I was the police chief of a small town in Vermont called Dusky Creek. It was for the most part a quiet little town. No genuinely horrific crimes ever really happened. The worst things we got were the occasional road accidents caused by drunk drivers. Crimes were pretty uncommon and never truly serious.
There was the once-a-blue-moon theft and the occasional domestic disturbance call. We also had some incidents of livestock going missing, as well as the occasional vagrant or hiker. The forests around the town are pretty dense, meaning there are many places for big predators to hide, and many places anybody inexperienced or ill-prepared could get themselves lost. I never suspected that something a bit more… sinister could be involved.
But this all changed one cloudy morning on June 23rd, 1997. My last day as a cop.
I was sipping my cup of coffee when our department’s dispatcher, Nancy, came into my office. She looked pale and anxious. So unlike how she usually was.
“What’s up, Nancy?”
“I just got a call from a young woman. She went to her friend’s house earlier this morning and found the place ransacked. Her friend and her friend’s husband are both missing.”
I’d woken up that day thinking that it would be like any other day. But it seemed as if the powers that be had decided to change it up a notch. Break the status quo a little. Make things a little more interesting.
I put my coffee down, grabbed my hat off my desk, and put it on my head.
“Which residence is it, Nance?”
“The Tommersons.” Nancy replied.
I didn’t know the Tommersons all that well. They had moved into town about two months before the incident. They had bought a small homestead that used to belong to a farmer who had died a few years before.
I gathered four of my officers. Their names were Tom Harris, Sherri Carter, Bob Williams and Richard Cleese. We all set off for the homestead in two patrol cars. Tom and Sherri were with me, and Bob and Richard were following behind us.
On our way to the homestead, we passed by the ruins of the Heaven’s Hope Orphanage which burned down back in 1904. As with many places of its ilk, countless urban legends have abounded. The most common one is about the orphanage being built on some sacred Abenaki burial ground and the orphans being possessed by angry native spirits that compelled them to burn the place to cinders. Another common one is about the head of the orphanage being a mad scientist who experimented on the orphans.
I can safely say that all of these legends are complete residue from a horse’s nether regions. Now there are some Abenaki burial sites around Dusky Creek. But none of them are anywhere near the Heaven’s Hope Orphanage.
Here’s what really happened there. The orphanage was absolutely haemorrhaging money. Completely on the verge of bankruptcy. So the orphanage director, a man named Jedediah Crowe, decided to cut his losses and burn the place to the ground for an insurance scam.
The dumb bastard ended up getting caught in the flames and died of smoke inhalation. The fire burned his scheming ass to a crisp. The orphans, twelve of them in total, fled into the surrounding forest to escape the fire.
Nine of them were soon rescued. But the remaining three, one eleven year old boy, and two girls, one fourteen and the other fifteen, were never located and were believed to have eventually died of exposure. Their bodies were never found.
So that’s the true story of the demise of the Heaven’s Hope Orphanage. The only thing the urban legends get right is Jedediah Crowe being an abusive piece of manure. He was known to poorly treat the orphans under his care. And he became increasingly neglectful as the orphanage’s financial situation went south. It got a point where many of the poor kids started begging around town for food.
One of the older girls who were rescued also fell pregnant shortly after the fire. The girl never said who the father was, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of eighteen. But, many of the townsfolk did remark that the baby looked a lot like Jedediah.
The homestead came into view. It was nothing but a smallish clapboard house that presided over an overgrown pasture. And beyond the decaying fence, there lay the forest. It looked so dark underneath the cloudy sky.
“They haven’t done anything with Chuck’s old place. Just let at all waste away.” Said Tom as he peered out the passenger window at the nature-reclaimed pasture.
“I think I can see a little vegetable garden in the front yard.” Replied Sherri.
I saw the garden too. At least they weren’t letting everything decay. We parked outside the house, and Mrs Tommerson’s friend was waiting for us on the porch. Bob questioned her while the rest of us investigated the house. The living room looked like a hurricane had gone through it. The couch was upturned and had several chunks take out of it. The CRT television looked like it had been thrown across the room and now laid shattered against the left wall. A shelf had been knocked over. Drawers were scattered all over the floor, and their contents were spilled all over the carpet.
But the most disturbing thing was the blood. It looked like arterial spray. It was smeared over the walls and floor. There were sliding doors leading to the patio and backyard on the east side of the living room. One of the doors had been smashed.
“Think it might’ve been a bear attack? Maybe we got a rabid black bear on our hands.” Said Richard as he examined the blood on the wall.
