Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Run!

The Narrator

Hernanda clenched her teeth and grasped her slingshot as Miss. Dakota, holding fast to her stick, carefully unlocked the door and entered a corridor.

"Come on! All clear!" she whispered.

Hernanda went out and then helped Jackson carry Kirt into the corridor. 

There were some thuds on the floor above them.

Hernanda gasped but Miss. Dakota quickly put her hand on her mouth. "Not a noise."

Kirt had passed out but he was not that heavy for Jackson to bear on his shoulders. 

"This way!" Miss Dakota said pointing to the right side of the corridor. 

"Isn't the way to the tunnel the other way?" Jackson asked.

"I know. But it's above us. Not safe to go there. We'll find another way up!"

Jackson and Hernanda nodded and followed. Hernanda took one last look at Alice's rotting body. She wished she could have given her a proper burial. 

"Hernanda. What the hell are you doing?" Jackson hissed.

"I am sorry."

***

"F**k! This is a dead-end!" Miss Dakota muttered when they had reached a wall, thinking it was the way to the tunnel. "The door on the left!"

They banged against it and fell through, only to cover their noses. The windowless room was almost empty except for a table in the far corner on top of which a row of corpses was hung from the ceiling on hooks. 

"Knives," Jackson muttered. "A pickaxe too!"

"Great!" Miss. Dakota said as she rushed to the table, picked up the pickaxe. She took one of the knives and handed it to Jackson. "Keep this!"

The footsteps on the floor above stopped. Dreary silence hung in the air. 

"Where is it?" Hernanda muttered.

"I don't know. Stay close." Miss. Dakota said. 

Hernanda gulped. Her heart was thumping and she could feel it in her neck and in the blood rushing through her head. Her breathing grew shallow. 

"Let's go to the room on the right, near the dead end," Dakota said. 

The stepped across the corridor and tried that room and there it was: another door. 

"Come on! Hurry!" 

There was a door on the other side of the room. 

Opening that door, they discovered a spiral staircase running up. Climbing up the stairwell, they reached the first floor, where the tunnel opened to. All they had to do then was finding the way to the room with the tunnel. 

Jackson was slowing down, exhausted after carrying Kirt on his shoulder. But, he kept on with it. 

The four reached a corridor, ominously silent. Miss. Dakota remembered this place; it was the corridor where they had first entered when they came out of the tunnel. The tunnel should have been inside one of those many rooms in the corridor. 

Hernanda looked behind her. She thought she had seen something flashing, something with a black veil moving passing by. But it wasn't there when she'd turned back. She took in deep breaths, calming her pulsing breathing and thumping heart. 

They heard some squeaks and began gripping their weapons, only to be relieved when they realized that those noises were made by rats scampering on the floor. Hernanda hated rats and if this was anywhere else, she'd have hollered but that was something she couldn't afford to do inside that cursed house. Her fear was that it would hear her. 

The atmosphere was muggy. And it was getting humid inside; the darkness accentuated the feeling. The floorboards were creaking and there were eccentric paintings on the wall. 

They slowly reached near the door of the room where the opening to the tunnel was. It was four doors ahead. Since the house was big, it had been a long walk. Miss. Dakota was wheezing, slightly scared. Gooseflesh was clearly visible on Jackson's arms. Hernanda swallowed once again. Kirt was unconscious. 

Just before Miss Dakota increased her pace and was about to reach the door, Hernanda looked behind her and froze.

It was there. She wanted to let out a scream, a loud scream but she couldn't do anything more than a whimper. She wanted to run, but her feet were pegged to the floorboards, her muscles heavy. It had a face turned dark by decay. There were bloodstains on it and it wore a cloak hiding its feet and arms. In its hands was a blade.

It was closing in. 

"Hernanda, run!" Miss Dakota shouted.  She had dropped her pickaxe in fear and didn't think of picking it from the ground just like Hernanda and Jackson who had dropped their weapons.

The thing raised its blade.

Hernanda shut her eyes. Jackson gasped.

"Run!" screamed Miss. Dakota.