Haunted Rayne

23 | Between Dread and Desire

Half past two in the morning, Deputy Malik Thompson remained hunched over his desk, eyes fixed on the documents spread before him. The office was silent, local law enforcement memorabilia winking at him from their perch upon the yellowing walls. He stifled a yawn. The weight of this case—that should've been closed—was really starting to bear down on him. His fingers traced the edges of a photograph. The victim, Hillary Berkshire. Her face was frozen in a moment of conflicting despair. Next to it lay the autopsy report from another victim, Nicole Livingston. Ten years ago, her death had also occurred on this very same campus.

Maria J. Westwood Correctional Facility.

Officially ruled a suicide by hanging, Livingston's autopsy report noted incredibly deep lacerations and a fractured rib that did not fit with a self-inflicted hanging. Apropos of that, there was another student, Elias Bradford, that had been sentenced with defiling her corpse; however, it was clear to Malik's laymen eyes that these injuries did not occur post-mortem. His skepticism regarding the official story was only growing stronger.

He set aside the Livingston file and picked up a stack of recent records from the school. This investigation had already hit several roadblocks, requests for financial documents yielding incomplete and heavily redacted papers. The administration provided excuses, citing bureaucratic red tape and high-volume requests—which didn't make a whole lot of sense given the secluded nature of the institution. It was becoming increasingly clear that someone was obstructing his efforts.

Worse yet, Malik noticed even more alarming inconsistencies among the records. Several M.J.W. graduates had criminal histories that were somehow mysteriously wiped clean. His eyes skittered, back and forth, back and forth, as he cross-referenced student names with old police reports and social service files.

There was so much here. How could anyone have missed this?

Determined to dig deeper, Malik logged into the department's internal database from his desk, but his access was suddenly restricted. "What the hell," he muttered, trying his credentials once more, only to be met with a "Permission Denied" message. He tried several alternative routes, including accessing old backup files and network drives, but every attempt was thwarted by access restrictions.

Malik remembered something his uncle had mentioned once before: certain materials from older case files were kept in a back room at the department's substation—a forgotten storage area most deputies didn't even know existed. With no one in the office, Malik grabbed his coat and keys. He rode the coaster of adrenaline through the weary moonlit hours, driven by a sense of determination he had never felt before. His car stuttered to a halt outside the substation, a small building on the outskirts of their rural town in Lockwood, Pennsylvania. Dusty and hardly used, it served as a makeshift archive for bygone dossiers. Malik unlocked the door and stepped into the cool, musty air, the scent of aging paper and stale coffee greeting him.

He made his way through a narrow hallway, eventually reaching the storage room. It was cramped, lined with filing cabinets and boxes stacked high. Malik propped a small flashlight between his teeth as he flipped through folders. He finally found what he was looking for—reports marked with familiar names. Nicole Livingston, Olivia Harper, and so many others—over forty names!—but they were in surprisingly poor condition. There were pages missing, some deliberately torn or smeared with ink.

His heart raced as he examined the forms, catching sight of something peculiar. Many of the incident reports had unofficial scribblings in the margins—words like "not yet" and "close but no," along with cryptic, occult-like symbols. Some documents had been heavily annotated with what looked like a tally of attempts—attempts at what?—and notes regarding "Lunar Thresholds" and "Celestial Barriers."