The figures departed.
Ellie shouted louder, pleading with them, but they didn’t reply. Were they part of her dream too? Ellie didn’t know. Her teeth chattered. She hugged herself, longing to get dry. Her clothes were heavy and ruined. She’d probably have to toss out her shoes after returning. She still didn’t have her rental car’s key. She brushed her foot around the water, trying to see if she could feel the key. The water was too deep. Ellie held her breath and descended. She didn’t know how close she got to the bottom, but it was far enough she had to turn back. She looked up again. No sign of the silhouettes. She would say she was losing her mind, but then she’d probably lost it the moment she painted the first portrait.
Leaning against the wall of the well, she wondered what life would look like if she didn’t get the power. Troy and her would’ve gotten back from Naples, stayed on their honeymoon high, and returned to their normal lives. They’d moved in together before the marriage, so Ellie imagined that not much would’ve changed. Well, except for the fact that the baby talk was actually an option now. Like with the wedding, Troy was also the more adamant one in the relationship. He had proposed to Ellie multiple times over the years before her career was finally profitable enough for her to accept the commitment. Troy had already brought up multiple times that he wanted kids. Two boys and a girl, just like his family. Ellie didn’t know what she wanted. Even after years of planning, Ellie was unsure on the number of kids would be right for her or when she wanted to have them. Troy would probably push the issue after their second honeymoon, seeing how neither of them were getting any younger. Ellie remembered that she was supposed to plan out the second vacation. Whoops. Not like it would matter anymore. Troy was probably dead by this point.
“Hey!” A voice echoed down the well.
Ellie shielded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the silhouetted figures. One of them dropped down a thick hemp rope. It splashed in the water beside her. There were a number of knots on it.
“Can you climb?” The person asked.
“I think so!” Ellie replied. Even if she couldn’t, she’d try for the life of her.
She grabbed the thick rope and began to pull herself up. Her shoulder and back muscles ached as she began the ascent. The last time she’d done anything remotely close to rope climbing was in gymnastics class during the second grade. Mucky water dripped from her body as she rose out of the well’s bottom. She planted her soggy shoes on the wall of the well and started to “walk” as she grabbed ahold of the rope. Her palms stung like crazy. She bit into her lip to keep herself from letting out a cry. Before she knew it, her lip was bleeding.
At about the halfway point, Ellie was ready to give up. The figures pulled on the rope, but only slowly. If they actually moved at a faster speed, Ellie would have probably lost her grip five feet ago. She reminded herself of Troy and the family they may never have. She let those thoughts be her strength, and when she felt her hand slipping, she relied on desperate prayer.
Somehow, some way, she reached the top. Two people grabbed her arms and helped pull her from the well. When Ellie got out, her ankles rolled and she nearly collapsed on the dirt. The men caught her before she could do so. One put a towel around her while another mumbled something under his breath.
“How long were you in there?” the one who supplied the towel asked.
Ellie’s teeth chattered. “The whole night.”
She looked at the men, recognizing them immediately.
Detectives Adrian Peaches and Detective Eugene Skinner. Peaches was a tall, handsome man with a five o’clock shadow, trusting eyes, and smile. There was a bandage wrapped around his forehead where the Hooded Man had hit him with a baton two nights ago. Apart from his awkward, somewhat confused smile, he seemed relatively functional. Then again, the grin could be a residual effect of his beating.
Skinner was a short, stout man with a bulldog face, wrinkled clothes, and thinning hair. He had not been with Ellie and Peaches during the Hooded Man’s attack on Andrew and thus had not sustained any injury during the investigation. Ellie was jealous. She glanced down at her splinter-free but damaged palms. Her wounds were not as bad as they appeared last night, but she would’ve much rather have been unharmed.
“Decided to take a late-night swim?” Skinner mocked.
Ellie glared. “Let me use your phone.”
Skinner didn’t oblige. “Not until you tell us what the hell happened last night.”
The three of them turned to the steaming pile of barn rubble.
“No time,” Ellie replied.
