Chapter 1 – Chap 1

I’m not sure why I wanted to be a private investigator, it may have been my early love of murder mysteries I would watch with my grandmother or it may have been the fact my father strangled my mother to death when I was 8, it’s hard to know but the fact is I lived with my granny after that and she loved murder mysteries. Columbo, Poirot, Murder She Wrote I lapped it all up, every Halloween I’d dress as Columbo and every Christmas I asked Santa Claus for a new detective book and a spy kit. People would always suggest that I become a cop when I grow up but the life of a cop didn’t seem glamorous, it was the heroic PI who always showed up to solve the crime while the idiot cops bumbled around like fools. That’s how the movies and tv shows made it seem anyway but realistically being a private investigator is boring. Less solving a murder on a yacht in North Africa and more eating a KFC in your car while you wait for hours outside a cheating husband’s workplace hoping to catch him in an act of infidelity. However, every now and then a job comes up that reminds you why you became a PI in the first place.

The job was in St Cloud, Minnesota. A smaller city than most around an hour away from the state capital of St Paul. The town centre was surrounded in beautifully bright buildings with most barely reaching over five storeys in height, the downtown area was covered in greenery with beautiful trees growing all around the outskirts and on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River which flows right through the city. It’s hard to explain but it’s places like these that I believe captures the true essence of Americana. A community of like-minded people with a real sense of community spirit that aim to help each other in any way they can. The fact that I am here to investigate the mysterious disappearance of local teenagers surprised me, so much so that I began to question if I had gone to the right town, surely a beautiful and quiet place like this couldn’t be home to such a horrible mystery but it was and I would soon learn just how horrible this mystery really was but we’ll discuss that later.

Upon arriving in the town I was met by the local parents association who had hired me to investigate these disappearances as they felt the local police department wasn’t doing enough. I spoke to them for a couple of hours getting all the information I could about the case and the victims. All of them were boys between the ages of 13 and 17, most had disappeared on the weekend and none of them had left any sort of trace or indication of where they may be. It wasn’t going to be an easy case but I was relishing the challenge, the latest disappearance was of 16-year-old Brad Canton, he was last seen finishing up his shift as a valet at the local used car dealership so I decided to head down there and ask a few questions. The owner of the place Sid Skinner was a strange guy, to say the least, he dressed like Lyle Lanley from The Simpsons wearing a white bowler hat with a burgundy suit jacket and slacks, a polka dot dickie bow tie and ivory snakeskin loafers. Questioning him was even stranger, he was never off salesman mode and answered my questions the same way he’d speak to a would-be customer looking to buy a 2009 Daewoo Lanos. Take for example when I asked him when was the last time he saw Brad.

“Hmm, the last time I saw Brad was when he was down in our state of the art valeting area, valeting a beautiful 2013 3-door, 4 litre, BMW M3 we have on sale here for $23,500. Like all our employees he loved his job and did it to the best of his ability, we miss him here.”

And when I asked him if anyone suspicious had been around the shop floor, someone who may have stood out he replied:

“The only suspicious things in this store that stand out are our insanely low prices.”A baffling response, the guy was a true jackass and I couldn’t tell if he was an idiot or a genius regardless it quickly became obvious that I was going to get nowhere questioning him and my time would be better spent elsewhere so I left. However, as I left I was stopped by an employee who identified himself as Shawn Kelly, a co-worker and friend of Brad. Shawn was wearing a bright orange puffer jacket, he had long, sandy brown hair and he seemed to be injured as he walked with a limp in his left leg.

“Hey there, are you that investigator fella?” he loudly whispered towards me as I went to leave, his hair hanging down over his face giving me the impression I was speaking to some curtains.

“Yeah, I’m the ‘investigator fella, why do you ask?” I responded.

“I think I know someone who might know something. Darren Shannon, he’s a friend of mine and Brads, ya see.” Shawn replied

“And why do you think Darren knows something?” I asked, unsure if this would lead to anything but with literally no leads I had to take what I could get.“Well, because I saw him with three of the guys that went missing, you see and it was around the time they went missing too, including Brad. Darren picked Brad up here last weekend when his shift ended and that was the last time anyone saw him, ya” Shawn replied while brushing the hair from his eyes, revealing a pale-faced kid with almost impressively large bags under his eyes.

