Inside Evil

Chapter 14 - Part I

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Since the moment that Karl had been ushered into Susan's basement, his deepest fears had been realised. Karl Frans was a logical and scientific soul, and there was no room for the paranormal in his life. Everything had a reason for being, and there was always a scientific answer for every circumstance, and it was this fact that was causing the detective a great deal of trouble.

Until now he had known of a string of strange deaths and murders, the circumstances of which could all be explained by science or coincidence. The fact that so many of the victims within Ridgewood knew each other was of no great surprise. Ridgewood was a small town, which was shut off from the rest of the world and therefore everyone knew everyone else, even if it was just as an acquaintance. The death of each victim, though not having any firm explanation, had always, in Karl's mind, been subject to interpretation. The body of Roger Fenwick, cold as ice after only minutes, had been put down to extreme temperatures from the open window acting upon the body, combined with the possibility of understandable time confusions from his hysterical wife. Lillia Evans' deranged gutting of her two dogs and blowing her brains out was a simple suicide case. John Cooper had been discovered dead in a cold street, James Harrow nearby with a stab wound to his leg. Faulty instruments for taking liver temperatures and exposure to the cold could be used to explain away this incident, and James Harrow's near unconscious state was down to blood loss. Both men having the rubber in their shoe soles burnt away had been odd, but there had never been anything to suggest that the shoes had not been like this far before the occurrence. Even the strange circumstance of Vanessa Lingly's death, her snapped shoe, her icy body, could not instil belief beyond anything explainable for Karl. Even if he couldn't explain matters himself, he was sure that an unread paper in a journal or periodical answered his questions with total certainty. Even the burn mark on the bottom of all the victim's feet could possibly be explained scientifically, he just didn't have the answer yet. However, Karl's problem now, was that the scene in Susan's cellar could not be explained away. It was not an illusion, it was not a figment of his dreams or imagination; it was unmistakable proof that there was something outside of this world. And it made Karl very uneasy.

Though Martha and Susan spoke of strange forces and an obvious connection between the victims, Karl had always believed that he was dealing with a serial killer who got off on making the police jump through hoops as they tried to solve unexplainable deaths. His belief had been further cemented when the London homicide team had taken over all the cases and removed it from Ridgewood Police Forces' eyes. Surely, the only reason a crime squad from the capital would become involved was if they were trying to avoid the widespread panic that would emerge if the nation's latest serial killer appeared. There were strange features and lots of coincidences of course, but everything had been explainable. Karl's problem now was that the coincidences probably weren't coincidences at all, and the strange features probably had no scientific backing that was known to man.

Karl perched on the edge of the bedspread in the tiny square B&B room and glanced out the window. The winter night had already drawn in and from his position there was no glare of town lights and just the blackness of the lake and the wood beyond. In his hand he gripped a piece of paper which had come into his possession many years before but, until now, he had completely forgotten about.

There had been something that Martha had said about Barry's journal which had bugged Karl. He wasn't quite sure what it was until he'd been driving back to Mornington earlier that day and passed the turning down to his old cottage. It dawned upon Karl, that Martha's belief that the only clues available lay hidden in Barry's lost journal were not quite true. A decade ago, when Barry had turned up at Karl's door having discovered James Harrow's body, there had been something else.