“This wasn’t a bear, Richard. A bear, no matter if its rabid or not, wouldn’t think to go through drawers. Especially ones that don’t have any food in them. And they don’t have right anatomy to lift up a television and throw it across a room.”
“So, you think a person may have done this?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
I walked to the smashed sliding door and peered out at the patio. There was a pretty thick trail of blood on the slabs. I walked out onto the patio and followed the blood trail to the edge of it, and discovered that the trail continued onto the grass, and all the way to the fence that separated the backyard from the forest. The fence had a massive hole in it.
“Richard, come and look at this.”
Richard quickly joined me on the patio and his eyes widened when he saw the trail of blood and the massive hole in the fence.
“Jesus Christ.” He breathed.
“Richard, something really goddamn fishy is going on here. And it isn’t some rabid black bear.”
Richard knelt down and covered his nose. He studied the blood trail for a few seconds, and then he looked at the hole in the fence. Then he stood and spoke.
“Maybe Mr and Mrs Tommerson had massive fight and one of them ended up losing it and stabbed the other one death? And when they came to their senses, they panicked, dragged the body out here to hide it in the woods, and then ran off?”
I smiled a little at Richard’s sleuthing.
“That’s a good hypothesis, Rich. But, I don’t its the correct one. Why would they smash open their sliding door and knock a huge hole through their fence? Its a bit… impractical for a murder coverup isn’t it?”
“Well, they would’ve been panicking.” Richard replied.
Sherri and Tom appeared at the sliding doors, and they both swiftly spotted the blood trail and the broken fence.
“What the hell happened here?” Said Sherri.
“That’s what we need to find out. Quickly. Did you find anything in the kitchen?”
“Its completely ransacked, like the living room. All the cabinets have been opened and the fridge is on its side. It’s like a gaze of raccoons just fucking went crazy in there.”
“Guess that puts my domestic dispute murder theory out the window then.” Richard said.
“This whole thing is a burglary. Its got to be. Or maybe somebody had a nasty grunge against these two, and decided to get rid of them for good.” Tom said.
“Well, if this is a burglary or a deliberate homicide, then the perp did a shitty job of covering their tracks.” Sherri remarked.
“To be honest, everyone, I don’t think what happened here is either of those. If it was a burglary, then why didn’t they take anything of value? There was some pretty expensive stuff in that living room, and it had all just been left there. That CRT-Television looked like it was worth quite a few bucks, and it had just been thrown across the room like a worthless piece of scrap. And if it were grudge-fuelled a homicide, then why didn’t the killer try to be more discreet? They haven’t covered their tracks at all. None of it adds up.” I explained.
After talking to the woman, Bob joined us on the patio. And what he told us just made the situation even stranger.
“Alright guys, Miss Daniels told me that when she came out here, she saw a girl watching her from the forest. She was maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, tallish, and had long, shaggy black hair. She was wearing a deer pelt and necklace with… bones, or teeth, hanging off of it.”
“A deer pelt and a necklace made of bones?” Richard remarked.
“Shit. Sounds like we’re dealing with some drugged up hippie commune or something.” Said Tom as he glanced at the forest.
Yeah. The entire situation had just become even weirder. I walked to the hole in the fence and stepped through into the dim woods. I examined the surrounding area, and soon located a large, bloody handprint on one of the fence planks. I put my own hand next to it to get a sense of scale, and the print was near twice as large as my hand.
I was just about to call everyone over when I heard some leaves been crushed a few meters ahead into the forest. I looked in the direction of the sound. Peering out from behind some bushes was the girl. She looked exactly as Miss Daniels had described her. Deer pelt. Bone necklace. Very rugged, unkempt. But the thing I found most striking about her, were her eyes. They were big, and green, like shimmering jade-stones. Primal.
“Hey!” I called out to her.
“What’s wrong chief?!” I heard Richard call, but it barely registered.
The girl stayed there, staring at me for a few seconds and then she took off running.
“Shit!”
Richard appeared at the hole in the fence.
“What’s going on?” He said.
“Its the girl! C’mon, we have to go after her!”
I took off running in the direction the girl had gone. Richard and the others quickly followed suit. The forest was dense and uneven. How the girl was able to traverse it so quickly, I don’t have a chance in hell of knowing. We were constantly tripping over and getting snagged on bushes and overhanging branches. It felt like hell. But, little did I know, the worst was yet to come.
