Whenever she heard the noise of some animal, Ellie would freeze and scan her surroundings. She still had a kitchen knife in her purse from when she went to save Andrew last night. Ellie kept it concealed, but grabbed its hilt hidden within her purse. She really needed a better way to transport the sharp object, or a better knife.
Soon, the tree appeared into the view. The ground dipped where Ellie stepped out. The shallow hill sloped onto a flat clearing under the shadow of the massive white oak tree. On its trunk was the vertical crack that made Ellie’s heart sink. The bark around it had turned black. The wood within the crack was dead and lifeless, yet the rest of the tree seemed to be in full health. With how its branches grew out, it looked like a mushroom cloud. Fat roots snaked in and out of the dirt at the tree’s foot.
Ellie pulled out the Polaroid photograph and stood in the exact place where the photographer would’ve stood. She imagined Kenny and the other three people, smiling and dressed in similar attire. She glanced around the surroundings, seeing thorn bushes and swaying wildflowers. As Mina had said, it was a nice place for a picnic: quiet, clean, and completely separated from the world.
Ellie approached the tree. She craned her neck up, spotting a few birds’ nests. Ellie looked over the crack on the trunk. She turned on the flashlight on her phone and shined it inside. A few black beetles scurried away from the light. Ellie kept an eye out for anything that would launch her investigation forward, like a memento or something.
Ellie paced around the tree. She studied the roots and ground and kicked aside rocks in hopes of finding some hidden secret. Nothing. Her frustration increased when she checked the time. Maybe she should call Troy, tell him to stay safe, and that she’ll be home this evening. Just as she started to dial, she noticed an engraving at the bottom of the oak. Ellie put away her phone and squatted down to the tree’s base. She brushed aside the loosely packed dirt around the trunk and examined the names crudely carved into a place where the bark had been dashed away.
“Ken. Pam. Kim. Andy. Mike.”
Ellie repeated the names as she studied the Polaroid. The females must’ve been Pam and Kim. Ken was obvious, so the other male may have been Andy or Mike.
The revelation hit her. Ken was short for Kenny, which meant that the other names were abbreviations too. Ellie looked back at the picture, realizing why the faces looked so familiar. The female with the chiseled face and athletic body was Kimberly, the potter and subject of Ellie’s first death portrait. Pam was short for Pamela, the stuck-up wealthy curator killed second. Then there was Andy, short for Andrew Maneau. She recognized him now, despite his dyed hair and soft features of his youth. Ken looked like Ken, just younger. There was no fifth person in the picture, so Ellie guessed that Mike was the photographer.
She let the revelation sink in and wondered why Andrew didn’t tell her about the personal connection with the girls and Kenny. Them being childhood friends seemed like something worth telling the police. He must have something to hide, Ellie concluded, but what?
A crow squawked nearby. Ellie turned back, watching the tide of crows take flight from the nearby trees and fill the indigo sky. Ellie kept a keen eye out on her surroundings. Something didn’t feel right. Like she’d gone to a place she shouldn’t have gone, or seen something she shouldn’t have seen.
She snapped a picture of the engraved names with her phone, stood up, and dialed Peaches.
He answered with a groggy voice. “Hello?”
“I found something,” Ellie said, unable to keep a lid on her excitement.
Peaches yawned. “I thought I told you to contact Skinner with whatever case information you uncover.”
“Screw Skinner,” Ellie said bluntly. “You’re the one I trust. Are you going to listen to me?”
“Of course,” Peaches replied.
Ellie heard his hospital bed squeak as he sat up. She gave him the skinny version of what she learned. “Andrew shares a personal connection with the victims. Even stranger, one of them died on April 21 last year. That’s exactly one year before my first blackout.
“Quite intriguing,” Peaches admitted. “And why do you think Andrew kept his involvement with the women hidden?”
“I don’t know, but I think it’s safe to say that this has nothing to do with some art deal,” Ellie replied.
Ellie sent him the Polaroid and the image of the etched names.
“Who’s Mike?” Peaches asked.
“Perhaps he’s the cameraman,” Ellie replied.
“And our next lead,” Peaches replied, struggling to keep a lid on his excitement.
