The Puzzle
“What is this?” Heffer thought to himself as he came across a strange looking letter at the end of the pile of mail he had just grabbed from his mailbox. It had a mixture of words and letters that looked jumbled together and had made no sense. After a minute of trying to decipher its meaning, Heffer gave up and through it in the trashcan. 
On a hot mid-July day in 1999, Heffer Buschman began to get an outfit together for his class reunion that was just one week away. He went up to this closet, and tried on several different things. After many failed outfit attempts, he finally came across one he liked. As he stared into his closet mirror, he examined his body from head to toe. From his long brown shaggy hair, his scruffy beard, to his blue tie over his bright white shirt that was topped with a black blazer followed by black pants, he felt confident in his look for the upcoming Friday. After getting his outfit together, his only worry for the reunion had vanished as he hung the suit up on a rack, and went to sleep. 
Days had passed and it was the day before the reunion, and he had just got home from his job at the pet store. He decided he wanted to look through his old year book and reminisce on his high school years. He sat there flipping through dozens of old pictures of him and his classmates and the memories they had together. He felt extremely nostalgic when he came across a picture of himself and his three best friends; Jimmy, Anne, and Kelly. He had not seen several of them in years, but he still talked to Jimmy on a daily basis. He got a thrill of excitement when he realized he was going to see all of his friends together again after such a long time. As he continued to flip through the book, he found himself looking down at a picture of him and his favorite teacher, Mrs. Hardiwoman. She had gone missing at the end of his junior year when he was sixteen years old, and he had completely forgotten about her until now. As he kept flipping through the book, he came to the last page, where there was a letter from Mrs. Hardiwoman that was wishing him luck during his senior year, and a few puzzles she used to give out that he had kept because he enjoyed doing them in her class. He suddenly remembered he saw something similar recently and ran down his steps to his trash can. After digging through days’ worth of trash, he slowly pulled out the letter from days ago and wiped it off. He began to read it again. “You’ll find the, you’ve wondered, places where you,” was what it read from top to bottom. He had realized that the message had more to it, and wondered where the rest of it could be. 
He brought the letter up stairs and held it next to the one he found in the yearbook. The only similarity between them was the setup of them, the puzzle from the yearbook had a goal to solve it by the given clues, and the puzzle from the trash can was just in the form of the puzzle sheet. After re reading it a dozen more times and still had no understanding of its meaning, he walked over to his coat that hung on his closet door and slipped it into the pocket. 
The next day, the time for the reunion had arrived. Heffer had just arrived at his old high 
school, Dunkwood High, in Dunkinville. He spent most of the night talking and catching up with his old friends. Towards the end of the night, Heffer and his three best friends Jimmy, Kelly, and Anne, finally all met up. They talked with each other, catching each other up on their current lives, and reminisced for a few minutes talking about all the memories they had together. The conversation then shifted to the four of them talking about their old teachers and this had sparked Heffer’s memory of the letter in his pocket. He quickly grabbed it out and showed it to the rest of the group. They then all began to take turns reading it, all finished with a confused look on their faces. 
“I found something similar on my chair earlier this evening,” said Kelly.
“Me too,” Jimmy and Anne said in unison.
The four of them walked back to their tables and showed each other the mysterious letters. Jimmy had spotted that there were numbers in each corners, placed the four sheets of paper on the table, and began to put them in numerical order. After that, the four papers lined up had read from first to last, “You’ll find the answers you have wondered for so long. Go to the place where you would spend hiding away.”
“The place we spent hiding away? We spent most of our teenage years hiding in various spots to escape going to school,” Anne chuckled.
“You’ve got that right for sure,” Jimmy responded with a smirk on his face.
“Where would we even begin to look then?” Heffer asked. 
“Why don’t we just start by going to where we would go to when we skipped school, I’m sure we all can remember how to get to all of them,” said Kelly.
“There are way too many places that we would go to skip school, we don’t have a lot of day light left to go to every single one,” Heffer clarified. 
“Well, where is the place we used to go to the most?” asked Anne.
“That old creepy cabin over on Donut Street, everyone used to hang out there,” said Kelly.
“Are we really going to go there right now? We have no clue if this is even safe. We have no clue if these messages are even from Mrs. Hardiwoman. They could have been sent as a prank from anyone,” Heffer argued, in an aggravated tone.
“We all adored Mrs. Hardiwoman when she was our teacher, and we were all heartbroken and worried when she disappeared. Wouldn’t you like to know what happened to her? This could be our one chance to find out.” Jimmy said sternly.
The two girls sat in silence and listened to boys argue for another minute.
“Fine, I give up, let’s go,” Heffer said, with a defeated look on his face.
“Great, I’ll drive,” Jimmy said.
The four friends piled into Jimmy’s car and drove off. They drove for about 10 minutes and then arrived at their desired location. It was now dark and they could not see much. They one by one got out of the car and stared at the building in front of them. The whole world sounded silent, and the only thing Heffer heard was the footsteps of him and his friends. The cabin had looked much different from what they had all remembered. Heffer felt his body tense up and felt chills run down his spine as he stepped closer and closer to the cabin. The windows were boarded up and shattered glass covered the ground below them, the wood paneling the cabin was made out of was rotting after years of exposure, and the pealing door that was bolted with iron rods was falling off the hinges. 
“Well it certainly looks different from what I can remember,” Jimmy joked, trying to clear the air of the anxiety they were all hiding. As he slowly pushed open the front door of the cabin, a rush of cold air hit his face. They all stepped into the hallway and looked at each other, not sure what they should do next.
“I think it would safer if we all just stayed together, I don’t really remember how it looks in here and we all can't see that well,” suggested Heffer. The rest of the group shook their heads in agreeance. Heffer took out his phone and used its screen as a light. He shined what little light he had all around the room. It revealed however paint clinging to the walls, once colorful, now many shades of blue. A thick layer of dust settled on everything in sight and gave the four of them confirmation that this place had been untouched for many years. In the middle of their gazing around, a loud crashing sound was heard below their feet. 
“What was that?” Anne worriedly asked, clutching on to Kelly.
“I am not sure, but it definitely came from the basement,” confirmed Jimmy. 
“I am really scared, I don’t want to do this anymore Jimmy,” admitted Anne.
“I agree with her, we should just turn around and leave,” said Heffer. 
“And give up after we go this far? Not a chance. This is where the puzzle said to go, and we are already here. Might as well just take a look around the place, it won’t hurt anyone,” Jimmy said, furiously. 
“I said we have had enough, Jimmy,” Heffer exclaimed.
“Fine, we won't look around the entire place, just the basement,” Jimmy said. He then began to walk towards the basement door without another word, leaving the rest of the group no choice but to follow him. One by one they walked down the stairs of the basement, trying their best not to make a noise, but failing due to the wooden stairs making a loud crunching noise after each step they each took. Once at the bottom of the stairs, they took in their surroundings. The only light that shined in was from the tiny windows, only illuminating the dim room slightly.
The room was filled with standing shelves and dust had covered the items on them. From behind one of the shelves, Kelly had spotted a dark shadow standing still. She slowly tapped each of her friends on the shoulder and pointed in its direction. After spotting the dark figures presence, Jimmy called out to it.
“Hello? Mrs. Hardiwoman, is that you?” Jimmy questioned, in hope for a response.
“I'm glad you all followed the directions my puzzles instructed, I knew you were all my favorite students for a reason,” the shadowed responded, in a feminine, low raspy tone. 
Seconds after it responded, the four friends watched the figure slowly reach behind its self to grab something off a self. None of them could make out what the object was, but heard a quick clipping sound, followed by gun shots, leaving them to each fall to the ground one by one.