by Amy Cross
Glancing across the room, I look for some sign of Darper's presence. She has to be here, but I'm worried that she's holding back because of Lenora's presence. After all, it took a few attempts to lure Darper out of the shadows five years ago, and I doubt she's going to be keen on appearing while there's a camera here. I also know, however, that it's futile to second-guess what Darper might do next. She's always been unpredictable, and although I have no doubt that she's here right now, watching us, I have no idea when she might make her move. I can feel her, though. In fact, it's as if she's getting closer and closer, almost on top of us...
"Fisher..." Cassie mutters.
Looking down at her, I see that her eyes are halfway open.
"It's okay," I placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'm here. We're at the cabin. How do you feel?"
"Cold," she whispers, staring straight at the wall. "Is she here?"
I glance over at Lenora. "Your ghost writer's here," I say after a moment, unable to hide the disgust in my voice. "She's filming us right now."
I wait for a reply, but Cassie just continues to stare at the wall. It's as if she's drifting in and out of consciousness, and she seems to have no energy at all.
"I don't know what to do next," I say quietly, turning my back on Lenora and leaning closer to Cassie. "You asked me to bring you here, so I brought you, but now what?" I wait for a reply, "Do you have a plan?" I continue eventually. "It sounded like you had a plan. Do you know what we're supposed to do when she gets here?"
"Is she here already?" she whispers.
"Darper? Not so far. I haven't seen her, anyway. I think she might be around, though." I pause as I hear Lenora walking closer, and after a moment she crouches next to Cassie, keeping her phone pointed at us. She has the gun in her other hand, and I can't be certain she wouldn't use it if I tried to get that damn phone out of her hand. "It's just the three of us," I say, wiping the wet hair from across Cassie's forehead. "There's nothing... There's no sign of Darper."
"She's here," Cassie whispers, sitting up slowly, still wearing my jacket. "She's always here. This is her home. She'll never leave, not really."
"Are you talking about the ghost?" Lenora asks.
"Shut up," I reply.
"This delusion really runs deep, doesn't it?" Lenora continues. "I can see it in her eyes. She really believes it. Holy crap, this is good stuff. I'm thinking movie rights, or maybe a show on cable."
"So what do we do next?" I ask Cassie, preferring to ignore Lenora as much as possible. "How do we get her to appear? We don't have a board this time."
"We don't need a board," Cassie replies. "The board... was just a toy. It was something that focused our minds, but it doesn't mean anything. The only thing that means anything is us, being here. That's all Darper wants. Us, or me."
I turn to Lenora. "You should leave. You have no idea what you're getting yourself into."
"No," Cassie whispers. "Let her stay."
"Don't worry about me," Lenora says with a smile. "I can look after myself."
Cassie turns to me, and I can see the fear in her eyes. "She's coming," she says after a moment.
"You've said that before," I reply, "but there's no sign of her. What's she waiting for?"
"She's waiting for..." Pausing, Cassie seems to be momentarily lost in thought, and for a few seconds it's as if she's drifting away from us until, finally, her eyes seem to focus again. "I think... She's waiting for..."
Before she can finish, there's a single loud knock at the door.
"What the hell was that?" Lenora asks, all the confidence suddenly gone from her voice. She turns the camera to face the door, but I can tell she's worried.
"Answer it," Cassie whispers.
"Is it her?" I ask.
"This isn't funny," Lenora says, still filming the door.
"Answer it. It's what Darper's waiting for." She pauses. "If there's no-one there, walk around the cabin. Just make sure. I know it's raining, but you have to check all around." She turns to me, and there's a hint of darkness in her eyes. "Do you understand, Fisher? It's very important that you look properly. We'll be safe. Just go and look."
"Stay here," I say, getting to my feet and walking over to the door. I can hear the storm outside, but although I'm terrified that there might be something waiting out there, I know I have to do what Cassie says. After all, she's the expert when it comes to Darper Danver. I turn and look back at her, and I can see her watching me while Lenora sits nearby, her camera trained on my face. "Are you sure about this?" I ask, hoping against hope that Cassie might change her mind.
