95. Emma

After listening to the kids’ story and getting their contact information, I met up with the ghost hunters as they went back to their parents. As it turned out, the man who spoke to Rey was a local policeman. Apparently, they were getting desperate, as there were no leads in the investigation.

Rey was also in a nasty position, as he was stuck between keeping some information secret so the ghost hunters could nab the person first and helping law enforcement as he’d promised. Those were the pains of being a good person, I guess, not that I would know.

I went back to the motel to theorize and start slowly preparing for a possible confrontation. I finally had an outline of what had happened inside my mind.

The hook ended up in the preacher’s son’s body. I would assume it caused either a soul mutation of some sort or possession. Whatever it was, the boy was now capable of magic. The bigger question was why it was killing the teens. The boar mutant seemed to have a motivation of its own. It didn’t attack normal people. It stalked them, only attacking once it sensed magic. That didn’t look like the wants and needs of the boar but rather of the soul attached to it. So what would the boy want?

Revenge would make sense for the kid, not the souls attached. Maybe the kid made a deal of sorts? There were many explanations.

But what mattered was that I now knew the creature’s target. It was capable of basic planning, so it would wait for the target to be isolated, at least judging by the preacher’s and Sandra’s murders.

I lay down, mulling over all the unanswered questions. The biggest question was how the hook activated and made its way into the slaughterhouse. There wasn’t a mana vein around, that’s for sure, and it didn’t seem like the artifact was there before. Given its description as “nice,” I doubt the kids would have left it as a decoration.

The only answers were that it was masking itself or someone put it there. I didn’t like either of those.

I tossed and turned for some time before finally falling asleep.

The next morning, I went to meet the ghost hunters. After talking with Cecil, it was apparent that my part was slowly coming to an end as the investigation moved away from ghosts and into the territory of “serious police work.” The opinion of an exorcist wasn’t needed anymore.

They would be doing some interviews with the teens on the police list while I was free to go, and they would call me if needed. They did have enough decency to at least share their findings with me. They suspected that one of the kids from the overdose scene was the culprit. Their working theory was that one of them poisoned the drugs the two took, or gave them something lethal at the behest of Peter.

Cecil gave me the overview in his presenter voice, ending it with a dramatic “one of them is the killer.” According to him, whoever did it wrote the quote to point toward Peter and away from himself, as it was surely due to an argument between partners in murder.

It wasn’t a terrible theory, I had to say, so probably Rey had a hand in it.

After a bit of talk, I went on my own way. Today I wanted to meet Emma and stake out the place of the festivities. I would assume that whoever was hunting them down would use a busy night like tonight to at least stake out the victims, if not go for the kill when they were returning home, assuming they were even going.

I took out my phone and used the contact info they gave me to ask them about plans for tonight. Their messages varied from trying to be brave and saying that the killer wouldn’t stop them from trying to have fun, to being scared about staying home alone while their parents were at the festivities.

They all decided to go.

Would the killer use the opportunity, knowing where the victims were? Or wait for another one? I couldn’t tell what a mutant or possessed person was thinking.

I then went to stake out the festival, mainly looking for good places for an attack. I arrived at the site. It was organized a bit away from town near the fields. A large part of the land was cleared, evidently prepared for events. I asked one of the people setting things up, and apparently, it was used initially for auctioning cattle and other farm animals.

The festival was quite large, but the theme was rather strange. It was too early for a harvest celebration and Halloween but too late for a carnival, so they did a bit of all. There were some classic carnival games mixed with more rural farming themes, such as a competition for the biggest pumpkin, the nicest zucchini, and so on. There were also competitions for imitating animal noises and many others.

Aside from that, a local band would play, and some local wines and beers would be sold, along with a suspiciously clear beverage kept in old lemonade bottles barely hidden under one of the tables.

But two activities drew my attention the most. One was a hayride, and the other the corn maze. Those two had the potential for isolating someone from the crowd. 

I went over the path of the hayride. It went through the nearby forest. It was a fifteen-minute ride through the trees, decorated with some lamps, quite romantic, I imagine, and quite easy to stalk someone in the dark forest.

There were places where it would be easy to see and attack, having a clear view of the people riding from a nearby hill.

After getting the overall picture, I went to the corn maze. This one was harder as the people were still setting it up, but after a quick walk through the corn, I entered from the side. I had to say it really was a maze, quite well done, with a few dead ends. This was a perfect trap.

I walked through it to memorize the structure until I heard some voices in the distance. I furrowed my eyebrows and tried to find the source, but noticed it wasn’t in the labyrinth. I finally started to walk through the corn straight toward the voices and arrived at a small square clearing in the stalks.

