“Jill you wait here, till I go get the vegetables ….okay?”  Billy spoke keeping his hands gently on Jill’s shoulder.

They were standing in the Butcher’s shop, having ordered three kilogrammes of meat and were waiting for it…

Jill nodded her head, though after what she’d heard, the last thing she wanted was to be left alone in an unknown place, which just happened to be a butcher’s shop...

She pacified her fears by reminding herself that the grocery shop was just on the other side of the road and her father was not taking her there as it was insanely crowded.

Moreover, it wasn’t as if she was alone. There were a bunch of other customers, men and women alike, waiting for their orders in this shop.

Her father smile and turned around to cross the road. Jill looked at the people surrounding around her and started observing them.
There was a short, stout man with a tall boy, a woman wearing peasant’s gown and a group of labourers standing by the door, all too busy to notice her staring.

“Well well well…who do we have here?” , a very nasal voice interrupted her observations.

She snapped her head in the direction of the voice, having an inkling that the voice had addressed her…

However when she found its owner, her legs involuntarily stepped back. 
The butcher’s  assistant was standing behind the counter of the shop, staring at her with an unamusing  glint in his tawny eyes.

His appearance was the most bizarre one Jill had ever seen. He appeared to be a short, ugly fellow; a crooked smile displaying the yellow, uneven set of teeth, of which some were missing and a very prominent mole on the right side of his blotchy visage.
He was a bit too much on the plumb side and his thick, bushy eyebrows completed his appearance as that of every child’s nightmare.

“What is a sweet girl like you doing alone in this shop?”
He asked again, his voice getting shriller with each syllable.

Jill had the sudden urge to run to her father but her feet were frozen at the stop.
She didn’t know if it was due to his eerie face or due to the news she had gotten earlier, but this man terrified her even more than the thought of loosing  her treasure. 

“You know you shouldn’t be alone like this, right? It’s not safe… especially for sweet little children like you”
He continued, staring at her like a wolf stares at its prey…

Jill visibly gulped at which the man chuckled… only it wasn’t a nice chuckle…it had more of an evil tone to it.

“Haven’t you heard of the news yet child?”

He was serious for a second. Jill simply  nodded.
She wasn’t able to form any words. The man smiled wickedly and leaned forward, keeping his elbows on the counter and spoke in a hushed but clearly audible voice-

“You know he cut the boy’s heart out…with a knife they say…The boy had screamed a lot…” He clucked his tongue and continued, 
“Too bad no one could hear him…You know what else the officers found? He had stolen his belongings… toys…money…and a chest…made of the finest sandal wood. It was handed to him by his grandmother” 

Jill let out an audible gasp at this. Her mind immediately wandered off to the chest tucked under her bed… It had also smelt of sandalwood …but surely it couldn’t be …

“And you what else they are saying? They say that he has kept the boy’s heart inside the same chest and hidden it somewhere… and he is coming for more children…children like you…” 

By this time, he was awfully close to Jill’s face, his upper body leaning across the counter top.
Jill couldn’t help the sudden gust of terror that coursed through her body at his words…

She instantly turned back, his eyes too overbearing to look at, at the moment, and ran as fast as her legs could allow, his vicious chuckle following her.
She made her way out of shop but was pulled back by her forearm. For a second, she thought it was the same man, and panicked, thinking that he had come to kill her and cut her heart out but recognizing her father’s worried face, she buried herself in his embrace and started sobbing .

“Hey…hey ! What happened? Shh…don’t cry…Why are you running ?”
Her father held her with one hand, the other holding a bag of groceries.

Jill’s simply shook her head at his words and spoke in a small voice-
“I want to go home ”

Her father smiled at her and nodded his head…probably understanding her problem, though she highly doubted it.

“Let me just take the meat” Her father replied, walking back to the counter.
Jill’s gaze followed him, afraid to meet the tawny orbs of the assistant but to her surprise as well as relief,  he wasn’t there…it was just the butcher handing the pack of meat  to her father…

While walking back home that afternoon , Jill’s mind resembled the inside of the factory that her father used to work at…there was so much going on… but none of it was in a proper working condition.
All her thoughts were terrorized by that murderer but the most terrifying of them all was what the butcher’s assistant had said…if it was true, then that meant that the treasure she had discovered was actually that dead boy’s heart…

Jill shuddered at the thought.  When she was leaving for the town that morning, all she had felt was the anxiousness to return back to her treasure. However, now with the new discovery, she was trying to think of ways to avoid going anywhere near it.

The simple idea of that chest containing something so horrific was…well, horrific.

“Hello kind Sir! Would you like to buy one of these masks for the county fair? Try them…these look wonderful…”

A boy, not more than eighteen, stopped in front of them, trying to sell the wooden clown masks he held in his basket…

They were very pretty. His words reminded Jill that the county fair was going to be held the next week but that was just a fleeting thought as right now, her mind was too preoccupied with more serious issues to dwell on it.

Her father looked at her for response at which she shook her head.

“No, thank you“  Her father replied with a clipped smile and brushed passed him to keep moving forward, with Jill trotting close beside him, holding his hand all the more tightly…if that was even possible. 

Jill had never felt such a strong need to cuddle with her mother than as she felt that night.
Her heart was thumping so loudly that she feared it wouldn’t require the murderer to leave her body.

She was lying in her bed…the chest containing the boy's heart lying just beneath her and her nerves were a wreck. 

She couldn’t even dare to disclose the fact to her father. This thought terrified her to no extent.

Every nerve in her body was on edge…She couldn’t sleep. For every time she closed her eyes, she saw the butcher’s assistant prowling towards her, a big knife ready in hand, the vicious chuckle filling her head…all set to  remove her heart out of her body, and her eyes would snap open on their own accord, beads of moisture adorning her forehead.

At that time she had the most ardent desire to get rid of that chest…