Episode 19: Abandoned House in the Woods (Patreon)

Lucas has lost track of time walking in the woods along side Amelia, the heat and humidity begins to slow him down. Amelia on the other hand looks as lights as a feather, hopping around even with her bare feet. Figures, since she’s used to this environment.

 'Am I out of shape?' Lucas could no longer keep up, but Amelia continues to stop for him to catch up to her. Though he worries he's slowing her down, she looks like she's having a lot of fun, from clearing branches out of the way, to collecting flowers and showing them to Lucas. He couldn't help but enjoy himself just watching her 'I'm glad she's having fun, and not overthinking the trip'.

After another hour, Lucas's appearance changed to a flower boy. He had made the mistake of agreeing to Amelia that flowers are enjoyable. 'A bit too much fun' Amelia suddenly stops and hides behind Lucas

"Hm? What's wrong?" Lucas peaks at the top of a small hill and spots a worn down log house near a swamp lake. Amelia grips onto him, terrified. "Hey, it's ok. You can wait here, I should be quick as promised. If you need anything just call out to me, ok?" Amelia nods anxiously and begins to envision Lucas beating the crap out of young Madeline, so she begins to root for him on the sidelines with a grim expression as he heads to the abandoned house.

Crows croak as he approaches, his presence alarms them and eventually they fly away.

'Did she have a bad memory from this place? It looks like it's been abandoned for at least a decade judging from the size of the tree penetrating the roof.'

The door to the log house is half torn with a monstrous claw mark, but other than the wear and tear, it appears to have been an ordinary home. Lucas looks through the door before going in, he spots a kitchen, a small living room, shelves with old books and broken windows. Lucas looks back to where Amelia stands, hiding behind a tree (though she’s not doing a good job at hiding), then he continues to look further.

He finds a table with tools to make herbal products, a collection of papers lying around consisting of faded biological studies. ‘Looks like someone who enjoyed the study of chemistry and the anatomical structure of animals. Was the Giver who lived here some sort of scientist or veterinarian?’ Lucas continues to look around. he finds a bedroom with two small beds covered in moss and dried leaves, the wall behind him has carvings to indicate height and age of two children. Madeline, and Amelia. ‘Did Amelia have a sister?’ Lucas touches the carvings on the wall ‘It stops after Amelia reached age 6.. and her sister.. age 11? She hasn’t mentioned anything about a sister, only her mother’ Lucas remembers the nightmare Amelia had when she first woke up in his room, screaming the word mama in pain repeatedly. ’What exactly happened to her mother and sister?’

Lucas looks around some more before leaving to the main room again. He stops at a shelf full of books, but they were unreadable. A leak from the roof must’ve completely wiped out all the ink ‘these are all useless’ Lucas grits in frustration. He checks again for Amelia through the broken window, she’s just standing around waiting patiently for him and kicking rocks from boredom, Lucas couldn’t help but chuckle at her pouting face.

As he shuffles through the useless books desperately looking for answers, an envelope drops down

”Hm?” Lucas reaches to grab and read what’s inside ‘It looks like a collection of unopened letters’ Lucas opens one by one and reads through the child like handwriting

Letter 1:

‘Hello papa! It’s me, Maddie, 

mama told me I could write you letters about how 

I’m doing since you’re busy at work lately.

It’s been 3 weeks since we’ve seen you, 

we miss you papa,

I hope you’re doing well’

Letter 2:

’Hello Papa! You won’t believe what happened!

I have a little sister now, she’s so cute and small

and she looks just like mama, she‘s definitely gonna 

be pretty when she grows up.

Oh yeah! And I was a good girl, I brought mommy some warm water

and held her hand when she was in pain to bring Amelia into the world

Don‘t worry Papa, I know how busy you are, 

so I promised Mama I’d protect them both until you came back!’

Letter 3:

’Hi papa, it’s me again. Today is Amelia’s 3rd Birthday, 

she’s gotten a lot bigger, and I did too! can you guess what her

first word was? You guessed it! Candy! Haha

I wish you could see how much she‘s grown

she’s starting to walk on two legs, but her magic is still a mess

she accidentally turned into half a deer yesterday while playing, it looks like she has

your transformations. Mama has been teaching her how to use her powers and

Sometimes I feel left out because I’m only human, but I have been teaching 

her how to read and write, it makes me so happy when she learns new things

from me’

Letter 4:

‘Hey dad, it’s me. I found the letters mom had been collecting to give to you

I was upset that she hadn’t been sending them, but then she started crying

and told me that you had gone missing since a long time ago

It’s the first time I’ve seen mom cry, it made me really sad seeing her like that.

She misses you so much. I’ll make sure to keep telling Amelia stories 

about you. 

I told mom that I wanted to write you this last letter

even though you won’t be able to read it, I want you to know 

that we all love you, and will always remember you

Love,

Madeline’

‘It looks like their father had gone missing before Amelia was born. And this Madeline girl is a human adopted into the family. They seemed to have been doing well until about a decade ago, Could Amelia have been alone since then? But why is she so hateful towards humans when her own sister was one? Their relationship was just like any other sibling relationship’ Lucas sighs and remembers the words ‘humans hurt’ from when Amelia had almost killed him ‘Did both her mother and sister die at the hands of humans? I sure have more questions than answers now. Seeing how much this place affects Amelia, it’s not a good idea to just straight up ask her what had happened here…’

Lucas puts the envelopes back in place and begins to walk towards the kitchen.

 ‘This tree’ Lucas finds a tree in the center of the kitchen, but it was different compared to the other trees he’s seen throughout the forest, it seamed out of place, covered in red flowers.  ‘It’s pretty big compared to the other ones here. It looks to be at least 30 years old‘ Lucas examines it closer ‘I’ve never seen this kind of tree around here before, and in the middle of the kitchen? That doesn’t seem natural’ Lucas looks down to its roots and notices something hidden under the tree. He pulls a pocket knife and cuts through the roots to reach it.

 ‘A book?’ Lucas dusts it off. An unfamiliar language sown around the center of the ribbon which wrap around the book, and an odd puzzle that wouldn’t open no matter how hard he tried. ‘Whatever’s in it must be important, and these ribbons won’t even cut' Lucas attempts at cutting it with his knife with no luck. 

'I should finish up here, It’s getting late. It's unfortunate that I couldn't find any leads, but I should at least Maybe take her out to get some new clothes tomorrow. We could go to an outlet shopping center. Well I guess I can’t really take her out since these kinda places are usually crowded with people, I can’t imagine how she would respond to other humans’ the thought of Amelia tearing the whole place down gave him the shivers, though he finds it kind of funny thinking of the petite girl wreaking havoc. 

As Lucas continues trying to open the sealed book, a strange shadow creeps from behind him.