Don't Leave Me... Again |[TMF]|

17. Crosses over circles

Jake's POV-

I gulped, as my blood ran cold. ...

Now, I haven't told you everything that has been going on, since I joined this team of officers. I work in a work field of cases usually deaths or figuring where they went missing. Occasionally, we find dead bodies that went missing a long time ago. Rarely do we find them alive after years or even months after their disappearance. We find them, but dead.

But I can assure you that Andrew Williams is alive. How do I know? You ask.

Well ever since we got this one lead, It took us to an abandoned warehouse. Whoever that person was, knew that we would find it and left it as a bait. Me and my assistant, Mason, arrived but it was empty. We walked into the warehouse, the air heavy with the scent of dust and rust. The building was old and rundown, with the walls peeling and the floor creaking under my feet. I could hear the echo of my footsteps in the quiet, the sound bouncing off the walls, the sound of my own breath in my lungs.

And then, I saw it, the thing that made my heart stop, the thing that made my blood run cold, the thing that made me realize that I had walked into something far more disturbing than I could have ever imagined.

It was a scene of horror, a nightmare come to life, a glimpse into a world beyond my understanding, a world of darkness and pain and suffering. The walls of the warehouse were adorned with images, images that made my stomach churn, images that made my eyes water.

Certain images had bright red circles around them, but some had the circle and a cross over it.

This middle aged woman with dark blonde curls had two photos. One of her smiling and the other as she held herself crying in pain. Blood everywhere on her. Both had a circle and a huge Red Cross that crossed out both pictures.

I didn't want to know what it was for, but I needed answers and explanations. I look around the walls and that's when I found a bunch of pictures of....

Drew.

It wasn't nice pictures. They were horrid and disgusting. In fact all the pictures had people with injuries; some crying in pain; some cut deep enough to see their insides. It was that bad. I couldn't look at Drew. My stomach was churning at all this. Him crouching and holding his knees, as if trying to protect himself. He had no clothes, practically naked apart from ripped short.

But he did not have a circle, nor a cross.

And at the center of it all, at the center of this nightmare, there was a table, a table that held a single object, an object that made me realize, that this was not just a warehouse, not just a place, that this was a place of horrors, a place of darkness, a place of pain.

It was a single key.

I turned to my assistant, my eyes wide with shock, my hands shaking.

"What is this?" I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

"I don't know," he replied, his voice shaking as well. "But I think we've just stumbled into something far bigger than we ever could have imagined."

I grabbed the key and searched frantically for a door. And I found it. The dark coloured steel with rust coming from all around the edges was in the center of all these pictures.

I opened the door. My footsteps became muted on the concrete floor as I made my way deeper into the room, my heart thumping in my chest with fear. I'd been investigating my missing Drew's case for years, and this new lead was the one I'd been waiting for, the one I hoped would finally bring an end to the nightmare.

The room stank, not like stank as in a bad smell. But it reeked of chemicals and decaying meat.

But as I stepped deeper into the room, the walls closing in around me, the air growing stale and musty with neglect, I couldn't help but feel a sense of foreboding, as if I was walking into the mouth of a beast. It was dark, so Mason flicks on his flashlight and shone it in front.

And then, as if to confirm my darkest fears, we saw it. I quickened my pace, my breathing growing more ragged with each step, until finally, I rounded the corner, coming face to face with something I could barely believe.

There, in front of me, was a pile of boxes, and inside each box, something I couldn't quite make out, something which I knew in my heart couldn't possibly be good. I stepped forward, my mind racing, my hands trembling, as I began to open the boxes, one by one, each worse than the last, each revealing a horror beyond anything I could have imagined.

The smell that hit me. The sight. I wanted to throw up.

As the truth of what I was seeing sank in, as the weight of what I'd found fell onto my shoulders like a ton of bricks, I felt as if I were choking, as if the very air were being sucked out of my lungs, as if I were drowning in a sea of grief and guilt and fear.

It was a moment I knew I would never forget, a moment that would stay with me forever, a moment that would haunt me until the end of my days. It was the moment I realized that, in my search for the truth, in my hunt for closure, I had found something far, far worse than I could ever have imagined, something that would change who I was, something that would define me, a moment that would haunt me forever.

Heads, arms, feet, any body parts packed into those boxes. Some more fresher than others and some half way decayed. One head in particular. It was that same woman on the picture earlier. Dark blonde curls. That huge cut on her forehead.

Her head in that box. Her head! The cardboard box's base covered in blood.

We had to call back up. We both ran out of the warehouse and outside. I couldn't bear the smell any more. The sight. I couldn't get it out of my vision. All those innocent people. Dead. And for what cost? All those crosses meant they are dead. Each box one if someone's body part? Not to mention the barrels of chemicals on each corner of the room.

I couldn't hold it in any longer. I felt my stomach turn and heave, felt the bile rising in my throat, until finally, I could retch no more, could empty no more of the sickening horror, horror that had filled me like a sickness, horror that had consumed me like a fire.

"Call back up, Mason." I managed to say before throwing up again. I barely had time to catch my breath, to try to steady myself, before I felt a wave of nausea hit me like a physical manifestation of the horror I'd just witnessed. As I staggered backwards, my legs giving out beneath me, a cold sweat broke out across my forehead, and I felt the bile rising in my throat.

I've seen dead bodies before. Blood on the walls anything but this. The smell was 10 times worse and, yet I didn't threw up. We were taught not to. But here I held that head. I held it my bare hands.....

I heard Mason calling. He wasn't shaken as much as I was and I feel stupid about being affected so much. All of a sudden a bright blast came from the warehouse. Debris flying along with us. The high pitch sound echoing through my ears, as I hit the ground few meters forwards.

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A/N: ..... Well... How did we find that?

I'm not going to lie but I enjoyed writing this part more than the last chapter. I started writing this chapter at 21:58 and it's currently 23:12. Non stop writing.

I feel powerful 😏

Anyway what do you guys think of this chapter?

What do you think exploded and why?

-Lemon