In Your Footsteps *Book 2- Thrill of the Hunt* (COMPLETE)

The Shaquille O'Neal of Lying

Chapter 3- The Shaquille O'Neal of Lying

The family the child drew looks exactly like us. There's a tall father with dark hair and golden eyes, a shorter mother with long blonde hair and red eyes, a little girl with black hair and red eyes, and two other figures off to the side of a small flower-ringed pond: a man with blond hair and bright blue eyes and a little girl with brown hair and blue eyes... It's us. What's going on here? I've only ever lived at our home with Mom and Dad. Why is this stuff here then? The colors and furniture could be a coincidence among different families but there's no way that the family could look exactly like us and have the pond with Nemi and Uncle Torin included too. I take in a shaky breath and tear my eyes away from the table to look toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

I'm in a parallel universe. That has to be it. There's some kind of tear in the fabric of the universe and I stepped into it when I left the cottage, didn't I? That's the only explanation I can come up with besides my Dad hiding an incredibly large secret from me. There's a small voice inside me, beneath the spiraling thoughts, that's screeching at me to run far far away from this place and never look back, but my feet keep moving. My mind is reeling. I don't understand what's going on here... Is this why Dad set the boundary to not go past the pond?

I turn toward the door to the left at the end of the hall and find my name on it written in colorful bubbly letters made of paper. So, we lived here at some point. We must have, but why don't I remember it? My hand is trembling as I open the door into the exact replica of my old bedroom. When I turned twelve Dad and I updated it from light purple walls and brightly colored objects and toys to forest green walls and my books and medicine crafting supplies. There are stuffed animals and colorful blocks, kid's books and coloring pages all over the floor and a light purple knitted blanket in a pile on the floor near the bed. I adore the little handprints trailing up a small section of wall, starting with my hands at the bottom, Dad's hands at the top of course and what must have been Mom's in the middle. I walk over to the handprints and place mine over one of Mom's. Mine are just slightly smaller than hers.

The rug in the center of the room is upturned slightly, showing an inconsistency in the flooring pattern. I crouch down and note a notch in one of the board like a handhold. It creaks a little in protest, but a small section of the flooring lifts up on a hinge to reveal a hiding hole. It's just big enough for a small child to hide in and it's padded with a small blanket. Why would we need that? It was obviously used before we left.

I leave my bedroom and cross the hall to Mom and Dad's door. I reach for the knob but hesitate when I find very old dried blood on it. I step back into my bedroom and grab a shirt from the drawers and cover my hand with it as I open the door. Blood doesn't particularly bother me, especially when dried and obviously many years old, but I'd still rather not touch that. A gasp leaves my mouth and tears spring to my eyes as I take in the room. It's absolutely covered in blood stains. It looks like a normal bedroom otherwise, but there's just so. much. blood. Someone died in this room and sadly, I know who it has to be.

"Mom..." I whisper as I wipe my face with my sweater sleeve.

There's a set of bloody footsteps leading from the main stain to the window across the room, and several hand prints on the wall and this side of the door, they look to be about the size of Dad's hands... He must have found her and the footprints are from whoever killed her. I can't move any further into the room and I can't keep my eyes off the stain for very long despite how badly I want to look away. The spatter stains around the main spot look strange to me, they don't quite look like droplets, they look like- oh. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. I drop my gaze to my trembling hands and turn them palms up. The spatters aren't spatter... they're my hand prints. My hands were in my mother's blood... I'm going to be sick.

I run out of the cottage with tears streaming down my face, thoughts racing, and my stomach rolling. I make it to the edge of the yard before I lose the fight and throw up. This is what Dad was keeping from me. Mom died when I was five so why don't I remember any of this? What the hell happened? I wipe my mouth and suck in a breath before hurrying back through the trees toward the safety of my house. I break through the treeline into the pond clearing and stop short. There's a boy standing in the clearing looking at my family's flowers. His hair looks weird, it's a very faint teal color and his clothes look very fancy. Who is he and why is he here? No one is ever here. He looks up suddenly and our eyes meet.