Best left buried part 3 (OC)

 The only sounds that you were hearing as you drove through this cracked, abandoned road were the hum of your engine and the sound of your radio cutting in and out of existence with it seeming that every single living thing on the planet had abandoned the place with you not even seeing a bird fly above you, let alone something crawling out into the road. The trees looked over you, overgrown and winding against one another and covering the moon and stars, your eyes occasionally glancing at the void, your headlights firing at full blast so you got a full view of the overgrown grass, the remnants of cars that had crashed hiding within them with you having even investigated a couple of them at some point. You were jolted out of your focus when you heard the sound of static pushing through the air with you looking down at the radio to see that it had managed to regain connection again, the sound of a catchy tune echoing out from the tinny speakers before someone would speak.

“Hello, and welcome to the news bulletin with your host, Jericho NightShade.” The voice would say in its slow, slightly mocking tone, the journalist clearing his throat as he would start reading out the headlines. “Our first headline takes us to the rural town of Saint Ashland, where the news of a local death has rocked the town.” He would say, a slight chuckle moving across his voice as you would tense up slightly, your thoughts quickly moving to said local death since it was one that you had been investigating. Neighbors had reported a smell coming from the building, something foul and rotting and a local patrol board had been sent to investigate, having to break down the door to get in before they walked around and saw that the rotting smell was caused by a starving, wounded body.

With that you and forensics were brought onto the case which was proving to be one of the more mysterious of your detective career as the voice on the radio would hiss again before he would speak. “Local news report the death of the as of yet unnamed man was a suicide although police are allegedly looking into links on what caused the man to kill himself.” Jericho would say as you figured that the body would never be identified through evidence, the man now only known as body No.8166916 having burnt any and all identification in his oven since melted passport remnants were found within it. As for the apparent suicide, you and the forensics department could only tell it was a suicide because he still had the knife wrapped in his cold dead hands, the knife sticking halfway out of his thigh that he had tried to cut into.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the knife then you’d have assumed it was a murder, least of all because he had managed to somewhat slash at himself fifteen times before he finally kicked the bucket, running down the halls and covering them with blood as he did so. “Despite the mystery behind the case, police have found evidence that they describe as being “key to the case.” The voice continued as you thought back to the key evidence that you had found, the first being a journal found strewn across the floor in the bedroom. At first the journal seemed to be normal, talking about what his day was like and listing items he had to pick up from the store before the journal would take a turn for the worse, the handwriting becoming much rougher than the pages preceding it.

The writings would talk about how he had gone to a manor a few weeks ago where a beast, something he described as a woman mixed with a demon who had apparently dragged him through the house and raped him. You’d flick the pages, seeing they were filled with paranoia about the woman and justifications that it was just a dream until you got to a set of pages with even worse handwriting, some of the words even going through the lines as you figured that the man had taken a big mental hit at that point. The writing style was more deranged ramblings then anything else, talking about how the woman from the manor had come for him and crawled through his window to fuck him again, most of the words being barely readable in the manner that it was written as well.

After that the pages were just more deranged ramblings and crude drawings of the beast that had crawled through the window before the journal would abruptly end talking about a muddy trail that he went down, saying he shouldn’t have ever gone down it. This made it seem like a pretty open and shut case of severe delusional psychosis that ended in suicide with the journal ending up being a extended suicide note but then you noticed something resting down in the window, tangled between the latches. You would go over and take a look, grabbing ahold of it before pulling out a large clump of black hair, seeing that I couldn’t have come from the victim since they had short brown hair which raised the question of who the hell that this belonged too and why it was caught in the latch.

“Remember now, keep your eyes on the road.” Jericho said as you would snap out of your train of thought and looked back at the road to see something push through the bushes and run in front of your car. You didn’t catch a clear glimpse of the creature, seeing the blur moving through the air before it would disappear into the bushes, your car moving down to a droning halt before you would look to your right to see a rather rough dirt trail, just like the one that was described in the journal as the radio hissed to life again. “You should always take the road less taken. You never know what you may find!” Jericho would say as you would think for a few moments before you figured that going down the path may bring you closer to solving the case and as such you turned into the road and drove into the forest.

