The Midnight Scythed

Most teenagers in Whitwood avoided the church at the northern edge of the town. Rose Kerrell was fairly certain she must be the only one who liked to spend time there, although she knew Rue Graves and their friends had been messing around inside a month ago.

She’d assumed they were smoking or something like that, not trying to solve a murder, which was always going to be a fair assumption. Murder investigations weren’t the best way to make friends. At least as far as she knew — she’d never gotten involved in anything like it before.

Of course, she wasn’t sure smoking would be much better, and she had no plans to find out. She was just looking for… something.

And she was probably late.

It was hard to make out the exact time from the clock tower above her, but she checked her phone. Five past. Five past midnight to be exact. She should have been in the tower five minutes ago, not still walking through the graveyard.

She wasn’t really Graves-obsessed with death. The graveyard simply happened to be interesting, and a place she was willing to spend time in because nobody would ever bother her there. Usually not in the middle of the night. Especially not in the middle of the night, actually.

Rose sighed, walked two rows forward (more progress than she’d likely made in the last five minutes), and saw something that made her heart sink.

A bloody handprint on a grave.

Hands shaking, she tapped the torch on her phone and almost gasped, though she managed to keep her mouth shut. It wasn’t any grave, it was Imogen’s grave. Imogen, who’d been the second subject of Rue-and-company’s investigation.

Imogen Graves, who had been Rue’s older sister.

She knew Rue was at home, of course. Their dad wasn’t letting them out this late at the moment, after they’d lost an eye to the murderer, but it still felt like a sign.

She was thinking about Rue an awful lot, wasn’t she? But most people were talking about them constantly at the moment. Rose was their age, just a few days younger, so she had something of an excuse to pay attention to the whispers. Which was the only reason she kept thinking of them.

Absolutely.

The bloody handprint was definitely not indicative of anything close to a murder. Maybe a Halloween prank.

In December.

So that was probably unlikely.

Pulling her scarf a little tighter around her neck, she turned from the marked grave and strode towards the church without looking back. She would go to the family in the morning and tell them that someone had vandalised one of their daughter’s graves. It wouldn’t be the first time Imogen’s in particular had been the target.

It was warmer inside the building, naturally, but she couldn’t help shuddering. Everything felt off, the air strangely thick and uncomfortable. She was even later now, the time approaching ten past, and she still had to climb that damn tower.

At least she knew where the entrance to it was.

Everyone was told not to go in there. She ignored that sensible advice, but she also never went up the stairs. So she didn’t think it counted.

There were a lot of stairs, spiralling up and up and up for what felt unsettlingly like forever from the bottom of them. She didn’t dare hesitate for too long at the bottom.

She was going to be spectacularly late. And she really didn’t like being late.

So she half-ran up the stairs, scraping one hand on the inner wall of the spiral to keep herself balanced, and proceeded to practically fall through the door at the top anyway.

Although she was dizzier than she had ever been in her life, so she figured that was probably fair.

When she felt she could sit up without collapsing again, she pushed herself up onto her knees, and finally registered the smell.

Blood.

Oh God, she was kneeling in it.

She could hardly think straight, her stomach threatening to revolt. Staring at the source of it, their covered head a couple of inches away from their neck, her own head span again.

How she didn’t throw up was likely a miracle.

Who was it? She’d have to know, there were so few people in Whitwood that Isabella Prescott had ruled a little under ninety-nine percent of them out of being murderers in a single weekend. Rose wasn’t quite Isabella, of course, but she was good with faces.

She would know them.

It took her longer than she’d like to admit to pull the pillowcase off the dead person’s head, and then she finally screamed.

Not her.

It couldn’t be her.

Help, help, she had to get help. She wasn’t even sure what should be done, there was no helping a person after they were fully decapitated, but she knew she had to get someone.

Shamefully, her first thought wasn’t the police.

She didn’t dare run down the stairs, of course. Still, as soon as she was back on solid ground she was practically flying, sprinting at her absolute fastest towards Nightshade Place. Where Rue Graves would have to be.

Although the Vaughns’ Sanctuary was a slightly more appealing option. Further, but also not a funeral parlour. And Ellis had been one of the two people who found the body in Grave House.

Yeah, the Sanctuary might be better.

Rose ran straight past Nightshade and almost ran straight into the closed door of the Vaughns’ home, which would probably have woken someone up. She knocked like a normal frantic person would instead, praying that someone would be awake, though she had to admit she wasn’t very hopeful on that. Even running as fast as she could, it was past half twelve.

People usually didn’t stay up this late on Wednesdays… it was Thursday now, of course.

And yet her prayers were answered.

Probably because of the chorus of animal noises from inside the place rather than her own knocking.

“Rose! What are you doing here so late?”

It was one of the Mr Vaughns. The new one, because the Vaughns were a rather odd couple in that there were two men and one woman, which meant they weren’t actually a couple at all. She had to admit it was a bit confusing.

“Ellis,” she whispered, so quiet she knew she’d have to repeat herself. “I want to… I need to speak to them.”

“It’s nearly one in the morning.”

“I need to speak to them.”

Ellis appeared at their not-dad’s side just as he opened his mouth to remind her of the time again, holding a dog in their arms. “She’s here in the middle of the night. It’ll be important.”

“You should be asleep.”

“Today’s my late class, remember?”

The man relented, thank the Lord, and Rose stepped into a much more comfortable warmth than the one in the church.

Ellis shoved the dog into her arms and went into the kitchen while their not-dad led her into the living room. She ignored how he asked her to take her coat off. She’d have to take Ellis out to the church at some point soon, she was sure, and there was no point taking her coat off before then.

She wasn’t quite sure when the man went back to bed, only that Ellis had pushed something warm into her hands before sitting down next to her. They were smiling, kind of, but it was a worried one.

“What happened?”

“You solved a murder two weeks ago.”

“Oh, Rue did most of that,” they laughed, shaking their head. “I just… helped a bit.”

“Fine, you helped solve a murder. I need you to do that again.”

Ellis Vaughn was a redhead with very pale skin, so she couldn’t tell if they went any whiter.

“What do you mean?”

She took a sip of the drink (hot chocolate) before saying it.

“My mum has been decapitated. She’s in the church tower… someone wanted me to find her.”

And if Ellis had looked half ill before, they looked much worse now.

She didn’t feel any better.