For most of the train ride, followed by the drive, there hadn’t been a noticeable difference between Virginia and New Hampshire. Maybe it was because the terrain shifted so slowly, from deciduous trees to pine. Maybe it was because, when you weren’t particular about the trees, a forest was a forest. Whatever the reason, Cassidy wasn’t struck by the change in scenery until they pulled up to the house where the tragedy took place. Suddenly, she felt like New Haven, the town they were visiting, had been pulled from the misty pages of books that told tales of witch trials and creatures in the forest. There was a light fog hovering over the grass, seemingly rolling from the tree line. The pine trees easily outnumbered the more familiar leafy ones, and their tops seemed sharper than normal, like knives pointing to the heavens. The sun was just beginning to set, tinting the scene an orangey-red. There was nothing particularly foreboding about the house. It was a one story ranch house. It had slate blue siding, two front windows with gently billowing white curtains, and an almost white front door with a little half-circle window. It was innocuous, sitting against the rustic backdrop. It gave Cassidy chills.
Despite the sense of wrongness that settled like an uncomfortable blanket across the air, Cassidy parked the car. She had made a life and a career out of going towards things she knew it would be smarter to run fast and far away from. She looked over to her partner, ready to offer some reassurance, but he seemed fine. Somber, given where they were, but calm. Unafraid.
When he felt her looking, Ethan turned toward her. He offered her a soft smile. He didn’t seem happy, really, but he still gave off a certain warmth. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah, of course,” Cassidy dismissed without giving it much through. She had learned the hard way not to cite the uncomfortable creepy crawly feeling she had as case relevant information. She stretched, the motion exaggerated. “Just a long drive.”
“Well, I know you prefer to drive, but I’d be happy to drive the rest of the way to the inn after this if you want.”
“I’ll think about it.” Cassidy would be driving. “Thanks. Let’s rip the bandaid off and head in, if you’re ready?”
“Sure,” Ethan agreed. “Let’s go.”
The other car in the driveway, the one they assumed belonged to the sheriff, was empty. They headed up to the door and knocked.
The man who opened the door was taller than Cassidy but shorter than Ethan. His blond hair was cropped close to his head, but a barely-there beard added an edge of gruff scruffiness to his appearance. His dull blue eyes narrowed at the investigators, an expression just shy of being a glare. He stared them down for a moment, thumbs hooked in the loops of dark uniform pants, before reaching out his hand to Ethan. “Sheriff Adam Stern.”
Ethan accepted the hand shake. Sheriff Stern squeezed his hand a little too hard to be called firm, and almost looked disappointed when Ethan didn’t flinch. “Special Investigator Ethan Mercer.”
Without an excuse to keep trying to crush Ethan’s hand, Sheriff Stern put his thumbs back in his belt loop. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Cassidy stepped half in front of her partner and held her hand out as well. “And I’m Special Investigator Cassidy Caraway. I’m the department’s lead on this case.”
Sheriff Stern took his time looking Cassidy up and down. Ethan started to frown, but Cassidy kept her expression blank and her arm level until the sheriff met her with a much more brief, less powerful handshake. “If we’re all done playing meet and greet, we’ve got a crime scene on our hands here.”
“Of course,” Cassidy agreed. “Lead the way.”
The sheriff simply stepped aside, and Cassidy moved into the room, closely followed by Ethan. Those flowing white curtains didn’t look nearly as pristine from the inside. Blood splatter nearly covered the curtain to the left of the door. The one to the right only had a few streaks, but it was no less marred. The curtains were nothing, however, compared to the tape outline where the body used to be. There was a puddle of blood on the floor at least four feet wide. Little chunks of what Ethan could identify as brain matter but Cassidy only knew as nameless, gut-churning gore were splattered near the tape outline of the head.
“That was the first body we found, but the girl told us it was the second killing,” Sheriff Stern supplied. “First body was there.”
