dumb horror story split that apart.

"Perhaps I should've just listened to him earlier," Rick sighed pondering back on how he judged Alan earlier that day. The pang of guilt still sienged his heart even at the very moment he thought of it.

"What was he saying earlier? It might be a 'ghost' who wrote it?" Rick shook his head. It all seemed palpably false to him. As one of the ace graders in school, it was nonsensical for Rick to even have the slightest believe on paranormal activities, not forgetting the fact that he was also an atheist. So it isn't suprising that such things just seemed too... dubious for him.

Rick scowled himself. This was no time for his calculative thoughts or insecurities.

"Maybe I should just get to the bottom of this and see for myself if Alan is just imagining things or not," Rick assured himself and went to his computer.

His sticky fingers played the keyboard as he moved the mouse around to find a webpage. He opened 'Google', typed the words, 'cases of...' , then paused. He stopped typing. And pondered.

What was the one thing that connected Alan's fictional story to the real world? Which part of it could've been unintentionally similar with something that happened in real life?

"Think Rick. Think," Rick told himself. "Use that big head of yours if you wanna make that stupid accident that happened at school with your best friend right".

Rick's eyes widened. "That's it." Rick splayed his fingers back on his keyboard and finished typing his sentence. 'Cases of accidents due to heavy vehicles'.

Rick frowned. That was too general. He clicked backspace and deleted the words. Then after some thought, he typed again, this time confidently. The words on the screen read, 'Unsolved cases of hit-and run accidents with children'.

Rick clicked 'Enter' and the search engine did it's job. Rick's eyes squinted as he looked at the page that popped up. The list was endless, from cases back in the 90's to now. Rick breathed a sigh of annoyance as he kept scrolling down. This was pointless.

Just as he was about to give up, one case popped up that caught his attention. Rick scanned the information on the page:

Year: 1997

Place: Hollow Village

Case: Unbiased child hit and run (truck)

Driver and cause: Unidentified till date

The list went on. With further details about the accident and how it went unsolved for years without solid evidence to support it. But only one thing on the page startled Rick the most.

The victims's name. Trembling, Rick breathed out the 5 letter words slowly and clearly...

"Alice B. Janet"