The Case Of Stitch

## The Case of Stitch by Ryan Johnson

It was just your typical Seattle day – light and dark gray clouds intermingling together, sprinkling throughout the day, wind blowing near constantly.

I was sitting in mine and Anna’s office when the Boss came in and dropped two huge boxes on my desk, nearly spilling my cup of coffee all over my keyboard.

He walked out of the room and left me to the case. I wiped off the few drops of coffee that made it onto my suit. I sighed. You would think more boxes would mean an easier case to solve – more evidence, easier to find suspect – but no. Generally speaking, the more boxes the Boss handed me the more work I had ahead of me.

My partner, Anna, wouldn’t be pleased either. I sighed and sipped my coffee for a few unfortunately short minutes, staring at the boxes in front of me. After much internal bargaining, I stood up and opened the first box and peered inside. It was full of DVDs, journals, crime scene photographs, physical evidence – hair, bits of flesh, nails, blood samples. This already looked like it was going to be one of the most gruesome cases of the year.

I looked at the clock and decided to take the boxes home and organize them. I left the office building and walked out into the crisp autumn air. It struck me that not many people were out that evening. It was just after five o clock. Shouldn’t more people be getting off work? I reached my car, put the boxes on top of it, unlocked the door and piled in. I put the boxes on the passenger seat of my beat up car and started the drive home.

I got home around 5:45, after stopping to get some food for dinner. I made myself tacos and sat down in front of the television. I ate quickly, watched my favorite comedy show – King of the Hill. I would need something funny to get me through these boxes. I emptied the contents out onto the table in front of me. I noticed there were photos from three different crime scenes, so I started by organizing everything by victim.

Why it wasn’t in the first place, I wasn’t sure at that point. But as I started going through everything, I had an idea why. It was all so gruesome. No one would want to deal with this. Maybe that’s why me and Anna got the case. We were the best detectives there. Stomachs of steel. Everyone probably assumed we would be able to cope with it. Looking through it though, I wasn’t sure we could. It wasn’t like we had a choice though. People were dying and Anna and I were assigned the case, so we had to end it.

After organizing everything by victim, I started on the pile with the earliest dates. I picked up the first of many photographs and gulped as I examined the picture. What was left of the body was mangled. As if someone…had been eating it, ripping pieces of its flesh off, tearing it to bits. The body was lying in a bed. The white sheets were soaked with fresh looking blood.

They were ripped in places, like the person had struggled. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. The body was too destroyed. I thought it was a woman because the hair on the head was long, but everything was too mangled and bloody to tell. The chest was torn to pieces, the ribs were broken, sticking out, the heart was missing, three fingers were gone, the nose was gone, the eyes were lying on the floor. I could hardly bear to look.

Not wanting to look at the pictures anymore, I picked up the journal they’d collected and put in the box. I opened it and flipped to the last entry.

''"11/3/12, 8:50 PM. I don’t know how much longer I can take this. I’m scared all the time. Paranoid. Something’s always watching me, opening my doors and windows whenever I’m asleep. I’m sure I’ve developed insomnia. I just can’t sleep anymore. Oh God, someone help me. I’m going insane. Something’s going to get me, I just know it. Every day it’s the same thing. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. My mom told me to go get help. I don’t want help, I want this THING to leave me alone! Oh God, I shouldn’t have written this. Now I’m just even more scared... I remember growing up I was always scared of what’s under the bed, behind the shower curtain, or waiting in bed next to you, waiting for you to roll over… that heaviness that you feel when you so desperately want to look behind you, but can’t bring yourself to move… None of those were ever as terrifying as this feeling I’m plagued with now… I know I’m going to die. Whoever reads this, you all know what I’m talking about. That overbearing paranoia and fear or your own imagination when you sit in a dark room, all by yourself…"''

The writing was shaky and specks of blood covered the page, like it had opened while she was being murdered. They said they found it on the floor by the bed. I looked through some of the previous entries. A lot of the same. Paranoia, fear. Opening doors and windows. Feelings of being watched. I wondered what this thing was. Seattle is thought of as the hippie coffee drinking and pot smoking city, but considering how relaxed everyone sees us as, there’s a lot of crazy stuff that happens here. Washington is just serial killer central. It at least looked like that was what we had on our hands. Three killings in the same style – bodies torn to shreds… appearing to be eaten. I flipped to the first entry of the journal.

''"11/1/12, 11:36 AM. My window keeps opening. They’re closed when I go to sleep, open when I wake up. Maybe it’s just an animal. A squirrel or something climbing around in the tree outside my window. I think I’ll set up a video camera tonight. Try to catch it. If I didn’t have to wear these stupid earplugs every night I could just wake up when it opens. It has a really bad squeak when you open it. If the baby would just stop crying long enough for me to get to sleep without ear plugs, I could find out what’s making my window open. Those darn neighbors."''

The first entry in the journal was only three days before the last entry. Things escalated quickly after that. All the rest of the entries showed panic and fear. She was terrified after that first night of filming. It was getting hard for me to handle this, even with the canned laughter in the background. I packed up the boxes, being careful not to look at those damn pictures anymore and put the boxes aside. I’d just watch some TV for a while, take my mind off everything.

I woke up the next morning on the couch. My apartment was cold. I stood up from the couch, sore from a night of awkward sleep. I took a shower, got dressed, and left for the office, calling Anna while I drove. She said she’d be a little late, that she just woke up. I stopped at the Starbucks down the street from the office and got us both coffees. We really needed to get through all the contents of the boxes so we could start to think about who this sadistic killer was.

I took the boxes out of my car after I parked and stacked them on top of the trunk. I put the two cups of coffee on top of them and carefully carried them to our office. When I got to the office, it was cold there too. Colder than usual. I turned on the heat and took a sip of my coffee, leaving my suit coat on. Anna arrived ten minutes after I did and gratefully took the coffee.

“So what do we have?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you want to know,” I said, trying to sound light-hearted.

“Oh, please,” she said, chuckling. “We can handle anything.”

I sighed and opened the boxes for her. I pulled out the pictures from the first crime scene and showed them to her. She gasped as she looked at them. I saw tears well up in her eyes as she put her hand to her face and grabbed the photo. I’d shown her the only picture I looked at thoroughly. I could understand her disgust.

“What kind of sick…freak…can do this sort of thing to someone?” she said, more quietly than usual. “This psychotic nut job stole her heart! He tore her to shreds! What…who can do that?”

“I don’t know, Anna. I was wondering those same things last night,” I said. “I only looked at that picture before I couldn’t do it anymore. After that I started reading through the journal the first victim had been keeping.”

I grabbed it out of the box and opened it to the first entry. I read it to her, and the few from the second day where she was starting to panic.

“What do you think? Could it be her ex? Whoever she and her ex are? She talks about something standing outside her window, so maybe he was stalking her.”

“It’s possible,” Anna replied. “But have all three of these victims dated the same man?”

“I don’t know.”

We kept going through the boxes. Hours dragged by all too slowly. We read the journals, all with no clues as to who this murderer was. We looked at the pictures, all so grotesque that we could hardly bare to look through them all. Every picture was of a different limb disconnected from the body and sprawled across the room, or of bits of torn off flesh and spattered blood around the crime scene. The blood and gut filled images were stained into our minds by the time lunch hour came. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat,” I said, almost joking, as we walked out of our office to go get lunch. Anna laughed a little.

“I know what you mean. This is probably the worst case I’ve dealt with.” Over lunch we discussed theories. Who-dun-it type theories. But none of them really made sense. The ex idea could be plausible, but what was the likelihood of two women and 1man in a city as big as Seattle dating the same man? It could just be a serial killer, but why was he targeting these young people? Maybe they knew some of the same people, and one of those people happened to be psychopathic. There were just too many options to narrow it down this early in the investigation.

After the last few hours of work, Anna took one box holding one case home, and I took the other two. I was going to watch the DVDs they’d found on the scene. I got home and made myself some dinner and sat down on the couch. After eating, I popped in the DVD labeled “Night 1” and watched. I fell asleep ten minutes in though. Woke up the next morning, almost late again. I made my way back to the office as fast as I could and told Anna I’d fallen asleep and didn’t manage to get through the whole thing. She said it was okay, that we could watch one or two of them then. We situated ourselves around my computer and put in the first disc.

Nothing much happened, except the near constant cries of a baby. We fast forwarded through the first few hours, but stopped when we saw something strange. Someone – something – crawled up the tree outside her window and sat there, unmoving. All we could see was a black silhouette of a strange figure.

We went to one of the briefing rooms where there was better tape evidence viewing equipment. We hooked everything up and got back to where we were in the tape, and zoomed in as far as we could, but we still couldn’t make the figure out clearly. It appeared to have something on its wrist as it opened the window. We assumed it was man based on how huge the hand was. For the whole video, he sat at the window, staring at the woman. Just staring. It looked like he was mumbling to himself violently. Like he was battling with two voices in his head. Near dawn, he jumped out of the tree he was perched in, startling the woman awake. Anna looked at me in horror when the video ended. I didn’t know what to say so I just nodded at her.

“I’ll take the rest of the tapes and watch them tonight,” I said, sparing her sanity. “Go home. Take a break.” She nodded at me and stood up to leave. I followed her. Even though it was still only lunch hour, I went home, DVDs and soda in hand, to watch the videos before the Christmas party. Definitely not an activity that encouraged holiday spirit, but what could I do.

I walked into my apartment, dropped the DVDs and soda down on the couch and went to make a sandwich. When I came back into the living room area, the window was open. I didn’t remember opening it. I tried to brush it off as nothing, but after watching the DVD of the first night of filming, I was starting to become paranoid. Maybe this thing would come after me, since I was assigned the goal of capturing him. Maybe he didn’t want to be captured and would kill everyone who would try. These thoughts ran through my head and made me more and more paranoid with every second. I shoved them out of my mind and closed the window, making sure to lock it.

I ate my sandwich quickly, gulped down some soda to wake me up, and put on the next DVD. It started off the same, except the woman had left a candle lit by the window. Probably so she could see who was there. It didn’t help me much though. I could make out what looked like bracelets dangling off his wrists, clanking whenever he moved. He pressed his hands and face pressed against the locked window. I couldn’t make out any eyes, hair, or a human face… All I could see was a nose, which looked broken, and a mouth, that looked severely chapped. The whole video progressed the same way the first had.

He stood there till dawn, watching, muttering. I wished I could see what he was. But at the same time, I didn’t. Just from his outline he looked grotesque. The second video ended with the creature leaving just like he had the night before.

I remembered reading that on the third day the woman had called the police. I didn’t remember anyone telling me someone had called, claiming to be being stalked by night or claiming someone was standing outside her windows at night. She also wrote in her journal that she called someone to come stay the night with her. During his interview, we found out he was her cousin. I know he found the body. He woke up to screaming in the middle of the night but claimed he couldn’t open the door in time to save her. He was held as a suspect in custody inside a mental hospital. The incident had caused severe mental damage. He refused to discuss the event and only muttered to himself. He was the second victim this killer had claimed.

I turned on all the lights in my apartment, becoming paranoid myself. Before I watched the next and last DVD, I opened up the woman’s journal again and read through the entries she’d written on her last day.

''"11/3/12. 5:17 PM. I called the police. They won’t help me. They don’t believe me. They think I’m crazy. I tell them someone with something on its wrists and an ugly face keeps opening my windows and trying to open them if they’re locked, but they just don’t care. I called Bill and asked him to stay over tonight."''

