Eighteen O' Five {ONGOING}🇳🇬

•~~Chapter Twelve~~•

"Hey, stay here. Let me take over from here and solve it my way," my dad said, stopping Olamipo from chasing after Dorcas. After which he headed out to catch up with her himself.

It wasn't after hours that he returned into the house, sweaty, and breathing heavily from his chest.

"Dad, what happened?" I asked anxiously.

"Nothing... It's nothing," he said, coughing. "Where is Olamipo?"

"She has gone to bed," I answered. "Dad, are you sure you're fine?"

He paused while unbuttoning his sweaty shirt, looked at me mutely for a few seconds before saying, "I...am...fine. You should go to bed, you know you still have to go back to the school tomorrow."

He walked off to his room, still coughing. Something didn't feel right about him. It'd be difficult to know what was wrong if he didn't say for himself, he kept his secrets well.

*

The following morning when we arrived at the school, the atmosphere was rather tragic. The expressions on the faces of the students gave it up, the silence from them was deafening and usual. No chatters, no murmurs. You would argue they were the same kids that came here every other day.

Perhaps their noise was unbearable so the police scolded them to silence, I thought.

"Sorry, excuse me. What happened?" my inquisitive sister asked one of the students that were standing alone.

"You haven't heard?" the girl asked surprisingly.

"What's that?" Olamipo asked.

"Another girl is missing," she whispered. "Since yesterday night."

Another girl? My thoughts blanked.

"Wow! Who is the girl?" Olamipo asked again.

"Dorcas."

Dorcas? Two heavy metals clanged in my head, producing high frequency sounds like the crashing of cymbals and chirping birds. It rendered my ear deaf to the rest of the conversation between Olamipo and the girl. I watched their mouth inaudible words as my noisy head thought of only one phrase; "...solve it my way."

It can't be.

I shook my head and shuddered my shoulders like a kid that was fed bitter leaf concoction to perish the thoughts.

Slowly, the noise in my head disappeared and I could hear their words again.

"We don't know who is next," the girl said before walking off. My eyes followed her

Who was next was a valid question for anyone to think of if two young girls from the same town had already gone missing under seventy-two hours. One of which was the king's daughter, and the other a detective's.

More trouble.

My thoughts had consumed me in the deep that I wasn't aware of the words Olampio spoke to me. She brought me back with taps on my shoulder when she noticed I wasn't paying attention.

"Yeah, wha-what?" I stuttered.

"I said crazy things keep happening in this town. The Dorcas we still saw yesterday night," she said.

"Do you know what I'm thinking?" I asked, staring head fucked.

"What?"

"Dad said something and it's starting to have meaning to me now," I replied. "He said something like he would do it his way."

"So... What if he said that?" she asked. "Or wait, you don't mean he... "
Her eyes widened as she spoke.

"I don't want to believe so too but he was sweating and panting when he came back home yesterday night. It was so weird."

Her cellphone beeped in between the conversation, she dug it from her pocket to check the notification. Whatever she saw on her screen wasn't good, her eyes went agape, her jaw dropped followed by the escape of the exclamation "Ah!" from her mouth.

"What's that?" I asked.

With her eyes and mouth still widened, she said to me, "I just received a text from your phone."

I wanted to speak but words failed me, they wouldn't come. The two metals changed again in my head but I shuddered quickly to make the noise go away.

"Let me see the text," I requested.

"Do not worry about a thing. It is all in perfect control. -1805."

That was all the message read, sent from my phone number. The sender must be the person that found my phone in the woods. And maybe Rera's body, too. It reassured me that she could still be alive, safe.

But how did the person know who to text? My sister's contact wasn't saved specially on my phone, just her name; Olamipo.

"Don't you think we should reply to the text?" she suggested. "At least to know how we can get the phone back."

"I think that's going to be a bad idea," I replied.

"How?"

"I mean, how did the person know who to message? Your contact was just saved as 'Olampo' on my phone. The person couldn't have messaged everyone on my phonebook," I explained. "Could be a trap."

"You have a point there, we should tell dad about it," she said. "But what does '1805' mean?"

Olamipo's mention of dad reminded me to speak more about dad's weird actions the previous night but another voice spoke before me. We were lost in the conversation that we didn't notice someone had been standing behind us, most probably listened to everything we talked about.

"A-a-re... Y-ou... G-uys... In... Trou-ble?" the voice spoke.

"Shit! You startled me, Titi." I reacted. "How long have you been standing there?"

"N-not... L-lo-ng... I-I... He-ard... Y-ou s-say... 18-05," she spoke again. "A-a-re... Y-ou... In... Trou-ble?"

Why would she even think there was trouble in the first place? She must have listened to our conversation all along. My sister, with her cunny ways confused and dismissed her from the discussion while we joined the other students in the classroom.

My mind was congested with so many thoughts; the text, trap, missing Dorcas, my dad's suspicious phrase, the possibility of Rera still being alive. I wasn't sure I was in the proper mental state for the day's interrogation.

I would fail.

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