After following the vision of Alice a little way down the track, it vanished just in time for me to see that she had entered the forest. The edge of the woods were quiet, desolate, almost seeming as if they were devoid of life. I hadn’t heard her voice, but I knew Alice had christened this place as the Lonely Forest.

Reasoning with a child’s logic seemed easy right then, so simple. I carried on walking into the forest that, even on immediate inspection, seemed unusually quiet. I’d had no visions, heard no past conversations, but instead picked up on the energies left behind. It led me along a barely visible trail of scrub and leaves that wound through the trees like the giant serpents body resting in the shade. I had followed the energies until I was deep into the forest and it seemed my reward for the travel was seeing another vision of Alice, another piece of the puzzle. She was alone, amazement in her eyes as she gazed around her surroundings, her eyes acting as projectors that screened their own story over the script. I could see she was amazed by what she saw, her tiny imagination conjuring scenes, characters and creatures, ideas she could use, places she could disappear into that no one else knew about. I watched her pace through the leaves and twigs on the ground, her head turning from side to side almost like the needle of a Geiger counter. A pen in the chest pocket of her jumper, that same story book in her hand that never seemed to leave her side, I didn’t need anyone to tell me that was her real friend, what seemed like her only friend. I saw a flash of light in our direction, catching her eyes as well, she looked over and through the trees to see the orange reflection of something glinting through the forest. She’d walked over and straight to the source of the unusual light. Even when she looked down at it, even I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. What looked like polarized orange glass and surrounded by white plastic, mostly buried in the ground. I watched as she got onto her knees and began scratching away the surrounding soil from the thing in the ground. She needn’t take the effort to completely discover the thing to see what it was. Scratched and dirty but completely recognisable even when still half buried. An astronauts helmet sat half in the ground like a partially buried ostrich egg, Alice eyes had widened just as mine had at the sight of it. How or from where it had come from I didn’t know, I wasn’t even completely sure at what time the event had happened in relation to everything else I had seen so far, part of me was even beginning to wonder if all of this was even in the same time line at all. I had only my instincts and logic to go on in that respect.
The vision ended before I heard voices come through to me, Alice talking to her mother.
“Mommy?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever seen an astronaut in the forest?”
There was a brief pause before Katelyn’s reply.
“An astronaut? No, why would I see an astronaut in the forest?”
“I found his helmet, I think he’s still out there.”
There was another pause, Katelyn seeming uneasy, unsure about it all.
“Right, you just carry on with your stories.”
Had this been the start of what had driven them all mad, or was it something else, something even I couldn’t yet see. She had somehow triggered something, set things in motion, and it had got out, into the forest, into the air, into the minds of her family, and what ever it was, it was still here, somewhere.
I’d headed back through the Lonely Forest roughly the same way I had entered. I came back out by the house again, standing on the track between the old Klaver house and the Cleaves’ house, I gazed further down the track and toward the dam crossing towering above the water reserve below. Alice had been that way, I hadn’t seen anything, but I could sense it. I took my first steps over the dam, faded railings on either side, stone cobbles underfoot, a light breeze in the air, the sun on the back of my neck. The vast natural reserve of water sat twenty or thirty feet below on my right side and formed a vast flowing river several hundred feet below on my left. From the top, I could see the hydro-electric station down there at the bottom controlling the water flow. It had obviously been what had given them electricity. They quite obviously hadn’t been able to make much use of any of it though, I hadn’t even seen a phone or a television since I had arrived in Green Ridge.

