The basement felt incredibly cold and a musty scent lingered in the air.
“Do you see anything?” Lacey asked, finding her hand clutching the back of his shirt.
“Not really.” William narrowed his eyes, finding a small, dirty window on the right side of the basement. It let in a trickle of light, barely enough for them to see a few feet ahead.
Reaching the final step, they landed in the middle of the room. The place smelled like sweat and mold, and the energy permeating the air was dark and foul.
“I don’t suppose you have one of your flashlights on you?” Lacey whispered.
He shook his head. “Wasn’t planning a hiking trip today.”
Sticking close together they moved about, their eyes strained to see the basement and all in it.
“Did you hear that?” William asked.
“No.”
“That moaning sound again.” William stopped, his gaze scanning the area.
“Wait, I think I hear it,” Lacey agreed, nerves cutting through her words.
They both pivoted, hoping to find the origin of the sound, until William cursed under his breath.
He ran over to the right corner of the basement, then crouched down to the ground. Lacey ran over to see what he had found, and when her gaze fell to the sight in front of him, she gasped.
“Mrs. Collins!” Lacey cried, kneeling next to William.
Mary Sue Collins was chained to the wall, cuts and bruises smearing her skin. Her clothes were filthy and the woman smelled like she hadn’t bathed in weeks.
“Help me prop her up,” William instructed, and Lacey took one of Mrs. Collins’ arms and placed it around her shoulders. The chain wrapped around her right wrist kept her attached to a wall beam, and William inspected it closely.
“It’s thin enough it should cut loose with a pair of pliers.” He rose up and rummaged through the basement, searching the small shelving unit for a tool box.
In the meanwhile, Lacey gently tapped the woman’s cheeks, hoping to revive her. “Mrs. Collins,” she called out. “Mrs. Collins, it’s me, Lacey Shaw. Who did this to you? Where is Julie?”
The woman moaned, her eyes struggling to open. She tried to form words, but her throat was too raspy.
“William, hurry,” Lacey urged, and finally he came back with a pair of pliers. Lacey held the woman in her arms, cradling her like a scared child. William went to work on the chain, and after a few efforts, it cut loose.
“We should get her some water, she seems parched,” Lacey instructed, noticing the woman’s chapped lips and raspy grunts.
“I’ll get her some, I’ll be right back,” William said, and took the stairs upward to the main level.
“Mrs. Collins, you’re going to be okay,” Lacey assured, carefully leaning the woman against the wall and rubbing her hands. “We will take you away from this place. Julie has done this, right?”
Mrs. Collins finally regained a moment of clarity, her glossy eyes focusing on Lacey. “Where am I…?”
“You’re in the basement of your home, Mrs. Collins. I’m Lacey Shaw. You remember me?” Lacey asked, worry lines forming on her forehead.
The woman smiled. “You’re that sweet girl who fixed my wheelchair.”
Lacey smiled, relieved the woman remembered her. “That’s right.” She leaned closer to Mrs. Collins, noticing her lids getting heavier again “Hang in there, we’re getting help. Mrs. Collins, where’s Julie?”
“Who?” she croaked.
“Your daughter,” Lacey answered. “Where’s your daughter Julie?”
The woman looked at her with a confused expression, then shook her head.
“I don’t have a daughter. I never had a child.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The bright lights of police cars reflected against the Collins’ residence as Lacey, William, and a handful of police officers stood outside the house.
Lieutenant Bennett cast a glance at Mrs. Collins, who sat in an ambulance parked at the curb. A few neighbors had already gathered outside their homes, eyes wide and confused expressions on their faces.
“You are something else, Miss Shaw,” Bennett said, returning his attention to Lacey. One hand sat on his hip, while he shook his head. “How in the world did you get out of jail?”
Lacey was about to spill the beans, but a warning look from William told her she probably should not reveal Ginny as a ghost.
“Uhm…I have my ways,” Lacey replied, an awkward but also sly look on her face.
