by gleefulblogger

Fading Muddle: Secret Affair Part – 2

September 7, 2017

‘You made a PROMISE, and then YOU broke it – but I AM BACK to repair it’

It was Sunday night when they heard a shrill so loud it could reach miles away in the valley and reverberated through the entire town. No one dared or bothered to come out and check who is behind this scream and the reason to it – as if this is business as usual. However, kids are good at asking unwarranted questions which elders avoid in the best way possible. ‘Mommy Daddy – who is that, is that the boogieman?’ ‘Shhhh…. nothing like that will ever come to us – go back to your bed kids, we all are protected.” that’s the promise.

Next morning town was back to normal routine, kids went to school talking under hushed tones – ‘Did you hear that cry yesterday night, it was boogieman & he’s back!’ hush shushhh and rest of the town’s elderly folk met at Church to ponder on something no one wanted to know about. Everyone knows everything here, but no one wish to talk about it – ever. What is stopping them? What is hidden behind these closed calm faces.

At Clergy’s inner office there were worried faces discussing the recent incidents and troubled times with all that police investigation and press commotion. ‘No one is safe now, we have called it on us.’ Said one worried gentleman, when he was snubbed by heavy baritone of Mr. Smith the Town’s caretaker – ‘We will never be harmed, that’s the Pact a Promise never broke.’ Period (no one argues with him)

Cindy was at DA’s office when Tessie called her from the Crime Reporting Department of her office, to inform one more disappearance case has been reported in Ravencliff and again the victim is a young girl. Cindy was horrified with the news, all those days when she was in town with her whole camera crew not a single incident or mishap occurred. Nothing felt amiss, just a lazy quite town with oldies and homely folks. She was back in city to finish work on her other pending cases, and another girl disappears. Talking to townsfolk will yield no results, she tried that many times but all got in return – some stares or look of oblivion.

Hence, she decided to meet with her IJ team at a local bar near office and discuss a new approach to handle this case. She reached the bar before time hence was fiddling with her files when she stumbled upon a written note – a note she never seen before. ‘I knew you will come back, but now it’s too late. You broke your promise.’ This note came as a brutal surprise, her folder only contained documents related to Ravencliff’s disappearances cases and nothing else – in fact she only keeps files & images in her folder. Her mind was racing a sprint on all directions – who could be behind this prank? When her team arrived they, all discussed the possible angles to investigate & approach the case afresh but her eyes were busy on scanning everyone’s handwriting.

She kept thinking about who could it be – her colleague Jared, from the legal department who approached her many times for a coffee and she refused stating various reasons. Or this could be the handy work of her neighbour who seems like a spy to her keeping track of her every move like- when she comes in, when she goes out and with whom?

Next few days were filled with applying various permissions for investigations on administration levels with local authorities. She received two more notes with equally weird messages from anonymous, one with creepy personal details – ‘I love smell of your Skin’ and another with a warning – ‘Never come back here, again’. She ignored both the messages being an Investigative Journalist this is not new for her. However, to be safe from any unwanted encounter she installed a CCTV camera outside her house main and rear entrances. She shared these notes with Tessie (who also doubles as her best buddy) who went berserk seeing the messages. Tessie insisted her to register these scribblings as evidence to personal threat, however Cindy did not want to divert her attention from this mystical case of Ravencliff she named – Fading Muddle.

What happens next, keep watching this space for more….