Tiffany was never afraid. Of all the boys in her neighborhood, only she was brave enough to remove the gardener snake that had slithered into the sand pit they played in. Alex was always afraid. Afraid to cross the road, afraid to step on cracks, afraid to sleep in the dark. The neighborhood kids would have called him “weird” or “off” if it weren’t for Tiffany’s right hook. After a long summer of playing together, the LaChaumiere Cul De Sac kids were back to school, ready to celebrate the first true holiday of the school year, Halloween. A whole 1 mile away from school, the duo felt like at 10 years old they were competent enough to ride their bikes to and from - so long as they were accompanied by one another. 

“C’mon slowpoke!” Tiffany said, her dark chestnut hair pulled back from her petite, round face. She had one foot on her bike pedal and the other on the ground, bracing herself to push off the moment her partner in crime got on his bike. Her blue eyes flashed a challenge at Alex, who simply shrugged and swung his leg over his “Hotrod”- a name lovingly bestowed upon the hand-me-down red bike he got from his older brother. 

“You’re always rushing me but, ya know, we’re never late.” He said quietly, his brown eyes cast towards her back pack. His blonde hair glinted in the early morning sun, giving off the orangish red hue of the sunrise happening directly beside them. With that, both children shoved off, and Tiffany’s mom, Julia,  watched from the porch as the blue and red biked duo streaked by. 

They met each other at the drinking fountain by the door once the last bell rang, shoving books into backpacks while walking down some cement stairs. Alex stopped short above the second step, hopping lightly onto the third. A crack. Back on the bikes, a teacher said she saw the two ride off towards home, just like every other day.

Cruiser lights bounced off of Tiffany’s house, blue and red reflecting off of the light yellow side paneling. 

“This just isn’t like them,” Julia cried, a hand covering her quivering mouth, “They’ve been gone for four hours, detective.” Detective Randall nodded and took a look around the Cul De Sac. 

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll have the dogs out here in less than 15 minutes and we already have a search party combing the woods as we speak.”

“We need to find them before dark, Alex- he, he can’t handle the dark!” Rhonda, Alex’s mother, moaned from her spot on the porch, her head leaning against the wall and tears streaming down her cheeks. Detective Randall went to meet the canine unit, armed with a hairbrush of Tiffany’s and a shirt of Alex’s. The dogs took off in the direction of the school, leaving the detective thinking that maybe they had picked up on their scent from that morning until, halfway there, they went into the woods. A handful of volunteers accompanied them, calling out the children’s names periodically. About a mile into the woods, in a place about a mile from the school and a mile from the Cul De Sac, two dogs began barking vigorously. “Over here!” a volunteer called, pointing to an abandoned blue children’s bike. 15 yards from that, a red one. 

“How do you gain access to this part of the woods from the road?” Detective Randall asked Sheriff Kristom. 

“Not easily, but there are some two tracking paths that wind between the local farms out this way.” 

“I need a list of all private residences within a three mile radius.” 

“You got it.” 

Day turned to night, and Detective Randall had searched 6 of the 10 houses on the list supplied to him by the Sheriff’s office. The 7th was an early 1930’s ranch style farmhouse with a barn behind it. He knocked on the door, greeted only by silence. 

Maybe they’re working in the barn? He thought to himself, making his way behind the house. 

A light swung above a rusty, double paneled wooden barn door. Left, then right, left, then right- a low groan sounding with each swing. Through a crack between the door and the worn, faded red wood wall came a line of light, dimly illuminating the gravel that led up to the door. The rain started to fall in spatters, making the swinging light give off an aluminum twang. One hand out-reached towards the door, he called out “anybody there?” Scuffling accompanied by a soft, muffled groan was the only response he got. Shoving the door open, the Detective stepped into the barn. 

Yellow bulbs hung from the ceiling, illuminating the light grey concrete interior. Cobwebs ran across the ceiling corners and dust filled the ones on the floor. The dust was disturbed in a trail leading up to the door and splitting to the left to a workbench and to the right into fading darkness. Detective Randall unholstered his police-issued flashlight from his utility belt, clicking it on and pointing it towards the dark. Another small scuffle sounded from further down the hall. The detective kept his back to the cold radiating, wet wall and swung his flashlight into the first room. 

