CHAPTER 18

We looked around , hoping to find something useful . The darkness was helping a lot because we weren't spotted yet . Nathaniel found a ladder that lead us to the roof of the villa that Cora entered . Not even thinking twice , both of us made our way up , just in time before they noticed us . The roof was not very clean but we saw another door at the other end of the roof .

Moving past many broken pieces of glasses , we successfully entered the villa . We still needed to be careful when they would get back in though . Even though the house looked very old and rusty on the outside , it was perfectly furnished on the inside . Everything looked brand new so I was pretty sure that they had bought this place just to hide Beth . There were so many air vents that it was hard to keep count.

The lights weren't turned on so we didn't on it either since we couldn't afford getting their attention right now , with whoever she was with right now . "Rene , look over there . Do you think that a house this old would already have a basement ?"

I looked towards my right , towards the area he was pointing at . Indeed , there was a door with stairs going downstairs . This house was definitely too old for the engineers to start building such good basements . We were walking towards the basement slowly and cautiously when the front and back door opened again so we rushed in , closing the basement door in sync with both the front and back doors .

"Jed , they are so near to getting Beth . Where the hell did you hide her ?" It was Cora who was talking and I was so shocked hearing Jed's voice replying . My boss was staying in New York after our incident ? Oh gosh , he was so scared to simply face me or dad I guess . I was so curious to see whether he would tell her the location because then , we would be able to find Beth and save her from getting into any harm .

"I can't tell you now , Cora . You know that you are close to those monsters . All we can do is get ready to go to Georgia next week more accurately . I will bring Beth with me too and we can elope from here . I assure you that they have found something other than Beth and will never be able to find them . Beth's highly guarded , by me . That's all you need to know , ok?"

That's all we needed to know to make sure that he had no intention at all to tell Cora Beth's hiding place so we started walking down to the basement . Nathaniel's torch shone through the pitch black basement . It looked like how you would expect a normal basement to look like . All kinds of junk was kept in piles and it was scary to think of staying there for a long time since it looked the same as the basement used for the movie 'The Conjuring' .

It was barely noticeable but I noticed a small door , half the height of a normal door , which made me want to simply check what it had inside . I walked up to the door and tried opening it but in vain . The door was locked. I didn't know for sure whether Beth was there so I simply called out to see if she was there , careful to make my sound as low as possible so that Cora and Jed wouldn't hear us if they were still there upstairs , "Is anybody in here ?"

I didn't hear any clear noises but I certainly heard small muffles from the other side of the room . Not any chance should be left behind so I called Nathaniel to get some help . He luckily found a hairpin in one of the old jewellery boxes in the basement . I used it open the door . If you're wondering why I didn't use my powers , it's because I had other plans for it .

The door opened and I crawled my head inside to see what it had inside properly . A woman had both her hands chained to the wall , just above her shoulders . I didn't know for how long she was there but I was sure that staying in the position she was then , literally hanging on her arms on the wall , because she was barely on her tippy-toes . I squished myself in and ran over to her , searching for a way to bring her out . Because of the tape stuck on her mouth , I couldn't hear what she was saying but then , when I took it off , she told me that her key was hidden in her pants .

She collapsed onto the floor as soon as she was free . "Hi. I'm Rene . " I said , stretching my hand out all the way to her palm , which was on the floor because I had a feeling that her arms would be in so much pain right then . She smiled at me weakly before talking to me in the same horse , dry voice I heard when she told me where the key was , "Hi . I'm Beth. Thanks for saving me . But if you'll excuse me , I have a friend who's under the possession of a Nogitsune."

I shrugged and said , "I guess then we could help Cora together ."

She looked up at me with wide eyes and whisper-shouted , "You know Cora? Did you come here because of her ?" I nodded and told her how we ended up here . We were so relaxed that we found Beth that we didn't realise how fast time flew by.

The room would've been fully dark if not for a small window kept in the opposite direction of the room . Beth was tied up to the right wall of the room while the window was on the edge of the left side of the wall and the ceiling . She looked at the window and counted the stars seen right then . We were confused to what she was doing but her sudden gasp made us be alert of ourselves .

The basement door was opening .