Page 78 of A Forgotten Mistake

“Right… but it’s well after dusk and chickens roost at dusk. So it takes a whole fucking lot to get them to move because they have horrible eyesight at night. Something was disruptive enough to drive them out from wherever they were roosting.”

“Okay, but what about the person in the house?” he asks.

I’m torn. Something is drawing me to that dark barn, door open wide, as if inviting me. There’s obviously something inside that’s scary enough to drive the animals out. But someone had to have turned off the light in the house… right?

I lean against the house as Gabriel watches me like I have all of the answers.

“Let’s go to the barn,” Gabriel says. “Your instincts are rarely wrong, so I vote that we go there.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m never wrong,” I remind him.

“It’s okay to be wrong. I mean… realistically, Cameron wouldn’t kill Liz in his house, especially when he knows we’re watching him. I would be amazed if he even decided to leave her on the property with us taking note of him like we are.”

“That’s true,” I say as we head toward the barn. One of the chickens looks quite displeased to be out and flies to the top of a fence where it decides this will be its new roost. It’s all black, and it seems like an odd type of omen as it watches us reach the large open barn door. I swing my light back and forth as I hold my gun at the ready.

There’s a stall covered in wire mesh right when we walk in. It was likely once used for a larger animal that has since become predator-proof for the chickens. The door is open and the wire that covers the opening is drawn back. When I shine my light over it, the blood that’s caught on the small twists of metal glistens.

I nod to Gabriel who picks up on what I’m looking at before the beam of his flashlight flicks to the floor, like he’s wanting to show me the drops of blood that the light catches.

Noise draws our attention, and Gabriel looks over in the direction it’s coming from, though I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t more animals in the barn making the noise that’s currently coming from our left.

We keep moving forward, and when Gabriel’s light sweeps to the left, I see a pig watching us curiously. It quickly gets bored and moves on, out of sight. The blood is getting harder to follow, telling me the wounded person either realized they were leaving tracks for the killer, or their bleeding was slowed by something.

Toward the middle of the barn, I realize two of the stalls are housing horses. One is watching us, curious about our arrival, but the other one doesn’t look up. There’s something more interesting than us inside that stall that makes the horse snort, like it’s smelling something. It could very well be hay or something a bit more… alive.

“Watch me,” I whisper.

Gabriel nods as I slowly slide the stall door open. It runs along a metal track which means no part of it is quiet, telling me that if someone is in the stall, they entered from above. Does the killer think their victim is up in the hayloft? I can’t see an opening to it from down here, but the hay and cobwebs hanging between the floorboards above me tell me that’s likely what it’s used for.

The door slides open just enough that I can look in and see a dark mass tucked against the wooden hay manger.

“Police,” I say quietly, assuming this is the victim but refusing to let my guard down. “Put your hands up.”

They lift their head, and in the light leaking in through the stall window, I realize that it’s not Liz, as I’d thought, but Cameron. His eyes are wild as he holds a hand against his bleeding side. Blood has darkened his shirt and pants.

“Hands up,” I order, having no idea whether he’s the victim or the assailant here. Did he attack Liz and she got the upper hand? Or is there more at play here?

He lifts his hand and launches at me. Pure stubbornness keeps me from shooting him. I want to know what the fuck’s going on here, and shooting him won’t give me the answers Ineed. I don’t realize what he’s swinging at me until I have a hay hook slamming into my side. He rushes behind the horse who is panicked at the quick movement and shies away from him toward me, seeing me as the lesser of two evils. Clearly… the horse isn’t a very good judge of character.

Gabriel yanks me back out of the stall. “What the fuck? Were you just going to get trampled so you could brawl him?”

“Maybe. Something’s not right.”

“He still went at you with a weapon!”

“I noticed,” I say since my side stings a little. Thankfully, it wasn’t a very sharp hook and will probably just leave a bruise.

“Come on,” I urge before I hear a board creak above me. I glance up as I realize that whoever had put Cameron in that state is still in the building.

With Gabriel behind me, I carefully walk back into the stall and look up. I notice that the hayloft is open above the stalls, likely so you can throw hay down from above, but instead of hay, I find a person staring back at me. A gun goes off and I shove Gabriel back as the horse panics and plows me through the door to get out. I’m thrown forward, sending Gabriel to the ground as I hear the horse’s shoes sound off the concrete while it bolts down the aisle and out the barn door.

“Where the fuck is the way up?” I hiss as I pull Gabriel up to his feet.

“I can see Cameron running,” he whispers.

The wood above us creaks again, a little farther down, and I feel mesmerized by it. I want to hunt. I want Gabriel to remove my leash so I can pursue… but no… no… the police are heading here. I have to do everything by the book. I can’t chance anyone finding me stalking my prey.

Gabriel grabs the front of my shirt and gives me a shake, snapping my focus back to him. “Cameron seems pretty unsteady. I doubt he’ll get far but we also don’t know who shotat you. It could be someone working with Cameron or it could be Liz. We’re not going up the ladder; they could be watching it. There’s some hay stacked over there that we could use to climb up. Please be careful.”

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