Miles leaned against the shoe rack, taking a moment to catch his breath. The clock directly opposite him chimed.
7pm.
His head throbbed. His eyes felt heavy. He blinked. His back ached because of the too heavy bag filled with equally heavy case files. For a moment, he wanted to stay there, sink to the floor and take a long nap.
I better get back to work.
At the thought, he dragged himself away from the rack even though his joints blared with pain. Miles placed his shoes on the rack before washing his hands by the sink beside it. He paused.
The fresh aroma of lavender swept past his nostrils.
It reminded him of his mother. Dark skinned, equally dark fiery eyes. And a very deep -unfiltered- annoyance towards his very existence.
"Get away from her!"
The right side of Miles' lips pulled into a semblance of a sad smile. The dull headache intensified.
I really need to get a cup of coffee-
"I hope you've been taking care of yourself, Miles."
Doctor Doris's words to him earlier today in the hospital rushed back to him. Miles swallowed. He would be fine. He had been fine then. He'd be fine now. His coffee drinking wouldn't change a thing.
Miles straightened from the sink. When he turned the corner, on his way to his room, he found Bella.
Bent over a keyboard.
A knot twisted deep in his throat.
Goosebumps prickled his arms like a burn. He inhaled. Music from the past swept past chests of memories. Sweet, beautiful music.
Music that only left a shudder down Miles' spine while he bled from numerous gashes.
"What in the wo-rld are you do-ing with that?" He managed to keep the tremble out of his quiet voice, still staring at the keyboard as though it were a murderous weapon.
Bella's eyes widened, then they narrowed.
"I don't see how it's any of your business-"
"Plea-se, I don't ha-ve time for this. Ju-st get rid of it."
Bella scoffed. "Are you being serious right now?! It's a keyboard for goodness sake, Miles! Just a keyboard. Besides, I don't see how it's bothering you?"
"You are not go-ing to be allowed to play this thing in my ho-use."
"Really? So now you can control me? For someone who openly despises her so much, you sound awfully a lot like mother right now."
His mouth soured. "Never. I just don't wa-nt to have this-" Miles gestured to the keyboard in the carton, "-in my house. Is that suc-h a hard th-ing to ask?"
Bella huffed. "If it's the noise-"
"It's not ab-out that. I just don't w-ant to hav-e it here."
Bella crossed her arms, "Why, Miles? You can't expect me to listen to you if you can't even-"
"You know what? Just forg-et it." Miles moved to walk around her but she took a step back, blocking his path.
Bella folded her hands over her chest.
"See, you're doing it again?"
"Doing what?" Miles gritted his teeth, heat drawing lines down his back.
I don't have time for this. I-
"Avoiding the question. You always do this."
"I don't have ti-me for games, to-day."
"Neither do I. All this would end if you would just tell me why. This shouldn't be so difficult to do."
Miles swallowed. If only she knew how difficult it really was.
He gnawed on the right corner of his lip. The distant songs breezed past, stringing him between past and present. The applause. His father's adoring fans.
Miles bristled as a scream bounced through the silent, think air. His younger self cowered in a corner. The air was biting cold. His clothes were torn. Everything hurt. But, he'd gotten used to it.
Miles could still remember looking into a mirror one day, directly into his eyes. His eyes had never been lively. They never had the sparkle that people always complimented Bella for. But at least, there was still a little semblance of life when he looked in the mirror.
But, in that small fragment of time, his eyes- they looked.... dead.
Miles blinked. Mist formed in his right eye, he looked away, throat hoarse. You wouldn't unde-rstand."
"Miles-"
"Just for-get it, okay? You can kee-p it. Just-" Miles leaned against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose. "-don't play th-at thing anywh-ere near me."
"Fine then! If that's how you want it to be. I'll stay very much out of your way!"
Miles rubbed the skin between his brows, "I didn't-"
Before he could finish his statement, Bella dragged the keyboard away, muttering under her breath. After he could no longer hear the distant sound of her murmuring, the loud bang of a door reverberated through the silent house.
He sighed.
Within a span of twenty minutes, Miles walked up to his room, cleaned up, washed the blood stains of his dirty clothes before trudging down the staircase while trying to balance the heavy case files in hand.
Miles slumped on the couch facing the tv. He rolled his shoulders to still aching before the case files to the glass table. He had spent hours, checking through the volumes of old records back in an old police station that had been converted to an old records storage facility. But, at least the thorough search had yielded fruit.
He hoped at least it would give him an idea of what was going on.
Miles went to the kitchen and got himself a mug of steaming coffee. He inhaled. The smell of dark roasted coffee beans romanced him. The smell alone made his skin buzz, a comforting heat trailing underneath his skin.
As he tipped the mug back, his tongue eager, he suddenly remembered what Doctor Doris said.
