He pauses.
He swallows.
He tells her in a tone as hard as steel.
“I saw him.”
Police have revealed the body discovered in the storm tunnel behind Hollow Grounds Graveyard early Thursday morning is eighteen-year-old, Tiffany Anne May. Father, Neil May, identified the body of his daughter late yesterday afternoon. Police have shared a chilling detail that comes with the discovery of the deceased young woman. Tiffany Anne May was the daughter of Evelyn Anne May, who was the fifth and last known victim of notorious Devil’s Peak Killer, Kevin Campbell. Campbell had violently murdered the mother of the dead eighteen-year-old before he was incarcerated over a decade ago. Police Chief Wynston shared in a press conference this morning that May was last seen at Devil’s Diner and left the premises alone and on foot at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning. Police are urging anyone who saw May to notify Devil’s Peak Police Department. A source close to the investigation, who wishes to remain anonymous, has shared that the discovery of May was as grim and disturbing as the Campbell murders. The young woman had been paralyzed antemortem.
Eighteen Years Old
The first rays of iridescent pale-yellow sunlight snag on patches of grass that grow wildly and tall across Hollow Grounds Graveyard.
I can hear the breath in my lungs, along with a bird chirping high in the treetops above.
It is eerily quiet.
No one came down here anymore, unless they had reason.
My shoes brush through the wet blades of grass, pearled droplets of water clinging to the verdant spears that peak through the thick fog circling and dispersing around my ankles.
The air is slightly crisp, and yet it carries a familiar thickness.
Last night's erratic downpour hadn’t lasted all that long. It never did around here. However, it hadn’t stopped the town's locals from yearning for the same thing they did every time the sky turned menacing: a lengthy downpour to counteract the sweltering heat. And it had, only not for long enough. I feel it creeping back, a line of perspiration beading at my chest, seeping through the cotton of my off-white T-shirt, clotting in my throat. It’s as if the air in Devil’s Peak had begun to sweat.
I slow when my vision swirls, blinding pain chewing at my temples. The strap of my best friend's guitar case slips off my shoulder, and I’m working it down my arm, dropping it to the ground, pressing my palms to the decrepit headstone beside me and crouching at the knees.
The scent of soil is in my nose, shadows looming and ducking through gnarled graveyard trees. Torn up pieces of soggy newspaper from last week are at my feet, because the town of Devil’s Peak was set in old ways, unmoving with time, internet, and news blogs, adamant on keeping locals informed of events, fundraisers, gatherings,murders…in ink.
Wind hits me and I blink, take a moment to breathe, squeezing my eyes closed. When the pain hammering my brain doesn’t shift, I return to my feet, reaching into the back pocket of my torn black jeans. I pull out a squashed, half empty packet of cigarettes, tapping one into the palm of my trembling hand, biting it and touching my lighter to the tip. The yellow flame dances with the puff of breath that whistles from my nose, and I burn a charred line through my throat, waiting and finding—the same way I knew I would—that the nicotine no longer offers relief.
My shoulder pops, my lungs squeeze, and my fists tighten when I haul the guitar case up, throwing it on my back, feeling the dampness settle across my spine from where the dregs of the storm soaked through the thin fabric.
I cut across the quiet and still graveyard, taking the path toward the back fence. It sits at waist height, a corroded mess. The emerald-green paint has almost completely flaked away from the rusted metal. I shove the cigarette between my teeth, place my hands on the fence and haul myself over.
My body tilts as I descend a sharp drop, bridging the mouth of the town's old concrete storm tunnel.
The grim passage runs beneath the soil of buried bones, tracking to the opposite end of town, depositing what little run-off we had into a mucky creek locals knew to avoid. I hadn’t followed it through, not sure I ever would. I had only one reason for being down here, and it didn’t come from the will to explore. I left that to the youth who accepted dares from their friends, or the ones that carried morbid curiosity for the dead.
The rubber soles of my Vans are worn, and as I enter I can feel the tunnel's permanent chill seeping into the arches of my feet. They quickly start to ache, dispersing into numbness, though I push myself to walk, to continue to move.
A shallow pool of stagnant water sits in the center, reeking of filth. Its fetid, stale, and musty stench carries the smell of death.
A scent the small town of Devil’s Peak was all too familiar with.
Two years ago, when the mutilated body of an eighteen-year-old girl was found disposed of in this same tunnel—paralyzed and scrubbed with bleach—it had chilled the town to its bones.It was too close to home.
Since that day, locals have been holding their breath, hoping it was a random act of violence, praying that the vicious roots of the town's past would remain buried. However, hope and evil grew different sets of teeth, and evil had no mercy when it carried rot at its core.
My heart bangs into my throat, a shiver coiling around my spine. With a tight chest, I work to readjust my jaw, taking a deeper step into the inky darkness.
The concrete walls are covered in lichen and graffiti, grim shadows creeping in sharpened blades of stolen light, and the cold that follows had long settled into the pit of my stomach.
Devil’s Tunnelhad received its name fourteen years ago when sadistic serial killer and rapist, Kevin Campbell, had been the first to use it as a dumping ground for his victims.
He struck five times, murdering five young women—all paralyzed antemortem, all sexually assaulted, all doused and scrubbed with bleach,all mutilated the same way—before a small piece of evidence, and an anonymous witness,led to the police making their eager arrest, catapulting the devil who had reached his peak and disrupted what was once a sleeping, peaceful town, to prison.
Locals had hoped for the dried-up sack of shit to rot behind bars, but he had other plans when he selfishly drained his wrists two months after his arrest.