"Go and see who it is," she whispers.
Taking a deep breath, I reach out and grab the handle, and finally I open the door and find that, just as Cassie suggested, there's no-one there. All I see is the dark forest, with the wind blowing leaves through the air as rain pours down. It's a desolate sight, and although the lights of Fort Powell are just about visible in the distance, it's clear that we're alone.
"There was someone out there," Lenora says, her voice tense with fear. "Let's not pretend it was just the wind, okay? Someone knocked. Did you arrange for someone to come up here? Is this all part of some big trick? If you're setting me up like a fool, I swear to God, I'll make sure you don't only lose the fee, you'll be sued for every penny you've got." She fiddles with her phone for a moment. "Great," she mutters. "Now there's no fucking signal."
"I'll go and look," I say, even though my heart is racing.
"Don't go out there," Lenora replies. "It's a trick. Someone's trying to get you to go out there. Someone's been listening to us, and now they're trying to mess with our minds. They want us to be terrified. Jesus Christ, this is a bunch of kids, isn't it? Some kids obviously followed us out here and now they're trying to fuck with us."
"You have to look," Cassie says quietly, holding her hand up and staring at it for a moment. "She's coming. She's getting closer all the time. She's almost here, but..." She pauses, as if her hand is the most fascinating thing in the world. "You have to go and look," she says eventually. "Please, Fisher."
Without saying anything, I step out into the storm. After turning and looking back at Cassie for a moment, I pull the door shut and start walking around the cabin. The storm is battering me, almost blowing me off my feet, but I know I have no choice. I just have to trust that Cassie knows what to do next. Forcing my way through the wind, I finally reach the rear of the cabin, but of course there's no sign of anyone. Still, that knock was real, which can only mean one thing: Darper Danver wanted me to come out here. I guess I knew, deep down, that -
Suddenly a shot rings out from inside, followed immediately by the sound of Cassie screaming.
Becky Madison
"Okay," Mulcahy says as we walk through to the Briggs family kitchen. "Why don't we start from the beginning? When's the last time you saw Cassie?"
"I don't know," Mrs. Briggs replies, her eyes filled with tears. "Some time this afternoon, I guess. She'd been talking to the writer from New York, and when it was all over, she seemed tired so I told her to go to bed. She seemed so stressed and exhausted. Then when Fisher came to see her, we went up to her room and that's when we realized she was gone." She pauses for a moment, before glancing over at me. "Why are you here?" she asks.
"Ms. Madison is helping me with some separate inquiries," Mulcahy says firmly. "So Cassie could have gone missing any time between, say, midday and the time you called me. Is that correct?"
"I saw her at about 2pm," Mrs. Briggs continues. "After that, I was mostly just in the house, not really doing anything in particular. I still don't get how she could have slipped out, though. I was in the kitchen most of the time, and I'd have heard her coming down the stairs. I just don't see how it's possible..."
"She's sneaky," says Mr. Briggs, standing over by the doorway. "Always has been, always will be."
"But I would have heard her," his wife says, her voice trembling.
"Jesus Christ," he replies, "you must have tak
en a piss at some point, Lucy. She just waited 'til you were in the bathroom or something."
"What if someone kidnapped her?" Mrs. Briggs says suddenly, turning to Mulcahy. "What if someone hated her enough to snatch her?"
"I don't think we're dealing with a kidnapping situation here," Mulcahy replies. "I think it's much more likely that Cassie simply found a way to sneak out while no-one was looking. What we have to do now is work out where she might have gone, and what she might be intending to do." He glances at me for a moment, and I can see that he's worried. "Mrs. Briggs, can you tell me about Cassie's state of mind? Is there anything she said or did in the past couple of days that might indicate emotional or mental disturbance?"
"You're kidding, right?" Mr. Briggs says. "The girl's been disturbed for five years."
"I'm thinking of something more recent," Mulcahy continues. "Has there been a change in her mood at all?"
