Just a brief word before we go on. To everyone who´s reading. This is not supposed to be a Comedy story. It´s serious. Like dead serious. If you want to read something funny and more true to Psych, I suggest you read something else. Everyone else … just have fun with the lack of fun.

Also the title of this chapter is taken directly from Stephen King´s Different Seasons. No Copyright infringement intented. Only a loving reference, sinse I was in love with this title ever since I first lay eyes on it.

Fall from Innocence

The moon was full in the sky, as Shawn walked down the path. The park lay quiet and peacefully before him, and the chilly night-air blew lazily around his head, cooling the headache he felt, just a little. It didn´t help much. Not as much as he´d hoped, when he´d come out here. But it was better than to lay awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

Usually it helped him to feel better, just to take a walk. Only he usually didn´t take walks that long. His apartment was miles from here, in another quarter. Why he´d come here to this park, instead of just walking around his building for a while, was beyond him. But he was here now, so it didn´t really matter. Did it?

The night was quiet and in all honestly, really beautiful. The silence all around him, made him feel free. More even than sitting on his Norton, driving down the highway. It was a feeling as if he was really truly one with the night. Like in an old Indian legend, when the warrior became one with the spirits. Or maybe it was the hunter who felt this connection? A connection that helped him to find his pray. Something animalistic, to sharpen his senses.

Shawn chuckled. Where did these strange thoughts sometimes come from? He had no idea. Gus would have freaked out if he´d known.

But Gus was in Santa Barbara, far far away from Ohio, probably learning for his final exams, to finally be a … what? Pharmaceutical salesman? Despite how lame that sounded, Shawn sent his best wishes out into the night, for his friend to make it, past his worries to fail. Shawn just knew he wouldn´t. And neither would he. No, he thought, a strange calmness taking over his mind. No, he wouldn´t fail. Not tonight, he wouldn´t.

He smiled up at the pale moon, and when the sound of faint footsteps sounded from up the path, he took a long deep breath, and just kept walking. No, he´d never fail. No matter what his father thought. There was no way he ever would.

...

Today:

"I´ve got the files from the case in Ohio ten years ago." Juliet tells him, sitting down with him. Her face is dark, and there´s a heavy tone in her voice, when she tells him: "The first murder happened at the same time as this one. To the day. Same with the first murder twenty years ago, here in Santa Barbara."

"Wow." Shawn exclaims, not knowing what else to say. "That´s creepy."

Jules only nods, in agreement, and opens the file. She shows him the reports and the photos. It all looks familiar and strange the same time.

Ten years ago, before he came back to Santa Barbara, Shawn had nothing to do with crime solving, so he´d had nothing to do with this case in Ohio. But now that he looks at the information, it all starts to come back to him, slowly.

"I think I knew the second victim." he mumbles when he recognizes the face on the photo.

Of course he remembers her with more color and open eyes. Alive, not slashed to death by a knife, cut over her throat. Her name was Emily, he believes to remember. Emily … something.

Juliet´s eyes go wide at his revelation. "What?" she cries, in total shock, and Shawn is too numb to try and calm her down.

"I dated her." he hears himself tell her, and the memory of it all seems too much, even for him. God, he´d dated a murder victim.

"Once." he remembers, talking more to himself than to Jules. "I thought she didn´t call back because …" he shrugs. "Didn´t bother me too much."

But now that he looks at her photo, pale and dead. A body. He shakes his head.

"Dammit."

"Emily Eames." Jules reads the full name from the file, and she gives him a quizzical look. "You know anything about her private life?" she asks. "If she had any enemies?"

"No." he shakes his head. "I met her in the zoo, while I was feeding the zebras. She was cute, that´s all I was interested in at the time."

On the spur of the moment, he grabs the other two files, and looks at the photos. What looked only halfway familiar earlier becomes clearer now. The third victim was someone he´d known too.

"She was the girlfriend of a colleague of mine." he tells Jules. "Uhm … Anna? I´m not sure. I only saw her once, when she picked him up from work. They were in the process of breaking up at the time. When I never saw her again, I assumed they´d broken up."

"He didn´t say anything about her being a victim?"

"No. Didn´t even look very sad."

"What was his name?"

Shawn tries to remember. "Hank." he then says. "Hank …. Camilla? Or something like that. The name sounded Italian, that´s what I remember."

"Okay." Jules writes the name down, promising to check it out. "What about the first victim?" she then asks him. "Does she look familiar?"