“What? You’re suddenly recovered now?” Ellie teased.
Peaches’s bed squeaked again. The detective grunted as he stood. “I think I’ll check out early. How far are you?”
“Lancaster. It’s too far for you to drive,” Ellie said. “Maybe you can research about this Mike guy. See how he ties into this.”
“We can place bets. Next victim or killer?” Peaches asked.
“I don’t know, Peaches. What matters is that he is found. Lord knows it will take a miracle for Andrew to tell us anything useful.”
Ellie’s skin crawled as if she were dressed in flies. Someone was watching her. A little beyond the sloped natural terrain stood the figure. The foliage and thorn bushes masked their appearance. Ellie glanced back, not saying a word.
“Peaches,” Ellie whispered into the phone. “Someone’s here.”
“Who?” Peaches asked.
Ellie squinted, trying to make out the figure’s appearance. “I can’t tell. It’s like they’re waiting on me.”
“To do what?”
“Something,” Ellie replied.
Neither her nor the obscured figure moved. It was like they were having some sort of old Western standoff.
The figure stepped away from her and started into the woods, away from the street.
“They’re going somewhere,” Ellie said with a worried whisper. She felt the figure’s eyes on her as it moved away. “I think they want me to follow.”
“Ellie,” Peaches said. “You know that’s a stupid idea.”
The figure vanished from her sight. “I’m going to lose them.”
“Listen to me, Ellie,” Peaches warned. “Call the cops and wait for backup.”
“They’ll be gone by then,” Ellie replied. “It’s now or never.”
“It could be the killer,” Peaches warned.
“Or it could be the lead I need to save my husband,” Ellie replied defiantly. “I’m at the big oak on Willoughby Drive if you want to come looking for me.”
“Ellie--”
Ellie hung up and followed after the stranger.
5
REAPER
Ellie was chasing a ghost. The stranger was steps ahead of her and out of view. She could make out the person’s black attire, but only faintly. The sun was falling and the sky turned from crimson into a dark indigo. Ellie’s lack of sleep over the last few days slowed her. She could feel the aching in her knees and in the soles of her feet. She stepped over felled trees and pushed aside branches. Small bugs swirled around her head and tried to fly into her mouth as she breathed heavily. The trek was a good twenty minutes, and Ellie tried her best to pick up landmarks she’d be able to easily spot on her way back, which would probably be under the cover of nightfall. She increased her pace. The stranger did so as well. Whatever distance Ellie gained seemed futile. Her heart pounded. She didn’t know if she was following her adversary or a new ally. She could use the latter, especially having worked alone all day. Maybe it was Mike.
Without warning, the figure took off into a full sprint.
“Son of a...” Ellie said as she ran after the person. A root grabbed her foot and sent her tumbling to the dirt. She pushed her palms against the earth to lift herself up and kept on after the stranger. The person weaved through the trees as if it were their natural habitat. Perhaps it was. Ellie tried her best to follow the figure, but soon they vanished
from her view. She relied on ruffled brushes and broken twigs to follow the person’s path. A building appeared in the distance.
Ellie pressed onward, seeing the tin roof through the canopy. She exited the woods and entered into a clearing with tall grass that nearly reached her knees. The building was an old red barn built on a brick foundation. The walls tilted a few degrees to the side. Its only windows were a handful of brick-shaped holes above the various horse/cattle pens within.
The front door was made of vertical wood planks and covered with a coat of chipped red paint, like how it was portrayed in Troy’s portrait.
Catching her breath, Ellie rested her hands on her knees and glanced up at the sky. No eclipse tonight. She wondered what the rings in Troy’s pupils were. She blew at her sweat-dripping bangs that were glued to her forehead and started moving cautiously to the barn’s door. There was a small latch on the second floor that probably opened into a hayloft. Like the door, the latch was made of vertical planks that had a half-inch gap between them. Ellie felt her heart rate quicken as she neared. She expected the little upper door to fling open and for the hooded man to rain down pistol fire on her. Thankfully, her fear didn’t come to pass. She reached the barn door without issue. Her sweaty clothes stuck to her like a second layer of skin. The cool spring air made her shiver. Her hand grabbed the wooden handle nailed to the door. She gave it a pull.
