Sound of Darkness

They saw a small stretch of drive that led to the left—and the remains of scattered cabins that had once been homes.

After Mark made the turn, they noticed the frame of an old chapel.

“That’s got to be the old burial ground, where the students were studying, right around the chapel,” Colleen said.

“Yeah, and look there. That old structure appears to have had work done recently. I’m thinking whoever was in charge of the student on-site work saw to it the place was safe enough for them to set their work area.”

“Seems kind of sad, doesn’t it? I mean, once people lived and worked and had hope here. It had to have been large enough at one time to have a chapel and graveyard,” Colleen said.

There was an open space in front of the cabin and chapel that was now filled with tall grass, but it wasn’t as overgrown as the rest of the surrounding area.

“They must have had it mowed down back when they were studying this place,” Colleen said.

“Yeah. They parked their cars here. When this study went on, they must have had the area cleared. That’s why it’s just overgrown grass now,” Mark said.

Colleen turned back to the dog.

“Let’s see what we’ve got, eh, Red?” she asked. She stepped out of the car, letting Red out.

Mark emerged from the other side.

“One would think, though, if someone was building coffins here and closing women into them, one of the students might have noticed,” Mark said dryly.

“Ah, but they were here before Emily was killed,” Colleen said, studying the notes she had on her phone.

“True,” he agreed. “So...”

“I’m going to check out the chapel,” Colleen said.

“I’ll take that old house,” Mark said. “Red—go with Colleen.”

She smiled. “Now, would you have sent Red with Ragnar?”

“No. But I haven’t slept with Ragnar,” he said, grinning.

Colleen laughed. “You’ll never get over how attracted you are to me,” she said.

“Nope. Never will. Nor will I get over just how much I like it.”

She grinned and walked off—accompanied by Red.

The old chapel seemed as sad to her as the rest of the decaying little compound. The area had probably been too rocky and overgrown for the settlers to sustain any kind of farming, though. From what she understood, people had lived here until after the Civil War.

There were a few broken and rotting pews left in the chapel. Rain had come through. The altar, though, had been made of stone and remained.

It was one room.

And there was nothing in that one room to indicate anyone had used it recently—to build coffins or do anything else.

The roof was only partially there.

Leaves and bracken covered just about everything.

She went back outside. Her cell phone rang. It was Mark.

“This is the place the students were using,” he told her. “Whoever was in charge of the study group definitely made sure the foundation of these ruins was solid. There’s a torn tarp still covering an area where the roof leaks. The wood is deteriorating in the whole of the place, but I can see where an area was swept and cleared at one time for tents and bedrolls for the researchers out here.”

“Anything else?”

“There isn’t much to the cabin here. It’s one big room.”

“The chapel is one big room too. I’ve just started out to the graveyard. I think I can see a few of the old stone markers Lindberg was telling us about.”

“Okay, meet you there. I believe there are still a few of these cabin remnants we’ll need to go through, but I’ll meet you in the graveyard first.”

“I’ll be there.”

She hung up.

At her side, Red began to growl.

“What is it, boy?” she asked the dog.

He barked and ran through the overgrown profusion of weeds and stones.

Colleen followed him and then stopped as the dog dug furiously at the ground.

“Red, it’s an old graveyard. There’s going to be—” She broke off.

Where he was digging, pieces of broken wood began to appear.

An old coffin. A very old coffin.

But it wasn’t. The pieces of wood were treated pine.

And in the mix, there were bones. What appeared to be disarticulated finger bones.

“Colleen?”

She looked up. Mark had come out of the old cabin. He was staring at her, frowning.

“Someone has been here,” she said, her voice soft across the distance.

“The students—”

“Not the students,” she said. “Mark, we have another victim.”