Miles paused. A beat passed. Was it really going to cause him issues? The thought quelled the heat underneath his skin. Despite the thought, he shook out of it and took a long gulp.
The nutty flavor poured down his throat, filling him with a sudden burst of energy, like it always did. Miles stopped And waited. For the heart burn. The trembling. The headaches.
Nothing.
He sighed, relieved.
Miles settled back on the sofa, before placing his mug in front of him, and then opened the first case file. The name of the man was scrawled boldly onto the first page.
Steven King.
The mug shot in the document showed a middle aged man with closely cropped hair. This one was the most recent of them all, before this whole case started. About ten years ago.
Miles turned the page. According to the case file, Steven King -when he was still alive- belonged to a terrorist group called GIX, the remnant of one of the many terrorist groups that scoured the land almost a century ago during the Great War. He was charged for multiple crimes; assault, drug dealing and murder of innocents, especially children.
As it went, the man was caught in a fist fight with a vigilante group before being apprehended by the police. But somehow, he escaped. And the police searched for weeks, but found nothing.
But then, they did find him- not living but as a burnt corpse- underneath a dried, dying tree, near a freezing lake. And there was ice surrounding his corpse.
But, it was winter anyway.
Miles swallowed. He flipped the page, skimming over the forensic reports.
It said he died of obvious fourth degree burns and inhalation of toxic fumes. Miles stared at the picture of his corpse, comparing the mugshot to the picture.
Even though the man bore no resemblance to the men who had been killed so far with his wild amber eyes and dyed green-yellow hair -as a corpse, he looked exactly like them.
His heart thudded faster.
As Miles read on, the words began to blend. The ink danced, turning to darkened masses in his vision. His eyes felt heavy.
Before he could stop himself, he fell down the abyss of darkness.
***
"Miles!"
Miles shot out of his sleep, disoriented. The world blurred around him. He blinked a number of times.
"Can't you give yourself a break? You know, if you work yourself to death, you'll be of no use to anyone. And life will continue."
Miles turned around. Bella was standing beside him, her gaze fixed on the stack of case files. Miles followed her gaze, noting the lines of files and his unfinished mug of coffee, all of which he was making use of before he fell-
Miles stilled, his right eye widening slightly.
I didn't have a nightmare.
His heart skipped a beat. The air around him felt light, without the thickness that it normally held when he woke up. It had always been quiet. But, this time, it was the right type of quiet.
It was almost unbelievable, especially after last night's horrific episode.
Miles stared at his hands.
For the first time in a very, very long time, he didn't wake up screaming. His throat wasn't hoarse. He wasn't sweating unnecessarily. He almost felt... at ease. The right side of his lips quirked up.
"Miles."
Once again, he was reminded of Bella's presence. Bella looked down at him, her eyebrows raised in question but, there was an amused smile playing on her lips.
Miles straightened. He cleared his throat.
"W-hat do y-"
"You slept peacefully, I believe." Bella gave him a knowing look as though she could see through him, past the rising walls in his eyes.
Miles' stomach clenched at the thought of the numerous times Bella must have heard his screams at night.
I wish I could soundproof that ro-
"Do you have nightmares on a regular basis?"
Miles bit his lip, almost drawing blood. He avoided her probing gaze. "You sh-ould get some rest-" he looked at the clock across the room, it read 11:50pm. "-it's lat-e."
"There's so m-uch to do." He muttered to himself, running a hand down his face before picking up the first case file again to continue from where he stopped.
"I can help."
His right brow raised slightly. "No."
Bella's blue eyes flashed. "Why? You think I'm too stupid?"
"No. I simply don't wa-nt your help. This info-rmation is not for the pu-blic eye."
At that, the fire in Bella's eyes died down. "Oh."
"Yea-."
"But, I am already involved. I mean I did help you back in the WDG. Besides-" Her voice softened. "-I want to know who killed daddy. I know this must be weird but despite what he did, I still do want to know."
For once, Miles could understand. He paused, gauging whether this was the best idea.
Are you really thinking....?
Miles sighed.
"If I hear a w-ord of this, out-side of this house-"
Bella brightened. "You don't have to worry-"
"I mea-n it." Miles pointed at her. "If this gets out, I'm going to th-row you in pris-on."
Bella raised her hands in surrender, "Sure thing, boss." Amusement glinted in her eyes. He moved so that she would have space to sit down beside him.
"How do you scare criminals with threats like that? I thought a detective would be scarier than that." Bella snickered.
Miles tried to keep his face neutral. "Try me and you'll se-e how scary a dete-ctive can be."
Bella's loud roar of laughter echoed in the room. "You're funny when you want to be, you know."
"I wasn't b-eing-"
Miles cut himself short, watching her snicker. For some reason, he shook his head, his lips curling up in amusement too.
