Inside Evil

Chapter 9 - Part II

*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks* 

In the darkness of his room, Karl Frans turned over, opened his tired eyes and looked at the clock. It was 4:37am. He'd now been lying in bed, awake, for three hours and twenty seven minutes. Before that, he'd been perched on the end of his bed, and before that he'd been staring out of the tiny window which nestled underneath the overhanging roof of the guest house he was staying in. There was no need for B&B's in Ridgewood, so he'd travelled the solitary road to Mornington, found a relatively expensive room with a view overlooking the lake, and spent the entire day gazing at the scenery and trying to categorise his thoughts. The shore of the lake immediately below his window had lit up with small pedestrian lights as darkness had descended, mapping out the path alongside the shingle shore and off to the jetty. After a short distance, the glistening lights stopped, giving way to a thick forest which swirled around the rest of the shoreline for as far as the eye could see. It was a breathtaking sight, especially when the moonlight caught upon tiny ripples on the lake's surface. But, though Karl had happy memories of casting fishing lines off that rocky shoreline from his youth, his adult experiences had tainted any good feelings that he had about this place.

Karl felt foolish for returning to Ridgewood, and for his actions over the past few weeks. He had taken leave from work to return to a place which he hated. He had pushed his way into Roberta Arlington's home under the pretence of being on duty, and to make matters worse, had let his guard down and said something he shouldn't have. 'It's happening again'. He was in disbelief that he'd said that, aloud, in front of Roberta Arlington of all people.

Then, in another move of idiocy, he'd gone and sat with Martha Wittle and the dead girl's mother and convinced them both that it was a case of murder, not accidental death. He'd intimated at details of former cold cases to members of the general public. He'd openly given both Martha and Mrs Lingly four names of people who had died in suspicious circumstances and who had had their deaths covered up. Martha was right, his superiors didn't believe him, or at least, they wouldn't believe him if he'd actually told them where he was going and what he was planning to try and unravel.

Over a decade ago Frans, looking to get out of the metropolitan police and go somewhere a little quieter, had managed to transfer to the little known town of Ridgewood. It was small, secluded, and practically unheard of by anyone in the United Kingdom. Karl was disillusioned by the police force and had already determined that should his new position not work out, he would leave the force with immediate effect. He hadn't expected to find any kind of comfort or solace in Ridgewood, but upon moving into a small cottage on the outskirts of the town, he'd become utterly enthralled with the place. To the point that he never wanted to leave. His actual career became second to living life, and though he was called out now and then to hurry a group of youths along, or aid an elderly resident who had fallen, his cottage with its little garden surrounded in a stone wall, its blazing fireplace for the cold winter nights, and the serene remoteness, were all he needed. He struck up a friendship with a fishing enthusiast, Barry Wittle, and soon his days were one of waders, bait and evening beer.

The first death had come as an immense shock to everyone. Roger Fenwick, local historian and keen dog walker, had been found on his bathroom floor by his wife. He was icy cold, stiff as a board and seemed to have been there for days; a fact which Iris Fenwick proclaimed not to be true as she'd only been out shopping for three hours. The window was ajar and it was yet again an incredibly cold winter, and the coroner's only guess was that the weather had impacted upon Fenwick's corpse. There had been no indication of foul play, even when it was discovered that in recent weeks the usually subdued man had beaten his wife on three occasions. He simply seemed to have dropped dead on the spot.

Lillia Evans was discovered several weeks later, and the sight which had met police had been harrowing. For a woman who had always been immaculate, her house had been horrifying. Karl could still recall the overpowering stench. Officers had forced open the front door, pushing aside the weeks of mail and papers which lay, undisturbed, at the foot of the letterbox. In the living room they discovered two black Labradors, gutted and decomposing with their innards strewn across the floor. Their throats had been slit and the bloody splatter over the entire room indicated quite a struggle. On one wall was written 'They will get us all' in large bloody letters which had flecks of intestines dried into it. Sitting on the couch was Evans, a gun in her hand and the back of her head blown off. Karl had instantly vomited, rushed outside for some fresh air and never been allowed to go back inside the house.

The events which took place after this second death had always been suspect in Karl's eyes. All the police officers in Ridgewood were instantly removed from the case with, as far as he could gather, a specialist homicide team recruited from London taking over. Lillia Evan's death was never formerly announced, and instead a cleanup crew arrived in the middle of night, cleared the scene and Ms Evans effectively vanished from Ridgewood forever. There was no mention of her ever again, apart from a few weeks of rumours being passed through the town saying that she'd left to look after her mother.

It seemed only a matter of days before a call came in about John Cooper, found on a cold afternoon in the middle of the street. This time two individuals had been discovered; John Cooper and James Harrow. Cooper was dead, icy cold, the onset of rigor mortis already locking his muscles together minutes after he died. James Harrow was alive, but was found unconscious and with a stab wound in his right thigh. The rubber soles on both their pairs of shoes was burnt away. Every single victim had a strange burn mark on the sole of their left foot.

After these few details had managed to surface, there had been radio silence, with all Ridgewood police officers once again prevented from having anything to do with the cases. Then Karl's best friend, Barry Wittle, had discovered James Harrow on the side of a river bank whilst he was out fishing. A fourth death in as many months, in a town which was becoming increasingly panicked. Perhaps this was the reason why the homicide crew continually made efforts to keep the deaths as quiet as possible; to avoid causing undue concern in a place where everyone knew everyone else's business.

Karl had been concerned up until this point, but it was the behaviour of Barry in the weeks after finding James which upset him most. Barry became visibly troubled in just a matter of days. His jovial and passionate manner became short, irritable and snappy. He began to distance himself from Karl, replaced his fishing with woodland walks, and seemed to pale before the town's very eyes. He obstinately wrote in a journal which Karl had desperately tried to get a look at, even after Barry's disappearance, but Martha had always feigned ignorance as to where it was. It had become the end of the road for Karl in Ridgewood, and there were no answers to be found.

After Barry's disappearance, there was not another hint at anything suspicious and there was not a trace of any of the police investigations left within the Ridgewood or Mornington police force's systems. Eventually, Karl had requested a transfer back to London with the hope of continuing his own personal investigations. However, away from the secluded bubble of Ridgewood, matters didn't seem as important, and normal life had soon stripped away all emotion Karl had for pursuing the truth. That was, until a former colleague had quietly contacted him and said that a high school girl had been found dead in Ridgewood. She was icy cold and unusually stiff just minutes after death. The woman who had found her had fainted at the scene and was now acting oddly, and the sheer circumstance that the girl's death was almost a decade after the Fenwick death was of no coincidence in Karl's mind.

Karl looked at the neon red lights of the bedside clock again. It was 5:14am. There was no way he was sleeping tonight. The problem he now faced was a lack of direction. He felt drawn back to Ridgewood, an unpleasant mixture of fear and intrigue in his gut as to what was happening. But, he had no real leads. His only certainty was that Roberta Arlington was caught in the middle of something which she didn't understand. He had seen the same confused yet jaded look upon her face as he had on Barry's. And, if he couldn't uncover something of meaning soon, Karl was almost certain that Vanessa's death would not be the only murder that the town saw over the coming months. 

*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.

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