And he can tell that she is afraid of the answer. She´s afraid the answer could be yes. That Lassiter could have been right and someone really was after him, killing only girls that he´d had contact with.

But this time Shawn has to shrug, can only shake his head. He can´t remember her face. Her hair, long brown curls look familiar but many women have such hair so it´s not really anything to point out. He probably never met her. And that would be the best, because the fact that he´d known two of three victims is already starting to freak him out. Man, does that mean he really has a stalking serial killer? Someone who kills off people around him, just for the fun of it? Or to send him – or maybe Henry – a message?

Jules suddenly reaches out a hand to cover his, squeezing reassuringly. Until this moment, he hasn´t even realized how cold his hands have gone. But now that her warm skin is over his, he feels it. Shit, this is messed up.

"We´ll find out who did this." she promises and somehow he manages a smile for her.

...

In the end Juliet´s research on Hank Camilleri – that´s his real name – stops dead in a big heap of nothing. As it turns out, their first real suspect in this case has died in a car crash only three years ago. So he´s off the list and their hunt for the real killer once again, dry like old bones. Even if he´d been the one doing the killings back then, Shawn thinks, the only way for him to be responsible now, would be, if someone would be copying him. But that sounds too far fetched even for Shawn.

The fake psychic sighs in frustration. He´d been so sure.

"He didn´t shed a single tear when his date died." he recalls once again, but the facts are clear. It´s not him. Dead men don´t kill living girls. Not outside of George Romero´s Night of the living Dead.

"Would you cry when you found one of your dates dead the next day?" Juliet asks him. "I mean if you would have known."

Shawn looks at her, hesitating. "Well … not exactly cry." he stutters. "But most of my dates I only dated … once."

"Hmhm." Juliet nods. "Makes me wonder how you could stay so persistent to ask me for a date all these years."

That finally makes him smile again. "Well." he turns to her. "I guess the one and only is something you only meet once in a life."

Her smile is as sweet as honey and so is the kiss they share. Something small but so much more value. And it almost makes him forget the knot in his stomach, for a moment. Almost.

...

In that night Shawn dreams about his time in Ohio. He wanders through the zoo at bright daylight, shoving a pushcart full of hay to feed the zebras with it. He passes tourist groups of laughing kids with their mothers and the compound of the giant hamsters. One of them is jumping out of it´s cave like a raging bear, and Shawn gets a little scared that it will jump over the fence and attack him. But it doesn´t even look at him and at the top of the hill it stops jumping and only roars over the area.

Shawn´s heart is hammering and he has to force himself to keep going. Why do they surround an area that keeps such big animals with such small fences he wonders.

He reaches the gate and walks out. The pushing cart has mysteriously vanished somewhere on his way to the front and now he has to run an errand for his boss, so he drives into the city, on a toilette bowl. He parks it behind the mall, between a dark blue Crown Vic and a small light blue Toyota Echo.

When he gets off of the john, a woman walks by and eyes it with great interest. She asks him where she can get such a thing but right in this moment he can´t even tell her. It´s borrowed, he tells her and makes his way into the mall.

As soon as he´s inside, he sees a nice girl. Emily. He recognizes her. They talk for a while about how American doctors advice the population on how to perfectly use the bathroom when you´re between twenty and twenty-five. Shawn is convinced to just let it run is the easiest and also the best way, but Emily tells him he´s wrong.

She doesn´t get the chance to tell him the right way though, because the management of the mall announces over loudspeaker that the mall will be closed now, because of the curfew the police has imposed. When Shawn leaves the mall through the front door, it´s already dark outside.

He´s not outside the mall though. He´s in the park at once, trying to cross through it as fast as possible. The curfew is set for sundown and if anyone finds him walking around in the dark without a hall pass they will put him in jail. Because that´s the sanction for walking in the dark. Guantanamo. Everybody knows it and so he´s the only one who´s out here that late.

He walks and walks and somewhere on the way the park has turned into a deep forest. When he reaches the end of it, there´s a depression and he slides down the slope. Somewhere ahead he sees someone working on the field, breaking up the soil with a rake. The closer he gets to the person the better he can see that it is not a man but a boy. When he reaches him, the boy stops with his gardening and turns around to him. And Shawn sees himself, with fifteen.

"What are you doing here?" he asks the kid and the kid smiles.

"Digging." he says and he holds out his rake for Shawn to take it. "You want to try it? It´s fun. And I could use some help here."

