Chapter One
Eighteen Years Old
The first rays of iridescent pale-yellow sunlight snag on patches of grass that grow wildly and tall across Hollow Grounds Graveyard.
I can hear the breath in my lungs, along with a bird chirping high in the treetops above.
It is eerily quiet.
No one came down here anymore, unless they had reason.
My shoes brush through the wet blades of grass, pearled droplets of water clinging to the verdant spears that peak through the thick fog circling and dispersing around my ankles.
The air is slightly crisp, and yet it carries a familiar thickness.
Last night's erratic downpour hadn’t lasted all that long.
It never did around here. However, it hadn’t stopped the town's locals from yearning for the same thing they did every time the sky turned menacing: a lengthy downpour to counteract the sweltering heat. And it had, only not for long enough. I feel it creeping back, a line of perspiration beading at my chest, seeping through the cotton of my off-white T-shirt, clotting in my throat. It’s as if the air in Devil’s Peak had begun to sweat.
I slow when my vision swirls, blinding pain chewing at my temples. The strap of my best friend's guitar case slips off my shoulder, and I’m working it down my arm, dropping it to the ground, pressing my palms to the decrepit headstone beside me and crouching at the knees.
The scent of soil is in my nose, shadows looming and ducking through gnarled graveyard trees.
Torn up pieces of soggy newspaper from last week are at my feet, because the town of Devil’s Peak was set in old ways, unmoving with time, internet, and news blogs, adamant on keeping locals informed of events, fundraisers, gatherings, murders… in ink.
Wind hits me and I blink, take a moment to breathe, squeezing my eyes closed.
When the pain hammering my brain doesn’t shift, I return to my feet, reaching into the back pocket of my torn black jeans.
I pull out a squashed, half empty packet of cigarettes, tapping one into the palm of my trembling hand, biting it and touching my lighter to the tip.
The yellow flame dances with the puff of breath that whistles from my nose, and I burn a charred line through my throat, waiting and finding—the same way I knew I would—that the nicotine no longer offers relief.
My shoulder pops, my lungs squeeze, and my fists tighten when I haul the guitar case up, throwing it on my back, feeling the dampness settle across my spine from where the dregs of the storm soaked through the thin fabric.
I cut across the quiet and still graveyard, taking the path toward the back fence. It sits at waist height, a corroded mess. The emerald-green paint has almost completely flaked away from the rusted metal. I shove the cigarette between my teeth, place my hands on the fence and haul myself over.
My body tilts as I descend a sharp drop, bridging the mouth of the town's old concrete storm tunnel.
The grim passage runs beneath the soil of buried bones, tracking to the opposite end of town, depositing what little run-off we had into a mucky creek locals knew to avoid.
I hadn’t followed it through, not sure I ever would.
I had only one reason for being down here, and it didn’t come from the will to explore.
I left that to the youth who accepted dares from their friends, or the ones that carried morbid curiosity for the dead.
The rubber soles of my Vans are worn, and as I enter I can feel the tunnel's permanent chill seeping into the arches of my feet. They quickly start to ache, dispersing into numbness, though I push myself to walk, to continue to move.
A shallow pool of stagnant water sits in the center, reeking of filth. Its fetid, stale, and musty stench carries the smell of death.
A scent the small town of Devil’s Peak was all too familiar with.
Two years ago, when the mutilated body of an eighteen-year-old girl was found disposed of in this same tunnel—paralyzed and scrubbed with bleach—it had chilled the town to its bones. It was too close to home.
Since that day, locals have been holding their breath, hoping it was a random act of violence, praying that the vicious roots of the town's past would remain buried. However, hope and evil grew different sets of teeth, and evil had no mercy when it carried rot at its core.
My heart bangs into my throat, a shiver coiling around my spine. With a tight chest, I work to readjust my jaw, taking a deeper step into the inky darkness.
The concrete walls are covered in lichen and graffiti, grim shadows creeping in sharpened blades of stolen light, and the cold that follows had long settled into the pit of my stomach.
Devil’s Tunnel had received its name fourteen years ago when sadistic serial killer and rapist, Kevin Campbell, had been the first to use it as a dumping ground for his victims.
He struck five times, murdering five young women—all paralyzed antemortem, all sexually assaulted, all doused and scrubbed with bleach, all mutilated the same way—before a small piece of evidence, and an anonymous witness, led to the police making their eager arrest, catapulting the devil who had reached his peak and disrupted what was once a sleeping, peaceful town, to prison.
Locals had hoped for the dried-up sack of shit to rot behind bars, but he had other plans when he selfishly drained his wrists two months after his arrest.
