Chapter 57
Fifty-Seven
Morgan
Diggerty sniffs around. I’m glad he followed me to the den because it’s even creepier without a torch.
‘Harry?’ I was told he was here waiting for me.
I get onto my knees and shuffle into the room that Harry and I set up our investigation in.
I bump into something and reach down to grab it. It’s a torch. ‘Harry?’
Harry isn’t here. As I shine the torch at our wall, I gasp. Everything we pinned up has gone, replaced by what looks like Great-Aunt Dorette’s work. The pages are filled with notes and drawings.
I light up each one in turn. Jasmine walking a little dog through the woods.
Jasmine gets sucked into an abyss and then she comes out into the dark woods.
A woman holding a basket befriends her. Jasmine is then later dressed like an angel.
A woman comes and ties a pink ribbon around a tree.
This isn’t a story. It’s real. It’s the rest of the Jasmine book that had been torn out.
I fell into a trap by coming here. The den is closing in on me.
The torch flickers so I hit it. The story continues.
Jasmine becomes everyone’s angel protector then she’s in a small room where she sits in a chair with her little dog, her newly earned halo hovering above her long hair.
I know who’s behind this and I need to warn Mum and Dad.
‘The angel of the forest.’ A woman’s voice from the other section of the den makes me jump. I’m trapped with no way out. As I turn towards the exit hole, I stare at the note:
JASMINE WOZ ’ERE.
Jasmine is all around, I feel her presence.
She died here. She didn’t run away. Great-Aunt Dorette knew everything.
She died with her secrets, but she left her book behind.
I shuffle back through the hole and into the next wooden structure knowing I’m coming face-to-face with the woman who is behind everything.
I inhale sharply as her figure blocks me.
She’s holding a pink ribbon in one hand and a knife in the other.
‘You can’t go yet, Morgan. There’s still so much to learn.
’ She stuffs the ribbon in her pocket. ‘Your mum needs to know what this feels like. How someone you love can be there one minute and gone the next.’ She spits as she speaks.
‘Someone needs to feel my pain and your great-aunt is dead so…’ She clenches her fist around the knife.
‘Everyone lied that day, everyone. No more lies. Today, we all get the truth.’
She drops a pile of treats next to Diggerty and he wags his tail. That dog loves her, I can tell. He followed her into our house, onto the balcony. It was definitely her in our house. ‘You’re related to Jasmine?’ I swallow the lump in my throat.
She nods.
I could push past her, knock her over like I did to James, but one strike with that knife, I’m dead.
‘Where is she? Where’s Jasmine?’ the woman screams.
‘I…I don’t know.’
‘I just want the truth! Where’s the rest of the notebook?’
‘At home.’
She lets out a long breath.
‘You sent the letters?’ I now know she had the rest of the notebook. She could have mimicked Dorette’s writing; the capital letters would have been even easier.
She ignores me. ‘Sit, now we wait for Mummy.’
I don’t sit. She needs me. I’m no use to her dead.
‘Sit.’
Again, I don’t.
She steps forward and prods the knife at my neck then she lets out an angry roar as she pushes it into my flesh. I should have sat.