Chapter 34: Chapter 34

He tapped Stacie shoulder lightly; she almost jumped out of the chair.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “when we leave here tomorrow, we will have to find the nurse grave and burn the book beside her grave.”

“But how do we know where she was buried?“ Stacie responded with a sigh, as she was more than frustrated.

“I don’t know we could check online, “ he replied.

The rest of the night went well until 3 am in the morning. Stacie woke up with slight headache, and her eyes darted towards Jasper who he was arranging their stuffs at the entrance of the door. After he finished that he went out to check the bus and noticed it was still in good shape.

Not that the curse had lifted. But they could leave. He checked his inner pocket of the leather jacket he was wearing; he found the diary was still intact.

Jasper went back inside the house and one by one he took their bags and baggage into the car. She couldn’t get all of them to take their baths, but they did brush their mouth, as she helped to lift the toothbrush to their mouth. Demonstrated and told them to do what she did.

Ruth action was worse, as she looked dense after saying she couldn’t feel her face and touch herself. It was stressful for Stacie as well.

She tried to get into the shower with Louie, but he shouted at her. She left him. It surprised them and seemed they were under a spell that made it worse. Stacie got dressed and went into the kitchen where saw Danielle holding a gun. Where would she find it?

She noticed that the cabinet in the kitchen was opened and the extra foods they brought with them had spilled on the floor. Wondering where Stacie had gotten the gun from, she remembered that her grandfather owned one, but how did she find it?

Danielle knew not what she was doing anymore. She found herself in front of a lake where she saw a person tied to a pole. The face of the person looked unfamiliar to her, a face she had not seen in her entire life. “Shoot,” the voice told her. “I can’t,” she cried.

“Do you want to die?” The voice asked eerily.

“No,” she yelled to emphasize. She knew not where the other voice came from. Next thing, she stood in the middle of a field with the person tied to a pole, and saw many people, sitting on the bench, shouting shoot. She raised the gun.

Stacie took a step at a time to collect the gun from Danielle, “give the gun to me. She kept saying.” Danielle however looked blank with tears coming out of her eyes. Then she raised the gun at her.

“Danielle don’t do it”

The shot went off. Stacie staggered, she placed a hand on where the bullet had entered, below her shoulder. Danielle cowered in a corner.

“I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean to.”

The rest heard the gunshot and ran to the direction. Jasper didn’t need to be told what had happened. His brother was on the way, but it would take him till afternoon before he reached here. Although he left home quite early said he had something to do later that night.

Louie was angry, he picked a butter knife and took a long stride towards Danielle, whilst Jasper picked a fry pan and hit him hard on the head. He fell unconscious. Thought about what to do with Louie, he picked a rope he found somewhere in the kitchen cabinet, and tied him to a chair. Feeling accomplished with himself, he laid Stacie on the kitchen counter, as she had lost so much blood.

He remembered how he had helped his brother to remove a bullet once when he got shot from one of his numerous gang lives. But would Stacie be strong enough to withstand the pain. Dashing upstairs to Danielle’s room he took the first aid box. He wanted to remove the wound, but first he reached for his phone and dialed 911 and told the lady on the line what she wanted to know and their location.

“There’s a girl bleeding, it would take more than five hours to get here.”

“We’ll send an air ambulance. They should be there latest three hours, make sure you do all you can to suppress the blood.”

“Thank you,” he said and hung up. “He called his brother next.”

“Hi Josh, how many hours more?”

“ Three hours more,” his brother replied.

“Damn, that was fast, you really stepping on the gas.”

“Lol, yeah, I’m not a slow driver beside I set off at 3am. I told you I have something important to do tonight.”

“Yeah right.”

“You owe me, and you will tell me everything.” His brother said and hung up.

Stacie experienced death, or did she actually die and woke up? When Jasper poured some vodka on her chest area close to her shoulder.

She had bitten her lower lips to stop her from screaming too loud. Jasper took a scalpel and plunged it to the area where the bullet had entered and brought it out. Pouring she had lost plenty of blood. One hour more and the airline would be here.

“Stacie stay with me, help is on the way,” he said it like a mantra in her ears. She was restless the pain was too much.

Jasper started pacing around. As chilly as the weather seemed, he was sweating. He heard the faint sound of a helicopter, and ran outside to raise his head up to scan the sky. Seeing the air ambulance a smile lit up his face, and he ran back inside to tell Stacie. But when he got inside, she was breathing in spasm; he touched her wrist but couldn’t feel a pulse, although her heart was beating.

“Stacie don’t die on me, please don’t do this,” he cried, “help is here.”

The helicopter had landed. He whispered to her ear, “if you can still hear me, I have to leave now, and I have to do this on my own, you have to wake up.”

Her heart stopped beating and Stacie was dead.

As he heard the front door opened; he grabbed his phone and Stacie phone on the counter and ran out through the kitchen back door leading to the lake. He couldn’t stay, they would not believe him, and nobody would. For the sake of his friends and himself, he had to leave everybody behind to do this on his own. He stopped not from running until he reached the lake.

The doctor entered the house and scanned around, as he entered the kitchen he saw Stacie, and he quickly rushed to her side, looking for a pulse, but he found none. He placed the stethoscope on her chest and could hear a faint beat.

The nurses moved away for him to pass as he carried Stacie to the helicopter.

He quickly administered treatment on her, but first he had to use the defibrillator to restore a normal pulse. The heart monitor beep as the defibrillator went into action. Stacie jerked a little.

The doctor went back to the other friends inside to ask them questions, but none of them answered except for Jasper who pointed to Danielle that she killed Stacie with a gun. Then where was Danni? She had run away.

Jasper called his brother again and this time he was close. He calculated soon the police would be here. His brother had passed the police car on his way to them. The police wouldn’t suspect a thing if they could leave early. He told his brother to wait some meters away from the cabin so he would meet him there.

Jasper walked back towards the cabin; he got back to the house peeping through the window. Stacie wasn’t on the counter anymore, neither Danielle was on the floor and Louie was on loose already.

On walking round the house, he saw his friends sat in the parlor, with some nurses around them. He turned around and looked outside the cabin, he saw two helicopters outside, and another flew off. Three-air ambulances came he calculated. Noticing his friends came out of the cabin and entered the ambulance; he wondered why the police were still coming.

Might be they had come to investigate what had happened, either way he waited till all his friends entered the ambulance and took off.

Jasper made sure nobody saw him, before he came out. As soon as he saw his brother he hugged him tight, and he told him to drive down to the cabin.

Josh helped him unload his friends’ bags and baggage from the bus to load them in his car and then drove off.

“Now tell me everything,” his brother said.

Jasper explained everything that had happened within the last two weeks and some few days of their stay in the cabin. His brother was more than shocked. Instead of passing the straight route the student came through when they came his brother took a different route a short cut turning left.