“Don’t think you are not in trouble, Miss Shaw,” Bennett reprimanded. “What you’ve done is serious!”
“But it led me to Mary Sue’s home. If it hadn’t, God knows how long she would have stayed in that basement. Lieutenant, she could have died!” It was now her turn to place an appalled hand on her hip.
Lieutenant Bennett mumbled something under his breath and cast another look at Mary Sue Collins. “Well, that’s true. We will deal with you soon enough, Miss Shaw…but first, we need to take care of this mess.”
Bennett walked over to the ambulance, where a paramedic administered oxygen to a frightened-looking Mrs. Collins, and gave her a sympathetic smile.
“Mrs. Collins, we will get you right as rain soon enough,” Bennett began. “But first, I need you to tell me if Julie is responsible for this.”
Mrs. Collins gave him a confused gaze, the same one she had directed at Lacey when asked about her daughter.
“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re saying…” she mumbled.
“I know you don’t want to get her in trouble, but if she’s responsible for locking you in that basement and neglecting you, we need to know,” Bennett urged.
Mrs. Collins shook her head, still half in a stupor. “Julie?”
“Your daughter,” Bennett pressed, a hint of impatience in his tone.
“My daughter?”
“You remember her, I’m sure. She is your caregiver. Dark brown hair, dark eyes…” Bennett continued, but the woman’s brows furrowed into a deeper line.
“Pale skin, grumpy, disheveled,” Lacey added, earning a chiding look from both Bennett and William. She shrugged. “What? Just trying to jolt her memory.”
“Someone has been in my home?” Mary Sue Collins fretted. “A stranger?”
Bennett took a big inhale, probably wondering if the woman was exhibiting signs of dementia. “Not a stranger. Your daughter, Mrs. Collins.”
“She has been taking care of you for years,” Lacey chimed in, trying to remember useful information for the woman to identify Julie. “She wears a necklace with a strange box charm on it. Her face has…well, splotches or acne.” She was about to apologize for being so graceless in her daughter’s description, but her own words made her remember this important clue.
William noticed Lacey’s sudden pallor. “What is it?”
“The blemishes on Julie’s face,” Lacey replied. “Another clue!”
“What in the world are you talking about now?” Bennett asked, rubbing his forehead.
“Paul Martinez’s video showed the quick sight of someone in the woods with him. Their ankles had blotches all over them. Now I recognize them,” she explained, her voice raising with excitement. “It was Julie! Julie attacked Paul in the Davidson Forest. Not only that, but Allison’s autopsy showed a strange mark on her body; and what about the little orphan girl, Joann? She too was found to have a mark resembling a bite.”
Bennett and William exchanged puzzled looks.
“What are you saying?” William asked.
“That something is spreading in Raven Hills. Something—or someone—is infecting people. And Julie is the one with all the answers. We have to find her before it’s too late.”
Bennett drove through the center of town, with William in the front seat and Lacey in the back. Lacey found it a bit nerve racking to ride in a police car, this being the first time she’d been in one. More importantly, she feared that this entire situation with Julie had spiraled ou
t of control. How could it be that Mrs. Collins didn’t have a daughter, while all the while she had been parading her in town and even living with her?
Lieutenant Bennett seemed to mimic Lacey’s confusion and fear. “I supposed it could be the onset of Alzheimer’s,” he rationalized.
“If that’s the case, and Julie really is her daughter, then where is she now? And why would she lock her own mother in the basement and neglect her like that?” Lacey argued, her blood boiling as she relived the memory of finding poor Mrs. Collins in such pitiful conditions.
“We don’t know if it was Julie,” Bennett countered, but there was hesitation in his tone.
“Come on, you must feel it too,” she continued. “Something isn’t right with Julie.”
“Where are we looking for her?” William asked from the front seat.
“At the Davidson property,” Lacey replied.
Bennett took a sharp turn, heading toward the forest area. “Miss Shaw, what do you expect to find there?”
“Clues, Brian, possibly Julie,” she explained. “Something happened to Martinez in those woods, and Brian was there, too. Something happens there…something terrible.”
