May 10th, 2015.
The following statement was given by a former employee at the [redacted] hotel. She was part of the cleaning staff assigned to look after the rooms in which the former senate candidate, Joseph Lionheart, was staying with his family.
The statement goes as follows:
“I’m not one to gossip, nor do I make stories up to cover up my screw-ups. Ask any of my coworkers, and they’ll agree.
"I was working for the family only temporarily, placed as one of the very selected line-up of personnel. They didn’t want to have any issues in case something got lost, or stolen, or the Lionhearts turned out to be… difficult. They weren’t I can tell you that. Those videos of mister Joseph shouting were only after his little girl went missing, the man was kind and gleeful, it’s that kid who turned him rotten.”
“What kid, miss [redacted]?”
“The kid. There was this boy following her around. Nobody talks about it and I don’t even know why, but he was there, like a shadow, always behind her."
"I didn’t notice at first, there are only so many faces I can remember working at a place like that, but I can perfectly portray that child in my head. He was so skinny, and one wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking, but his hands were abnormally thin, and each knuckle pressed onto his skin like rubber. It was awful."
"Miss Maria was prone to be in more quiet environments, she didn’t like to stay up in her room, though. She wasn’t introverted before, I could tell. Her eye bags were too deep for it to be normal."
"As a maid, one hears things, and learns to read silent cues more accurately than ever, so I knew it wasn’t her parents. They were very loving, strict, but loving and kind. But Miss Maria fidgeted so much! It wasn’t normal, it was as if she was always nervous or wary of something, she’d always look behind her shoulder very discreetly. And she would walk quite rapidly, always, not like she was trying to get somewhere, but like she was trying to get away from something."
"I didn’t understand it, some days she would not even be able to eat half her meal at the restaurant. She always had a bad feeling about public spaces, and if you had followed the family since the beginning, you would know she was not anxious. She didn’t use to be, at least, before moving into this city."
"But sometimes, it got so bad she had to take very deep breaths before taking her fork or spoon and eating because her hands would tremble so much. Or she would refuse any invitation to the rooftop pool, or even the indoor pool. She would decline any invite outside the hotel, she couldn't even hide her dread when she had to leave for school every weekday, or even go somewhere where her bodyguards couldn’t reach her easily. She was terrified, and I didn’t know of what."
"But then, I noticed the kid, he was probably younger than Miss Maria, but he was far taller, even if he walked a little odd, somewhat crooked, somewhat hunched, always. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and he always wore extremely baggy clothes. I think that’s why I noticed him, it was the middle of June, who would willingly wear thick hoodies and sweatpants when it’s so hot? I thought, maybe he was like those weird kids, but he wasn’t normal."
"He would somehow always be near her, I don’t know how to explain it so it sounds coherent, but whenever she was dragged down to the arcade by her cousins, he was there, in the lift, casually waiting. When she would go to the restaurant with her parents, he was there, sitting at a table in the same area as her. One night, she had such a bad episode of paranoia she had to go back to her room early because she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. When I went up to deliver her unfinished meal, he was there, just walking down the hallway, as if he hadn’t just been at the restaurant, too. He wouldn’t always be alone, but I don’t remember his companion as much.”
“And how do you know he was following her exactly?”
“All of this is circumstantial, I know, but… there was this one time… god, it was awful. It was the night the Lionhearts had to leave, the night the [redacted] attacked the conference room. It was chaos, everyone could hear the explosion. You remember?"
"She had been ansty all morning, and I brought her waffles and chocolate to maybe help her, but she didn’t have the stomach to eat it all. Still, I tried, I even left her plushies in a funny position for her to see when she went back from being at her cousin's room. But she just kept spacing out, and scratching her arms, it was an awful habit of hers, and she was so nervous."
"When the explosion came, she ran down the hall to the main balcony of the floor. I was still at her room looking by the window when I spotted her out of the mass of people standing there to look, but she wasn’t looking like they were, she looked somewhere to her left. I followed her gaze and on the other balcony, the one in building B, there was the kid."
"He was just looking at her, he didn’t move, didn’t flinch or smile or anything when she found him staring. Miss Maria looked pale."
"His eyes, officer, his eyes were white, like something was wrong with them like his irises weren’t even there”
“Are you insinuating it was a ghost?”
“No. He was fine before that. That kid wasn’t blind, he didn’t have cataracts I know because I saw him before that day, and his eyes were fine before, but then they were white, and they were off. It wasn’t natural, he could see perfectly fine because he was looking straight at Miss Maria, but it was so eerie and so strange.”
“Why wouldn’t she report this incident?”
“With the attack on the soon-to-be senate, who had the time to hear what a teenager had to say? And with those eyes? They'd call her crazy. She didn’t leave her room for days, and we weren’t allowed into the suite for long after that day, we were prohibited from ever being alone with her if there wasn’t at least one bodyguard, and even so she’d always leave the moment someone she didn’t know appeared, she looked awfully tired and restless and each day I could feel her slipping away from reality.”
“When was this?”
“A week before her disappearance, sir”
“Why didn’t you report it until now?”
“Oh I did, I told everyone at work, I told the Lionhearts, I told her bodyguards, everyone. The Lionhearts got me fired, got me blacklisted, and I still can’t get a stable job.”
“The Lionhearts got you fired? Their daughter was missing, and you saw someone tailing after her and they got you fired?”
“See? I know I’m not crazy, they didn’t get me fired for speculating or gossiping disrespectfully about Miss Maria or whatever nonsense they accused me of. There was something about that kid that they didn’t want people to know about. When I mentioned the mark—”
“The mark?”
“Yes, he had a mark on his nape, I couldn’t see very well from afar, but it looked like a [redacted]”
“...Are you sure?”
“I know what I saw, on Maria’s name sir, I know what I saw. I would never make anything like this up. Joseph Lionheart didn’t want to see it, but I’m sure he knew perfectly well who took his daughter. Why do you think they haven’t found her yet? They aren’t looking”
