Page 41 of Girl, Haunted

Ella realized she'd drawn her fist back, ready to deliver a broken nose. She looked the bear-man in the eyes and saw the unmistakable look of defeat. Adrenaline still buzzed beneath her skin. She drank in the details she'd been too busy to process mid-tussle: the fake blood on his outfit, the smaller teddy bear sewn to his breast pocket.

‘Roland Pierce,’ she said, ‘you’re coming with me.’

Ella's fist froze mid-air as the thundering of footsteps echoed through the maze. She whipped her head around, half-expecting to see the punters back for an encore.

But no. Sheriff Redmond burst in, flanked by a couple of uniforms and a grim-faced Luca.

The look on his face said it all.

‘Hold up, Ella,’ Redmond bellowed. ‘You might have this all wrong.’

Ella's stomach dropped like a lead weight. The triumph that had been coursing through her veins moments ago evaporated.

‘No. Don’t tell me…’

‘I’m sorry. We’ve got a third body.’

Ella let her head fall back. The case she thought was closed had just blown wide open, and she was back at square one with a handful of nothing.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ella Dark spent her days staring mortality in the face, but here in the so-called Execution Chamber of a cheap haunted house named the Crypt of Despair, mortality had never looked so wrong.

Because in front of her, amasked man hung from the rafters, swaying gently on the end of a rope that groaned with each sway of pendulous motion. Luca placed a hand on Ella’s shoulder. She wasn’t sure if he was comforting himself or her.

‘You gotta be kidding me,’ Luca said.

There was no kidding here. The victim was unidentifiable, given the mask – a white thing with streaky tears of red around the eyes – but the owner of this place had apparently confirmed him as Benjamin Clarke.

Sheriff Redmond scrubbed a hand over his face, then turned away from the scene. 'This is hellish. Who does something like this?'

Ella tried to view the scene with a detached eye, but the visual of the hanged man demanded a moment of tribute. Whatever this was, it wasn’t the work of a garden-variety psychopath. This was the twisted vision of someone beyond repair.

‘Who found him?’ she asked.

‘The owner of this place. Harry Gibbs. The guy’s in quite a state.’

‘Not surprising. How did he find him?’

‘Victim’s an electrician, apparently fixing the lights in here. Gibbs brought him a coffee and found him... strung up.’

Luca asked, ‘He suspicious?’

Redmond shook his head. ‘Man’s in his seventies. Frail as hell. Can barely lift a toothbrush.’

Ella took a step closer and inspected the contours of the body. She noted the thickness of the rope, the lack of any loll in the victim's head. Then, her attention was drawn to the red blotches beneath the man's clothes. Two of them.

‘Our killer stabbed him,’ she said. ‘Ankle and stomach.’

Luca joined her. ‘Incapacitate him, then hang him from the beams. That takes a ton of strength.’

‘Vic was dead before the killer hanged him. Look closer.’

He did, then shook his head. ‘I’m not seeing it.’

‘The angle of the head. He’s looking straight down. Hanging kills by snapping the neck, which makes the head loll to the side.’

‘Maybe it just choked him?’

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