Recap: After the detective group gets chased around the school, Alex and Y/n get split up from the rest and get cornered in a walk-in freezer, where they discover a corpse.
[This chapter somewhat contains graphic contents.]
The wind drifted strand of his h/c hair to disarrange, and Y/n glowered in apathy; Tranquillity inhabited the instance as he partook unwaveringly eye contact with the stranger. After a never-ending juncture, the maniac turned away from the window and walked off.
The boy upheld his frown toward the window even when its presence had faded into obscurity. "Y/n what are you looking at?" Clark questioned. The h/c haired broke his stare to acknowledge the query.
His brows knitted in a slow ponder. "Nothing." He eventually let out. A bundle of emotions swirling inside him without taking a concrete shape, constraining him from giving voice to the internal fervour.
"You guys are covered in blood..." Morgan noted with a layer of caution. Her body paralleling by retracting her body language at the sight of the crimson. Y/n looked down at the leftover mess. Tiny smudges had desiccated into his skin, the aftermath making his palms feel dry, the smell still a metallic invasion.
The colour coercing images of the lifeless body to taunt his mind, the portrayal stung holes into his memories and sewed itself in the creases of his cognizance.
The aftershock of the event left his mind prickling panic that couldn't articulate into a proper response. "We...we found the security guard." Alex revealed with a level of vacillation, almost questioning his own memories and the horror scene the two had seen.
Y/n separated his eyes from his palm to glimpse at the blond as though to ratify the statement without a verbal answer.
Morgan perused their rebuttal with knotted worry before she silently connected the dots to their demeanour between her own reaction to a very certain incident. The quietude festered in the group, no one disturbing the silence out of a form of acknowledgment over the reality they had just faced.
Kiara unclogged her throat from the fretful lump beginning to eat away at her anxiety. " ...On the footage we saw Serene being dragged away most likely unconscious, meaning she was not dead yet, so then what happened with her?" Her voice lacked its usual amount of confidence when the girl uttered the words. Yet again a stiffing stillness swept up the question to loiter in the air.
"I mean, what would in practice, a killer like the Runswick killer, do to victims they don't immediately kill?" Morgan said, posing the question as a rational debate amongst the teens. "We have no way of knowing, there's never been cases of victims disappearingâ" Clark's sentence died down on his lips as he disproved his own point.
"Harper Smith."
The name made two of the teens frown in puzzlement. "The girl that was found dead in her house? What does she have to do with anything?" Morgan muttered.
The brunet met eyes with Y/n and Kiara internally deciding whether to fill in the others on the secret. Y/n exhaled, taking on the role of opening the conversation on behalf of the trio.
"When the town held the search party for Harper, we participated..."
The boy sensed his tongue accumulate a queasy taste, indistinguishable from a nearing rush of panic.
"We encountered a cabin, miles into the forest, we found a body inside, it appeared to have been... been strapped to a chair and burned." Morgan and Alex took in the confession with aghast, unable to respond in a moment of shock.
The h/c haired tried to further carry the sentence but his words got jumbled under the pressure of a growing stress. "After that, we ran out of the cabin but similarly to what happened in the school, we got ambushed and chased by a masked individual wielding an axe, most likely we stumbled upon the cabin while they were still...cleaning up." The black-haired girl finished. Her tone of voice containing reflective guilt over the day.
Alex composed his stupor first and gestured his hands near his head, his anger reaching a boiling point as he contrived his frustration into words. "Wha-- what the-- What were you thinking?! Why haven't you told the police? What the hell is going on? What is it that you guys are not telling us?!"
"As I said, we got ambushed and chased. Kiara retold the story in a harsher tone to overthrow the frustration of the blond with equal vigour, allowing the statement to sink in. "We managed to escape but not soon after, we received a threatening message saying if we told anyone what we encountered in that cabin, we'd be next."
".... So, what you're saying is, Harper's death was a set-up accident, but that still doesn't explain what it has to do with Serene."
Once the discussion slid to a more passive atmosphere, the h/c haired retrieved the chronicle to shape it into a simplification of his thoughts.
"Harper's death was a set-up accident, Clark, Kiara, and I, found her body before the killer had fully executed the plan." The male carefully convened the concept in a manner he often saw his mother describe her point of view.
"Serene's disappearance is set up in a similar way, it doesn't draw any direct connection back to the Runswick killer. Authorities haven't found Serene yet, so who's to say we won't find her...or her body, in that same area where we found Harper?"
Y/n concluded his speech with a look around, hoping the explanation had been postulated around the group in a sensible fashion. Clark drove out his musing with an agreeing remark. "Serial killers tend to have consistency in their murders, so it wouldn't be surprising if what Y/n is saying is true."