I put in the next DVD and prepared for what I was about to see. I don’t think anyone could successfully prepare themselves for that though. What I saw was beyond horrific. It wasn’t grotesque, it wasn’t horrifying, it wasn’t appalling… none of those words would suffice in describing the sights I had to sit through. The DVD started with her locking the windows and closing her curtains. Her cousin walked into the room and reassured her, rubbing her arm. “I’ll be in the next room,” he said to her. The woman nodded and he walked away. She lit two candles and put one next to her bed, and one by the window. We found them on the floor, both labeled “Vanilla Honey Stress Relief Candle.” The woman curled up under her blankets, facing towards the window.

A few hours passed with nothing happened. Even just fast forwarding through the DVD was suspenseful enough to make my heart race. I would fast forward for a few minutes, press play and watch for a few seconds, just in case the murderer came in. I didn’t want to miss it. Even though I did want to… At around 2 AM in the tape, I pushed play and went to the bathroom. As I closed the door, I heard a loud crash and ran back out into the living room, my fists raised. I looked around and saw no broken items. I started to hear loud thumps. I went to my door and looked through the peep hole, but no one was at my door or my neighbors. My heart was pounding even harder than it was. I went back into my living room and the thumping got louder. I looked at my TV screen and the camera was shaking. I knew this was it. I sat on my knees in front of my TV; my palms were sweaty; my hands were shaking; I felt I was going to puke, thinking about how she was about to die and I was the first to witness it.

The door opened slowly, eerily, opposite her bed. The man trudges into the room, dragging his feet. The door swings closed behind him, without him even touching it. He makes his way to the side of the woman’s bed, the side with the candle. The flame flickers as he moves closer and closer to her bed. His steps were loud and slow.

Thump…thump…thump… Finally, he makes it to her bed. He only looks at the camera for a split second before he turns his back and faces the woman. I’m not sure what I saw, but whatever it was it was disgusting. I couldn’t make out any eyes. His spine stuck out of his back, his whole body was naked, he was tall…6’ 5” probably…the bracelets on his wrists were not bracelets at all, but shackles with broken chains. He had them on his ankles too. No one mentioned this was a rape-murder. But with this naked man standing beside a woman’s bed, what else would I think? As he stands there I heard muttering in a low, menacing voice. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He bent over, slowly, eerily, and lifted the woman’s hair, smelling it deeply.

She started to wake up, and rolled over mumbling “Bill? What are you doing?”

When she saw what was waiting for her, she screamed. After less than a few seconds, I heard pounding on the door and Bill yelling, screaming, begging to be let in, asking what was going on. But the door, which wasn’t barricaded, wouldn’t open. The woman starts panicking, struggling to get out from under her blankets and falls to the floor in the process. With speed that I didn’t think this creature or human could possess, he was then on top of the woman, ripping the woman’s fragile body into pieces.

He ripped and tore bits of skin off and threw them around the room. He was laughing, menacingly, getting progressively louder and more joyous as the woman died beneath him. I couldn’t see what was going on, but the sheer horror of the situation made my imagination run wild and made the situation even more terrifying. Soon, the woman stopped struggling.

The creature smiled as he tore her heart out of her broken chest and ate it. I didn’t see him do anything to her fingers, but seven of them were nowhere to be found when the CSI team arrived. The naked creature stood up and walked towards the camera.

I could finally see what this thing was as the candle light shown on his face. He had skin sewn over his eyes and the rest of him too was just bits of various skin sewn together to create a human like figure. His lips were chapped to the point of breaking and his nose was extremely crooked. He was bald. The blood all over his body made him even more nightmarish. He blew out the candle on the nightstand and laughed. Blood spat out of his mouth. He walked to the window and blew out the second candle. Breaking the window, he jumps out. All the while, Bill is screaming.

I sat in silent horror and began to hear thumping again. Terrified, I walked slowly around my house, searching for the source. I found nothing. The last room I checked was my bathroom. I opened my shower curtain and just as I did so, the bathroom light exploded, nearly giving me a heart attack.

“Okay,” I said to myself. “I need a break…just gonna go to the Christmas party now. Take my mind off this…” As I walked out the door, I thought of what this creature would be called. Stitch. Little did I know the horrors that awaited me in the weeks to come.

**Chapter 2:**

I came home from the Christmas party unwillingly. I would’ve stayed at Anna’s, but her parents were in town. My little apartment was not nearly as welcoming as it used to be, in the days before this Stitch creature came around.

I keep thinking I’m hearing thumping, or windows opening, and it’s freaking me out. But I came home anyway. Maybe I just needed a break from the case. Yeah.

For Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I didn’t touch those boxes once. The Boss handed me a couple cases of convenience store robberies that were easier to solve than a game of Clue.

It was a nice distraction from all the gruesome imagery I’d been forced to see those past few days. But unfortunately Wednesday had to come and Anna wanted to work on the case.

“The sooner we start working again, the sooner it’ll be over,” she said trying to convince me to work with her.

I sighed and put the coffee I was drinking down on my desk. Anna had put all the second victim related evidence on a table in a conference room. It was the first victim’s cousin, the man who’d stayed with her the night she was murdered, Bill.

I looked at the pictures of the crime scene first. He’d been killed in his room at the mental hospital we’d been holding him at. The scene was just as bloody as that of his cousin's, if not more. The walls were covered in bloody hand prints and the bars on the windows weren’t bent, meaning Stitch must’ve found another way into the building. There were two beds in the room, one for Bill and one for his roommate; both were messy and blood stained.

The red stood out vividly on the pristine white sheets. When I got to the pictures of his body, there was only half. His legs were lying on the floor, bones sticking out and sitting in a pool of his blood. His white hospital clothing was no longer white, but blood red, like Snow White’s lips.

My hands began shaking as I looked at more and more pictures of his mangled and missing body and the blood soaked room. I felt my heart beating faster, like I was panicking. I didn’t know why though. Why should I panic? Stitch couldn’t find me…

“So what do you think we should do? We don’t really have any leads on who this guy is,” Anna said, bringing me out of my terrified state. I pulled myself together so I wouldn’t scare my partner.

“I don’t know,” I replied. Honestly, I didn’t want to keep working on this case. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t just leave Anna to handle it by herself. I couldn’t convince the Boss to let us do something else. When a case got to us, it was because no one else could handle it and solve it. We were the top… I guess that’s what comes with being the best detectives in the office. Some detective I am though can’t even look at the pictures without shaking. I’ve been having nightmares too…

“I was thinking maybe we could go interview the mental hospital staff who worked with Bill. We should probably go over the security tape footage and journal entries first though. Didn’t they diagnose him as PTSD?” Anna said.

“Yeah. I only took two psychology classes in college, but I remember that with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder a lot of the times therapists will tell their patients to relive the event a lot of times, so it won’t cause them that overbearing stress… So I imagine that’s what his journal will be full of. Just retellings of the story to help ease his anxiety, but I dunno. We probably should look through it,” I said.

I secretly hoped she’d watch the videos on her own and let me deal with the journals. But knowing her, knowing our jobs, that wasn’t likely.

“Do you want to look at videos or journals first?” she asked. I shrugged and took a gulp of my now cold coffee.

“Let’s do this then,” I said.

God damn it, I thought to myself as she put the four discs into four DVD players. They were all different cameras from the same period of time. For a while we just fast forwarded. Bill stayed in his room, writing feverishly, while his fellow hospital patients wandered from room to room to common room. He only left when a nurse came to bring him to his therapy session with the leading psychiatrist of the hospital.

As it started to get dark, the patients made their way to their rooms. Bill's roommate walked into their room. Bill was still writing in his journal with a painful expression on his face. His roommate looked at him concerned. There was no sound, but we saw him say something along the lines of “Are you okay?”

Bill looked over at him and told him to “Shut up before that thing found him too” or something. His roommate looked away and leaned against the wall his bed was against. He played with his thumbs for a while. Meanwhile, the nurses wandered the halls, locking the doors for the night, making sure everything was okay.

After about twenty minutes of that, Bill and his roommate laid down for the night and fell asleep. It was dark and we couldn’t see much. The camera started turning to static and the images on the screens kept becoming distorted. The screens all blacked out and we were waiting for anything to happen. When the image returned, Stitch was standing in the middle of the hallway. He trudged down the hallway, looking through every room’s door window to see if Bill was there. While he systematically wandered the hall, Bill sprang to life and rushed from window to door and back again, looking for what woke him.

Stitch stopped looking for Bill and appeared to sniff the air. He took a couple big sniffs then turned his head. His face was looking towards the camera. You could see his teeth. His mouth wasn’t fully closed. His teeth were vile. Black and yellow and green and every color that teeth shouldn’t be. He opened his mouth and a little bit of blood fell out. He kept moving his head back and forth. As if he was listening for something.

He walked straight to Bill's room with determination in his steps and opened the door without touching it. Bill screamed, waking up his roommate. Bill flipped over on his side springing off of his bed. He grabbed what turned out to be his writing pencil.

The cameras began to turn to static and cut out again. We could see bits and pieces of what was happening – both of the roommates running around, Bill's roommate eventually ran out of the room and Bill had stabbed Stitch in his back.

We’re not sure how, but Bill's hand and the weapon just went straight through, pushing out darkened blood and random chunks onto the floor. It looked like he was struggling to get his arm back. As if his arm got stuck inside Stitch’s body. Stitch grabbed him by the hair and whipped him with his rusty shackles, breaking his skin.

After that, Stitch just stood there. Standing over Bill. Maybe it made him feel powerful? Well, could he even feel emotion? I don’t know. He stood above him while Bill screamed.

I thought Stitch was raising his hand to strike or rip Bill’s flesh, but he didn’t. He rubbed his hands together, and then rubbed from his neck up to his face. And as fast as you could see a light turn on, his hand was on Bill's face. He started rubbing it. Running his hand through his hair.

Stitch started laughing at that point, and blood dripped on Bill's face and clothes. It was then Stitch decided to attack. He tore bits of skin off his poor body and ate them like he’d never eaten before. He broke his body in half, just tore it in half, with inhuman strength. The blood started to really pour then.

As all of Bill's blood and guts spilled onto the floor, Stitch squatted down and started running his fingers along the edge of Bill's skin where he ripped him in half. Stitch began eating his insides all the while it appeared he was laughing - just as he did in the first murder.

Stitch stood up and, well, just stood there. He stood there facing the corner until the morning sun started to peak in through the bars on the windows. He was mumbling to himself but since there was no audio in the security cameras, we couldn’t make out what he was saying without bringing in someone who could read lips.

I didn’t hear Anna making any sounds. I wondered if I was the only one having a hard time with this case. I looked over and she was crying silently. I moved my chair and put my arm around her and rubbed her shoulder while we watched. I tried to hold myself together for her. The door to the conference room slammed open, nearly giving both of us heart attacks.

“Johnson, Reynolds. Have an intern,” the Boss said, pushing a young man into the room. He left as soon as he’d come. We stood up. Anna wiped her eyes hastily and paused the videos.

“I’m Anna,” she said. “This is Ryan. I’m sorry you had to come at this time. We’re working on a pretty nasty case.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s bound to happen eventually, so I may as well get myself acquainted with murder. I’m John Freeman.” He held his hand out to us and shook both our hands.

“I think we’ve looked at enough evidence for now, Anna. Want to go to the mental hospital now?” I said.

“Sure,” Anna said. We headed out the door, with our new intern at our heels. With his slightly unkempt blond hair and puppy-like blue eyes, he reminded me of a golden retriever. I felt bad ruining his innocence with this horrifying case. But that’s just what happens when you get involved with police work…

We made our way to West Seattle Psychiatric Hospital. It looked less welcoming than a medical hospital, just because of what lied within its walls. John looked at it with hesitation. I pushed him forward. If he wanted to be a cop, he’d have to learn to deal with situations he didn’t want to be in.

