"Elizabeth!"
I practically ran to my mother. I had to know what was going on.
"Mom, what happened here?"
"Lizzy… I don't know how to say this… this has to be so much for you to go through. Maybe we should just sit down and-"
"JUST SAY IT!"
I couldn't contain it anymore. I had a rage born of my fear and confusion, and nowhere to put it. I looked at my terrified mother and started to cry. She didn't deserve this, she was just trying to help.
"I-I'm sorry, I-"
"It's fine, Lizzy, I understand."
She handed me a photo.
"Here, this is all you really need to see."
I stared down at the piece of paper, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There was a dark wooden box laying open on a bed, Ellie's bed. Inside the box, upon a layer of blood-spattered ice, lay a finger with a piece of paper with small writing on it;
"One is trash, the other treasure,
And I've not the pleasure. Hand her over, or I shall send far more from her."
There had been stories on the news of things like this, of heinous crimes committed with little left behind, but she'd never thought it would ever happen to anyone she knew, after all, the last place they had hit was hundreds of miles away. Yet here she was, staring at indisputable proof that she had seen something no one else had.
That night, she and Eliza had seen the Poet, a serial killer known throughout the entire state. The worst part? In almost every poem, they bragged about remaining unseen, about being a shadow.
She and her childhood best friend had just angered the most notorious killer in Nevada, and they weren't about to have any witnesses.
