Chapter 8: Chapter 8 – Front Doors Are For People With No Imagination

"Matthew's not answering his phone," Max said, scratching his head.

"Seriously? Of course, this is the one time we can't get in touch with him," Kashyap sighed, shaking his head.

Jason followed behind the trio, nervously scratching his wrist, with eyes that twitched at every little movement.

They had headed down the road from his house and began the short walk to Matthew's. He had done the walk a million times before, but this was the first time he was scared.

He didn't know if he would rather find Clare alive or not.

'If she's alive... Will she blame me?' It was a horrible, selfish thought, but he couldn't help himself.

"Jason, keep up, will you?" Vincent shouted from further down the street. As his mind drifted, Jason had fallen behind them.

He hurried to catch up, doing his best to avoid the judging glares he was being given. Having known all three of them for almost seven years, this was the first time Jason had seen them so serious. It was unnerving.

'Either way, I've fucked up,' He realised, 'If Clare is fine, then I'm the asshole that lied about a girl's death. And if she isn't, then I'm the scumbag that killed her,'

They walked around a bend in the road and cut through a lane that led out onto the football pitch. Jason fell behind the trio again, and as they glanced back at him, muttering to each other, he wanted to die. If he could shrivel up in a ball and cry, he would. But he needed to find out the truth first. He needed to know.

Crossing the pitches, they walked onto a road that led up to Matthew's house. Just outside his house, they stopped, and Max, Vincent and Kashyap turned to look back at Jason.

He stopped in the middle of them, looking down at his feet.

"Jason, this is your last chance." Kashyap looked at him sternly, "What happened to Clare?"

"Dude, if you were lying, it's not too late to come clean," Max said, trying to sound calm, not that it helped.

"Yeah, we won't hold it against you as long as you tell us now," Vincent talked to Jason like he was trying to soothe a child.

Jason took a deep breath. "No, I know what I saw." He stared up at them, locking eye contact.

"She's dead."

Kashyap looked like he wanted to say something, but Max stopped him. "Okay, let's go see what happened to Matthew,"

They walked up the drive to Matthew's house, finding the lights off. Looking through the windows, they could tell the place was empty.

Vincent went to the door and knocked, but there was no response from inside the house, "Do you think he slept in or something?" He asked, returning from the door.

"Maybe. Is there another way in?" Max glanced at Jason who had spent the most time here.

Jason nodded, "See that fence," He pointed to a green wooden fence around the side of the house. It was tall enough that the top was only barely reachable when they jumped. "We can get into his back garden through there,"

After hoisting each other over the fence and jumping into the back garden, they walked around to the backdoor, which they found lying open.

"Hello!?" Max shouted into the house, getting only silence as a response.

"Should we go in?" Vincent asked, looking sort of apprehensive.

Jason shook his head vigorously, "I don't like this, guys. Clare dies, Matthew says he's with Clare, and now we find his house abandoned. How is that not strange?"

"How do we even know Clare's dead!? What if he just took her to the hospital in a hurry?" Kashyap shouted suddenly, losing his cool.

"But... Why would they leave through the back door?" Max pointed out, starting to feel a bit uneasy himself.

All four of them were quiet as they thought this over.

"Hey, guys," Vincent said, pointing down the back garden. "Can you see those tracks in the grass?"

They followed his gaze and saw two trenches in the grass. At about a shoulders width apart, the troughs started by the backdoor and travelled along the length of the garden, disappearing into a hedge.

"Shit, you don't think?" Max muttered.

"What?" Jason blurted.

"Well, you know how Matthew has a crush on Clare. What if he found her body and..."

"Get a grip!" Kashyap shouted. "Do you seriously think Matthew would do something like that?"

"But it looks like someone dragged a body out of here," Jason muttered. "If it wasn't Clare's body, then whose was it?"

Max looked at the tracks in the ground soberly, "Could it have been Matthew? But why?"

"I'm going to take a look inside!" Kashyap shouted, turning away from the back garden and almost running into the house.