Seeing that he was not going to get anything from Ellie, Peaches surrendered his phone. Ellie tried to recall Troy’s number, but she could hardly think straight. After a few seconds, it came back to her. She dialed him swiftly and listened to the phone. She chanted under her breath. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
Voicemail. She craned her head back to the heavens and fought back her tears. She tried calling him again and continued her desperate chant. Voicemail. She tried again, clenching the phone so tight that her knuckles went to white.
She called Troy’s boss. He claimed that Troy left work at 8 pm last night and hadn’t heard from him since. Ellie gave up the phone before she was tempted to throw it.
“We need to go,” Ellie declared. Holding the towel tightly to her body, she began to march the way of her rental car.
The detectives exchanged looks and followed after her. Peaches put his hand on her shoulder. “Ellie, slow down.”
Ellie pulled her shoulder out of his grasp. Feeling weak from the night’s events, Ellie was done playing nice girl. She didn’t need to say anything. Her look was enough to cause the detective to back off. Ellie kept forward. She wanted to collapse. The night in the water killed the circulation to her lower body. She dragged her numb feet and ankles across the rough terrain of the woods. She wasn’t even sure if she could drive. One issue at a time, she told herself.
Peaches and Skinner caught up and flanked her on either side. Peaches spoke softly. “You’re not well, Ellie. You need to sit down.”
“There’s a good chance Troy is gone and you want me to sit down?” Ellie chuckled in frustration and marched on. Her world tilted. She blinked a few times to straighten it out. Suddenly, she fell against a tree. She winced but couldn’t bring herself to push off the trunk.
Peaches and Skinner stopped next to her, wondering if she was finished resisting their help. Ellie took a breath. She nodded at the men. Peaches lent her a shoulder while Skinner marched ahead.
Ellie’s teeth chattered. “How did you find me?”
“You told me you were in Lancaster, and then I remembered you had a rental car. I called the rental company. The built-in GPS put you on Willoughby Drive. Then Skinner and I just followed the smoke. We found your keys by the well. I’m guessing you found out who the stranger was?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s not very happy with me. I burned the barn down to get out,” Ellie admitted.
“Smart,” Peaches replied. “My hospital escape was not as brilliant. Just a few stern words to the doctor and reminding him I’m part of law enforcement.”
“I imagine you’re still recovering?” Ellie asked.
“I am. The side effects of the concussion remain,” He smiled at her as they headed deep into the woods. “Thankfully, I had Skinner to give me a ride. I’m not in any state to drive.”
“Is that your way of lecturing me about going solo?” Ellie asked.
“I was that obvious, huh?” Peaches replied “What did you get when you tried to solve this yourself?”
“It was going well until I was being hunted by a man with a scythe. But I get your point, Peaches.”
“Glad we understand each other.”
The three of them headed to Skinner’s squad car that was parked behind Ellie’s rented midnight blue Mitsubishi. Before heading out, Ellie gave her brother a call.
“What’s up?” Paul answered, sounding completely bored.
<
br /> “You want to make some money?” Ellie replied.
She could hear Paul sit up on his recliner. “I’m listening.”
“I have a rent-a-car parked on Willoughby that I’m not fit to drive.”
“Hangover?” Paul asked.
“Sure,” Ellie replied. Only it felt fifty times worse than a bad night out. “Look, if you can get this car and take it back to my place, I’ll pay you three hundred bucks.”
“Three fifty,” Paul said, trying to sound sly.
Ellie groaned. “Fine.”
“You’re serious?” Paul exclaimed. “I mean, yeah. Cool.”
“Just get it back to my place. I’ll leave the keys in the back, driver side wheel well,” Ellie said. With that taken care of, she climbed into the back seat of Skinner’s police cruiser. She would’ve apologized for the swampy smell radiating from her body. However, the stench of Skinner’s unmarked Impala was much more powerful and stank of fast food grease, dead fish, and other unappetizing things.
Peaches scrunched his nose as he climbed into the front seat. He grinned at Ellie. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Hey,” Skinner barked. “Drive yourself or shut your trap.” He put the car into drive and they started down the road. “So Mrs. Batter,” Skinner began. “What did you find out about this guy?”
