Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/17a6fvm/a_serial_killer_is_copying_horror_movies_part_2/
Because Samantha was from one town over, the crime scene was more crowded, more complicated to navigate.
Her parents showed up. Her brothers and sister too. They wanted to see her, touch her. Her mother shouted at the EMS responders to check her heart rate, give her oxygen, do chest compressions.
“Ma’am…” one of them said, softly. He didn’t need to say anything else. We all knew what he meant. She was dead. Had been for a while. There was no bringing her back.
The chief of police from Samantha’s town showed up with a couple of patrol cars. They sent ambulances and a fire engine too, to help get the body out of the well.
I told him we managed just fine, but thanks.
He asked me for photos of the scene. He didn’t say “crime scene.” Probably because he thought it was an accident.
I told him I’d send them over. I remembered, suddenly, that the tape was in my pocket. We hadn’t photographed it, hadn’t entered it into evidence. There was still time, but I held onto it anyway.
I rationalized it. The body had been found in our town. It was our jurisdiction. I’d share the tape and its contents with them later. No need to make the parents feel any worse by bringing some old horror movie into this. This was real. Their real daughter, found that way. Their real daughter, dead. Not a prop in a sick bastard’s game. Not something to be used for set dressing or a reference to a stupid movie.
“Why’s she wearing that dress?” the mother asked. “She wasn’t wearing that dress.”
Paul was the ME for Samantha’s town. I wanted to talk to him about the case, like I had about Becca and Dylan, but I couldn’t. Not here. He’d report his findings to that sheriff first. Jurisdiction. Complications. I’d ask him about it later. We trusted each other in that way. In the meantime, I had a tape to watch.
I walked up to my car just in time to see Jordan pull up…with Vivi in the passenger’s seat.
As soon as Jordan stepped out of the car, I practically tackled him.
“You brought my daughter here?” I asked. “This is a crime scene!”
“You told me to watch her!” Jordan said. “I didn’t want to leave her alone at the station. She rode her bike there and it’s dark and—”
“You left me here all day!” Vivi said, shouting from the back seat. “Like a prisoner!” She tried opening the door but it wouldn’t budge. Vivi knew that it wouldn’t open. She’d ridden in patrol cars since she was a kid. But in all the excitement, she must’ve forgotten. I was livid. She wanted to get out…no, she felt she had the right to get out, the right to go up to the well and gawk at a dead girl’s body, the right to walk onto the crime scene. And why? Because she was my daughter? Because she liked horror movies? Because she had the same morbid curiosity that was running rampant in this small town?
I took a deep breath, feeling the heat on my cheeks dissipate. It took a lot of the anger with it as it went.
I reached out and opened the door.
“I didn’t tell Jordan to hold you there,” I said, leaning in to look Vivi in the eyes. “I just told him to watch you. But he shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“What’s that?” Vivi asked, pointing to my jacket.
My stomach sank. The VHS tape was sticking out of my pocket.
“A VHS tape?”
“No,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s a VHS tape isn’t it? As soon as Jordan said they found a girl in a well I knew it was related! That’s what I wanted to tell you yesterday! Like the message on your phone. Seven movies, seven bodies, seven days? Seven days is right out of The Ring!”
“How’d you know about the message on my phone?” I asked.
“You kept playing it, over and over again,” Vivi said. “Not just in your ear but when you had the phone on your hand. I thought you knew I heard it.” She suddenly looked hurt. It reminded me of when she was a kid, when I’d accuse her of something that her brother had done.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get back to the station and check out the tape.”
“I’ve got the crime scene photos!” Jordan said, holding up his camera.
I could tell he was excited. The only crime scene photos he’d ever taken were of broken windows, scratched-up cars, or empty spaces left behind by stolen property.
“Alright, follow us to the station,” I said.
Before I left, I caught Paul talking to the other sheriff. We shared a look. I tried to keep my face neutral. I didn’t want him to know that these two cases are related. Not yet, and certainly not in the way that they are, as references to famous screen killings. So far, we’ve managed to avoid any mention of horror movies altogether. I don’t our local little newspaper to start calling these the Horror Movie Killings or, like the commenter Dear-Original-675 suggested, dubbing whoever is behind this the “Thriller Killer.”
The last thing I need is more attention on this. I’m already risking enough by posting it on here. I hope that the risk is worth it, that your comments, suggestions, and even theories might help me make sense of it.
Vivi sat in the passenger seat on the ride back to the station.
I keep referring to her as Vivi but, a few weeks ago, she threw this huge fit over it, saying that “Vivi” sounds stupid and childish. We’ve called her Vivi since she was a baby. She said that her friends call her Viv. And her dad too.So I relented and called her Viv for a few days, then she said it sounded wrong and said that I should call her Vivi. Her friends and her dad still get to call her Viv though.
“So,” I started. “Chris tells me you have a boyfriend.’”
“Mom,” Vivi said. “Stop.”
“What? You’ve had boyfriends before.”
“Not real ones. I was like thirteen.”
“But this one’s real?”
“I guess. I don’t know. I hope so.”
“So tell me about him.”
Vivi sighed dramatically. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Chris said he had a car. That he picks you up and drops you off late.”
“I’m gonna kill that little asshole!”
“Hey!” I shouted. “He’s just worried about you!”
