The Understorey

Ha! You have no idea!



“Yeah. What should we do?”



“I think you and I should take a quick ride to my office and dust it for fingerprints.”



Yes! I thought. Finally, he’s going down! But Jesse was no fool and there was potential for nothing to be found on it at all.



“I’ll run in and tell mom that we’ll be right back.”



We rode to the station in absolute silence. The tires crushed the piled snow against the railroad ties and his headlights produced foggy beams that traced along the red paint of the tiny shack that was the sheriff’s office. He unlocked the door and stomped the extra snow off his boots before stepping onto the creaky wood floor.



“Dang Danny, this place is a regular haunted house in the dark.”



He laughed, “Yeah.” He flipped the lights on, “it also looks like one in the light.”



We both laughed and he lead me to a makeshift lab covered in dust.



“Been awhile?” I asked.



“Of course, not much of a need for it you know? It’s kind of nice to shake off the old cobwebs though.”



He grabbed a full black brush with incredibly fine bristles and a ceramic ramekin. He unscrewed the lid to a bottle full of light black powder and poured a small amount in the ramekin. He took the brush, dipped it in the dust and shook off the excess.



“It’s better to under develop than to over develop the print.”



He lightly brushed the top surface of the box, using a twisting motion to get all of the ridges of the print.



He spun a hinged desk lamp over the top of the box and flipped on the light. He recognized two possible prints, maybe three but he also knew that we had touched the box. He removed a Sharpie from a container above his workstation and marked the edge with the number one. He took a piece of tape and lifted each individual print and marked each one. He repeated the process for each side of the box.



“Looks like they used latex gloves to assemble the box. There’s white powder on the tape I used to lift the print. That’s a rookie mistake.”



“What does that prove?”



“It proves that they handled it with gloves on. Why would someone need to do that? To avoid prints right? I doubt we’ll find anyone’s prints, at least on this side of the paper but I’m gonna’ print you to use as a cross reference anyway just to make sure. “Come here, “ he said and walked me to the fingerprinting station.



“Gosh Danny, you’re a regular CSI.”



“Yeah,” he laughed.



He fingerprinted each finger.



“I can tell you’ve never done this before. The newbies are always awkward finger printers.”



“Thanks?”



“Yeah,” he laughed.



“You’re going to need Jules’ prints too. Should I call her?”



I was excited at the possibility of seeing her.



“No, that’s not necessary,” he said.



“Why? She touched the box too. It’s true there was proof of female fingerprints. It could very well be Taylor’s.”



“Elliott,” he shook his head. “You seriously have to let that theory go. Though, I almost prefer yours. I’m thinking more dangerous thoughts.”



That statement made me shudder inside. He underestimated Jesse entirely.



“Wait,” I realized, “why don’t I need to call Jules down here?”



He hesitated, “Uhhh, because I already have them.”



“Shut up! You’re lying to me!” I said, with a massive grin on my face.



“Anyway, let’s move on.”



“No, no, no. Back the truck up here Danny! You have Jules’ prints? Why?”



“None of your darn business Elliott!”



That’s okay. He didn’t have to tell me but Jules would have to later. I was sort of averse to the idea of finding out but I was also dying to know.



“Okay, okay,” I said quickly abandoning the idea that he was going to tell me.



Danny hadn’t handled the box with his own hands, he had used a handkerchief he always kept with him but never used. I sort of wondered why he even owned it until I saw him take it out to the handle the box.



He went to a locked file cabinet and retrieved a folder, flipped through it and took a sheet of paper out that looked similar to the one he had just used to document my own fingerprints. He put the rest of the folder back in the cabinet and locked it. Jules’ file. He sat back down at the lab table and reached for a shelf above him. He pulled a small cardboard box out and opened it to reveal a stand magnifier. He compared all of the signatures and found only mine and Jules’.



He decided there was nothing on that side of the paper. He unwrapped the paper flipped it, repeated the entire process and found nothing. Again, dusting the cardboard box that held whatever it was that was inside but finding nothing.



“Time to open it,” he said.



I was pretty frightened to be honest with you and I actually felt like telling Danny to let me do it in case it was something that could harm him.



“Danny? I think I should open it, just in case.”



“Nonsense. Wait,” he laid his ear against the package. “Nope, not ticking. I’ll open it.”



“This isn’t funny Danny. I’m pretty nervous.”



“I know son. It’ll be okay.”



He pulled off the tape that bound the lid and dusted it as well, finding absolutely nothing yet again. He peeled the lid back.



My eyes widened in fear. Jesse was more insane than even I gave him credit for.



“My God.”



Chapter Seven



This is How I Win



Danny was taken aback by what he saw. He stood up quickly with a gasp and nearly fell over his chair trying to distance himself from what was in the box. I was frozen, my hands trembled where I stood and I couldn’t willingly move a muscle. I peered at the horrifying message he was sending with dead eyes, a feature I wanted him to share with me soon.



