Police Station “Hidden in the Walls”

“Normally it is the cases that we aren't able to solve that linger with us, but not for me.

For most of my life, most of my career, I was good at making sure that the work I do doesn't come home with me, and for the most part I have been successful. It is true that maybe things would have been solved sooner if I was willing to take the hit, but I have always thought that I can only do my job if I know that waiting at home is a life outside of it.

And I have tried to put the case behind me. I went to a therapist, spoke with coworkers, and even talked about at length with the people left over, and still nothing has been able to help me feel disconnected from it. The case was solved, the perpetrator was caught, and justice was done, but something about it refuses to go away, even all these years later.

It was a simple missing persons case. A woman went missing from her home, and local man she had been seeing was the prime suspect. I wasn't the only person working the case, and I can't say who I am if I want to keep my job. Some things are of public record, but a lot of this isn't, but I doubt that would bother you.

Your place isn't to share, but to retain the truth.

It was a long search for the girl, and I worked very hard to try and get to her alive. There is always a point in time with a search where the person no longer is a missing persons, and instead it is presumed that you are looking for a body.

The distinction is on a case by case basis, and the likelihood of this happening goes up when there are elements involved, such as being lost in the woods during winter, or if a certain amount of time goes by without a word.

We searched for the girl for three months before we became certain that she was dead, and it was another three months before we found the body. All the while the prime suspect didn't say a word, and we were unable to connect him to any of it. When we found her, it was not relief or despair that came over me, but horror. Horror, because it was clear that the girl had been alive, had somehow held onto life for far longer than we had imagined possible.

And worst of all, it was in the first place we looked.

We found her in the wall of her bathroom, after a family member noticed a growing stain in the wall of the home. We couldn't tell why it was that she had not called out at any point, and it was perplexing when we realized that she had survived like that for over two months before passing away. She seemed to have tried to eat insulation to keep herself going, but other than that there seemed to have been no sign of her trying to sustain herself. It was as if she had been drawn into the wall, and then gave up.

And yet she kept on going.

Her stomach, we found, was more decayed than the rest of her body. In fact, it seemed as if various parts of her decomposed at different paces, and though it was clear that she had been dead for some time, when we came to her heart and brain, it seemed as if they had still been operating up to a few weeks before we found her.

We didn't know how she got in the wall. We didn't know how the man was involved. We didn't even know how she had managed to survive for so long.

We still don't.

What we had was a body with clear signs of an assault, even though such evidence would normally have been lost at that point. But there was not physical evidence to tie him to it, and so we were forced to drop the case. It is not a strange thing around here, for us to have to do, which is why we have found ways to make sure that justice is done, even if we wouldn't be the ones to do it.

I think a lot about the woman. I think a lot about the man, and how he looked after the thing had gotten done working on him. It looked like an animal attack, and for weeks after there was a mad dash to try and find the monster. But they were never going to find it, and there is no way they will.

I am tired, and I don't know if that means that I am unhappy, or if I feel better, like a weight had been taken off of me as I finish writing this.

But I do think about them both from time to time, and sometimes I wonder if I was wrong to leave it in the hands of such a thing, to figure out whether or not he was guilty. But in the end, its foresight never seemed to be wrong, and what it did to him certainly wouldn't be done on an innocent.

Please make sure this gets put away, and thank you for accepting my story.

Its just another mystery to add to the pile, even if I see every detail, especially when I dream.”

The officer refused to identify themselves, though I have my suspicions. Things tumble together, and are connected in the strangest of ways.

The sound of the train taking the turn, the way the wheels squeal, sounds a lot like screaming.

I've been sitting at the station a lot lately, late at night when there aren't many people. I just sit and listen to the train, even if the bright lights of it and the piercing cries it makes causes my head to split open.

This week it is homecoming.

I haven't been to one in years obviously, and I am sure that for the kids things are very different from what they are used to. Masks are likely mandated, and there is other safety precautions.

Or maybe there is nothing.

People nowadays don't seem very interested in being safe anymore. There was a time where they were, where they would seek out the ways to avoid danger. And as much as I am speaking about the pandemic, I am also speaking about the residents who live here.

The hunters are out at night. People don't always talk about it, but this is the time of year when some things are most active. I don't know what percentage of the creatures that call this place home hibernate for winter.

Maybe none of them do.

But when we are looking at the realities of the situation, it is hard to deny.

Call it the nature of the season, the way Halloween can seem to draw all sorts of wicked things out. But it feels less like a coincidence sometimes, and sometimes it is more like a harvest. And the thing is, it is hard to really figure out what exactly it is that some of these forces need to survive. Some, like the Tikoloshe, or the Jingle, seem to be beings of constants, things that simply exist and that is that.

Then there are beings like The Old Man, who may or may not actually require the pain he takes in. Maybe he needs it to sustain himself, but there are records of quiet, when he seems to disappear for a year or more.

But there are other things, things that linger in alleys, or those things that don't leave behind bodies. Surely they more than anything need to feed, but how would I know?

So many or them you cannot possibly talk to, without putting the lives of yourself and those you love in danger.

I suppose I am mentioning this, because every year there seems to be something that comes out around this time.

Last year I found out that the dark, shadowy hags that murmur and shuffle about when I was a child were real. I still cannot remember getting home that night. I still don't understand why they are here, and why they are interested in me.

I still don't know why I smell that foul stench of sickness and ink, of sewage and something lingering...

I smell it when I wake up.

I smell it when I brush my teeth.