I had reached about half way across the dam when another vision came to me. Alice was ahead of me, hands empty and running frantically for the far side of the dam. Hearing footsteps behind me, I saw Sid running after her, equally as frantic, his face wrought with rage, his fists balled. Katelyn followed just behind him, her face just the same, her eyes cold like a winters night, the two of them were in pursuit alright. Then just a few moments later, Sinead jogged along as well but it didn’t seem like they knew she was following. Her face still red, her hands covered in dry blood. It had obviously been a short time after she had killed Oliver in the church, whether she was trying to catch her sister and nephew, or Just Alice, I couldn’t tell. The look on her face as she past me told me all I needed to know, she was more than ready to make another killing, and probably another after that. They had feared Alice would find the astronaut before any of them, they intended to stop her, by any means. They disappeared over to the other side as I carried on, another vision coming to me. Alice walked over on her own this time, her book tucked under her arm, relaxed, at ease before stopping and looking behind her vigilantly before carrying on. I could see she knew she wasn’t supposed to be venturing over to this side, but she was quite the little adventurer, I almost envied her. I had carried on until I was well beyond the halfway point when I saw yet another vision, Alice again, but this time carrying homely possessions with her. Still going at a leisurely pace, she had a teddy bear hanging in one hand, then bedsheets and a pillow slung under the other. Where was she taking all this stuff? What was it for? It was obvious she had been this way on numerous occasions despite her mother warning her away. As far as I knew, there was the old train line, the mine and a large patch of forest on the other side, so I’d have to let Alice show me where she was going with it all. I took several steps more before Katelyn’s voice came through.
“Sid, I want to know where Alice keeps disappearing to all day. She missed diner again last night.”
“Well what do you want me to do?”
“Follow her, I want to know where she’s been going.”
“If you say so.”
She had obviously been going somewhere, maybe somewhere hidden, somewhere she hadn’t mentioned in her letter, somewhere even the rest of the family didn’t know about. It was my job to find out where that somewhere was, to find out what had happened to the Cleaves family.
Once I had reached the other side of the dam, I could see the entrance to the mine further ahead. The old rail line running across it, the means by which the mined ore would have once been carried away to parts unknown. I had been about fifteen or twenty feet from the rail line when I saw a vision of Sid running ahead of me, he’d obviously left his mother behind in order to see which way Alice had gone. He strode off in front as he approached the line. I almost felt like shouting something as an ore carriage came rolling down the track from the right. I couldn’t see anyone at the controls but it had gained a fair speed nonetheless. Sid had gone straight onto the track completely unaware of the carriage and his impending doom. He’d looked, but just a split second too late. The carriage ploughed straight into him with unstoppable force before he simply vanished into a red mist. A severed forearm came spinning to the ground before a shredded and bloodied leg flopped and rolled to a stop further up the track. Straight afterwards the carriage came to a grinding stop on the tracks, the old man Orson peering out from the carriage. He got out to inspect the front of the carriage as I followed him. He was blank, unreadable, his eyes steely and cold as he looked down at the mashed remains of his grandson scattered about the place. The impact had sent blood absolutely everywhere, more than what I had initially seen. The front of the cart peppered with shattered teeth and hair, a bone fragment glinted white in a red purple mush of brain matter running down the front. Sid’s body had been partially pulled underneath the steel wheels of the carriage before being shredded like beef mince. Remains of the kid lay strewn about the place as if a whirlwind had carried pieces of him off far and wide. Orson just stood there emotionless, checking for movement before turning and heading into the mine entrance.
“Alice! Alice!” I heard him call out before the vision ended.
He’d sounded extremely calm with all things considered, no malice in his voice, no anger to turn Alice away from him. He’d just murdered the son of his daughter, and he’d just walked off indifferent to it all. The forces at work here were bending the family, turning them against Alice, and against themselves. I’d followed where I’d seen Orson enter the mine, the murderous saga of the Cleaves family continued. The interior was dark but lit with flickering lead lamps strung up along the ceiling like I’d seen in movies. The air inside smelled odd but air was moving through the place as it danced through my hair and nipped at my ears. I could see the place had been unused for a while, but aside from that, it was no modern mine. The place had to be at least a hundred years old, at least. Making my way further down the main entry shaft I spotted the characteristic rust red of the archaic steel timbering supporting the mine. Looking at the line of faint orange lights along the ceiling, it looked as though it went on and into the centre of the earth. I could see two figures under the lights ahead of me, one far smaller than the other, one with a flat top hat on. Alice had stood face to face with her grandfather, wary of him, she stayed a good five or six feet away from him.
“Alice you don’t understand, I’m trying to help you.” Orson pleaded.
“You know I can’t trust you Granddad, soon you’ll be like Mom and Sid and Aunt Sinead.”
Orson mentioned nothing of what had just happened with Sid outside.
“I’m okay for the moment, look, I’ve seen the astronaut as well. You need to reach the ancient house in the Old Forest, get there before the rest of them.”