The woods would be even thicker then on the main road, branches pushing out of the trees and scraping against the roof of your car as the radio would start glitching out, buzzes of static coming out from the speakers as you went to turn it down. “Don’t turn that dial just yet! The show-BZZZRT has just begun.” He would say, sounding more and more ominous with each passing line as you decided not to turn off the radio, keeping it hissing as you drove deeper and deeper into the woods. After what seemed like a eternity of driving you would proceed to finally find the manor, the ruined building seeming like it would fall apart in a light wind as you would wait in the car, the headlights turning off as you would wonder what you should do next or if you should turn back.

“Go on-Bzzrt, Go inside! What the W-w-worst that could possibly happen?” Jericho would say before you turned your car off so that he would shut up for once,your hand grabbing ahold of your flashlight and flicking it on. With that you would step out onto the dirt, feeling the cold air against your body before you would focus your light on the windows, seeing that mostly all of them were smashed in and those that weren’t were way too dirty to see inside of, your torch moving down to the door as you would do so. You walked towards it, seeing that it seemed to have been opened recently given that the doorknob was stained with some kind of substance with you pushing your foot against the best of the door and flicking it open, walking into the building as you did so.

The first thing that you heard when walking in was the sound of the carpet squelching underneath your boots, looking down to see that the floor was well and truly soaked in water before your eyes were drawn to a stairwell in the middle of the room. You’d point your flashlight upwards to see if there was anything waiting above the stairs for you but there was nothing but darkness and dust up there, your flashlight moving down to the door in front of you before you entered it. This room seemed to be some kind of kitchen, having been long abandoned with pots and pans all over the place and grime dripping down the walls before you saw that there was a clump of red hair pushed into the the gap between the door and the wall with you wandering through the door as you did so.

You walked through the ancient halls, seeing that this area seemed to be less dilapidated than the front of the house before you looked down at the floor and saw that there was a clear path that had been dragged through the carpet. With that you decided to walk down the trail, wondering where the path would lead to as you would go from hall to hall, smelling the scent of damp and something rotting in the air as you shine your light into the distance, seeing nothing out of the ordinary for an abandoned house. Eventually you would find yourself in front of a large door to what seemed to be some kind of ball room, your hand moving to the doorknob and testing the locks before you would proceed to open it seeing that it was indeed a ballroom that you’d walked into.

The room was devoid of all furniture, most of the lighting fixtures hanging out of the roof and wall by wires before you’d move your light around the room, glancing around it as you would see that there seemed to be a hole in the floor. Moving over to the hole would reveal that there was a metal coffin in the middle of it, the casket seemingly having the top ripped off it, the inside being stained with what seemed like blood as well as other fluids, a weird chill moving across your body as you walked away. You would wander around a good chunk of the house but you couldn’t help but feel like something was coming after you, lurking behind every corner and watching you for a time to strike and the fact that you couldn’t see it only made you more paranoid.

Eventually you turned and went to leave, feeling like something was going to go horribly wrong if you stayed for a moment longer, the air moving across your face as you’d eventually moved to the front door, grabbing hold of the doorknob and glancing behind you as you did so. You wouldn’t see anything, having almost expected to see something running down the stairs to kill you but you saw nothing, moving outside of the building and to the comfort of your car, leaving the door half open as you would do so. You got into the car and fell into the seat, groaning as you’d put your keys back into your car and started, the engine letting out a chitter and a hum before your headlights would turn on, your stomach dropping at the sight that had been revealed to you.

There were eyes in the windows, shining in the light, all of which now staring down at you in your car, seemingly having binded their time to wait for you to leave although you didn’t know why they would do such a thing. As you glanced between them all you couldn’t help but feel that these weren’t human eyes by instead belonging to something warped and twisted although you couldn't see much of them other than the eyes with you desperately trying to look through them and see what you could find. A few strands of stringy hair moved over some of them eyes and others seemed to not have any noses or lips but other then that you were just sat there, afraid to move in case you managed to invoke their wrath somehow before you suddenly heard the buzz of your phone in your pocket, answering it.

“Hey Anon, I’ve been trying to contact you for a while, I haven’t been able to get connected to you until now. Anyways, we need you back at the precinct, the boss wants you working on the body No.8166916 case. See you in a bit.” Said your coworker before you hung up the phone, looking back up at the manor to see that the eyes had all disappeared, much to your confusion as you placed your phone into your pocket and started to reverse out of the driveway and back into the woods. As you drove away you wondered what the hell was going on with this case and how the hell you were going to solve it especially given that whatever was going on in the manor was way above your pay grade which was when you figured one thing about the mansion, something that the victim may have also learned.

Some things are best left buried.