Souls Of The Innocent

Chapter fifteen: Setting the plans...

Three girls sat around a small square table, trying to fit on the wooden bench living a space for Stacy who had not shown up yet for their meeting. They glanced at their watch and turned at the same time to look towards the school gate.

“ I don’t think that she will join us. Maybe after Friday... she wants out”, Debra said breaking the silence.

She told Logan and Amber that when she had spoken to Stacy yesterday she seemed a bit shaken up by the whole Friday incident.

“ It’s ok. If she’s not comfortable, I don’t think we should force her”, Amber said with a soft smile.

Logan and Debra agreed with her. They would have to finish what they have started the three of them. A recap of what happened on Friday was the first thing on the agenda. The close encounter with the mysterious woman was the highlight of the night. Everything that they were experiencing was hyping them up to go all the way and uncover the mystery of that woman and the missing girls. Amber was determined that her neighbor had something to do with Nora’s disappearance and she will go to hell if she has to, to get her sister back. The disappearance of her sister had not only changed her world but her personality. In just a few weeks everything around her had completely changed, this quiet girl who used to mind her own business had befriended three girls and her life was no longer one with the same routine. Life’s circumstances could surely change someone’s life and her sister was the reason why she was changed. She wanted to see her again so that happiness inside her home could be restored once more. But what if Nora was no longer amongst them? If that was the case, knowing the truth of what happened to Nora will be sufficient for her sister’s soul to Rest In Peace.

“I want to get in touch with Lisa Martin’s brother... Gregory”, Amber said and her friends looked at her with narrowed eyebrows.

Amber gave them an account of Lisa's story. She explained how she needed to hear Lisa's story from a member of her family, from the time she disappeared and if anyone experienced anything strange like her. Lisa was almost the same age as Nora and the fact that she saw her next to her little sister made her more curious to find out what happened to her.

“ What do you mean you saw her?”, Debra asked with wide eyes.

“ When I went to their house, I saw her standing next to her little sister. She asked me not to tell her mother anything but I got hysterical and made a scene. I thought about it the whole weekend, I want to go back to that family or at least get Gregory to be on my side”, Amber said.

“ Is he good-looking?”, Debra asked and the two other girls laughed.

“ I’m being serious, if he is, one of us can try and seduce him into telling us what we needed to know”, Debra added.

Logan and Debra turned and looked at Amber and she smiled. She will not be seducing Gregory but simply asking him to help her to uncover the mystery of the disappearance of their sisters. They surely have the same thing in mind, to find out what happened to them. The first thing that she needed to know was, did they ever have a mysterious neighbor around the time of Lisa’s disappearance. What they needed is to open their own investigation file about the missing girls.

“ I need to get a picture of that woman so that I can show it to Gregory”, Amber said and her friends agreed.

“ But how do we that? She barely comes out of that house”, Debra asked and she had a good point.

“ I can try and take a picture of her from my room. I've spotted her so many times standing there on her porch, if I can't … then when we break into her house, we will surely find something”, Amber said.

“ So do you meet up with Gregory before we break into her house?”, Debra asked in a whispering tone. She didn't want anyone to hear then planning a break-in.

“ Yes, the first thing we need to find out which schools he goes to”, Amber said.

“ Or we go to his house and wait for him to come out or force him out of the house, like pretend we need help or something”, Logan said.

“ Yes, better”, Debra said.

“ But we need to do it without causing a commotion. I’ve already been warned by the police to stay away from that family and my parents will ground me for life!”, Amber said.

They were so caught up in their conversation that they didn’t see Stacy approaching them until she dropped a file in the middle of the table.

“ Amanda Vox, blue eyes, blonde hair, fifteen years old disappeared from her school a week ago”, Stacy said as she sat down next to Debra.

Everyone turned and looked at her, they were so happy that she came for the meeting. Stacy looked at them and asked why they were grinning at her like that.

“ We are so glad that you came. Thought that you wanted nothing to do with the paranormal world”, Debra said squeezing her friend’s hand.

