Through the Dark

Chapter 4

It was Sunday morning and I woke up completely disoriented. It took me a whole minute to open my eyes properly and another to gather my thoughts and comprehend where I was. I had a serene, dreamless sleep which gave he rest that my mind and body needed.

"Hey sleepyhead, I was just about to wake you," Thea came inside the room all dressed up.
"What time is it?"
"Quarter past nine," she replied as I yawned.
"Shit it's already late," I mentioned and got up hurriedly.

I changed into another one of Thea's tee-shirt and my jeans, ate breakfast which Thea's mother had prepared for us and left the house to go to the hospital. It was 15 minutes till 10 when we reached the hospital to hear that Reese was awake.

"Go inside I'll wait out here," Thea insisted to give us some privacy.

I entered the room as nervousness coursed through me. Reese, on the other hand, was grinning as she saw me.
"Hey darling. How are you?" she asked.
"You tell me."
"Oh! Sweetheart I'm as fine as I'll ever be." I pulled the chair beside her bed and sat down.
"This 2 days were a hurdle which I did not expect to encounter," I said holding her right hand which did not have any tube attached to it then.
"I know darling."
"The nurse said that it won't be long before you are good to go. Then we can finally get home," I added casually but hearing that Reese's face became pale.

"Vianna I'm not sure that I can go home anytime soon," she said looking away from my face.
"Yeah we won't be leaving before you heal," I chuckled nervously.
"No darling it's not my health for which I won't be able to go," she added.

"What do you mean?" I could feel all the blood flowing out of my face.
"Come on Vianna it was a joke. I was just pulling your leg," Reese said and began to laugh.

"It's not funny. You know that you're the only family I have and you are joking about leaving me," I said and got up from my sitting position to clear my head.

"I know," Reese sighed. From the corner of my eyes I saw her rub the sole tear that had fallen.
"Let's forget about it."
"But I'm still mad at you for pulling the worst joke on me," I whined. 
"Come here," she said softly making me go sit beside her once again.
"I love you Vianna you know that don't you?" Reese asked while pulling me towards her and enveloping me in a hug.

"Reese is everything fine?" I asked. I was beginning to get concerned because of her actions.
"Everything will be fine," she sighed.

It was after a minute when she released me and I sat beside her to look at her face. She was as beautiful as she always was. Her brown hair were secured in plates on both sides and she had no makeup on or anything but to me she was looking gorgeous. Only if she changed out of the hospital's clothes then nobody would even realize that she had been here, unconscious for such a long time.

I smiled knowing that this women was always there for me, even though she was only a couple of years older, and when this will be over we can continue with our lives together like we did.

"What are you thinking?" she asked after a prolonged silence.
"That I'm very lucky to have you and that I love you." I replied which made her hug me again.
"Are you crying?" I asked as she sniffed. Reese chuckled and released me before rubbing both of her eyes.

"Reese can I ask you something?"
"Yeah go on."
"On Friday did somebody else enter our house?" I asked not sure how to put my words. I could not possibly say that I thought there was an intruder by the minimum evidence I had.

"No, why do you ask?" she asked. The nervousness could be felt in her as she spoke.
"Nothing just curious," I replied and did not say anything else.

Thea came inside the room after a while and the first thing she said was that I would be staying at Thea's place until Reese was fine.
"It's only for the next handful of days maximum," Reese had replied.

"Do you need anything from home? I'll be going there and can pick you something if you want," I said before we were about to leave.
"No darling. It's fine," Reese smiled. 

"Did you ask her?" Thea inquired as soon as we got out of the room. I knew that she was questioning about the whole theory that we had the previous night.
"I did ask but she said that there was no one," I replied.

"I was just being frantic," I added but deep inside I knew Reese was not telling me the truth. I had lived with her long even to know when she is lying. When Reese told me that no one was inside the house, her eyes were widened. If anything I was only more certain about the assumption that I had made.

"Well, Nathan and Aiden are waiting outside your house right now thinking that there is a conspirator," Thea laughed but I did not say anything about it to her.

Surely as her car emerged the driveway of my house, we saw both Nathan and Aiden standing behind the bushes, attempting to blend in. However, their tall and muscular figures hid nothing. The only thing it did was make them look like maniacs because of the way they were standing quietly behind the low bush. 
"What are you idiots doing there?" I asked instantly bursting out laughing looking at them. 

"False alarm. There was no intruder," Thea shouted for them to hear.
"Dammit we came all prepared," Nathan began.
"Yeah we can totally see that," I stated.

Both Aiden and Nathan were holding baseball bats. Nathan even had a pepper spray in his hand. Both of them also had walkie-talkies attached to their shirts and had backpacks slung around their shoulders.

"What were you exactly planning on dimwits?" Thea teased them.
"We thought there was going to be a murderer in here. It's wise of us to come prepared," Aiden replied.
"Yeah as if that person would be making himself home inside right now, waiting for four teenagers to barge in," I said and all of us began laughing.

"Hello? Is anyone in here?" Nathan shouted as I unlocked the main door and opened it.
"Nathan, even if someone was in here they would not just answer back," Aiden, being slightly more logical than Nathan, pointed out.
"If anything you are just giving them a heads up that you just entered," I joked.

As we got inside the house, there was nothing that seemed to be out of place. The blood in the kitchen was cleaned which I presumed was done that night after I called the ambulance. Everything was just as normal as it could be. I went upstairs to my room while the others wandered about the house. After arranging all the paraphernalia that I needed for the coming days I realized that my backpack was not enough to fit it all in. There were books, clothes, toiletries and the other important things which apparently took a lot of space. Thus, I decided to borrow one of Reese's larger ones which was somewhere hidden in her room.

I emerged her door and turned the knob expecting it to open but it did not. I tuned it again but the door did not move and I understood that it was locked. It was then when it hit me that the night when it all happened, I had closed the door after I came out from Reese's room but it was definitely not locked and I was certain about that. After that nobody else was supposed to be inside the house. Regardless, the main question was how the door was locked if the house was empty from that day onward. 

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The tension is growing! What do you all think is going to happen?

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