Vanished

A story of a group of friends who went exploring.....something they shouldn't have done...

"Wow!! The summer holidays are over", I said.

"Yeah, I know, it seems so soon", said a voice coming from behind.

It was Catherine. She had long black hair and was very beautiful, she always had a warm, welcoming-sort-of smile on her face, I guess that’s why everyone liked her.

"Hey guys", said Catherine.

"Hi Cathey!", said Bella. She was blond. She was in my Biology class and was very good at it. Did I tell you she was my best friend?....Well she was ….

"Hey, Cathey, where have you been all this summer?", I asked.

"Um…with my grandparents", Catherine answered with an expression I hadn’t seen before.

"Guys, we don’t want to get late to our first class, now do we?", Said a voice which I pretty much recognized.

"Drake, Hi!!", Catherine said with a bit of excitement in her voice.

It was Drake. Catherine and drake were childhood friends and the best of friends. He was the smartest guy in Biology, and was liked by almost every girl. Most of the girl on campus was jealous of Catherine because of her extremely close relationship with Drake.

"Hey Drake", I said with a smile on my face.

"Hey Melody", Drake replied, returning a warm smile.

"What class do we have now?", asked Bella.

"Hmmm… Gym", Catherine answered with rather disappointment.

"We should go, or else we’ll be yelled at", I said ending the discussion.

All our classes were over and we were ready to head back home. As usual we decided that we’ll all bicycle home together and if we find that candy shop open o our way, we could carry some. But somehow we ended up taking a different route. It was a street none of us had walked on or bicycled on, or even noticed. Strange!

"Hey, Cathey, who are you doing your project with? You have a partner, right?", asked Drake sarcastically.

"Ha Ha, very funny, like I wouldn’t", answered Catherine.

We were all laughing, until we heard something. We heard someone scream.

"What was that?", Bella asked.

"I don’t know but whatever it was, it came from that house over there", I answered pointing towards a strange old house.

"Guys, I have a bad feeling about this", Bella said.

"Oh! So, Bella is afraid to enter the haunted house, well , what a shame ,’cause I sure want to get exploring ,in that house", teased Drake.

"No! I’m not going. You can if you want to but……. but guys please don’t", said Bella with a little worried look.

"Bella, It's going to be OK , believe me. We are just going to see what’s inside", I said trying to comfort her.

"I don’t want to ", Bella said trying to clear her point. She really didn’t want to, she doesn’t act so stubborn…

"But we do!", drake said.

"So you can..but.. be careful", Bella said, she really was worried.

"Smiling, Drake said "Yeah, sure".

"You sure you don’t want to come?", I asked.

"Yeah…positive", she answered, still worried.

"Is it really OK?", I asked.

"Yup, I don’t mind", Bella said with a cheerful smile hiding just how worried she really was.

"Oh, then it's settled, let's go, Bella are you gonna wait?", Cathey asked.

"You don’t have to, It’ll take time for the ghosts to kill us!", Drake said sarcastically.

There were no more arguments. We (Drake, Cathey and I) entered the house and boy was it huge. It was all like from the movies, a thriller. We could see Bella ride back home.
The house was exotic…wait did I say that?... I mean it was like this house from the horror land or something filled with interesting things Bella’s missing a lot, I thought to myself.

There were a dozen of rooms, dust covered paintings, staircase leading to who knows where, some hallways and some rusty looking gates. We decided to see where the stair case leaded to, so we went upstairs. We learnt that there were three rooms up there. We chose to explore the middle one first, Cathey’ s choice.

The room was full of spider webs like the rest of the house, and things we didn’t thought we knew what they were. I saw a diary on the table; it was black and was covered with dust. After wiping dust off it the letters were clear. It said "NOT TO READ" in golden, the obvious sentence that makes you tempted to read it. Below it was "personal" smaller that the order in the middle but the same color as it. It seemed interesting, so I decided to announce about it.

"Guys, look at this", I called out to my friends who were going through the closet and touching thing which would have a "Do not touch" if displayed in a museum.

"What have you got there?", asked drake, curious, not to my surprise. He liked to go through things like this!

"A Diary, I think it belongs to a girl", I answered after have read some pages of it.

"A dead girl", Cathey announced.

We looked at her in amusement.

"Look at the year. It said 1896! The girl has to be dead, she can’t be alive, now can she?", Cathey explained.

"Yes, it says right here, at the back. Pretty smart of you", Drake commented.

Cathey ignored something which she rarely did.

"Did you guys hear that?", Cathey asked, a little scared. A little shiver ran upon my spine. Catherine is scared of nothing but losing her beauty.
"Did I hear what?", I asked.

"That sound, or maybe that scream! I heard it again!", Cathey said, a little bit scared.

"You are hearing things. It’s just your imagination", Drake said trying to calm her down.

"Let’s get out of here", Cathey said.

"Yeah this should be enough", I said.

"Are you serious? Leave all these amazing things behind? Come on!!", Drake said with a sad face.

"Drake, lets go!", it sounded more like an order.

So we headed towards the door.

I turned back just to hold Cathey, she was behaving a little bit odd. But when I turned around I found nobody there..

"Cathey?", I asked.

After realizing what was my intentions Drake joined me and we shared the same look.

"Catherine?", Drake asked, a bit tensed.

"Cathey? Hey! If you are trying to scare us, you are doing a heck of a job", I said.

"Cathey?"

We searched the whole house but didn’t find her. We informed her parents who latter called the cops. They couldn’t find her. The case was closed unsolved, put as missing. We knew we couldn’t hear or see her anymore.

She had gone! She had vanished!!