"What is this?", he asked while taking the journal in his hand, while he handed the laptop to me.

We took the journal and the laptop and headed to the car.

Sitting on my bed, we evaluated both our finding. He had the Journal while I had the laptop.

Carter is ............ was a computer genius and I tried to decrypt his personal files, but it was useless. I kept trying while Ryan shuffled through his pages.

"Shit", he said, his eyes at the journal, "You need to see this", he said.

Picking up the journal, I started reading the first line, and it read............

Carter:-

Sunday, 2019 (the day before Carter's roof accident)

" I don't know why I did it, but I just did. I don't know what came over me that day, but I didn't feel the guilt that I feel now.

I've started seeing him, Ethan, his eyes looking at me , making me feel like like a murderer, making me feel guilty of what I did. I reacted seeing him looking at me the way he did that day, when he lay n the hospital bed.

Adam wasn't at risk, he's got a rich dad, who can throw money at any one who raises just a finger at his son. But me who would have saved me ? No one. No one that I know of.

Why did we drink that night? Why did we drive the car? Why?

If only it had never happened.

I can't forget the woman I saw in the cave the 2nd time I visited. Maybe Olivia saw these hallucinations too. It wasn't a hallucination then, was it?

I see her, and Ethan multiple times now. When I'm eating, showering, or even when I'm talking.

I hate it, the guilt that I feel when I see his eyes. When I see her eyes. I don't know if it is my guilt that is eating my soul from the core, but I can't take it anymore."

Ryan looked at me as I read out the last entry in his dairy which was dated the night before he fell off the roof.

"This is the last", I said.

"There got to be more", Ryan said, as he ripped the journal from my hand and flipped the pages.

A folded piece of paper fell from the journal on the bed cover between Ryan and me. I took it in my hands, and took a heavy breath before opening it.

{

"The place it all started"

-CARTER

}

Was written on the little piece of paper.

"What can this be?", Ryan asked.

"I........... uhmmmm...... I don't know", I said while I tried to think what the little piece of information meant.

"You should sleep", my mom coming into the room. We kept the journal aside and I shifted it under the cover as she approached me. She didn't notice me doing it and I could be more thankful for that. She wouldn't had let us do what we were trying to do.

"Ryan, why don't you stay over today, it's late son", she said as she placed a hand on his head.

"Yes, thank you Mrs. Pierce", he said, my mom nodded and looked at me.

"Goodnight", she said hugging me, and she closed the door on her way out.

She was disturbed due to Carter's death as well, because our parents treated the 5 of us like their own.

"Let's look at it tomorrow", I said and Ryan and I put the cushions between us as we prepared to sleep. He didn't go to another room because sleeping alone didn't seem like an option for anyone right now. All of us were together when Carter was unconscious a week back, but now when he wasn't among us anymore, all of us were alone.

I removed the cushions that we had placed earlier and cuddled up next to Ryan.

"Ryan, I'll miss him", I said as I wiped of the tear that had formed in my eye with my sleeve. I placed my head on his shoulder while he put his arm under my head, his hand on my back.

"I'll miss him too", he said.

We were in the hospital with Adam the next day as we told him that Carter would be taken to the graveyard once the case is closed by the police and the autopsy is done.

None of us spoke anything anymore.

We didn't tell anyone about the journal, because we hadn't found anything concrete yet. Then is when it hit me. Who was Ethan?

"Adam?"

He raised his head to look at me.

"Was Ethan the guy who died?", I asked.

"How do you know?", he asked

"You must have said it yesterday when you told us", Ryan covered for me.

He nodded and looked back at his fingers.

"You remember how much he loved his laptop?", Adam asked.

Ryan and I looked at each other when he mentioned it. Little did he know we had stolen it.

Then it hit me. Password. That was the password to decrypt his personal files.

"Ryan I think we should go", I said as Mrs. Grant entered the room, and Adam would have company now.

I drove us back to my house and he didn't bother to ask why.

I climbed the stairs in one breath and switched on Carter's laptop, taking his journal in my hands. I took out the little piece of paper from yesterday and opened the folds.

"Where did it all start?", I looked at him.

"Grant Pvt. ltd. ", he said, naming Adam's family company, where the accident took place as Adam had explained to us.

I tried to decrypt the files using it to no avail.

"No something else", I said.

Ryan looked at me as he thought what the line meant.

"What did Carter love?", I asked.

"Who? not what", he said.

"Olivia", I said.

And still it didn't work.

"Where did he propose her?", I asked.

"The bridge on the forest road", Ryan said.

And I tried, and this time it was a success.

The folder had just one file in it. I clicked on the file.

The file had video logs, probably of Carter.

Ryan came next to me on the bed and looked at the screen of the laptop.

"Damn", he said. And I was shocked as well.

There were around 10 of them.

I started with the first.

It was of the time he submitted his research in the field of Artificial Intelligence but it wasn't accepted by a professor at MIT. Ryan and I laughed as we saw the 15 year old over ambitious child in the video who we wouldn't ever see again now.

"Always ambitious", Ryan laughed with a heavy voice.

I moved back to the folder to see the other videos.

The next video was the one we shouldn't have seen. It started playing as I clicked on it and we regretted the second we feel the dark vibe it offered. It was dated 7th January, 2019 , the day before Carter died.

Carter was looking into the camera as he spoke with the bruise on his face, " If you are seeing the, means I'm dead. I wouldn't let you touch my laptop else wise. And Lue, I proud of you, I knew you were the only person who could decrypt my laptop, MINE.

I know I'm an idiot to kill myself, but I can't take it anymore. Since you've read my diary where the code was, you know I've been seeing things. Lucy, you figured out everything long before anyone one of us did. And I wish, I could turn back time, and stop myself the day I committed the biggest sin of all.

Ethan didn't die himself, I was the one who took his oxygen mask off. I killed him. I never wanted to, but I feared, feared that I would be the one behind bars if he survived. He would have identified us, and Adam would have been saved by his father's money. But no one would have saved me. I was scared that I would be the one who would be blamed for his condition, so I made sure he died."

Ryan an I paused the video as it was too much to take. We placed the laptop on the bed while we tried to accept what the video said. The Carter we saw in front of us today wasn't the one we knew. His tone changed, to the one a guilt free murderer has at the last part of it.

"I need to know more", he said.

He clicked the play button and the video continued.

"I didn't feel guilty, I felt relaxed. I had saved my future.

But now when I see her, the woman of the cave, I shiver. She makes me feel guilty of what I did. Of the ruthlessness I had when I denied Ethan of Oxygen. I get nightmares, of Ethan standing in front of me, looking at me with the eyes he looked at me when he died due to lack of air.

And every time I see it, I do this (he said as he made multiple cuts on the skin of his arm). I try to bring myself to reality by doing this. But it does no good, no good at all. I didn't want you guys to think I'm a maniac so when you saw it Lue, I tried to do what ever I could to distract you guys from it. But I wish I had spoken to you about it, maybe I could have redeemed myself, maybe I could confess it to him, his Grandfather, who reminds me of my doing every time I see him.

So I think it is time. I never was who I've become."

This was his last message.

"This Ethan can't be Uncle John's grandchild, can he?", I asked Ryan as I understood the second last line Carter spoke in the video.

"Crap! When did he die?", he asked me.

"5 years back", I said as I realized that was the year when Adam said the incident took place.

"We need to confirm it, and make him confess before he......", he said.

"Yup, let's go", I said.