- NOSTU, Part I: Third Time’s the Charm
- NOSTU, Part II: Last Round Before Heading Home
By Draven Copeland, Managing Editor
**CONTENT WARNING: This text contains graphic crime scene descriptions, strong language, and references to suicide**
Sheriff William Q. Wydell, known around Insmith simply as “Sheriff” (and always with an added chuckle afterwards), stared at his computer screen as it played through a gallery of family photos. He’d memorized their order after being on the job for 25 years and having practically nothing to show for it except two and a half decades of sitting in the office and occasionally handing out a speeding ticket or two to outsiders on the particularly exciting days. If he was honest with himself – though, he often was not – he would think he could do a lot better with what was left of his life.
The musty holding cells in the station had been vacant for the last decade of his tenure. Every squad car but his had remained in the same uneven parking spaces for weeks, if not months. And now, the desk before Wydell gathered dust on practically everything but the keys used for his computer password, which consisted of the names of his wife (Caroline) and daughter (Marcy) with an exclamation point at the end. Clearly, he was known for his originality just as much as his accomplishments as a man of the law.
Footsteps approached outside of the office and he sobered himself up. He hadn’t been drinking, but he had been slouched in his chair, his hefty beer gut slowly transforming his old, wrinkled, and stained tan button-down into an untucked old, wrinkled, and stained tan button-down. He shifted his campaign hat to look presentable, closed out his photo gallery on his computer, and, in the dark and distorted reflection of the blank screen, he saw his own grayed hair and wide face that was approaching the late stages of middle age. He forced away the image of his wife’s youth that his mind tried to force into the unnatural reflection on the dark screen. She’d been saved from the grief of aging, he’d always thought. It made him feel better about it all.
Wydell pulled his collar up to cover the scars on his neck and awkwardly shoved his shirt back into his jeans just as the door to his office swung open. His first appointment with someone other than an Insmith regular in over two decades had arrived.
Jackie stumbled into the office, hiking up his jeans as they started to sag below his buttocks to the point that even his appealingly patched denim jacket couldn’t hide the fact. His spiked hair stood stiff even as he fumbled over the threshold of the doorway, smelling dankly of a mixture of THC oil and Axe body spray. The officer in the doorway sneered at him as he passed, a hint of anticipation in their wide eyes as they slammed the door behind Jackie and walked away down the hallway.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Jackie said, plopping down into the chair on the other side of the desk and leaning back into it, spreading his legs. When he raised his sunglasses and actually looked at the man across from him, he added, “Finally, someone who looks fucking normal around here.”
Wydell smirked. “Despite the phrasing, I know what you mean. Outsiders don’t often know how to take it when the people of our town look a bit different.” He interlocked his fingers as he rested them on the desk. “Now, right out the gate… before you start asking your questions, I mean… I have a question or two of my own for you.”
Jackie pointed a half-assed finger gun as his sunglasses slid back down. “More on that in a minute. First question: are y’all inbreeding these sons of… or daughters of…” He paused, stumped as to how to properly frame his question. After a few seconds of entertained staring from the Sheriff, he finally said what he meant. “Why does everyone look like that? At first, I thought I’d taken a few too many… I mean, I thought I was seeing things, you know what I mean?”
Wydell looked over at his family picture frame, sighed, and looked back up at Jackie. “Well, son, let me be straight with you right quick,” he said as Jackie took his glasses off and slid them into the pocket of his jean jacket. “We don’t get many visitors around here. I’d like to say I like to keep it that way but you caught me at a, shall we say, opportune time. These young ladies’ deaths… I’ve seen a lot in my time, believe me, and the people behind all this they’ve, well, they’ve gone too far. It’s my hope you have no intentions of being a nuisance to the investigation or to myself as the cases’ lead investigator, you see. Now, I want to know that my hope is well-founded before we continue.”
Jackie sat up in his chair, losing his personality and replacing it with the one he assumed on camera for his apology videos. “Yes sir, I apologize. It’s just that, with the weight of the case and all, I’ve been trying to keep things light, y’know?”
“I can appreciate that. To answer your question, the people that live here now are those that have lived here for years… decades, I’m talking here. Like I say, we don’t get many visitors around here – haven’t for some time. My family and I, we were some of the last to move into town and that was just about 30 years ago now. Damn near to the day.” Wydell took his hat off and set it on his keyboard before resting his hands back onto the desk.
“I’m sorry, man, I meant no disrespect on the whole… y’know, what I said earlier. I’m sure I haven’t met any of your family or anything.”
“I’m quite sure you haven’t, son. They passed five years after we moved here.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Jackie said, his tone softening even further while he stifled a smirk. He thought to himself of all the times his middle school play director had called him a bad actor. If only Mr. Barber could see him now.
