Gothicana

Corvina blinked as the scent disappeared, opening her mouth to tell her but something stopped her, with all the other girls around. She shook her head, her eyes spying a familiar figure talking to a guy on the other end of the Wing.

“Nothing, I just remembered I had to talk to Troy’s brother about something,” she told Jade, pointing towards Ajax’s big form. “You go on. I’ll meet you in a few.”

Jade glanced between her and Ajax, her eyebrows going up. “Oh god, he’s the hickey guy!”

Corvina almost denied it, then shut up. Better she thought that than the truth.

“Damn girl,” Jade gri

Corvina took a deep breath and headed towards Ajax.

He spotted her coming, and the determined look on her face, and excused himself from the guy he’d been speaking with.

“Do you have some time?” Corvina began without preamble.

His face got serious. “Sure. We’re just finishing the forensics at the lake. What’s going on?”

She looked around, checking no one was within hearing distance. “I need you to come to the woods with me.”

His big body straightened. “What’s going on, Corvina?”

“There’s a shack in the woods,” she began, not knowing how to tell him what she knew without telling him what she knew. “Do you know it?”

Ajax frowned. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“Just, come with me,” she told him, buying time. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

Looking around, he caught one of his colleagues and told him he’d be unavailable for a bit, indicating for Corvina to lead him.

Corvina wanted to let Vad know about the development, but not having seen him on campus since yesterday, she had no idea where he would be. But he knew Ajax and she trusted him, so she had to make it work.

They entered the sunlit forest and Corvina pointed to the right, towards a direction she hadn’t taken since that day. “That way.”

The woods looked unreal bathed in the brightness of the sun. The trees stood wall, a plethora of earthen colors from browns to greens and colorful flowers dotting in between, azure sky peeking from between the branches. Without the constant grey and the fog, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. And yet, darkness clung to it.

Ajax followed her down the incline by her side. “What’s with the shack?” he asked, jumping over a log and helping her over it.

“We went there once,” she told him the truth. “Troy and our group. He just wanted to explore the woods once, and we randomly headed in this direction.”

She picked up her skirt, walking around a hedge of weird-looking flowers, and descended down the incline.

“Did something happen?” Ajax asked from a few paces away, turning to look back at her with eyes the same as Troy’s had been.

“We saw something,” she reminisced, remembering the long silhouette they had encountered that day. “A long dark silhouette behind the windows. It was moving. But Troy noticed the lock on the door. Whatever it was, it had been locked in.”

Ajax let out a breath. “Fuck, this place would give creeps to the bravest bastard.”

They kept a quick pace, the castle having disappeared behind them above the thicket.

“And why did you want to check it out now?” he asked her as they almost neared the place.

“Just a hunch.”

Ajax slid her a look but didn’t say anything as the shack came into view in the distance.

“Is the lake close from here?” she asked as the smell of decay that she’d always associated with the lake infiltrated her senses again.

Ajax paused and looked to the left. “Just about there, I’d say. Maybe a five-minute walk. Why?”  

Corvina felt her heart begin to pound at the realization that the rot had always been coming from this place. While the lake had hidden horrors, there was something else in the shack.

They finally stood in front of the little brick and wood cottage, and Corvina’s eyes fell on the door. It was unlocked.

“Are you sure it had been locked last time?” Ajax asked in a low voice, pulling out a knife from his boot that Corvina hadn’t even seen.

“It was Troy who’d noticed the lock,” Corvina told me. “I didn’t look at the door.”

“Then it was locked,” Ajax said as they crept closer. “Troy was always good with details. Which means someone has been here recently. Stay behind me.”

Corvina felt her stomach tighten as Ajax cleared the space around the shack, coming back to inch the main door open. The pungent scent of rotten flesh assaulted them immediately.

Corvina covered her nose as nausea rose up, trying to block it out, Ajax wincing at the awful scent, pushing the door open completely. A small room came into view, with a kitchenette and a fireplace, a seating area, and two doors leading to the back.

Corvina ventured in slightly, the phantom ants that had always crawled up her skin doing so with a magnified intensity at the sight.

A body lay on the floor, body charred, with scavenging insects feeding off it.

Corvina felt the vomit rise up her throat and ran outside, spilling her breakfast in the bushes, panting as she vision of that ugly, ugly death imprinted itself on the forefront of her mind. Wiping her mouth, she steeled her spine and went back in to see Ajax covering his nose with his hand, examining the body, completely unruffled, which made her wonder how many corpses he must have seen.

“From the decomposition, I’d estimate she died anywhere between the last five years and a few months,” he spoke, his eyes sca

“She?” Corvina mumbled, trying to get her eyes to stay on the burned body long enough to observe.

“Definitely female,” he nodded. “And the burns are postmortem. See the legs,” he indicated the portion of the body beneath the knees. It was a pale grey and swollen. “Whoever it was began to burn the body and then stopped. Either they were interrupted or they only wanted to burn the upper half.”

He turned to her. “Are you sure you saw something moving here that day?”

Corvina nodded. “Yes. A long silhouette.”

“The body would’ve been here already,” he grit his teeth. “Let’s get back. I need to get the forensics here.”

Corvina gladly left the shack, her arms pebbled with goosebumps, unable to understand how she even knew any of this. Had her subconscious mind picked up some clues the day they’d been there? And who the hell was the female?

“Corvina,” Ajax said after locking the door as they started their trek up. “How well do you know Vad?”

Corvina paused on the incline. “You think he had something to do with that?”

Ajax put his hands up defensively. “Hear me out. I like him but my personal feelings ca

Corvina shook her head even as snippets of memories flashed through her brain.

Him coming out of the woods immediately after their group that day.

Him getting angry that she’d gone to the shack.

Him not telling her what happened to his grandfather.