JJ in Wonderland – Chapter 5
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"Sheriff?" Dave walked out of the building and looked about him; the Sheriff's car was gone! The entire railway complex was deserted. "Now where the devil did he go?" He walked around the building and there was no Sheriff's car in sight.
"JJ…you'll never believe this…that Sheriff Dougherty has disappeared." Dave pulled out his cell phone and saw that there was no service available in the area.
"Where is he then?" JJ began to walk away from Dave in search of the Sheriff. "Sheriff Dougherty! Sheriff! Can you hear me?" JJ turned around and saw Dave's perplexed looks. "What is it now?"
"No cell service." He waved his phone at her.
JJ removed hers from her pocket and saw that she, too, had no cell services for her phone. "Well, that sucks."
Dave watched her, "You've been hanging around Emily too much or is it her 'ghost' hanging around us?"
JJ gave him a look but ignored him; he was relentless in his quest about Emily's 'death'.
"You seem to be pretty obsessive about her, aren't you?" JJ asked him, feeling slightly jealous.
"Not at all, JJ. I just find it all very mysterious." He shrugged as he walked away. "Come on, this is a dead end."
JJ stared after him for a while before sighing and joining him but as she stood by him, Rossi suddenly looked up and around them.
JJ frowned as she wondered what he was looking at as well and widened her eyes, "It sounds like a train! But the Sheriff said this railway is no longer been used in this depot …" She looked out of the building, trying to see where the train was coming from.
"Let's get out of the tracks…just in case."They began to step out of the tracks which were almost buried in the concrete but they could still see parts of the steel structure.
The train was getting closer to them as they stood near the wide opening.
"I hope the wheel doesn't crush our evidence!" JJ had to yell to be heard as the noise of the oncoming train was deafening.
Then the loud whistle blew as the agents clapped their ears to muffle the noise.
The squealing sounds of brakes were loud as they continued to cover their ears as it entered the building.
Suddenly as loud as it was the deafening noise stopped!
The two agents removed their hands from their ears and looked; there was no train!
"What the hell?" Dave uttered.
"Where's the train?" JJ looked down the tracks.
Then they turned to each other, "You heard the train?" Dave asked her.
"Yeah…I mean how could I not? It's as if the train had stopped right in front of us but…" She waved her hand at the empty space before them. "What the heck just happened?"
"If Reid was here, he'd tell us that we're in some kind of flux…as if this place is haunted and we just heard what seem like a temporal interference or we had witnessed a spooky memory."
"Spooky? Haunted? Come on Dave, do you really believe it?" JJ placed her hands on her hips.
Dave pointed at the concrete, "Take a closer look, this looks like it's been poured not long ago."
JJ bent at the waist for a closer look and saw the tell tale sign; there were some area of the concrete that looked damp.
Dave began to walk away from her, "Hey! I found something!" He held a big sledge hammer. "I think I have an idea."
"Dave, don't tell me you're going to break this concrete ground?"
Hefting the tool, he walked up to her and placed it down by their feet. "Yes, I am…right where the photo had indicated the head would be."
Seeing as she had no other ideas, JJ waved at him, "Knock yourself out…well, no pun intended, that is." She grinned as she moved away from him.
Soon Dave began to pound on the concrete to break the hard material.
JJ in the meantime studied the other photo, specifically the one on the bed frame. The woman tied to it seemed as if she was from another time…about 20 years ago.
"JJ!" Dave called out to her. "I think I found our head and the rest of her."
She walked to him and looked at the broken pieces of concrete and the dirt it exposed…and the head just like it was in the photo, only this time the head was a skull.
"But Dave, according to this picture, it looks as if the head was just buried. How could it have become that? It'll take many months for the decomp to complete. This is all wrong, Dave."
He nodded. "It looks like someone had given us a wrong set of photos or a wrong crime scene."
JJ nodded in agreement. "What are we to do?" She looked out the windows, "It looks like it's getting dark."
