Emma pulled Henry back just in time, holding him close to her chest in an attempt to protect him from the cold.
Well, that, as well as the man who was in front of them.
Tied naked to a pole, his hands over his privates, as if that made it any better. Henry glanced up at her, casting his gaze down at the ground. Emma sighed, thankful for the action. Carefully, she released her son, taking a hesitant step forward.
"Henry, just stay there," she ordered the boy, and he nodded, keeping his gaze averted. Emma turned back to face the man, leaves crunching under her brown leather boots. Pursing her lips, she cleared her throat, calling out, "Sir?"
No answer.
"S-sir…?" she tried again, muttering a curse at how shaky her voice sounded. Turning, Emma stole a glance at Henry. He was still looking down, his green backpack slung over his shoulder. A whistle rang in her ears as the wind blew through, playing in the trees.
Emma turned back to the man, her eyes scanning him tentatively. His skin was ghostly pale, an almost pallid gray color. As she got closer, she could see bruises lining his neck and chest. Some were purple, others were yellow, healing and fading into his skin. Ropes around his chest, neck and ankles kept him upright, while another helped him protect his manhood. His black hair was messy, and something was matted in the layers, drying into a crumbled state.
"Sir, are you alright?" Emma said once more, strong and authoritative.
Still no answer. Emma was now up close to the man, able to examine every freckle and marking in his skin, how his lips were somewhat like a frog's, and his hair colored as black as ebony.
"Just like Snow White…" she murmured, eyeing him carefully. With his skin such a pallid color, she wasn't sure of he was breathing- nor did she want to find out. Touching anything that looked dead always gave her goosebumps, which was ironic, since she had handled the Katherine Nolan case a while back, what, with the human heart in the box and all.
"Emma, can I look up now?" Henry's voice broke through her thoughts, and she whirled her head around to see him looking up anyway, eyes widening with shock and awe. Cursing under her breath, Emma took out her cell phone as she tried shielding Henry's eyes again to no avail. He had dodged her feeble attempt in protecting him and was approaching the body, cocking his head at the bruises and lacerations on the man's body.
"He looks kinda like Snow White, huh?" he asked, and Emma faltered with her answer.
"I don't know how Mary Margaret would feel about that," she tried joking, but she knew it wasn't really the time. As she inspected the body, she realized that the crumbling material in his hair was blood.
If it was dried like she had seen it, then he was hanging up here for a very long time.
"Henry, get away from there, okay?" Emma beckoned Henry to abandon the body, and he obliged, stumbling backwards as he tripped over hidden tree roots, shrugging his backpack straps higher up on his shoulders. Emma pulled his coat tighter around his person as the and played with their hair, nipping at their cheeks and noses. Clenching her fingers around her phone, she pressed a few numbers, the metal and plastic cool against her cheek as she held the device to her ear.
"Are you calling David?" Henry asked. For a while now, David Nolan was acting as a sort of sheriff alongside her, helping solve a few cases here and there after Graham had died. Just thinking about the former sheriff made Emma want to cry, but she knew there wasn't a reason to linger on the past. Besides, she thought, I've got Killian now, and David's doing a good job of helping out. She jiggled her foot nervously as she listened to the phone ring on the other end, her eyes flitting back and forth to the man strung up like a puppet. Henry had given up on gawking at him, now he was sitting in the dirt, rummaging noisily through his backpack. Emma could see papers strewn loosely around inside the bag, and it made her wonder how he managed to do his homework and not lose it too.
"Hello?" came David's voice, and Emma nearly groaned with relief- it had gotten colder, and she wasn't sure how much longer she wanted to look at a possible receiver crackled with static as she spoke almost rapidly, hearing the faint scratch of pencil on paper as Henry started writing in one of his boac marble notebooks.
"Hey, uh, we have a situation," Emma gulped, pushing her hair out of her face.
"A hello would have sufficed, but what kind of situation are we talking about?" David asked, "Theft? Mugging? What?" The wind was playing with the man's hair, and Emma swore his lips had turned a darker shade of purple, almost black as she kept an eye on him.
She probably should have taken him down and wrapped him up in bundles of blankets, now that she was hinting about it.
Grunting, Emma replied, "Um, I was with Henry in the woods- we're still in the woods, actually- but uh, we came across-"
"Oh, you're with Henry? Mary Margaret said he was doing really well in class and-"
"David!" Emma snapped, catching Henry's attention. He looked up from his work to eye her curiously, waiting until she continued talking to look back down, "We found a body, okay? We're standing right in front of it and I don't know what t-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" David cut her off, his voice cracking, "A body?"
Emma nodded, "Yeah, and it's really freaking me out the longer I look at it."
"Alright, uh…" Emma could practically hear David thinking, the grinding of the gears in his brain as he tried to asses the situation as calmly as possible, "Is there blood?" Emma shook her head. Aside from the bits in the man's hair, there was none. She told him so.
"I also tried talking to him," Emma added, her breath forming white clouds as she breathed out, like smoke from a dragon. "He isn't answering, It's very likely he's unconscious or already dead."
"Just don't touch it, whatever you do," Emma could hear the scraping of a chair in the background along with the banging of a door, "I'll be right there, just keep Henry away from the evidence."
Emma nodded, hearing the dial tone on the other end as David had hung up the phone. Shivering, she slowly crouched down next to Henry, her eyes flicking to the page he was writing on. "What's that? One of Mary Margaret's art assignments?" Henry shook his head, lifting his head every few seconds to examine something.
"Nah, I'm just drawing it so we can remember." was the boy's answer, and it took Emma a minute to process what he meant exactly by "it."
He was drawing the body.
Henry was trying to remember what the body looked like, that was sitting in front of them, she realized, with pale skin and black hair. Her mind automatically went to Henry's storybook- a large, leather-bound book with gold lettering on the cover, with the same color stitching on the border.
"Henry, I don't think you should do that," Emma said as she watched him erase a few lines, then shakily draw them back in. She could make out what was supposed to look like the head, leading down to the torso and arms, then the legs. The feet were awkwardly done, with no distinction of where the man's feet ended and his toes began. You really couldn't expect a masterpiece from a middle school student though, now could you?
Sighing, she let Henry draw, hoping that David reached them quickly.