Twilight: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 3

deep breath, feeling calmness return. “Where did it go?”
“Don’t know. It just vanished.” Dean tramped over to stand beside them. “Did y’all notice there was no sound? No freaky-ass noise like at South Bay, no screams, not even the sound of bushes being moved around. Nothing. Quiet as the fucking grave.”
Startled, Sam thought about it. “You’re right. I didn’t notice at the time, but yeah. No sound at all. Just like earlier.”
Bo gave them both a solemn look. “Let’s go take a look. We need to find out if someone really did just die here, because if they did we’ll need to radio the police.”
“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Sam demanded. “We all saw it!”
“And I got it on video,” Dean added, holding up the camera.
“Okay, maybe ‘if’ is the wrong word, but…” Shaking his head, Bo moved off toward the spot where they’d just seen a person die. “Come on.”
Confused, Sam glanced at Dean, who shrugged. With a deep sigh, Sam turned to follow Bo. Dean fell into step beside him.
The three of them stopped just outside the rhododendron thicket and silently scanned the ground inside. To Sam’s relief, he didn’t see a trace of blood. Puzzling as it was, he was glad to know he hadn’t actually seen what he thought he had. They could figure out why they’d all imagined the same thing at the same time later. Right now, he was just glad they didn’t have a dead body to deal with.
Then he saw the fingers sticking up from the thick carpet of dead rhododendron leaves. Fingers attached to a curled, bloody hand, ending in a ragged stump of a wrist.
“Oh fuck,” Sam breathed, stumbling backward. “There. A hand, in the leaves.”
Bo and Dean both leaned over to look. Bo drew back with a hiss. “Oh, Jesus. I see.” He turned his back to the spot, throat working.
Dean crouched on the ground, peering into the bushes. “I can see the rest of the body now. Except for that one hand, it’s pretty far back and scattered around, which is probably why we didn’t see it at first.” He turned to Sam with a frown. “It’s weird that there’s no blood on the ground, though. We just saw this, right? So why isn’t there blood?”
Bile rose in Sam’s throat. “I’m gonna be sick.”
He stumbled toward a space in the trees to his left, searching for open air. Something rolled under his foot, causing him to lose his balance and stumble forward. Both hands came up instinctively to break his fall. One palm slid on the leaves and into open space, and he found himself flat on his stomach on the ground, staring down over a sheer drop-off.
Behind him, Bo let out a gasp. “Sam, for God’s sake. You almost—”
“I know.” Moving carefully, Sam scooted backward away from the edge and sat up on his knees. He took the hand Bo held out for him and rose to his feet, shaking all over. “I stepped on something round, and lost my balance. Shit.”
“Is this what you stepped on?”
Sam turned toward Dean’s voice. Dean squatted on the ground a few feet away, staring at something halfhidden by pine needles and rhododendron leaves.
“I don’t know.” Keeping hold of Bo’s hand, Sam moved closer to Dean. At Dean’s feet was a small white paper bag, and beside it a prescription bottle. “Maybe. Was that on the ground?”
“Yes. The cap’s cracked, and there’s a fresh shoe mark on the bag. Looks like it was maybe buried in the leaves, and you slipping on it shoved the leaves off it.” Glancing up, Dean beckoned them down to look. “Check out the label on this, y’all.”
Sam and Bo crouched beside Dean, Bo keeping a hand on Sam’s shoulder and grimacing as his injured leg bent. Sam squinted at the tiny print on the label. His eyes went wide. Beside him, Bo let out a small, shocked sound.
The name on the label read “Norton, Harry”. The prescription, lying abandoned in the forest next to the spot where they’d just witnessed a brutal slaying, belonged to Sunset Lodge’s missing employee.

Chapter Seven
    By the time the police arrived on the scene, the snow had been falling for nearly three hours. It crunched under Sam’s boots as he, Bo and Dean followed the two detectives and two uniformed officers to the spot where they’d found the body and the prescription. All around, the deep green of the pines and firs was frosted with white, giving the forest a fairy-tale quality.
    Gloved hands in his pockets, Sam turned his face up to the glowering gray sky. Fat white flakes drifted down in