It’s so much worse than the fingernails.
It’s shriveled and black like a Halloween prop, crusted on the outside but squishy with even the slightest pinch of pressure from my touch.
The glint is a tiny purple stud earring.
Harlow’s ear.
And I throw up all over it.
Twenty-Seven
I return to the world as if surfacing from a swim in the ocean. Ears ringing, lightheaded, gravity feeling a little too heavy on my muscles and bones. A spot of warmth hits my back and I realize Beck’s touching me. I managed to stay calm as I processed the bloody pliers and the nails, but I’ve hit my wall. It’s only once I have that thought that I start quaking.
Beck’s touch on my back turns to two grips, one on each of my shoulders.
“I know,” she says. “C’mon, we don’t have to look at it.”
And Beck leads me away from the piles of wood and the fire circle. Flies land anew in the circle. The image alone makes my stomach lurch again, but there’s nothing left to come up.
Beck waits until my body stops convulsing to keep walking me away. We make it to a house several structures away, out of the sight of the circle. She settles my shaking legs down until we’re both sitting on a porch.
“That was…” Beck blows air out into her cheeks. A choking laughescapes her lips. “Oh, that was real. That was…” She scratches at her neck so hard I fear she’ll draw blood. “They were killed for something.”
“A ritual.” My throat’s parched, but I know better than to put anything in my body right now.
“Do you still not believe in witches?”
I let my breath out slowly, pressing my palms into the warming wood of the porch. A splintering bit of wood cuts at my skin, not enough to get stuck but enough to wake my senses a bit. I pull my hands up and inspect the flesh for splinters anyway. “It doesn’t matter if they exist. But whoever did kill them clearly believes in something. Summoning the witch themself, thinking they’re possessed by the witch, and trying to get the devil. Who cares.”
My mouth still tastes like vomit. I swallow again and again, like it’ll do anything to banish what just happened.
“So people are being ritualistically cut up in the town that believes a witch needs to be ‘satisfied’ to prevent another fire,” Beck says. “Some traveler disappears the same night Paisley, Harlow, and Opal died. And supposedly there was a bloody woman running from the woods into town. All this shit would certainly get someone covered in blood.”
Whoever killed Paisley, Harlow, and Opal not only planted a witch story in their minds, but also planted the idea of going out to the ghost town. At some point, they were all killed for this horrible ritualistic belief. At some other point, they had hair, teeth, nails, and an ear removed. Once they were dead, the killer threw their bodies over a cliff.
And if the texter is right, the whole town knew this ritual took place.
This town is hiding three murders.
Or everyone in the town but the texter, anyway.
Why would someone be so careless leaving Paisley’s nails and Harlow’s ear around a campsite that anyone has access to but rememberto take Paisley’s phone? And if the killer is local, did they just go home after killing my friends, or did they have some kind of secret hideaway in the forest?
I know the forest destroys so much evidence, but there has to besomethingof this killer out here somewhere, right? The pliers are an amazing start to dust for DNA or prints, but this killing wassobarbaric. I turn the pliers around in my hands, thumbing off dirt.
My heart jolts, my brain finally able to move on from the taste in my mouth.
There’s a label on the pliers.
KINGSTON WATCHTOWER.
I pull out the paper map Natalie gave us.
My blood goes cold.
We’re right by the lookout tower, which is labeled as defunct. If Natalie knows exactly who came in and out of the national park that night, then we have a very limited suspect pool. It appears that the killer is a woman with long hair. They were able to grab pliers from the lookout tower.
The killer is only human. They must’ve left some trace at this lookout tower.
