by Elen Chase
"Ahh… here..." he moaned, reacting to a small pressure of my fingers right under the tip.
"Here? You like it here?" I asked, moving my thumb in circle.
"Yea— ah!" Those sounds he was making were delightful. If I wasn't completely destroyed after that orgasm, I would have been in for a second round.
Slower. Slower. With just a minimum movement of my wrist, his breath grew more shallow, and his body grew closer. Reddened cheeks, half-open lips in need of a kiss, misty eyes. I had never seen him so taken, so vulnerable, and so dependent on me.
"Drew… go faster." I wondered if he wanted it to finish soon because he felt uneasy being completely in my hands like that.
“Why should I? You like it so much...”
“It’s too… it’s not supposed to be like this...”
“Like what?”
“So good,” he whispered in my ear. A slow and deep tremor shook him, finally reaching his peak. I kissed his face all over, his body still jerking in aftershocks. He was beautiful. I couldn't help staring at him, as his breath was going back to normal. He smiled, looking deeply in my eyes.
"Drew, can you go find something to wipe it off?" he said, sort of ruining that sweet, intimate mood between us. Dan was always extremely pragmatic when it came to sex. I couldn't hold back a smile.
"Yeah, wait a minute." I went to the bathroom, trying not to wake up anyone on the floor. I found a brand new tissue box in one of the drawers of the bathroom and brought it to our room. "Found it." I smiled at him happily from beside the door, then I sat on the bed close to him to help him. He put back his pants and I hugged him strong.
"Dan, is it okay if we… kiss?" I asked him.
"Are you sure? It'll taste strange."
"I don't care."
As a response he slowly got closer to me closing his eyes, and I did the same. Our lips touched tenderly, in a wonderfully delicate kiss, which slowly grew more intense. We were so lost in our kiss that we didn't hear that the others were calling us.
"Hey, are you guys still sleeping?" asked Chloe, opening our room door and finding us like that. We turned our head to her, seeing how her gaze passed from us to the tissue box on the bed, to the dirty tissues on the floor, then back at us.
"Chloe, did you wake them up?" asked Sara walking by the corridor on the other side of the door. Chloe reacted immediately closing our door and saying, "Yeah, they're getting changed now." I was glad she was such a smart girl.
Chapter 54
“I don't know about this knife,” was Hutchison's answer to my message. He was lying, or it didn't make any sense. But why lie to me? That man was strange. Since I wasn’t getting anywhere with Hutchison, I called Ms. Wilson to ask for her opinion. She didn’t seem to know anything about it either.
"Mr. Robinson must have hid it somewhere; that’s the only thing I can think of," she told me on the watchpad.
"It doesn’t feel right. He was hurt, he couldn’t go far, and I’m sure those people searched the villa for good as soon as they heard what happened there. Yet they didn’t find it, which is strange."
"I’ll try to talk with Mr. Hutchison again, but if he told you he—" she suddenly stopped. "No, wait… maybe he does… he might know something," she added, but her tone of voice changed drastically. She was now anxious, her breath unsteady. "Can I call you back in a few days?"
"Yes, but are you alright?" I asked, more curious than actually worried; those servants were really hiding something, and I wanted to know what it was.
"I am, Andrew, thank you. I might have an idea, but I’ll tell you next time I see you in person," she said, and even if I had the feeling it was a bit of an excuse, I had no choice but to back off. I decided to wait, to focus on the texts coming from and to Domme’s watchpad. It was mainly things of no importance, but after the meeting they had set up, an interesting message was sent to all the members. It said:
“Again there won't be flowers, nor snow on my grave. Sun and wind won't find me, under the tree that signed our beginning.”
I couldn't understand the message at all, but in it there was without a doubt the information we needed on their next murder.
"The first sentence is referring to the period they're doing it," Lilian told me by video call. I was on the porch swing with Chloe, who was busy studying for her exams.
"How do you know for sure?" I asked her.
"The word ‘snow’ is suggesting it. Remember what Bart had heard when he first started suspecting his father? ‘This time before the snow melts, the sinner's blood will save us,’ snow melts in spring, and Shallie was to be killed before that, during the winter."
"So if snow represents winter, we could assume flowers represent spring?"
"I think so. ‘There won't be flowers, nor snow’, so it's not happening during spring or winter."
"We have left summer and fall, six months in total. That's a lot of time."
"Four months," she said. "Remember that they're gonna be too busy during July and August."
"Yes, but we already know that; they have to kill the next victim by the end of the year."
"If it's so specific about spring and winter, why doesn't it say anything about the third season to exclude?" asked Chloe, lifting her head from her textbook.
"You go back to studying, kiddo," I told her, poking her head.