And this case was about as bad as it gets, so if he could handle this, he could handle anything. We went into the building and found the nurses who were involved with Bill and his treatment. They wore white uniforms, like you saw in the movies and were as kind as you would expect nurses to be.

“Hi, Miss, I’m Ryan Johnson, this is my partner Anna Reynolds and our intern John Freeman. We’re working on Bill and his cousin’s case. We just have a few questions.”

“Of course,” the first nurse said, nodding with a smile.

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary with Bill's behavior before the attack? In the videos we saw him panicking moments before the killer came, but not before then. We don’t know what was normal or abnormal in his condition,” Anna asked.

“Well, he was always very agitated, always writing in his journal. The Doctor told him to write his story down at least once a day, but he did it almost constantly. We think maybe he was desperate to get better. Or get out. He kept saying he needed to keep moving or else ‘that thing’ as he called it would find him,” the second nurse said. Anna wrote some notes down.

“But you didn’t notice anything abnormal?” I asked again.

“No, sir, nothing. Just his usual behavior.”

“Did you see anyone lurking around the building at all? Like before the attack or in the days preceding it?” I asked.

“No, sir. Or if the killer was here he was very good at hiding,” the first nurse said.

“Did you see which way the killer went after the attack?” I asked. The nurses both became quiet and turned a little pale.

“No, sir,” the first nurse said quietly. “We saw him throw part of Bill out the window and follow, but we didn’t see which way he went once he was on the ground outside.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said, even though they really hadn’t given us anything useful. They nodded.

“Of course, any time,” the second nurse said. They turned around and continued with their work. We left in silence. Once we got into the car, I was irritated. How were we ever going to find this guy and put him behind bars (if that would even help…) if we couldn’t find a single lead?

“This is just great,” Anna said, sounding equally as frustrated. She sighed loudly.

“Let’s just work on this some more tomorrow,” I said. We drove back to the station. I got into my own car and drove back to my apartment reluctantly. Weird things had been happening ever since I first opened the boxes to this case. I kept hearing thumping at night and creaking like my windows were opening.

But I wasn’t sure if I was just hearing things or not. I could never find the sources of the sounds. I opened my apartment door half expecting Stitch to be waiting for me. I’d been becoming paranoid, scared. Just fact that I was becoming paranoid and scared was scaring me.

I walked into my apartment, finding no one inside. It was colder than I expected it to be. I wandered through all the rooms, only to find what I hoped I wouldn’t. My bedroom window was opened. I swear I locked it before I left. My hands shook as I closed it and my heart started to race.

The panic was setting in again. I turned on all the lights in my apartment on my way to the kitchen to make some comfort food. I made a giant sandwich, grabbed a can of soda and some chips, and walked into the living room. Desperate to take my mind of that god awful case, I turned on the TV and put on a funny movie – Anchorman to be exact. I always loved Will Ferrell.

I ate my food and soon my mind was far from the case. Until I heard the thumping. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. It rang in my ears, echoed in my mind, until I couldn’t take it. I ran to my bedroom and grabbed the ear plugs out of my bed side table. I shoved them into my ears to stop that thumping.

My window was open again. I still heard the thumping. That god damn thumping. My heart was racing, my palms were sweating, and my hands were shaking so hard I could barely grab the phone. I dialed Anna’s number as quickly as I could.

“He-” she started.

“Anna! Can I stay over tonight?” I asked, cutting her off.

“Sure, what’s wrong, Ryan?” she asked.

“Please don’t tell me I’m not the only one having problems with this case,” I said, nearly begging.

“Are you freaking out too? I swear, I keep closing my windows, but they’re always open…” she said, trailing off.

“I’ll be over in ten minutes.” I hung up the phone and packed a bag as quickly as I could.

We both actually got sleep that night. We drove to work in our separate cars in case I decided to sleep at my own house that night. Neither of us wanted to dive back into the case, but instead of Anna making me, it was John making us.

He reiterated almost exactly what Anna had said. “Come on, guys, the sooner we start working the sooner it’ll be over!” He was annoyingly chipper all the time. But I was friendly, so was Anna.

He put the tapes back in and pushed play. They started where we’d left off. John looked at them intently, taking notes about all the gruesome things Stitch was doing. I could hardly watch.

Stitch picked up Bill's upper half like a bowling ball, sticking his fingers in Bill's eyes and mouth. His hand was still embedded in Stitch’s disgusting naked body as he dragged him out into the hall. A trail of blood followed the poor dead man’s body.

When Stitch reached the window, he tore Bill's arm off and threw the rest of his body out the broken window. From the other angle, we could see Bill's roommate still cowering in horror. Stitch ignored him and tore the arm from his chest. Dark goo-like blood came out with the arm, leaving a gaping hole where there should be something…anything… He didn’t even seem to care.

He put Bill's hand in his repulsive mouth and ate three of his fingers. I imagined the sound of crunching bones and shuddered. He smiles at the camera as he eats Bill's remains.

His teeth were rotten, his lips were still bleeding, his eyes still covered in sewn on flesh… The video cut out again and when the image returned, Stitch was gone and Bill's arm was on the floor. His roommate was crying. I looked at Anna who looked back at me.

“Maybe you should just live with me for a while. I’m too scared to live alone,” she said quietly. I was glad to know I wasn’t the only one scared out of my wits. Maybe the two of us together would be enough to keep Stitch away. We’d start looking at victim number three soon. After we’d had some time to regain our sanity.

**Chapter 3:**

“The third victim was a paranormal type. You know, the sort of person who decided to make her own ghost hunting team after watching any of those shows out now,” Anna said as we walked into the office.

She hadn’t been able to sleep last night so I guess she’d started going through victim threes files.

“So what’s your point?” I asked. Sleeping on her couch every night was making me cranky but thankfully all the weird things had all but stopped happening and the paranoia and fear was dying down too. I could probably move back into my place soon.

“So, I don’t know. Hey, where’s John?” We walked into our office, boxes and coffee in hand. We sat down at our desks and sipped our coffee for a few minutes before diving into this God awful case once more. Before we could get too into our missing intern, one of the forensic scientists came into the room with an envelope.

“Here’s the DNA sample back, guys,” he said. We’d sent him the sample when we were working on the first victim. The CSI team grabbed blood samples from the candles he’d blown out in the first murder.

“And? Get a match?” I asked.

“Not even close. It’s not even human. I did every test I could think of a million times. It’s just not human. Humans have 46 chromosomes, right; this had 58. I have no idea what it could be.” Anna and I looked at each other.

“Weird,” she said. “Thanks Max.” He put the envelope with the DNA test results on my desk and left.

“Anyways,” I said. “I don’t know. I think someone said he called in sick or something. John did look a little under the weather yesterday.” Anna nodded in agreement.

“Hopefully he gets back soon,” she said.

Anna and I went back to the pictures of the third crime scene. It was all the same. Blood, guts, unbelievable gore. I still was not used to it though. It was all more grotesque and inhumane than I thought even possible. I got to a picture of her head. There was a slim white stick-looking item sticking out of her skull. Her hair had dried blood all over it and her eyes sat there open and unseeing, well, one of them at least, like that of a porcelain doll watching you as you sleep. From her mouth, blood ran down her cheek onto the ground. Her head sat in a pool of her own blood. But the bone-appearing item stuck into her head was pristine. A pure unsettling white. I showed it to Anna.

“I think that’s in the box,” she said, pointing to the stick.

“Forensics determined it to be a bone.” I shuddered.

Anna dug through the box and took the bone out. I took the bag from her and looked at it. Forensics is always careful to not disturb the way the evidence was found. And even with that care, it was disturbingly white.

“Let’s just watch the video and get it over with,” I said.

“It can’t be that bad,” Anna said. “We’ve seen two of the most brutal and horrifying murders already and this victim has most of her body parts still intact, unlike the first two”.

“I guess so. I just don’t want to have to look at pictures of dead people anymore. I’ve had enough for one year,” I said, exhausted.

Before she pushed play on the video player, we just sat there. I guess we were preparing ourselves for it, even if we’d already seen it all.

It was then our boss came in, urging us to finish this case. We sucked up and got him out of the room. Anna pushed play.

The video started off in what looks like a bedroom. The camera was handheld. The victim sounded excited. She had a chipper light voice and the camera was moving around rapidly. We heard a bunch of clicks and snaps and sounds of clothes rustling. We figured she was getting something together or putting something on. All of a sudden the camera swung up and we could see her hands grabbing different electronic devices.

''“Ok! I’m all set up. I have my camera on my shoulder mount; I have my EVP recorder, my infrared scanner and many other pieces of equipment for my line of work,” she said while looking into a smaller camera. We would watch that tape but this was the only tape in the evidence box.

“It is 9:14 pm here in Seattle, Washington. This is an unofficial SPA investigation. I say unofficial because nobody else in my team is here and I am off the clock. I am in my house all by myself with my little corgi puppy Samson.”

She was still getting herself ready and giving us other useless information about her house and her equipment she was using. SPA stood for “Seattle Paranormal Association” and it turns out she was the cofounder of it. We decided to fast forward a little bit until we saw her go to the door of her bedroom and open it.

''“Okay all you ghost hunt fans out there, just a few minutes ago, I was hearing strange thumps and what sounded like someone talking. I could hear the voice, but I just couldn’t make out what the person or thing was saying. I hope to capture something on my equipment and share it with you guys.”''

She walked down the hall until she came to her living room. Right upon entering the living room, to her right was a recliner chair and straight ahead was a couch. She stopped in her tracks.

''“It just got really cold. Perhaps this is a good place to do an EVP recording. I’ll just take a walk around the rest of my house first so I know where to go after this, unless this is the only cold room.”''

She walked throughout her house. Only the living room seemed cold to her. She also mentioned that the living room was where the thumps sounded like they were coming from.

''“I checked the rest of the house and it all checked out fine.”'' she said. ''“Whoa… what is that? My window curtain just moved.”'' She walked over the window and used some weird device towards it. Turns out it was some sort of EMF detector. It has something to do with shifts in the magnetic fields. A shift is supposed to mean there’s a paranormal presence nearby. She moved the curtains. All three of her windows were open.

''“Okay? I didn’t leave any of these open earlier,”'' she proclaimed. ''“Weird.”''

She shut them and turned off the light to her patio. She started walking towards the hallway, but just as she reached the hall, there was a very loud crash coming from behind her near the kitchen. She turned around and just stood there. She then pulled out a flash light and shined it across the room.

''“Damn it! That was the plate my mother got me for Christmas. I am now going to pull out my EVP recorder and see if we can get anything on tape.”''

The little device started to beep loudly. Like something was there. She pointed her camera in all different directions and started to breath heavier.

''“It just got colder. Even colder than before. I’m going to do an EVP now.”'' She takes out another device and sits down on the ground.

''“Is anybody there?”'' it was quiet for a couple minutes.

''“Are there any spirits here who want to make contact?”'' she said louder.

'''''“No,”''''' a voice replied.

''“No?”'' she replied.

''“My arm itches. It just started getting all tingly with a slight burning feeling,”'' she said, directing it towards the camera, most likely for her viewers.

''“Did someone just touch my arm?”'' she asked.

'''''“I’m very pleased you can feel that,”''''' a booming menacing voice said from somewhere in the room.

The victim turned around as fast as she could. The room was dark, adding to the spooky effect for her ghost hunt archives so we could barely make out what was talking. But Anna and I both knew exactly who was there. The odd thing was… we were not listening to the EVP recording while watching this video. We could hear Stitch talk through the video camera. At least now we know more about this thing. We now know he is very real. Not a ghost or demon or anything else supernatural.