A million thoughts streamed through my head. At first, I wanted to run, to grab Jules and run with her, somewhere far away, somewhere only we know, somewhere he could never find us.



In that instant, she became my only dream, my only wish for the future. I cared about nothing else and no one could stop us, not when every fiber of my flesh wanted nothing else but to be with her. My immediate reaction was flight until I realized he would never stop looking. Jesse was no longer the friend I remembered him to be. He hadn’t been for awhile. If we had vanished, I knew he would try to find us and I was so scared to imagine him still out there waiting for his opportunity again, striking when we least expected, when he thought we were comfortable.



He would wait until our thoughts of him were a distant memory for us. I cringed. He had to be stopped, now. That flaming box, came back into focus. I wanted to scream out, to tear what I saw into a billion pieces. I suddenly wished I’d never told Danny. I wish I had opened it on my own so the motive for the murder I was going to commit because of it wouldn’t become so apparent.



“I have to kill him,” I accidentally said aloud.



“No!” Danny screamed, grabbing my shoulders. Breathing deeply to steady his calm, he said, “I know you don’t mean that son! Elliott, I’m gonna’ get who did this.”



I gained control of my neck and turned my head toward him, “You’re going to arrest Jesse immediately?”



“Elliott! We haven’t found reason for him to want to do something like this. This is too advanced for him.”



“No,” I scoffed, “it’s not. You don’t know what he’s capable of. Growing up I always knew he had a little bit of an evil streak, I just underestimated it. He’s a lunatic Danny. You’re wrong.



“Look, it obviously took two people to do it Danny. How do you explain that? Huh? Taylor must have taken the picture for him.” I pointed to the picture hanging off the edge of the table. It showed the frame of Jules’ bedroom window.



“Maybe he used a tripod Elliott, I don’t know for sure but for the sake of argument, say I am starting to believe your theory. I have no evidence that he’s done anything.”



I stared hard at the two photographs in front of me. It was him, I could tell, in the shape of his body, in the way his fingers grasped at the blade he held at my sleeping Jules’ throat, in the way his eyes bore into mine through his dark ski mask. I knew it was him and if Danny couldn’t prove it, bad things were going to happen to him. He pushed through a really dark line with me and was begging for a reaction. I’m guessing he wouldn’t like what it was and I also guessed how much he underestimated me.



The second photograph was Jules’ hanging painting. The letters Y.O.U. dripping in red paint. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the photographs. I stared into the small harmless cardboard box that contained them and noticed that the filling inside was torn canvas.



“Danny!” I yelled.



“What?!”



“The, the.......painting! It’s shredded in the box!”



I was starting to feel nauseated. I knew what the painting represented to Jesse. It was Jules. He was going to kill Jules and soon.



“Okay Elliott. Listen,” he said, trying to calm me down, “we need to get back to your grandma’s. We’ve wasted enough time here. Just let me lock all of this in the evidence room and I’ll call Julia’s parents and..”



I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to downplay it, like it was something that could happen to just about anyone, but I knew. I knew that this was probably one of the sickest things he’d seen in Bramwell.



“No!” I interrupted. “Jules’ parents can’t know. They’ll leave Bramwell if they hear of this.”



Danny looked on me with pity.



“I can’t Elliott. They need to know. Think of the danger that Julia is in? Is it worth her life? This has spun so out of control. It’s too serious to take the risk.”



On our way back to my grandma’s and granddad’s I could barely keep two thoughts in my head. I was reeling in physical pain. My entire world was about to crumble on top of me and there was nothing I could do about it. I walked into the house and everyone was cheery and happy and full of life.



“Mom,” was all I could mumble off my tongue.



She could tell something was wrong. She ran up to me and hugged me and I hugged her back. I felt like I was seven again, and I’d skinned my knee and ran to my mom for her to make everything better, to make the wound disappear but this hug couldn’t make it all better. It was just a reminder that nothing could fix the pain but a locked away or a dead Jesse. I didn’t really want Jesse dead I just wanted the monster that was doing this to die inside him and for him to be at least somewhat normal again.



“Let’s go into mom’s room Shelby. I need to talk to you,” Danny said.



Everyone watched with solemn eyes as I nearly toppled over trying to get to my grandparent’s room.



“It’s okay everyone! Granddad? Can you put on some music?” My dad said before closing the door to the bedroom behind him.



I plopped at the edge of my grandparent’s bed and examined the fibers of the shag carpet beneath my feet. I listened as Danny revealed the details to my parents but I felt as if I were in a fog. The words were barely audible. They all buzzed around me in slow motion. I snapped back into reality when Danny mouthed the words ‘Julia’s parents’.