Spirit Falls

Chapter One

Greetings

“..There once was a boy.. A boy who had a loving family. An amazing mother, a supportive brother.. And of course, the best father he could’ve asked for. One day, his father got the boy a puppy for Christmas! Isn’t that wonderful?”

The Young Brother smiled at the Older, overjoyed to finally be the one telling the story.

“The Boy was so excited.. This puppy- an adorable Golden Retriever.. It was his favorite breed. He loved the dog. Until.. Well. Until he murdered the damn thing.”

The Young Brother smirked and just picked up his dull steel knife. His brother cried out through his gag with tears staining his face. His mother and father tried to squirm out of their bindings on their hands and feet but they were too tight to do much of anything. The Younger just sighed in content and looked down at his brother with the knife trailing against his cheek. A small prick of blood appeared as the Younger applied more pressure. As he saw the blood, a side of him opened up his inner core. That inner core then stabbed the Older Brother in the temple. It was a nice spurt of blood, mixed with the muffled cries from his parents. The Younger yawned slightly and jabbed his fingers in the fresh corpse’s eyes, removing them both cleanly. He examined the eyes with a grin. He loved seeing the terrified and disgusted eyes of the others. In every situation, it just got better. Every murdered family, every reaction, every fight, all the blood. From all the way down in Miami to now Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“Aren’t these so beautiful? Cerulean blues.. Hmph.. I see where he got them..”

The Younger smiled and just walked over to his mother, her blue eyes sparkling from her tears. He held his brother’s eyes for a second, examining them again before taking his mothers hands and putting the eyes in her palms. He stared at her for a long time, forcing a message into her head not to drop the eyes, a message she would comply too. The Younger walked back to the corpse of his brother and mercilessly tugged the knife out of the corpse’s temple. He twirled it through his fingers for a second, light reflecting from the dim lamp in the room onto the dull steel blade. He then proceeded to throw the knife at his mother, aimed at her chest. The light seemed to exit her eyes relatively quickly, which annoyed the Younger.

“Damn.What a weakling she is, can’t handle one throw?”

He shrugged and just smiled at his father, the father sitting in a room with his dead family. The father sobbed as he tried not to glance at the bodies, but the Younger wouldn’t allow that. He grabbed his fathers’ chin and jerked it to where the dead sat. The corpse of his eldest son, Jason. The corpse of his loving wife of almost 24 years, Linda. Then his son. The son who had been dead to him for a decade now. A forgotten memory, one that was not wanted.

“How’s that for a reunion Dad? Regret getting rid of me? Probably.. Eh. It was too much effort to find you guys, considering the amount of cars I had to steal to come here. That was the only hard part. You really shouldn’t have let mom make that family blog with all your names.. And addresses.. And everything. It’s really not safe when a murderer is trying to locate you..”

The Younger mused with a smirk and took his father’s gag off and just waited for a second to let him suck in some oxygen.

“Say my name.”

The Younger seemed to turn from amused to terrifyingly serious in a matter of seconds. At first his father felt like throwing up from the already rising stench in the room, but he’d soon discover his voice.

“...C-Connor please- I’m sorry..”

The father choked on his words, but Connor rushed over to his dead mothers’ body in a flash and gripped the hilt of the knife then twisting it out of her once beating heart. Connor spun back around, his expression being one of pure hate and anger. It didn’t seem possible to exist on a sixteen year old, only on hardened criminals and psychopaths. Perhaps that described Connor enough.

“Sorry? That’s all you have to say? Shit, I assumed you’d say more. Maybe yell at me like you did when I killed that damn dog. Can’t even remember its name...”

He sighed and just gripped his fathers chin again, opening his mouth and gripping his tongue.

“Well? Any last words?”

Connor waited a second and laughed as he saw the look of terror on the middle aged man.

“Eh too bad. I’m not a patient person.”

Connor cut off his tongue in rough cuts and strokes. It took a second, but blood poured into the man’s mouth rapidly. He barely got to scream for a second before Connor stabbed his throat soon after cutting the tongue, the blade being propelled deeper, crossing his vocal cords. He seemed to become a chocolate fountain, except it was blood and not chocolate, and it also was only coming out of his mouth. Connor hummed a child’s lullaby quietly as he started to cut off parts of their bodies. It was tedious work, but manageable, even if he only used a dull knife. He went through each corpse, cutting off parts of their faces like the tongues, eyes, lips, ears, strips of skin, and only one arm from his father since it had taken too long. Connor always cleaned up afterwards, knowing he’d definitely get caught by the still barely active police force since he was thought to be one of the most wanted in the United States. The whole of the USA’s services were scrapped bare. The United States of America had gone through much in the last 20 ish years. From the beginning of 2020 to now, 2038. Nothing too much happened technologically, iphones, televisions, appliances. Everything was practically the same. Nobody had made a huge impact since everybody who wasn’t swimming in gold was just trying to survive. Everywhere on the globe, humanity seemed to be on the brink of collapse. Thankfully no major wars had come up, but with the United States more or less crumbled. At least it seemed that way since most large cities have turned into crime havens. The Top one was of course, Miami. With its Five Zones, 5 being the multi billionaires and so on. Connor grew up in Zone 0, an area only full with gangs and criminals. Turf wars and violence was a daily if not hourly occurrence. Just visiting this area of Miami once, changes a person.