After a few seconds, he called back their attention to the matter at hand.
"So, th-ese are the case files of cri-minals that murd-ered children." Miles stated, gesturing towards the case files that were between them.
"How come you're looking through these? A lot of them date back to ten years and more."
"Well, it's somet-hing I needed to do, since present evidence -or rather lack of- isn't yielding fruit. So I'm trying to s-ee if there's any simil-arity between what's hap-pening now and what happened in the past."
"You're trying to look for ideas then?"
"Something like that." He muttered, leaning, dropping Steven King's case file and moving to the next one.
This time, it was a woman named Kim Millers. Aged 50, a former social service worker. 12 years ago, she stabbed her 10 year old daughter to death.
A shiver ran down Miles' spine. His knuckles tightened over the case file. He blinked before he was sucked into a dark tunnel.
Ice tore down Miles' chest, scratching his bare skin. His nerves frayed.
He pushed against the floor until his back slammed against his bed. His breath turned to lead in his lungs. His skin was hot. Sweat trailed down his back, like his pores were crying.
Crying for the danger that lay just before them.
His father leered, the smell of alcohol tainting the air around him. Now, the air was thick, syrupy. Deadly.
His father cracked a smile.
"Time to play, boy."
He raised the knife.
Miles blinked, heaving.
"Miles, are you-"
"I'm fine." He finished, holding up a hand and doing his best to keep his gaze trained on the table. His hands trembled. Even after, he carried the case file again, he could still feel her eyes on him.
"You know when someone says they're fine.... They never really are." Bella stated quietly.
"I didn't say this before, maybe I'm not in the best place to but-" she stopped.
Miles looked up. Bella was looking the other way, biting her lip. "But, if you really aren't fine, you should talk to someone. Believe me, your silence..... could be your very death."
"Maybe not literally but it will leave you... a broken shell."
Miles pondered on those words as he directed his attention back to the ca
A broken shell. Talk to someone.
Miles' hands formed fists. No one had ever been there to listen to his garbage. He'd grown so used to this, that now, he was accustomed to it. To the silence. Bearing all his pain by himself.
What would he even say?
This is stupid.
Miles shook his head. His chest tightened. Despite that, he continued reading Kim's file.
After she killed her daughter -he swallowed the lump in his throat- she ran away. She was found by the police-a few days later in a battered car- as a burnt corpse.
His heart skipped a beat. There was a hand written note attached to the photo of the bashed car and her corpse right inside it. It said,
"The drunk driver that crashed into her didn't kill her. No. This was no accident. This was very, very intentional."
Miles stared at the picture again. The car obviously hadn't been set ablaze but rather, it had collided with another car. But she.....
Her almost empty sockets stared back at him, haunting and gruesome. He didn't have to read the reason for her death to know that she had also been burnt to such a devastating degree.
She almost looked like all the rest.
He blinked. Just by the side, he caught the sheen of ice sparkling against the glare of the camera, spread across the windshield.
A cold dread settled over him.
No it couldn't be.....
"Why are they all being-"
"Burnt to dea-th?" Miles couldn't keep out the tremble in his voice. Miles collected the case files from her swiftly and began to flick through all of them.
Each one stated the same claim.
They were all burnt to death.
His heart iced over.
The pattern continued almost 40 years ago.
Could this be bigger than a serial killer? Was there a vigilante organization trying to dish out their own justice on child murderers?
"Are you okay?"
Miles looked up, noticing Bella's concerned gaze. His fingers trembled. He looked away from her, staring at the paper.
"I-"
His phone rang. He jerked, his gaze straying to it. He noticed that Isaac was the one calling him.
So soon. That was fast.
His hands hovered over his phone. For some reason, his heart was beating faster than before. Nothing was wrong. They caught the criminal. Everything was going to end now.
It seems too fast, too..... good to be true.
He picked the call, ignoring the chills racing down his spine.
"Did you catch-"
"He's dead!"
Miles blinked. Everything around him stilled.
"What-"
"I don't understand how it happened! I mean we were watching him, we didn't-
"Calm dow-n."
Officer Isaac halted, the line thrown back to silence.
"Sta-rt all over again. Slo-wer this time."
"He's dead."
"Who?"
"Henry."
Henry. The criminal they wanted to use as bait. To lure the serial killer. To catch him.
Did that mean the killer....
His throat closed up.
"But how? The cam-eras? The alarms? We all checked it tog-ether, how did the killer slip in witho-ut notice?"
"I don't understand this either! I don't know, I just-" Officer Isaac sounded visibly distressed. "What have we gotten ourselves into?"
"Getting cau-ght up in your em-otions isn't what we need now, Is-aac. Explain what happened. How di-d you find ou-t?"
