Sam and Colby: The House

30

We all walked up the creaky old wooden ladder, me putting all of my focus into moving steadily and not losing my balance.

"Here," Colby said, gently placing his hand on the small of my back when we made it all of the way up. I turned around to see him holding out one of the black XPLR masks.

"Oh, thank you," I said, taking it from him. I pulled it on and tucked the straps behind my ears and watched as the rest of the guys did the same. Sam reached into his camera bag that he'd had slung over his shoulder and took out five flashlights, then handed one out to each of us.

The attic was pitch black with thick, dusty air. No one had been up here in a long time.

"So do you think it's possible that the last person in here was the guy himself?" asked Jake.

"Who, Ed? Yeah, it's more than possible. It's very likely, considering that the police couldn't even find it," I said.

"Dude, you should be a cop," said Corey.

"No, that's okay. I like her being with us all the time and not at a daily risk of being shot," Colby said.

"What did you want to be? Like if this had never happened?" Sam asked.

"Well... I moved to LA to go to UCLA and study psychology. But I got my job at Chanel and that was good enough for me," I said.

"Oh, nice," Sam said. I nodded in response, but only once because the base of my head ached when I moved my neck too much.

"Okay, you ready to turn on the lights and look around?" asked Colby. We were all standing by the open hatch, only able to see a couple feet in front of us from the light of Augusta's room.

"Yup," said Corey. We all turned on our flashlights to see that the hatch actually led us up to the middle of a room. It was giant for an attic, a couple doors lining the walls.

"Jesus, there's no way this house came with such a huge attic," I said.

"Do you think he built onto it? To spend his time up here?" Sam asked. I looked down at the rickety wooden floorboards we were standing on, then make my way over to one of the doors and pushed it open to reveal a room full of clothes and boxes. I kicked a box out of the way to see a tiled floor.

"Yes," I said. Attics in a house like this weren't built with tiled floors, nonetheless separate rooms with different flooring styles.

"Do you think this is where he, like... brought the bodies?" Jake asked.

"I'm not sure, but no one ever cleaned this place out so if there's any answers to that question, we'll be finding them here," I said. I remembered the research I'd done, how gross and trashed out the place had been when the police raided it. The floors had been barely visible, covered in small trinkets and trash and haphazardly strewn about furniture. This space wasn't anything like that. The first room definitely was, completely packed full of random shit that had obviously just been thrown and shoved in there, but the big main open area was relatively clean.

I walked around the perimeter of the main room. There were a couple hat stands and coat racks, full of women's dresses and wigs. There was also an old vanity, set up with bottles of old perfume. The mirror on it was shattered with a circular pattern that had radiated from the middle. It looked like someone had punched it.

On the table of the vanity was a small chest with a padlock on it, but it wasn't clamped shut. I slid it off of the chest's latch and opened up the box.

It was a jewelry box, full of necklaces and bracelets and earrings and rings all jumbled together. I picked up the piece on top, a long pearl necklace. I held it up in front of the flashlight, admiring the iridescent gleaming white pearls.

"Do you think those were his mom's?" Corey asked. He'd come up beside me.

"I wouldn't be surprised. Dude had some serious attachment problems with her," I said. Corey and I set the box on the floor and sorted through it, finding a bunch of expensive looking jewelry.

"This is weird. I feel like someone who lives in a normal house like this wouldn't have so damn much luxury jewelry like this," said Corey.

"You're right... these stones are all genuine. You see these ring bands? They don't have the sterling silver numbers engraved on them and the clarity of these diamonds show that they're genuine and not lab created," I said.

"Meaning...?" asked Corey.

"These are all at least $500 rings, and these pearl necklaces are all genuine, too. I think the garnets and sapphires embedded in these bracelets look real as well," I said.

"Do you think he robbed people?" asked Corey.

"I think he kept all of the nice jewelry he found on the bodies of the people he killed," I said.

"I thought he only technically killed two people," said Corey.

"I know... that's still a little mystery I hope we can figure out. You heard that long list of all the stuff he had. He couldn't have gotten it all from just three people," I pointed out. "He had nine of... those things. That means there had to be at least nine different people he, uh... took them from."

"That's so gross," Corey said, shuddering. "I just—,"

"Got chills. Yes, I saw," I said with a short laugh.

"Hey guys, come check this out!" Jake called from one of the rooms. "Except maybe Corey. This is sort of gross."

"Yeah, I'll keep looking at this stuff. You go ahead," Corey said.

I got up and joined Sam and Colby in the doorway to the room that Jake was standing inside of.

"Is this a fucking—," Sam started.

"Are those—," Colby said.

"Oh my fucking god," I whispered.