The forest at the edge of Mounts Bay is cold this time of year.
I arrived here days ago, the trail I’m following not yet cold, and if the pattern holds true then there’ll be a new present left here for me.
I don’t believe in spirits but you don’t have to believe to feel them in the air here.
I pull my jacket around my shoulders and set off. I walk with silent feet, a skill I’ve honed, so despite wearing my biker boots there isn’t any sound coming from me. I don’t bother with a torch either, my eyes are better in the dark.
There’s a clearing, out past the sawmill, and it’s there I find the blood trail.
Perfect.
I follow it, the trees becoming denser and the wildlife more active here. There’s clearly not a whole lot of human activity out here on the regular which fits the pattern perfectly.
The presents are never left out in the open, never somewhere where someone on the straight and narrow would find it. No, he wants me to find this one first. His letters have made that perfectly clear.
This game we’re playing, this puzzle I’m having to unravel, it keeps my mind busy and out of trouble. The kind of trouble that has me leaving my own trails of blood deep in haunted forests.
I can hear the rabbits out to play, some foxes too. I know where I’ll find my gift by how busy the animals are, scurrying around her and speeding up the decaying process by taking a nibble.
This one is a red head.
Hm.
That’s a first. Usually they’re all dark-haired, their ethnicity always differs but there’s never a blonde.
Her chest has been cracked open, like they always are, and her eyes are open and staring sightlessly up at the stars. Her arms are splayed out and her legs are spread. She’s also naked, except for the shoes.
I snap on a pair of gloves. The FBI is following these murders, the girls have already turned up in ten different states, and I don’t need to be leaving behind any extra evidence.
I pry her jaw open, difficult with the rigor mortis already setting in, and I find the note. Always in their mouths. I read it and then place it back down on the chest of the body, leaving it for whoever finds the corpse. I’ll let them guess at the clues that have been left for me, left to taunt me until I can figure this puzzle out.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. - 1 John 3:8
Chapter One
Illi
I met little Matteo D'Ardo at the group home.
We slept in different rooms, the little psycho was years younger than me and I didn't notice him when he first arrived. Everyone knew his story though, everyone knew that he'd slit his mother's throat while she slept, escaped juvie because of the state that the emergency services found him in.
I didn't ask questions.
I regret that now.
Maybe if I knew just how badly fucked up his life was before we became ride or die I'd know why the hell he'd become such a fucking traitorous cunt. I mean it had to come from somewhere.
The Bay skews things a little in all its inhabitants' brains. We don't see things in the conventional sense of black and white, it's about survival and loyalties here. Do whatever it takes to die another day, keep your belly full, sleep with some sort of peace. There's a lot that we'd do without flinching, no hesitation as we pull the trigger.
Betraying our friends isn't supposed to be one of those things and I never would have expected it from him... nah, he was fucking solid from day one.
The group home was a little more strict back in our day. They counted us on the hour every damn hour when we were back from school. We had jobs to do there, slave labor with no pay and barely enough food to survive, but I'd been sent out on one of those jobs.
Community service type shit, cleaning up roadsides and gardening in the local parks. I didn't care for it but I also had nothing better to do. I was busy trying to figure my fucking life out at that point, was I going to kill the Adder for what he did or just try to live a normal life? I was decent at school... I could figure that shit out maybe.