Isaac inhaled sharply. "Everything was alright at the beginning. We checked the rooms. The tech unit cross checked the wires and cameras. We made sure the surveillance van was hidden."
Isaac stopped, most likely to catch his breath as his voice was still trembling up until now.
"So wh-at then?" Miles urged.
"We sat in the van, Daniel and I. We made sure to stay awake. Believe me, we didn't sleep a wink-"
"I know y-ou didn't, Isaac. Get on w-ith it."
"Okay." Another shuddering breath. "Around 12am, there was an interference."
"Interfere-nce?"
"The cameras jammed -the screen just....blacked out."
A slither of sweat trailer down his neck. Miles forced himself to inhale but even that brought no relief.
"That's when we heard him scream. Daniel and I found him dead, a few minutes later. Charred like the rest, all smoke, no fire in sight."
For a moment, all Miles could do was stare at the tv in front of him. The words echoed in his head. Each echo sunk in his reality louder than the last.
Henry's dead.
"So he's dead?" He finished quietly, unable to grasp the reality even still. He really thought it would have been a success. Highest, the killer wouldn't have taken the bait. The cameras. The alarms. The-
"But we did see something before the interference."
Amidst the darkness surrounding him, hope swelled in his chest. "What's tha-t?"
"A shadow. The shadow of a little girl, right by his bed."
***
12:45 am.
Miles had driven here as fast as he could.
Miles walked into the room. Plumes of smoke still swirled around, like black clouds hanging over the area. His left eye pricked. Miles fished out his dropper from his pocket before letting a drop fall into his left eye. He adjusted his eye patch.
The oppressive stench of charred flesh burnt his throat, scraping his skin with razor sharp blades. He coughed. Unease like fire, crawled down his body, crackling and tearing at anything it laid its hands on.
Miles glanced back at the wooden door. Two small cameras sat at the walls adjacent to the door, covering the door. It was the same for the cameras that covered the window. One was pointed directly at the bed.
Where the man's corpse now lay.
Miles' stomach churned as he walked towards him.
The stench worsened. His right eye watered.
Henry's lips were parted, a bottomless chasm that could no longer emit a scream. His eye balls were almost burnt out of his sockets. His skin. His once pale skin was darkened, a patchwork of charred flesh.
At some point, where the skin was completely torn away, Miles could see his bone.
How did this happen?
Despite seeing this, three other times before, and about seven more times with the case files he had been able to get hands on. He just couldn't get used to it.
Bile coated his tongue. For a moment, he wanted to vomit.
Then he felt it. The temperature dropped a few degrees. It was colder. Colder than he remembered.
Maybe he hadn't noticed how cold it was, in his bid of confusion. His fists tightened. And somewhere, in that cold, he suddenly felt hot. It wasn't the temperature.
It was a slow sensation. Creeping -climbing up his back- slowly. The hairs on the back of his neck stood. The jacket suddenly seemed like a bad idea. Sweat pearled his brows.
He could almost feel a set of eyes boring through him.
Miles turned around. Nothing. The room was still empty. The lights danced along the clean and sparse room. No boot marks. No struggle. No break-ins.
It was very, very intentional.
Nothing identified that someone had even entered this place.
Who was this person? And how were they so good at their game?
Miles stared at the camera at the door, dismissing his paranoia. He looked at the corpse, one more time.
How am I going to explain this to Alice? To chief even?
Miles shook his head.
Keep yourself together. You'll find your way out of this. You always do.
Miles was about to bring out his note when a knock bounced through the room. The sudden sound made him stand straighter. His head swiveled in different directions, his heart pounding.
The pestering heat had lost its hold but the cold was back.
Why was it this cold despite a body being burnt here minutes ago?
How could someone set a fire, that did so much damage and put it out in a span of about five minutes without leaving even a trace?
Mile wrote those down quickly. Another knock swept through the air. His ears perked. His muscles tensed.
He turned towards the window.
The silence felt.... dead. He stepped forward. The thud ruffled the silence, just a bit. He looked in all directions once again. Still nothing.
He inhaled. Slightly bent, he crept up to the window, his gut twisting. Something felt very, very wrong.
He took another gulp of air. The beige curtains swayed as though being blown by the breeze. His heart rammed. Miles fingered the edge of the curtain, his other hand slipping beneath his jacket finding the familiar grip of his gun.
One second passed. Nothing.
He pulled it apart roughly, getting a view of the window which faced the small backyard. He stared outside.
The flowers and grass looked undamaged, the large lights beaming at them. Miles looked from side to side, trying to gauge as much as he could from here.
Nothing. No one was in sight. He blinked.
A bluish-white dot snagged Miles' attention. His eye narrowed slightly.
Was this ice-
Right there and then, the dot spread into a thin sheen of ice, right before his eyes.