Satan's Sorority Girls 2, page 30
Whenever we came across a small stream or an obstacle, we all helped each other over it, and then the silence continued again.
Part of me wondered how long we were going to be walking, but the other part of my brain told me that it didn’t matter. We still had a couple more hours before the sun started to set, we all had phones with flashlights, and I was surrounded by five witches.
Even if we ended up getting lost in the woods, I knew the girls would know of a way to save us with their various gifts and abilities.
But all of a sudden, as I thought about getting lost in the woods, my thoughts vanished from my mind. Something colorful appeared in my peripheral vision.
“What is it?” Robyn asked as we all came to a halt.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
I saw a flash of pink and red hidden behind the luscious green leaves of the trees, and I found myself staring at the colors as I tried to work out what it was.
“It can’t be the lights,” I muttered to myself. “They’re far brighter than that, and Chrissy’s lights aren’t red, either… I think we should check it out.”
Robyn let out a little whimper, but Julia whispered some comforting words to the English Rose. The others stayed together as a group, and they followed behind me as I crossed through the forest toward the peculiar colors.
I knew we were headed toward something when my hands began to tingle so much that they started to itch.
It was like something had caught on fire underneath my skin, and no matter how much I scratched at the spot, the flames continued to burn.
But I was momentarily distracted by the itching when I pulled back the branches and caught sight of the colors in front of me.
“Holy shit,” Tasha whispered.
“This can’t be real, can it?” Fiona asked.
“I think it’s very much real,” Samantha mumbled.
In the middle of the dense forest, filled with fallen branches, dying leaves, and bare trees, was the most beautiful meadow I’d ever come across.
Flowers of all various colors, shapes, and sizes sprouted from the ground, and it was like someone had placed a colorful carpet over the top of the grass.
The meadow was circular in shape, and it wasn’t overly big, but it was like the darkness of the forest didn’t exist, and all that mattered were the flowers.
Chrissy’s gift included flowers, and it couldn’t have been a coincidence that we were standing in a meadow surrounded by them. Particularly as I hadn’t even seen another flower in the forest until now given that it was October in New England.
“Do you think… Chrissy did this?” Tasha asked.
“She created all of this?” Robyn gasped. “How?”
“I’ll be shocked if Chrissy isn’t behind this,” Samantha mumbled as she crouched down to the ground and held one of the flowers between two fingers.
I was relieved that we’d decided to bring the shovels with us, because I was even more certain that Chrissy had been buried in the meadow somewhere. But if she had caused all the flowers to bloom in the exact spot where she was buried, then it made me wonder whether she was alive throughout the entire process.
It could have been the case that she was unconscious when she was buried, and perhaps whoever put her there mistook someone being knocked out cold, for someone who had died.
Or they didn’t give a shit, and they caused her unnecessary suffering until the very last second.
But I made Chrissy a promise there and then, as I looked across the meadow, that I was going to find out what really happened.
Whether it was Toby, one of his friends, or someone else entirely, I was going to get to the bottom of what happened to Chrissy Fry, and I was going to give her the justice she deserved.
“Oh, shit!” Fiona suddenly called out from the other side of the meadow. “Samantha, Grayson!”
I briefly looked over at the sullen witch before the two of us took off running, and as I came to stand beside Fiona I noticed the abundance of small, soft-blue flowers all grouped together in small bunches.
The gasp that came from Samantha was shattered, almost like her previously-icy heart had broken all over again.
“Forget-Me-Nots,” she whispered.
“What’s this?” Robyn asked as she looped one arm around my back.
Having her there beside me helped with the nerves, and I was suddenly glad she hadn’t decided to stay in Hartry.
“Forget-Me-Nots were Chrissy’s favorite flower,” Samantha explained and brushed her hands across the tiny petals.
“They symbolize love and respect,” Tasha took over. “If you give someone Forget-Me-Nots, you’re essentially telling them that you’ll never forget them.”
“Do you think Chrissy was trying to say she’ll never forget you?” Mo asked carefully. “And her family?”
“I think that’s exactly what she’s saying,” Julia sighed.
Chrissy must have used the last of her abilities to create this meadow, and she was conscious enough to include her favorite flower, too. Even if no one ever found her, the symbol was still there, and that broke my heart.
Samantha told me that Chrissy put everyone before herself. She was kind, caring, and a loyal, loyal friend, and that was visible by the simple addition of the Forget-Me-Nots.
“I think I know where she’s buried, too,” Samantha mumbled before she stood up straight and rolled her shoulders. “Have any of you noticed the shape these flowers are in?”
I hadn’t noticed the shape, but it was as clear as day once I thought about it.
The flowers grew in a large oval shape, big enough to become a bed for one of the girls if they curled up on top of the flowers.
It made sense that Chrissy could have been buried underneath them given everything the girls said about the flowers, but there was only one way to find out.
The thought of standing so close to a buried body caused Robyn to leap back in fright. And she mumbled as everyone turned to look at her.
“This is… a lot.” Robyn whispered.