“Don’t mind it too much,” Wydell said. “It was a long time ago now. When people move in, they look a lot different from the crowd. Everyone else around here now – the locals, I mean – they, well, they don’t fornicate with outsiders very often, if you catch my drift.”
“Not a hard one to catch,” Jackie replied, provoking a genuine chuckle from the Sheriff. “But the recent victims… Angela Mariani and Robyn Patterson. They weren’t from around here, were they?”
The Sheriff’s face hardened again. “No, they weren’t.”
“And neither of them were pregnant or expecting when they came here, were they?”
The Sheriff chuckled again, this time without humor. “You’re pretty good. Better than your image suggests, if you’ll allow me.” Jackie did, while uttering profanities towards Wydell in his head. “You’re right, son. They were not.”
Jackie flipped his phone from out of his jean jacket pocket and started typing away. “Mhm,” he muttered to himself. “Yet they were at full-term when they were found?”
“They were.”
“And no fetal remains were found near or around either of the victims?”
“None at all,” Wydell replied. “Now, before we continue your line of questioning, I’d like to begin my own right quickly, if you’d let me.”
Jackie looked up from his phone. “Sure, man,” he said, scratching behind his ear. “Go ahead.”
“I thank you,” the Sheriff said, ignoring his gut reaction to disrespect that had been broiling beneath the surface. “Not to interrupt your investigative flow, you understand. What’s been on my mind since your call is… well, I’m in the dark here. Those photos that you shared – the ones from the crime scenes – they haven’t left this building. I mean to say, they hadn’t until you posted them. How did you get a hold of these? Who gave you the photos, son?”
“Y’know Sheriff, I’m not gonna lie to you, I was wondering the same goddamn thing,” Jackie replied, setting his phone down. “Honest to God, I half thought they were fake – I mean, dead naked pregnant women? Sounds like some fucked up AI shit, doesn’t it? Look at me, man, I’m an internet personality. Half the shit I post about turns out being fake or highly sensationalized, like, us horror-core investigators are up against fucking Stephen King and like, fucking, uh, Godzilla and shit, man. Nobody cares unless it’s some insane ass shit, y’know what I’m sayin’?
“Honestly, now that you’re giving me actual answers, I’m starting to think this could be a big break, you know what I mean? I mainly came here just to get a break from the ole missus — who’d’ve thought I’d get the chance to do something, y’know, real.”
“So you don’t know who sent you these pictures? I’m hearing you right, aren’t I?”
“Your ears are working just fine, man. So, how do you explain the lack of fetal remains from both of these victims, Sheriff?”
Wydell leaned back and thought for a moment about his next move. Finally, he responded, exhaling heavily as he began. “To put it plainly, I don’t. I don’t frankly know what to make of it… as a man of the law, that is.”
“And as a man of his own?”
The Sheriff chuckled again. “A man of his own… I like that, Jack. I’ll tell you this. And this is not in any reports. The cuts that were made into these young ladies… they were deep, and they were… erratic. Made quickly and without regard, you see. Something like that, you’d expect… gory details, let’s just say, to be scattered around the body – I mean, flesh don’t just disappear. Now, placental remnants were found, but not intact. There was some missing from each of them, you see. Cut or… chewed through.”
Jackie looked up from his phone. “Chewed, huh? And no ‘gory details’ like scattered flesh and shit.” He took a moment, jotting down these details as Wydell nodded in response. “Are you suggesting that the bodies were moved post-mortem?”
Wydell smiled. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”
Jackie flashed a smile back, looking into the Sheriff’s eyes while tapping away at his phone. “You said ‘the people behind this’ earlier. Do you think these deaths were coordinated? Would that explain why there were burn marks on the victims’ wrists and ankles? And the cause of death is still ‘blood loss,’ isn’t it?”
“One thing at a time, now,” the Sheriff replied, straightening in his chair. “I’ll answer your first question, but after this, I’m done… I may have, well, divulged too much already. I’m not used to this whole reporter interview business. You’re the first I’ve had since I became Sheriff, you know that?”
“It’s an honor,” Jackie said.
“That it may be.” Wydell looked at Jackie for a moment, a hint of regret in his eyes that was not missed by their target. “Do I think the deaths were coordinated? Well, son, allow me to answer with another question, if you don’t mind. Do you think that one person alone would be re-creating Caroline’s death?”
Wydell stood and walked over to the door, his hand resting on the knob. Jackie stood to follow.
“Caroline?” Jackie asked.
“She was relatively new to the town when she died. Only got to be around here for about five years… alive, anyway. Caroline Rose… and her last name was Wydell.”