In the clearing, there were a few benches set up with workers sitting on them, tasting the clear liquid in lemonade bottles.

“Hello,” I greeted as they turned to me.

The atmosphere became a bit awkward.

“Don’t mind me, just walking around,” I said with a smile.

“The maze is closed while we set it up,” barked one of the men.

I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“It’s a work in progress. What, you gonna run to the supervisor or something?”

Great, assuming I was some sort of spy.

“And say what? A few workers drinking water on the job? Although I would need to confirm it is water…” I said.

“Well, then confirm all you want!” shouted one of them and offered me a cup.

I sat and took a large swig. It tasted like gasoline, to the point I would have thought they’d given me paint remover if not that they poured themselves from the same bottle just a few seconds ago. They all looked at me in amusement, expecting some sort of reaction.

“Yep, good one,” I said, using all the muscle control I had not to cough. “Love the subtle notes of acid, what year is it?”

“Hehehe, strong stomach, I see,” one of them nodded, and I saw them relax slightly. Apparently, I’d earned some respect.

After that, I sat with the workers for some time, asking about the festival, the setup, the place we were sitting in, and whether it would be “open” during the festivities. It turned out this was a spot the teens used to drink away from their parents. They would go into the corn maze and come here to party. Smart. 

Now the question was whether the five would be dumb enough to pull something like that. The girls, I doubted. The quiet guy with his cop parent, also. But Andrew seemed like the loud, too-sure-of-himself type. He was the one pretending he wasn’t scared. Also, Oliver seemed like a pushover, so he might get roped into it.

If I were the attacker, I would choose this place. It was perfect.

After some more worker talk, I separated from the men and went back to staking out the festival. Nothing more jumped out at me as a possible ambush point or unusual, so after a few hours, I went back to my car.

I then checked on the cat once again, but no dice. I was slowly thinking about using something to trace him. There should be his hair in the apartment, so maybe a curse? But that would be antagonizing if he wasn’t an enemy, so not ideal.

I went back. Now, the last part I wanted done tonight was visiting Emma. Hopefully, there would be a time window when the kids would come back from school, but the parents wouldn’t be home yet.

I drove there. Her house was in a different part of town than the preacher’s, practically on the other side. After driving for some time, I parked near her house, and waited. It was around 3 p.m. when a girl came back home. I waited for some time so she could get herself sorted out after school, and then rang the bell. The girl opened the door slightly and looked me over, almost closing it back up.

“Your friends sent me here to talk with you about Peter,” I said quickly, which stopped the door from closing.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“I’m here to help you with the whole situation. Call your friends to confirm. I’ll wait,” I said.

She closed the door, and I could hear her talking on the phone inside. After some more time, she opened the door, this time letting me in.

We sat down at a table to talk.

I asked her about Peter but got a broadly similar story. She was being stalked as it slowly escalated into him going near her house in the middle of the night. I also tried to sense for anything around, but nothing caught my attention. The girl seemed normal, the house was normal. I even walked around it using the toilet as my excuse, but there was nothing.

“So, did you ever have any strange dreams before all this?” I tried, practically shooting blind.

“No?” she answered, confused.

“Any strange feelings? Maybe something weird happened around you?”

She thought for a second and then shook her head.

“Do you have any strange family members, you know, into the occult, maybe an aunt who thinks she’s a witch or something like that?”

“Are you really an exorcist?” she asked, skeptical, as I rolled my eyes.

“Yes, I really am. Please answer the question.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Your parents changed? Stopped going to church, started going to church? Acting weird?” I was trying one long shot after another.

“No, same good old traditional church folk, salt of the earth,” she said, parodying a thick rural accent. “My younger brother is being difficult, but that’s nothing new.”

“Difficult how?” I asked, hoping it was a lead.

“I snapped at him and he stopped talking to me.”

I groaned. Didn’t sound like much beyond siblings being siblings.

“Hmmm, any strange markings on your body?”

“No.”

I relaxed into the chair. What was it? Was I seeing things? Was this really a simple fascination of an awkward guy that turned into stalking? He seemed really introverted from the description, but stalking a random girl? I looked her over. She wasn’t very popular, from what I gathered. Nothing stood out that much, and she swore she never even spoke with the guy.

I was about to ask another strange question before I heard someone knocking on the door.

“Sorry, I have to let my brother in,” she said and walked toward the entrance.

I just nodded absentmindedly, trying to figure it out. Was something influencing his mind even before the hook stabbed him? Maybe the person who put the hook there. I was still missing pieces.

I heard someone walk behind me and turned around to see Emma’s brother. I started to turn back in my chair, but then did a double-take. I knew his face.

And the moment I recognized him, everything clicked into place.