A. Renee Art

The tape stopped. Janet stood horrified, hardly breathing. Her phone rang, startling her. She took a few breaths as she grabbed her phone.

“Hello,” she shakily answered.

“Janet,” Caylix said, shouting over the sounds of police sirens heard in the distance. “Are you at the church?”

“I am. I—”

“Maddie said you would be. Listen, get out of there right now! Scott’s here—”

“Scott?”

“Scott came back to Painscreek. He heard an investigator was here.”

“He did? Are you all at the cabin?”

“Yes, but you need to hurry back now! Scott just told us that Father Matthew confessed to him. Father Matthew killed Vivian!”

“I know. I found a confession tape he made and the murder weapon.”

“You don’t understand! Father Matthew still lives here!”

“Lives here?”

“He never left Painscreek. He’s been here all this time!”

“He was the one knocking at the door the first time we were at the Roberts’ place,” Merc shouted in the background.

“He left a vase of flowers at Sofia’s grave,” Lydia shouted nearby.

“And killed Steve Moss,” Caylix exclaimed. “We found Steve’s body in the cabin well!”

“Oh my God,” Janet whispered. “I’m on my way!”

As soon as Janet hung up and put her phone away, she heard a door slam from downstairs. Looking out at the window to the second floor, she saw a hooded figure carrying one of Bernard’s axes from his house.

It wasn’t Bernard.

She quickly dashed back down the stairs and out of the office. Upon doing so, she saw a woman in black with long dark hair on the staircase nearby.

“Sofia,” she exclaimed.

She heard heavy footsteps on her left. Turning in that direction, she saw Matthew in a hoodie down the hall coming toward her. Looking back at Sofia, she remembered Maddie’s words to her:

Follow her out. Whatever happens, you must follow her out wherever she goes.

As soon as she began going toward her down one set of stairs, Sofia vanished. Janet kept going down until she saw her again, this time pointing in the direction of the open door leading down to the locked door Lydia, Caylix, and Maddie found earlier on their run-through at the church. No longer locked, she was able to get out.

That door, she discovered, led to the sewers. Looking right, she saw Sofia’s ghost again, far away this time, and followed her, completely trusting her. She ran and ran following her ghost though the stink and slime of the sewage system, almost tripping in front of a gate at one point. Behind her, she could hear Matthew running behind her.

“You can’t know,” he shouted at her, voice echoing. “YOU CANNOT KNOW!”

She was eventually led to a door and quickly managed to barricade it with a, large empty wheeled trash bin after entering it. It wasn’t going to hold him long enough, but she knew it would buy her time by confusing him. She then noticed a large bloodstain in the hallway.

Remembering what Merc and Connor told her and the others, she knew where she was. As she was trying to find the stairs, she tried to get her phone out.

Just then, Matthew burst through the door, tripping over the trash bin. His yelling spooked Janet, causing her to drop her phone. Looking ahead of her again, she spotted Sofia’s specter pointing in the direction of the stairs. She disappeared as soon as Janet got close enough to see the stairwell.

Janet raced up, Matthew getting close as soon as he recovered. Recognizing the hallway, she immediately raced for the front door. She tried to push it open, but it seemed locked now, as if the chains were somehow redone.

She could see Matthew rounding a corner.

One more desperate push on the door and it miraculously opened. As she ran toward the outside stairs, she saw three police cars and officers behind them with their weapons drawn. Janet was startled by the scene and dropped to the ground.

Matthew, focusing on Janet, saw his crouching target and raced toward her with his axe raised. He was stopped, however, by Sofia’s ghost flickering before him, protecting Janet behind her.

“Sof—”

When she vanished, he noticed the police cars, officers, and the flashing lights. He was screamed at to drop the axe and complied. Three officers rushed to subdue and take him away, at the same time, Janet ran to one of the cars and was helped by a couple of officers.

“Are you hurt,” one of the officers asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Janet replied. “I’m just out of breath.”

“Was there someone else besides you two just now,” the other officer asked.

Janet almost started. They must have seen Sofia’s ghost when they saw Matthew come out of the hospital. Janet shrugged and shook her head. One of the officers looked around with confusion. He gave orders for other officers to search the abandoned building, just in case.

Since the old sheriff’s office was locked, the authorities, Janet, Vincent, and the teens all met at the inn. The police thought it unusual that a group of teens would be helping an investigative journalist solve a cold case. Janet was mortified at the thought that, since she was the only adult with them during the weekend and that they were minors, she would be charged with putting them in danger and that would be the end of her career.

However, since she nor anyone knew about Matthew’s presence explicitly, and they did solve Vivian Roberts’ murder, with evidence to prove it, the officers decided to find no fault with her. But she promised to never involve minors to help her with another case. There was one thing on Janet’s mind though.

“How did you all know where I was,” she asked one of the officers.

“One of the kids told us,” the confused officer said. “Said you called one of them on their cell phones that a man was chasing you with an axe.”

“I—I never got the chance,” Janet started to say.

“What?”

“I—I mean, which one? I want to thank them.”

The officer pointed at Maddie, who was standing at a dart board on the wall talking to another officer. Janet quietly sighed.

Vincent finished reading Derrick’s letter from the time capsule, handed to him by Merc. After placing it back in the box with the rest of the evidence, he approached Janet and formerly introduced himself. He told her that he had heard from a couple at the store he worked at that an investigator was in Painscreek. The couple had been at a pit stop near Painscreek on their way to the city and they overheard some kids talking about the case and that they needed to get back to the town quickly. He thanked her for solving the case.

“Not just Vivian’s,” he added.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

“Thanks.”

Later that afternoon, the five teens packed up and headed for their car after saying goodbye to Vincent and Janet, who stayed around for more questions and answers with the officers. Just before leaving, they managed to get a Polaroid of the seven of them taken by an officer. By the time they left, Matthew Brooks had been taken away from the town by police and Steve Moss’s body was fished from the cabin well.

A week had passed since the Painscreek Killings were solved and during that time, the town sat completely empty of human life for the first time in its history. Fully and truly abandoned.

Not even Sofia’s ghost lingered.

Another week would pass until the bulldozers arrived taking down blocks of buildings that once housed and kept lives, lies, secrets, truths, stories.

Stories that were buried in cemeteries under graves marked and unmarked. Lives thrown away in wells, sealed off with the intention of being forgotten. Secrets locked away behind drawers and doors. Lies exposed in scattered diaries and letters. Truths told in sealed boxes hidden in a tree stump next to a playground and buried next to a boulder among the dead.

Stone by stone, brick by brick, block by block, the town left behind by the former denizens both living and dead, was being taken down with every movement of every bulldozer, blast of the wrecking balls, and clearing away of rubble.

Never to live again.