"She spoke to the ghost writer," Mrs. Briggs replies. "A woman named Lenora Mackleberry came to town and spent the morning with Cassie. They talked about what happened with Bobby, and apparently Cassie really opened up and told this woman the truth." She pauses for a moment. "You don't think..." She pauses again. "I mean, you don't think she'd do anything foolish, do you? What if she's decided she can't take the pressure?"
"Cassie's not suicidal," I say.
"You don't know anything about my daughter," Mrs. Briggs replies with a scowl.
"I know she's not weak," I continue. "I know she's not the kind of person to have a crisis of confidence."
"This isn't about being weak," Mulcahy says. "It's about how people deal with stress. I doubt she's a danger to herself, though. Not intentionally, anyway. If she had a fever, though, she might not be in the right frame of mind to make decisions. I'm gonna alert the local hospital to be on the lookout for anyone who displays unusual symptoms. In this weather -"
"The cabin," I say suddenly.
"She wouldn't go there," Mrs. Briggs says. "Not after what happened with Bobby. She'd never go there."
"She went there the other day," Mulcahy replies. "I found her up there, just kinda poking about."
"Back to the scene of the crime," I mutter.
"She wouldn't go out there in this weather," Mrs. Briggs continues. "It's appalling out there. No-one in their right mind would go into the forest during a storm!"
"Cassie hasn't been in her right mind for five years," Mr. Briggs says. "Not since she killed that boy."
"She did not kill Bobby Madison!" Mrs. Briggs shouts, turning to him with a look of pure rage in her eyes. "How can you say that about your own daughter?"
"Just looking at the facts," he replies with a shrug. "Who else did it? It's blatant, Lucy, at least to anyone who's not blind. I don't pretend to know why she did it, but there's not a doubt in my mind. I'm sorry, I wish that wasn't the case, but there's no getting around the truth."
"If anything's happened to her," Mrs. Briggs replies, fixing her husband with a determined stare, "I'll never forgive you. She knew you thought she killed that boy. You made no effort to hide how you felt. If you'd shown a little more compassion, maybe she'd still be here."
"I'm not taking the blame for this," he replies. "If she comes back, she comes back. If she doesn't..." His voice trails off, and finally he turns and leaves the kitchen.
"There's something else," Mrs. Briggs says after a moment, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She heads over to the door that leads down into the basement. "I need to show you what we found earlier. It was after we realized Cassie was missing." Opening the door, she starts walking down the steps, and a moment later the light flickers on.
"You think she's at the cabin?" I whisper to Mulcahy.
"Either that or she collapsed on the way," he replies. With that, he follows Mrs. Briggs down into the basement, and finally I decide I might as well go with them.
"Cassie has been obsessed with this whole thing for far too long," Mrs. Briggs says as I make my way down the steps. "It's my fault. I wrote these stories for her and her brother, and Cassie just seemed to embrace this Darper Danver character so completely. Even as a young girl, it was all she could talk about."
"Holy crap," I mutter as I see that the name Darper Danver has been scratched into every goddamn surface in the entire basement. "What kind of psycho would do something like this?"
"My daughter!" Mrs. Briggs says angrily, before wiping her eyes again. "My daughter did this. She's not psychotic, though. She's just..." She pauses, and it's clear that she knows there's something seriously wrong with Cassie.
"When exactly did she do this?" Mulcahy asks.
"Some time after she got back from prison," Mrs. Briggs replies. "I don't know if she did it all in one go, or if she did it a bit at a time. We don't really come down here very often, so she could have..." She pauses, and finally she starts sobbing. "It's all my fault," she says, sitting on a nearby box and putting her hands over her face. "If I hadn't written those stupid stories, she never would have become obsessed with the Darper Danver legend. That's why she used to make her friends go up to the cabin. She just couldn't stop talking about Darper. Eventually, I hid the stories, but it didn't stop her. She found out that Darper was a real historical figure, and she became completely fixated. I think..."
