Hello, so here's the second part of Small Worlds and the third and final part will be up tomorrow. Enjoy.
Thanks.
Chapter 17
Small Worlds Part 2
They arrived back at the hub and Jack gathered them all in the conference room so they could research these so called fairies further.
"This is the youngest girl, and this is the girls cousin." Tosh explained as she brought up two of the Cottingley Fairies photographs on the screen.
"I thought those photographed were faked?" Rose asked.
"Conan Doyle believed in them." Owen told her.
"He was gaga at the time." Gwen chimed in.
"And Houdini?" He shot back.
"Self publicist." She continued with a shrug.
"How do you know so much about this?" Jack asked.
"Because I wrote an essay on the Cottingley glass plate photographs when I was at school" She told them which caused Owen to snigger.
Rose resisted the urge to roll her eyes and hid her smirk behind her coffee cup as Gwen continued.
"And when the girls were old ladies they admitted they were fakes."
"Where was this sighting?" Tosh chimed in as she brought up one of the photographs Estelle had taken.
"In a place called Roundstone wood." Jack explained.
"I know that place, got a bit of an odd history." Owen told him.
"What do you mean odd?" He asked.
"It always stayed wild." He said with a shrug.
"Back in ancient times it was considered bad luck to walk in there, even the romans avoided it." He continued.
"There haven't been any reports of any sightings." Tosh told them.
"You won't, these things stay under the radar, but they play tricks with the weather so set up a program for unnatural weather patterns." Jack said and she nodded."
"Jack, are you saying our machines can't pick them up?" Rose asked him with a frown.
"Nothing can." He told her with a shake of his head.
"Right, who's up for a little trip?" He announced suddenly, rising from his seat.
"Tosh, keep an eye on those weather patterns. Owen, Gwen, Rose with me, we're gonna check out these woods." Jack gave them their tasks and made his way out of the conference room, Into stayed behind to clear away their coffee cups whilst the others followed him.
The group made their way through the woods, following Jack as he navigated the area in search of the spot in which Estelle's photos had been taken. Rose hung back with Owen as Gwen and Jack walked ahead, she could hear Gwen trying to pry further information out him about his father and wasn't surprised when he gave her a simple answer with a tone that very much said he wouldn't be going into any further detail.
"The stones from the photographs." Rose announced as they came to a clearing where a set of stones were placed in a circle.
"Anyone could have made this circle!" Gwen told them, throwing up her arms in disbelief.
"What's your problem?" Rose shot back, annoyance evident in her voice.
"I'm doing my job." Gwen said with a shrug, unfazed by Rose's demeanour.
"No you're not, the danger of these things is being spelled out for you and all you're doing is looking for explanations." Rose continued, she was sick of Gwen doubting them all the time.
"That's what police work is all about." Gwen replied as calmly as she had before which only irritated Rose further.
"You're not in the police anymore, you're part of this team now and you need to start acting like it." Rose told her bluntly.
Gwen had remained calm throughout their disagreement but her final comment hit her in a different way and finally made her snap.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Gwen shot back, her voice rising.
Jack and Owen had been watching their exchange in silence, Owen with a smirk as he found the entire thing quite amusing and Jack on standby incase things escalated. Rose had a point, he was starting to get frustrated with Gwen's lack of faith in him and had she not beat him to it he would have probably said something himself.
"That's enough." Jack called out and they both looked at him.
"We've all got jobs to do here, let's get them done and get back to the hub." He continued, deciding not to weigh in on their argument.
Rose sighed but nodded nonetheless, heading over to where Owen was she kneeled down beside him and got to work in silence. Gwen had a similar response and shot Rose one last glance before getting to work.
"You're quite hot when you're angry." Owen whispered to Rose with a smirk and she rolled her eyes.
"You're such a pig." She told him, punching him in the arm which caused him to lose his balance and fall sideways onto the ground.
She couldn't hold in her laughter as he fell, watching him with a smirk of her own as he shot her a glare and got back up. They finished the rest of their work in relative silence before packing up their things and heading back to the suv, Rose and Gwen hadn't said another word to each other since their argument and neither made any effort at conversation on their way back to the hub either.
They had barely made it back to the hub when Jack received a phone call from the local station about a suspicious death involving one of their inmates, he figured it wouldn't be the best idea to have Gwen and Rose together after their recent spat so had Gwen stay behind and go through the samples they had collected from the woods and headed off to the station with Rose and Tosh.
The officer in charge led Jack and Rose through the station as Tosh dealt with things behind the scenes.
"We had him locked up on his own the entire time, he was shouting the odds when he was first brought in, said things were following him" The officer told them as he unlocked the gate separating them from the main cells.
"What kind of things?" Jack asked him.
"Shadows he said, and he was going on about being choked." He explained.
"There were four other prisoners, who saw nothing." Tosh chimed in as she appeared behind them.
