Where we left off…
I jumped and my foot came away from the door. SLAM! I panicked, grabbed the handle, and pulled as hard as I could, but it was stuck shut. The light on my cell phone dimmed and clicked off. I took a deep breath. As I was telling myself not to panic, I felt a cold hand slip into mine.

I jerked my hand away from the cold touch and stumbled backward. My forearm scraped against something sharp and I felt something wet trickle down my arm. I sat down on the floor and flipped my cell phone back open and held the light to inspect the blood dripping down my arm.

“Did you get hurt too?” a small voice asked.

I turned the cell phone toward the voice and saw a small figure standing near me.

“Are you real?” I whispered.

The voice giggled. “Are you real?” it asked back.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Who are you?” the voice asked back.

“Chloe,” I answered.

“Kiya,” said the voice. “I’m four.”

I’ll be honest, up to that point I was sure I had been talking to a ghost, which is crazy because I don’t believe in the whole ghost thing. I pushed myself up with my good arm and walked toward the figure. I held my cell up to its face and realized that the ghost was actually a four-year-old girl. “What are you doing in here?” I asked.

“I got lost,” she answered. “I thought this was the way back to my class.”

“So you’re the one I have to thank for tipping over the coffee and getting into trouble?” I said it with a lot of tone and I was ready to start yelling when she meekly interrupted.

“Sorry.”

I started thinking about my cousin who is four and how little she is and then I started feeling pretty bad about yelling. “I’m sorry, Kiya,” I said. I had to keep flipping my cell phone open and shut to light her face. “Kiya, did you say you were hurt too?”

“Only when I move my leg.”

I moved my phone down toward her leg. From the light of the phone I could see she had some sort of wire twisted around her ankle. It looked like it was starting to cut into her skin.

“It doesn’t hurt when I’m very still,” she said.

This girl was amazing. Here she was, four years old, trapped by a wire in a dark room, and she wasn’t even crying. She had future detective written all over her. As far as my detective career, this case was turning out to be one of my easiest yet. This big mystery was nothing more than a four-year-old girl. To make things even easier, all I had to do was call upstairs to the church office and help would be on the way. Although after all my years of detective work I should have known better than to be so confident. Something always gets in the way of a simple case. Today, my simple case was complicated by a disheartening message on my cell: NO SERVICE. I’d have to leave Kiya alone to get help.

“Kiya,” I said, “it looks like that wire is really twisted around your leg. I need to get help. You stay here and….”

That’s when brave Kiya started crying.

>>> Read the conclusion of the story in the Summer issue of SHINE brightly!<<<