I wait for her to continue. "What?" I ask eventually. "What do you think?"
"Sometimes," she continues, "I think Cassie even thinks that she is Darper Danver. I know that makes her sound insane, but it's true. I heard her talking to herself sometimes, and she used to scratch Darper's name into her bedroom door. It's all my fault. I started the whole thing with those stupid stories."
"Darper Danver was something of a folk hero around these parts," Mulcahy says after a moment, as he runs his hand across the carvings on the wall. "In the late nineteenth century, all sorts of legends sprang up about her. If you read the history books, though, it's pretty clear that she was a strange woman, even for the times. Violent, too."
"And Cassie really believes that she's Darper Danver?" I ask. I always suspected that there was something wrong with the murderous bitch, but I never thought she was quite so insane. "Is that why she murdered my brother? Was she acting out some kind of fantasy?"
"She didn't murder your brother," Mrs. Briggs says between the tears. "She can't have..."
"You think?" I reply, unable to hide my anger any longer. "You have a fucking insane daughter! You must have known she was dangerous, but you just let her carry on anyway until she killed my brother! And even then, you managed to convince yourself that somehow she was innocent, and now..." I pause for a moment, feeling as if I'm out of breath. "You're right," I say eventually. "This is your fault. You didn't cause that bitch to lose her mind, but you sure as hell didn't do anything to stop her."
"She didn't kill anyone," she replies, but it's clear from her tears that she doesn't believe what she's saying.
"She's mad," I say, turning to Mulcahy. "Cassie Briggs is mad. You realize that, right? She's mad, and she's dangerous, and as the local sheriff you have a duty to keep this town safe -"
"I know," he replies firmly, interrupting me. "You don't have to tell me how to do my job, Ms. Madison. I know exactly what I have to do."
"You can't hurt her," Mrs. Briggs says. "Please, you can't hurt her. She's my daughter! She didn't mean to hurt anyone!"
As Mulcahy hurries back up the steps, I turn to follow him before stopping and glancing back at Cassie's mother. "You should have said something sooner," I tell her. "You should have let people know that you'd raised a monster. She could have been locked up, and everyone else would have been safe. Instead, you let her go free, and my brother's dead, and she'll kill more people if she isn't stopped. You're her mother, Mrs. Briggs. You should've recognized the evil in her heart and..."
She stares at me for a moment, her eyes filled with tears. "What?" she asks eventually. "What should I have done?"
I open my mouth to answer her, but finally I realize that I need to go and
find out what Mulcahy's going to do. Instead of saying anything, I turn and hurry up the steps.
"You can't hurt her!" Mrs. Briggs calls after me. "It's not her fault! Please, if you find her, bring her back to me! None of this is her fault!"
Fisher Benhauser
"Cassie!" I shout, racing around to the front of the cabin and trying to push the cabin door open, only to find that something seems to be keeping it firmly shut.
From inside, there's the sound of another gunshot, and then another. Cassie's still screaming, calling out for me, but no matter how hard I try to get the door open, it's wedged shut. I run to the window, but even though I try to wipe the rain away, I can't see inside. It's as if something's blocking my view, and after a moment I realize that the inside of the glass is smeared with blood.
"Cassie!" I shout again, running back to the door. I take a couple of steps back, and finally I take a run at the door, determined to break through. I slam into the wood with all my strength, and the door opens. As I stumble into the room, something heavy slams into my side and I'm sent crashing to the ground. I struggle to get back to my feet, just in time to spot Cassie in the far corner, staring at me with a look of absolute terror in her eyes.
"What happened?" I ask, running over to her. I run my hands over her arms, checking for any sign that she's hurt, but finally I realize that she's staring past me rather than at me. Turning, I spot a dark shape on the floor, and that's when I remember Lenora.
"It happened again," Cassie whispers.
Getting to my feet, I walk over to Lenora's slumped body, and although I can't see her face, it's impossible to miss the slowly growing pool of blood spilling from her head. I kneel next to her, but it's clear there's nothing I can do to save her.