Chapter 2: Join Us
27 Years Later
Join us…
There it was. He heard it again; the voices in the wind. The old man cradled his bible to his chest, shivering not from cold.
Join us…
His eyes fell upon the harmless cardboard box marked "evidence" that lay beneath his old oak desk. He had tried so hard to keep from peering into that damn box. But the contents inside called to him. Softly at first until, they grew louder and louder with each passing year. Now the calls were unbearable. They destroyed him, ruined his marriage, took his badge…caused him to steal evidence from one of his old cases. The most gruesome of all his old cases.
Join us…
He could no longer resist the temptation. For what seemed like the thousandth time he abandoned his bible for the box. This time, however, his nagging urge was not satisfied by simply looking at the objects housed within the cardboard walls.
His fingers, without his mind's approval, gracefully traced the semi charred parchments at the box's bottom, like they had so many times before. His hand did not stop there, but continued to venture across the only other significant item in the box. As he lifted the heavy tape recorder from its container he realized this was the object he had no desire to further investigate. The old man wished he still possessed enough will power to restrain his curiosity. His one vice, curiosity, was now slowly killing the old cat.
As he dragged the power cord to the nearest outlet he began to wonder if this is what happened that weekend, in the cabin where the contents of the box had been found. Was it the same chilling call of the wind that had driven a young man to brutally murder his friends, his sister and a group of complete strangers? The images of those deposing corpses haven't allowed him, a cop, a decent night's sleep in twenty seven years. Not to mention the countless scenarios he had dreamed—nightmared—up to explain the one body that was never found. Yet they had found that young man, a college student, functioning without remorse when he was arrested. The arrest added another murder to his resume; an elderly woman blow to bits with a shotgun inside the local S-Mart store where he was employed. It didn't take long for the authorities to connect the two crimes. The old man had always wondered how that boy could have done such horrible things to so many people. What was it that he said? Demons did it? Demons in the woods "took" his friends?
He pressed play.
"…the first few pages warn that these enduring creatures may lie dormant but are never truly dead…" the professor's voice floated out from the recorder for the first time in nearly three decades. With it the old man's first sympathetic thought for the media dubbed "Cabin Fever Killer" formed: perhaps he didn't have a choice, either…
Betsy Ellen York was washing her dishes when she heard the scream emanating from her next door neighbor's home. The noise startled her so she nearly broken a plate over her toe. She peered out the window over her kitchen sink carefully, looking for any sign of danger next door. Betsy didn't know her neighbor very well. The old hermit kept to himself mostly; keeping his doors always locked and the curtains drawn over every window. So that's what she noticed first—after the scream and glass scattering sound—was the broken window with the curtains billowing against the wind. Then she heard the bone crushing thud below where the retired cop hit the pavement.