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “Why don’t you stand back while we… start digging, and then you won’t have to see anything.”
“Wait, you’re going to start digging… now?” Robyn placed one hand on her chest.
“Do you have any other ideas?” Samantha snapped.
“No, no.” Robyn shook her head. “I mean, we ought to say something to someone. The police have to get involved if we think there’s a dead body down there!”
“Technically we don’t know that she’s definitely there yet,” Tasha said in order to soothe the anxiety in the air. “We know she’s in this meadow, but we’re just assuming she’s in this spot.”
“And what would we say to the police?” I asked as I held out my hand for Robyn to take. “We’ll look suspicious as fuck if we just so happened to come across Chrissy without any evidence behind it and start blaming the Chief’s son.”
“And I’m not sure if Fiona’s gift is powerful enough to warp the minds of the entire police department.” Mo shrugged. “No offense, Fiona.”
“None taken,” Fiona replied. “I was going to say the same thing.”
“Samantha?” Willow asked. “Are you okay?”
I had been so caught up in the conversation that I hadn’t noticed Samantha had stepped away from the blue flowers. Both hands were placed on her chest, and it looked like she’d seen a ghost, or that she was about to throw up all over the Forget-Me-Nots.
“I’m…” Samantha’s breathing was deep and labored. “I…”
“Hey,” Tasha said soothingly. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I know this is a lot, Sam.” Fiona placed her hands on Samantha’s shoulders. “But remember why we’re doing this.”
“No it’s… It’s not that.” Samantha shook her head, and she bit down on her bottom lip as her eyes winced with anger. “I just remembered something.”
“What?” I frowned.
“When I was reading Toby’s mind earlier, he did think about his dad fleetingly,” she explained. “I didn’t think much about it because he would’ve questioned him a lot about this during the interrogations, so it made sense that his face was there. I was so busy sifting through the various faces he thought of, too, and getting more information from him. But what if…”
I could have heard a bird shit on the other side of the woods when Samantha’s gaze met mine.
“I know,” I said through gritted teeth. “This whole thing fucking reeks of corruption. I’ve heard a number of true crime podcasts where the cops covered up evidence, assisted criminals in getting away with their crimes, and even created fake alibis. And the fact that the details of Toby and his family weren’t even mentioned…”
“That son of a bitch,” Julia muttered.
“Father and son really could have covered up everything.” Fiona shook her head in disbelief.
“Or it could be that his father has no idea about the truth?” Robyn suggested.
“Yeah, we don’t even know if anything’s been covered up yet,” Mo added. “Maybe Toby knows what happened, but he wasn’t actually the one to do it, so he could have been telling the police the truth about his alibi. And his dad thinks he’s just doing his job. It’s still withholding evidence technically, but Toby might not have told his father what happened?”
“Then explain this.” Samantha crossed her arms. “How did they miss this plot of land during the searches? A wooded area no one explores anymore is a prime fucking location to bury a body. Because if they had been doing their jobs properly, they would have found Chrissy a long time ago. Or maybe… just maybe… Chief Michaels was able to tick off this area before it was even searched?”
“Yeah… that makes it sound like Toby’s father knew exactly where Chrissy was,” Tasha mumbled. “He has a lot of power, and he could have used it to his advantage.”
“There’s also the fact that the case went cold before a full year was up,” I added. “Maybe they genuinely lost all their leads, and there wasn’t much else they could do for Chrissy. But now that Chief Michaels shares some of the spotlight, I’m starting to think otherwise.”
“It’s all far too suspicious,” Samantha sighed. “But let’s work on finding Chrissy, and then we can deal with Chief fucking Michaels later.”
“Okay, but just so you’re all aware…” I looked around the group. “This isn’t going to be a pretty sight, and it will stick with you for the rest of your lives. Just… be aware of that.”
I knew about the various stages of decomposition in animals, and I knew it was the same with humans, too. But I also knew that an animal on the surface decayed faster than an animal buried deep underground, so it was hard for me to know which stage Chrissy would be at when we found her.
There was also no way of knowing whether she had been dead for the entire year. For all I knew, she could have been kept alive in the shed until six months ago.
A body had to be perfectly embalmed in order to delay decay, as well as the protection of the coffin around them, and it could take up to ten years for the body to fully decompose.
A body without being embalmed, and without a coffin, could skeletonize within five years, so there was a chance we were going to witness the most horrific sight, and part of me wished we’d brought gloves and face masks to keep the stench away.
But the girls knew what they were getting themselves into, and they just wanted to get everything over and done with.
With that decision in mind, Samantha and I grabbed two of the shovels, and Mo stepped forward and offered to take the last one. Just so the others didn’t have to see their friend in such a state if they would have rather stayed back.
Willow stayed with us, but Fiona, Julia, and Tasha went to stand beside Robyn in the middle of the meadow.
“Okay, are we good to go?” I asked.
Samantha placed the tip of the blade in the ground between the Forget-Me-Nots. “As good as I’ll ever be.”
The soil was surprisingly easy to dig through, and my shovel sliced underneath the small flowers with ease. Then I carefully lifted the flowers out of the soil and placed them neatly on the ground beside me.