Ellie reached for the photo she got from Kenny’s widow. The water had torn the Polaroid and distorted the image. Unable to use any visible cues, Ellie closed her eyes and recalled the evening. She started with the revelation of Kenny to the mannequins set up in the stalls. She described the hooded man’s attire and the crude scythe he wielded. By the way he was able to secure the doors so quickly, he had familiarity with the place and was probably stalking Ellie. For how long, she didn’t know, but she felt he had been watching her for quite some time. How else would he know her name that had only changed to Batter a few weeks ago?
After relaying the information, Ellie swaddled herself in the towel, rested her head on the window, and let the road put her to sleep. Her dream was horrible. It showed Troy, strung up at the wrists by rope. His chest was cut open but he wasn’t dead. A dark fog inched toward him. He screamed Ellie’s name, though all she could do was watch. Out of the darkness, crows flew and circled Troy multiple times before landing on his pale flesh and using their razor-sharp beaks to bite at Troy. With each piece of meat they tore from him, his screams grew louder. She tried to scare away the crows. They didn’t pay her any mind and only increased the pace of the feast.
“Ellie!” Troy screamed. “Ellie.”
It wasn’t his voice but Peaches. She opened her eyes and saw the detective looking back at her.
“What?” Ellie asked as she yawned.
“We’re here,” Peaches declared.
On the sidewalk, the Northampton typical local crowd enjoyed their lunch break. Hipsters, independent women, and other artistic types flooded the restaurants and cafes around Ellie’s apartment complex. She stepped out of the cruiser and stretched. Her back popped and she had a crank in her neck. Ellie shook out the jitters. Her clothes were dry now but stiff from the well muck. That didn’t matter. She marched to her twelve-story apartment building. Peaches and Skinner struggled to keep up as Ellie pressed the elevator about forty times until it finally came to a stop. She held the door for the detectives and pressed the number 12. The elevator rumbled and climbed. An old man checked Ellie out from the corner of the elevator. He seemed to always be hanging out in there. Ellie wondered if the old man was senile or if he just enjoyed riding the elevator. As they climbed the floors, Ellie turned to him.
“Did you see anyone come through here today or last night? Anyone suspicious? Possibly wearing a black hoodie.”
The old man smiled and nodded.
Ellie’s heart raced. “When?”
The old man smiled and nodded.
“Hello?” Ellie asked, wondering if there was anything going on behind his stupid look.
Peaches shook his head. “You’re not going to learn anything from this one.”
The old man smiled and nodded.
The elevator door dinged. Ellie, Skinner, and Peaches exited. Ellie jogged down the hall to her apartment. Hands trembling, she pulled out her key, slid it into the lock, and gave it a twist.
Peaches and Skinner kept their hands on their weapons. Peaches blinked a few times, overcoming the sense of vertigo from his concussion. Skinner stayed directly behind Ellie, ready to push in front should the need arise.
The apartment was dark. The blinds were shut, preventing any natural light from flooding the place. Ellie reached in to toggle the light switch. That was when she saw the mess. Chairs were flipped, the couch was stripped, and there were more signs of a struggle, but no signs of Troy.
7
COMPLETION
The apartment was ransacked. The refrigerator doors were swung wide open. Broken eggs splattered the kitchen floor along with a mix of spilled milk, orange juice, yogurt, and more. The cupboards above the sink were ajar as well. All of the glassware Ellie and Troy had received from their parents was shattered and slung across the room. The TV had a massive crack down the middle. And the SOB responsible was so spiteful that he even left the bathroom sink running, causing a flood into Ellie’s hallway.
The home Troy had so joyously carried Ellie into a little over a week ago was gone. What remained was a ruin and mess that would take days, perhaps weeks to clean up. Though as much as Ellie’s mind was on that issue, her biggest concern was Troy. For a moment, it seemed like the fire in the barn and being lost in the cold depths of the well were tiny issues. She ran for the living room.
“Troy?” she called out.