''“Were you the entity that opened my windows and made the thumping sounds?”'' she asked in a worried voice.

'''''“That itch that you feel… It’s rather interesting you would feel an itch,”''''' Stitch said.

''“Why?”'' she asked.

'''''“That is the part of your body I was looking at. I wish to eat it.”'''''

And all of a sudden, as loud as I have ever heard someone yell in my life, loud enough to knock the victim back on her heels, Stitch said, '''''“And I intend to.”'''''

''“Who are you?”'' the woman asked, her voice shaking.

'''''“I am known as Beul in the Netherlands. Carnifex in Latin. Pyöveli in Finland. Bøddel in Norway. I have many names. I have killed many people. At least ten per country. You will be my third here. I am your worst nightmare. I would run.”'''''

As he was talking, the woman took something out of her pocket. It was later found to be holy water. She opened the bottle slowly and tossed some of it in the direction of Stitch. Stitch laughed. The woman got up off the ground, turned the light on and started backing up to the front door. We saw that the holy water had melted some of Stitch’s skin into the shape of a cross. It was burned into his skin, like he’d been freshly branded. It was red like you’d expect a burn to be, and crusting. Other than the melting flesh, it didn’t seem to affect him.

While the woman was backing away, we saw Stitch swinging his chains at her. They wrapped around her arm and tore into her skin. The crunching sound was disgusting as her arm was torn out of her socket and the skin was torn off. The camera landed on the ground. We heard chains clanging and the woman screaming and then we saw her. Her arm was gone.

Blood was pouring everywhere and we could see her shoulder blade sticking out of her broken bloody flesh. The woman screamed and screamed while Stitch laughed and laughed, getting slowly louder like he always did.

While she was lying on the ground, Stitch towered over her. She tried to crawl away but grabbed a piece of the previously broken dish and tried to use it as a weapon. She stabbed it into the first place she could get it, his arm. But it just went through him. Chunks of blood and guts came out the other side of his arm, dripping and plopping onto the ground. it was gorier than I thought possible. His blood was dark and crusty. Rotten. As it oozed out of his arm, he laughed. He got some of the blood on his fingers, with those awful dirty nails, and shoved the blood into the woman’s mouth.

'''''“You cannot hurt me,”''''' he chuckled.

As if to prove his invincibility, he shoved his hand into his chest and ripped out one of his ribs. The bone we’d found in the evidence box we assumed. The woman screamed in terror.

''“Why are you haunting me?”'' she said.

'''''“I'm not haunting you. I'm going to kill you. Chew you to bits and use your flesh to complete mine,”''''' Stitch responded.

''“Are you a ghost or a demon?”'' she said. Her voice was shaking.

'''''“No. I am real. I am the one who makes people scared,”''''' Stitch started to say. '''''“I don’t hide under beds or in closets. I watch you. I like to see my victim’s faces while I study them.”''''' He paused and looked at her. He smiled. '''''“You’re scared. I can smell it. I can taste it so clearly."''''' He stroked the spot her arm used to be and licked the blood off his fingers.

She tried to escape again but Stitch shoved his fingers into her eyes and held her head like a bowling ball. She kept screaming. Stitch laughed louder than she screamed. He took his fingers out of her eye sockets and took his torn out rib and stabbed it into her skull. Her head fell to the ground. Adding insult to injury, Stitch shoved his hand into her chest now and ripped her heart out and ate it. Then he stood up and grabbed her torn off arm. He sticks her fingers into his mouth and bites them off.

The sound of bones crunching rang through our ears. I could hear Anna shuddering next to me. But Stitch wasn’t done. He took the fingers out of his mouth and stuck them into the woman’s mouth. He left, leaving the woman on the floor. Her head was rolled to the side and what was left of her eyes drooped to the ground. There was blood everywhere soaking into her carpet, drying into her hair and onto her skin. Her fingers were sticking out her mouth. Her nails were broken from the struggle.

I looked over at Anna. She looked like she had been crying. She acted like she could handle all this, but I didn’t think she could.

“I’m going home,” she said. She stood up and left the room quickly.

I couldn’t blame her. If I could escape this case, I would.

“I guess I will too,” I said. I thought she needed some time alone, so I decided to go back to my house. Before I could leave though, John ran into the office, disheveled.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said.

“Late?” I said. “It’s three o’ clock, John. You may as well have just not come in.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But I found something and I thought you should know. Where’s Anna?” He was talking quickly like he was panicking.

“She went home early. Well? Spit it out, kid,” I said. I didn’t really want to hear what he was about to say. But the information could help us stop this guy, so I listened.

“He’s killed more than just three people. He’s killed like…a hundred…at least. Probably more. He’s known all over the world. Like in old folk lore. You know how Hansel and Gretel is supposed to scare children into being good? I think that’s what Stitch was supposed to be. He’s got different names all over the place, but they all translate to Executioner. Beul means butcher in Dutch, but same difference.

“I thought this guy sounded familiar. In college I took a class in mythology and folklore and we talked about this guy,” he said. He kept moving his hands all over the place and could hardly stand still in the doorway of my office. He’d graduated top of his class at Harvard. I figured I could trust the things he was saying. I took feverish notes so I could call Anna later and tell her everything.

“I don’t know if this is something we can stop, Ryan,” John said distraught.

“Why?” I asked.

“He’s been at this for who knows how many years. If they have stories about him all over the world, and he’s killed all over the world, what makes you think we can stop him?”

“We have to try,” I said. “It’s our job as detectives. We have to stop him from killing anymore people. I don’t give a damn if he’s been at this for however many years; his reign ends now,” I said.

“Okay,” John said. He took the beanie he was wearing off his head and twisted it in his hands. “How, though?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to stay over at my place tonight? Maybe we could try to bait him somehow. There’s got to be something we can do,” I said.

John sat down next to me and we started researching more. I tried calling Anna while he worked but she didn’t answer. She didn’t come to work the next day either.

**Chapter 4:**

John came over to my place after work. We decided to do a little investigation or experiment, if you will, alone in my apartment, and a little research. If we could even find anything about this thing.

We left the office around 5 pm and met up around 8. We just hung out for a couple hours, playing video games, making some food, talking about the zombie apocalypse and what we would do to survive. Just guy stuff. It was a nice break from the case.

We started doing research around 11 and ended up in the deep end of the internet. Places I've never been to, but in the back of my mind I knew existed.

You know those sites. Everybody has that wonder of how deep and twisted the internet is. Well most of those ideas you all think of, are true.

But I'm not going to give any website addresses, so don't ask.

We stumbled upon this one website... it was all black with pictures of rotting skulls everywhere, and the main picture in the middle of the website was just a picture of a goat head, decapitated and rotting in front of a pentagram.

That site had a couple of interesting things about something that seemed to match Stitch, for the most part. They had the stitched skin, chains, naked. But on the website, they talked about it having eyes and then losing them. It didn't say how he lost them, but a few commenters on the articles were all furiously talking... a lot of capitalized letters and exclamation marks.

There were some comments in Norwegian, some in German and very few in English. It seemed like it was all the English speaking commenters who were asking how he lost his eyes.

There was only one response. A really long comment, sometimes repeating sentences, in some language we didn't quite know.

There was a commenter on the article we posted on reddit named "RepetitiveRoutine". He mentioned using Google Translate to figure out what Stitch called himself... or claimed he was called, rather. He was a nice guy. We got in contact with him right away and thanked him for showing interest in the case. He offered his assistance and we let him help. We plan on video chatting soon.

Anyways, the comment was in a very old language. One you never hear anymore, but it does still exist. It was in Aramaic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was the language Jesus Christ himself spoke; that old of a language. Not just old, but ancient.

We got in contact with a world language expert that I knew from college who now works for the military.

We asked him what the commenter was saying, but he couldn't make out that many words. He said it's much older than we thought. He made out something about the thing enjoying self mutilation. He would poke his eyes with his fingers over and over again. He would pull on his eye lids in all directions.

Peel his skin off with a knife. Shave his head with a razor, leaving scars and gashes all over his bald head. Like he was some kind of masochist. It also talked about the thing cutting the skin to his knees off and hitting the kneecaps with a hammer. That was all he could get out of it.

Other comments in German talked about him getting sexual pleasure from harming himself and others, ultimately leading to the death of his poor victims. He enjoyed taking their body parts and making disfigured bodies out of them. He would claim to be married to them.

Other people from Norway would claim he would give the body parts to Satan himself for his godly powers.

We had enough with that site though. We went on to try to figure out if there were any survivors. There weren't any. Although, some commenters speaking in Chinese would explain how he would chain the soul of his latest victim to himself and walk them to the Gates of Hell personally. So once you were his victim... you were his victim forever.

But what I want to know is how all these people came to learn this about Stitch and we weren't able to learn anything. Were we not trying hard enough? Were we not religious enough? I have no idea.

The last commenter mentioned how this thing; apparently it was a man once and died. After all of his monstrous acts, whatever the truth about his wrong doings may be, the civilization he lived in murdered him. He mentioned how he was torn apart by horses... A rope tied to each of his limbs was attached to a horse and they ran off in different directions, tearing him to pieces. After the horses pulled him apart, the people let the dogs go at him. They tore him to even more pieces. They left the body there to rot. They came back a week later and the body was gone. Not even a blood trail to follow.

That night, as everybody was laying down to sleep, they heard crying. Animals crying. They found their dogs with their stomachs ripped open, some of the animals ripped in half.

We are not positive, but we are assuming that is how Stitch got his skin back after being eaten by the dogs. The commenter did not say.

John and I got curious about all these people and their information. We tried tracking them down through their internet providers and IP addresses but nothing came up. Not a country... city... zip code... home address.... Nothing. It struck us as odd.

So that is all we learned about Stitch. I honestly don't want to know anymore. But for some strange reason, I feel like we’re much closer to capturing him now.

We got connected to the video chat with the commenter from reddit and started telling him all that we learned and he seemed really interested. Like none of it bothered him. At least we had someone new to help us. It would also help us get through it faster with his motivation. And a new eye on the case is always good. Like they say, two heads is better than one. So four was probably better than the three we had.

After a while discussing Stitch and all we learned, we decided to see how to get him to show himself. We absolutely needed to figure out how Stitch chose his victims. If we could bait him into coming to us, we could catch him and put an end to all this terror.

I asked the commenter to scare himself. Told him to get scared. Considering Stitch mentioned he could smell the last victim’s fear.

It took a long time, but he was finally scared. He said after a while he started hearing thumps and whispers. We knew Stitch was close.

“Turn off every light in your house, except the light closest to the window in the back of your house and the window in the front,” I told him. Then I asked him to stand in front of each window looking out for at least 2 minutes, in case Stitch was around. He would see he is home.

After the four or five minutes, he came back to his computer and asked for further directions. He mentioned his front window was open before he got to it.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. John told him to make sure there was nothing on that can possibly create any sound. It needs to be completely silent.

The commenter sat there, waiting. We all sat in the silent dark just listening. Staring into each other’s homes.

Then we heard thumping. He said it was coming from his hallway. We told him to get in either his closet or under the bed or something. Go anywhere, just hide.

“Take a camera with you in case Stitch comes in. You can take video or pictures of him,” I urged. Right before he went to hide I told him to stop being afraid. “Don't be scared. That will just make things worse. Stop being afraid. I promise he is not real. We're going to figure this out.”

He went and hid in his closet. It was silent, deathly so. We couldn't see anything. We just sat there looking into his room.

My heart was pounding out of my chest and I felt sick. I was on the edge of my seat. John and I both were.