We eventually stumbled upon a shallow stream. The girl’s footprints were imprinted into the muddy bank. Something was moving around inside a thick cluster of red spruces on the other side of the stream. And whatever it was, it seemed too big to be the girl.
“Is it a bear?” Bob enquired.
“Let’s see.” I replied as I retrieved my 9mm luger pistol and fired a single shot at the tree cluster. The blast reverberated off the tree trunks and stirred a few birds from their perches. Whatever it was that was moving around in amongst the spruces quickly went still.
“Want me to go check it out?” Said Bob.
“Go ahead. We’ll cover you.” I replied.
Bob retrieved his gun from his holster, and then slowly stepped into the slow moving stream and carefully advanced towards the spruces. His gun at the ready. Finger firmly on the trigger. The forest had grown oddly silent. I could hear my own my heartbeat. Hell, I could hear everyone’s heartbeats. As soon as Bob’s left foot hit solid ground, a great breath came from the bushes beneath the spruces.
A gargantuan and unfathomably ugly man burst forth. He may not have been a bear, but he was as tall as one and just as wide. His hair was sparse, thinning. His sapphire-blue eyes were uneven, one bigger than the other. His teeth were huge and gnarled. And his nose looked as if it had melted into his face. His only item of clothing was a pair of dirty jeans that were far too small for him.
In his massive hand, he held a broken pitchfork. He came at Bob so fast, and so viciously, that the officer had no real time to react. None of us did. He plunged the pitchfork through Bob’s chest, and Bob recoiled and fell into the stream. God, his spluttering gasps. His blood clouding the once clear water. It was just… macabre.
Richard was the first one to react. He aimed and fired a shot that hit the grotesque giant in the shoulder. But, besides a slight wince, the giant man barely registered the bullet wound. Sherri fired the next shot, and this shot hit him in the upper leg. And he didn’t even notice that one at all. He bellowed and charged across the stream, swatted Richard out of the way, and Richard went tumbling across the ground. His next target was Sherri, she took aim and fired, but missed her shot and the giant man grabbed her by the scruff and flung her into a nearby tree trunk, and the tree rattled when her body slammed against it.
Me and Tom both fired at him. Tom managed to score a hit on the giant’s hip, but this ended up drawing his attention. He lunged for Tom, grasped him by the neck, lifted him from the ground, and pinned him up against a trunk. The giant man began strangling Tom, growling through his jagged, misshapen teeth. Tom lashed out with his feet and his fists, but they did little to deter the freak of nature.
I needed to find a weak spot. Hitting the torso wasn’t doing jack squat. Thinking fast, I quickly decided on the throat. That would take the freak down. I grabbed a rock from the ground, and I hurled it at the giant, and it hit the giant’s shoulder, and the giant swiftly turned in my direction and released Tom from his grasp. I swiftly took my chance and fired. The bullet hit the giant man in the neck, and his neck exploded into a cloud of viscera, and the giant man emitted a prolonged gasp and fell to his knees.
I thought that would take him down for good. But, it didn’t. His misshapen eyes glared at me with a hatred that could only have been stirred from the deepest pits of hell. And even with his neck torn open, and one of his arteries lashing about, squirting blood everywhere like a garden hose, he managed to muster the strength to start clawing his way towards me.
I swiftly put three bullets in his head. And his misshapen eyes rolled up into their sockets, and he finally collapsed. His blood seeped into the stream. Joining Bob’s own blood.
The stream turned deep red.
Tom was hunched over by the tree trunk he was just pinned up against. He was clutching his red throat, gasping desperately. Sherri slowly pulled herself to her feet, and stood shakily, staring out at the bloody chaos that now surrounded us. Richard was in the crimson stream, trying to drag Bob out of it. The broken pitchfork was still sticking out of his chest.
“Fuck… I can’t breath… I can’t breath!” Tom shouted.
Sherri quickly ran to him and tried to calm him. I ran over to Richard to help him haul Bob out of the stream. Taking him by the shoulders, we pulled him onto the bank. He lay there, motionlessly, his eyes empty.
Richard quietly took his pulse. All the colour then drained from his face, and he looked up at me with glassy eyes.
“Nothing. He’s gone.”
Silently, I shut Bob’s eyes and then removed my hat and covered Bob’s face with it. I’d seen many deaths in my time. But when its of someone you know, its cuts deeper than any other. And Bob’s death had been a horrible one. His last moments filled with terror.
“What in god’s name is that thing?” Richard said, glaring balefully at the hulking corpse of the deformed man.
