Page 39 of Darkside

“I was right.”

“About what?” Rene asks shakily.

“We’re not just dealing with any old spirit.”

“What are we dealing with?”

“The dark spirit of a witch hunter.”

ChapterNineteen

Gasping, I startle and almost bump into the candle in front of me.

“What did you see?” Ethan rushes out, too worried about something happening to me to just let me do my thing.

“Hang on,” I whisper and push my shoulders back. I’m sitting cross legged on the bedroom floor, reaching out to Allison. She just showed me her death and my heart is hammering as fear and adrenaline flood my body.

I’m safe. I’m not the one being drugged and beaten.

The scene rewinds in my mind, playing out again. She’s in her bed, and Marissa is on the floor, already dead.

It’s him. He killed me.

I see the same man who appeared in the bathroom mirror. His rage is palpable again and if this wasn’t premeditated, I would think this is a crime of passion. But he waited and watched until he had the chance to sneak in without being caught.

“Who?” I ask out loud. “Who is he?”

She wants to tell me but his spirit, fueled by hate, is stronger. Allison is gone and the air around me gets cold. Something scratches my arm, making me jump again.

“We’re done,” Ethan says. I open my eyes as he comes over, footsteps shaking the floorboards beneath me. “You’re bleeding.” He blows out the candle and kneels down next to me, taking my arm in his hand. “Get the lights,” he tells the others and someone flicks on the overhead light. I blink, eyes adjusting to the light. There are four scratch marks on my arm, and Ethan gently puts his fingers over them. Someone with large hands scratched me and it’s no mystery who.

Only…it is because I haven’t gotten a name yet.

“Should we get out of here?” Keith asks.

“No.” I shake my head and let Ethan pull me to my feet. “I’ll cast a circle he can’t cross.”

“Who can’t cross?” Ethan asks.

“I didn’t get his name, but he’s the one who murdered Allison and Marissa. He got away with it, didn’t he?”

“He did. Can I tell you what happened now?”

“Yeah. Tell me everything.” I sit on the air mattress and hold out my arm, letting Ethan dab it with an alcohol pad.

“Nothing eventful or historically notable happened in the house until the late eights. 1988 to be exact, as you already said. Allison Fox and Marissa Musgrave were found dead in their apartment on April twenty-first. The coroner placed their time of death to be roughly two days prior. When Allison didn’t show up to her shift as a nurse, her boss got concerned and had the landlord check on her.”

“Were there any suspects? Maybe a name will stick out to me.”

Keith gets his folder from his bag. “Allison’s ex-boyfriend was the prime suspect but there was never enough evidence to convict him of anything. The girls had a bunch of friends over the night before they were murdered, and the police supposedly interviewed who they could. Having that many people in the house made it hard to get fingerprints. This was back in the day before TikTok CSI was a thing and no one had Ring doorbells.

“Were the official details of the murders released?”

“All I was able to find was that the girls were strangled and possibly drugged. But I did track down someone who used to rent here back then and she said it was pretty gruesome and supposedly the murderer disfigured the girls. I don’t know how.”

“He cut out their tongues so they couldn’t ask forgiveness, even in death.”

“Fuck.”

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