It opened into the dark main room of the barn. The floor was dirt, with loose hay scattered about. To the left and right sides of the barn were animal stalls fit for horses or cattle. They had very small windows in the back and wooden doors made of horizontal planks with a twelve-inch gap between them. Above Ellie’s head was a loft that was only accessible from a ladder at the back end of the barn. Instead of animals in the stalls, there were different “scenes” with mannequins for actors. The first showed two females and three males standing around a circular table. They had empty beer bottles taped to their hands and were wrapped in unpowered Christmas lights. The next stall had the same five mannequins, but now they were standing in a line, facing Ellie. Instead of beer bottles, they had knives.
Ellie turned back to the barn door, adrenaline pumping. Instinct told her to flee, but the barn had a way of drawing her inside like a moth to flame. It was slow, torturous curiosity that pulled her deeper. The obsession with the truth, with answers, kept her from doing the logical thing. However, the logical thing wouldn’t save Troy.
The next stall showed the five mannequins standing around a plastic Christmas tree and a sixth mannequin lying on the barn’s dirt floor. The stall opposite of that only had one mannequin. It was the generic male with an identical molding to the one lying before the Christmas tree in the opposite stall. Only now the mannequin was covered in slashes and appeared to have been smashed apart by a baseball bat. The next stall showed a lone female mannequin on the floor. She was naked with a featureless face. Her arms and legs had been hacked away. There was a knife hilt glued to her back.
This area of the barn opened up like a “T”, with the lower part of the letter being the part with the stalls and the upper bar of the “T” used for storing farming equipment. There were old tractors, crude hay rolling equipment, gardening tools, etc. There was a mural on the back wall showing the cracked oak tree, the two females and three males standing around two bodies that were cut up and sleeping. All around the mural were circles of Christmas lights and a plethora of hanging empty crow cages stained with ancient bird crap and filled with bird bones.
Ellie pulled out her phone. No service, of course. She snapped a picture of the mural. As soon as her finger hit the button, the Christmas lights flickered on, flooding the room with festive greens, reds, blues and yellows. A generator hummed just out of sight.
Ellie twisted around to the front door at the opposite end of the barn. She noticed more lights wrapping around the various upright support beams and the horizontal ceiling rafters. In the hayloft above the front door, Ellie spotted a fake owl used to scare away snakes. A figure shrouded in darkness stood beside it.
Ellie froze like a deer in the headlights. Not taking her gaze from the stranger, Ellie dialed 911. Still no service. Her gut twisted. Every hair on her body rose.
“Hello?” she asked, feeling stupid and vulnerable.
The figure lingered in the shadows. Completely still. Seemingly not breathing. Ellie swiftly glanced around her, trying to catch a glimpse of a nearby weapon, when and if she needed one. There was an old wood-cutting axe propped, head down, against a shelf loaded with bags of spilled and dried-out fertilizer. If she ran, she could get it swiftly. Still, any quick moment felt like a foolish reaction. Beyond the old green tractor, she spotted a sliding back door. It was chained shut. Apparently, the only way out of the barn was the front door. That meant passing under the figure.
Ellie’s teeth chattered. She took a step forward. “Who are you?”
Silent as death, the stranger stepped out of the darkness and stopped beside the dangling fake owl. Ellie’s wide eyes traced the curvature of the long blade and the serpentine shape of scythe’s wooden handle. The stranger held the crude tool in both hands with the edge to the loft’s floor. He was clad in black, a hoodie covering his face that was masked by a thin sheer cloth.
Ellie knew him immediately. The graze on her neck throbbed with her thumping jugular vein. The slash below her eye screamed. Flashbacks of Andrew’s art room and the hooded man’s many attempts to kill her repeated in her mind over and over again. She had flown too close to the sun. Time to run.
Ellie darted for the front door. She got about three feet before the figure dropped from the loft and landed between her and the door. Dust and hay kicked up around his boots. Multiple Christmas lights reflected their pretty colors on the scythe’s crude, rust-spotted edge.
