Sketched

Chapter 1

James Newton sat lay in his bed reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King for the 5th time as the noise of the house party down his street practically shook the town. Since the Johnstons moved in he hadn't gotten a peaceful nights sleep, with the teenage son Sam constantly throwing house parties for all the reckless teens in his neighbourhood to celebrate the death of their own livers. Other than this James lived a peaceful life, with an office job at the local post down the street.

He jolted up as the motion lights suddenly switched on in his backyard, he assumed it was an animal or at the most a drunken teenager sneaking out of the house as the police had shown up for the 4th time this month, but instead, it was nothing. The motion lights always gave James an impending sense of doom, like a bomb siren in the middle of a war. He had been broken into multiple times since moving in with many of his valuables stolen. Since then he installed an alarm system, security cameras and the motion sensor lights.

He woke up the next day to the sound of the mailman shouting at the neighbour's dog, who refused to let go of his grip on the man's trouser leg. Finally, he heard the mail being slipped through the slot and the starting of a van engine.

He casually skimmed through the reams of junk mail and bills, at the bottom of the pile there was a letter, sealed in an intensely bright pink coloured envelope with no senders address or stamp. "Strange" he muttered to himself as he opened the slightly sealed mysterious envelope. He pulled out a piece of lined paper folded into a neat square and tied in a bow with a velvet ribbon, he began to question if this was for him and quickly checked the mail address before proceeding to carefully untie the ribbon.

He unfolded the paper to unveil a hand drawn picture and a handwritten letter to accompany it. The drawing was a disturbing picture of a man in a bathtub, covered completely in what appeared to be blood. James' eyes grew wide as he realised the man in this picture was dead, a possible murder scene. "it's just the weird kids down the street" he tried to reassure himself, although not quite believing. He began to read the letter,

" His name was John McGrath, he was an Irish man who moved here in hopes to pursue a career in forensic psychology, he was 46 years old and wore a checkered shirt and jeans when I bashed his head in and stabbed him, 35 times. You may not know him now but you will, "

James' heart began pounding in his chest, his breaths felt like climbing a ladder. He stood there in shock for what felt like an hour before rushing to his room to put on whatever clothes he could find and rushing out the door with the strange letter in hand.

He arrived at the police station 30 minutes later and ran up to the only available desk. He showed the officer the letter and told him that he had received this letter in the mail this morning. The officer seemed slightly disturbed but not as much as James had wished.

"I believe this to be a prank Mr Newton, this describes an exact murder that has happened around this area, all this is public knowledge since very early this morning, I will keep this for evidence, thank you for bringing this to our attention"

"A Prank?" James was disgusted, clearly whoever did this is extremely disturbed. He thanked the officer for his time and swiftly left the station and arrived home. He switched on this news immediately in hopes to hear about John McGrath. The picture of the man swimming in his own blood was sketched in his mind. He got up to make a coffee when he heard the all too familiar name,

"Irish man John McGrath killed in suspected serial killer murders".

James began to feel his fingers go numb as the news anchor began to describe the exact details of the crime that was written in his letter. He felt his blood turn cold as they flashed up the picture of the man, the drawing was an exact replica of him, almost as if it was a printed photograph,

"he was found in a motel bathroom, covered in his own blood, he suffered a blood trauma injury to the head and his body was severely mutilated, with what is to be believed as 35 stab wounds".

James' stomach began to turn, "this wasn't a prank", he knew it for certain now, "what mentally stable person would do this, his face was almost too perfectly drawn and the murder was perfectly described, who would search for this type of practically unknown murder and why send it to me?"