It was like we were watching one of those internet jokes where you watch and wait for the paranormal activity to start, but a face just pops up and screams at you.

We started to hear thumping. It got louder and louder and so did the voice. As usual it was talking to itself.

The bedroom door opened. Stitch walked in and just stood in the middle of the room. Stood there for about 20 minutes. Just stood there. Then for no reason at all, he just started laughing. Louder and louder. While he laughed maniacally some sort of liquid spat out of his mouth. We assumed it was blood.

As the laughing got louder and louder... it happened. The damn kid screamed. He started screaming how he was so scared and didn't want to do it.

“Kid, shut the fuck up! Don't be scared! He can't hurt you!” I screamed back at him.

Stitch turned his head and looked directly into the webcam. My heart sunk into my chest. It hurt. The commenter screamed again. Stitch turned his head as fast as lightning and looked at the closet. John screamed telling him to keep hiding and Stitch turned his head back to the webcam.

The commenter screamed saying he was going to run. Stitch turned his back to the closet. All this time, Stitch was smiling. John yelled for him to run. Stitch turned his head to the webcam. Just as he did, the commenter opened the closet door and took two steps. But he didn’t get any farther.

Stitch stretched his arm out and grabbed the commenter by the neck without even looking at him. He was still looking at us. I was breathing so fast I was getting light headed.

“Is this some kind of game?” Stitch asked, followed by laughter. “You were trying to trick me? How did you think you would catch me? You are no match for me. Now because of you, I will take this boy’s soul and strike him with my chains for all of eternity. I will feed him to my dogs and bring him back and do it again. And I have you to thank.” Stitch yelled. His voice made my skin crawl. I could hardly believe what we were seeing.

He stepped towards the camera and tilted his head forward. “Do you have any more unfortunate souls you would like to have play this pathetic game? Hiding in closets or under beds does not make you safe from me. I can smell your fear right now. I can taste it,” he said while rubbing his disgusting bloody fingers on his tongue.

“I want to feel your heart beating,” he yelled.

Stitch then did the unthinkable. He reached his hand towards us... it came straight through my monitor. I slammed my laptop closed and all I could hear was his laugh, echoing in my head.

That's it... I... don't know what to do anymore. I want to leave. Forever. Move out of the country and live in the woods somewhere.

To the parents of RepetitiveRoutine, I am so sorry. I should have known what was going to happen. I don't know what to say.

And as for all you other readers... please do not do what we had RepetitiveRoutine do. Stitch will enjoy it and it will just make him stronger. It is not a game. It is death.

**Chapter 5:**

I just woke up and thought I should write this down before I forget. I haven’t been sleeping that much lately, which is why I am just now waking up. The paranoia and fear is just getting worse as the case goes on. I had this really weird dream. I was in a field. Just a field like you would normally think of when you think about fields. Trees everywhere with shrubs at their bases. There were some deer off in the distance and I could hear birds chirping. The sun was shining. As I stood there thinking about how this would be a good place to come and think. I started thinking about my childhood. I used to come to a field just like this and play with my dogs. They loved to play fetch in the grass. When it was really tall they loved to sneak up on me or leap over the grass like gazelles.

I thought it was a dream about that. But as soon as the sun vanished and the clouds covered the air, I knew this was no dream – but a nightmare – and not one that was about my dog filled childhood.

When the clouds covered the sky, the plants all died. The trees lost their leaves, the grass turned brown, the flowers wilted where they stood. The deer dropped dead and the birds fell from the sky. There was a smell in the air that I can’t even begin to describe; it was so disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Like rotten flesh and rotten eggs and rotten milk all combined together. I watched as all the deer dropped to the ground and I ran to them thinking there could be a way for me to help. But when I got there, there was nothing I could do. Their flesh was already rotting and parasites had already come to eat the meat off their bones.

Suddenly, I heard a loud, low groaning sound. It was coming from all around me. It sounded like it was coming from the trees. I couldn’t escape it by running. It just got louder and louder the longer I was in that field. I saw some concrete stairs going into the ground. I watched myself run. It kept switching from first person view to third person. It was really disorienting. I kept going towards the stairs and then hurried down them. At the bottom of the stairs there was a beat up wooden door. Something told me I shouldn’t open the door, no matter how badly I wanted to escape that groaning sound. That I should force myself to wake up and just keep going on with my life, without opening that door. But of course, like in all nightmares and typical Hollywood teen screams, your gut is ignored.

I opened the door. It creaked and it felt like it was going to fall off its hinges. There were scratches all over the back side of the door. Like someone had been trying to escape. It was cold as I entered the hallway the door lead to. Ice cold. I shivered. I didn’t know if I was shivering from fear or from the cold. Either one was entirely plausible. I closed the door behind me and the groaning stopped instantly.

It was pitch black dark, but I walked down the hall anyways. I tried to move quickly, but my feet felt like they were made of lead. It felt like each step took five minutes. It was driving me crazy. I put my hands on the walls to guide me. I felt inscriptions on the wall, but I couldn’t tell what they said. I patted my pockets to see if my cell phone was there. It was, so I pulled it out of my pocket and when I went to open it to shine light on the wall, it shocked me and I dropped it. I winced and shook my hand to get the pain to stop. I went to pick it up off the ground, but it turned to dust as my hand touched it.

The dust was unusually warm and more ashy than grainy. I stumbled forward, keeping my hands on the walls to guide me. I felt more inscriptions, but I wouldn’t find out till later what they were. I felt a corner and slid my hands onto the cold wall in front of me. As I felt it, trying to find an escape, I felt a handle. I put my hand on it, tried to push or pull the door open. It wouldn’t budge. So I tried sliding it open. And that worked. It slid open with a loud bang.

I walked into the room and slid the door closed behind me. The lighting was like a doctor’s office. The kind of light that washes out your skin and makes it look blue. I always hated that light. The room looked like the morgue in the hospitals. In the middle of the room there was a metal table, shiny and eerily clean. Like it had never been used. Along the walls there were drawers you put dead bodies in. The room smelled strongly of sulfur. Next to the table there was a little cart with various surgery tools on it. I walked towards it carefully. Every step I took was deafening. I got to the table and picked up the first tool I saw, a Stryker saw. My dad was a coroner so he would always talk about that stuff over dinner, which I really didn’t appreciate. The only time I put up with it was when I was doing an internship for him when I was trying to decide what part of the police world I wanted to join.

I started thinking about how I had to watch him use various saws to cut ribs open to get to the heart. I remembered the blood everywhere and dropped the saw on the ground, forgetting I was holding it. It hit the leg of the cart and all the tools fell onto the ground. The metal clanked against the tiles on the ground. The sound was just as deafening as my footsteps had been. When the sound stopped, I started to look around the rest of the room. It was back in third person. I watched myself wander around the room. My other self looked into the file drawers that weren’t full of bodies. He pulled out some papers and looked at them. All the files were in a different language, but neither me nor the other me could tell which language it was. I watched myself find a single paper in English, talking about the Lake Bodom murders. I remember Googling the case a couple years ago out of curiosity because one of my favorite bands was named after them. No one ever found out who committed them. Maybe Stitch was behind those attacks too... Then suddenly I was back in first person.

As soon as I oriented myself, I started hearing banging and moaning. I looked around the room and saw the body drawers shaking. I heard people pleading to be let out, moaning and groaning, begging. I started panicking and ran to the corner. I sat on the ground and covered my ears and closed my eyes, hoping against all hope that the sound would stop. And it did. It wasn’t a good quiet though. It was a scary quiet. Eerie. The quiet went on for what felt like forever until the loud groaning sound from the field started again. I walked to the sliding door trying to find a way to escape it again. I opened the door but couldn’t see anything. My eyes were still adjusting to the darkness in the hall. Once they did, I saw Stitch standing at the end of the hallway. You could only see one of his arms. He took a step forward and then I could see him holding his chains behind his back.

'''''“Are you trying to hide?”''''' Stitch said.

“Where am I?” I asked.

'''''“We are inside your memories,”''''' he replied.

“Why?” I asked.

'''''“I want to ruin your best memories. I feed off fear and anger. I killed the animals and turned the sky gray. Now look behind you and feel more fear,”''''' Stitch said.

All of a sudden there was the stench of rotten flesh and blood in the air. I turned around slowly. As I turned around I slipped and hit my head on one of the counters. I put my hand on my head to ease the pain and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I looked at my hands and they were covered in blood. I looked around the rest of the room and the floor was flooded with blood. Papers covered the floor. I looked at the body drawers and saw all of them were open. The dead bodies inside them were sitting up on their metal beds, smiling, with dead eyes and pale skin. One had a gunshot wound on his head with crusted blood around the edges. Another had his throat slit. Another was severely burned; his skin was blackened. Their smiles were still and frozen. Like mannequins. I turned back to look at Stitch again. His arm was still bent back.

'''''“Meet my latest victim. Courtesy of you.” '''''

He grabbed his chains with both of his hands. He jerked someone roughly. As the mystery person went flying through the air, Stitch jerks him back by the neck even more roughly than before. It yelped and cried in pain. He landed right in front of Stitch. There was a chain around his neck. It could’ve come off, but there were spikes driven into his neck, keeping them in place. The holes in his neck kept oozing blood. His legs were broken off at the knee. His femur was sticking out. The skin and muscle were all torn, still bleeding. From his bottom lip to half way down his neck, the skin was gone. The muscle was disturbingly red, bloody… it made me want to puke. It seemed like every pore in his body was blood oozing out of it. He was so beat up. Some of his teeth were missing. His hair was torn out in chunks. His arms and chest had gruesome scratches all over them. His eye lids were missing. His eyes were dried and shriveled. There were chunks of his face missing, along with the rest of his body.

''“You know who I am,”'' Stitch’s victim said.

“No I don’t,” I said quietly, scared.

''“Yes you do. You watched me get taken away.”''

''“RepetitiveRoutine,''” he said.

Then it hit me. I recognized his short dark brown hair with its slight curl. I felt a fit of tears coming and held them back. Suddenly, RepetitiveRoutine came loose and started bounding towards me. He ran on his fists, like an ape. While he ran, he screamed blood curdling screams. Terrified, I stumbled back and ran as fast as I could to the corner of the morgue-like room. I slammed the door and as soon as the sound rang through my ears I woke up. Or at least I thought I did.

''“You need to wake up, Ryan. It’s time to have breakfast,”'' a voice said.

I found myself in my childhood bedroom, cuddled up in my Scooby Doo sheets. I rolled over and saw my mom watching me. Before I could answer her, Stitch came up behind her. He loomed over her. He was wearing a blue button up shirt with slacks. He put his hand on her shoulder. She put hers over his. “Hey, honey. I’m just trying to wake up Ryan,” she said.

'''''“Wake up, son,”''''' Stitch said.

Stitch was playing the part of my dad. But my mom couldn’t even tell that my dad wasn’t there. She couldn’t tell what was coming for her. Naked again, Stitch tore her skin off in one piece and danced with it, laughing. I was left frozen in terror. And even with her skin missing, my mom stood there smiling. After a little bit of dancing, he tore her skin in half. The back of her landed on the floor and he held up the front in front of him. He put his eyes where hers should be, wore her like a mask.

'''''“Good morning, baby,”''''' he said, mocking my mother’s voice.

He stuck his tongue through her lips and wiggled it around at me like a child, and started laughing again, even louder. All the while, my mother was standing there, all meat, just looking at me. Stitch dropped the rest of her skin on the ground and grabbed her veins from her ankles and wrists. He wrapped them together and swung her around, her feet touching her hands. As he swung her around, her blood splattered all over the room. It flew onto my face and I nearly threw up. I tried to get up off my bed and run away, but before I could reach the door, Stitch pushed me against the window. A piece of broken glass cut my back, leaving a huge scratch. I woke up for real then, drenched in sweat.

