31 #2
At the very bottom of the box, a large, dirty envelope was encrusted to the cardboard. Groaning in disgust, I used a tissue to peel it up, finding it covered in rings of black mold. There were even more photos within.
But these were different than the others.
The first few were so dark, I could barely tell what I was looking at. But the longer I stared at the strange photos—bloody red, fatty white, pale splintered bone—the more my stomach churned. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew there was something very wrong with it.
The first clear photo I found, I dropped as I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror. Dead animals, so mutilated I couldn’t determine their species, spread out across a familiar wooden table. The table from the stone house.
“Oh my God...” I picked up another, and another, my eyes scanning the photos with growing horror. Flesh and bone, blood and organs. Some photos were so grotesque I was nauseated, and I dry heaved suddenly, doubling over as I tried not to vomit.
The last few photos were the worst. It wasn’t an animal they depicted.
It was a person. There was one photo of a wide-open, glassy eye—ringed with blood. Another depicted a woman’s naked body laid out as if for dissection, her face not shown. Her throat was gashed open, a deep and vicious slice. Her torso was marred with gaping wounds.
The last photo was of a pile of bloody bones, some with bits of flesh clinging to them. Stained hands held a femur aloft from the pile, showing a row of tiny carved symbols in the bone.
My hands were shaking as I set everything down, got to my feet, and began to pace in circles. I had a terrible feeling I knew whose body that was.
Melanie was supposed to be buried; Rayne said her mother had been laid to rest.
But I didn’t believe that was true anymore.
Rayne had promised she would radio me before she began her drive back, but the hours were passing too slowly. Those awful photos festered in my mind, so much so that I looked at them again just to assure myself I’d truly seen them.
I wanted to believe they were fake, but my visceral reaction told me they were real.
How could I tell Rayne? What could I tell her? The very thought of her having to see those photos made me ill.
“You feeling okay, Miss Salem?” Andy said, looking at me from across the kitchen table in concern.
I’d barely been able to touch the food he’d made.
“Don’t you worry about Rayne. She’s made the trip up to that old tower plenty of times.
She’s a smart woman; she’ll stay up there if the weather is too bad to travel back. ”
I was thankful for his reassurance. I almost blurted out to him what I’d found, desperate for a second opinion, but the girls were sitting right there. Instead, after poking at my food for a while, I curled up with a cup of tea near the radio, waiting desperately for Rayne’s call to come through.
But evening came and darkness fell, still without a word from her.
A knock at the office door made me jump, and Andy poked his head in. “I’m gonna hit the hay. You should try to get some sleep. The weather has been rough; it’s probably keeping her busy.”
Maybe it was just my anxiety talking, but his assurance didn’t seem so sure anymore.
Hours later, Loki’s sharp bark woke me from a fitful slumber.
I’d fallen asleep at the desk again. I stretched my aching neck, and shivered as I tucked my hands into my sleeves. While I was almost positive the radio would have woken me, I picked up the mic and said softly, “Rayne? Are you there?”
No response. Loki wasn’t lying by my feet anymore either; he was probably at the front door, waiting to be let outside to pee. God, it was freezing. Cupping my hands around my mouth and exhaling to warm them, I hurried to the front door and grabbed one of the warm coats hung near the door.
Loki was pacing and whimpering, so I hurriedly opened the door for him before shoving my arms into the coat sleeves and tugging on my boots.
Stepping out onto the veranda, I peered out into the dark night. The snow was falling again, twisting in flurries and massive gusts of wind. Floodlights ringed the house with their illumination, but I still didn’t want to stand out here any longer than necessary.
But as I scanned the yard, I realized Loki was nowhere to be seen.
“Loki?” I expected to see him come trotting from around the side of the house, but no. My eyes followed his tracks through the snow, across the yard... and away.
Into the forest.
Distantly, carried on the freezing wind, came the sound of a barking dog. It was a frantic snarling sound, full of fear. My heart pounded against my ribs, my throat swelling with fear.
“Loki!” My call was swallowed by the howling wind. His barking sounded even farther away.
Panicking, I hurried inside to my backpack and rummaged through until I found the hunting knife Rayne had left with me. Ripping it from its sheath, I sprinted out into the stormy night.
The freshly fallen snow weighed down my feet like anchors. The wind whipped around me, flurries obscuring my vision.
“Loki!” I kept calling for him, following his prints through the snow as best I could. My lips and fingers were turning numb from the cold, but I couldn’t abandon the poor dog to death out here. Why would he run off, what had possesed him?
I couldn’t hear him anymore. I couldn’t see the farmhouse either. All around me was nothing but a maze of tall trees and frozen brambles.
My heart plummeted, terror racing through me. I needed to go back and wake Andy for help. But as I turned in circles, I quickly realized I might not even be able to find my way to the house again. My prints in the snow, and Loki’s, were swiftly being covered.
My breath came faster, my lungs aching with the cold. Damn it, where had the dog run off to? It wasn’t like him. I cupped my hands around my mouth, yelling uselessly into the howling wind.
Faintly, distant barking answered me. Desperately, I ran, following the sound. But my foot caught on something I couldn’t see beneath the snow, sending me sprawling to the ground.
As I pushed myself up, I could see a faint red glow in front of me.
Long, dark, bloodstained hair flowed in the flurries of wind. Hollow eyes watched me as blood dripped from too-long fingernails, stark in the white snow. I gasped, and it was as if I inhaled a wave of sadness that hit me like a kick to my stomach.
Everything hurt. I could hardly breathe.
It was less than a second, the blink of an eye, then she was gone.
The wind was full of whispers, strange voices overlapping. My chest felt so heavy, my head dizzy. I needed to get inside, but where... how...
I turned back, and she was there: face contorted, bloody arms outstretched, mouth gaped open in a horrifying scream.
My own scream was swallowed by the storm as I was thrown down. I landed in deep snow and tumbled, sliding down a steep slope into a gully.
The air I desperately needed was squeezed out of my lungs. It felt as if my chest was caving in.
Again and again, the awful feeling of constriction came.
I couldn’t scream, couldn’t get up. It was as if my throat was full of liquid, and I was choking on its gross metallic taste.
A shadow wavered before me, forward and back, forward and back.
Crushing me with every swing. Pounding my chest, so that bubbles rose in the bloody pond filling my mouth.
Someone in the distance was screaming. Such a wretched, pitiful wailing. The whispers persisted, surrounding me, infecting me.
The bones, the bones, to the bones I bind thee. With flesh, with flesh, with this flesh I feed thee. In blood, in blood, in blood do I call thee.