He pointed, and Cassidy and Ethan’s eyes followed. The front door had brought them into the family’s living room, though they hadn’t noticed at first past the scene they were met with, and the implied body that used to be. However, the open concept allowed them to see into the kitchen, where the second outline told a similar story.
“Little monster killed her mother first,” the sheriff explained. “Took the axe from the woodpile out back and came in through the back door. Dad heard the screaming and came out to investigate. Mom was already dead by then, and she killed him too. Last body was her younger brother. He hid in his room, but she tracked him down all the same.”
Cassidy and Ethan followed Sheriff Stern through the house. They went down the hall to the left, and into the last bedroom on the left. The window was open behind a desk, and the smallest outline was spread across it. The head of the outline was on the windowsill itself, and Ethan recognized more brain matter on the window. The kid had almost escaped, but almost didn’t matter for anything.
“You’re free to look around the place, but I don’t know what more you think you might find,” Sheriff Stern told them. “Pretty simple. Kid wasn’t right, and the family paid the price. I think we coulda handled this one without any big government help, but what do I know?”
“If it’s all the same to you, we’ll take a look around since we’re already out here.” Cassidy took the excuse of making eye contact with the sheriff to stop looking at the blood. “Which room was the girl’s room?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“It’s not all the same to me, but I suppose I can’t stop it,” Sheriff Stern grumbled. “Across the hallway, door to the right. The other one is the master bedroom.”
“Understood.” Cassidy left the room they were in and headed for the girl’s room. According to the files they had received, there was no indication of anything wrong before the gruesome murder of a family, but Cassidy had a hard time believing that. With any luck, the girl was a journaler, and as someone who used to be a kid with experience hiding things from her parents, maybe Cassidy could find something the local investigators hadn’t.
The moment she turned the knob and pushed the door in, a shadow ran up her arm. There was nothing around that could have cast a shadow, but she knew she’d seen it. Cassidy turned her arm to look, but she didn’t see or feel anything else. She shook it off and kept moving into the room. The air had been charged with something from the moment they pulled into the driveway. Cassidy had noticed it when she parked, but she’d chalked it up to nothing more than dramatic tension. It was something different, when Cassidy opened the door to the little girl’s bedroom. It didn’t look like something out of a horror novel. It looked like a very average little girl’s bedroom with pink walls, glow in the dark stars glued to the ceiling, and a little desk. Excepting the knowledge of what the occupant of this room had recently done, there was nothing about it to make Cassidy’s hair stand on end. Still, it stood.
The desk was her first target. Cassidy walked over to it and took in the pictures scattered across the surface. Flowers. Unicorns. Fairies. Happy stick figure renditions of her family. Nothing on the surface to indicate any significant inner turmoil. Then again, these things often weren’t on the surface. Cassidy reached for the top left drawer, and immediately pulled her arm back at the sensation that trailed up her arm. It was a shot of the pins-and-needles sensation that occurs when a part of you falls asleep, but much more concentrated. It went up her arm, to her shoulder, through her neck, and ended in her eyes. She staggered back from the desk and put her other hand over her eyes.
When the pain subsided enough for Cassidy to try moving her hand away from her eyes, the world was wrong. All the colors she could see were muted, the pink of the walls dulled to an almost bland red. Sparkles of darkness crawled across her vision when she looked down at the desk again, almost seeming to concentrate on the face of the little girl in the stick figure drawings. When she moved her eyes again to the drawer, it somehow seemed darker than everything else in the room, flickering shadows notwithstanding.
“Fucking caffein,” Cassidy swore, reaching for the drawer again. The drink she picked up on their pitstop wasn’t one she’d had before, and clearly she hadn’t read the label carefully enough. She had to get through a decent investigation before the migraine became unbearable.
This time, Cassidy managed to find a small key hidden among the scattered markers and crayons. The shadows that speckled Cassidy’s vision seemed to cling to the key for a moment before she shook her head to dispel them. Cassidy held onto the key as she looked around the room. A pulsing was starting behind her eyes. It seemed to spike when she looked at the closet, so she decided to start there. The right side of the closet was almost completely cloaked in shadows, real or imagined. Cassidy felt around the floor of that side of the closet on an impulse and pulled out a little locked diary. The key was a match.
