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“Is that blood?”
TEN
Jayla twists and her flashlight beam joins mine. “Shit. That really looks like it.”
I touch it, and my finger comes back red. The blood is dry around the edges with a dull glint where the middle is still damp.
“There’s more over here,” Jayla says.
We follow the droplets. They lead to a custom-made sign.
WARNING! DEEP ROCK CREVICE AHEAD! PLEASE DON’T WALK UP HERE!!!
Yep, far too many exclamation marks, with a garish font in lettering as red as the blood below. I’ve posted three of these signs, plus I include it on the “Hazards” page of my visitors’ bookandthere’s a clause in the contract requiring that rentersreadthat hazards page and share it with all family members. I’ve still had one person fall—bumps and bruises only—and one tumble in and get stuck. The latter said I should “block off” the crevice, as if I could just nail boards into rock to cover a twenty-foot-long crack.
There’s a drop of blood on the sign. I’m examining that when Jayla steps past me and then:
“Motherfuckers!”
I glance over to see what prompted the extra-special profanity.She’s looking at a flat pale rock just past the sign, the sort that invites graffiti, and I’ve had to scrub off initials more than once. What’s on it right now is different. It’s a circular design, drawn in blood.
I shine the light on it as I hunker down.
“Hex circle,” Jayla mutters.
When I don’t answer, she waves at it. “That’s what it is, right?”
“I’m not exactly an expert.”
“Compared to me you are. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that’s what the thing on the crawlspace door was… and that you didn’t look it up to see what exactly it meant.”
I did, and it was a fairly standard hex, which made me even more certain it was fake staging. Do an internet search for “hex circle” images, and it’s the first one that pops up.
This is different. It’s not so much painted on as smeared. It also just… looks different. If it weren’t drawn in blood, I’d think it was a renter’s kid making a design on the rock. Finger painting—that’s what it looks like. A rough circle with slashes and swirls.
“It’s different from the other one,” I say, “but I suspect they were in a hurry this time. They had some pig’s blood or whatever and dashed something out.” I start to rise. Then I pause and walk around to the other side of the circle. “From here it looks like stick figures. Two of them holding hands.”
Jayla joins me. “Kind of?”
“Like seeing dragons in the clouds, right?” I shake my head. “If that’s what they were going for, they did a shitty job of it. Strike all artists from the list of suspects.”
“How fresh is the blood?” she says.
“Again, I’m the expert?”
“Tell me you don’t have any idea.”
I shake my head. “Fine. It’s not wet, so it isn’t fresh. There was rain two days ago, which would have damaged it. So maybe yesterday?”
She peers around. “This afternoon, we stood over there. Wewouldn’t have seen it. Did anyone walk over here after that? When we were looking for clues?”
“We’ll ask if anyone noticed the rock. If so, then it happened after that. Oh, check out the lichen over here. It’s crushed.”
As I take another step, following the crushed lichen, she says, “Watch out for the crevice.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Just reading the helpful sign. Could you have added more exclamation marks?”
