#revenantstart

[teenixle-blog]

“My cables gone out for the third time this month. This is getting ridiculous...”

[teenixle-blog]

“Thank God for this party, I’m not so sure I could handle the sense of dread that’s been all over the place lately...”

[katerinarivera]

She hasn’t quite processed the news of James’ death yet, and isn’t quite sure she wants to. Because doing so meant acknowledging the fact that Amy’s killer hadn’t been satisfied with just one victim, and that there were likely more to come. She focuses her mind on prayer, though, on well wishes for the deceased and for those still living, on positivity and peace. She calls these thoughts to the forefront of her mind now as she runs through the forest, fog seeming to seep from the cracks in the trees surrounding her, engulfing her and hiding her in its shadow. A chill runs down her spine as an animal shifts behind her and causes a branch to snap. She stops, removing an earbud and letting it dangle as she cautiously peers over her shoulder, goosebumps dotting her skin and heart racing. A beat passes in which the silence seems to surround her, hissing with the electric buzz of fear and crackling with expectation until she turns with a shudder and forces herself to continue.  What was once a jog now becomes a frantic run, palms clenching anxiously and skin crawling as she picks up speed against her well, desperate to be anywhere else, desperate to emerge from the forest and the fog, desperate for this all to end. The road comes into sight, framed by the last few branches of fading green, and just as she’s about to reach the pavement, her toe catches a gnarled root and she comes crashing down with a yelp, body falling to the ground much like she imagined Amy and Fawn’s had. “Shoot.” 

[miiissanna-blog]

“I swear to God, if you talk about Amy one more time, I’m going to lose it.”.

[penny-evans-blog]

Penny held the gun in her clenched hand with eyes shut tight, willing herself to stop shaking so damn much. As much as she would have liked to convince herself that there was no killer on the island, it was hard to deny the evidence—Amy’s bloodied and battered body floating in the water was practically proof. So she chose to fight back, or at least prepare to do that. She just told herself it was the same as holding and shooting a gun in one of her video games. Standing in the midst of the woods near the beach, Penny mimicked pulling the trigger without doing so; fear was holding her hand still, keeping her gun’s safety locked. 

She nearly dropped the weapon when she heard a twig break behind her. 

[rilvys-blog]

A numb mind carried him back to town, driving carelessly down the rural highway. Trees blurred into farmland blurred into suburban homes into a downtown setting, and before Riley could properly blink, he was back in the station, grabbing his case files on Amy. Both hyper-aware and totally oblivious of his surroundings, his head was whipping around at every sound or movement in his peripheral.

As he blasted through the double-doors, exiting the station and moving directly towards his car, his mind was spinning. Amy was dead. Truly dead. He had seen her body. And she was gone. It only took seconds before his body was spinning too, crashing headfirst into another person. Unsteady as he was at the moment, Riley recoiled, stumbling backwards as his files dropped out of his hands. It didn’t even bother him, really. He had much to much to think about — like Amy dying. Still, every the all-American boy, Riley righted himself, holding a hand out for the person opposite him.

“So sorry about that — are you alright? I was, erm, kind of distracted, as you can imagine...” Motioning to the file folders scattered across the entrance path, Riley tried a crooked smile. It didn’t work, of course, looking more like the grimace that it should’ve been, grief lining every feature of his far-too-aged face. “Yeah, I was distracted. Is there anything I can help you with, or...?”

[the-james-king-blog]

Immoral Compass || OPEN

Six twenty-two in the morning was an ungodly hour to say the least. As the autumn pushed forward the air felt colder and thinner as if each passing day was another few meters up a frigid peak whose eventual apex was the dead of winter. A heavy fog hung low around the town commons, smoke from the water beyond. All the birds with any instinct left in them had already flown south, with the exception of the occasional flock of Canadian geese that squawked their echoes of distant sorrow, disappearing overhead. The sun was rising later and later as the days went by. This morning, it was barely peeking through the blanket of clouds, hesitant to rise for another few minutes and leaving the world a blurry grey. The buildings and trees still loomed like shadows, without definition or detail. A scene so idyllic, it could have emerged from the brushstrokes of Kinkade. For the most part, the world was quiet. 

