Little Black Book

It was so typical for plans to go wrong each time Maya and her friends, Tilly, Sarah and Lila went out, it was a given that something would go wrong, yet they somehow made the most of it . Tonight wasn’t an exception. Lila’s car had gotten a flat on their way to Lila’s house. The thunderstorm made things even more gruesome and when Sarah spots a nearby manor they decide to ask for help. With their phones all out of signal, it seemed the wisest thing to do. The plan was to ask for a phone, call a taxi and wait. The owner of the home was more than gracious. Safi, a wonderful kind woman, let’s the four women in but this story takes a turn when while Sarah makes the call for a taxi, Maya wanders off and gets lost in the manor uncovering a secret long forgotten. It all started out as a wanders through the hallway looking for a bathroom but when she takes a wrong turn, she gets locked behind a hidden trap door which locks her in a room filled with vile secrets tucked away safely until now.

Wiping the dust off Maya stands up in a pitch black room. Guiding herself along the walls, she searches for some sort of light switch until she finds one, revealing a study filled with books and tons of glass jars with well preserved human organs. Frightened Maya tried to open the doors but it was locked as well as the drawers. As she ran her fingers underneath the table hoping to find a key that could let her out. Suddenly her fingers felt a button, as she presses it, a drawer, the last on the table flings open revealing a pen and a little black book. Picking it up, she dust the book and opens it. The book looked well preserved. She begins reading, nothing seemed to make sense, it appeared each page talked in depth about some sort of surgery. Definitely a surgeon’s book! The second half of the book were names...long list of women’s names. Beside each name were numbers like a serial code. She thought this quite odd, picking up a very sturdy flower pot she started strike the door hoping the locks would fall. As she did that a couple of times just as she got so close to breaking off the lock she suddenly realized the lock is moving. ..from the outside. Unsure of what to think she calls out "hello! who’s there can you help me I’m stuck". Then suddenly there's a knock on the door from the other side. Suddenly the double doors that were locked flung wide open with such speed it made Maya scream . In her face blows a gush of cold air. It blew in so fast and yet didn’t stop immediately. For a good 30 seconds ...it blew across Maya and as suddenly as it started it stopped. Like a raging storm erupted in the room and then all of a sudden stopped. There standing right in front of her was a woman who looked quite a lot like Safi the owner of the home but yet younger. She stood face to face to Maya. The hair on the back of her neck stood in fear. Safi’s younger self mid 40s looked furious as she starred at Maya. Then she spoke "How dare you ? " Maya looked stunned “excuse me?" "You promised you wouldn’t ever again" Safi said as she walks angrily to Maya and just like an unforeseen nightmare she walks right through Maya and carries on shouting. Maya stunned and lost for words for a brief moment felt like she was suffocating, she regains her strength and turns around eyes wide open in disbelief. "You promised! " shouted Safi. As Maya turned around to see who Safi was scolding her mouth opened in a mix of fear and awe, more fear than awe! The room was now brightly lit, everything seemed new and clean. The same room she had just rummaged through but in a different time. There stood at the desk was a man grey haired but yet youthful in his late 40s, he was dressed in medical scrubs covered in blood as he took his gloves off on the far end of the room was a blonde female tied up and bound to a bed. She wasn’t moving but her eyes were open cold and starring right at Maya. She was bleeding out. She was clearly not alive but her eyes starred at Maya as a tear fell from her cold eyes as if to tell a story through her muffled pain ." You know I do this for science...one day the world will thank me and my name will live through generations! Safi, his wife stands still breaking out in tears says “I'm so sorry, I had to do it ! The man’s eyes narrowing at his wife, slams his fist on the desk. "What have you done?" Suddenly, the room starts to shake as the books start violently flying across the room on their own accord. A freaked out Maya screams and runs off.

Back in the lounge, a sudden loud thud hits the window which sends Sarah, Tilly and Lila into a shock.

