Chương 102: 95. Emma

After listening to the kids' story and getting their contact information, I met up with the ghost hunters. Apparently, the local police were getting desperate, as there were no leads in the investigation. Rey was in a nasty position, 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 in my mind. It still had holes in the story, but it was there. 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 capable of magic. The bigger question was why he—or it—was killing the teens.

The boar mutant seemed to have a motivation of its own, although it had low intelligence. So what would the boy want? Revenge would make sense. Maybe the kid made some sort of deal that went sideways? But what mattered was that I now knew the creature's target. It was capable of basic planning, showing much more intelligence than the boar did. 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 one was how the hook activated and made its way into the slaughterhouse. The magic I sensed was the outcome of casting a spell with some mana loss, not likely to be enough to awaken the artifact. The front-runner theory was that the magic I felt was after the soul-shatter spell, and the artifact was awakened somewhere else and brought there for some reason. Or it was always there, but the source of awakening was gone after I got to the slaughterhouse. And I didn't like either of those options.

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 interview the teens on the police list and call me if needed. They did have enough decency to at least share their findings with me before going off on their own.

The clowns suspected that one of the witnesses 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 message 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; probably Rey had a hand in it. After a short talk, I went my own way. Today, I wanted to meet Emma and check out the site for the upcoming festival. I would assume that whoever was hunting them down could use a busy night like tonight to at least stake out the victims, if not go for the kill when they were returning home. I took out my phone and used the contact info the kids gave me to ask about tonight's plans.

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? Or wait for another one? I then went to stake out the festival myself, mainly looking for good ambush spots. I arrived at the site. It was set up 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 initially used 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 best-looking 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 was the corn maze. Those two had the potential to isolate 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, and relatively easy to stalk someone in the dark forest. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. 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. 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. Frowning, I tried to find the source, but noticing the voices weren't in the labyrinth, I finally started to walk through the corn straight toward the sounds. After a minute's walk, I arrived at a small square clearing in the stalks. In it, a few benches were set up, with workers sitting on them, drinking the clear liquid from lemonade bottles.

"Hello," I said as they turned to me. The atmosphere became 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?" the man said, in a less-than-pleasant voice. Great, assuming I was some sort of supervisor's spy.

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

"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 acid, to the point I would have thought they'd given me paint remover if not for the fact that they'd 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 battery acid—what year is it?"

"Hehehe, strong stomach, I see," one of them said, nodding, and I saw them relax slightly. Apparently, I'd earned some respect. After that, I sat with the workers, 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 potential victims would be dumb enough to pull something like that. The girls, I doubted. The quiet guy, 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 more worker talk, I left the men and returned to staking out the festival.

Nothing more jumped out at me as a possible ambush point or anything 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 some of his hair in the apartment, so maybe a curse? The moonhunter dragonfly would require a long drive to the closest vein I was aware of, not to mention its low efficiency in forests.

So the curse, but that was the last resort as I didn't need to antagonize Q'Shar's retired agents for now, at least. I went back. Now, the last part I wanted to do tonight was visit 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 to the address I'd gotten. 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 sat in my car for a while longer so she could get herself sorted out after school. Once ready, I rang the bell, and the girl opened the door slightly, looked me over, and almost closed it back up.

"Your friends sent me here to talk with you about Peter," I said quickly, which stopped the door from being slammed back.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"I'm here to help you with the whole situation. Call your friends to confirm. I'll wait." She closed the door, and I could hear her talking on the phone inside. After a few minutes, 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, which slowly escalated into him going near her house in the middle of the night. I also tried to sense anything around, but nothing caught my attention.

Neither the girl nor the house had anything unusual about them. I even walked around it, using the toilet as my excuse, but nothing was interesting.

"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."

"Have 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 recently, 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 to this puzzle. I may have to use the curse or call for a tracking specialist. I heard someone walking 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.