Liam
Goodbye My Love; Ailee
A year after the gardener's death, as shocking as his death was, everyone accepted it quickly and moved on. His family was not as lively as they were before, but they were coping with their loss. Mrs. Vale had offered for them to continue staying in the employee's quarters, but Mrs. Falcon insisted that she and her children would move out to her father's house in Appleville just beyond the border of Charllottesville.
Charlottesville was a small town in comparison to its neighboring cities; Appleville and Jamesville. Nothing extraordinary happened in the small town. Everybody knew each other's family lineage. We even learned about the Four Great Families who founded Charlottesville in 1540 in school. Everything was normal. No crimes like Appleville or suicide and other cases like Jamesville.
But it all changed when, the morning after Mr. Falcon's death, three people were reported missing. They had gone to hang out in their usual place, which was the forest behind the only Cinema in Charllottesville. There, the forest wasn't dense, and many teenagers went there to do things teenagers did, including smoking.
Even an infant in Charllottesville could navigate their way through the forest. Everyone knew the forest like the back of their hand. It was the edge of the forest itself, and, most days after the air had been cleared of the teenager's pollution, older people went there just to relax and gossip.
The place was like an informal parliament.
There was absolutely nothing to fear about that area of the forest. No wild animals roamed Charllottesville, even the denser part of the forest was safe, or so we thought.
It was an early morning, one week after the three young men got missing, that news of people getting killed reached the ears of the Charllottesvilleans.
The once peaceful town was now a place of terror.
It started on the day I first saw the Grim Reaper. The gardener wasn't the only one that died that night. Three more people were reported missing on the night of Mr. Falcon's death, and the police believed that they died on the same night Mr. Falcon had died. But their death wasn't natural, it was a horrible one. The police searched for them for more than three days, but there were no clues. On the fourth day of the search, the bodies of two people who were not related to each other in any way were found, all dying in the most gruesome ways.
They were almost headless. Like Nearly Headless Nick in Harry Potter, their necks had been torn like a rag with only a few tissues and flesh joining their necks to their bodies, and shockingly, all the blood in their bodies was gone, not a drop was left. They were as white as snow.
The other four who were missing were found a week after the first three people got missing. They were all found in the same place; the space behind the Cinema. They all had a terrified look on their faces as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing at the time of their death. Their bodies had no injuries or evidence of a struggle or an attack, like bruises.
Only the torn necks and bloodless bodies.
It was horrible.
People started spreading rumors, of creatures that lurked in the dark. Werewolves and Vampires, they called them. Some believed them to be ghouls, others just believed that a serial killer was on the loose.
In a matter of ten days, six people were killed in Charlottesville alone, whilst the other two cities recorded only two people who had died in the same way, one in each city.
Going out became a thing of the past for everyone in Charllottesville. As soon as the sun went down, the town became deserted. No one walked alone again. Everywhere, people walked in groups of two or more. Everybody became insanely paranoid. Some even doubted the people they walked with. What if my friend is a serial killer? What if that man wearing the black hat is the serial killer? This man is weirdly staring at his food. What is he is the serial killer? My head was full of these questions daily, and I was sure I wasn't the only one. No one trusted anyone anymore.