Frozen they stand still. "What was that? Tilly asks holding Lila “I don’t know". Then another loud thud hits the window and then another and another and then suddenly nothing. Unsure of where the noise is coming from Tilly decides she wasn’t waiting to find out "I’m leaving! why am I scared to my bones!" Tilly said holding on to Lila. Without warning, the huge chandelier in the middle of the lounge slams to the ground creating a frightening noise and shatters of glass dart across the room almost blinding Tilly and Lila who are stood not so far from the freak accident. They close their faces out of fear of being hit my glass shards. Lila looks at Tilly “Ok I think you’re right. Let’s wait outside. Just as they decide to leave, Sarah who had been standing at the hallway calling for Maya, is still frozen from shock when Maya darts past her, screaming even louder. Without waiting to talk things through and compare each others' brief encounter in the twilight zone, all four girls sprint out the house, running and not looking back. Not one of them stop until they run into the main road flagging down the next car they see approaching them. Thankfully by some weird stroke of luck, they realize it’s the taxi and they jump in trying to talk at the same time, each trying to explain what they had just experienced. As the taxi driver listened he calmly waited for the girls to get off their adrenaline high and then he spoke as they got in.

“You shouldn’t have been there. No one has been there since the fire”.

“What fire ?” Sarah asked he smiled and narrowed his eyes. Turning the car around he said I’d show you . As they pulled up to the house he stopped at the beginning of the driveway . Each of their eyes widened in disbelief. All but the driver were strangely perplexed. "But...but...that’s not it …couldn’t be " argued Maya ,"yea no way... we were just there and inside" followed Sarah. Lila added " and we met a woman named Safi, right here but this house is burned down and by the looks of it seems it’s been ages.. years if not decades" said Lily sure the driver was wrong. Tilly just starred too confused to speak at all.

The driver carried on ignoring their doubtful reality. "I’m not saying you didn’t meet Safi or that you weren’t in that house. What I am saying is whatever you saw or heard in that house cannot be counted as your present reality. The owners Jacob and Safi Baker lived here in the 1950s. Jacob was a surgeon ahead of his time, respected by all until he lost his reputation after proposing some very bizarre suggestions to the medical community. People said he had gone mad and he stopped at nothing to prove the world right that his very barbaric ways of learning medicine would be ground breaking. He eventually lost his medical license and he went into a huge depression. Obsessed with restoring his name he would hunt down younger females particularly blondes and subdue them, inducing a coma after which he carried out various tests. He called it revolutionary, people called it madness but even though the police had suspected him for a while they had no evidence. They couldn’t find the bodies that... is until his wife grew weary of covering his secret and in fear of going to jail herself and loosing their new born daughter she gave Jacob up. Enraged with fury, he set the whole house on fire. The flames claimed, the once prestigious home and along with it Safi, her mum, Jacob and their infant daughter. People say if you get close enough, you can still hear screams. Some claim to have seen Jacob, some say they have seen blondes walking around the grounds. One of those victims was the daughter of wealthy business man. She went out shopping one day and never returned. Saddened with despair, he put out a reward for his only daughter's safe return. If I remember clearly, it was twenty thousand dollars. Of course no one ever claimed it. There were rumors' of a book that Jacob kept close to him like a diary that he once boasted about to a friend containing names of his victims but that too was never recovered. Even till today the reward still stands as the family never gave up hope that one day the truth would be uncovered."

As he drove the girls to Tilly’s country home, he told them some of the tales he had heard over the years of people who claimed the house was haunted. As a local, he grew up hearing so many stories about Safi and Jacob.

It was about 2am when the girls finally arrived at their destination. As they stood in front of the Tilly’s home and watched the driver leave, they explained what had happened to each of them and they all wondered if anyone would believe what they had been through that night. "No one would ever believe us" Sarah said. It was such a frightening series of events and they tried to make sense of it. Maya picked up her jacket and said to her friends "Guys...I may have proof, it’s a book I found I think these are the victims." as Maya flipped through the pages of the little black book. Sarah pulled out her phone and researched the names, each of them missing women from the 50s. When they got to the last name, it became apparent that by some freak storm that night had led to a series of events that had changed the lives of these four women forever. As they sat in silence briefly Tilly blurted out "well Maya looks like you just won twenty grand. The reward was never claimed" she said reading a related article on her phone . They all looked at each other and sat in silence going over the thin line between reality and fiction. Somehow that night, those lines had been blurred forever, engrained in their brains.