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Footprints in the Blood Part 2

As we stepped through the door, we realized that this was a completely modern house, even though it looked as old as an oak tree from the outside. Long, colourful curtains draped across the newly-placed French windows, a furry rug huddled on the floor, a flat screen TV attached to the wall, a fancy chandelier hung above us in the living room. Even the walls were painted different colours!

     “Ok, so where is the incident?” I asked, getting straight to the point.

     “Of course, of course,” Laurens face turned pale again.

     Zoe let go of Lauren, as she lead us upstairs, without saying another word. Once we had reached the top, I noticed something.

     “Hang on, aren’t there three floors in this house? I thought I saw three from the outside?” this was obviously something the others hadn’t noticed, since everyone started murmuring in confusion.

     “Ah,” Lauren looked at us with fear glistening in her big, round eyes. Everyone silenced instantly. “Yes. When I bought this house, I also thought that too. But obviously I was mistaken, because, well, I never found the entrance to the top floor. If there even is a top floor.” She shrugged. We were all starting to become a little shaken at this scene. Something was a little …off about this. It was as if the air itself was hiding something. We just couldn’t put our fingers on it.

     We all trudged after her in the bright hallway until we came across a mint-coloured door with a gnarly door handle.

     Lauren stepped aside cautiously, allowing us to go in. Inside was a rather large bedroom, with cream walls and a king-sized bed.

     “My husband is at work today. He works full-time, so I am nearly always alone,” she explained.

     Fiddling with her fingers, she briskly walked over to the far end of the room.

     “Here,” she pointed down to her feet with a shaking finger.

     No-one could see what she was pointed at, so we all joined her. I was the first.

     I was very much surprised at what I saw, though I showed no sign of it, being the all-professional Head Officer I was. There, just a few inches away from our feet, lay the strangest thing.

     A pool of crimson liquid. We couldn’t confirm it was blood, as we hadn’t got any clues yet. It just sat there, oozing and squirming and bubbling, as if it were alive.

     “Look there,” Detective Roy nodded his head over to some peculiar shape nearby. There was another even further away. And another. They were also the color red, and had started from the liquid pool.

We found it lead to a door on a different wall, opposite the one we came through.

     Abigail leaned forward and inspected it closely.

     “Aren’t they … footprints?” Indeed she was correct.

     And the search began.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Detective Roy was leading, eyebrows furrowed deeply together in concentration, trying to work things out in his head. As we entered through the door, we found the trail of footprints continued on. On and on we went, until it finally came to a stop in front of a fireplace. It was a smaller room, with a single bed on one side, and the fireplace on the other. On either side of the fireplace a bookcase filled up every inch of the wall. We figured it was the guest room.

     Lauren was always between Zoe and Abigail, turning paler and paler, until her face was as pale as paper.

     “Hmm, maybe the suspected person or thing, shall I say, could’ve gone right up this fireplace, through the chimney, and supposedly escaped …?” Detective Roy muttered, almost to himself.

     “That is practically impossible. This … thing couldn’t have such skill to climb up such a slippery hole, and even if it could, we had blocked it with nailed pieces of hard wood ages ago, because the fireplace was in bad condition,” said Lauren.

     “But we’ve got think outside the box here,” Detective Roy waved his hands about in circles. “Suppose it had … some sort of weapon? Machinery? It could have broken through the pieces of wood and carried on.”

     “But the footprints are facing away from the fireplace,” for the first time Luca spoke.

     None of us had spotted this either.

     We started pondering, what could’ve happened, whilst Detective Roy was strangely rustling through the books, taking one out every so often.

     I looked over at him questioningly. Without turning round, he said calmly, “I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.”

     Suddenly, without any warning, an eerie clink! echoed out through the room. Then there was a loud, deafening scratching, sounding like nails on a blackboard. We looked about to see the source of this unbearable noise.

     And I looked. And fixed my eyes on something.

The fireplace.

To be continued…