“We believe Martinez simply went home,” Bennett argued. “We searched the forest and never found him.”
“How well did you search?” Lacey asked, brows arching high.
“We had two men go through it,” Bennett answered, getting impatient.
“There’s a swamp there,” she remembered. “Did you dredge it?”
Bennett cleared his throat. “No…there was simply no need.”
“Well, there might be now,” Lacey added, followed by a tense silence filling the patrol car.
Soon they arrived at the outskirts of the Davidson property, where Lieutenant Bennett parked the car and shut off the engine. A cloud of dust circled the area, the vehicle having disturbed the thick underbrush.
The Davidson Forest was shrouded in its usual eerie silence. Bennett, Lacey, and William crossed the threshold and entered the woods, goosebumps trailing their skin as a sudden creepy energy permeated the air.
“We have already scouted this area, and found nothing of interest,” Bennett reminded. “What are we looking for exactly, Miss Shaw?”
Lacey swept aside a low-hanging branch, then answered, “At this point, I’m certain that the Davidson property has everything to do with whatever’s going on in Raven Hills. We’re looking for more clues, and we are definitely searching for Brian and Julie.
“I remember seeing a shack in Martinez’s video. We need to find it.”
“I know what you’re referring to,” Bennett added. “It was once used by the Davidsons during their stay in the forest. Back then they would crash there late at night after working in the mine all day.”
“You inspected the shack, then?” William wondered.
“Yes, after Paul’s disappearance. We found nothing unusual with it. Just a crumbling, abandoned place,” Bennett explained.
The three of them continued trekking through the forest, every scampering of nearby critters putting them on edge. Even Bennett, the seasoned Lieutenant, always a stoic and collected figure, appeared to be on alert. Lacey wondered if he’d finally come to terms with the fact that this town was in serious trouble, and that it was time to figure out who was behind the evil deeds and strange incidents.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached the location where the old mine sat. Lacey recognized this place all too well.
“This is where I found a page from Brian’s notebook, on which he had scribbled Mary Sue’s home address.” Pivoting, she observed the area with laser focus.
“I found you unconscious not too far from this location,” William added.
“And that’s where I saw Ginny,” Lacey said, pointing a finger toward a little mound ahead.
“Who?” Bennett questioned, brows pinched together.
William shook his head. “You don’t want to know, Lieutenant—not yet.”
Lacey began tracking up the mound, finding it familiar from her last trip in the woods. She had been too dazed and hurt to continue exploring, but now it was time to see what was on the other side.
“I think Ginny wanted me to go deeper into the forest, like there was something there she wanted me to find.” Lacey glanced over her shoulder, finding both William and Lieutenant Bennett at the bottom of the dirt mound. Bennett looked at her with doubtful eyes.
“Are you two coming?” she urged.
Both men looked at each other questioningly, sharing the same concern about heading deeper into the forest. Then again, they both thought sending Lacey off on her own was out of the question.
The three of them hiked even deeper into the forest, the heart of it now turning into a semi-night, all sunshine blocked by a thick canopy of trees and overlapping branches. Walking in the shadow of the woods, they struggled over thick underbrush and knee-high grass. The light scampering of wood animals was now replaced with the noise made by much bigger animals, and Lacey tried not to imagine whom they belonged to. Still, although the thought of wolves and other feral animals lurking nearby twisted her stomach, she feared a much bigger evil hiding in these parts of the forest.
Breaking the eerie silence, Lacey decided it was time to use her voice.
“Brian? Brian, are you there?” she cried.
“You really think Brian could be here?” Lieutenant Bennett asked, the older man slightly panting from the effort of trekking into the woods, despite his athletic build.
“I'm certain he was here,” Lacey answered.
Suddenly, the loud sound of flapping filled the air. The three of them looked up and around, feeling the rush of something coming toward them. Appearing out of thin air, and dashing through the openings between trees, a murder of crows rushed at them. They appeared like a huge black cloud coming to swallowed them whole.