"And we are quite far from town. I'm not really keen on walking all the way back to town in the dark, especially when I have no knowledge of where we're going."
"So, you're suggesting we sleep here?" she spread her hands about her.
"Well, we'll find someplace a little more comfortable."
She glared at him, "Luckily it's Fall, the weather here is not extreme." They walked around the depot and finally finding nothing but barren floors, with scattered broken and shattered glass about, and trash.
It didn't look warming to JJ who scanned about the place with dishearten.
Dave saw her expression and felt sympathetic. He sighed and looked for the most suitable corner to camp.
"Over there, JJ, far right of us." He pointed and walked towards the corner of the building, hoping she'd follow him.
She did as she went reluctantly. As the sun was setting, the vast depot looked …spooky.
Settling down on the concrete floor, Dave leaned against the wall behind him and patted a space beside him. "Here is just as good as any." He offered.
Resigned, she plopped down next to him, making sure there was enough space between them; she still did not trust him…or herself.
"I'm not going to bite, Jennifer." He said softly.
"I know …. I'm comfortable here." She smiled confidently at him.
Sitting quietly, they began to drift off as neither of them had gotten any sleep the night before. The quietness of the place was lulling them to sleep as the sun set and they were in almost dark, were it not for the full moon rising up from the east.
"Look at the moon," JJ said as she indicated outside the cracked windows. "It looks big and it's a full moon." She almost whispered.
Dave frowned as he heard the tone of her voice; there was almost a trace of fear in them.
"You're not afraid of the full moon, are you?" He asked her and gauged her reaction, thankful the twilight ambience afforded him a view of her face…her beautiful, ethereal flawless face.
Her eyes huge, "No…not at all, Dave." She grinned. "I'm an adult now, I don't believe in ghosts and monsters." She chuckled as she leaned back, "I left them in my closet when I left for college."
He smiled, "That's a nice notion. I remember a few years back that you mentioned meeting me in one of my book lecture while you're in college."
She nodded, "Yeah, it's what prompted me to choose psychology and criminal investigation."
"But you were a media liaison?"
"I was because I took communications too. So the Bureau thought I'd be a better fit as the media field. I'd always wanted to be a criminologist and profiler, just like you." She turned to look at him. "I kinda blackmailed the bureau."
He arched his brows, "You? Blackmail the FBI? How?"
She chuckled, "Not the way you mean, Dave. I told the administrators that I'll be their poster girl if they'd let me take the courses I wanted and choose where I want to go."
"And what did they say?"
"I was Miss Pennsylvania when I was a senior in high school and when I was in college, I competed in pageants and won. The Bureau saw that my face has its uses."
"I see, and I have to say, I agree with them."
"Dave…I…" She was cut off by the sound of moaning and metal creakings. "What's that?" JJ began to look around her frantically as she scooted closer to Dave.
He began to stand up but JJ held his wrist, "What are you doing, Dave?"
"I'm going to look at where that sound comes from."
JJ got up too, "I'll come with you."
He noticed she was still clutching onto his wrist tightly.
"Let's go, then."
They walked carefully in the dark, mindful of making any noise that might alert whatever was making the sounds.
"Dave!" JJ tugged hard at his wrist as she held it close to her. "Do you see that?" She whispered.
"See what? It's dark….Oh, yeah."
Across from them, in the opposite end of the Depot, they saw with the glow of the moonlight, a metal bed frame and there was a figure lying on it!
But the figure and the bed was not solid, it had an almost translucent look. They could see the floor and the wall through the woman.
"Do you remember seeing the bed earlier? I don't." JJ said. "And that's not real either. Dave, do you think we are seeing something like a memory, just like that ghostly train?"
"You believe in ghosts?"
She turned to face him, "I told you, I left my ghosts and monsters back in my room…in Pennsylvania."
"Well, this is not your ghost, JJ."
"Then whose ghost is it?" JJ asked.
…..
End of Chapter 5
