The Flayed Awakening

Chapter 2: The Investigation

Over the following weeks, Emily and her partner Trevor Phillips worked around the clock pursuing any leads in what was quickly becoming one of the most disturbing cases of their careers. The Miller family massacre was already being compared by the media to infamous killers like the Zodiac or Son of Sam - only this psychopath displayed a level of sadistic depravity that seemed to exist on a whole other plane of insanity.

Every morning brought new horrors as the evidence analysis team reconstructed the nightmarish timeline leading up to the slaughters. Based on the grievous wounds and splatter patterns, the FBI profilers concluded the Miller family had endured unimaginable torture and anguish over an extended period - for days, if not weeks. 

The father's fingertips showed signs of being slowly removed over time, while the mother's eyes had been gouged out and the empty sockets grotesquely violated. The true extent of their suffering was so extreme that the experienced forensic coroners found themselves making frequent trips to the bathroom to vomit.

Detailed abrasions and lacerations across the children's bodies indicated they had been subjected to ritualistic, almost religious defilement. Their reconstructed final moments were truly the stuff of eternal night terrors – right down to the excruciatingly sluggish sawing motions used to detach their scalps amid shrieks of agony.

Emily often found herself loudly praying over these innocent young lives so brutally extinguished...or worse, to whoever could inflict such profane evil on defenseless children. Was this the handiwork of some devil cult that preyed upon the virtuous? Or a lone psychopath with an obsession for pagan blasphemy? 

Despite such copious evidence telling the story of prolonged barbarism, there were absolutely zero forensic clues or DNA trails leading back to a perpetrator. Not a single hair, fiber or even a partial fingerprint that could generate a suspect profile. It was as if the killer had discovered some supernatural way to simply will themselves from not leaving evidence at the crime scene.

The only strange anomaly recovered were those bizarre, asymmetric bare footprints found throughout the blood-soaked killing rooms – telling of some distinctly inhuman presence moving about the Miller home. But whose...or what's?

Perhaps most unsettling for Emily were the taunting touches the murderer had left behind. Like the bloodied magic marker arranged on the mantle in the shape of an upside-down crucifix. Or the wildly contorted Miller family portraits, violated and reshaped into sneering depictions of pure malice. 

To call the perpetrator "sick" or "deranged" seemed pitiful understatements at this point. Emily was rapidly coming to believe she was dealing with something much more insidious than just a mortal psychopath...an ancient, primordial evil possibly dating back to the very first instances of ritualistic human sacrifice and ceremonial butchery.

Though her bullheaded partner Trevor dismissed such "hoodoo voodoo paranoid gibberish," Emily felt a very real darkness permeating every facet of this case. A sense of dread that this was all just the beginning of something far worse...a slumbering abomination being purposefully, diligently awakened by an earthly agent of profound iniquity. 

Something evil was stalking Black Ridge. Emily had to find out what before it struck again.

Or perhaps more accurately - before SHE became its next target...