Hmm, we could try knocking on the door but I don’t want to get their attention right now. I go back down the stairs to the next level and the cats follow. Meow, meow?=Why we come back here? “To check and see if there is a door here,” I said, “this should be about the end of the hallway where the bedrooms are.” Meow.=Not hallway, it have small window at end. “Hmm, you’re right Mr. Cat, which means we are at the bedroom that is always locked,” I said, “look around carefully.” It didn’t take Muffin long to find a door, a small crawl through type door again. Now to figure out how to open it. I feel around the edge of the door and…what’s this? I press the spot, there is a click and the door opens toward us. Great, not much room here to open it, but we manage to do it. It leads to the closet so we go inside.

I open the door just a bit and…Lena? She’s laying in bed and looks like she is asleep. But we just saw her in the attic with her grandma. What’s going on here? Meow, meow.=That not Lena, look at hair. Muffin was right, this woman has longer hair than Lena and the color is different too, more auburn than brown. But otherwise the two women could be twins. Now I’m getting more confused. But we go into the bedroom, I check the door and find it’s still locked. The cats jump on the bed and go over to the woman. Muffin rubs her head on the woman’s cheek and the woman awakens quite startled to see us. But she doesn’t say anything. I motion to her not to talk and I plug in my scrambler.

“Okay, now we can talk,” I said. Then I told her who we were and why we were here. “My name is Lena,” she said, “and my grandmother is keeping me locked up in here…for about a month now.” She started crying. “I don’t know what is going on, why this is happening,” she continued. “If only my grandpa knew, he would get me out of here. Can you tell him?”, she asks me. This is not going to be easy, but I tell her about her grandpa and his “friends” and their plans for her. She starts to cry again. “Then I’m all alone. I have no one I can trust anymore,” she says, sobbing the whole time. The cats sit right next to her. Meow, meow.=We here, you can trust us, we keep you safe. Meow.=Yes, we not let anyone hurt you, we with you.

“Oh, you two adorable cats, thank you so much for saying that,” she says without thinking. Then she picks them up and hugs them both. Then she opens her eyes wide and looks at me. “I guess those drugs grandma has been giving me have messed my brain a bit,” she said while turning quite red. “Why, just because you understood what the cats said?”, I asked, “it’s okay, I understand them too. But I’m not sure why the other Lena could understand them.” Meow, meow.=She pretend real good, maybe that why. Muffin might have a point, it seems this whole family is good at pretending to be what they are not. Charlie had shown me pictures of Lena when she was a little girl and this woman has the same color hair, so I would say she is the real Lena.

And she has the most incredible eyes, deep and true. “We need to get you out of here quickly,” I told her. Muffin comes over and whispers to me. That is a problem. I unlock the door and look down the hall, no one in sight. So I go down to the fake Lena’s room and pick up some clothes for Lena and come back quickly. While she is getting dressed I notice a picture on the wall and ask about it. “That’s our old homestead house,” she answered, “it’s in rough shape now.” “It isn’t even standing anymore,” I said. “It was about 3 months ago, I was over there, I like to go over there when I get stressed,” she said.

To Be Continued.

Pictures of Mr. Cat are kindly supplied by his human, Nina.

Previous chapters of this story and other stories can be found on my home page under 20/20 Investigations, Inc.

©2020 Steve McLeod.