"All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
ACT 2, Scene 7
The exit room was engulfed in complete darkness while a dark feeling crept inside me, my mind hallucinating as if I was able to make out shadowy figures from inside. Ryan pushed open the door slowly with his gloved hands and made his way through while I followed silently. He pulled the flashlight from inside his rucksack and switched it on, revealing a bright beam of light that slightly illuminated the dark flight of stairs buzzing with an abandoned silence.
"Ryan, are you sure about this?" I asked out nervously in a low voice, my eyes scanning the door every now and then, not wanting someone to pass by and catch us in the darkness.
He stepped forward and stood tall, his piercing green eyes looked straight into mine as he pulled closer, our faces only inches apart. "You know Ava," he began, his voice sounding cold and harsh. "Not everyone is going to believe you, especially in times like these. If we want to prove Ms. Campbell's death wasn't a suicide, we've got to make sacrifices. If justice isn't served in time then we've got to bring it, you understand?" his deep voice rung loudly in my ears.
He pulled away from me slowly and bent down towards the old wall with cracks and faded layers of paint. Ryan's grip on the heavy metal mesh was firm as he pulled it out that led to a cold dark vent. He grabbed his rucksack in one hand and held his flashlight from the other, slowly crawling his way ahead and gestured me to follow him.
Everything has sacrifices that have to be made, even illegally breaking into Ms. Campbell's office in search of truth at the dead of night.
* * * * * *
The vent cold and dark almost felt like an endless maze and I crawled for what felt like forever. "What exactly did you mean Ava? That Ms. Campbell wasn't capable of holding a blade from her right hand?" Ryan questioned abruptly that caused me to jerk.
"I felt something strange the last time I met her back in the office, I could feel it in my guts." I narrated as my mind quickly travelled back to the incident. "There was something totally odd about her right hand, something that was recent because it was never this way before. Ms. Campbell's right hand was totally paralyzed, it was as if she couldn't move it at all, not even her fingers. She never mentioned what happened to her hand and it felt weird to ask." I paused to ponder, if I missed out any important bits of information.
"While I left her office I overheard a conversation she had. Couldn't make out who it was but she sounded worried and afraid. She mentioned about some sort of car accident in the middle of the night, people she didn't recognize who threatened to kill her and about something called 'Monoplegia'."
* * * * * *
The path through the vent finally came to an end as Ryan pushed out another metal mesh and jumped out, landing on his feet as I followed. The office was dark and silent, everything preserved exactly how it used to be back when Ms. Campbell was the principal. Her lamp stood on her desk alongside a globe and a shiny metal card that spelled her name.
"I guess I'll look through the wardrobe and maybe you could rummage through her desk but you better be careful," Ryan warned. "Make sure you have your gloves on and don't leave behind any bits of DNA and be quick, we haven't got long,"
I nodded as I went to her desk and slowly pulled out the drawer and began going through her contents while Ryan began rummaging through all the old files and books carefully stored inside the tall wardrobe. There wasn't much I could find, except for a few pens, sheets of paper and.... a leather-bound diary?
I carefully lifted the diary and flipped through its yellow pages and recognized Ms. Campbell's familiar handwriting that filled most of its pages. She wrote down everything, some accounts official while most of it remained informal, like some sort of diary she kept, which included everything until they day she died.
* * * * * * *
FIVE DAYS AGO
The morning sky was bright and cloudy as thick white clouds floated up above and the sun's rays fell into Ms. Campbell's office. The day had just begun as she sat slowly, relaxing against the red cushioned chair, staring at the bright fire that burnt with life in the fireplace. The calm atmosphere around her was short lived as soon the black telephone on her desk began to ring, it's loud vibrations filling up the office.
She answered it immediately as she held the phone close to her left ear, finding it dead and completely silent from the other end. "Hello?" Ms. Campbell began nervously, her heart beat began to rise as she expected someone might reply from the other end but it still remained dead silent.
"Hello? Is anybody there?" she questioned once again, expecting a response to follow while the line filled up with weird buzzing sounds as she finally made out a voice from the other end. "Olivia Campbell" the voice called out, a very unfamiliar voice. Ms. Campbell was taken by surprise and her heart beat drummed louder, so loud that she could hear them ringing inside her ears.
"Who is it?" she stammered nervously. "I'm certain you must be very worried about what's happening at Mount Preston High, about all those innocent people being murdered. What a shame!" the voice continued laughing darkly from the other end. "This isn't funny, you know" Ms. Campbell tried sounding serious but that didn't do any good. "Of course it isn't. I need you to meet me exactly at 12 AM at night by Redwood road. If this news leaks to even a single soul I'll have you dead like the rest of them and if you failed to make it, I swear something really bad will come your way," and with that the line fell silent.
Ms. Campbell was taken by both shock, surprise and fear, having no idea what to do. She couldn't refuse not wanting something worse to follow nor could she tell anyone about this and at last, she finally made up her mind, taking up all the risks to meet this stranger at the dead of night.
She was dressed in a woollen sweater and a beanie as she walked down the road nervously with ragged heavy breaths. She stood there waiting until she noticed a pair of white lights heading from the end of the usually lonely roads. The car dashed forward at an unpredictable speed knocking off Ms. Campbell immediately, hitting the side of the road as she was thrown of by the force of the car, hitting her right arm immediately against a street lamp as well as the back of her head.
Ms. Campbell rose up after a while, the world spinning in circles around her as she noticed two figures dressed in black exiting the car and another figure she recognized. It was none other than her very daughter, Sofia Campbell. The two black figures held Sofia whose eyes were read and tears flowing down her cheeks as she sobbed bitterly, a knife held at her neck.
"Mom, please" Sofia cried out bitterly, pleading for help as she noticed the shock on her mother's face. Ms. Campbell was completely clueless as to what was going on when everything hit her hard. These unknown people had kidnapped Sofia to demand something.
"Please, let her go. She's innocent" Ms. Campbell pleaded on her knees, begging for mercy.
"But what do we get in return?" one of them asked through a loud muffled voice, only their eyes visible.
"Anything, I'll give you anything, anything you ask for,"
The two humanlike figures cloaked in black whispered something and then pushed Sofia on the ground and quickly thrust in a piece of paper into Ms. Campbell's wrist and drove of.
Your soul
* * * * * *
Life was never the same again as Ms. Campbell was always anxious about herself and at the moment she even lost her right hand. After the sudden car crash that night, Ms. Campbell was now suffering from Monoplegia, having her right hand totally paralyzed.
It was then when a loud sound fell into Ms. Campbell's ears that she heard the sound of metal coming from one of the walls. That's when someone entered through the vent and eyeing Ms. Campbell, quickly slit her wrist using a blade and carefully placed the blade between her fingers, planting a murder as suicide.
* * * * * *
"Ryan this diary, it's got everything about how Ms. Campbell suffered from Monoplegia. It's the best piece of evidence we could fin-" and that's when the sounds of keys hitting against each other was heard from outside the office door.
Someone's coming
A twisted riddle
@ahlanazarx ⛓