Mirror mirror on the wall will Lilia find them after all? Can she save her precious Millie, or will the fair maiden be a stain on the wall. Hurry, Lilia, run as fast as you can. Her time ticks short, shorter than those that have gone before. 

+++++

At a quarter after ten, Storm, Lyliana, and I are out on our way for the mountains behind the home. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't even the slightest bit scared of going out. I mean we had no clue what awaited us once we were there. 

Would the girls actually be there? Was Ollie correct about all this? If so were the girls dead? My head spun with possibilities of what could await us. 

"So who do you think did all this?" Storm struck up a conversation in a hushed tone, as if the murderers could here us. 

Murderers? Is that really how I thought of them now. Like coldblooded murderers? Maybe they had a very reasonable explanation for why they were doing this to these girls. 

Yeah right, Lilia, like some psychopath has a good reason for kidnapping and killing teenage orphans. I was being stupid and I knew it. 

"Lilia!" Lyliana snapped her fingers in front of my face.

"Sorry what?" I stopped walking and turned to look at the pair of girls.

Lyliana laughed slightly. "Storm was asking you a question."

I focused my attention to the other girl. "I'm sorry. What is it?"

"I asked if you were paying attention to the location on the GPS, but you obviously weren't and now we're way off coarse." Storm restated, holding up her phone to show how off we actually were.

"Sorry again." I sighed. "I was thinking about who could do this." I had technically been thinking about that I just didn't know I had been for that long a time. 

We were about twenty minutes off coarse in the opposite direction. 

Lyliana groaned. "Come on before my feet fall off." 

+++++

Two hours later we had finally come to our destination. A widemouthed cave that got smaller as you went in. It was incredibly dark in there and all our phones had died an hour ago. 

Lyliana dug around in her backpack for a minute before producing a thick red marker and a flashlight. With the marker, Lyliana drew an X on the lip of the cave; a reminder that we had been here. She then switched on the flashlight and shone the beam into the cave. 

"Hello!" Storm called out loudly. 

There was no answer. 

"Should we go in?" Lyliana questioned, stepping a little closer.

I took the flashlight from her then stepped inside. "We came all this way to find out."

The first thing that hit me was the smell. The smell of what could have only been rotting flesh. 

Storm squealed as she stepped on something. "That felt squishy." 

Lyliana pulled out another flashlight and switched it on. "Oh my God!" 

My stomach dropped as my eyes landed on the slowly decaying corpse of none other than Anna Cathcart, one of the first girls to go missing.

"Oh God!" Storn screamed, inching away from the poor girl. "I can't believe I just stepped on a dead body." 

"Keep your voice down, S, someone could be here." Lyliana chided. 

"Like the killer." I muttered, moving farther into the cave.

Blood became more frequent on the cave walls and floor as I went farther. Lyliana wasn't far behind me, but Storm had gone outside to be look out after claiming she was going to be sick. 

Bodies of the other poor girls laid around some sitting, some laying, and some missing pieces because of wild animals.

It was a horrific site that was sure to give us nightmares for the rest of our lives. 

My heart dropped when the light fell across one pretty brunette I knew so well. Millie. 

A sob left my throat as I sank to my knees beside her dead body. "Oh, Millie, I'm so sorry." I moved the hair from in her face and starting crying harder. 

All these memories of her came flooding in as if someone had unlocked a box.

"I never said I love you back." I cried. "I'm sorry I never did."

Lyliana voice broke through whatever bubble I had built around me. "Uh, Lils, you might want to come see this." 

I unclipped the necklace from around Millie's neck, pocketed it, and left my dead ex-girlfriend to see what Lyliana had found. Something about the necklace weighed heavy in my pocket.

Lyliana's flashlight was trained on a girl with long dark frazzled hair.

"She's alive!" I exclaimed, watching the girl's chest rise and fall.

Lyliana shook the girl with her foot. "You alive there kid?"

The missing girl slowly opened her dark bloodshot eyes. "H-Hello?" She coughed out, barely able to speak.

Lyliana knelt beside her. "We're here to save you, Olivia." She said soothingly.

Olivia Rodrigo. She was the first person I remembered getting taken. How was she still alive?

+++++

Once back outside the cave, Lyliana had given Olivia a bottle of water and a granola bar. We waited in silence while she ate.

I couldn't imagine what she had been through this whole time. 

Storm took off her flannel and wrapped it around the shaking girl. "Was anyone else alive in there?" She asked.

"No, we checked all of them." I replied sadly. "Olivia is the only one who wasn't dead."

Storm nodded. "We should go." She looked back at the cave uneasily, still a little rattled from stepping on the hand.

It didn't take long for us to be all in agreement. The Home seemed like Heaven compared to that place. 

I took out  the necklace as soon as the others were far enough ahead of me. It was a purple butterfly. 

That's weird it's a butterfly. Maybe butterflies were a common thing to like around here.

Shoving the necklace back into my pocket, I ran to catch up to the others.