Jackie’s eyes widened as Wydell opened the door. The next words he spoke were nearly whispers as he patted Jackie on the back, leaning in close.
“Word to the wise,” Wydell said. “Don’t trust anyone you meet.”
Having made his final delivery, Sheriff Wydell drove slowly up his driveway, watching the shadows as his headlights made them dance between the forestry that lined the gravel road. He shook with his seat, hitting all of the uneven sections of the unpaved road that he knew like the back of his hand. The tall fir trees enclosed him on either side, seeming to loom closer than he remembered.
Parking just in front of the garage of his one-story house, he shut the car off but kept his foot on the brake; his hands tightly clutching the wheel, he slowly looked up and into the rear-view mirror.
The tall, dark trees were bathed in the faded neon-red of his brake lights, illuminating the scenery but keeping it from being seen clearly. As he focused on the side of the road, right at the last bend of the driveway, his suspicion was confirmed. He had seen what he thought he’d seen as the headlights had danced around the trees. One of the shadows hadn’t moved.
He stared at it for some time, waiting to see if it would make a move before he did. To see if it was impatient. It wasn’t. It just stared back.
The slow creaking of leather broke the silence as he softly released his grip on the wheel, finally shifting his vision away from the mirror. He looked around his car, grabbed the note he had scribbled onto a sheet of ruled paper, careful not to let the sweat from his fingertips ruin the ink. After releasing his foot from the pedal, he looked back into the rear-view. Everything was bathed in shadow, his mind playing tricks on him as he gazed into the reflection of complete darkness.
Wydell nodded, opened the door, walked along the stepping stones between the wet grass of his unkept lawn, unlocked the front door, and walked in. He didn’t look back once, nor did he close the door behind him. It wouldn’t have been any use anyways, he thought.
The Sheriff navigated through the house without flipping any light switches, finally arriving at his favorite rocking chair, which he kept in the TV room in the back-left corner of the building. “Should give me some time,” he thought out loud as he settled into smooth cushions of the chair, letting it rock a little while he set the paper down on the table beside him.
“Father Jesus,” he began, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. He was beginning to be able to see the outline of the room: the large black rectangle that was the TV in front of him and the surrounding tables and shelves that varied in darker grays against the lighter gray that was the wall. “I know I’ll be seeing you real soon, but I thought I might ask a favor before I get there…. tell Carol and Marcy I’m coming, will you? I hate to bother them, but I’m so excited to see their faces again… you wouldn’t believe. Will you do that for me, Lord?”
A tear dropped from his eye as he shifted his weight to pull his revolver from its holster, unbuckling it and sliding it out before settling back in the chair. Subconsciously, his feet pressed against the ground harder to let the chair rock a little more, swaying faster as his nervous anticipation grew. His weary voice began to shake and streams of tears began to fall as he continued.
“I hope they aren’t raw about me, Lord. I hope they forgive me for my… for my… for my cowardice. This may be the only good thing I done all my life, I know it, Lord. I know it won’t make up, but, Lord, I hope it does. Will you tell ‘em that, Lord? Please? I don’t want ‘em to be raw about me I… I just want to see ‘em.” He whispered. “I just wanna see ‘em.”
A slow, wet clicking noise started to grow from the right corner of the room. It was the darkest corner, as the doorway into the room was on the left, letting in the vague, hollow light from the screens on his refrigerator and oven. The corner was darker now than it had ever been; a shadow filled its space, seeming to move like viscous liquid in the darkness. The wet clicking grew louder and slower until it stopped.
“Amen,” Wydell uttered under his breath. Silence filled the room as he raised the pistol towards the moving darkness and fired.
The creature was more terrifying than he remembered in the brief, fiery light. The weapon’s flash sparkled in its dark, gray eyes, its long, pointed ears perking towards the ceiling it hunched its massively tall, slender frame under. Its skeletal body was almost clear beneath the liquid cloak of darkness that flowed around everything but its head, dripping from its shoulders and running down its body. And its long, pointed teeth…
He fired again, jumping not at the jolt of the weapon but at the sight it allowed. Then again. Then again. He let out his breath before the fifth shot, realizing that he had been right. This wouldn’t stop it. It likely wouldn’t do any more than frustrate it. The shot rang out.
The shadow before him grew larger as the creature moved closer, its footstep long and slowly creaking against the floorboards as it moved uncannily towards the Sheriff. It let out a low, breathy noise that may have been an exhalation or some sort of vocalization, he couldn’t tell.
“Please don’t take this out on Evie,” Wydell said, the air from the creature’s vast mouth wet and warm against his cheek.
The wet clicking sound began again, moving closer to the Sheriff’s right ear until it echoed in his eardrums. He put the revolver into his mouth and fired its last shot.