After the day Connor brutally murdered his biological family, he cleaned himself and the scene up and left. He killed them at around 11 PM on November 11th, 2036. The next day would’ve been his brothers’ birthday as said on the blog post the previous day. It was surprising how some towns like Bethlehem were virtually unfazed from the breakdown. This murder would probably change that though, since most small towns had more hidden crime. The breakdown was what everyone called the government “collapsing”. It didn’t technically collapse, but they haven’t exactly tried to stop the expansion of cities like Miami or LA, their crime web and black market currently booming. There seemed to be no police anymore, at least in those cities previously stated. Bethlehem had a small force, mainly for helping and not arresting. It made Connor laugh at how peaceful some peoples’ lives were. They had no worry of being stabbed in your sleep, no worry of someone kidnapping you to sell. No worries at all besides graduating highschool or college, or getting a job, or something simple like that.

Connor had left at around three in the morning on November 12th. He’d stolen all the paper money he could find, leaving the credit cards and bank accounts left alone since it would lead to an obvious trail. The paper money would too, but it would’ve taken longer to connect the dots. He’d gone out with the money and his “go bag” which was just a glorified backpack. It may have looked stupid but it helped quite a lot. Connor had a phone that was specifically built without a GPS so nobody could track him, same with his laptop. He had his wads of cash, a first aid kit, a handgun with extra ammo, several knives, and one penny. Connor went through the car he’d stolen to drive to the Aldrich’s house to retrieve anything he may have left. Then he went off to an old breakfast restaurant after a short nap for two hours. He ordered a simple egg with waffles, smiling as the waitress dropped it off at his table. He ate like an average teen, hungry as can be as cop cars sped past the restaurant to the Aldrich family household.

“Oh my.. I wonder what happened..”

The waitress looked worried but kept washing Connors’ plate as he sat in the booth reading the last edition of the paper. It was surprising they still printed these. Only the Oldies liked to have the nostalgia of the newspaper days.

“I’m sure it was just a murder or something”

He smiled slightly behind the paper. The waitress’s face paled and her eyes widened, her hands scrubbing the stubborn syrup off the plate faster.

“Sorry, that was a bad joke. I’m sure everything is fine you know. This town is too safe and wonderful to have something so horrible and wretched happen in its corridors.. But.. when the next paper comes out.. Make sure to look for a mention of cerulean blue..”

Connor folded the paper and put it in his bag, looking back at the waitress who’d just stared in confusion. He smiled his signature smile and left a twenty on the table before exiting the restaurant.

Turns out Cerulean Blue did turn up in the papers.

Two pairs of blue eyes sewn into a stuffed bear. Its mouth was Linda’s lips. Its ears was Philip’s ears. Its arms were two of Jason’s fingers. The walls asked vague questions in blood, asking “What happened here?” and “Where’s Rollie?”. The stuffed bear was found in Jason’s room, on his bed with a note tucked inside its fleshy mouth.

“Where’s the waitress who works at 237 Cornerstone Road?”

“Her body was found later, at around 6 am. She was stabbed once in the chest, a clean sudden stab. Her body was laid in a pose that was crouched in the corner of the kitchen. Nobody would’ve entered the restaurant since she was the only one having this shift for the next few hours, plus the Murderer had put the “Closed” sign on the door. Smart bastard.”

The Detective sighed and looked up at the other detective.

“It has been two fucking years since that murder. PLUS more home invasions and family desecrations. This motherfucker has gotten away with almost 30 murders if my theories are correct.”

She rubbed her head in defeat and felt like the largest failure the human race had ever seen.

“It’ll be okay Dove- you’re the best detective I know alright?

“I’m the only one you know.”

She rolled her eyes at Portia’s unhelpful joke.They had been friends since training, and would usually meet up and talk about their current cases in various hotels. Her friend was investigating several purposeful building fires in Maryland. The fires led closer to Pennsylvania until the perpetrator finally crossed the border.

“We’ll find these two shitheads alright? We’ll find them.”

They both smiled, a spark in their eyes. A spark of hope.

Until two small chinks were heard and they both fell to the ground.

A figure blew a puff of smoke away from a barrel of a handgun with a silencer.

“Can’t find me if you’re dead. Now.. who the hell is this fire person?”

Connor grinned as he pulled down his hood and looked at the bodies of the detectives and picked up the file for the fires from the other detective. He also took their badges and soon left the hotel, plus the workers would not pay attention to a random teen in dark clothes walking through the lobby. 32 murders. Four years.

“I’m coming..”

He mumbled quietly as he kept rereading the documents as he walked down the sidewalk, unnoticed as usual.

Connor Aldrich, 18, was now the most wanted man in the United States of America, but nobody even knew he existed. Not by his traditional name anyway.

Only by The Enucleator. Or the Question Killer. Or by Blood Face.