I went to the bathroom before I started writing this. There’s a scratch on my back… I’m going to go to the hospital now and get this checked out. I just thought of this… My dad’s still alive. Why was Stitch pretending to be him in my dream if he’s still here? Maybe I should go stay with him for a while…

I know you guys have been wondering about Anna too. I still haven't heard from her. It's been a while now, a week and a half... I'm starting to get worried. She won't answer her phone, her emails. There isn't even anyone there when I go knock on her door. This is getting distressing. What should I do?

-Ryan

**Chapter 6:**

Anna is gone. After days of emailing her, calling her house and even knocking on her front door, I finally got an answer.

I went over to her house today. Her car wasn't in her driveway. The curtains weren't closed, so I decided to look in. I put my face against the glass and cupped my eyes with my hands. There was nothing in the living room. It was empty.

I then tried to call her cell phone. It went straight to voice mail.

I really hope her voice mail is not the last time I'm going to hear my partner's voice. Can you imagine how that feels?

I'm being left here with John, and even John is acting weird on me now. He seems withdrawn and quiet. Not as chipper as he was when he first got to us. John doesn't want to do this anymore. Neither of us do.

Nothing else huge has happened since my dream. I still hear knocking and sometimes quiet chuckling in the distance. I'm planning on going to my dad's house soon.

I'm still trying to figure out why Stitch was acting as my dad in my dream and why my mother didn't notice it was a monster.

I can't get the sound of my mother's skin getting ripped off of her out of my head. The tearing of veins and tight skin splitting. It's driving me crazy.

If I'm not listening to Stitch laughing in my head, it's all of the disgusting sounds I have had to hear the past month. Bones breaking, skin ripping, guts getting thrown around. ReptitiveRoutines screams.

It's always the same with gruesome sounds like that. Someone getting their neck slit, someone smacking their head on the pavement after getting hit by a car, someone gurgling in their own blood after having their face bashed in.

The sound is always much worse than the image and the sound is going to stick with you for your whole life. It's going to haunt you.

I'll keep in touch.

**Chapter 7:**

John and I were working on the case in my office. It was weird not having Anna around. I was so desperately hoping that my suspicions were wrong, that she wasn’t dead, just hiding until the case was over or was taking a break. The office was cold, so cold we could see our breath. Neither of us really knew what to do about the whole Stitch thing.

We looked through the pictures, read the journals, and watched the tapes, God knows how many times. We would watch the tapes in slow-motion looking for any little clues that might tell us where to find him. But we couldn’t find anything. First, we were thinking he must be hiding somewhere outdoors.

He always seemed sort of dirty and disheveled, like he didn’t have access to a shower and was always running around barefoot. But then we wondered, if he’s an outdoorsman, why is he naked? Doesn’t he get cold? Then we played around with the idea that he lived in a cave somewhere.

Which would make sense – he’d have some warmth so he could wander around naked all he wanted. But it still didn’t quite work in our heads. Since when do supernatural creatures and serial killers not have homes and established lives outside of their murder sprees? Vampires, you think live in castles, mansions, and whatnot. Werewolves are only like that once a month, so they obviously have stuff to do the rest of the time, and have a house. Even zombies sort of have a home – their coffins until they rise from the dead. What would make Stitch want to be the outcast and not have a house and established life?

Nothing was making sense to us. Our heads hurt. Our coffee was running out. The sun was going down. The work week was coming to an end. Our options were running out. Thankfully no one else had been killed. But surely, it would happen again soon. Stitch wasn’t one to sit and do nothing for extended periods of time.

“What do you want to do?” I asked John as I stretched out my back.

Before he could answer, the door to my office slammed open and an FBI team walked in.

“We need you two to come in for questioning,” the only one in a suit said.

The rest of them were wearing the typical FBI uniforms, with their guns and everything. John and I were confused. What could we have done to catch the FBIs attention? We complied and went with the team willingly. We all walked out of the office quietly. My coworkers watched, just as confused as we were. Their eyes were all wide. Some of them mouthed words at me, asking what was going on. I just shrugged. I really had no idea. They shoved us into the back of a car and drove us to where they wanted to question us.

We arrived at the jail in Downtown Seattle. It was a tan building with small windows with bars over them, so the prisoners couldn’t escape. I was scared. I looked over at John. He was squeezing his hands together; I could see they were sweaty. He had wide eyes, like he was a child caught stealing candy. My palms were sweaty too. I’m sure my eyes were just as wide.

We were let out of the car. Two men grabbed both of my arms and pulled me into the building. I didn’t know what we’d done to deserve such harsh treatment. They didn’t give us time to look around the building, but I didn’t really mind. I’d been there countless times. I was just confused by why we were being brought there for questioning.

John and I were put into separate rooms. Each room had white walls, a white tile floor, a white ceiling, and a white light. There was a metal table in the middle of the room with chairs all around it. I was told to sit down and wait. So I did as I was told, in an attempt to stop the brutal treatment. The walls were entirely bare of everything, even texture. As I waited, I tried to find something to fix my eyes on. But I was so nervous I could hardly sit still. I tapped my feet and drummed my fingers and chewed my nails. What could I have possibly done? I’m just a detective! I’m the one who’s supposed to be solving the cases, not be a suspect or anything. Interrupting my thoughts, a man in a gray suit walks in with a file. He sits down across the table from me and just looks at me for what felt like an eternity.

“You’re probably wondering why we brought you and your intern in here,” he said.

His voice was deep and scratchy. He had a bird’s nest type of hair, mostly white with shades of gray. His eyes were tired and old, like they’d seen everything to be seen. I nodded at him, unsure if I was allowed to speak.

“What do you know about…” He looked at his papers. “Repetitive Routine… What do you know about his death?”

“I know what happened on the tapes,” I said. “I have them back in my office if you want to see them.”

“We know what happened in the tapes,” the man said. “What do you know? Is there anything we should know that can’t be learned through the tapes?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The bright light was making my headache worse.

“What did you have to do with it?”

“Nothing!” I said, shocked. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. He offered to help us find Stitch and that’s what ended up happening. Stitch came and killed him. We didn’t think that would happen, but it did. And from that side of the webcam you can’t really do anything.”

My speech got faster and faster as I kept talking. Was I really a suspect in his death? In my own investigation?

“Okay,” the man said. “Calm down. We’re just investigating his death.”

That made me fume. That was my case. I didn’t work so hard to become the best detective in the Seattle PD just to have my case taken from me. Even if it was impossible to solve…

“You’re free to go,” the man said. “We’ll be in touch with any further information on his death.”

I nodded at him and walked into the hall. As I waited in the hallway for John to come out from his interrogation, an idea crossed my mind. An illegal one, mind you, but an idea nonetheless. And despite its illegality, I decided to pursue it. I jogged down the hall to the man who’d questioned me and asked him where the nearest bathroom was. He pointed and said down the hall and around the corner. So I walked down the plain hallway and stood just around the corner, near the restroom.

I peaked around to see the man go into a room with the folder, and come out without it. When the coast was clear, I snuck into the room, quietly so no one could hear. The room was dark and dank with file folders covering all the walls. The files were organized in alphabetical order so I found the J drawer and searched for my file. At last I found it. Johnson, Ryan. I opened it and found a small notebook. Flipping through it, the pages were covered in notes. I smiled to myself. Suddenly I head the door opened so I stuffed the notebook into my pocket and closed the drawer quickly and silently. A woman with sharp features and a stern expression walked in.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked.

“I was looking for the bathroom,” I said.

“Wrong room. It’s down the hall and around the corner,” she said.

“Okay, thank you,” I said. I walked out of the room and found John waiting at the end of the hall by the rooms we’d been questioned in.

I swiftly walked to him and gestured for him to follow me quickly. We stepped out of the building into the crisp Seattle air. I kept walking until we were a good distance away from the building. Then I pulled the journal out of my pocket and showed it to John. He looked at me with concern. “Did you steal that?” he asked. I nodded but didn’t care that he was worried. We were already in trouble. I flipped to the first page. It talked about how we were suspects in Repetitive Routine’s murder. John Freeman and Ryan Johnson – present at time of crime, could have orchestrated it in ploy to solve serial killer case, follow after questioning.

That made both of us nervous. We looked around as soon as we read that, looking for suspicious cars. Cars of different colors and models whizzed around us, but nothing was standing still watching us. We felt small rain drops start to hit our heads and neck so we started walking and fast as we could to the office. The rain started to really pour and get us soaking wet before we reached our cars.

“I was thinking…we should go up to Anna’s parents' house. She might be staying with them,” I told John.

“Let’s go now,” he said. “Why not? The sooner we find her the sooner we can let our minds ease.”

I agreed with him and we both piled into my car. It was getting dark as I pulled out into traffic and eventually onto the freeway. The clouds were ominous. They were a dark gray. The rain was pounding on my car. John and I were silent the whole time. Neither of us knew what to say. We didn’t know what we were going to find. But both of us were praying to whatever God was out there, that we’d find Anna alive. A couple hours went by. The weather kept getting worse and the sun kept going further down until it was pitch black outside. That’s when I felt a bump and then it got really hard to drive all of a sudden. I pulled over to the side of the road and jumped out of my car. The front left tire was completely flat.

“Great!” I nearly screamed. “Just awesome.”

John got out of the car and looked at the wheel. I ran my hand through my messy hair and sighed. It was already getting late and I didn’t want to deal with this. Especially given the situation. What if Stitch found us? I shoved those thoughts aside and tried to focus on fixing the wheel. I opened my trunk and found my spare wheel. But only a spare wheel. All my tools to fix it were gone. Nowhere to be found. How was I supposed to fix my stupid tire without tools? I nearly screamed again. I shut my trunk and leaned against the driver’s side door and waited for someone to drive by and help.

“You okay?” John asked after a while.

We were both standing the pouring rain, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere. Neither of us were happy. Our suits were soaked; our hair looked like we’d just taken a shower; it was late; we were tired and stressed out. Things just weren’t looking good for us.

“What do you think?” I said. I wasn’t trying to sound rude, but I guess that was the vibe I put out because John scooted away from me a little bit and didn’t say anything else for a while.

We waited in the rain for half an hour before a car finally stopped to help us. A man and a young woman got out of the car. The lady had long brown hair in a braid down her back and hippie like clothing. She had a kind face and walked towards us with welcoming arms.

“What happened?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Flat tire,” John said.

He sounded in a better mood than I was. Even if he had been acting strange lately, he was still more chipper than me.

“We can’t find Ryan’s tools.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” the woman said. “We have tools. Go help them change their tire, Josh!”

The man she was with was tall and extremely muscular, to the point that it was kind of weird. He wore a plain white t-shirt and jeans. He didn’t seem like he would be dating the woman he was with – if they were dating, that is. He nodded in her direction and went to the trunk of their black car. Shortly thereafter he came back with the necessary tools and helped us change my tire. In just a few minutes we were ready to go.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “This really means a lot.”

“Oh, no problem at all,” the woman said, grinning. “Just one question though. What’s with the car with the two scary looking men in it back there? They’ve just been sitting there the whole time.”

John and I looked back at the car and then back at each other. Neither of us had noticed it until she pointed it out. It was sleek and black, nearly unnoticeable in the dark from that distance. I thought on my feet.

“Oh, that’s the FBI. We’re detectives working on a case with them. It’s nothing to worry about.”

It was something to worry about…

“Interesting!” the woman said.