A shot rang out in the distance. The sound bounced off the trunks of the nearby trees and vanished into the forest, disturbing the peace for only a moment before everything faded back to silence once more. It was six thirty-one. The sun was peaking through now, the fog slowly melting away and leaving things clearer and brighter than before. Something tossed up the underbrush, crunching against the leaves in an effort to get away. Another shot. The scurrying stopped. 

James King had been in the woods for over an hour, just waiting and absorbing the stillness of the place. As much as he pushed them to the back of his mind, the smell of the pine and the damp, matted leaves reminded him of his childhood. He had spent enough time in cities, from Los Angeles to New York, to know that there were a hell of a lot of things better than miles of dense forest. But sometimes there was something calming about it. The feeling of the gun in hand calmed the hundreds of thoughts that ran through his mind, wondering what the hell he was going to do next. He smiled. Perhaps that was how his father lost his mind.

He hadn’t been hunting in a few years before he arrived to Chegual Island and he had known from the first time he went that he was completely out of practice. But that didn’t take long to remedy. Every so often, at least once a week, he would forsake his morning run for a stroll through the woods with an eye for anything that was trying to get away. I came to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach… Today, he had found a rabbit. It wasn’t much, but he was getting better.

He had left his days of skinning and taking care of the remains of an animal behind him along with his father, back at The Hermitage all those years ago. Now, it was simply hunting for sport. The rabbit belonged to the forest and he was going to leave it right there, an easy meal for whatever may pass by in his wake, if it was brave enough to come around after the shot rang out. He glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock. Not bad. In an hour and a half he would be showered and on his way to the Town Hall, ready to deal with the pressing town crisis that had befallen them only a few days earlier.

The fact of the matter was that Amy was dead. The search had turned up her body along with a few clues that he didn’t know what to make of. A few various and sundry items here and there – including the backpack that he had convinced the leggy girl he had been searching with would be better left in their hands – but nothing that had solved the case. But the town had been rocked by the discovery of her body. From the looks of it, the island hadn’t had a death like that in quite a few years. If ever. And Town Hall was sure as hell paying the price. He had a thousand phone calls last night about what they planned to do and who they planned to call. He was sure that today, he’d have a thousand more. He imagined that the sheriff’s department was fielding even more. 

He knew, deep down, that there was some way to turn this into an opportunity. To make this a show for him to look good. An active leader taking control of the situation. More than once he wondered if this was a sign that he should leave. But hell, if he didn’t know how to make the best of a bad situation, then no one did. 

He trekked the quarter of a mile or so back out to the road where he found his Mercedes parked by the edge of the woods, silent and waiting for his return. It was the perfect car, as far as he was concerned. It cost just enough to make him look like he had the money he actually had, but it was inexpensive enough that he wouldn’t regret leaving it if he one day decided to bolt in the night. The cars were always the hardest to leave behind. He popped the trunk and loaded the gun back into its case before straightening his hair and unlocking the driver’s side door. Up the road, he noticed a car parked by the forest edge with the engine running. 

And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

His curiosity piqued, he decided that, at seven o’clock in the morning, that was something worth looking into. He looked the car again – hitting the button on his keys twice, for good measure, before dropping them back in his pocket – and walked up to the vehicle, the window open. “Good morning,” He smiled, “Looks like someone’s out early.” There he was. A nosy opportunist playing the role of the perfect friendly neighbor.

[espcsito-blog]

Perhaps it was simply the approaching winter, but as he aimlessly strolled through town, Jude couldn’t help but notice the chill hanging frigidly in the air of Chegual Island. The cold front had moved in practically overnight, and suddenly, it felt more like late November than the first week of October. While his uncle had prattled on all morning about how climate change would be the death of the planet, Jude had a sickening feeling that the weather was simply mourning Amy Woodward along with them. What right did the sun have to shine when a teenage girl had been found dead on their isle of solitude and peace? Lifting his cigarette to his mouth, Jude turned a corner, only to be abruptly confronted with an entire telephone post’s worth of missing person posters being unceremoniously ripped down. Without thinking, he laughed, a sharp, bitter sound worsened by the smoke caught in his lungs, and asked, “Isn’t it kind of soon to be doing that?”