“How do I get there from here though?”
“Keep going down the shaft, there’s an elevator at the end, it’ll take you down, keep going straight and you exit the mine just passed the hydro-station. Now go!”
“But what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll stay here and distract whoever comes through next.”
Alice looked to him once more before running off and deeper into the mine. I’d taken several steps in the same direction before I saw the figure of Orson standing in the middle of the shaft looking back up at the portal. Running footsteps came from behind, I turned just to see Katelyn picking up a pickaxe that had been resting against the wall before carrying on toward her father.
“What have you done? Why didn’t you stop her?” She shouted.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t how it should have ended.”
“You let her go you fool!” She shouted as she raised the pickaxe in mid stride.
The closer Katelyn got to Orson, the more hysterical she became until she burst out on a wild scream like a banshee rushing down the tunnel. Orson just stood there motionless as his daughter raised the pickaxe further and took one last step before swinging. Grunting from the bottom of her chest, Katelyn swung the pickax around in a wide sweeping motion before letting the weight of it carry itself into the side of Orson’s head. A quick splash of blood erupted from the impact before the old man fell back to the ground, the axe falling away as he went and pulled the side of his head open with it. He landed with a soft thud before the handle hit the ground, heels shaking involuntarily on the stone beneath, fingers clenching, his throat gargling in the last dying moments. Katelyn stood there panting in a fury before another set of footsteps came running down the tunnel. Sinead gained on her sister before jumping and taking her straight off her feet. I watched as the two of them wrestled one another, they’d probably done it plenty of times during their childhood, but this time it was real, permanent. Katelyn tried to resist but the furious strength of her sister soon overpowered her before she found herself lock to the ground by her sisters grasp. Sinead pulled her arm back, her fist balled, no remorse in her eyes, no fear, no limits. She punched Katelyn straight in the face, once, twice, three times before she lay flat on the ground. I watched as the series of macabre events unfolded in front of me, Sinead now climbing to her feet, raising one foot above Katelyn’s head, her face twisted with unrepenting rage. The impact from the sole of her shoe sent a wet crack through the air before Katelyn’s body convulsed and twisted as if subjected to an electrical current. But Sinead went at it again, then again until her sisters head had been smashed like a water melon across the floor of the mine. After it was done, I watched her as she looked further down the mine shaft in the direction that Alice had ran in. An inhuman, animalistic look in her eyes, it wasn’t enough until she found the astronaut for herself. The vision finished before I headed further into the silent mine where Alice had gone.

After witnessing what I had just seen, I half wondered if something would emerge from the darkness where the lights couldn’t reach, a monster in human form. But there was no one here, just like the rest of Green Ridge, it was just me and the darkness, the madness that had driven everyone apart. Further down the mine, I could see the ore chute over on the right hand side before the tunnel narrowed down ahead. Carrying on into the narrow section, the steel timbering ended and the tunnel tapered down. I could see what looked like stone gobbing stacked up on one side that carried on as far as I could see. It had been neatly stacked, and it’d been there for a long time, longer than Alice, longer than me or Orson. The tunnel twisted through a left then right turn before I felt something beneath my feet. The ground shifted, rocks suddenly moving under me before the sound of cracking stone went through the air. The ground beneath me suddenly gave way completely before I went tumbling through and down into the void beneath.
I awoke in a strange land, the air murky, the grass beneath my feet swaying gently. There were several trees scattered about, large boulders piled atop one another, then, oddly enough, bubbles rising from the ground and up into the vast murky space above me. It was at that point I suddenly realised I was under water, but somehow still breathing, and walking on the ground as if on dry land. Before I could take in any more of my surroundings, a massive, gargantuan groan went through the water. The sound became deep enough I could feel it in my chest, through the floor and my feet. There was something big out there in the watery expanse somewhere, bigger than me, bigger than what I could imagine, the Kraken living in the centre of the earth, the consumer of drowned wanderers. There was a long line of broken rocks along my right hand side which I assumed was a collapsed dry stone wall. It trailed off into the distance, a wire fence just in front of it as if to keep me from wandering too far. The groan came out of nowhere again, this time louder, more thunderous than before. Looking to my left where I thought the sound was emanating from, I caught sight of something rising through the water from the watery horizon in the distance. Two massive tentacles rose up from the ground, climbing slowly but constantly, they soon rose as high as a sky scraper. Waving gently in the water, they towered above me, the sheer scale of them dwarfing everything else. I saw the suction rings lining one side of each one, some kind of octopus out there somewhere. I looked around me once again at the odd landscape I appeared to be on. It looked like dry land, and perfectly preserved, yet undeniably underwater. Had the Kraken somehow pulled all of this down here from the land? Reaching up from the depths and pulling things down here like the boogieman of the deep? Looking again into the distance, I could see the huge tentacles, but not the actual creature itself, that part was left to my own imagination. Turning I looked to see what lay behind me when a torn off sheaf of paper drifted gently in front of me, I’d seen these bits of paper before, and looking and the handwriting on it, I’d seen that handwriting as well.