The man stood beside her silently the whole time they’d helped us.

“Well good luck with your case!”

“Thank you. And again, thank you so much for the help.”

I smiled at her and John and I got back into my car, thoroughly soaking wet.

“What should we do about them?” John said, pointing at the FBI car trailing us.

“Just let them do whatever. There’s nothing for us to hide; we didn’t do what they think we did,” I said.

I started up the car and kept driving. John and I were silent the whole ride to Bellingham. The car kept trailing us all the way to Anna’s parents' house. We tried acting like we didn’t see them. We tried to act as natural as we could. It was hard, but we did as good a job as possible.

Soon we pulled up to Anna’s parents' house. It was a small little house just outside the city. They owned a little ranch with three horses. They were neighing in the barn a little ways from the house. They sounded panicked, but I didn’t know anything about horses, so for all I knew, that was what they sounded like all the time. John and I walked up to the front door of their shabby little house. Anna’s car was sitting outside. It had frost on the windows and what looked like fresh mud on the tires. Maybe she had just come back.

The paint on the house was peeling and the grass was unkempt. The stairs creaked as we walked up them onto the porch. I knocked on the door, but as I knocked it just opened. I pushed it further open and John and I walked in skeptically. The air was freezing cold and bugs were crawling on the ground. The first room we came to was the living room. The furniture had that typical old-lady pattern of canvas flowers. The furniture was covered in those plastic covers. The window next to the television was broken. Glass was all over the ground. The television was on. A news broadcaster’s voice rang through the silent house. It was eerie.

The floor creaked beneath our feet as we kept walking slowly through the house. We got to the kitchen. The fridge was open and the sink was running. Food was sitting on the counter like someone was about to prepare a meal. The food was rotting and there was a slight stench in the air. It was starting to get various colored mold on it. Flies buzzed around the plate, loving the stench of the disgusting food. John walked over to look at it. He winced a little.

“One of those flies just bit me,” he said.

He poked at the food and a bunch of fruit flies jumped off the food on the table. We couldn’t tell what the food even was. The table was set and one of the chairs was pulled out from the table like someone was sitting there watching the other person cook. I started to see specks of blood on the floor as we kept walking. We followed the blood drops until they turned into trails of blood. Some places it was hard to make out on the brown carpet.

The trail led into a room that appeared to be an office, but also kept going down the hall. We decided to go room by room and started in the office. It had a computer, printer and a desk with some cabinets. The blood trail went right past everything and up the wall. It stopped halfway to the ceiling. John told me to come over to where he was. I walked around the desk on the side where the chair was. The chair was covered in blood and so were the keyboard and the top of the desk. Some of the keys were missing from the keyboard, the monitor was completely broken and the mouse was hanging down, covered in blood. The damage and destruction of the desk area was not the most disturbing part. The worst part was, all over the keyboard. We found teeth. Like someone had gotten their face slammed into it repeatedly and their teeth had fallen out. They were white with yellowing at the top of them where they’d fallen out. The monitor still had glass around the frame. It was covered in blood and on one long shard of glass, there was an eye ball. It was brown and still had the veins attached to it. There was also some hair caught on glass on the side of the monitor. It was long, white, and sort of crinkly.

At least I knew it wasn't Anna’s. I went to pull the chair out from the desk, and as I did, I heard a loud thump. I look down and there was a hand coming out from under the desk. John and I crouched down to have a better look. It was Anna’s mom.

She was curled up under the desk, her knees against her chest, sitting up. Her left eye was out of its socket, some teeth were missing as well and there were a few holes in her scalp where hair and skin should be. We could see the white bone of her cracked skull. Her right eye was still in its socket. It was swollen and black with bits of blood trickling down her pale white cheek. Her nose was severely broken. You could see the cracked bone beneath the crusted blood. We decided not to touch the body continued down the hall way.

The blood trail was on the ground for a good five to six feet then it swerved to the left and went up the wall. We followed it on the wall until it came to a door. This door was locked and after several attempts to break it in with our shoulders, John kicked it in. It was Anna’s dad’s personal room - bachelor pad, if you will. It had a flat screen, computer, fish tank, various mounted animal heads, a gun cabinet and a cigar humidor. We didn't stay long in that room.

The first thing we saw was her dad’s body. He was ripped in half and replaced on the wall with his mounted bear head. His lower body was still standing up, right below him on the ground. On the wooden plaque, where it read the name, size and weight of the bear, someone had carved over it. It said "Collateral" and below that it said "You can't run". Maybe this will get those damn FBI agents to finally believe Stitch is real. Maybe this will get them off my back.

John and I went outside to find the FBI agents. They weren’t in their car so we assumed they were following us around the house. We turned to go back into the house and look for them and saw them coming towards us. Their guns were drawn but they weren’t pointing them at us.

“Do you believe us that Stitch is behind all this now?” I asked.

“Do you believe we didn’t kill Repetitive Routine?”

“We don’t know what to think,” one man said.

He scratched his head and rubbed his chin.

“Maybe we should call the local authorities. They might have some insight on this couple. Maybe someone was out to get them. We’ll also call in more field agents. This might be beyond your control now, if what you’re telling me is true.”

“Didn’t you see what was written on the plaque? It was Stitch!” John said, getting flustered.

“Show us,” the second man said.

We walked back into the house and tried not to look at the gore too much. We got Anna’s dad’s room and showed them the plaque. They looked at the words carefully.

“Collateral, huh?” the first man said.

“Collateral for what?”

“We’re thinking he has my partner, Anna. She’s been missing for a little while now. We don’t know where she is,” I said.

“We definitely need to call the locals. We need all the help we can get.”

The second man pulled out his phone and dialed 911. He told the operator about him being an FBI agent and needing back up. He asked for the address, I gave it to him, and we waited for the police to arrive.

“Maybe we should go check on the horses,” John said.

“We don’t know how long these people have been dead. They might be needing food and whatnot.”

We all agreed and walked back out into the cold. It might have been dark and freezing cold out, but it was a nice change to the disgusting sights inside the house. I loved the open field that lay between the house and the neighboring house. Although, it did remind me of the dream I had a couple days ago.

As we walked further into the field, my heart began to beat faster. I found myself staring into the woods that surrounded the property. I can still hear that loud groaning sound from my dream. I know it was just a dream, but it still makes me nervous. We walked towards the barn quietly. Part of the thought maybe Stitch was waiting for me. The barn was like a typical horse barn. Red outside and stalls inside with open windows so the horses could get fresh air when they were inside. We opened the door. It squeaked loudly.

You could smell the stench of decay from 20 feet away from the barn. I doubt I was the only person who noticed it. All of the straw and hay on the ground of the barn was damp and stuck to the bottom of our shoes. It felt...gross...beneath my feet. I almost slipped a couple of times. The horses were in the back of the barn in the last three stalls. As we got closer, we noticed only 2 of them were alive and they were just skin and bone. You should see every bone in their body and their neighs sounded like they were in pain and scared and they could barely stand. Their legs were close to collapsing underneath them. As I checked them out, I noticed they had rope around their necks. Why would they have ropes around their necks?

When we found the horses, three more police men showed up.

“We were the closest officers to your location. We checked out the house and we called for more back up though,” one of the officers said, almost out of breath.

“Oh my god... what is that smell?” another said. He put his hand over his nose and mouth.

“That's what we're here to find out,” I said.

I opened the stall where the third horse should have been. I wish I didn't. The only thing left in there was the scalp of the horse... It's whole mane and the horse tail was on the ground. The tail had a giant chunk of meat at the end, still connected, where someone ripped it off the horse. Next to these things on the ground...there were three of it's hooves.

“Jesus Christ! Where did the other hoof go?! Where did the body go?!” John yelled.

We all walked away from the stall and one of the FBI agents ordered another officer to take the two remaining horses out of the barn and take them to a veterinary clinic. As we opened the stall to one of the live horses, blood was everywhere. All over the horses feet, it's mouth and in its hair. We couldn't see any wounds or anything on him though.

Around the food trough, there were flies flying around it. I walked closer and my nose started to burn. There was a lot of meat in the trough. Some of the meat was still connected to bones. But... they didn't look like... human bones. They were much too long...much larger than human bones. The joints were different. The horses had been eating the third horse whose body we couldn't find. Who the fuck does this? I thought.

“Guys... I think I found the third horse...” I said, trying not to puke.

“Holy shit,” John said.

“I'm going to go back to my car and get some gloves. I'll bring some for everybody,” I said, as I walked away from the crime scene.

I started walking across the field again. I was dragging my feet as I walked to try to get some of the hay off of my shoes.

It was odd. I felt as if I was being watched as I walked through the field. I looked left and right, along the tree line, but I didn't see anybody. I turned around and still, I did not see a single person besides the officer who took the horses out of the barn. He was crouched, picking up grass, attempting to feed the horses. I turned back and walked towards the car. From the field, you walk along a fence that was along the side yard of the house. The house has two windows on that side. I could have been seeing things...but I swear I saw a curtain move and someones hand go behind it.

I decided to go back inside the house. I figured it was just the other officers who were called. I walked up the front steps and into the door. As I entered, I got light headed and dizzy. Everything I saw flashed and went from blue to green and back to blue. It happens though. I think I remember reading somewhere it's from adrenaline kicking in really fast.

I made my way towards the room I saw on the side of the house with the moving curtain. I've only been in this house a handful of times. Usually just Christmas or other major family events. I knew Anna from High School so her family and I were close. I found the room I'd seen the hand in and walked in. It just had a bunch of boxes in it, like a storage room. I went to the window and moved the curtains. The curtains were dusty as if they hadn't been moved in a long time. The air started getting heavy. It was almost suffocating. I didn't see anybody in that room or the room next to it which had the second window on the side of the house. I started to go to my car and I ran into one of the officers who were in charge of the crime scene in the house.

“We're almost done here. We have one body and... well, one head, correct? I mean... you were the first officer to enter the house, right?” he asked.

“One body? No. There are two bodies and there wasn't just a head. It was a whole body and a body split in two. The upper half is mounted," I said.

“Oh. Uh. We have the mounted body, but not a whole second body. There's the body mounted on the wall and the lower half beneath it, and a head outside. No second body,” he assured me. I walked as fast as I could into the office. He wasn't lying. The body of Anna's mom was missing.

“Nobody took the body of the old woman out of here? None of your officers?!” I demanded. I was getting pretty mad.

“No! We just got here!”

“Well bodies don't just get up and walk away! Then where is the head you found?” I asked, but I assumed it was the head of Anna's mom.

“You didn't see it?” the officer asked. “It's outside. Now... keep in mind we did not touch it or move it or anything. We found it right where it is”.

I walked outside. There was a trail of brown dried blood in the dirt path going to the gravel driveway. I followed it around the back of my car and along the driver's side. The head was sitting on my hood. Who the hell put it up there? There wasn't just a decapitated head when we first got here!

I walked around to the front of my car. The head was facing that way. It was Anna's head. It was terrible. Every single one of her teeth were out of the gums and were shoved into her cheeks and forehead and her eyes were missing, as usual when it comes to Stitch.

I lost it right there. I got on my knees and began to cry. It was the first time I cried since I was a kid. With the never ending disappointment from my parents as a kid and the constant beating, I learned how to hold back my emotions at a young age. It felt good. It really did. My eyes burned and my chest hurt, but it was worth it. It felt like a sack of bricks were lifted off my chest and shoulders. I could think clearer.

“Did you know her?” the officer behind me asked.

“She was my partner at the Seattle Police Department. I've known her most of my life.” I said trying to make out a clear sentence.