The pain in Cassidy’s head spiked, and her vision almost completely blacked out. She sat back on her heels and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths. When she felt steady, she stood up, clutching her finds. This would have to be enough for the day. Cassidy hated to admit it, but she couldn’t do much more.
While she may have to admit her failings to herself, there was no way Cassidy was going to admit them to that sickeningly macho sheriff. She stood in the room with her eyes closed, breathing deeply, until she felt like she could fake her way out of the house. She walked out of the room to find Ethan in the living room, speaking to the sheriff with a strained expression. Cassidy felt a little more assured that Ethan at least genuinely tolerated her. The man had no poker face.
Cassidy watched the pattern of the conversation, and when Sherif Stern paused whatever tirade was making Ethan look so bothered, she inserted herself into the conversation. “I think we’ve done all we can here.”
“I could’ve told you that before you arrived,” Sherif Stern grumbled.
Oh, Cassidy hoped her poker face was better than Ethan’s, because she felt inappropriately smug as she held up the little journal. “Well, I’m hoping we’ll get something new out of this. I’m going to need time to review it tonight, though, and I’d prefer to get to it sooner rather than later.”
“Oh.” Sherif Stern’s face went carefully blank. “Alright, then. Keep me informed.”
Cassidy managed to keep it together until they reached the car. Then, she held the keys out to Ethan and covered her eyes. “I’m going to need you to drive.”
The irritation melted out of Ethan immediately, replaced by a concern that was far more natural to him. “What’s wrong? Are you ok?”
“Migraine,” Cassidy admitted. “Must’ve been caffein in my drink.”
“Ok, get in the car.” Ethan pursed his lips as he took the keys without comment. He hadn’t gone to medical school for nothing, and he wanted to question Cassidy about what was wrong, if she’d had migraines before, if she was going to be ok, but he knew better than to do so in the moment. Instead of helping Cassidy to her door like he wanted to, Ethan let himself fumble with the keys in the car door a bit, giving off a clumsy affectation that allowed him to wait and see that his partner made it safely into the car before he got in himself.
Ethan drove in silence, though a few times he glanced at Cassidy out of the corner of his eye. She was sitting with her head resting against the window, and a hand over her eyes. Light sensitivity, then. It was interesting that the vibration of her skull against the car window wasn’t enough to bother her. Perhaps the chill of it was worth the offset? Internally, Ethan shook his head at himself. It wasn’t his job to diagnose his partner. Surely she’d been to a doctor for this.
That thought gave him enough pause to stick his nose in, just a little. “Have you seen a doctor about this?”
“I have,” Cassidy confirmed. “They recommended avoiding caffein as much as possible, laying down somewhere dark, taking pain pills if it gets to be too much, and waiting for it to go away.”
“Do you need pain pills now?” Ethan asked. “I can stop and get some.”
Cassidy gave a light shake of her head. Then, she realized her partner was still paying more visual attention to the road than he was to her. “I’m fine. The headache is usually mild. It’s more the lights and things I see that are the problem.”
Ethan pursed his lips, but said nothing. That sounded concerning to him, but if she had been to the doctor she had been to the doctor. Cassidy’s medical concerns were already less his business than he had made them. Instead of interrogating her further, he focused on getting them to the inn they were staying at. He went in himself at first, despite mild token protests from his partner, carrying both of their bags and getting them checked in. A quick conversation with the innkeeper, and he’d gotten the lights temporarily turned off to bring Cassidy to their room. He lead her in, then produced pain medicine from his own bag and put a glass of water on the table by her bed. “Get some rest. I’ll go over notes down in the lounge, try not to disturb you for a while.”
“Thank you.”
Ethan beamed. “Happy to help.”