“I don’t know. I don’t even want to know, to be honest. But I have a good feeling that this thing, and that girl, are responsible for the Tommersons going missing.” I replied.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced over at Sherri and Tom. Tom was sitting against the tree, pale white, muttering, and hugging his shoulder. Sherri, god bless her, was at his side, trying to calm him.
“Sherri, stay here with Tom and call for backup. Me and Richard are gonna push on and try to find that girl.”
“What? The two of you can’t just go on. There could be more of those fucking things in there. You’d be outnumbered and…”
“Sherri, we don’t have a choice. The Tommersons could still be alive. Or at least one of them might be. We can’t waste precious time waiting around here.” I explained.
Thinking back, we should’ve stayed and waited for backup to arrive. But I wasn’t thinking straight. Neither was Richard. We were angry. Very angry. Revenge was on our minds just as much as the Tommersons’ safety. God, I should’ve listened to my rational side. But my anger drowned it out completely.
“Richard, you still got your gun?”
“Yeah, I somehow managed to keep hold of it when Gunther Twibunt over there knocked me out of the way. Guess it must’ve been the adrenaline.” Richard replied.
“Alright. When we cross over to the other side, we stick together. At all times. We work as a team.”
Richard nodded in agreement. We stepped through the bloody water and entered the cluster of spruces on the other side. We quickly noticed the giant’s man’s footprints in the soft dirt. And we also noticed the girl’s footprints as well, leading deeper into the forest. We carefully followed the girl’s prints, keeping our guns readied at all times. We listened to every single sound that emitted from the gloomy trees and vegetation.
After what felt like hours, the dense vegetation gave way to a sparsely treed area. In this area, there was an ancient looking two-story brick house that looked as though it had been built in the 1800s, maybe civil war era.
“I do not like the looks of that place.” Richard remarked.
“Me neither. But I got inkling that the Tommersons are in that house. Dead or alive.”
We slowly advanced toward the house. Sweat drenched. Our hands white as snow from clutching our guns so tightly. Everything was quiet. No wind. No birds. The air was frozen still. I kept feeling eyes watching us from the dark windows of the house.
Underneath a small birch tree, a few meters away from the house, there was a large ditch. Our curiosity piqued, we both carefully approached and peered into it. There was girl inside. She was laying on her back with her left arm over her chest. She was wearing a dark, stained sundress. She looked maybe two or three years younger than the the girl with the bone necklace. There were flower petals on her pallid forehead, some having fallen into her long black hair. There was snakebite on her shin, likely the work of a Timber Rattlesnake.
We then heard a door swing open behind us. We swiftly turned around, guns at the ready. The door to the house was now wide open, and a tall, burly man stomped out onto the rotting porch. He was barefooted, and wearing a dark brown flannel shirt and a pair of dirty, black trousers. His hair was long, black, and shaggy, and his face was enshadowed by a great, bushy beard.
“Put your hands behind your head and get on your knees!” Richard roared.
The man snarled at us and then retreated back into the house and slammed the door shut. We bolted to the porch, blinded with rage and tried to open the door. But it wouldn’t give. The bearded man had either locked it or barricaded it. Bracing ourselves, we both slammed our shoulders into the door, again and again. Finally, with one great shove, the door gave way and we stepped into the decrepit foyer.
The stairs were to our right, and the man was standing in front of a door at the other end of the foyer. He was holding a massive pickaxe, glowering at us. He bellowed and went to charge at us, but I swiftly fired a shot that hit him in his right shoulder. He recoiled backwards and slammed into the door, and the door gave way to darkness. We heard him tumbling down a flight of stairs. The basement. It had to be.
A door slammed open upstairs and we swiftly pointed our guns at the top of the stairway. A woman came into view, and following behind her was a young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old. The woman was tall and lean with long black hair and olive green eyes. The dead girl outside, and the girl with the bone necklace both looked very similar to her. She was a wearing a dirty, ripped black dress. She was also barefoot, like the man and the girl.
The boy was dressed in deer pelt, like the girl. His dark hair was long and unkempt. His eyes were sapphire-blue, like the giant deformed man’s. He clung tightly to the woman’s arm, and stared at us fearfully.
“Put your hands behind your head, right now!” Yelled Richard.
“Don’t make this get any uglier now.” I said.
I was hoping she’d comply. I didn’t want to risk accidentally hitting the kid. The woman glared hatefully at us, and then she shoved the boy back into the room they’d just come out of. Then, much to our surprise, she raised her hands and slowly descended the stairs. Her eyes kept glancing between me and Richard. When she got to the foot of the stairs, Richard lowered his gun a little, but I kept mine trained on her.
