Page 96 of Black Curtain

Just below the couch, blood pooled on the stone floor.

A man lay dead on one of the mats, his throat cut.

Next to him lay another woman in a pale green dress with delicate folds of cloth and a white shawl around her shoulders. A hammer covered in blood and hair lay next to her, and she stared up at the glass room of the sunroom, clearly dead.

The last two bodies were the hardest to look at.

Two children lay dead under a window framed by dark ivy.

One looked to be a boy roughly twelve years old. The girl was maybe six. They also looked like they’d been killed by the hammer.

I didn’t recognize any of them.

None were the auburn-haired woman, Virginie, or her husband, Denis.

This looked to be roughly the same time period, though.

Maybe a decade or so after.

Behind me, Black laid his fingers gently on my shoulder.

He had finished getting dressed.

He’d finished putting on pants, anyway.

“Fuck,” he muttered, looking around the sunlit room.

No one answered him.

16

TIMELESS

“Well, they’re obviously serial killers,” Nick said, breaking the silence.

Everyone turned, looking at him.

Dexter scowled, seemingly lost once more in Nick’s pale skin, and his cracked-crystal eyes.

“Or vampires,” he muttered.

Nick gave him a hard look, then seemed to decide to ignore him.

“They aren’t the dead ones,” Nick pointed out, motioning with a hand and arm over the dead bodies. “I don’t see either of Brick’s weirdo relatives here. I haven’t seen them in any of the other murder scenes, either.”

“Not much of a mystery though… is it?” Jax frowned, hands on his hips.

He glanced at Kiko, then caught the glaring contest going on between Nick and Dexter and looked away.

He focused on me, instead.

“I thought we were supposed to besolvingsomething here?” Jax said. “What the fuck is there to solve with this? It’s pretty obvious who did it.”

“Is it?” Black frowned at the other seer. “So far we haven’t seen any actualmurdersyet. Just dead people. And some boasting from the two freaks who supposedly live here. We don’t even know if they’re still here when this happens. If you look at the clothes…”

He pointed at the woman with the white shawl and the cotton-looking dress.

“…At least twenty years have passed between this and that first recording we saw in the front sitting room. The dress styles have changed to more of that peasant style. And the man’s coat is more fitted, and shorter…”

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