The amaranth-haired mulled over the whole exchange, maintaining efforts to remain civil in the middle of her two conflicting inner voices.
"So now what? Should we go to the local forest and try to find her?"
The contentious suggestion earned mixed expressions from the teenagers, who all still struggled to recover from the experience inside the education facility. "The chances of her being alive are extremely low." Y/n pointed out with weary tiredness.
"Even so, finding her would make a significant difference." Morgan reasoned with the h/c haired. Y/n's sentiment to the idea stayed potent.
The boy levelled an incidental look to the school building, ruminating over vacuous thoughts to scramble together a response. Ultimately the male poured out a heave of vanquish.
.
.
.
.
The climate of the woodland was woeful as the group stood by the outskirts of the woods.
"What are we even looking for?" Y/n asked, his face containing an amount of bothersome as the large trees emerged ominously higher than the figures of the teenagers, the branches cracking with fleeting movements. Clark waved his flashlight to grade the light up and shine the radar into the dark that engulfed miles upon miles. "We'll know when we find it, I guess." Y/n's expression punctured to a dull lower. Repeating his footsteps with the rest to start the descent into the forest.
"We'll know when we find it...great. Alex, you didn't forget to lock your car, right?" The blond rattled the metallic tool in his pocket to recognize the question with an approving rebuke.
"Nope, got the keys here."
Kiara dispersed her sights along the overgrown parts of greenery, trying to locate any oddity in the surroundings. "Good, keep the keys close, if we lose anything in this forest, we're not getting it back" She warned.
Small-scaled crickets rang in the atmosphere, jointly with foliage crunching under the shoes of each student. The hike lasted an overlong time, and the pitch-black sky totalled the impression that what they were doing was risky and dangerous further.
'I hate being here when it's so late'.
Every meter lapsed Y/n's spirit more and more, their location distorting the deeper the teenagers ventured. The boy lamented over the decisions that had brought him to the predicament, whilst peeking in the corner of his vision.
The lack of findings in the search was grating the h/c-haired's ire and the occupational introspection couldn't satisfy his temper long-term.
The path began to stretch out and vanish with untouched grass and bushes, hinting that they were slowly going astray from the appointed trail. Despite this, the group kept going, side-tracking their flashlights between eye level and the ground.
Y/n sharpened his perception of the dense nature. Any motivation he had evaporating steadily.
'How are we supposed to find Serene in this place? it's literally miles of forest'.
A conception threw his dissatisfaction of the rails along with his movements 'I have her number...' The male pried the cellular device from his inner jacket and unlocked the screen that showcased multiple appliances. The halt of the other companions followed suit after the boy. "Y/n what are you doing?"
Y/n ceased the probe with a shushing mantra when his phone blared the ringtone of the number he had dialled. The line cut off with no answer after ongoing calling.
The h/c-haired boy pressed the recall button, and the dial tone clamoured from the speakers again. This time, the others understood the cue and took a chance to try detecting any reoccurring tones in the span of the area.
A remote ringing captured Y/n's ears. And discarding any prior comment, he travelled to the sought-out noise chiming on the horizon.
"Y/n! --"
His sensory faculty lessened the farther he got from his original position and the group sped after the boy.
His heart hammered from his ribcage the more he caught a glimpse of the space where the ringing originated.
The neck of woods was not separate from the masses of thickets. The only oddity in the expanse was the discarded backpack dumped by the tarnished foliage and leafage, barely visible without a solid light source. He did not need to verify its contents to know who the bag belonged to. The replicating tunes muted within the fabric of the object were enough.
His motor functions stammered as it digested every visual perception, racing oxygen in and out, his brain not fully converging what it was taking in. His companions reached the proximity not long after. "Y/n can you not? --" The mystique around the expanse shut down the frenzied words of the brunet.
"What the?" Alex flashed light atop an uprooted section of dirt. The heap standing out from the flat surface surrounding the woods. The others diverged their attention to what the blond referred to.
"It looks like a grave.... yet it appears way too shallow, a meter at most." Clark noted, staring disturbed at the area, fear of the worst-possible scenario clammed his throat shut. The h/c-haired glared at the alleged pit, or rather, at the bouquet of soft pink flowers thrown down. The petals were losing from the pistil, adapting a more discoloured appearance.
The process showing that the flowery was wilting its lifespan. Y/n's countenance stooped at the abstracted detail displayed. The flowers carelessly discarded, were Carnations, beautiful and bound to last longer than the average flowers.