“Now turn around and get on your knees.” I ordered.
She scowled, and then elbowed me hard in the face. My nose cracked, and I fell onto my back, completely dazed. I heard Richard fire his gun, and then he grunted and I felt the floor vibrate. Clutching my bleeding nose, I waited for my eyes to clear. When they did, I saw Richard on the floor and the woman straddling him. She was trying to stab him with a folding knife. Keeping the knife at bay, Richard punched the woman in the face, and she dropped the knife. Then, Richard pushed her off himself and then got on top of her and went to punch her again, but she caught his hand and grabbed his throat and started choking him.
The boy suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs. He was holding a broken piece of wood. He then charged down the stairs towards Richard and the Woman as they were struggling on the floor. I just panicked. I fired my gun and… it hit the boy in the stomach. He gasped and fell down the rest of the stairs, and landed in a heap the bottom of the them.
I didn’t mean to shoot him.
Richard and the woman stopped struggling and looked over at the boy. He was laying on his back, clutching his bloody stomach, silently crying. God, I’ll never forget the look in that woman’s eyes when she saw the boy laying there. She growled viciously, and threw Richard off herself. And then she leapt atop him and bit into his throat and tore it open. His blood sprayed everywhere. It just all happened so damn fast, I didn’t have time to react. Richard laid there, wheezing and weakly grasping at the panting, blood-smeared woman.
The woman then glared at me. Eyes filled with pure hate. She got to her feet and charged at me, and I reflexively opened fire and shot her three times in the stomach and once in the chest. Her charge halted, and she fell onto her back. Coughing and spluttering. She took one last, bile-filled glance at me, and then she weakly crawled towards the boy and fell atop him, and wrapped her arms around him.
I sat there, panting. Staring at them. Blood running down my face from my cracked nose. Letting go of my now empty gun, I shakily got to my feet and approached Richard. He lay there in a pool of blood. His neck a gruesome chasm. His skin as pallid as the reaper’s face. His eyes sunken in their lids, empty and void of light. I shut my eyes and inhaled. And then I closed Richard’s eyelids.
His girlfriend wouldn’t be getting that ring now.
A great growl echoed in the cellar and my skin paled. The man. I’d completely forgotten about him. His feet came pounding up the stairs and his massive frame appeared in the doorway, blood dripping from the hole in his shoulder. He stood there, his muddy green eyes glaring into my own, his jagged teeth clenched. And then he noticed the woman and the boy on the floor, and his face fell. His eyes widened and his hand covered his mouth. Then his eyes turned to me again, and they hardened and darkened. He roared and charged, and I went to grab my gun. But I wasn’t fast enough, and the man’s brawny arms wrapped around my neck. He lifted me from the floor and threw me into a door on the left wall of the foyer. The ancient door easily gave way and I fell into the room behind it.
Gasping, my vision fuzzy, I blindly tried to grab for something, anything, that I could use as a weapon. My fingers brushed against something long and metallic, and I swiftly grabbed it. It was a long, rusty nail. I got on my knees and glanced back. The man was kneeling over the bodies of the woman and the boy, silently weeping. I got to my feet, and he quickly noticed me. He slowly stood up, fists clenched, and rushed me. I readied the nail, and he wrapped his hands around my neck, and slammed into the far wall.
He squeezed my windpipe shut. Glaring his tear-stained green eyes into my own. Anger and pain was all that I could see in his eyes. My own eyes narrowed, I plunged the nail into the man’s chest. Besides a slight wince, and a quiet grunt, the man just squeezed harder, and my vision started to get fuzzy. I pushed the nail deeper, and the man squeezed tighter.
My vision was now so foggy that I could barely even make out the man’s face. I used every ounce of my waning strength to give one final push of the nail, and I felt warm blood pour all over my hand. The man’s grip on my throat finally weakened, and then he gasped and let go completely. I too gasped and sank to my knees. My throat felt like it was on fire. When my vision cleared, I saw the man crouched on the floor in front of me. He was clutching his bloodstained chest. His pierced heart was pumping blood around the nail.
The man gave me one final look, and then he turned around and hobbled toward the woman and the boy. And then, he fell atop the both of them, and embraced them.
I got up and stepped back into the foyer. I looked down at the three people I’d killed, holding each other in death. And then I looked over at the doorway to the basement. I approached and peered down. A horrible stench permeated from within. Carrion and rotting, maggot-infested flesh.
