Little Miss Evil (Tall Trees Book 1)

by Jim Ody

  Brett made a noise that might’ve been a hum. “Nah, we’re going to split into groups.”

  “Oh, exciting,” Keith said. Smaller groups of people were an interesting tactic.

  “We’ve not got that far yet.”

  “I’m staying with Adam,” Nat said.

  “Shock!” Meg giggled, and the girls stuck their tongues out at each other at the same time, then laughed.

  “That sounds like group one then,” Keith said matter-of-factly.

  “Me and you?” Brett said to Meg.

  “You and I, I think you mean?”

  Brett looked like he really didn’t get the difference, or rather couldn’t care less. “Yeah, whatever.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  Keith looked at Jenny and Max. “I guess that leaves you two then?”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said a little flatly. It was the same old story.

  “So why don’t I join you two? If you don’t mind?”

  Jenny glanced at Max. Keith couldn’t read her body language very well, but she didn’t look completely comfortable with the idea. Maybe she was worried about the Treasure Hunt. Or maybe she was just a little shy in front of him.

  “Sure,” Max said. “Jenny?”

  She shrugged. “If you want?”

  “That sounds wonderful.” He took a bite of his burger. “So,” he began. “What do you think of the food here?”

  “It’s good stuff, mate,” Brett said. He was the first to offer his thoughts.

  “It’s a lot better than I thought it would be,” Adam said, and then looked a little worried he might’ve offended Keith. “No offence.”

  “None taken. It’s great to get feedback. We do try to make the food as great as possible.”

  This was another benefit of mingling with people. Often, they would be honest and open up about what they thought of everything.

  “And your cabins are satisfactory?”

  “More than,” Meg said, and the others agreed, each telling him what he already knew. But he liked to hear it anyway.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 49 - Meg

  S he was loving this whole thing. The getaway had been Jenny’s idea, and she did feel a little bad that she’d not found someone, but what could she do?

  Brett was great. She loved the way he tried to take control but ultimately, he was putty in her hands. He would literally do anything she asked of him. That was sooo exciting! She was going to fully use that to her advantage.

  Here they were back at their cabin, and they sat in their three groups.

  “It’s 8 o’clock!” Meg said and put in her email address into the website. Nat followed suit and Jenny did the same. All three had decided to be team leaders.

  “Urm,” Max suddenly said. “I might just do it on my own.”

  “Really?” Meg said, and saw Jenny turn and give him daggers.

  “I just… I dunno, it might be more fun.”

  “Whatever you want,” Keith said quickly. Meg had to suppress a laugh. He wanted to shag her friend something bad!

  Then Meg’s phone beeped, as did Nat’s. Their first clue had arrived.

  “What does it say?” Brett said.

  “I’m not going to say it out loud,” Meg grinned. “Come on!” She grabbed him by the hand.

  “But I thought we couldn’t start until…”

  Meg winked, and he followed. They heard two more phones buzz as the others got their instructions too.

  “We can start now it says!” she showed him the message when they were outside.

  “So why say otherwise before? What’s the clue?”

  “No ideas. Come on,” she said and they jogged out and away from the cabins.

  She showed him the text message.

  Because you’re early and never late, let’s start now! Forget the wait!

  Clue:

  If you go down to the woods today, you’ll be sure of a big surprise!

  Go to the house, find the place for the mouse,

  And be one step closer to your prize

  “Do you think it’s the house in the woods?” Meg said. It sounded a bit too easy and obvious.

  “D’you think that’s the place where the guy was attacked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could be.” And then it sunk in. They were going off into the woods on their own.

  “I’m not sure splitting up was such a great idea now,” Brett said, as the camp disappeared behind them.

  The night pulled them away from anyone else, only the light from Brett’s torch app cut through the darkness for them to see where they were going. All they had was the story from the night before. And the deeper into the dark they got, the more eerie the woods began to feel.

  Brett stopped suddenly, and that made Meg worry.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Don’t you think it’s strange that Keith just appeared again?”

  “He’s lonely, and he’s got the hots for Jenny.”

  “He has?”

  Meg looked at him like he’d just said the earth was flat. “What? Seriously? How could you not have seen that?”

  “Dunno. I thought he was just being friendly.”

  “Men!” she huffed, but then softened.

  “But anyway. We wouldn’t have known where the clue was unless Keith hadn’t told us about the story.”

  “True.”

  “I think he knows more about this than he’s letting on.”

  “What would the point of that be?”

  “God knows, but…”

  “He got to be with Jenny alone though…”

  Brett clicked his fingers. “Shit!”

  “Hold on though,” Meg then said. “Max was meant to be with them. He had nothing to do with him deciding to go along, did he?”

  They started to walk again. “Hmm, I guess not.”

  At one point they stopped and looked around. It was easy to lose your bearings when all that was around you were trees. Each were different and domineering, but you could easily go around in circles. Meg thought more than once that it was all a little Blair Witch.