Shawn is unsure. He wants to reach out for the rake but before he can do so, he wakes up, from the sound of the door. Gus has walked into the psych office, once again.

Shawn doesn´t know why it is so important, but he wishes Gus would have waited a few more minutes before coming in. Because if he´d had the chance, he would have reached out for the rake and even though Shawn doesn´t know why it is so important, he can feel that it is.

Gus walks in, and immediately his gaze drops to the ground with a disapproving frown.

"Shawn." he cries.

"What?"

"Can´t you just wipe your feet before you get in here? You carried at least two pounds of dirt in here."

Shawn opens his eyes a little wider, trying to ignore the sandpaper his dry eyelids have become, and stretches his neck a little, to look over the desk. Gus is right. The floor is dirty, where he´s walked in.

"Sorry, dude." Shawn lets himself fall back into the chair, exhausted. "I took a walk last night, to clear my head."

"You slept here?"

"Seems so."

Gus groans quietly, exasperated. "You should at least sleep on the couch, not in your chair. It´s bad for the neck."

"I´ll think of that next time I fall asleep without planning it." Shawn groans and stretches his aching neck. It cracks under his hand and Gus winces at the sound, halting in his sweeping of the floor.

...

About half an hour later a call comes in, from Henry. Another body has been found. At the cliffs. A young woman of twenty-nine, her throat slit, almost decapitated. Not even the angle in which her body got buried, has helped to keep the head from falling backwards, as if she tried to look into the sky. An old man has found her in the morning, while taking a walk. He had to be brought to hospital, suffering from a shock.

When Shawn and Gus reach the crime scene, Gus stays behind, keeping his distance from the gruesome sight. Shawn on the other hand can´t keep himself from looking, looking closely. There are so many things he notices at once. The way the wound on her neck is ripped in many places, as if the killer had not just slit her throat but sawed into it. He probably tried to get the head off for good and failed.

He also notices the faint rills all around the victim, in the ground, as if the place has been swept with a broom. So that´s how he´s doing it, Shawn muses. Not that the CSI dudes haven´t deducted that by then, and as if that isn´t exactly what Henry has told them about the case from twenty years ago. But this is the first time Shawn sees it with his very own eyes, that he stands right where the killer has been when he did this. And somehow seeing it for real makes it more … real.

All the sudden he recalls the image from his dream again, where his younger self stood on that field, with the rake in his hands. The ground in this dream had not looked like it had been raked, it had looked like this. Like it was swept. Weird.

"That´s how the crime scenes in Ohio looked like." he murmurs, more to himself than to the others.

Still they hear him, and they frown.

"What? How do you know?" Lassiter wants to know. "I though you were not there at the crime scenes."

"I wasn´t." Shawn admits, shrugging, unsure himself why he´s said this. Or how he can remember it for that matter.

"I … saw it in a vision." he says, to at least have an explanation, and halfheartedly he raises his hand to his head. "Last night."

Lassiter narrows his eyes, suspiciously, but lets him be. Instead he turns to the victim in the ground.

"Ever saw her?" he asks and Shawn doesn´t need to ask him why he wants to know that. He simply shakes his head.

Lassiter nods.

"The Yin-Yang case didn´t reveal anything either." he tells him. "There´s no one dedicated enough to this family that would fall under the category for something like that."

"Except for Alison, you mean?"

"But she´s still in prison." Juliet recalls and of course she´s right.

"That means we´ve got to focus on you again." Lassiter goes on. "Was there anyone in Ohio you came across that had knowledge of crime solving? One of your colleagues at the zoo?"

"Other than me you mean?" Shawn beams at his father but only earns himself a dark glare.

"This isn´t funny, Shawn." Henry snaps. "Focus."

"No." Shawn answers, after a moment. "I … I don´t know. I never asked any of them if they knew such things. I mean …" he tries to laugh but it somehow won´t come out the right way. It doesn´t feel like a real laughter.

"What about your school mates?" Juliet asks now. "Did you remember anything over the last two days? Anyone that might have followed you to Ohio."

Again Shawn can´t do anything but shake his head. "I … kinda couldn´t think about that lately. As if my mind refused to go back in time."

Again he receives strange frowns from everybody.

"Well, you better make your mind overcome that block." Lassiter demands. "We need some answers."

"Don´t worry." Gus says, stepping to Shawn´s side. "I´ll help him. We´ll look into our year books and take a walk down memory lane."

Shawn only nods. That sounds like a good idea. It really does. Then why, he wonders, is he so goddamn scared of the idea?