Serenity Falls

Chapter 18

Thanks for being so patient and waiting 4 days for a chapter! I know this one's short but there's a longer one in store for you next time :-) Happy reading!

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"Wait, what do you mean ‘gone missing’?"

Alyssa’s voice could be heard clearly above the noise of the panicked crowd as Olivia and Ethan entered the kitchen. She didn’t even notice them enter – she was too preoccupied interrogating Kayla about the supposed ‘disappearance’ of their friend. She was trying to find some flaw in Kayla’s explanation, one little thing that would be able to convince herself that it was all okay.

The situation was getting scarier with each second, combined with the pitch black cabin and dense forest that surrounded them all, making an escape route difficult to find.

"Are you sure she didn’t just go to the bathroom or something?" Alyssa asked her.

"No," Kayla answered. "She was with me, we were talking. She was saying something about Brooke’s outfit and how fat she look–"

"Kayla," Alyssa interrupted, in a warning tone, giving her a look that read shut up now.

"Yeah, and then like, the lights and the music went off. It was… dark. And then someone screamed, really close to me. I think it was her, but it was really hard to tell. I turned round to see what happened, but she wasn’t there. I called her name, but she’d just… gone."

"So she just vanished? Into thin air?"

"I don’t know."

"It doesn’t seem very likely, Kayla. Does it?" she sighed. "Go and check the rooms upstairs. She’s probably in one of them."

Kayla nodded and trotted off obediently, not one to disobey Alyssa. Despite Alyssa’s attempts at a rational explanation, the whole situation was still creeping her out and she was reluctant to search the rooms upstairs herself.

"What if someone’s got into the house? What if she’s been murdered?" Brooke said suddenly, her voice consumed with worry.

"Oh shut up, Brooke. She’s not been murdered, for God’s sake. Get a hold of yourself, will you? It’s just a freaking power cut," Alyssa snapped, turning round to glare at their host. "You’re just scaring everyone. Now go find some flashlights or something. It’s no use just sitting here in the dark."

A few minutes later after she had left, Kayla re-entered the kitchen, shaking her head. Courtney was still nowhere to be found and the whole room was looking increasingly scared as the possible situations dawned on their minds. Even Alyssa was now looking unsure as Brooke and Kayla looked at her for some sort of explanation.

"Maybe we should go look for her," Kayla said, after a brief moment of silence.

"Look for her where exactly? She could have gone anywhere."

"But she could be in trouble," Olivia said suddenly.

Alyssa spun round and shone her flashlight as she looked for the owner of the voice. When she realised the identity of the speaker, her eyes narrowed and she glared at Olivia with a look so fierce it could have burned right through her. However, Olivia was not fazed. She knew what she had just seen, and Alyssa knew it very well too.

Olivia felt slightly empowered as she studied Alyssa’s anxious gaze. It was not often that anyone got to see Alyssa Taylor unnerved, and so Olivia decided to savour the opportunity. This type of control could turn out to be the perfect revenge.

"Olivia’s right," said Ethan, stepping forward. "We’re going to have to go search for her. She can’t have gone far in this amount of time, right? And there’s only one place she could’ve gone, if not inside the cabin."

He turned his head in the direction of the window. All that could be seen out of the glass was a labyrinth of dark, dense forest that surrounded the lake.