We looked around the room for signs of Henry, finding nothing. There was more broken furniture in this dark room and a small trail of blood on the floor.

“I really think it’s time we called the police,” Calen said.

He was scared; we all were. What if something awful had happened to Henry? What if he was severely hurt, or even worse—dead?

“I think so too,” I responded.

“No. Henry is fine! Do you realize how much trouble we can get in just for being in this house?” Jacob said, almost angrily.

“Jake, we’ve been running for what seems like forever. Toward something that has Jake! Something that we don’t even know what it is. There’s blood, and we heard Henry scream. Isn’t that enough information for us not to care about the trouble we get in as long as Henry is okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, it is. But…I really think Henry is okay. Let’s just find him and get the hell out of here,” he said as he began moving around the broken furniture to look for clues.

I walked over near the blood trail and began looking for more signs of where it might have taken Henry. Jennifer came over to help me look.

“This is the creepiest thing we’ve ever done Wendy,” she said.

“I know. But Jake has a point. It will take forever for the police to even come in to look. The house is condemned; they’re not going to risk the building collapsing or something because some stupid kids decided to check it out. By the time they even get down here, Henry could be dead. We’re better off just searching by ourselves. We’ll deal with the consequences later,” I replied.

I followed the blood trail through the room. It had begun to become less and less blood as I followed it down to a few drops—when I spotted a small crawlspace.

“You guys! I found something!” I yelled.

Calen came over and started to look inside of it with his flashlight from his phone. I regretted not being smart enough to think we needed real flashlights in this place.

“Uhm…that looks like water down there. A lot of it,” Calen said solemnly.

“Shit,” Jake said under his breath.

“Guess we’re going for a swim,” Calen said.

“That water is filthy, you guys.” Jen piped up. “Plus, we don’t have ANY idea what took Henry. Now we want to follow it into the water?”

“What choice do we have?!” Jake screamed at Jen.

I knew Jake was upset, but it was becoming more and more evident that he was a little more than upset. He was taking his worry out on all of us.

Calen began undressing down to his boxers, and Jake followed behind him. They threw their clothes over some of the furniture. Calen faced us, gave a grim smile, and jumped down into the water. We looked down to see if he was okay; he surfaced and took a breath.

“It’s actually quite refreshing!” he yelled, a big smile coming from his face now. It was nice to see someone have a glimmer of happiness in this hectic adventure that we were dumb enough to partake on.

“Well, I’m going down too. You girls coming?” Jake asked.

“I’d rather not, but we’re all in this together.” Jenny shrugged, taking her clothes off. I did the same.

Jake snuck me a quick kiss, and then we all jumped down one-by-one. It was almost impossible to see, but there was a very dim light a distance away. We headed toward it. We all just wanted to find Henry and get out.