Y/n plodded down by the burial pit and leaving out any feigning discomfort, scooped away the dirt with robotic swifts to and from.
The digging drained a considerable duration; however, the onslaught of energy outweighed the likelihood that the endeavour was ineffectual by a degree. Y/n's arms pounded as the activity persisted with a pain he ignored for the sake of his cascading sanity.
The hole was coming undone, gradually giving away the silhouette of something that could only corroborate the group's worst fears. Locks of hair uncovered under patches of dirt. Then, skin, then the collar of a uniform.
'No--, no, no, no, please please,' Y/n swept away the small pile of dirt, a mantra of pleas to not let it be who he thought it was.
A petrified gasp flared up from the spectators as the digging ensued a clear view of the corpseâperson, buried in the ground. The deprived flow of blood caused the muscles to shrivel away and their skin to diminish to a lustreless faded colour, sheen blisters in various regions exposed bits of bone.
The girl's eyes were glassy, and the dimmed lustre in her irises produced an absence of any emotional depth, deserting only a void stare obscured by the perforating of maggots gnawing at the sides of her eye sockets and laying an abundance of oval eggs that teemed to feed on the remains of the female's flesh.
The h/c-haired male retracted his hand in firm speed, stifling a gag at the swarm of larva eating away at the onset of putrescent. "I'm so sorry Serene..." He apologized, his timbre threatening to shatter into fragments. "I'm so sorry it's all myâI should have...I should have done more to..." His ramblings lowered to self-loathed bargaining as he refused to break down in the presence of other people. "Y/n, don't blame yourself." Kiara discouraged with layers of stern sympathy.
Y/n didnât muster an intelligible reply and only descried the restricted position the deceased girl was in. Scooping up remains of dirt, the boy narrowly avoided the crawling bugs spreading across the surface.
The girlâs limps had been tied together. Pointing to more inhumane treatment that the girl had been subjected to. Y/n attempted to sway his rising anger. âThis wasnât just a murder and hide the body. They...they buried her alive, it was meant to be a prolonged torture.â
"WATCH OUT!"
Clark ducked away from the forthcoming attack, the blade jamming the bark of a tree.
The brunet tumbled back, crashing against the amaranth-haired girl with a yelp reacting to the butcher knife that almost inflicted fatal damage hadn't it been for his reflexes. "Oh my go-" Kiara jumped multiple feet away from the danger. Y/n disgruntly angled his head to the group, his irritation still scraping his temper until he saw--what could've been one of the worst outcomes. An individual with a torn beige mask and dark clothes.
The butcher knife got pried out of the wood bark and the stranger faced the teens. Y/n's thoughts diminished to a blank fog. His vision not adjusting to dark surroundings, forcing the circular range shining strictly on stranger to be the only perception. The knife lifted, the blade pointing to Alex, then the blade moved to Clark, to Morgen then to Y/n. The periodic motions reminded the h/c haired of a parallel to a counting-out rhyme. Finally the blade pointed to Kiara. The knife twisted to the side.
The black haired's girl took a step back, stress flooding her expression as she understood the gesture. The maniac examined female's compartment. The butcher knife sunk back down. And Kiara spun around to take a beeline run back to the car.
The lunatic followed suit. Everything infront of the students played out too fast and no one of them could oppose the running girl. "Kiara!" Clark shouted accented with a wave of fear. But the two had already faded from sight.
Y/n rose from his pose to rush after the path leading to the parked vehicle.
Twigs and frondescence breaking under the boy's shoes as he moved forward, his legs still in a unsteady pain. "KIARA!" The yell pounced of the woods and came back to the source with no luck. Y/n rotated clockwise to try catch something. The lack of success cemented the maleâs worst fear. 'Please be okay..."
His volatile mind adjacent and all the ways looking alike thwarted his sense of direction. Cool air around the night elements to forge a even colder febricity but not comparable to cold hysteria creeping up.
The boy continued his searching, fully aware every second he was incapable of locating Kiara increased the chances of her getting killed. Meters later, and a scream alerted the boy's senses. Y/n wasted no time to run to the derivation. Pushing aside branches he eventually saw the petrified form of Kiara. The killer stepped closer to the girl, the butcher knife heightened readying to strike the student.
Dedication rushed Y/n's movements and abandoning every self-preservation skill he acquired, he grasped his final pluses of adrenaline and his legs made progress quicker than any rationale could.
Y/n shut his eyes and extended his arms to bear the fall and possible harm he would mete out on himself. The individual glimpsed to the side, only to go colliding against the h/c haired and the two went crashing to the leaf ground.