The Monster Of The Deep
There was a giant monster that lived at the bottom of the ocean. It was thousands of years old, so old that no one ever knew it even existed. Sometimes in the olden days it would reach its huge tentacles up to the surface and pull a ship down under water before eating the crew. The monster lived under the water for thousands of years and saw the civilizations of humanity rise and fall. But it was when the humans invented guns and bombs that they started to annoy the monster because of all the noise they made when fired. The monster watched as the humans fought two wars against each other using their guns before they started to make really big bombs that made lots of noise. The sound of all the bombs being dropped gave the monster a headache and put it in a really bad mood. The monster feared one of the bombs would fall into the ocean and kill it so it decided to try and stop the bombs first. It reached its massive arms up and out of the water and started pulling everything down and into the sea. Clearing seaside towns and pulling them under water, it started reaching further inland and eventually pulled all the cities underwater until all the noisy humans were gone and the monster could live in peace again until another civilization came up.

I awoke again back in the narrow tunnel, the stone gobbing still stacked up down one side just as it had been before I had been taken by Alice’s imaginings. The piece of torn off paper still in my hands in spite of me not having any memory of picking it up here in the mine. Folding the piece up and putting it in my pocket, I’d decided there was only one possible explanation as to how this could be happening. By now, it was no secret to me that Alice’s surroundings had inspired her imagination. She’d left her stories scattered around in the locations that had inspired her to write them, but I had been afforded the ability of actually seeing what she saw in her imagination. The visions from her stories had been as clear as day to me, clearer than any dream, in more detail, more real than any dream I’d ever known. Which meant only one thing, she, somehow had superimposed her imagination on the real and physical world. Her imagination had permeated the environment around her and left pieces of it for me to see. I’d no idea if it had been something she’d done intentionally, though I doubted it since she hadn’t mentioned anything about her having psychic abilities in her letter to me. She was a brilliant child, with a brilliant and vibrant imagination, far beyond what I’d ever imagined. But she, and the rest of the Cleaves family had still vanished, that hadn’t changed.
As Orson had instructed Alice, I carried on down the corridor until the tight and winding tunnel and stacks of gobbing gave way to an opening with an elevator at the back. Just as the old man had said in the vision, it ran down to a lower area in the mine. I pulled open the flaking yellow lattice forming the elevators door then ground it shut behind me before reaching for the simple down switch. The elevator jolted to life slowly at first, then picked up momentum as it rumbled down the shaft and into the bowels of the mine. The journey down hadn’t taken particularly long. Nearing the bottom, I saw Alice standing next to me in the crimson light. Her expression blank, hands down at her side, maybe it had all been too much for her to take in. By the time I reached the bottom, the apparition had long since disappeared. Stepping out, my surroundings hadn’t differed that much from above aside from the air temperature being several degrees higher until a cool wind came whistling through the mine. Peering further into the shaft ahead of me, I saw the glare of what I thought was daylight at the end, just as Orson had said. I walked on further, step by step getting closer to the sunlit portal at the end until the sound of the birds outside finally reached my ears. The portal of the mine brought me outside just where Orson had said. I was now on the low side of the dam just past the hydro-station, in front of me, the forest that Alice had called the Ancient Forest. I left the claustrophobic confines of the mine favoring for the track leading to the leafy canopy of the Ancient Forest instead. Alice had come this way, a brief vision moments later confirmed that. I saw Alice ahead of me, a pillow under one arm, bed sheets folded under the other. Her tiny body waddled along with the bulk like an overweight kid carrying too much fat. She’d wandered into the forest before the vision ended, but this was at some different point in time, she wasn’t being chased, I had to assume this had taken place before the rest of them had descended into madness. I was just at the forest edge before I saw a vision of Sinead, still in pursuit, barely dried blood on her face. Her fists were still balled and a maniacally angry expression written on her face said it all. Just like Alice, she went forward and into the forest before the vision ended.