Ellie froze in her tracks, regretting she didn’t go for the axe first. It was too late for that. She took a step back slowly, trying to hide her intentions from the man who killed Kimberly, Pamela, and shot Ellie in the neck.
“Why are you doing this?” Ellie asked.
The man took a step forward, his black boot unintentionally crushing a beetle.
“You know why, Ellie.” His voice was soft, calm, but laced with torment. Ellie didn’t need to see his face to know he was a broken man; someone who’d taken the hurts of this world and channeled them into dark deeds.
“I don’t,” Ellie replied honestly, slowly moving closer to the axe. “Explain it to me.”
The point of the scythe created a small line in the dirt floor as he stepped toward Ellie. His movements were subtle but precise, like a lion stalking its prey. “You took something that wasn’t yours, Ellie Batter.”
Ellie shook her head. “What does this have to do with the paintings? With Troy? Andrew? Any of it?”
The hooded man stopped his pursuit. One of the words gave him pause, though Ellie didn’t waste time trying to guess. She was already dashing to the axe. She grabbed it and twisted in time to see the curved scythe blade slicing at her face. She ducked the deathly blow and scurried to the side. The hasty footfall of the hooded man grew louder behind her as Ellie darted for the front door. Another near miss from the scythe forced Ellie to change her course. She weaved through the various support beams wrapped with coils of distracting light. The hooded man darted parallel to her. Instead of going for another deadly swipe, he raced for the door. It was a competition now. Whoever got to the door would determine the fate of the other.
Ellie had the lead for most of it, but the hooded man was just a few paces quicker. He slammed his shoulder into the door, effectively closing it. Ellie skidded on her heels, keeping herself from tumbling into the man.
Before the stranger could ready a strike, Ellie swung down the axe. With a thunk, the weapon’s head wedged into the door a few inches from the hooded man’s face. Realizing that she had missed, Ellie pulled back on the handle. Her soft palms slipped on the coarse wooden handle. Splinters, some inches long, pierced her
flesh. Gasping in pain, Ellie yanked the axe head from the door and went for a desperate sideswipe. The hooded man ducked it. The axe head slammed into a support beam, and a few Christmas lights exploded into shards.
Recovering from the blow he ducked, the hooded man sliced the scythe at Ellie’s ankles. She leaped over it. Her childhood days of playing hopscotch were finally paying off. Instead of going for another hit, Ellie ran from the hooded man and into the back of the barn. Behind her, the hooded man picked up the lock and chain from a nearby bucket and sealed the front door.
Meanwhile, Ellie slipped by the tractor and slammed the chain on the back door with her axe. The edge sparked on impact with the metal links. Ellie’s splintered palms burned in pain. She struck the chain again. Her mind was completely empty apart from a single thought: survive.
The axe hit the chain, chipping away at the metal. Tears of blood leaked from her palms and rolled down the axe handle. She looked over her shoulder. The hooded man was watching her at the “T” of the room. He was amused by Ellie’s desperate and futile efforts of escape.
Holding the scythe across his waist, he slipped by the tractor.
Ellie hit the chain. Sparks, but no breach.
Just one more hit, she told herself. No. Run, Ellie. She trusted the second voice and darted to the nearest stall. She scrambled over buckets, a woodman’s bench, and a collection of rakes and hoes, spilling them in her wake. She grabbed ahold of the stall’s horizontal slats and used them as a ladder to the loft. The hooded man marched over the mess and extended the scythe to strike at Ellie. The curved edge hit the slats nearest her and scraped downward, making a rivet in the wood. Ellie reached the loft, crawled on her belly, and forced herself to stand. The pain in her splintered hands caught up with her, and she could hardly clench the axe handle without letting out a soundless cry of pain. Her eyes were wet. She knew the hooded man would be up here soon. She turned back to the ledge, seeing the man climbing up to her. Ellie swung the axe down. The blood made her hands slick and made her lose her grip on what could’ve been the killing blow. The axe toppled down next to the hooded man. Knowing instantly that her adversary was undamaged, Ellie ran deeper into the loft. Her eyes were on the little upper door above the front entrance.
Stolen Secrets: A Collection Of Riveting Mysteries Page 17
