First Disappearance: John Blan. Age: 41. Job: Middle School Janitor. Priors: None. Last Seen: Exiting the local grocery store, Stokes, with personal hygiene products. His car remained in the parking lot, leading to police stating his kidnapping was right after. No witnesses were found.
Angelica sighed while she looked over the report. Her yellow Volkswagen Beetle ran loduly in the background. The fact that no one had seen anything was hard for her to believe, especially with the town being so small. 6,000 people is a lot, but in terms of the massive cities and decently populated suburbs, Anton was a speck of dust in the desert. Still, it pissed Angelica off with how ignorant these people had been. According to the presented timetable, a full week passed before anyone did anything about Mr. Blan’s disappearance.
“These folks…” She muttered under her breath as she exited her car, keys jangling in her overcoat pocket. Angelica was in her late twenties, but the combination of heavy smoking and workplace stress aged her to mid-forties or fifties, depending on which drunk at the bar you asked. Her black, curly hair was cut into a bob, and a small amount of make-up covered any blemishes that could be seen on her face. A pair of simple wire-frame sunglasses covered her dead amber eyes, eyes which had seen horrors but had yet to truly end her. Her stained jeans, simple blue t-shirt, and overcoat combined with her entire appearance made the outfit seem thoughtless–and they wouldn’t be wrong, not one bit. When the chief first called her to grant permission to investigate the Blan house, she had been dead asleep. But this was the first step into her investigation, and she wasn’t going to waste time looking pretty.
As she tread towards the door of the home, the key to the residence in her left pocket, she couldn’t help but notice the state of the home. Before he vanished, Mr. Blan took excellent care of his property despite his income. The grass, a bit taller now than the surrounding lawns, was perhaps the greenest on the entire street. The walkway was fairly clean, with only a little overgrowth. The porch was well-painted and stained, the brick walls were pristine in condition, and the door was perfect. The glass windows were only ruined with boards to stop looters and delinquents. Once again, John Blan certainly knew how to take care of his house.
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As Angelica reached down to unlock the door however, she stopped.
The door… it was slightly open. Almost invisibly so, but it was most certainly unlocked. Reaching into her overcoat, she pulled out her Glock 19 , the once-secure location now a potential danger. As Angelica slowly pushed open the door, the whole house suddenly creaked. Stepping inside, the first noticeable thing was the vile smell. It was a combination of smells she knew, a horrid, horrid collection. Iron, decay, burnt hair, stagnant water– it was all there. Treading carefully, Angelica slowly walked through the enclosed home. Every room was closed off in some way. Nothing seemed out of place. There was no running water or smashed decor. Everything was neatly organized, just like the outside. But the further she walked into the home, the more intense that congregation of vomit-inducing odors became. Entering the room, she nearly erupted her early breakfast all over the polished hardwood floors. The doorway into the room was in a perfect angle to reveal the open door of the master bathroom, where, once again at the perfect angle, Angelica saw it:
A burnt corpse, shriveled and charred like bad campfire jerky. It sat in the tub, where someone had filled it with water, water that was now a shade of brown that, while belonging in a bathroom, did not belong in a tub. The corpse’s arm was pinned to the wall, almost like it was raising its hand in a classroom, a white letter in its fingers, a green wax seal keeping it closed.
