CHAPTER I

        “How are we supposed to get over that?” Sam asked me as she shook her flashlight at the gates.

        I stared at the giant lock first, chains tightly held it and the gate shut. The silver had already started to wear away, but not enough for us to be able to break it with something. Through the metal bars, I gazed at a quiet neighborhood, a large road right down the middle and a line up of old houses on either side of the road. Some houses had a warm yellow light from the inside, giving the dead look a little more life. Climbing would be our only chance to get inside, but not near the trees, there was nothing but thorns and poison ivy. We’d have to use the chains around the giant gates to our advantage.

        “I hope you guys brought your climbing gear,” I finally said, shoving my flashlight in the pocket of my black trench coat. I heard two sighs as I walked up to the gates.

        “Why the hell even keep the damn lock?” Indigo asked, pulling her navy blue coat tighter on her. “If any people want to leave they can just jump the fence. Unless legend has it that nothing but dwarves live here.”

        “Actually,” I said, already starting to climb up the fence. “Legend here has it that monstrous psychopaths are hiding clues to the biggest secret this neighborhood has ever seen.”

        “Yes,” Sam agreed, but continued with her own idea. “But legend also has it that once you set foot here you’ll never be able to come back out.”

Indigo shined her flashlight up at me. “Ya know, that might explain why no one’s left this place.”

I finally made it to the top of the gate and sat at the top, making sure to keep my balance. “That's not the reason why. They're hiding something classified, I doubt they'd just let people waltz in and take it.”

         “Oh look, it's Miss Sherlock Holmes with her clever deductions again” Indigo mocked, shaking her flashlight around.

         “Well, I suppose those university classes I have almost everyday for criminal investigation and detective work is finally starting to pay off” I said loudly, making sure Indigo could hear me.

         “Yeah, and when I find your dead body, I'll be sure to use all of my hard work in forensics and medical classes and determine what an idiot you were,” Indigo laughed.

I noticed Sam next to her roll her eyes and chuckle. “Are you done yet?”

         “No,” Indigo answered, running up to the gate.

 By the time she started climbing I was already on the other side. Within the second my foot hit the ground I felt something off. It was negative, it was strange, it was exactly what we had come for. You’d expect a couple of university students to be at a frat party on a Saturday, taking shots of vodka and making out with the nearest person. But not us, we liked to get our careers started early.

          We go around to places people suggest or that we find, and Sam is the one who keeps a blog about it. Most of our cases deal with real life murders or mysteries, but there have also been cases dealing with the paranormal. That's where Sam comes in, our blonde haired medium who style consisted of a lot of plaid and blue jeans. She definitely made it easier to debunk whether a place was haunted or not. She's not very loud, in fact she was the quiet type and preferred to sit back and observe.

Then there’s Indigo, our smart but very sarcastic forensic specialist who was born in South Korea. Her clothes matched her personality half of the time, which happened to be all black. I would say that if she spent as much time on her work as she does making dark jokes, she’d actually be doing something useful. But instead, she does both and uses that ability to her advantage.

         “Hey so uh, Claire” I looked up to find Indigo already sitting atop the gate. Her dark eyes locked with my dark brown ones for a moment, part of me thought she might fall. It wouldn't surprise me one bit. “What sort of clues are we looking for here?”

I pulled out my IPhone and unlocked it. I wrote down everything about the case in my notes, so there I went. “There's not anything exact about them, but claims say they’re small pieces of paper taped onto different places in three different houses. There are only three slips of paper, and the houses are described like this-”

          My answer to Indigo’s question was interrupted by the sound of her feet hitting the ground next to me. She ran her fingers through her shoulder length, midnight black hair and bangs that stretched across her forehead. Sam was right behind her, struggling to keep her flashlight from falling out of her maroon coat.

