Shadow Seekers

Chapter 6

Liza closed her eyes in frustration. Another day searching endlessly without any certainty she would find what she was looking for. She was starting to get discouraged but knew she couldn’t stop looking. Not that she was an optimist, but she did remind herself that if she was having so much trouble finding it, so was he. She sighed as she walked up the stairs of the large house in front of her. She had been hearing whispers that there were some Timori residing in a house and had decided she might as well as take a look. She had no better leads and wasn’t quite ready to leave the area, and she wouldn’t admit it to herself but it wasn’t just due to her not finishing her search of the town.

She gave a slight knock on the door, but when she didn’t receive a response she gave a small push off of the door and leaned her head back to look at the windows above the door. Her eyes scanned them, looking for any movement behind the windows as well as a possible point of entry into the house. She noticed all of the windows were covered by thick curtains that were drawn closed. Normally she wouldn’t think much of closed curtains, but when she noticed that even the front room and dining room ones were closed, every inch covered so that there wasn’t any view into the house, she started thinking a little more into it. It wasn’t standard for there to not even be a small gap somewhere, especially in a house with so many windows. She estimated there had to be at least 15 windows just on the front of the house.

Liza started moving around the house, keeping her eye on the windows but finding the exact same as the front of the house. No opened windows, no space between the curtains, nothing to give her a single view to the inside of the house. Once she had circled the entire house, she decided to go to the backyard again, bending her legs as before and pushing hard up from her feet to grab the top of the wall separating the front and the back of the house. She puller herself up and sat on the top of the brick wall before kicking herself off of it and somersaulting on the ground till she came to a standing position from which she starting walking without even pausing.

Where she had only focused on the windows her first visit to the backyard, this time she was able to take in more of it. She immediately noticed how extravagant the landscaping was. Statues and waterfalls in every corner covered in different types of flowers. A pillared gazebo sat in the middle of the yard with very fine painted details of ivy wrapping around the pillars that at just a glance you would have believed that they were real. There were four stone walkways shooting off in different directions from the gazebo, winding their way through the yard and up to the back of the house. It would be a beath taking view, if the grass wasn’t several inches high and the flowers having overgrown the area. Once again, Liza couldn’t help but think how strange it was to have such a beautiful yard for the owners to just let it go. Something wasn’t quite right here. Liza squinted her eyes as she thought through what she was seeing and what it could mean. She knew that Timoris could cause fear, but that didn’t tend to make life just stop in a household, especially when she assumed that they had their own landscapers to take care of such a vast yard.

Liza then turned her attention away from the yard, swinging herself around, and started walking towards the back door she had noticed earlier. Not the ornate double doors that was the main entrance into the yard, but to the smaller less opulent door off to the side that she assumed was used for deliveries of food and goods to the house. She grabbed the doorknob and moved it back and forth but wasn’t surprised when it was locked. There was definitely a feeling of whoever was in the house, wanting to be left to themselves. Still holding onto the doorknob she lifted up on it and shoved her shoulder into the door hard and heard the distinct sound of wood cracking as the door slowly swung open. If there weren’t already some concerning signs she had noticed, Liza probably would have just left. She didn’t make a habit of breaking into people’s houses, but felt it was needed this time.

As she had guessed, the room beyond the door was little more than a hallway that led to a set of stairs up to another door. Behind that door would most likely be the kitchen or a food closet. She just hoped this one wouldn’t have a lock as well. The less signs she left that she was here, the better. She gave a small smile when she tried the door after walking up to it, and it opened without any resistance. It even was silent as she pushed it open and took her first step into the house. It was no surprise that the kitchen was quite large and was updated with all of the finest and newest things. Liza could almost smell fresh baked bread (her favorite) in the air. She knew it was her imagination. There was a thick layer of dust that caked the counters and appliances making it obvious that the kitchen hadn’t been used in quite some time. Liza started to wonder if maybe the house was abandoned, not that she could ever imagine someone just leaving a house like this, but it was clear that nothing had been taken care of for quite some time.

Shaking her head in order to clear her head and reset her focus, she started looking around the room, and after verifying that there wasn’t anything else in the room and nothing additional that could help her solve what was going on, she walked through the kitchen and around the island in the center to the double sliding doors on the left side of the room. They opened up to what was the dining room where a large table sat in the center surrounded by 10 matching chairs. She wouldn’t be surprised if there were additional matching chairs in storage somewhere for when events and parties were held here. She had no doubt that the owners loved to show off their house and their wealth to people in the community. Her eyes ran over the room before she continued on to the next set of doors centered on the wall to the right of her. These ones opened up to the foyer where she could see across the way a day room that held a beautiful grand piano.

Before she had time to think about it, her feet had already started taking her across the foyer to the opening in the wall that led to the day room. Her hands softly touched the beautiful wood of the piano and her fingers instinctively opened up the lid to reveal the piano keys. She seemed to have no control over her movements as her fingers touched the keys softly, a song already forming in her mind to play when she was wrenched away by the sound of gun shots being fired from upstairs.