  “Hold on, what’s that?” Brett said, looking off to the right, and almost back behind them. It looked like a clearing. They may’ve almost walked right past it.

  “It’s worth checking out,” Meg said, and wondered why there was no one else walking around there. If this was a big treasure hunt, then surely there would be a lot of people joining in. Wouldn’t there?

  Then from behind them they heard a shout, but instead of being scared, they instantly thought about losing.

  “Come on!” Brett said and they started to run towards the clearing. Treasure suddenly made you single-minded, Meg thought as she saw the garden, and the house behind.

  They climbed over the gate and into the garden.

  “Wow! Look at this house!” Brett said. “There must be something inside.”

  “Hold on,” Meg said looking around. There in the corner was a stone shed. “Look!” a sign said: Cheese Cottage.

  “Ah-ha! Cheese/mouse!” They tentatively walked over.

  Brett did his best to be the man and look after the lady. She didn’t care what people said about feminism, when she was in a situation like this deep in the dark woods, then she was more than happy for a man to take charge.

  He pushed open the door. There on the table was a mousetrap. It was set, and a key was there in place of cheese.

  Brett slowly reached over. His fingers trembled. He looked like he was about to disarm explosives.

  Suddenly, the mousetrap shot off the table as a can of paint made contact with it. It snapped and shot onto the floor. He turned around to see Meg grinning.

  “You didn’t have to reach onto the trap, you just needed to knock the key off!”

  He bent down and retrieved the key. His ego was a little bruised. He saw the note on the bottom of the trap.

  This is the key to the cottage’s back door;

  Go up the stair
s and you will find more.

  “Oh, I’m liking this!” Brett grinned.

  “Even though you almost lost your fingers.” Brett ignored her, but took her hand. She was more than happy for him to do so.

  They walked out of the shed, and noticed they could no longer hear any voices in the distance. If they were quick, they could go to the house and lock themselves in until they found the next clue. It meant they were surely in the lead.

  There was an old cobbled path, slightly overgrown, that led them to the back door. It connected to a path that ran around the perimeter of the house.

  Brett stepped forward and with a wiggle of the key, slipped it into the lock and turned. It clicked, and he looked back at Meg before walking in.

  The room was a kitchen. It was large and spacious.

  Brett locked the door, and kept the key in the lock. “Okay, I’m going to check out upstairs…” Meg was about to argue, but he held up a finger. She had to admit, she liked it when he was like this. “You stay here. Any problems, open the door and run back to camp.”

  “But…” she began.

  “As soon as I know it’s okay, then I’ll call you up, okay?” She nodded.

  Brett disappeared out of the door. She heard him walk up the stairs.

  She pulled out her phone and put on the torch app, too. She looked around the room at the belongings still there.

  Upstairs, she could hear the floorboards creak. She walked up to a drawer and opened it. Her light flashed back off the shiny surface as she saw it was a photograph. Intrigued, she looked at it.

  There was a woman and a younger guy.

  It was Keith!

  Then she heard the thud from above.

  “Brett?” she called, but heard nothing. Instantly she began to walk towards the door, and with more speed she took to the stairs.

  “Brett? Are you okay?”

  She got to the top, and turned.

  There was blood. A lot of blood. But all too late she saw the smiling face of a small blonde-haired girl. And then she was falling backwards down the stairs.

  She never saw the body of Brett. In fact, she never saw anything ever again. Knocked out at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes were open but blank. She didn’t register the axe that was swung down on the soft tissue of her neck.

  A beautiful, but bloody corpse lay broken.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 50 - Max

  M ax was fed up with being the spare wheel. He was happy for his mates to have found someone, but he just didn’t want to be hanging around with another couple. He knew Jenny had no interest in Keith, but what if she gave in? He didn’t know her well enough to think that she wouldn’t.

  Max liked her. He wasn’t totally into her, but if she was all that was on offer then he was happy. He really thought the night before something might’ve happened. They were drunk and alone together. But no. But hearing these thoughts play over in his mind only made him feel shallow and desperate.

  He hated not having the confidence of Brett, or the boyish good looks of Adam. He wasn’t sure what he had to offer, but he spent so long second guessing, the ship had often sailed before he got around to making a move.

  He wanted to lay blame somewhere. Was it his complete focus on his education? He didn’t want to just be a doctor, he wanted to become a surgeon, and a specialist at that.

  Max knew part of his DNA was to sit back and take stock, rather than grabbing the bull by the horns. He was able to apply this to his education and work ethic, but to him it was because they had defined rules, boundaries, and answers. Relationships were completely different. The variables were just that, constantly changing and hugely affected by a number of things he struggled to understand. It was ironic that he was considered by his peers to be the most intelligent person, however when it came to people, he had a mental block. He often made the wrong conclusions and ended up feeling stupid.

  He looked at the email that had been sent to him.