He froze the second he stepped through the backdoor and into the kitchen. It looked like a crime scene. The fridge was lying open, dripping water down into a pool on the kitchen tiles. Every cupboard was opened, with its contents strewn across the floor. Besides that, the oven was on, with no food inside.

Kashyap ran to the fridge and closed it before turning the oven off. On the floor, he spotted Matthew's phone, and his stomach started to sink.

"Guys! You need to see this!" He shouted.

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The other three trooped in, looking grimly at the carnage in the kitchen.

"Is that Matthew's phone?" Max asked Kashyap, who was trying to unlock it.

"Yeah, anyone know his passcode?"

They all shook their heads helplessly.

After trying all the obvious combinations and getting locked out, Kashyap sighed and put the phone in his pocket.

"Do you..." Max started to say. "Do you think he was kidnapped?"

Vincent bit his lip nervously, "If he was... Kidnapped. Should we call the police?"

"No!" Jason blurted.

"No?" Kashyap looked at him like he was an idiot.

"I mean, yeah. But even if we call the police, we should check on Clare's body separately."

They all turned to look at Jason, starting to believe him at this point. "Is she really dead?" Max asked quietly.

"I-I think so," Jason didn't sound convinced.

Kashyap looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes for a long moment. He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly through his nose. "Okay, Jason and I will go look for the body. You two follow those tracks up the hill after calling the police."

"Is it safe to do this? Why not just wait for the police to show up?" Vincent asked nervously.

Kashyap looked at Vincent grimly, "If Matthew's life is in danger, can he afford to wait for another twenty minutes,"

They exchanged nervous glances, nodding.

"Let's go!" Kashyap said, grabbing Jason and leading him out of the backdoor.

"It was at the Glenn, right?" He asked, staring at Jason, who was sweating uncontrollably.

"Yeah," He said, taking a shaky breath.

"Let's hurry then!"

They walked across the fields, circling the hill to its eastern side, where a forest grew in a narrow valley carved by the river over hundreds of years of erosion.

Jumping over fences and squeezing through small gaps between bushes, they worked their way around to a small path in an overgrown grove of trees.

It was well worn by hundreds of teenagers over the years, and they followed the track into the bowels of the forest.

Once they could hear the faint trickle of water, they knew they were close to the creek that ran through the heart of the forest and they picked up their pace.

The whole way there, Kashyap didn't say a word to Jason. His face was like a thundercloud, and he refused to speak at all.

But when they arrived at the creak and began to follow it downstream to the spot they often hung out at, Kashyap opened his mouth.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He asked quietly, sounding slightly hurt.

"Huh?" Jason was too stunned to respond.

Kashyap sighed, "I'm your friend, mate. I could have helped you out if you had told me sooner. Maybe we could have stopped Matthew from getting..." He trailed off, not saying it.

Jason looked down at his feet, unable to meet Kashyap's gaze, "Sorry..."

They walked along the river in solemn silence. Kashyap was too angry to speak, and Jason was too ashamed.

When they finally walked into the clearing by the stream, they were greeted with almost a hundred cans of beer and bottles of vodka strewn across the ground. Some were so old they had grass and moss growing in them. Teenagers had been coming here for years and rumour had it that some of these cans were older than they were.

"I don't see anything," Kashyap scanned the clearing, finding a complete lack of a corpse.

"No!" Jason ran to where he had left her body after pulling it out of the stream, "She was right... here."

He lost the words to speak, staring down at a human-shaped silhouette in the mud by the stream.

The silhouette scared him, not because he knew he hadn't dreamt it, but because of the hand prints in the mud beside it. He followed them along and found footprints that led along the riverbed and out of the clearing.

Too stunned to speak, Jason just gawked at footprints.

"What does this mean?" Kashyap asked, looking solemnly at the silhouette. She would have to have lain there for hours to leave a mark that deep in the mud.

"Did she really die?" He asked Jason, whose soul looked like it had left his body.

"I-I don't know anymore..."

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