I didn’t want to ruin Chrissy’s display too much, even if she wasn’t around to see that.
The girls were silent behind me, but I focused on pressing the blade into the ground, collecting the soil, and then tipping it over my shoulder.
Ten minutes after we started, Julia took over from Samantha, and all of the girls, apart from Robyn, offered to take turns to give the others a rest.
It didn’t seem to take that long for a large hole to appear in the middle of the ground, and the deeper we went, the more cautious we became.
I had a feeling whoever buried Chrissy underground wouldn’t have thought to dig a hole that was six feet deep. They wanted to get her covered as quickly as they could, that was all that mattered to them.
We must have been digging for the better part of an hour without any sign of Chrissy.
That was, until Mo spotted something in the soil.
“Eh…” He winced. “I don’t know what this is, but it looks white.”
Everyone stayed where they were, including Samantha, and it was like the reality of it all was far scarier than they first imagined. Because even I hesitated slightly.
But Willow took one for the team when Mo reminded everyone that he’d found something.
“I don’t mind dead bodies,” Willow muttered as she crouched down beside Mo’s shovel. “But it’s an entirely different matter when it’s one of your friends…”
Willow leaned into the pit and ran her finger across the white item. It looked more yellow from where I was standing, but nothing underground was going to stay white forever.
“It’s rubber,” Willow said confidently.
“Rubber?” Samantha gasped before she joined her sorority sister on the ground. “Is it Chrissy?”
“I don’t know,” Willow replied. “I don’t want to dig away at the soil in case I damage something.”
“Here,” Robyn’s gentle voice appeared from behind me. “Use this.”
Robyn dug her hand deep into her bag and pulled out the travel hairbrush she always had in her bag in case of hair emergencies.
It meant so much to me that she wanted to help the girls, and the smiles on their faces told me they were just as appreciative of Robyn.
Even Willow and Samantha gave her a small smile.
“I know it’s not a fossil brush, or anything like that, but it’s easier than the shovel.” My English Rose shrugged.
Willow accepted the brush, and then she used both sides to brush the soil away, or to clear away chunks that were harder to reach.
“It’s a shoe,” Willow mumbled as blue material and yellowed laces were revealed.
Attached to the shoe was a bone, but Willow didn’t look much further than that.
She must have also known that just because one part of the leg had turned to bone, it didn’t mean the rest of the limb looked like that.
I was just surprised we hadn’t come across any maggots yet.
“Did Chrissy have shoes like these?” I asked Samantha as a second shoe was revealed.
They looked like Converse, and they were definitely sneakers of some kind, but it was hard to get a proper look.
“I… think so,” she mumbled. “I honestly can’t remember what Chrissy wore that night, apart from the blouse and cardigan.”
I didn’t question her any more on the matter, and instead we moved to the top end of the hole and focused on that side.
But that was where everything took a turn. It wasn’t long before something soft and thread-like began to appear through the soil.
The new finding was just as brown as the dirt it lived in, and as more and more of it began to curl out of the ground, we all either shrieked or let out sad sighs.
It was Chrissy’s unruly hair.
A sliver of Chrissy’s forehead came into view, and the gray-black, mottled splotches under the skin that remained there instantly made us look away.
I thought I had a solid stomach, but I wasn’t about to reveal the sunken, decaying face of Chrissy Fry in front of her closest friend and fellow sorority sisters.
The girls fell to their knees around the ditch, and Mo, Robyn, and I stood back as we allowed them the space to grieve.
It must have been so hard for them to find Chrissy buried there, but there was probably a hint of relief knowing that they’d found her, and now they could bury her properly.
There was one issue, though.
“What do we do with her now?” I asked Mo and Robyn quietly. “We’re going to have to think of some believable, airtight story in order to get away with this.”
“Unless we keep this meadow as a burial site?” Robyn suggested. “But we’re going to have to tell someone we found her. And despite what we think, we still have to tell the police.”
“Yeah, this can’t exactly remain a secret between us,” Mo mumbled.
Whispering from the ditch drew my attention, and I caught sight of Samantha frowning, but then her eyes widened as she glanced up.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Then my body began to tingle and itch like I was standing in front of a hot flame. It was the exact same feeling I’d felt earlier as we searched through the woods, but I couldn’t understand why.
We’d found Chrissy, and I already knew I was tethered to her magical energy, so why was my body reminding me of that?
“Holy shit…” Tasha whispered, and her eyes widened as she also looked up at something behind me.
“Chrissy?” Samantha gasped.
“What?” Mo frowned. “What’s going on?”
I slowly and carefully turned myself around, and I just about fell back on my ass as I noticed the light, airy, smoke-like figure staring straight at me.
The figure had unruly hair, and she wore the exact same outfit the corpse was wearing. She was a mixture of white and gray, and I was able to see straight through her to the colorful arrangement of flowers behind her.
It was exactly like the ghosts Julia and I saw during the ghost tour, but now Chrissy was the “other” standing right in front of me.