I stepped down into the malodorous murk, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw countless animal carcasses strewn about on the earthen floor. And that wasn’t all. In the far corner of the basement, I also saw the ravaged bodies of Mr and Mrs Tommerson. We were too late. We were too late before we’d even arrived. I shook my head, and then turned around and walked back up to the foyer.
I heard quiet, rapid breaths. It was the boy. He was still alive. A small, yet profound sense of relief fell over me. At least I could save one person. I know he was one of them, but he was just a kid. He didn’t have a choice in being one of them. He was just doing what his ma and pa told him to do. And I’d shot him when he was just trying to stop an intruder from hurting his mother.
I rushed to the boy and, with some difficulty, pulled him away from his mother and, I think, his father. He didn’t try to resist me. Poor devil was probably just too weak to try. He’d lost so much blood. But I was determined to not to let him die on me. I carried him over to the wall and sat him up against it. Then I removed my shirt and pressed it against the wound.
“Look, I know you may not like me. But, I’m trying to help. I’m sorry all this happened. I’m sorry things couldn’t have gone another way. I’m just so sorry.” I said, not caring if the boy could understand me or not. I just wanted him to feel safe.
A shape then appeared at the front door. It was the girl with the bone necklace. Her piercing green eyes were stained with tears, and her fists were clenched tightly at her sides.
“Wait… I’m just trying to help…” I said. But she ignored my plea. She charged in and kicked me away from the boy. And then she slung him over her shoulder and ran out the door.
“Fuck!” I shouted and then ran out after her. But she was gone. Vanished into the forest.
I punched the wall and then I sunk down against it. I sat there for what felt like hours, completely dazed. The pain from my broken nose all but numb to me now. Eventually, I just blacked out.
When I came to, I was in a hospital bed. The fluorescent lights shining their harsh beams into my eyes from the ceiling. Everything that happened then washed through my mind like an immense tsunami, and tears started forming in my eyes. I laid there, silently weeping.
After half and hour or so, the mayor of Dusky Creek, Andrew Haleck, came into my hospital room and sat by the side of my bed.
“Are you feeling well, Chief Wexell?”
“Can’t say I am. Can’t say I’m not. I’m just lukewarm.”
“Do you feel well enough to talk?”
“I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?”
“Alright then. After we found you passed out on the porch of that house, I had everyone gather up the bodies of those… wild people, and burn them. We’re gonna tell the townspeople and the victim’s loved ones that it was rabid bear attack.”
“What? Why? Why don’t tell everyone the truth?”
Mayor Haleck sighed.
“Because, I just don’t think the people will take very well to the news of there being a bunch of cannibalistic savages living so close to their town. It could cause all kinds of problems that we really don’t need right now. We also don’t know if there might be more of them out there too. It’ll cause a mass panic.”
I decided not to tell Haleck about the girl and the boy. I know should’ve, but I still just felt so guilty. The entire thing was just a shit-show that probably could’ve been handled a lot better than it was. If only me and Richard, god bless his soul, hadn’t gone rushing off like a pair of cowboys and just waited for backup to arrive.
In fact, this entire thing could’ve been stopped from happening a long time ago. I think I now know where these people came from. This whole thing started with the Heaven’s Hope orphanage. And it should’ve ended there too. Those kids should’ve been taken away from that dung-hole and brought to a place that would’ve actually cared about them.
But, like a lot of horrible crap that happened back then, ignorance and apathy doomed those little ghosts.
I guess I don’t really hate those people. They didn’t choose their lot in life. Am I horrified by their actions? Well yeah, of course I am. But, I can understand them to an extent. They just did what they needed to do. What their natures compelled them to do. Natures that were forced upon them by the circumstances their ancestors were forced into.
Mayor Haleck bid me goodbye and then left. I was in that hospital room for two days, and when I left, I resigned from my position as police chief of the Dusky Creek Police Department. It just didn’t feel right anymore. Lying to the ones you were sworn to serve and protect just didn’t sound right to me at all. It was a burden I could not hold upon my shoulders. Not even by the grace of god.
In fact, living in that town, the town I’d grown up in, became unbearable too. My wife and I packed up and moved to another little town shortly after the incident. Things started to get a little better there. Sure, I still had night terrors and the guilt still ate away at the back of my mind (and still does, though less severely), but I was a bit more at peace.
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep late at night, my mind wanders to the girl and the boy. And I wonder of what’s become of them. Are they still alive? Are they doing what the rest of their folk did?
It all haunts me. And probably always will.