I’d carried on and into the forest until the track that had led me in became indistinguishable from the forest floor. Unlike the other forested areas I’d visited already, an abundance of birds sang in the Ancient Forest. Their calls filling the air, a friendly song to let me know I wasn’t alone. I’d carried on deeper into the forest, I’d based my route purely on instinct as I had done before. I went on for several minutes until I saw Alice there ahead of me. Empty handed this time, she walked along until she took a sideways glance through the forest and stopped in her tracks. Looking in the same direction, I saw that familiar and distinctly unnatural shape causing a glare through the forest. She went for it without hesitation this time, she’d done it once and she’d do it again. It was a NASA control bank, the exact same looking one that I’d seen in an earlier vision, the first time that I saw the landing module. Following Alice, getting closer, it had the same monitor, the same controls, that same red button right in the middle. I watched as Alice just went right up and pressed the red button as if she’d done it hundreds of times before. Yet when the landing module came hurtling overhead, it still surprised her just as it had done the first time round. I actually saw it as it approached, coming from the direction that I’d just come from, it flew directly overhead and deeper into the forest, but this time, without a crash landing. Alice suddenly looked around, peering into the direction the module had gone before I did the same, to also see what she was seeing. The astronaut, just stood there in the middle of the forest. It were as though his eyes were watching both of us through the impenetrable iridium glare of his visor. He stood there motionless for just a second or so before turning and taking off and into the forest in the same direction the module had gone. I stood there and watched as Alice went off at top speed after him before the vision ended. Where was the astronaut trying to lead her? Where had the landing module gone? At that point I couldn’t answer them, I wasn’t sure if anyone could. I decided to take off in the same direction, it seemed like the only thing that might possibly lead me to some answer as to what on earth had been going on here at Green Ridge.

Following in Alice’s footsteps, I saw the trees of the Ancient Forest began to thin out just a little the further I got in. Nevertheless, the foliage above me was still thick enough to form a canopy, thick enough to blot out the sky above and cast down leafy shadows around me. It came to me again while walking through a slight opening in the woods, an imagining, or a memory, I wasn’t sure, but Alice had been the point of origin of it. I couldn’t see it, but rather I was sensing it from my surroundings. Sinead had still been pursuing Alice through the forest, but upon entering the forest, something had begun its pursuit of her. There was a spirit residing in the forest, a sentinel of sorts that waited for misbehaving spirits to enter its forest. The spirit would pursue its target, then exact revenge on its chosen subject. Another vision began a few moments later, Sinead was hurtling through the forest just ahead of me, twisting and turning, she spun around then ran back in the direction I had just approached from. The look on her face told me she was confused, lost and questioning what she was even doing. Her arms flailed about at either side of her as she moved, running along like a lost child in the forest of doom. I stopped as she came running back past me as if to head back toward the entrance of the woods. But as I watched her, I soon realised there were other forces at work here. By each step she took, she became became slower and slower as if some outside force was casting some kind of lethargic power over her. She was slowed down almost to the point of completely stopping before something emerged from the tress ahead of me. The vengeful spirit emerged from the trees in all its terrifying form and headed for Sinead. Standing about eight feet tall, the spirit held a remarkable similarity to the mythological Lich of various fantasy role playing games. It looked old and archaic, tattered robes hung from its skeletal frame and its face somewhere in between flesh and bone. In one hand it clutched a monstrous scythe that must have been in excess of six feet long with a savage looking crescent shaped blade at one end. Sinead had come to a complete stop as the vengeful Lich made its terrifying approach to its target. Bringing the blade up as it clutched it in both bony hands, it swung the blade down and sliced Sinead in two in one fell stroke. Her torso went flying up and off to one side with a wild splash of blood and viscera as the hips and legs fell to the ground. Her digestive tract trailed behind the severed torso like a roll of toilet paper thrown through the air. Blood and gruel flying through the air behind her, dashing the trees as if like something from a horror movie. Life quickly went from the body after landing back on the ground before the vengeful Lich turned and the vision ended. Walking past and carrying on in the direction Alice had gone, I carefully made my way past the gutted ruins of Sinead’s body. Lying on her back, her face slashed with blood, her arms flailed at either side, her skin a ghostly, almost inhuman pale color. Her face cold and still, her expression twisted but with eyes wide open, she’d known she’d had a quick but messy death.

