Page 40 of Darkside

“Yeah.” I blink and see it play out again, watching through Allison’s eyes. She was drugged, and now I understand the feeling of sleep paralysis. “And then he marked a cross on their head with their own blood.”

“Details that specific probably weren’t released to the public,” Ethan says, wrapping a piece of gauze around my arm. “That way the police can weed out copycats or anyone who falsely confesses.”

“Makes sense,” I say. “Anything else?”

“Nothing worth noting. News spread about the unsolved murder and no one wanted to stay here. Then the house was rumored to be haunted and it’s had what appears a cursed business history since then.”

“So…now what?” Rene asks.

“Now,” I start and look at my friends. “We solve this cold case.”

* * *

“I cannot fucking believeyou didn’t tell me there were remains under this shed.” Keith wraps his arms around himself, staring at me with wide eyes. It’s the next morning, and we saw no reason to stay and keep up the ruse of living in the house. The spirits already revealed themselves and I know how to trigger the murderer. I’ll definitely enjoy toying with him before I send him on, where he’ll go straight to hell.

But I can’t cleanse the area yet and risk Allison going as well. I need her to tell me the name of her murderer. And I hope that is enough for her to cross over on her own.

“I didn’t want to freak you out and I had to go home for dinner.”

“You would have been freaked out.” Rene gets down on her knees, shining a flashlight at the base of the shed. “The wood is rotting.”

“This thing is supposed to be torn down,” Keith tells us. “The outbuildings are the last things on the list to take care of.”

“That’s probably good, for the time being,” I note, watching Hunter sniff around the overgrown grass. “He just picked up the scent.” The shed appears large enough to have been lived in at some point. Some kind of shitty cottage we’d call a “She Shed” if it was new and fancied up. Now it's just a falling down eyesore that might be covering up dead bodies.

“I still have a hard time wrapping my head around him,” Rene confesses. “I mean, I fucking love that dog, but he’s not a dog. Yet he can sniff out cadavers like a dog? It’s a little confusing.”

“I suppose. I just don’t think about it too hard.” I shrug. “Because I can’t really explain it either.”

We wait in silence for another minute and then Hunter comes back around, letting me know the rotting body is a cat that most likely went into a rabbit burrow, got stuck, and died. There are dead baby bunnies under there as well, but hey, at least it’s not a person, right?

“It’s animals,” I tell my friends but then Hunter picks up another smell. “But also human hair?” Hunter leads us to the door of the shed. There’s a single step to get up into it, and something is buried under there. He’s picking up the smell of several people.

“Hair,” I repeat. “Last night I saw him—the murderer—cutting off someone’s hair. He kept it as a trophy.”

“Holy shit.” Keith eyes the ground, running his hand over his face. “That’s DNA evidence.”

“We can’t touch it,” Rene says. “This is basically a crime scene, right?”

“I think the hair is kept in something,” I go on, letting my eyes fall shut as I drop my mental shields all the way down. Ethan is at the gym with a client and I promised I wouldn’t try to communicate with the spirits in the house without him since one already proved to be violent.

Still…I can handle myself.

Going over next to Hunter, I kneel on the ground and put my hand to the earth. “What did you do?” I ask and make a mental connection to the dark spirit. He’s aware of what I am now, repulsed that I’m a witch and angry that I’m a medium. He tries to get away but I keep prying, taking him on in a mental game of tug of war.

He pushes against me and it starts to hurt physically. Pressure builds in my head and I grunt, refusing to let go. Blood drips down my nose right as I get a flash of him sitting in a tiny cottage. He puts a lock of hair into a red coffee tin and then comes outside, moving the little stair. He puts the coffee can in a hole in the ground and covers it up. He knows he can’t keep it there forever, but he likes to go back and look at his trophies every now and then.

“Got you, fucker,” I grumble through gritted teeth, opening my eyes and wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

“W-what just happened?” Rene asks, digging through her purse for a tissue.

“There’s a coffee can buried right here. Filled with his murder trophies.”

“And maybe a few finger prints,” Keith adds.

“Yeah.” We all look at each other, debating what to do.

“I need to tell my aunt something,” Keith starts. “How the hell will I keep her out of the house? She’s coming after work today to rip up carpet.”

---