“Watch out!” William yelled, and ducked low to the ground.
The crows pummeled over them, nipping at their hair and faces. Lacey screamed as she swatted at them. Bennett cursed, his arms flailing in the air in hopes to deter the volatile birds. The crows remained relentless, screeching an ear-piercing caw.
“There are too many,” Lacey cried, covering her head with her leather journal and trying to run.
The deafening caws shrilled in the air, but then a loud bang echoed in the woods. Bennett had fired his gun in the air. The crows fled as quickly as they appeared, a moving cloud of black soaring through the canopy of trees and away.
“They came out of nowhere,” William wondered, wiping a hand on his sweaty brow. He looked over at Lacey, his eyes narrowing in concern. “You’re bleeding!”
Lacey wiped her forehead, her hand coming away slick with blood instead of sweat. “The little jerks got me.”
William and Bennett moved closer to assess her. “I’m fine,” she reassured them. “Just scratches, I’m sure.”
“Am I the only one thinking that was…bizarre?” William inquired, his face turning paler.
“No. It was bizarre,” Lacey replied. “I told you something is not right in these woods.”
“Should we keep going?” William looked up again, probably checking to ensure the crows weren’t lurking and waiting to dive bomb them again.
“Yes, we keep going.” Lacey resumed her hiking, and the two men followed her again.
Soon, they found a swamp. Lacey assumed it was the same one she’d seen in Paul Martinez’s video. A shiver ran down her neck as she thought back to the images he had inadvertently recorded with his phone.
“Let’s check for clues around the swamp,” she instructed.
“What are we looking for exactly?” William wondered.
“Anything. And be careful. I have a feeling Paul Martinez is at the bottom of that swamp. We don’t want to end up the same way.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The swamp was a green soup of thick, murky water. It smelled musty and earthy, an overwhelming scent assaulting
their senses.
They walked carefully around the perimeter of the swamp, looking at the ground in hopes of finding clues of any kind.
“Nothing that I can see,” William reported as he crouched low near the bank.
“If Paul Martinez is in there, we’d have to dredge the swamp,” Lacey said then looked at Bennett. “Lieutenant, you really should make a request.”
Bennett mumbled under his breath and continued walking. “There’s nothing here but fallen limbs and mosquitos.” He swatted the air, the pesky insects getting on his nerves. “We should go back…”
“What is that?” Lacey called out as she had moved a few feet away from the swamp.
William and Bennett rushed over to where she stood.
Lacey pointed to the ground, then crouched to examine it closely. “These marks are the same strange ones I’d seen hanging around Julie’s neck and in Michael Keenley’s reports.”
Bennett frowned. “Michael Keenley?” He thought for a moment. “The lad who worked at Derby’s Soap Shop?”
“He had made several complaints to Mister Derby. Joann Derby was tormenting him at work. He also believed she was responsible for carving this symbol onto the soaps, on the dead rat she’d placed in his locker, and even his poor cat.” She looked down at the ground, trying to make sense of the square symbol with a line crossing the middle of it.
“You’ve rummaged through the Derbys’ records?” Bennett shouted. “Seriously, will you stop at nothing, Miss Shaw?”
She looked up at him, a matter of fact expression sitting on her features. “No.”
Bennett opened his mouth to counter her audacity, but was cut short by a distant wail. It seemed like a moan, or someone crying out in pain.
Lacey shot up on her feet. “I know we’ve all heard that just now, right?”
Bennett and William nodded.
“Let’s go,” Bennett instructed, and the three of them dashed in the direction of the sound.
Another feeble moan filled the air, this one shorter than the first. Lacey ran through the brush, where sharp branches cut up her legs with their bony splinters. Her heart pounded at the speed of light, knowing the sound she heard belonged to a man. The voice was raspy and afraid, but mostly in pain. The three of them swatted aside the attacking branches that dangled down trying to obscure their vision and slow down the progress.
Raven Hills- Unraveling Evil Page 14