"Where are they now?" Rose asked.
"I had them transferred." She told her and Rose nodded.
"CCTV?" Jack questioned.
"I'm dealing with it." She assured him.
"At first we thought he was drunk or a nutcase, or maybe both." The officer explained as he led them down the hallway towards the cell.
He opened the door to the cell and stepped aside to allow them entry, a man lay on the floor in the middle of the room and Tosh came to kneel beside him so she could assess the body.
"His name is Mark Goodson, worked in town as a business consultant." Tosh relayed the information she had found out minutes before.
"Cause of death?" Jack asked.
"Going by the pin point haemorrhages on the eye lids and around the hairline I'd say oxygen deficiency, but it's odd, there's no finger tip bruising on the face and no areas of pallor." She explained.
"Nothing to suggest any pressure was applied." Rose summarised and Tosh nodded.
"So he suffocated, alone in a locked cell." She kneeled down next to the body as Tosh stood back up, trying to understand how it was possible.
Leaning forward to see if there was anything that would indicate how the cause of death was possible, she opened the victims mouth slightly and frowned as she saw something inside.
"Wait a minute." She muttered, reaching back she grabbed a pair of tweezers from her case before carefully reaching into his mouth to extract whatever it was.
They all watched in silent shock as Rose pulled what looked to be petals out of the victims mouth.
"I've never seen anything like that before." Tosh said in surprise.
'I have." Jack said and Rose looked up at him, he said nothing further so she assumed he would wait until they were with the rest of the team before he told his story.
They made the necessary arrangement in regard to body disposal and got all the information they needed before heading back to the hub. Tosh had collected the footage from the CCTV inside the cell and once back they brought it up on the screen in the conference room so they could see exactly what had happened.
There was no evidence on the recording that anyone or anything else had been in the cell with the victim, it looked as though he was having some kind of fit but they knew it was the work of the near invisible creatures.
"Did you know the dead man was a convicted pedophile, he used to hang around schools." Jack told them, disgust evident in his voice.
"But why put petals in his mouth?" Rose asked.
"Just a bit of fun on their part." He explained with a shrug.
"You call that fun?" Gwen piped up, a grim smile on her face.
"Thats the way these creatures like to do things, they play games, they torment and then they kill." He told her.
"But why?" Rose asked.
"As punishment, or a warning to others, they protect their own, the chosen ones." He said.
"How do we stop them?" Tosh asked.
"We need to find out who they want, we can't trap them because they have control of the elements, sometimes I think they might be part mara." He explained.
"Mara?" Rose repeated.
"They're a kind of malignant wraiths, it's where the word nightmare came from, they suffocate people in their sleep." He told them.
The landline on the table suddenly began ringing and everyone jumped, Jack reached over and pressed the button to answer the call and put it on speaker.
"Yeah?" He called out to the caller.
"Jack, it's me Estelle." Came the voice on the other end, it was Estelle and she sounded scared.
"What is it?" Jack asked, sensing the fear in her voice.
"You're right Jack, there are bad ones, they've come to me." She told him.
"Estelle we're on our way, stay where you are and don't go anywhere near them do you understand?" He told her, the others already getting up and preparing to leave.
"Yes." She agreed and only then did Jack disconnect the call.
They wasted no time and rushed straight out, Tosh monitored the weather conditions on route to Estelle's house and found that despite it being a completely dry night there was a patch of rain in one specific area. Behind Estelle's home.
Jack pulled up outside the house and everybody rushed out, the front door was unsurprisingly locked so they made their way around the back hoping they weren't too late.
"Estelle!?" Jack called out as he rushed into the garden in search of his friend.
He came to an abrupt stop when he found her lying on the ground, Owen looked up from his place at her side.
"It looks like she died from drowning even though the rest of the garden is dry as a bone." He explained to his boss.
Everyone but Rose dispersed as Jack dropped to her side, he slid her eyes closed before gathering her in his arms.
Rose took a deep breath to try and keep her own tears at bay as she kneeled down beside Jack, putting a hand on his shoulder she couldn't think of anything she could possibly say to make the situation any less devastating.
"We once made a vow, that we'd be with each other until we died." He told her quietly, tears slowly making their way down his cheeks.
Rose stood, giving him a moment of privacy as she wiped her own tears away. After a few moments he rose to his feet and she reached for his hand, he looked at her and after another brief moment he pulled her into his arms. She held him tight as she felt his tears land on her shoulder, he had been there for her so many times and it was now her turn to return the favour.
Neither were sure how long they were stood holding each other before Jack finally pulled away, he stepped away from Rose and ran a hand down his face, wiping away his remaining tears and releasing a long breath.
"I need a drink." He told her, unable to bring himself to look at Estelle again he wondered back towards the suv.
Rose followed him to where the others were waiting for them, no one said anything to them and the drive back to the hub was made in silence.