Leaving the haunting location of Sinead’s grizzly death, I carried on in the direction where I’d seen Alice go. Further into the forest, and the density of the trees began to thicken once again and blocking my view of what was afar. But it hadn’t been that much further when I saw it, partially blocked by the trees ahead of me, but definitely there in the middle of the forest. A structure, grey and unnatural, straight lines and square edges, a building, and by the looks of the stone built exterior, an old one. The trees thinned out a little the closer I got affording me a better view of what I was looking at. It could only have been what Orson had described as the Ancient House to Alice. A grey stone exterior stained with streaks of black, Gothic in design, arched doorways and no windows. I could only assume this had been where Alice had been visiting, where she’d been bringing her various things to that I’d seen her carrying. Getting just a little closer, another vision came to me. Alice was ahead of me, mere metres away from the doorway into the Ancient House, a rustling of leaves behind me, Sid had followed her here. Hiding behind a tree, he peered around just to catch sight of her entering the house before taking off and pursuing her inside. Following the vision of Sid, I went right behind him as he entered the seemingly hallowed interior of the house. The inside of the house was bare, grey and impersonal, it was all too obvious no one had lived her in a very long time. I heard footsteps descending steps somewhere but I wasn’t sure of exactly they were coming from. Tattered chairs and a broken side table sat in the first room Sid peered into, there was dust and a lot of cobwebs in the corners, I felt like the first person to have entered in an age. I followed Sid as he walked back down the corridor to find some old looking stone steps that led down to some lower level. At the bottom, I found myself looking at an ancient looking room like something from mythology. The walls on either side were lined with arched alcoves built into them, candles lit in several of them providing light, the place reminded me of the Dark Priest in Alice’s story. There was a book case at the far end that covered the entire rear wall, in front of it some kind of stone dial built into the floor. It looked about five or six feet in diameter with sections in it that looked as though they could be moved, there were various insignia carved into the sections but none of them were any symbols that I had ever seen. I saw looking around the room, he was perplexed, gazing from one side to the other then back again.
“Where the hell is she?” I heard him mutter under his breath.
Alice’s absence was all to obvious, I was sure it must have been her that I heard descending the steps, but where had she vanished to? Sid disappeared as the vision ended, voices coming to me next.
“Mom.” I heard Sid say.
“I followed Alice, she went beyond the dam, into some old looking forest where she found some ancient house in the middle of the woods.”
“Well, where is she then?” Katelyn replied.
“I dunno’, I saw her enter, I checked the whole house, upstairs and everything, then I found this really old room downstairs, but I still couldn’t find her. I don’t know where she went.”
“Alright, you remember how to get back there? I’m getting your father and Aunt Sinead, we’re going to go and find her, I don’t like the sound of this.”