She knew she wouldn’t get a reply, but she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t check every room. She raced up the spiraling staircase. The master bedroom was in disrepair. Every one of the dresser drawers had been removed and thrown out into the hallway. A knife had sliced open Ellie’s mattress and pillows. She checked the bathroom. The top cover of the toilet had been used to smash the mirror and crack the sink.
She rushed to the loft railing and looked down at the living room, using the higher ground to get a vantage point. She only saw more damage.
Guns out but lowered, the detectives fanned out in the living room and art room. It might have been wiser to call the cops during her drive back to Northampton. However, if anyone saw Ellie’s death portraits, she would be listed as a suspect. That was an experience Ellie could live without repeating.
“Ellie!” Peaches called her downstairs. Ellie started down the spiral staircase. She followed the detectives into the open art room doors. All of her spare canvases had been slashed. Her paint cart was tipped over, spilling a rainbow across the floor. The plastic sheeting that kept the hardwood from becoming a speckled mess had been slashed up so the paint was now in the cracks of the wood. Hanging on a string were a number of Ellie’s personal projects that she’d spent hundreds of hours completing, all slashed up, stomped, and just tossed about like trash. Her paintbrushes were broken. Her palette had been snapped in two. Her four-thousand-dollar easel had been reduced to a pile of rubble beyond repair. And, to top it all off was the dead crow nailed onto Troy’s chest.
The bird's wings were fully spread out with a series of small nails at the tip of the wing, middle, and the joint where it met the torso. The bird’s glossy black beak was slightly parted. Its head looked right ahead. Its beady black eyes locked with Ellie. Like Troy, the bird’s torso was sliced open. It was nailed on the mural of Troy, exactly in the middle of his massive wound.
Ellie covered her mouth. Every part of her wanted her to run and bury her head in a pillow. She wanted to forget what she was looking at immediately, to go back to Naples where her and Troy enjoyed cocktails on the beach side and spent way too much money on fancy food. Much like her home that was destroyed, so were those memories, because now when she thought of her husband, it would be this image that she recalled. And even th
ough the bird wasn’t attached to the real version of Troy, the detail was so realistic that Ellie might as well have been looking at her husband’s fresh cadaver.
Skinner gawked at the mural. Peaches covered his mouth with his hand, trying to figure out what to say. Ellie’s feet dragged her closer to the bird. The rest of the paper sheeting had been torn from the walls, revealing the black coat of paint Ellie had splashed up there when she painted Troy’s death. With a trembling hand, Ellie reached out to the bird, looking for any sort of message that the killer might have left. This couldn’t just be a taunt. He had to have left her something, like an invitation or a menacing request to back off. Ellie found nothing of the like. She felt her heart pound in her chest. Her breath quickened. Her vision focused on fake Troy’s blood and the bird’s real blood.
Suddenly, Ellie’s eyes rolled into the back of her head.
She didn’t know it, but Ellie grabbed the bird’s neck and tore the crow from the wall.
Skinner cursed and shouted. “That’s evidence! What the hell are you thinking?”
Without a care, Ellie tossed it backward. The bird bounced on the paint-stained floor and continued to leak out.
Skinner put his hand on Ellie’s biceps and turned her around. The dog-faced detective stumbled back. He stepped on a tipped-over paint can and fell to his bottom. With a shaking finger, he pointed to Ellie. “Do you see that?”
Peaches was slow to speak. “Yes.”
Only the whites of Ellie’s eyes were visible. She walked over to a dented but unopened can of paint and used her fingernails to pry off the top. Then she grabbed one of the broken brushes from the ground and created brush strokes on the black coat of paint surrounding Troy.
Skinner grabbed ahold of Ellie’s desk and scrambled up to his feet. He held the belt waistline of his pants to keep them from falling off. “What is happening?”
Peaches smiled to himself. “Something amazing.”
Ellie worked feverishly on the wall. No brush stroke or paint dabble was wasted. Everything was exactly where it needed to be and was created at the perfect time. Ellie picked up a second brush. The damage on her palms, her neck, and her cheek didn’t hinder her in any way. Like a masterful piano player, she used both hands to compose something beautiful and horrifying.
Stolen Secrets: A Collection Of Riveting Mysteries Page 19