“He shouldn’t be, and he shouldn’t tell on me either. I don’t tell you about the shit he does. Like the fact that he’s hanging out with Aaron and Lee and smoking pot behind the movie theater.”
“Well I didn’t know that,” I said. “And I’m not happy about it. But you didn’t have to turn it into all this. It was just a question. You’re my daughter. If you’re dating a guy and he has a truck and he drives you around at night, I should know about it.”
“Can we talk about something else, please?” Vivi said. “Like maybe about the fact that there’s a fucking serial killer in town and that he’s obsessed with horror movies?”
“Language,” I said. “And alright. Fine.”
“Do you have any leads?”
“That’s confidential.”
“You don’t, do you?”
I sighed. She was right. We were looking into Becca Campbell’s friends, ex boyfriends, schedule and activities on the days surrounding her murder. Nothing jumped out at us. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ditto for Dylan Russell. He hadn’t gotten into any fights at school, wasn’t tied to our town’s drug scene. Dylan wasn’t a bully or a stereotypical jock and he didn’t make enemies, as far as we knew. He was a good kid.I didn’t know Samantha Harris but I’m sure there’d be nothing on that front too.
“No fingerprints?” Vivi asked.
“No,” I said. “Or at least none we could find. Mason Bradley, Allie Park, and Stephanie Crawford aren’t exactly a world class CSI team.”
“I think they were careful.”
“They?” I asked. “You think we’re dealing with two killers?”
“No,” Vivi said. “I don’t know but no I don’t think so. I said ‘they’ because I don’t know who it is.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I was thinking about something,” Vivi said. “Seven movies, seven bodies, seven days, right? So far it’s been two days, and two movies, but three victims. First Scream and now The Ring.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So?”
“The count’s already off. There was one extra victim on day one.”
She was right.
“You think he—”
“They.”“You think they made a mistake?”
“No. Scream’s opening scene has two victims. They replicated the scene as well as they could. Dylan and Becca even look a little like the victims.”
“So if we assume he—”
“They.”
“So if they keep going like this, with one movie and one victim each day. There are five days left, and five movies, but only four victims. How could they reference seven movies but only kill six people. It has to be seven bodies, right?”
“Yeah,” Vivi said. “That’s what I was thinking about…and I think I know the answer.”
“What?”
“Seven and seven and seven.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a movie called Seven. It actually inspired the Saw franchise. In that movie, the killer references the seven deadly sins by killing seven people. Well, he kills six but seven die, but I guess that’s a spoiler.”
“Okay, so?”
“This whole thing is a reference to the movie seven. They’ve already killed three people and referenced three movies. Scream. The Ring. And Seven. That leaves only four movies and four victims, but five days.”
“They’re not gonna kill anyone the last day,” I said.
“Not if they want only seven victims, no,” Vivi said, smiling. “And judging how strict they’ve been with their references, I don’t think they’d spoil all this by screwing the numbers up.”
“Good job,” I said.
Despite how horrible this whole thing had been, I actually enjoyed talking with Vivi, spending time with her, working the case with her. It was like a book or a Lifetime movie, a sheriff solving crimes with her daughter.
When we got to the station, I put the VHS tape into one of the VCRs in the video room. We still have VCRs, yeah. Cops use them a lot.
A series of confusing images showed up, like a strange, black and white, avant-garde student film. It lasted only a few minutes.
When it was done, Vivi looked at me and smiled.
“That’s the tape from The Ring,” she said. “I’m pretty sure they just ripped it straight from the DVD’s special features.”
“It’s scary how much you know about this,” I said.
“I love horror movies,” Vivi said, shrugging. “You know that.”
The next morning, Vivi and I got up at the same time, got dressed at the same time, and rode to the station together. It was like we’d both agreed, without talking about it, that we’d be a team on this. I didn’t really have a choice. I didn’t want to bring someone in on this that I couldn’t trust, and I didn’t know anyone who knew horror movies like Vivi.
We were pulling up to the station when we got the call.
“Ana?” Monica asked. She was our dispatcher/secretary/general assistant.
“Another body?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” Monica said.
“But that’s not all?”
“It’s Jordan,” Monica said. “Harriet said he didn’t come home last night.”
Vivi and I shared a look.
“I called the medical examiner too, a doctor—”
“What did Paul say?”
“He didn’t say anything. I got his assistant. He said that Paul didn’t come into work. They called his wife and apparently he didn’t come home last night either.”
“Another two victims?” Vivi mouthed.
“We don’t know that it’s related,” I said. “Let’s just focus on the call for now. Where is it?”
I could’ve dropped Vivi off at the station, but I wanted her with me. She made me feel better about all this. We pulled up to a house. It was a new family. I didn’t know them. Even in a small town, you can’t know everyone.
And I was glad I didn’t know them. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle the sounds the parents made when we walked into the home if I had known them or their dead kid.
I walked up the stairs, to their daughter’s room, and opened the door. I flipped on the lights, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
There was a girl sitting on her bed. She was wearing a blue nightgown. Old fashioned. It was covered in green vomit. The girl was sitting with her back to me, but I could still see her face, could see the discoloration on it, the cuts, the bruises. I could see all of it because the girl was facing me, even if her back was turned to me. She was facing me because her head had been twisted 180 degrees.I don’t know many horror movies, but I knew this one.
The Exorcist.
Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/17cgzs8/a_serial_killer_is_copying_horror_movies_part_4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf