Emily woke up before her alarm went off and knew instantly something
wasn’t quite right in
the house. Bailey, her chocolate-coloured pet Labrador, should have
been there at the
bedroom door demanding food but there was no sound of him. She
decided to get up and
go and see where he was. It felt cold in the hall but she knew she
had left the heating on
last night. As she walked down the stairs she heard a noise in the
kitchen; the strange
feeling that something was wrong was getting stronger. What was going
on? She got to the
bottom of the stairs and opened the door to the living room, which
led to the kitchen. Why
was the door closed? She always left it open. Bailey was nowhere to
be seen and his toys,
which were usually all over the living room floor, were in a neat
pile in the corner next to his
basket. Had they been there when she had gone to bed last night? She
couldn’t remember.
She walked into the kitchen and turned the light on, it didn’t work,
nothing happened. She
stood very still and listened, nothing. There wasn’t a sound. That
was really strange; she
lived in the middle of a busy city, there were always people around.
She woke up to the
sound of traffic, car horns, police cars, her neighbours shouting in
the house next door, how
could there be silence at 8 o’clock on a Friday morning? She went
back into the living room
and turned the TV on, but again nothing happened. She went back into
the kitchen and
looked out of the window; it was a bright clear day. The back door
was shut but when she
tried the handle she realised it was unlocked. She walked out into
the tiny back garden and
opened the back gate; still nothing, not a sound and no sign of
Bailey. She called him but
he didn’t come. She went back into the house and did what she
realised she should have
done as soon as she got up and called her mother. But there was no
answer. She called her
boyfriend but his mobile was switched off and she got the answer
phone message. She tried
a couple of other numbers but with equal success. She sat down on the
sofa and thought
about what she could do. She couldn’t decide if she should stay at
home or go out and find
someone. Just as she decided the best thing would be to stay at home
and wait, there was
a loud banging on the front door. She jumped up and ran to the door.
‘Who is it?’ she
shouted through the door. ‘It’s me,’ came the reply. But she had no
idea who ‘me’ was. She
didn’t want to open the door until she was sure she knew who it was,
not with all the other
strange things that were happening this morning, and she didn’t want
to shout through the
thick front door, so she walked back into the living room and tried
to look through the front
window to see who was standing at the front door. It was a man but
she couldn’t make out
who he was; he didn’t look familiar. He was tall and was wearing a
big coat with a hood over
his head. Just as she was thinking of running out the back door she
saw that the man had
Bailey with him, and Bailey seemed quite happy, which meant that the
man had to be
someone he knew and liked; he would have been barking otherwise. She
still wasn’t taking
any chances though; she put the safety latch on the door and opened
it just enough to see
who was there. She was instantly relieved; it was her brother, who
lived just a few streets
away. She opened the door all the way and let him in. As he walked
through the door he
was almost knocked over by Bailey jumping up and looking more pleased
than ever to see
her. ‘So what’s going on?’ she asked her brother. He looked at her as
if she was stupid.
‘Haven’t you heard?
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