I come back to the cats. “Well, that theory didn’t work out,” I said to them. Meow.=Good, theories always cause more problems. Meow,meow=Yep, need answers, not theories. “Thanks you two,” I said. Meow,meow!=Welcome! They both meowed together. I checked on Lena but she still wasn’t awake. I hope that means they gave her something to knock her out, if not…I won’t think about that possibility just yet. They did say the cats would be killed first, then Lena, so obviously they didn’t want to kill her yet. But what to do now? We need to stay together, but we also need to look around. Hmm, there’s only one way to do this right now. Wait. Until we see what happens to Lena. So we spent the rest of the day close together except when I went to make us some food in the kitchen. And I made sure to keep my eyes open the whole time.

I brought in more wood for the fireplace before it got dark, amazing how cool it got in that place at night. I couldn’t leave Lena in that coffin any longer so I lifted her out and put her on my bed, then broke up the coffin and burned it. The cats and I took turns staying awake that night. Morning came surprisingly quickly, I looked over, Lena was gone! I also smelled coffee and pancakes. Meow,meow.=Lena say she make breakfast, I try stop her, Mr. Cat go with her to guard. So Muffin and I went to the kitchen and breakfast was ready. Lena was feeling good, but her stomach was sore. Obviously it was a carefully planned stabbing so she wouldn’t get hurt much. John didn’t want things to go too fast, he wants to enjoy his little “game”. I asked if Lena knew anything about how she got here but she didn’t. She had gone to bed and fallen asleep and then she woke up here.

I told her she needs to be careful because of the wound so it doesn’t start to bleed, and I showed her the note. She asked about this John and what this was all about. I explained it all to her. “There is definitely something wrong with that man,” she said. “I agree, but he is also very dangerous and we can’t underestimate him. We didn’t talk too much until we had finished eating, then we went to the library and I brought something in with me. “There,” I said, “now we can talk freely, that’s my little scrambler.” Meow,meow?=How that work with no electricity? “I brought my mini electric charger so that I could use this scrambler and also charge my phone,” I explained. “If you have your phone, why not call for help?”, asked Lena. “Because there is something jamming our signals again like when we were at your place,” I said, “that is something that puzzles me, how did John think of this same thing? And how did he know about you?”

“Perhaps he has help from someone in that gang my grandpa was with,” she said. “Yes, and that could also explain how he got out of prison, maybe they helped him,” I said, “and we need to keep looking around to try and find John before he has a chance to carry out his plan. He must be keeping an eye on us somehow too, but how?” We decide to go out and look at the staircase again hoping it’s still within the area we are allowed to be in. At least the top of the staircase was okay for us. Meow.=I go down further to look. “No, Mr. Cat!,” I said, “that’s just what John would like, to get you away from us so he can kill you more easily. We all stay together for now.” We began walking down the stairs and got nearly half way when I noticed something.

It was an odd long rock sticking out of the ground. It looked like a handle off something. I grabbed it and pushed. Nothing. Then I pulled it. A scraping noise and a door opened in the side of the hill under the staircase! We climbed under and went inside. It was a very well made tunnel with the same kind of work as the middle section of the hotel, so it must have been made at the same time. As we walked a little into the tunnel the door closed tightly behind us. Now, does John know about this? Is it part of his plan? Something bothers me about all this, but I’m just not sure what it is. We will soon find out I’m sure.

To Be Continued.

©2020 Steve McLeod.