Obsession || h.s [completed]

22 | fear

Fear is a strange thing, sometimes. It can wake you up, make you feel invincible. The adrenaline a drug like no other, and sometimes you'll even crave it. But then sometimes it shuts you down, leaving you to cower in the corner like a small child. The adrenaline too much, and sometimes enough to drive you crazy.

But they say the same thing can be said about love.

"Oh my god." I breathe. Staring at the red-stained carpet. And the red-stained sheets. And the red-stained curtains.

Those damn ugly curtains.

I notice the bloody handprint near the open window, too small and dainty to be that of a man. It must be Layla's as it would be all too easy to catch the killer if it were theirs. And he is far too smart for that, I've seen.

Everything in the room points to exactly what happened in one way or another, and it's like a movie in my mind as I piece it together and watch it unfold.

The splatter on the wall next to her bed from a knife flying upward after hitting it's target, possibly more than once. The rustled, bloody sheets from Layla's attept to get away. The smear across the floor as she's dragged toward the window. The bloody handprint on the wall as Layla fights against her attacker's attept to push her through. And the slight smear after it as her attempts are futile.

And the three letters carved into the wall, marking the room as that of another crime scene for the sadistic killer H.E.S.

Something about the writing catches my eye. It looks different somehow from the others I'd seen in pictures. And maybe that was simply because I'd never seen it in person, but something about it made me think.

The soft voices coming from downstairs are drowned out by my thoughts racing a mile a minute.

And it's like the millions of notes and articles I had read were clouding around my head like wasps. Like a swarm. Too fast and too many to swat away. Like bugs that buzzed through my ears and in my brain and down my throat until I felt as if I were choking on them.

I know better than to walk into the room more than the doorway but I stood and took a tentative step inside the room, but not far enough to disturb any of the evidence.

With a slightly closer look at those letters. Those three letters I'd seen so many times before. But this one had three little dots after each letter. Like an acronym.

Or initials.

And then it clicked.

I bolted to my room before grabbing all of my research and spanning it out across my bed, searching for one article in particular. Once I find it, I skim through the pages until I find the part that nearly confirmes my suspicions. Tells me every sign is there and is possible, if not likely.

I read it over and over. Trying to find a flaw, a crack, a characteristic that doesn't fit.

But I'm not sure if my hunch is actually correct, in fact I hope with every cell in my body that I'm wrong but as sadistic as this killer is, I wouldn't be surprised if he could manipulate my emotions so easily.

And I was almost scarily certain that Harry was the murderer.

But I was about to go crawl back out the window and run back into his house as if I knew nothing. Because if anything, I knew that if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already.

As I stare at the pages, my time ticking by, I struggle not to picture them as two different people; The loving Harry I know and the sadistic killer. And I have to keep repeating in my head all of the research I'd memorized.