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ONCE AGAIN, ALAINA and Jack slept through the night soundlessly. All was well through the morning, Sister Charlotte deciding to take a trip into town with all the orphans, including Jack, to go food shopping. She'd noticed they were running low, and to apologise for all the disruption they'd caused, she drove away and arrived with over the amount they needed with a smile. However, Mr Mullins wasn't there to thank her, which the group would soon find out.
Jack and Alaina had crates full of groceries in their hands as they rana way from the truck with bright grins and laughter spilling from their lips. The past few days since they'd met had been filled with such negativity and eeriness that couldn't be subsided, so while they were nervous for the oncoming hauntings they could evidently feel in their steps on the Earth, they enjoyed their time without the daunting worries of Annabelle.
While Sister Charlotte rounded the front of the vehicle she'd parked in the front yard, the two eldest teens began to run towards the house verandah. The other children watched with smiles, them growing into laughter once acknowledging the woman standing beside them's expression of irritation.
"Jack! Alaina! Get back here," she demanded, but the two teens only continued to rebel the woman as they bounded up the front steps. The Sister shot a look back to the children, it being filled with such disbelief that they couldn't be dared to withhold their laughter.
The two orphans moved to go inside, wicked grins splayed across their faces, before they heard a scream. Another scream. A scream that would haunt them for the rest of their life, much like the memories of Annabelle Mullins and the devil.
"Wait!" Sister Charlotte shouted from the truck, untangling her hands hurriedly from the crates of shopping near her. The other children around her and sitting in the back of the truck watched the house worriedly, as well as the two teens looking between the woman and the door with confliction. Before they even decided, the others knew what the two teens would do, because it was Alaina and Jack. They would never leave somebody screaming alone, so with a kick of dust lying on the wooden floor of the front porch and a drop of the crates in their hands, they pushed the door open and ran inside in a blink of an eye.
Sister Charlotte shouted with concern. Her job was to protect the orphans, even if they were old enough to protect themselves, so when two of them ran inside where somebody had just screamed from the depths of their lungs, she felt like screaming herself. She didn't know what was waiting for them in that house, and once she knew, she wished she didn't.
"Sam?" Alaina called out as they walked through the hallway, head turning as soon as they walked past a new room. She stopped, holding a hand out in front of Jack to make him stop too. He looked at her with furrowed brows, only watching as the girl narrowed her eyes at the floor and peered her head forward. She was listening - listening for footsteps, quiet talking, painful cries, muffled breaths, anything. She heard nothing.
She finally looked up to meet Jack's eye worriedly. At the sight, he immediately gripped her hand and moved forward, eyes darting between rooms as he shouted out the missing man's name. "Mr Mullins?" He shouted. "Sam, where are you?"
They continued speed walking down the main hall, fingers interlaced as they searched for the owner of the house. They didn't know where they expected him to be, or how they expected him to look, but when they glanced into the dining room and found him lying on the floor, darkness seeping from his eyes, they screamed and shouted in shock. That was not what they expected.
Jack's hand fell out of Alaina's as the girl moved them up to cup her face, eyes tearing up as she stared at the man in shock. He was walking around only mere hours before when they'd left, a joyful pip in his step as he moved throughout the house with a smile. It was the happiest he'd been in a while - clearly he didn't know how soon his day would end. It ended with his life.
He was lying against the stained rug beneath the table, eyes rolled to the back of his head with an uncertain greyness clinging to what was visible of his irises and skin. It looked like lightning strikes shooting down from his eyelids, travelling down his cheeks with a darkness he clearly couldn't fight away. There wasn't any blood, no cuts of circulation or anything of the sort, he was just dead. That's what they knew, there was no way Mr Mullins was alive at all.
Jack cried first. The man lying on the floor in front of him had saved his own life, taking him into a place with familiarity during one of the worst times of his existence. Sam was his second father, unrelated by blood but related through the connection of the heart, proven by the dull tug Jack endured once laying sight on the fallen man. He hadn't felt the loss of life before he saw him, he only felt the nagging emotion of knowing that badness was coming. He just hadn't known how bad it was, and how bad it would continue to get.
Alaina instantly turned to the side upon hearing a sniffle, watching Jack's face contort with inner pain. She could see he was holding back, trying to suck it up and do the to-be-considered mature thing. There was no mature thing to do, especially upon finding the man you'd grown up with dead.
Immediately, she moved forward and wrapped her arms around him, letting a tear of her own slide down her cheek as she felt him finally cave. Jack clutched her back tighter, burying his head in her shoulder as he sobbed into her clothes. She rubbed a hand up and down his back, a frown forming deeper on her face while listening to his heartbroken cries, knowing there was nothing more to do. If only she could take his pain away.
Sister Charlotte ran in the door behind them, quickly jogging towards the two teens crying at the end of the hallway in front of the dining room. She furrowed her brows but continued to approach the two with worry.
"Are you okay? Where's Mr Mullins?" The woman asked genuinely as she began to step closer to the two. Alaina felt Jack shudder in her grasp, knowing, but before he could pull away and stop the woman from having to deal with the traumatic and unforgettable sight of the deceased man, she'd already seen him. "Oh my God!"
Alaina looked at her with sympathy, watching her gasp with her palms over her mouth as Jack continued to cry into her shoulder. There was nothing she could do. Absolutely nothing.
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