On the floor, lining the walls were dog crates, and the detective could just barely make out the outline of a man sitting on the top of one off to the far left. He stepped farther inside, trying to get his flashlight at an angle that would illuminate the figure before him. 

“I wouldn’t do that, or little Tiff is going to have to find a new best friend to protect” said a rough, dry voice in an almost amused tone. 

“Sir, I need you to put down the child.” Detective Randall said in a stern, steady voice. 

“You would all say what I’m doing is wrong, but you don’t know the truth like I do” the crazed man giggled. 

“Just let the boy go and you can tell me all about it.”

“NO! I have the kid NOW, and you’re going to listen to what I have to say!”

“Alright, alright, just calm down. You’re right, you have the control here. I’ll listen to what you need to say.” 

“I must make them pay for their blissful ignorance. Heaven would rather ignore our deviousness, and allow us to act out on these most invading thoughts. Why, then, would they give me the power to do so much wrong if they are good? And if God is not good, then none of us are. I will make heaven pay for making me like this, and the price of their negligence is the blood of the children who they failed to protect from me.” 

“You can’t control the way you’re born. How about you put the kid down and we’ll go tell them, together, how we need to make them pay.” The detective had the flashlight aimed at him, his gun unlatched but not yet drawn. “We can tell everyone how the heavens made you feel this way.”

“The price has been paid in full- but what good is a cost unknown?” He sighed, “Well, its known now.” The detective heard a click, and then the room was a reverberating explosion of sound followed by ear ringing silence. 

As his hearing faded back into existence he started to hear whimpers, and small cries. He turned around, looking for a light switch to flip. As the light buzzed on, the detective saw a frightened Tiffany locked in a tarp covered kennel, and a blank faced Alex standing next to it, staring at his hands. The blood.

The blood was everywhere, and it was easy to see where it came from. Brain matter splattered the wall behind the kennels, and the dropped body of what looked like to be a white 30-40 something male slumped off to the side, his skull reduced to fragments. Detective Randall lifted both kids up, and got them out of the barn. He deposited them into his on-the-clock SUV and radioed for back up, letting them know that the kids had been found and there was an apparent suicude committed by the perpetrator.  The detective started the vehicle up and made his way towards the Cul De Sac. 

He pulled up to the light yellow house, and to roughly 20 community members waiting for the kids to be returned. The parents ran up to the car doors, scooping their children up. 

“We’ll need you to bring the kids in within the next two days for questioning, but upon initial inquisitions they seem to not have been harmed.” Randall informed the parents, turning to face Tiffany, who was almost as tall as he was while in her father’s arms. 

“Oh, Mr. Police Man, he said to give this to you.” Tiffany reached inside her coat and brought out a thin hardwood box, maybe used at one point to store cigars. Detective Randall lightly grabbed it from her.

“Thank you, I need you to go rest up now. We have a lot of questions we need answered, okay?” 

And with that he turned towards his SUV, reaching into his pocket to pull out the satellite phone his department had given him to reach the rest of his team. “Hey, guys, I think we need to get to the lab ASAP. He left us a present.” 

In the lab, Detective Randall set the box on a cleared table, where four techs wearing full PPE began running sonars and scanners over it.

“Non-explosive” said one.

“Non-radioactive” said another. 

“The go ahead to open is confirmed, Sir” said the senior lab tech. 

Detective Leroy Randall extended his hand to the box, hooking his finger under a lip in the middle of the side. With a flick of his hand he gently opened the box, letting the lid lightly thud onto the table top. “What are these?” He said, gloved hand picking up the ziplock bag inserted into the box. 

20 minutes later and a M.E. from the morgue came up to Randall, a haunted look on his angular face and shadows behind his doe brown eyes. “Detective, sir.”

“Alright, Hopps, what is it?”

“How many kids did you say you rescued?”

“Two.”

“And they both had all of their fingers?”

“What in the hell are you..”

“Sir, these are the intermediate phalanges of at least 16 separate juveniles. Each has been soaked in ammonium hydroxide and polished.” 

“He kept them as trophies. Dear God, we need to go back.”