I didn’t make the right decision by staying up all night. The fifty-ish hours of constant terror were kind of catching up to me, and that, combining with the numerous theories I had about Marcela and what’s happening in the videos, made my skin crawl.
We checked out of the hotel and drove to the station without incident.
The husband was there in the lobby too, pacing nervously while his kid slept on the seats. When he saw me, he looked like he was about to cry. Even without me saying anything, he began explaining what had happened to him.
Yesterday, as soon as I had left, he’d filed a missing person’s report for Marcela, and then gone home with his son and taken the next few days off of work. They’d both fallen asleep in their living room, and he’d woken up at about two in the morning, with three video attachments emailed to him by one of those random keysmash emails, and so of course he’d freaked. The weird thing was that he didn’t get any of the numerous texts I’d gotten, telling him to watch the videos immediately. No, he was warned with something objectively worse.
A family photograph of him, Marcela, and their son. He confirmed that yes, it was the one on their Facebook profile. He had blown it up and printed it out to bring to the police, and I saw how Marcela’s face had been partially scribbled out, and how there was an arrow pointing to the son.
So yes, he had watched the videos.
Here’s the kicker. They were different from the glimpse I’d seen. His were about thirty seconds to a minute long in total, and they were just videos of someone walking in a home. My home.
Marcela and I had hosted gatherings and dinners for family to come over to. Of course, he had been able to identify my front door and my office desk and my refrigerator.
I nearly threw up when I heard. Besides the obvious terror of someone breaking into my home, I wanted to know–why me? As far as I know, I haven’t really gotten on anyone’s bad side. For god’s sake, I was single all of high school and most of college, and that fling ended approximately three seconds after graduation. I haven’t exactly gotten into fights or had weird gossip about anyone, not more than regular people. And I don’t think I’ve killed?
But I can cross-examine my life at a later point. Right now, rather than figuring out the motive behind why this is all happening, I wanted to find out who was doing this, and what would stop them from doing so. The obvious answer; watching the clips.
I had barely slept in two days, and I really just wanted all of this to be over. This harrassment involved threatening other people now, too, and I didn’t want to see that list expand. Besides, I didn’t think that watching the video would suddenly make me magically susceptible to getting killed horribly, so when the officers came back in the lobby to bring us all in, I waited until after they asked us all the questions they wanted, and then asked my own question in turn: could I watch the videos?
We ended up agreeing that I could, provided one officer was in the room with me as I did so. Marcela’s husband wanted to watch too–he looked seriously perturbed, so he pulled up a chair. My heart was beating so fast I was scared I’d go into cardiac arrest before seeing anything.
I turned my phone on and clicked on the first attachment in the blocked chat, ignoring any and all other messages I’d gotten. It was horrible, but it provided a bit of context, while simultaneously making the situation much more terrifying.
The first clip opened up with a handwritten note on a piece of paper: “PRACTICE”. The next scene was where it all started to go wrong. The camera showed the outside of a door, and a hand coming into frame and knocking against it. There was a low sigh, shaky.
Someone opened the door. A woman–my suspicions were right regarding that, at least. Her face was blurred out. The cameraman stepped in, and the next portion of the clip and most of the second clip was dedicated to her murder. I threw up in a trash can at least twice. Marcela’s husband retreated to the corner of the room, weeping.
The third clip started with the scene I remembered–a bloody head, and someone breathing heavily. The camera fell to the ground, and all I could see was someone’s feet–they were wearing sneakers, and started crying loudly. Then they picked the camera up, and I saw that there were other bodies there, all of them with their heads practically blown apart. That part must have happened off-camera; suffice it to say they died from being hit too hard, if they were murdered the same way the woman had been.
Near the end of the clip were where things descended from just the concept of serial killings being filmed to something a bit creepier, and I understood now why the police officers had asked me about ritual killings. The camera had been picked up, and the cameraman seemed to be walking past the bodies into a hallway, where I could hear a chanting. It sounded like a million voices saying the same word over and over again, but it wasn’t a word I knew.
That was where the last video cut off, and I looked at the officer. He looked back at me. We looked at Marcela’s husband, who was practically incoherent. All he would say was the shoes were Marcela’s.
So she was probably the dead woman, then, which meant that the messages weren’t from her. Why was the clip labeled as practice, though? And why am I involved in this? Why is her child, who’s like ten, being threatened?
I didn’t cry; I don’t know why. I think I was too shocked. As though that wasn’t enough, the phone rang literally ten seconds later. An unknown number. We all knew who it was, and once again, I was spooked at how accurately they were timing everything. The officer picked it up, and asked who it was.
This was the first time I’d heard the voice of whoever was tormenting me. It was low and shaky; they seemed nervous of something, and talked like they were reading off a piece of paper. Of course, what they said is burned into my brain, and probably will be forever. “So you’ve watched the videos. Aren’t the actors so good-looking? It would have been easier if you hadn’t resisted so much. Now there will be more. As a consequence. Watch them and learn your lesson.``
Then they hung up, and I broke down.
Someone spent the better part of two hours trying to calm us down. They offered to bring my mom in, to which I said no. It was better if she didn’t know about this development. She used to bake Marcela cookies every time she would come over, and she joked about her being like a third daughter to her. And I’m keen on her being targeted because she was close to me, but I don’t want to distance myself from her.
She’s my mother.
I’m still at the station. The four of us have been here all day; the officers stopped questioning us around three, but we are all fucking terrified. Marcela’s husband–I’ll call him Hunter (fake name)–took the kid to the corner to give us some semblance of privacy while I caved and told my mother I was basically a walking curse unless the police caught the culprit quickly.
I was told to get a new phone, and that’s the first thing I’m doing as soon as I can stand up without shaking. This is so fucked.
Hunter thinks the police are working too slowly, and he wants to look into more stuff. I had my own reservations–what if it endangers more people in the process?
He said that people would die either way, and if anything, this might help the opposite happen. I just want this all to be over, so I agreed, and because my hands were mostly working fine, after a quick necessary snooze, we started to pore over all of Marcela’s social media and any weird stuff about ritual killings–there’s a lot out there about the latter.
We made another distressing discovery–remember the profile picture on her Facebook that I thought was weird? She’s very likely dead in it. I zoomed in on it, and there is the start of a swell on her temple, and her eyes just look… lifeless.
Hunter’s keeping it all in for now. His kid’s three feet away from us, and I can tell he doesn’t want to cry in front of the little guy, who we’ve all agreed to keep in the dark for the while. He’s obviously not going to school for a bit, and honestly, I’m worried about how his face had an arrow next to it. I’m taking time off work, and the three of us are keeping him in our sights at all times to make sure nothing happens to him as I “learn my lesson”.
I feel like I’m going to throw up. I promise you I’m not hiding some horrible dark secret–I have no idea why these people are being killed. I don’t know what the clip was practice for. Am I the next victim? Are these “consequences” building up to me being dead?
I feel completely lost.