Stitch is going to pay for this, I swore to myself. I got up off the ground and opened the driver side door and popped my trunk. I grabbed a pair of disposable gloves from a box along with a pair for the other officers in the barn.

“I don't want to see that on my hood when I get back. And would you mind hosing down my car?” I asked.

“Sure, I guess,” he said.

I turned to walk back to the barn and just as I did, I heard a loud neigh from one of the horses. I quickly walked around the house and hopped the fence going into the pasture. I jogged over the officer who was with the horses. One of them was on the ground.

“Is it dead?” I asked.

“Yeah, it passed. We're calling in some people to come take care of this one though, if it's not too late. They should be here soon.” He said.

I walked back into the barn. Everybody else who I left in there were all standing in a circle. Everybody but John, who was sitting in a corner sobbing. I walked to the back of the barn to see what everybody was looking at. There was the rest of Anna's body. Her upper torso in the middle. Her legs and her right arm ripped off, laying feet away. She still had rope around her wrist and ankles. Stitch killed her just as the people in his village killed him. I definitely think he was trying to send a message by killing her the way he died.

“I’m gonna go, John. Do you want to come with me or catch a ride with the FBI?” I said.

“Don’t leave me here with them!” he said.

I nodded at him and hopped into my car as fast as I could. John got in a minute later after telling the FBI we were leaving. I didn’t think they would be following us now. I looked at the clock. 3 AM. I yawned. I was getting really tired now that the gore wasn’t fueling my adrenaline. We started driving out of Bellingham, in silence once more. Both of us were exhausted. I put the radio on to try to keep us awake.

After a while, the buildings of the city started to become sparse again. As we left the main part of town, the radio started to go to static. Every channel I tried was static. I started getting nervous because of how the videos went to static in the second victim’s death. I saw a white building start to appear in the distance ahead of us. As we pulled up, we saw it was a Catholic parish. A giant church. I usually laugh at those, but Catholic parishes aren’t considered mega churches… Something in me clicked. With all the blood, guts, and gore I’d been seeing, something in me needed to go talk to God. Maybe He could provide some insight to this case. Maybe He could help me regain my sanity and get on track to solving this case. I pulled over and parked the car.

“I’m gonna go in and talk to God for a little bit. I need some help,” I said as I unbuckled.

“I’ll stay here. I’m not Christian. Jewish,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

I opened the door and got out of the car. Back into the cold. I walked into the church. I was enormous inside. It had to be to hold 2,000-plus worshipers. I walked past a few stone pillars with holy water in them. Then I walked out of the lobby and into the worship area. There were candles lit all over the place. It shown on the stained glass and made Jesus’ statue look really eerie. His crown of thorns created a shadow on his face and the blood on his hands was black as night. I walked down the aisle between the pews. I walked down one and kneeled on the ground in the middle. I put my hands together and set my forehead on them.

“God?” I started.

I didn’t really know what to say.

“I need help… I’m scared all the time. Paranoid…”

Then all of a sudden all the candles went out. It was weird enough being alone in a church in the middle of the night, but it just got scary when all the light was gone.

I got up off my knees and looked around, spinning in circles. As I turned back around to look at the candles behind the podium, I heard loud bangs. All of the doors were being slammed shut. I turned back around to look at the doors I came in through. I slowly started walking towards them. I could barely see two feet in front of me. I stumbled a couple times on some benches, startling myself each time I made a thud. As I reached the door, on the wall next to it, I saw my shadow. There was a flickering light coming from behind me. I turned back around and saw the first and last row of candles were lit. That was when I started to hear a cracking sound.

It wasn’t a cracking sound like the fingers and necks and spines I’ve been forced to listen to the past couple of months, it sounded like plastic or even porcelain cracking. I looked up at the statue of Jesus on the cross. He had a big long crack going across his chest. It was crumbling right in the middle of his chest. I got closer, and as I got closer, it felt like the room was getting colder. I reached out to touch the statue, and as I did, the crumbling center of his chest fell out and knocked over a bunch of candles.

It knew it was Stitch. The hole was right where his heart would be. The statue started bleeding. Out of the hole, his hands, his feet, his head and his eyes.

I was back on my knees, and I closed my eyes. I’ve never done it before, but I began to pray. I didn’t know how, so I just pleaded for protection. As I was pleading, I heard laughter. That awful laugh that has been haunting me since the beginning of the case.

I needed to get out of there. I ran to the doors, but they were all locked. I started to panic. I started banging on the doors. I turned back around when I heard a loud thump. It was to the right of me. I saw a bible go flying across the room and hit one of the confession booths. I took a step forward, and as I did, more bibles began flying across the room smacking into the confession booth. Was it a sign? I had no idea. I started walking towards the booths. I knew I still wouldn’t be safe, considering what had happened to RepetitiveRoutine, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see Stitch’s face again.

I opened the first booth and went in. I sat on the bench, buttoning up my jacket all the way and pulled the top over my mouth. Then it all started. The flame of a candle went shooting into the air in the next booth, hitting the top of the booth and going flat. As it died down, I could make out someone in there.

“Hello, my son,” the familiar, dark voice said.

“Uh... Father?” I asked, gulping.

“You can call me that if you like. It’s much better than what you have been calling me,” the voice said, beginning to chuckle.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

But I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer.

“Why?” Stitch asked. “Well you went into the confession first. I am here to forgive you for your sins”.

“You’re not a religious man. You’re a monster. A demon!” I yelled.

Stitch then began to laugh hysterically. I sat there looking at him through the mesh between the two sections. This whole time, he was looking at the confession booth door. He didn’t look at me once.

“I am going to kill you for all that you have done. For Anna!” I yelled again.

I looked back up to the other booth and Stitch had his face pressed against the screen. He was smiling at me. I moved from left to right, and his face moved with me. I still don’t know how he was able to follow me like that, what with the skin stitched over his eye sockets.

I closed my eyes and put my hands on my face. It was silent. I could hear my own heartbeat. After a couple minutes, I look back up. Stitch was gone. I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. I sat back on the bench and just stared off. I can’t remember what I was thinking about, but it was deep.

All of a sudden, I heard a door open in the distance. Footsteps were getting closer and closer. They were fast paced and small. I could tell it was a girl.

“Is there anybody in the church?” she said.

“Yeah. I’m… I’m in the confessional,” I said, still not fully thinking straight.

“Are you ok? You sound distraught,” she asked.

“Yeah I’m ok. Don’t worry about it,” I assured her.

“Well why don’t you come out of there and get some fresh air,” she said.

I came out of the booth. It was still dark. There were about 5 candles lit by the podium. I tried focusing my eyes to the darkness and I began looking around. I finally saw the woman. She was a nun in the back of the church, on the opposite side of where I was. She was standing in the shadows. All I could see was the upper half of her body and her head. Something didn’t seem right about her. She just stood there. Not moving at all. Staring at me.

“Would you like to talk about anything?” she asked. As she talked, she looked almost puppet like. Her mouth moved straight up and down and her face never changed. It was expressionless.

“Are you ok?” I asked. I wasn’t sure about her.

“What do you mean?” she asked, as she blinked.

Again, she blinked and her face didn’t change. It stayed stiff and plain. Her skin was extremely pale. As pale as the trimming on her habit. I felt sick. I decided I’d just go home before anything else happens.

“Uh.. I’m going to go now,” I said while walking towards the door.

The nun started moving. I could tell she wasn’t walking. It was like she was… bouncing, kind of. She stayed in the shadows though, only showing her upper half.

“I don’t trust you,” I said.

The nun started laughing. She had a high pitched girl laugh that echoed. Half way through her laugh, it started getting deeper. I knew it was Stitch now. But where was he?

“I see I can’t fool you,” his booming dark voice echoed. “Would you like to see my latest toy?”

As he said that, the nun started bouncing towards the candles. I walked backwards as she got closer to the podium. My back was almost against the door.

She got in the light of the candle. I was horrified. Stitch was standing right behind her, and he also was wearing a habit. Not only was he wearing a habit, but he also had a crown of thorns on his head. It looked like his arm was around her.

“This is one of my favorites,” he said while laughing.

He started humming. I saw what was going on. He started spinning around with the nun. He wasn’t holding onto her at all. He had his left arm in her back. A big bloody hole in her back. His elbow was bent, as if his forearm and hand was in her head. He made her bounce, like a child would make a Barbie doll bounce when they would pretend the Barbie was walking. As she bounced around walking around the stage, her arms flailed in all directions. Stitch repeatedly opened her mouth and closed it. I could hear her teeth slamming shut even in the back where I was. It made my mouth hurt. He made her blink a couple of times, then he picked her up with both hands and slammed her on the ground.

“She was fun. But I’m done with her now,” he said. “I need a new thing to play with.”

He finished his sentence and I started looking around for a way out. I looked towards the statue of Jesus at the front of the room. Something about the statue was different than minutes before. I could see something in the chest. I squinted my eyes and got a little bit closer. I saw hands coming out of the hole in his chest. They were facing opposite directions. I started to get closer and with each step, I could hear someone singing some sort of religious song. It wasn't in English though so I had no idea what they were saying. I started going up the steps towards the statue. I froze in terror at what I saw next.

The hands started pulling apart the chest of the statue and a head popped out. It was RepetitiveRoutine. I recognized his hair and his face from my dream. He didn't say anything. He just crawled out of the statue and fell to the ground on what was left of his legs. He landed right on his femur and the cracking and snapping sound made me want to rip my ears off. He started pointing behind me. I didn't want to turn my back on him, but I couldn't help it. I turned around and saw Stitch standing right in front of a big stained glass window.

He ripped off his habit and started to rub his chest. He rubbed from his chest, around the burned cross on his chest up his neck and onto his face. He started humming again. And as he hummed, the main door opened again. I turned around as fast as I could to run out. I took 2 steps and then I heard bubbling. I looked up and saw the holy water was boiling. I didn’t know what to do. I turned back around and saw Stitch running towards me, full speed and yelling like a mad man.

I blacked out. I don’t remember anything after that.

When I woke up, I was in FBI custody. I was lying on a bed in the infirmary of the prison downtown. I jerked up and rubbed my face to wake myself up.

“How long have I been out?” I asked the woman on the other side of the room.

“Just a few hours. It’s 11 o’ clock in the morning. Some FBI people want to talk to you when you feel up to it,” she said. I put my feet on the ground and stretched before standing up.

“Where do they want to see me?” I asked. She pointed out the door.

“Someone’s been waiting for you outside,” she said. I walked out the door into the familiar plain hallway.

On a wooden bench on the wall, there was the man who interrogated me the first time. He gestured for me to follow when he stood up. We walked down the hall and walked into the same room we’d been in before. I sat down at the table again and waiting for something to happen. The man left the room and came back with a folder. He sat down across from me.

“Okay, first things first. We know you stole the journal in your file. But that’s not the real issue here. You’re being charged with vandalism,” he said.

“What?!” I said loudly.

I nearly burst from the chair I was sitting in.

“What do you think I vandalized?” The answer was obvious but I couldn’t be sure. They were pinning all kinds of crap on me.

“The church,” the man said. I just shook my head at him.

“I didn’t do anything. Just watch the tapes. It’s a mega church, they probably have cameras everywhere,” I said.

The man looked stunned. Apparently I was better at his job than he was. How hard is it to look at tapes before trying to convict someone of something?

“Fine,” the man said. “We’ll call you back in when we prove you did it.” I thanked him and stood up.

I walked out of the building and the sun burned my eyes. It was sunny for once. Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe my visit to the church did some good. I found my car outside. They must’ve towed it here after they found me. I got into my car and drove back to my apartment. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but the sun made me hopeful.