“ I’m already in too deep”, Stacy said as she opened the file and explained what she had found out. After Debra had told her what had happened to Amber and Nathan after they had dropped her off, she freaked out. But, Stacy knew that her friend needed her help and once she made a promise she will not go back on her words and turn her back on a friend who needed her help. She had certain conditions, she will only be doing the research work, no way will she be doing any more fieldwork again. No more séance or breaking into anyone’s house.

Amanda Vox disappeared from her school two weeks ago. She had swimming practice but never made it to her class nor her home. The search to find her was still on and there had not been a single trace of where she could be. It was like she had vanished into thin air just like the other girls. But people cannot just vanish into thin air just like that , there must be an explanation for their disappearance and probably one that would shock everyone. Stacy had traced back to the first mysterious disappearance of a young lady by the name of Fiona Bets from Lake Valley High school, in a small town called Eastbourne. She was fifteen years old, went to the shop and never return, the case was dated fifteen years ago in summer 1995. Same year three other girls disappeared, Holly Hatcher, Louisa Perez, and Yolanda Miller. Aged between 14-16 years old, their case-files had been closed with a court order stating that they were declared dead. Stacy told them how her investigation led her to discover that those mysterious disappearances seemed to occur five years apart from each other and those girls were all teenagers. In a case in 2000 a young lady, by the name of Georgia Moore was sentenced to a juvenile court on the ground that she was found guilty for the disappearance of one of the young ladies, named Diana Anderson. Georgia was accused of murdering Diana and throwing her body over a cliff. No evidence was found against her and it looked like they simply wanted to find someone to blame. The girls glanced at each other as Stacy carried on explaining her findings, they couldn’t believe their ears that this has been going on for so long and no one has ever found out an explainable reason why those girls were mysteriously disappearing.

“ Wow Stacy, that’s loads of information!”, Amber said once her friend stopped talking.

“ It’s unbelievable! Things like that had been going on for so long and the respective authorities have not been able to come up with a concrete explanation for their disappearance. Guess we will have to do their job”, Logan said with a serious tone.

Stacy showed them the printed pictures of the missing girls dated from 1995. Amber picked up the pictures one by one to have a closer look at the faces of those girls. As she glanced through the photos, for some reason Amber started to feel dizzy. She started having flashbacks of the nightmare she once had when she saw those girls in an abandoned house in the woods. She was sure that she had seen three or four of those girls in the pictures in that house together with her sister. Amber shut her eyes and took in a deep breath, she grabbed onto the edge of the table tightly.

“ Amber are you ok?”, Debra asked worriedly as she looked at her friend’s pale face.

“ I’m fine ... it’s just ...”, Amber said and she paused as she took in a deep breath. Logan quickly gave her some water to drink as they didn’t like that look on her face.

“ We should take you to the nurse”, Stacy said and Amber slowly shook her head indicating no.

“ Once when I was still having those nightmares, I’m sure that I saw this girl, this one as well and this one. They were inside this abandoned house in the woods”, Amber said pointing at the picture of Holly Hatcher, Margy Roberts, and Lila Pagan.

“ I’m getting goosebumps”, Stacy said and Debra showed her, her arm as well.

“ What if that house has some sort of connection with their disappearance?”, Logan said and they all looked at her.

“ But how will I know where that house is. It was just a dream”, Amber said.

“ We should try hypnosis”, Logan quickly replied.

“ What ?! After Friday, I’m not in but please do let me know if you need any other help”, Stacy was the first one to reply and the others had to laugh.

Amber took a few sips of the water and then she looked at Logan.

“ How do we do that?”, Amber asked.

“Well, we have to tell my mum everything. She’s the only one whom I trust to do this to you”, Logan said. She explained how things can go wrong if the wrong person is carrying out hypnosis on you. The girls glanced at each other. For a moment Amber was quiet as she needed to decide whether to tell Logan’s mother about what is going on or not. Opening up to her could lead them in big trouble. Adults, especially their parents are always looking out for them and probably the first thing she would advise her to do is, tell everything she knows to the police. What will the police do? Nothing! They will probably think that they were a bunch of meddling kids who were trying to get themselves into trouble with the authorities or they might think that they were trying to hide something by inventing some stupid things to cover up their sin. There must be another way and with that thought, Amber glanced at Logan with a serious face.