So Alice had actually gone to a place even the rest of her family hadn’t known. Trust a child’s natural inquisitive nature to find something the grown-ups couldn’t. I could sense Alice near me, it wasn’t a vision, but just a sense. I was being drawn toward the dial in the centre of the room, Alice had stood in the centre of the dial. Her body weight had activated something, a mechanism. I tried doing the same, but to no avail, I guessed I was too heavy. But there were things lying around in the room that could replicate her approximate weight. The book shelf at the back was still filled with archaic volumes, the floor still littered with crumbled bits of rock the house appeared to be constructed from. Picking up some of the larger chunks, I started placing them in the centre of the dial before pulling a couple of the volumes from the bookshelf and placing them on top. Soon enough the weight on the dial was just enough that the centre of it clicked down and set another mechanism in motion. The book case at the back clicked as if unlocking, a section of it the size of a door now protruded as if waiting to be opened. I got my fingers around the edges of it before beginning to pull it open to reveal what lay behind it. Opening it, a sterile white light hit my eyes and cast a brilliant light into the ancient room behind me. By the time I had it open enough to get through, I’d finally managed to focus on what was beyond the door. Another room, a secret room, bathed in a clinical white light and a large white orb floating in the centre. Then I realised, the orb was the landing module, or just a landing module. Its surface a glossy white, faultless, clean with an almost polished looking finish to it. I stepped into the secret room as the the module clicked, then a door on the front of it opened as if to invite me inside. The interior of the module had a dual porthole on the other side, padded all over except for a small control terminal. There was nothing else in the room for me to investigate, it was bare. Had Alice discovered another module as well? It was the only possible explanation as to where she had gone. And now another one waited for me, waiting to take me to parts unknown. I’d just gone in and entered the module before the door closed softly behind me. I was on foreign ground now, in a machine I knew nothing about, destined for a place I couldn’t even imagine. Within mere moments of the door closing, the module began lifting, first just a few feet, then way up into the sky. I ascended up above the Ancient House, then high enough I could see the tree tops of the Ancient Forest. Then within seconds I was high enough I could see the dam and the water reserve, then the trees of the Lonely Forest and the Cleaves’ house before the whole of Green Ridge began receding away from me until it became a speck on the mid west of America. The sky on the outside of the module quickly grew darker until the earth itself became a little white and blue marble vanishing into the vast expanse of space. Suddenly the module then entered some kind of warp drive, accelerating me to what I assumed was faster than light speed. It stayed in that state for several seconds before suddenly jumping back out from light speed and back to sub light velocity. I stared out the porthole at something I couldn’t put a name to. A vast expanse of space lay out and beyond the module, colorful nebula stretched across the astral vista. Some kind of massive being floated in the void, an incomprehensibly large entity with no form, it was nothing, and it was everything. Looking around outside the module, I saw other modules just like the one I was in. They sat there floating in the void, all of them facing the cosmic being as it began creating new worlds, new universes. I wondered who else was in the other modules, Alice had to have been in one of them, but I had no way of reaching her. The entity was the Star Maker, creating universes, galactic clusters, galaxies, star systems and the worlds within those systems. The Star Maker was the supreme being that created universes, created dimensions, it had no beginning, had no ending, it was eternal. I had stared out in awe at the supreme cosmic being until something suddenly blocked my view, a piece of paper, floating through the air in front of me, I’d seen that paper before, and the writing on it.

The Star Maker
The Star Maker was an enormous and unknowable creature that had created our world and all the space around it. It had the power to create universes and to create life to put in the worlds it had made. Life on earth was one of the Star Makers experiments and when it saw some of the promise that some of the humans began to show, it decided to try and uplift them. The Star Maker sent astronauts down to Earth to see if they could find any humans that were ready to be uplifted and know the truth. But the astronauts soon learnt that the humans had also become a nasty and destructive race of people and only certain people could become astronauts. The astronauts scoured the earth in secrecy looking for people that would follow them into space where they would meet the Star Maker and know the truth of the universe before being made into astronauts. Then the people that had been made into astronauts would then go back to earth to look for more people to bring back with them.

Suddenly I was back in the ancient room again, the secret doorway in the bookcase already unlocked, but not yet opened. I’d seen this room before, I’d been here before, but it was as if not in the same time. I knew this story, and it was Alice’s as much as it was mine, but it wasn’t finished, not just yet. Opening the doorway in the bookcase, I could see the light on the other side wasn’t the same clinical white light I’d seen in the vision, but a dim, almost candle like light with a very slight flicker. I pulled the old door open eager to see what I would find on the other side this time around, certainly not a landing module as before, but I was near. I could feel it, my case here in Green Ridge was drawing to a close, and I still had no idea how it would end. The room on the other side was archaic and cryptic, candle lit and cobwebbed, for decades no one had been here until more recently. There were a couple of small tables around the room, chairs and a stacks of books laying around. Then looking round to the far left of the room, there she was. A make shift bed set up, the sheets I’d seen her carrying in the visions now on the bed, the same teddy bear I’d seen slung under her arm sat beside her. She sat there head down and a pen in one hand as she wrote in her story book I’d seen so many parts of. I looked at her for a few moments in silence, she seemed so peaceful, so happy, nothing but her and her imagination. She turned her head away from her paper and looked to me after finally noticing my presence. Her face surprised, slightly perplexed as she stood up and turned to me.