I continued. “One house is actually a mansion, the door shines white with a golden doorknob and knocker, even the inside is beautiful. It's said that it looks that way until you walk deeper into the house. The objects and rooms start morphing together, making it extremely difficult to know where you're supposed to go next. The first clue is hidden on a painting in one of the grand rooms downstairs. The second house is described as unusually small and worn down. Relics of a war are everywhere, some people have said it’s like a commemoration. A tight, cramped staircase will lead us upstairs into the attic, but people aren't sure if the clue is actually up there. Some of them barely escaped that house, it's rumored a relentless murder lives in there.”

          “You mean like the rest of the people here?” Indigo asked while fidgeting with the power button on her flashlight.

          “Not all psychopaths are killers, Indigo” I replied without glancing up from my phone. “The third house is also described as ordinary, but something hidden so well in plain sight you won't even give it a second thought. Ironically enough, it's described as normal and was built that way for the purpose I've said before. It's not said where the last lead is, but there is one word that gives us a hint… ‘mother’.”

         “The third one is super helpful,” Indigo sarcastically commented.

         “I'm really glad my jeans didn't tear any more,” Sam mumbled behind her while staring at her already ripped jeans.

I took out my flashlight from my pocket and put my phone back in the other pocket.     “Sam, are you getting any weird feelings?”

She stared over my shoulder, as if she were looking directly at someone. Her eyes then scanned the rest of the area, and she studied every corner. “No, there’s nothing out here. Perhaps in the houses I might be able to tell you the scale of deaths here, or at least when we get deeper into this neighborhood.”

          “Onwards, then,” I exhaled with a hopeful smile.

          We ventured down the road, which was in surprisingly good condition. In fact, there were no cracks or tire tracks. As I kept looking around, I also noticed that there weren't any cars out either. Does everyone keep their cars in their garages? I thought, do these people even leave their houses? The moon illuminated part of the neighborhood, but it wasn't enough light for us to not use our flashlights.

         What came off as even more strange was the lack of street lights. The houses themselves didn’t come off as average. In a regular neighborhood there would be a line up of houses that were similar in size and infrastructure. Here, the houses ranged in size and grandeur. It gave me an unsettling feeling, nothing really seems to fit together. As we followed the road, we kept on the lookout for a mansion. That was interrupted by the sound of cans dropping in the distance and a shout.

         “Hey!” A masculine voice boomed. We froze in our positions, not daring to make a noise. “You're not from around here, are ya?”`

I decided to make the first move and answer his question. I really didn't want him to start chucking more cans at us. “What makes you say that?”

         “Are you sure you want that answered?” Indigo hissed next to me.

I rolled my eyes.

         “Like you could come up with anything better.”

          I turned to my right to face a man in his forties smiling at me - with half his teeth missing - and his clothes stained with dirt. He had four scratch marks on his cheek, big and wide ones at that. I ruled out animals, as their claws tend to make thinner and longer cuts. Humans, on the other hand, leave deeper and wider ones. It was clear someone did that to him, there must have been a struggle, a fight. On his right hand, he had a wedding ring that seemed to be cutting off the blood flow to his finger. I glanced down at his feet and observed a black garbage bag that was filled to the brim with objects that looked like cylinders. I quickly turned my head and found the can of beer he tried to throw at us lying on the ground. That was a lot of beer for just a man and his spouse.

         “You want to know why I know you're not from around here?” He slurred his words together. Brilliant, I thought, he's drunk too. “Because no one leaves their house unless she says so.”

         “Who's she?” Sam perked up.

The man chuckled, his rotting teeth made me throw up in my mouth a little. “The Misses.”

I rose an eyebrow and turned my head back around to face my friends. Their faces had the exact same perplexed look as mine. So, I thought, some woman runs this place. Perhaps it's a secret of hers that everyone know that she's trying to hide...

         “Stop making that face,” the vicious snarl of the man cut through my eardrum.

I quickly looked back at him. “What face?”