  Take a boat across the lake, walk up the hill for more;

  Then go to the place that was, to defend against the war!

  His stomach dropped. He knew exactly what that meant. The bunker.

  He hadn’t wanted to admit it earlier but that place had been evil. He’d felt it. It was like it got inside of him and tried to take control.

  And that was in the day.

  Max looked around. Brett and Meg had been the first to run off. Had they already gone to the boats?

  And then he thought about how they needed to add in their details. What if each person logging in had a different clue? But they all eventually led to the same place?

  Max actually thought this was a smart way of doing it. He hated it when he’d done these things as a kid. The first person did the hard work and everyone else just followed not working anything out for themselves.

  He got to the boats and pulled one free. He looked around and noted nobody else was coming that way at all. In fact, the only person that was around was a woman and her son, and they looked at him like he was stealing the boat.

  He pushed off and began to row.

  It wasn’t long before he was in the middle of the lake. He could see the light from the jetty ahead, and when he looked back, the lights from the campsite seemed so far away.

  He always thought himself to be brave. He didn’t tend to be scared of the dark or have ideas of ghosts and monsters, but there out on the black lake he began to think about things lurking below the surface.

  And the thoughts of the bunker waiting for him.

  He got to the shore. His trainers getting wet as he splashed to get out. He pulled the boat out enough so as it didn’t float away and turned to walk deep into the dark to find the path.

  It was all real now.

  Very real.

  He could feel his heart pounding as he jogged up the steps. A lot of that was because it was quite a physical exertion to do it, and then mixed with the sudden adrenaline from nerves and fear, he felt in himself something completely unnatural.

  Then he was at the top, the wooded hill and lake falling off behind him, and he now saw the large expanse of the field. He almost felt a little better.

  Until he saw the bunker.

  He walked towards it, all the time scanning the area expecting the unexpected. More than once he questioned whether or not it was worth it.

  He used the torch app on his phone and stopped at the door to take a deep breath.

  He saw a box that looked like a microscope. It wasn’t there when they’d been there earlier. There was a viewfinder coming out of the top. Sat there in front was a note:

  Close one eye and look inside;

  Press the button and reveal the prize!

  Max looked at the button on the side of the box. It must be a light, he thought.

  The air suddenly became thick. It was worse than earlier. He wanted to get this it over with and move on.

  He leant over and placed his eye over the flat eyepiece. Experience with microscopes told him that you only ever hovered your eye over, and never tried to push your eye against it. It was the first thing anyone did when they first looked through the viewfinder, and then wondered why they only saw eyelashes!

  He placed his finger on the large button. He felt the raised ridges, but never thought for a second to shine his phone light on it. If he had, then he would’ve seen there was a single word.

  He pressed the button.

  There was a bang as the gun from inside the box went off. The bullet shot up through the viewfinder, exploded his eye, and shot out the back of his head.

  His body collapsed. The life stolen like a vacuum. His finger no longer on the button that said: Don’t Press!

  In the darkness, the light of the mobile sent an odd-angled beam towards a corner; the dripping from blood and brain matter was the only sound.

  Little Miss Evil

  Chapter 51 - Nat

  I f she was honest with herself, she didn’t care about the Treasure Hunt.
She couldn’t believe that she’d found Adam, and she’d played over the scene when they’d first met each other so many times that if it was one of her dad’s video cassettes, then it would be worn out.

  They were the last to leave the house. By the time they did, none of the others were around.

  “I’d be happy to just stay here with you,” she said to Adam.

  He grinned, and kissed her on the cheek. “I know, it’s tempting to go back inside and snuggle up naked. Let them all go running around in the dark for treasure!”

  “So why don’t we?” she asked, grabbing his left hand and placing it on one of her boobs.

  “Tempting…”

  “But?”

  “Well don’t take this the wrong way, but I was thinking we might still be able to do that later―”

  “Ahh, so you want your cake and eat it?”

  He nodded. “This might be fun. Why don’t we look at the first clue and if we don’t know what it is, then we’ll just stay here. What d’you think?”

  She gave a mock sad face by pouting her bottom lip and pretending to look sad. “I guess.”

  “Cool.”

  She looked at her email, and pressed the link.

  The clue read:

  The cottage in the village, you must come inside;

  The one where the old couple unfortunately died

  “See, complete mumbo-jumbo,” Nat said dismissively.

  “Hold on,” Adam said in thought. “That’s where one of the stories took place. You know, the old couple.”

  “It’s dark, Adam. We can’t just go into the house of somebody. That’s breaking and entering.”

  “It’s part of the game―”

  “What B&E?”

  “No, I mean, it will have been approved beforehand. A campsite like this wouldn’t be promoting criminal behaviour, would they?”

  Nat knew he was right. It didn’t make sense for them to encourage any illegal activity. They’d be closed down in days.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “How about we go and check it out. If there isn’t a proper way in then we just come back here, okay?”

  Adam nodded. “Yes, I completely agree.”