The Paranon Chronicles

Chapter 2: Quiet Wisps

Imagine deep, painful claw marks on your leg caused by something twice your size. The tissue's clearly visible, looks like a small bowl of blood, all of that. Now, imagine a thriving infectious creature wiggling about inside your wound, with pus and blood spewing out the sides and running down your calves. 

Okay, now take that, multiply it by 10, and that's what I'm looking at. 

The victim's room would be considered fairly cozy; warm brown floorboards, fluffy rugs, a pretty painting of the forest. I would almost be inclined to live here, if you power washed all the blood off the walls. 

I wasn't sure if I was fully processing what I was looking at. Bits and pieces of the victim flashed in front of me like a zoomed in camera. Her colorless skin, the way her eyes seemed to bulge out of her skull, the permanent look of horror on her face, the mangled way in which she laid. I looked away from her quickly. It was not a good idea to stop for tacos this morning. 

Martin manoeuvred from behind me and into the room, stopping to give the victim a simple glimpse of recognition, before walking further inside towards the window. In the back near a mangled armchair, a CSI agent handled a professional looking camera with difficulty, struggling to fix the tripod to a reasonable height.

Martin looked at her with a smirk, before walking over and taking the tripod's stands from her gently. "Allow me, ma'am." He purred, his voice silky and low as he winked at the agent. 

I growled at his flirty behavior. "There is a dead girl at your feet, Detective." I emphasized the last word sarcastically, just in time to hear a threatening response from behind. 

"That is your victim, Detective Betrose. One that you were supposed to be examining fifteen minutes ago." 

I turned around to gaze up into the stark brown eyes of the Captain, who clearly was not happy to see either of us fiddling around in a crime scene. "You two, outside with me. Freya?"

The now flustered CSI agent gazes up at him. She had been hurriedly glancing down to the mangled body before he acknowledged her, and I could tell she was eager to continue her examination. 

I cleared my throat, trying to clear the tense air. "We're fine in here, Captain. Rest assured, this will be handled in the next minute." Martin nods along with my statement, his flirtatious grin from before nowhere to be seen.

The Captain stares me down, clearly contemplative, and I glare back with force. 

I know what he's thinking. This has to be my what, fourth late call this month? He's surprised they still assign me to cases, let alone allow me onto a crime scene. But I've worked for this title just as hard as anyone else here. I'm going to solve this girl's murder, plus the ones before her, and no one is going to get in my way.

After a moment of competitive glowering, the Captain scoffs and turns to leave without another word. I smile with pride. Good riddance. 

As the CSI agent fixed her camera, the scent of the room was finally getting to me. The acidic smell of puke caused my nose to burn, and I scrunched up my face in disgust. "Hey, anybody got a mask?" I choked out.

The CSI agent pulled something from her uniform at my question and handed it to me with a smile. I pulled on the black, CSI issued face covering and decided to get to work. 

Her body had been found by the authorities forty minutes after the incident had been called in by a group of teens, most likely using the cabin as a meeting place. The girl's time of death had been just a few hours before her discovery, which puts the teens as prime suspects for now. Seems their alibi's all checked out clean, but you can never be too careful.  

I crouch down next to the unidentifiable girl's bashed in and blood-spattered face, most of it being covered by her soaked locks of blonde hair. A red, white and gray college uniform covered her twisted body, suggesting she would have been going to school at the time of her disappearance. 

The black stitchings in her skin stuck out like a sore thumb against her sickly complexion, each of them perfectly spaced and sized. I rose to a stand and let out a breath. So, our killer's experienced with needles...

Martin crouched down behind her head, the sunlight from the window highlighting his golden locks. He fixed his gloves and held her wrist in his hand carefully, eyeing a particular section of her arm. "Was our killer a sadist or something?" 

I turned to glare down at him, confused he would even consider that a question. Noooooo, they were an angel of god! 

He looked up to my puzzled stare and rolled his eyes, before holding her wrist up to the light. "This girl has a bracelet on."

 "...Oh yes, so unusual."

 "A bracelet that isn't hers."

 "Wow, so rare. Very uncommon that is."

He huffed, clearly annoyed at my sarcasm. "...This bracelet belongs to the killer."

 I tumbled in my thoughts. "What?" Moving closer, I crouched down next to him and examined the bracelet for myself. 

 "See that symbol right there on the silver end, next to the clasp? That's a needle," Martin explained. "On the other side here, look closely at the black string used to sew the victim and the string of the bracelet."

 I glimpsed between the stitches and the bracelet, before making the connection. "It's the same thread.."

 Martin nodded. "Whoever did this, they think of it as some sort of game." He moved her wrist closer to me and nodded to the silver piece. "Right under the needle, what does that say."

 I squinted in the direction he was looking. The words sent a shiver down my spine, and I muttered them aloud. "You found me..."

 He shook his head in anger, before standing and brushing off the dirt from his pants. "This is different, isn't it? From the serial killer case, I mean. A note so blatant as this would have been filed in earlier cases if there was a pattern."

I raised a hand to my chin in thought. "Yeah-" I swayed on my feet and squeezed my eyes shut when something sinister entered the room.

A loud, sudden onslaught of harsh whispers invaded my ears and bounced throughout the room, some of them older and quieter than the others, some of them younger and louder and definitely more desperate. 

For what, I have no idea. I don't have an answer as to why either. All I know is that the sound pulled me like a harsh unrelenting grip, each syllable like a hypnotising tug on my being. It blurred my vision, my senses, my thoughts. I know I need to follow them. I want to follow them. They need me.

A familiar echo of a voice stood out from underneath the whispers. "Clem?? Clem, where the hell are you... " It faded out, leaving me to drift inside the unknown voices once again. 

A faint, high pitched ringing in the background suddenly crescendoed to a note so high, so quick, that I felt as if my ears would bleed, before a crisp snap echoed in my head and I fell back into reality. I blinked over and over, trying to get rid of the lingering black spots in my vision, and figure out what in god's name just happened. 

Martin was just in front of me with a frown on his face. "Hey! I'm talking to you. What did you bring us here for?"

I frowned. "What?" 

 He rolled his eyes and stepped aside, leaving me to gape at what used to be a cabin room, and now was the edge of the forest behind the cabin. I blinked in confusion. What the hell!?