Let the fun continue.! This is the 70th installment of a continuing fictional story. Before each new segment, the last paragraph from the prior edition will be shown in quotations.
“There was another handwritten message at the end of the report after the official typing had ended. ‘The most perplexing death mask I have ever seen. It’s almost as though the last vision his eyes ever beheld, was enough to actually frighten the subject to death.’”
By C.L. Harmon
Letters reached in to his desk drawer and took out a bottle of bourbon. He poured three fingers in his brown ceramic cup with the oversized handle and then pushed the bottle in the air toward me. I nodded with a polite no thank you gesture and he placed the bottle on his desk next to the phone.
“What do you make of this Blake?” I didn’t know what to say. I mean what does one say that sounds sane when everything around him seems insane. “The coroner report indicates there was nothing physically wrong with Dobson that would cause his death. And that look on his face! My God, I have never seen anything like it!”
“Elden, (slight pause) when I found him, he looked like he had the crap kicked out of him. I admit I was scared, but I know what I saw. He was beaten like a dead snake on the wrong end of a shovel, then poof, an hour later not a mark on his face. So, to answer your question…I don’t know what to make of this.” Elden takes a sip from his cup and then another.
“Elden, I have been thinking about this, a lot. Ever since I have spoken to the priest, my mind keeps going over the belief that Weathers or whoever or whatever is responsible for all this wants us in this mess. He said Weathers wants chaos. That he needs chaos. If this is true, then we have to stop feeding his appetite. If people are frightened or confused, then they will react as such. So much has happened since Porter’s death that people don’t feel safe and normal anymore. If this gets out that Dobson’s cause of death is unknown or what I saw or didn’t see gets out, then this chaos storm gets worse for us and better for him.?
I left his office a short time later with his worries and his bottle. As I walked home that night, I passed by Sam’s house. The lights were on and I could see her mother walking through the living room. They must have just gotten back as I could see two suitcases still in the entry hall. I thought about knocking on the door, but then it crossed my mind that she may not want to see me. I didn’t know it at the time, but she saw me from her bedroom window.
I went on home and visited with my parents for a few minutes before heading off to bed. As I lay there seeking sleep, I kept seeing Dobson’s face when I first found him. Had I imagined that? Logically I must have. But in my gut I knew I hadn’t. It was time to pay Father Blaine another visit. Maybe he could expalin what I saw.
I went to school the next morning, but left at lunch to make the trip over to River Sands. I told my mom there were some books at the library over there I needed for a school project and our city librarian had made arrangements for me to borrow them. She loaned me the car and I left town for some answers. As I drove, Blaine’s words from when we first met at the church kept playing over and over in my head; “If you study history my son, you will find horrors and atrocities across the last 2,000 years that were initiated by one incident. That one act would set into motion a chain of events that ripped the very fiber of man’s souls.” Ripping and tearing they certainly were!
Serial Thriller
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