"That's a good question," said Lilian. "This is their official communication about when to commit the murder. If they have to specify it's not spring or winter, but don't say anything about summer and fall, it must mean that between summer and fall one is absolutely out of question and they don't need to underline it."
"Also, if this is their only communication, doesn't it mean that inside of this message there's also hidden the exact date?" asked Chloe.
"Not necessarily," said Lilian, "they could have a fixed day for killing for each season. In that case adding more information to the message is unnecessary."
"But if that was the case, then the dates of the previous deaths must follow some sort of pattern," I said.
"It's worth checking out. I'll do it," said Lilian. "You focus on the second part of the message. I believe it's about the location."
"'Sun and wind won't find me, under the tree that signed our beginning.’ Easier said than done," I said.
"You're so negative," remarked Chloe.
"Didn't I tell you to go back to studying already?" I poked her head again, stronger.
"Ouch!"
"I'd start by reading the book again," Lilian told me. "This entire symbolism could be inside of it."
"I'll do that," I said.
"And keep me informed if any other message arrives. Now I have to go."
"Sure, thanks Lilian. Bye."
"Bye," she said, and we hung up.
"I like her, she's so cool," Chloe told me. "I want to be as strong as her when I grow up."
That comment made me smile. "Yes, Lilian sure is strong. And I think you're on the right track to become just like her." She smiled back at me and returned to her textbook. I had to go get the book to try deciphering the message, but that seemed the perfect chance to mention what had happened that day. "Thanks for this morning, by the way."
Chloe turned to look at me. "Oh, that," she said, "I wasn't really expecting it. I mean, I thought that you would eventually… but I didn’t think it would be so... different."
"Different?”
“You kissed like two lovers, not like sex buddies. How long has it been going on?”
“Since Pholis. Trust me, everything went so fast I couldn't even describe it."
"That's fine, you don't have to explain anything to me. But I don't really feel like keeping it secret."
"Me neither. I already told Sean, and as for Sara… I want to talk to her myself."
"Okay, just don't take too long."
"Chloe, can I ask you something? You once told me not to get in a relationship with him… why?"
"I thought he would do the same with you t
hat he did with me. Dan, well, he doesn't look like it, but he's unwillingly desperate for attention. He slips into other people's lives searching for love, hoping to take unnoticed the human contact he needs to go on, without forming any bond with others. And then he gets scared when he finds out people truly care for him, and he runs away from them. But I have to be honest, I'm sure you’re special to him. I believe you can change him, even save him maybe."
"I'm so worried about him. I think what you said is right, but I don't even know why he became like that in the first place; and whatever happened to him in those months he was missing, he's not over it. I wish he would tell me more."
"Maybe he's not telling you because he doesn't want to distract you from your investigation. It's possible that he'll open up to you when everything is over."
"I hope so," I said, but I got the feeling that it wasn't going to be so easy.
I spent the following days trying to decipher the second part of the message. At first I read the book again, looking for references to the sun, wind and a tree, but I didn't find anything valuable. Then I thought that if it was about a location in the real world, those elements must be related to real places. I downloaded hundreds of maps and guides of the City of Rosedeer to look for those elements, and I had all the others work on them with me by splitting the material between us. The last evening, before going back to town, I had all of them report the results of their researches.
"Good, who wants to go first?" I asked.
"Me, me!" said Sean, waving his hand happily. "Look, I found a place that the sun and the wind never reach: it's here." He indicated a point on the Rosedeer map, a small forest on the west coast. "Trees so tall that will darken the sky, constant whispering of the nature all around you: Deep Jungle Island, discover the wildness of life, this summer group discount up to forty percent."
"… go away," I told him.
"Oh, it's a theme park!" said Sara. "I love theme parks."
"Are you guys doing this for real or not?"
"Sorry, sorry, that was a joke," said Sean. "I really did find a place though." He opened a tourist guide and showed us the location on map. "This is called ‘the valley of silence,’ it's right behind a small village on the other side of the mountain range. Since it's entirely surrounded by mountains, there's never wind, and soon after sunset it gets incredibly dark."
"I had found it in my material too, but I excluded it," said Chloe. "It's a small valley and there's really no place to hide to perform such a complicated ritual, especially considering they need to bring that altar with them. Also, being right behind the village, I heard people often go look at the stars from there."
"Yes, also there's no connection with the tree mentioned in the message, is there?" I said. "And you Chloe? What did you find?"
"This," she said, and showed us the picture of an old monastery. "This monastery is said to have disappeared from its original location around thirty years ago. Before it was reachable by walking a side path from the top of this mountain, but thirty years ago the path was destroyed due to an earthquake. When a new road was made on the ruins of the previous one, nobody was able to find the monastery again: a place that can't be reached even by sunlight or wind."
"And the tree?" I asked. I had the feeling that was the key point of the message.