“ Do you know how to do this hypnosis thing?”, Amber asked her friend.

“ I’ve never done it before but I’ve watched my mum loads of time”, was Logan’s answer.

“ I’ll be your first client. Telling your mum everything might ruin our other plans, do you understand me?”, Amber said glancing at her friends.

Logan understood where Amber was coming from. Her mother would ask too many questions and might even advise Amber to speak to her parents and the police who wouldn’t believe her. She will take on the challenge to hypnotize her friend, the information from Amber’s dreams could be very useful to them. One issue, where would they do it so that they wouldn’t be disturbed?

“ Where can we do it? We need somewhere quiet”, Logan asked and Amber looked at her with a mischievous smile.

“ Guess I’ll have to skip school one day and we could meet up at my place”, Amber said and Logan agreed. They turned and looked at Debra and Stacy. Stacy had already stated that she wouldn’t come and Debra said that even if she would have loved to, she would be in big trouble if her parents ever find out that she had skipped school so she wouldn’t be able to attend their second séance.

“ Can you record it though? I would love to watch”, Debra said with a hint of excitement in her voice. Logan laughed and then she put on a serious face.

“ So the plan is to get in touch with Gregory...”, she started to say and Stacy interrupted her.

“ Who is Gregory?”, she asked.

“ I’ll fill you in”, Debra said and Logan carried on.

“ Gregory, the hypnosis, then we break into the neighbor’s house... and if we do get something from the hypnosis session, we will be going on a field trip”, as Logan said her final word they heard a familiar voice and they all turned to look at Nathan Ricci.

“ Well, well starting the meeting without me”, he said standing behind Debra with his hands inside his pockets.

Amber rolled her eyes and glanced at her watch, it was time that they head in for their class. She didn’t reply to Nathan’s comment, instead, she grabbed her backpack and indicated to the girls that it was time to go inside. As Stacy picked up the file from the table, Nathan quickly grabbed it from her hand.

“ Hey give it back!”, Stacy said trying to grab the file from Nathan but he was too strong for her to do anything.

“ What do we have here? Missing girls file... what is this?”, Nathan demanded.

“ I knew you must have done something to your sister and they are your accomplices!”, Nathan hissed at Amber as a group of people walked by.

“ Go inside I’ll deal with him”, Amber indicated to her friends.

“ No, we will not let this bully intimidate you”, Logan said putting her hands on her hips and Nathan turned and looked at her with a smirk on his lips.

“ What are you going to do, cast a spell on me?”, he sarcastically said and his words infuriated Logan.

“ Nathan enough!”, Amber shouted , the anger in her voice caught everyone’s attention around them.

Her sudden reaction wiped the smirk from Nathan’s lips. Amber asked her friends to go inside and she will talk to them later.

“ Him and I, we have a few things to sort out”, Amber said looking at Nathan with a serious face.

She knew that she was going to miss her class and she will be in detention after school, but she was used to that. Today she will find out what was Nathan’s problem. She will tell him what was going on ,whether he believes it or not, that was his problem. But, she will make sure that he understands that she had nothing to do with Nora’s disappearance. Amber grabbed the file from Nathan’s hand and put it inside her backpack.

“ We are not talking here, I don’t what my friends to see us together”, Nathan said as he walked ahead and lead her towards his car. Amber took in a deep breath before she got into the front passenger seat.

“It’s was going to be an interesting morning …”, she whispered before Nathan got into the car . He turned and glanced at her then tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He started the engine , Amber glanced outside towards the school’s entrance. She remembered her mother speaking with the security guard.

If she finds out I skipped school there’ll be consequences… Amber thought as she grabbed her jacket and pulled the hood over her head making sure that her face was well hidden. Nathan glanced at her and didn’t ask any questions.

There goes the girl with all of her mysteries … which I will find out today, Nathan said to himself as they drove past the security guard and onto the main road.