“And how come you are only mentioning this now, Shawn?” I asked, aware that this may be some sort of sick prank two friends could play on each other but his response put an end to any doubts I may have.“I did but it got swept under the rug. Darren’s father is the Chief of Police you know, he told me that there was nothing strange or out of place about Darren being around the three guys that went missing as they were friends which is true but he was the last one to see three of them. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

Shawn was right; that couldn’t have been a coincidence not in my eyes anyway. I thanked Shawn for his help and asked him if he knew where Darren was and sure enough, when I arrived at the local pool hall Shawn had mentioned Darren was there. Darren was a tall guy, much taller than most 18-year-olds, he had long black hair that hung down over his shoulders and he wore a long leather duster with combat pants and steel toe boots. I decided against confronting Darren instead deciding to hang around the pool hall keeping a watchful eye on him. After about an hour Darren finished up and left so naturally, I followed as I said being a PI isn’t as glamorous as it seems but one great skill you learn after investigating countless cheating spouses is the ability to seamlessly tail someone. Darren drove around for a little, the way he was driving made me think he was trying to ensure nobody was following him but he wasn’t very good at it. He stopped at a 7/11 to grab some groceries before continuing on out of the downtown area and towards a small forest around ten minutes outside of the city.

I had to tail slightly further behind now as there was nobody else in this area, Darren drove deep into the forest before reaching a large wooden cabin in an opening just beyond a set of trees, he got out of his car and went inside the cabin. I decided to hide my car off to the side and far out of sight before creeping up towards the cabin doing my best to make little noise as I trudged through the muddy surface of the forest. Darren stayed in the cabin for around fifteen minutes before storming out the front door and speeding off in his car, it was then I made my move. I snuck up to the cabin and through the front door, the inside of the cabin was filthy, rubbish was left scattered across the dusty floor and the walls were covered in broken mirrors, empty picture frames and unidentifiable stains. The worst thing, however, was the smell, the entire cabin smelled like gone off meat, as if someone had left some steaks out in the hot sun for a week, the rancid stench stung my nostrils as I breathed it in causing my eyes to water up.

The cabin was mostly empty, it had a living room and a kitchen but neither contained much in them. The sink in the kitchen was filled with dirty dishes and the living room looked like it was rarely ever lived in, containing a dusty and busted up couch and an old flatscreen TV. After wandering around the cabin for some time it seemed like this lead was a bust and that Darren simply used this place as a getaway from the city, though he didn’t seem to care too much for the state he left it in. However, just as all hope was lost I noticed something hanging out from beneath a dirty, old rug in the hallway. As I got closer I could see that the wooden floor beneath the rug was different from the rest of the floor because it wasn’t a floor at all, it was a hatch. I kicked the rug out of the way and grabbed the handle to the hatch pulling it open, once opened I was immediately met with a smell so disgustingly putrid it made the first smell seem like lavender-scented candles.The hatch revealed a secret room beneath the cabin, steps led down into a dark abyss. I stepped down onto the steps and pulled the hatch closed behind me plummeting myself into complete darkness, slowly I traversed the steps doing my best to not fall into the consuming shadows beneath me. Eventually, I reached the room beneath and found a light switch on the wall just at the end of the set of steps. I palmed at the switch on the wall eventually hitting it and illuminating the room. The light blinded me at first but when my eyes refocused they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, the sight causing me to let out a guttural scream of pure fear and terror.

Chained to the walls were six teenage boys in various stages of malnourishment and bad health, they all gawked at me with dead eyes some of them struggling to even hold their head up. In the middle was Brad, his torso was covered in lacerations and bite marks. The floor contained eight decaying corpses stacked atop each other, each corpse had a large bite mark on their neck and they seemed to have been drained of all fluids.“Holy shit…what the fuck happened here?!?” I asked in terror, Brad weakly lifted his head once more to lock his dead eyes with my own before speaking.

“Run.”

At that moment I wanted to do just that but it was too late as I heard the door upstairs slam shut.