There had been rumors that he’d been sodomized with an unidentified object, and if it were true, I had hoped more so now than ever, that he had felt the final act touch the tip of his lungs.
I was four at the time. I had no recollection of the grim murders, though, when you grow up in a town as small as Devil’s Peak, it isn’t long before you hear about the women that haunt these concrete walls.
They had been called the unlucky ones, the ones that had been doomed into despair. I called bullshit on that though. They weren’t unlucky. They were hunted by a psychopath, had their lives stolen by a monster that had an obvious disdain for women.
Then…and now.
My stomach balls tighter.
I place my case on the ground and take a seat on the dry patch of concrete that’s further back from the murky pool of water.
I hang my wrists over my drawn knees, heaving out a weighted sigh, my skull connecting with the carved, gritty rock behind me.
The thud that follows echoes loudly, as does the high-pitched static tone of a soulful memory, a vibrant voice.
I pinch my eyes closed, run my trembling hands down the length of my face before reaching for the case.
Snatching up my black notebook from the front pocket, along with the red ink pen that lay beside it, I shove it between my teeth and hook my shoulder-length hair behind my ears.
My fingers quiver as I flick through the pages until the first blank page appears.
I scribble the words, Severed Veins, at the top, underlining it until the ink barrel pierces the thin, unlined paper. Then, I whisper beneath my breath, “You were never a number.” My pen moves across the paper, my grip stiff. “A bright spirit of wonder.”
The decibels of my voice remain low, anger flicking at the base of my throat.
“A soul that should have grown older.” I pause, allowing my gaze to fall to my right, and, extending my trembling palm outward, I touch the tip of my fingers to the fresh blood embedded in dried streams across the gritty shadow of gray that hadn’t yet been washed away.
My heart punches fiercely against my ribs, and my breath burns in my lungs. Shuffling comes from my left, but I don’t remove my hand. “An angel I should have kept closer.”
A zip shoots up my spine when a fist meets my tricep and I fall out of my stupor, finding my best friend at my side.
His golden curls hang around his forehead, his icy eyes glossed over.
He bites a guitar pick between his teeth and slides the guitar out of the case beside me.
It takes him less than a minute to run it through a tune before he jerks his square jaw at the pen and notebook in my hands.
“Show me,” he whispers, though his tone is thick.
I repeat what I have written.
Low, a whisper.
You were never a number
A bright spirit of wonder
A soul that should have grown older
An angel I should have kept closer
Harlen Graves plucks a few harrowing notes, and I shiver when the minor chords deepen the chill seeping through the cracks in my bones.
Was it too soon?
I snap the notebook closed, throwing it down to my left with a deep breath, drawing my knees closer to my chest. Acid burns through my stomach.
I watch Harlen out of the corner of my eye; he has stopped playing.
He places the guitar on top of the case.
“Rusty was asking about you before I left this morning.” Rusty is Harlen’s father—one of the good ones.
He shuffles backward until he’s resting against the concrete, the same way I am.
“He made a fuck load of food thinking you were still in your room.” A pause. “He’s worried about you, man. All the—”
I don’t give him the chance to finish. “I’m fine.”
Harlen nods, then does it again. I know he doesn’t believe me though.
He skates a hand through his hair. “You can lie to me all you want, but you can’t lie to him.” His voice is a shallow rasp.
I pop both thumb knuckles, and pull a breath through my lungs.
Silence hums between us, and when neither of us speaks, I drag my skull across the concrete, my scalp digging into the sharp grain until my searing eyes level with my best friends. Because I knew he wasn’t done yet.
Harlen is chewing on the guitar pick, and he speaks around it, “We know loss, bro, and right now, burying it might…” I begin to register every second word. “Easier…”
Something pinches in my chest, a flame of annoyance sparking. A fist punching.
“Does this look like I’m fucking b-b-burying it?” I stumble over my words, stuttering in my frustration, and yet guilt whispers, because me and Harlen both knew he wasn’t talking about right now, what I was doing here, in this lifeless tunnel.
But I hear what I want to hear, and I can’t find a way to see past all the roils of red.
I throw my closed fist to the concrete, meeting the crimson stains beside me. I should feel a sharp explosion, but the numbness that follows is hardly surprising.
I contemplate doing it again when Harlen sniffs, the space between us turning cooler, freezing me down to my bones.
I take a deep breath and remind myself to slow down when I feel my words lodge like boulders.
“I don’t run from my fucking storm, man.”
And they were somewhat of the truest words I’d ever spoken. Because I chose to sit in a pool of her dried blood, chasing the storm.