Episode 2: Murder awaits

The next morning I woke up to an empty house. I couldn't find Bethany anywhere. But an even weirder fact was that her bicycle which I saw from the window last night was still there on the bicycle stand. I, with a sense of foreboding, went to call her parents and inquire about her whereabouts.

My cell phone was dead so I went downstairs to use the landline. As I bent over the dining table to pick up the phone, someone grabbed my leg and pulled me down. I got a little heart attack right there. I was dismayed and started to scream out of fear when I realized that it was Beth hiding under the dining table.

"Oh my god, Beth, what is the matter with you? I've been looking for you all morning. Why are you hiding here? Are you fine? I am really worried about you?"

"Don't speak, we need to get out of here as fast as we can. You locked the gate of your house from inside and I couldn't find the keys or else I would have left sooner," whispered Beth.

"Okay, why do we need to get out? My house is perfectly safe."

She looked around the house with fear in her eyes and said, "Last night, while I was trying to fall asleep, I noticed a shadow outside my room. The shadow of a man. I was petrified. I watched him get into the room across mine and I couldn't think of anything else so I tiptoed my way and locked the door of the room he was in. I--"

"You saw a man roaming around the corridor of my house and you didn't tell me, warn me, or asked me to run--that man could have killed me?" I yelled.

"Okay, first of all, your room was locked from inside. And second of all, I tried waking you up by banging your door and shouting your name but you sleep like a log." Bethany frustratingly said.

So, are you sure there's a man upstairs in one of the rooms?" I asked. My heart was thumping and I sweating out of fear.

"Yes," she said in a dreary voice.

"Then we need to get out of here and get some help immediately," I replied and dashed out of the house along with Beth.

We came with the police after an hour or so. They opened the door of the room and we did find a man— a dead man lying on the floor with a knife stabbed through his heart and eyes wide open. I screamed after seeing the grotesque sight of the dead man who was apparently murdered. The police asked us to stay outside.

We were standing in the kitchen when Bethany abruptly grabbed my hand and said in a squeaky voice with a mysterious look on her face, "He's not the man I saw last night. That man was lean, muscular, and tall. He had long hair and the dead man is a bald, stout lad with a thin frame."

I got dumbstruck. I couldn't help but think if my brother killed the man. But how could Colton? He was cuffed in the attic downstairs where he's been hiding from the world since the time he killed three of his friends in the most monstrous method possible.