         He leaned up against the old, wooden railing of the upstairs balcony. That balcony looked like it would fall any second, perhaps even by the light weight of a pin dropping on it. His dark smile made a reappearance. “You're thinking. Stop doing that, it makes it harder for me. The Misses doesn't like it when people think, and if she sees you doing it…”

We all watched as the man buried his face in his hands. He began yelling and tearing at his already torn up shirt and jeans. Tears flooded his eyes as he stepped back, almost tripping over a garbage bag filled with empty beer cans.

        “Move, move!” I said, pushing Indigo and Sam forward.

        “Get away from me! Stop!” We heard the man shout in between our fast breathes and pumping hearts. “Get out of here, never return you whores!”

         His tortured screams faded the more we ran up the path. Eventually we slowed down when we realized he was too incompetent to actually follow us. My mind flashed back to him, particularly the ankles of his jeans and his shoes. There seemed to be a dark, red substance that stained them, I knew from the get go it was blood. He had said that no one left their houses unless the Misses said so. By the man’s outburst we witnessed, it was clear people abided by the rules.

         So no one could have snuck in and he couldn't have snuck out, there was only one person who he could have harmed. His spouse. It confirmed the scratch marks on his cheek were from that person. A really bad fight must have taken place, there was quite a bit of blood on his jeans. The one thing I wasn't able to confirm was whether or not she was badly injured or killed.

         “What did you do to them?” I blurted. My two friends gave me confused looks as they caught their breath.

         “Do to who...?” Indigo asked hesitantly.

I sucked in a small breath. I knew it was going to be a long night of explaining murders. “That man we just spoke to has a spouse, he physically fought with them but I'm not sure if they're still alive or not.”

Sam blinked and bit her lip when I looked over at her. “I sensed her while we were there.”

         “What? Her?” My eyes must have bulged out of my head when she announced that.

         “Yes, he had a wife. I actually saw her in her battered and torn clothes with a bullet through her temple,” She explained. “The woman was mouthing something, I couldn't really make out what she was saying. I asked her to speak up, but then realized that she was actually mute when she started using sign language.”

        “Well, now I know for sure where the blood came from. Since this neighborhood follows strict regulations, they must have something against killing their own kind, right? Maybe the reason no one gave a damn about her death was because the man was smart. Perhaps he made sure no one would hear her scream” I hadn't realized I went off on my own tangent. I heard Indigo scoff at me.

        “Or maybe no one really gave a damn. This town is really messed up, it would not surprise me if they have cult meetings every Saturday, sharing cookie recipes and bonding over who they've killed.” She was always the one who tended to look on the pessimistic side of things. I really couldn't blame her for that or her sarcasm, our cases would drive anyone to insanity.

Sam sighed. “She's right, but the woman was mute. I tried my best to focus on her mouth, what exactly she was trying to tell me.”

I crossed my arms. “And?”

         “This might not be accurate,” she warned. “But I'm pretty sure she was trying to say “it's a lie”.”

         I knitted my eyebrows together, giving her a puzzled look. I first assumed that maybe the woman was trying to say what the man was saying was a lie. But the only flaw with that was that he was partly drunk. I doubt he'd be able to lie in his state, not even that he was drunk, but also insane. I decided not to rule it out as a possibility, but we had more important things to focus on than a crazy man and his deceased wife.

         “Let's save that for another case, right now we have to find the first house. We don't want to be here all night. Quite frankly, I don't think any of us want to witness seventeen murderers all happen at the same time” I said. Indigo and Sam nodded at me.

          We continued walking down the road, and I made sure no people were following us or attempting to talk to us. For the most part, it was extremely quiet; no crickets, no wind, nothing could be heard. Just the grimly sound of our hearts beating in sync and our footsteps hitting the ground. I had read up on that town, I knew that other people went there and tried to discover things for themselves. The sad part is, none of them ever returned to tell the story. While walking deeper into their territory, the atmosphere seemed to become more and more dense, I felt like I was choking. I hated it whenever the air was thick, it always meant that there was more going on.