Chapter 12

The holidays have started!

The clock struck nine in the morning when Isabella came down to breakfast happily. The grace that she kept absent from school meant enjoying much more time with her parents because of their work, they were given a week off.

The plan was, without a doubt, to go out for a walk and enjoy the minimum family moments they had, however, he showed up.

―Mom, Dad! ―Lia, the eldest daughter, shouted. ―He has arrived! Please behave. ―She murmured with a face that denoted total shame.

The boy who had come to the cabin was nothing more and nothing less than her sister's boyfriend. From that point on, she was not beginning to feel good as she watched a stranger appear at her home and ruin her plans for the day.

No, sir!

To say that she was angry was a total understatement, she was literally fuming from her ears, but she just thought she could not do something about it. Seeing her sister smile like that slightly quenched her desire to kick her new couple out. She knew that after her painful breakup with her previous boyfriend, she had every right to be happy again with the person of her choice.

Isabella greeted Lía's boyfriend and took a seat at the table, next to the youngest daughter, her other sister, Camila. The stranger's name was Kevin. Isabella seemed to have seen him before, but she did not remember where. The most uncomfortable thing about the whole breakfast was the look from him that he never left her.

When she finished breakfast, they headed for the central square. There they found out that a museum had recently been installed and, as it was opening today, the place was offering free tickets to all visitors.

A guide received them upon arrival and began to show the family the interior of the place, explaining everything that their eyes could see: from portraits made by the ancestors to the corpses found in different excavations in the forest where they lived.

There was a time when the middle daughter, Isabella, deviated from the path her family was on and decided to walk through the museum in complete solitude. After a few minutes, she found a room lit by red lights that looked different from the other rooms she had already seen. This one in particular had animal skins taped to the walls. She approached the center table where was a gigantic black-cover book, whose title was: The incessant and mysterious deaths deep in the forest.

Had she read correctly? Was it really that the words deaths and forest were written there in the same sentence?

Curiosity was greater than fear, so she began to read it.

«The forest. A beautiful place to live and connect with nature, as well as enjoy wonderful landscapes to contemplate in a group or lagoons, where swimming is the most relaxing thing in the universe. Everything is so fascinating that we ignore the worst evil that those lush trees hide, as well as the song of the birds: The tribe. However, this is not just any tribe, because...»

―Isabella! There you are. Do not disappear again, my daughter. —Said her mother with the same sorrow that she felt in those moments when she knew that she had lived all her life in a dangerous place.

―I am sorry, Mom. What's going on?

―The guide has finished teaching us everything. We were looking for you for hours, it already started to get dark―

There was a moment when she could not continue listening to the woman in front of her. Kevin was watching her with those deep eyes, searching the soul of the young woman as if he wanted to know the reasons why the hell she had ended up in that room. Isabella thought that she would have to do more research about the tribe, maybe she could go back to the museum at night, then she could read more of that mysterious book.

―Are you listening, daughter?

―Well... ―Isabella was still a little dizzy and at the same time lost in her thoughts. ―Yes, Mom. Let's go home.

In the evening, they returned to the cabin. Lía said goodbye to Kevin and later he also said goodbye to her parents. Why couldn't anyone realize how weird that boy was? Were they blind?

Isabella was still disturbed by the boy's dark attitude and deep gaze, by that book she read in the museum, and by the simple fact that she no longer thought it was safe to dwell in a forest.

Then a question popped through her head.

Why did they live there?

Lía told her on one occasion that before she was born, she and her parents lived in the city, however from one day to the next, both parents decided that it was better for them to be close to nature.

Anyway, she could not get to sleep, so she sat on the sofa near the window and began to revel in the darkness that, combined with the trees, bushes, and flowers, made the perfect scene for a horror movie.

Even in the dim starlight, Isabella could clearly see that little pumpkin she had grown a few months ago. Also, there was a greenhouse that she and her family built last summer. What unforgettable moments those!

Also, there was a bush moving... Wait, What?

That symbolized too much for her sanity, moving away from the window as fast as she could. What was that? It could not be an animal, because in the part where they lived there were no animals, or at least no wild animals. But she was too scared to think calmly, to think that maybe it was just a bird, to think that maybe the wind was blowing too hard at that hour, to think that maybe it was Kevin.

Kevin. Why did his face always appear when she was afraid?

It was ridiculous. He certainly seemed like a mysterious guy, but she did not have enough evidence to believe that he would want to harm her family.

She was hallucinating things. Isabella believed that she should only sleep. Yes, sleeping and having beautiful, sweet dreams was what she needed right now.

However, those dreams never came. She was able to corroborate this when she woke up with sweat on her forehead in the middle of the night after a nightmare.

In those dark thoughts, she was watching with tears in her eyes her family being murdered. The entire cabin was covered in blood, even the wooden ceiling. She woke up when she felt someone stab her with a knife. Even when she came out of that horrifying nightmare, she still felt a stabbing pain in the back of her anatomy.