"The one you see in the picture close to the entrance of the monastery. The new sect was born thirty years ago, right? They could have met for the first time in this place."
"It seems like a valid option," said Dan.
"Yes, let's keep it in mind. Sara, you?" I asked.
"My approach was slightly different. I thought I'd look for the tree instead of a place without sun and wind, it seemed to me the most important point of the message. I read all the material we had on the sect again, and I found two trees that might be related to them: this one, where their very first victim was found, next to the east exit of Downtown, and this one, the cherry tree on top of the hill of the Rosedeer graveyard."
"Why this tree?" Dan asked her.
"All the victims of the second sect are buried there, and they also mention a grave in the message."
"It would be ironic if they were really doing it in a graveyard," said Sean, "but what Chloe said before is right: they need a place to put the altar in and do their ritual unnoticed. Do they have such place close to those trees?"
"The east exit of Downtown is surrounded by old factories, many are abandoned. As for the graveyard… I thought they might have an underground bunker somewhere down there," said Sara.
"Even if they have one, don't you think it would be risky to move that altar to the graveyard? Somebody could see them. The gates are always open, there could be people inside even at night," I said, thinking that Dan and I met exactly there, in the middle of the night.
And Dan was the one who replied to me, "No, it really isn’t. That graveyard is huge, divided in the new part, the one we all know, and the old one, behind the church, up to the hill. I have never been there, and most likely neither have you. If they were to hide an altar in a hearse and bring it to that area behind the church, do you really think anybody would notice?"
"So you think the graveyard is an option?" I asked him.
"I do," he said, then he showed us the map with the result of his research. "The Rosedeer graveyard is the place I had selected myself. I have come to this conclusion in a different way, but it's interesting to see that we both chose the same place."
"And how did you get to this?" I asked him.
"Twenty-eight years ago they killed their first victim, who represented the third cycle of the book. Considering that this year the second group was taking care of the third cycle, I thought that twenty-eight years ago the murder was organized by the first group instead. So the person in charge was Domme again. Like Sara said, the victim was found on the road out of Downtown, but she wasn't killed there, even though that's what they wanted everyone to believe. At the time they were young and didn't have all the power and money they have now… but Domme had one thing: his grandfather owned the land the old part of the graveyard is built on."
"So you think there's really something underground?"
"Yes, an atomic shelter maybe," he said. I hated the thought of the sect having a meeting place at the graveyard. I felt that their presence there was tormenting their victims even after death.
Those people are insane, I thought, don't they feel ashamed at all for what they're doing? What went through their heads when they created this absurd cult? Like Dan said, at the time they were young; probably some of them were my age when they started all that, and they killed a girl that might have been their classmate, friend, or sister. I now wanted to know more about them for the very first time. Until that moment I never cared about their reasons, I just wanted them to pay for their crimes, but suddenly I was completely stuck asking myself: why? The first sect was a group of old farts that just needed an excuse to kill girls. It was clear; one or two even confessed it. But the members of the second one were different; starting this while so young, spending seven years preparing the next murder, finding assistants to ensure the survival of the sect, having the altar and the knife made, and even moving them to a new location every time. It felt so strange. It was too detailed, too methodical, yet strangely naive and risky. Doing all this once every seven years, while normally living a perfectly respectable life. Why? Do they really believe in this sick prophecy? Thinking that they really believed in it was disturbing. For the first time I realized that those people probably thought that they were really doing the right thing. And what if it's only a game for them? A game created by bored kids who became bored, rich adults. I didn't know which of the two options was worse.
"… Drew, are you listening?" Sara asked me, and I realized they had been talking to me probably for a while.
"No, sorry. What were you saying?"
"I want to go check if there's really a bunker under that tree," said Dan.
"It's dangerous,"
I said.
"Of course it's dangerous. And it's the only way to prove our theory."
"If they found you…" Words died in my mouth. What am I doing? Why am I putting my friends in danger like this? Wouldn't it be simpler if I just killed them all? I always thought I didn't want to become a murderer; I was so scared of my thoughts going that way. But isn't it the best thing to do after all? Do I want those people to go to jail? Even if I manage to have them arrested, aren't they able to get out any time? They'll live the rest of their lives sure of having done what was right. Maybe another kid or two will take inspiration by their cult, and soon a third sect will be born. I had been feeling uneasy since the day of the party, and I finally understood why; they knew I was there, yet they didn't consider me at all. My existence is not a threat for them, they think they can handle me easily. And they're right, they can. If they threatened my friends, my family, what could I do against them? They haven't done it yet because they're not giving me a tumble. The scariest thing is that I should probably be grateful for that. That said, what do I want to do? Do I really want to send them to prison? Do I want to risk it all, do I want to attract their vengeance to me? Or should I just quietly kill them all? Send them to hell in silence while they're still underestimating me. Kill them before they can do anything.