“You did it kid.” I said to her.
“You found the astronaut?”
She kept looking at me, still surprised to see me, or that anyone had actually found her.
“Tobias Rodino? Is it really you?” Her tiny voice asked.
“Yeah it’s me, it’s alright, it’s over kid.”
“But how? Did I make you real?”
“I guess so.”

Alice had been sat on her makeshift bed down in the secret room in the ancient house. She’d been there for a while now, her latest story now coming to a close, she’d filled many of the pages of her story book by now. Though she was sure no one knew where she was, she’d only been half surprised when she heard action at the secret door way. Sid, her brother had come straight in, the sound of her mother, father and aunt behind him out in the ancient room. Sid stared at her with a mock smile as he approached before looking down on her.
“Alice what the hell are you doing out here? Mom’s pissed with you.”
She looked up at him after putting her pen down.
“Leave me alone Sid, I’m finishing my story.”
He screwed his face up before snatching the story book from her.
“Pfft stupid stories.”
“Give it back!” She yelled as he walked back out with her story.
“Hey Mom! I found Alice!”
Alice got up to go after her brother, some of the stone tiles on the floor rumbling and rocking under her feet as she went, they’d been getting looser in the last few days. As soon as Alice reached the door way, her mother stood there, a torch shining in her face.
“Alice what’re you doing out here? And on your own!”
“I’ve been working on my story, has it really been that long?”
Sinead stood there looking around the room.
“She’s been hiding out here in some shitty old house? You’ve really got yourself a fucked up kid Katelyn.”
Sid chuckled slightly as he looked down at Alice’s story, she felt horrified at what was going on. She’d ventured all the way out there to get away from them all, now they’d invaded her place, her private and peaceful sanctum. And now they stood there ridiculing her, using swear words and hurtful meanings against her.
“The astronaut in the forest?” Sid yelled out as he read the papers.
“The adventures of Tobias Rodino, supernatural detective.” He said in a mock dramatic voice.
Flicking through the papers a little more, he started screwing his face up.
“Hold on, what the hell? We’re in her damn story, she’s written a story where we all die!”
“For gods sake Alice.” Her mother called out as Sinead snatched the story from Sid.
“Gimme’ that.”
Her aunt stood there looking at the papers as Sid pointed bits of it out to her.
“Look there, Grandad Orson kills me!”
“Just…” Sinead said as she slapped Sid’s hand away.
“Yeah and we’re all chasing some fuckin’ astronaut through a forest or something.”
Alice just stood there still horrified at this awful invasion. This couldn’t be, in a way, she wished the events in her story could have been real, then they’d all leave her alone. Stepping back into the room and away from the rest of them, she went back and stood over the wobbly tiles in the centre of the room.
“Don’t back away from me Alice!” Her mother shouted.
“It’s dangerous you being out here on your own, you should know better!”
She stepped backwards, over one wobbly tile to the next before hearing cracking from somewhere below. The tiles seemed looser somehow, unless it was her imagination several of them seemed pretty loose now.
“Alice the floor! It’s not safe!” Her mother shouted out.
Then with that, a large section of the floor suddenly gave out beneath her. Looking to her feet before seeing a black abyss below her, she reached out for her mother before the hole swallowed her up like the maw of some hungry beast. She could only just hear them all shouting over the sound of falling and breaking stone as she disappeared out of sight. As she fell, the hole above her receded away from her as she fell through the empty void of black before she suddenly hit the ground way below. The last thing she remembered was hurting all over, not being able to move and hearing the sound of gently flowing water nearby. The screaming voices of her family above her slowly disappeared into the blackness as she finally found peace.

“Well what now?” Alice had asked me.
“You’ve finished it kid, it’s up to you.”
“But I was going to write another story about you.”
“I know you were, but my story’s done, and it’s a good story.”
“So what happens now?” She’d asked me expectedly.
“Another story kid, what else?”

The End