The building was a small, simple thing, not unlike the fishing huts you might see in older textbooks on US History. Nonetheless, the sight of it made my stomach do back flips and my heart pound like a thunderstorm.
"Do you suppose that she'll be in there?" I whispered to my brother, almost scared to bring my voice above a whisper. The forest was a huge, foreboding place, and even the most idiotic and fearless man could be brought to his knees from the eeriness that reeked in this place.
"If she's not, then we were lied to," James pointed out, also keeping his words a soft trickle of a whisper. "And I'd prefer to think Mum and Dad never lied to us before they died." I nodded absently, recognizing his logic. Mum and Dad had never lied about anything- Not even when they lost their jobs and we were forced to hop from foster home to foster home. That was the last time we saw them, and the memory of their goodbye still brought tears to my eyes. They had slipped a letter in my suitcase right before the Social Services carted us off, and with a wave, they watched us ride away.
The next day we saw their faces on the news. 'Couple Brutally Murdered' the headline had yelled. Neither James nor I had been the same since.
"Hurry up, Sis," James snapped at me, breaking my focus from my past back to the present. I scurried to catch up with him, the shoebox tucked under my arm like a football.
When we reached the door, we stopped. Neither of us seemed to have it in us to open the door. We had spent the last five years of our lives hunting this down, and suddenly we realized we had no life to turn back to once this was done. We hadn't been in a civilized area in months, and even then, Mesquite, Minnesota barely counted as much more than a handful of old farts.
"Ready?" I asked lamely, glancing between my brother's face and the door knob.
"I suppose," he replied, taking the initiative and slowly pushing the door open. I stepped in, followed closely behind by James.
"Hello?" I called out softly, my gaze raking the room. It fell upon a young lady of maybe fourteen years. Her brunette hair was long and unkempt, and her eyes were glazed with malice. She smiled, and her teeth seemed sharp, like a wild beast.
"Hello, Brother. Hello, Sister. I've been expecting you." The girl spoke with a sickly sweet tone, and she stood from the chair she had been sitting upon.
I held back the urge to gasp.
There was no way this could possibly be our runaway little sister.
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