Jules excused from the Dutch and found two figures chatting and laughing under the roof of a gazebo not far from the house. Glenn was messing around with a typewriter that seemed to be half assembled.
“What’re you doing?”
“Oh, Jules. I’m fixing this radio. That sniper broke the shit out of this thing. Thank God Cortland owns parts.”
Rake in the corner was doing nothing but massaging his hairy foot.
“What are you doing, Rake?”
“I’m watching him fixing the radio.”
Glenn stared at us quite mesmerizingly.
“If you, Jules, want to steal this pretty boy, go ahead. I’ll be alive on my own.”
Jules just stared blatantly toward Rake, who was starting to tie his shoes. They walked away from the creepy technical nerd toward the cornfield in the north.
“I thought you dislike that guy.”
“I do when he bosses me around too much. He’s actually a pretty fun dude, I must admit.”
“Nice that you two got along.”
They walked some more. Two girls and a boy were chasing around each other, and one almost hit Jules’ legs after rushing out toward the fields. They were playing tags.
“Fucking kids, am I right?”
“I call them happier, simpler humans. And please, your daily habit of cussing needs to chill out a bit.”
They found a small bench and sat there, pleasing their eyes to the panorama served for them.
“I can’t believe this view still exists in this world.”
“Yeah. Ava drew panoramas a lot. Seeing this is like seeing her paintings again.”
Rake, concerned, looked at Jules with all his heart.
“Dude, you really need to move on. You’re still twenty, you have your future. Live your life, especially in this amazing reality.”
“It’s very easy to say, Rake. Sorry, but it’s very hard in the reality. I wasn’t prepared about her… her death. I was baffled until now, confused on how this war changed me. I felt like living in an alien world since last December. Cortland also said the same thing, but I don’t think it affects me too much.”
“But you’re back, Jules. You have returned from that alien world, and now you’re home. Look at this living painting. Everything is peace and fair.”
“I hope so. I hope we can live here long enough for the American to push back the Japanese.”
That was the first positive thing Jules ever said to another person in months.
And that was what they did for a couple of weeks. They lived happily in the living painting with peace and fair in every corner of the haven.
Jules and the others helped the farmers big time. He even went east with Aaron and explore the jungle with the kids. Apparently the landmines were fake. They also played kites, tags, treasure hunting, etc. Life had been a miracle.
Food couldn’t be any better. Every day, Elizabeth and the farmers cooked something different. They upgraded the food each day, offering more and more and stuffed everything to the soldiers’ hungry mouths.
The fifth week was probably the quietest and definitely the nicest. The sun was somehow closer, and in the afternoon, they turned beautifully auburn red.
But the sixth week, something happened.
Jules was chatting with Rake and John at the back of their settling house when he saw a figure sneaked pass. The figure seemed to not be a farmer, but Jules only saw a glimpse.
“Did you guys see that?”
“See what?”
“I thought I see a Jep sneaking in the corns.”
“You must be delirious,” John commented.
“I think we should check it out.” Rake was being careful. If a Japanese soldier did stalk them, the apocalypse for their peace would be there soon.
Jules stood up first, followed by Rake and John. They scoured the corns and saw nothing but more corns. That was until Rake called them.
“What is it?”
“Footprints.”
He wasn’t lying. John found a trail of footprints leading to the thick part of the corn field. They were new and certainly genuine.
“Should we follow?”
“Okay.”
They followed the footprint until the end had come. But they bumped into someone and almost strangled the neck of a farmer.
The footprint belonged to a farmer. Jules slumped down, heart still beating fast. He was probably mistaken about the blur he saw, but he didn’t expect that footprint.
John slapped his face. “Jesus Christ.”
“Sorry guys,” Jules said, still gasping air.
That was the case until the day after that.
Two girls and a boy went missing. Their parents were worried sick, scared that they might be lost in the jungles at the east or at the hills near there too. They might even be kidnapped by a couple of ghosts, one of the older farmers said.
And a search party was held for the three kids. They were Putri, Wahyu, and Adjaya.
Rake and Jules even slept for only an hour that night because they still had to cover on so many areas.
Did they find those kids?
One of them, yes.
It was almost sunrise when they found the boy.
“Guys!” The shout was Blake’s. Jules and Rake who’d been searching near the small swamp heard Blake’s call and immediately rushed in. Two locals also heard it and arrived a couple of seconds after.
Adjaya.
The boy.
The one of the three.
No.
More like, Adjaya’s head. The nine year old boy was decapitated. His head was nailed to a tree. A wooden sign lied next to it, written with Adjaya’s blood.
‘Gotcha’
YOU ARE READING
Darkness Dissolves When the Door Opens
Historical Fiction[60.000-70.000 words] Trapped in a Japanese occupied island, Jules West and other allied soldiers were fighting for their survivals. Facing losses and mental breakdown were not their only problems since the whole island tried to kill them. It had b...
