She took the papers and went to the fireplace. She lit a match, placing the flame at the edge of the papers. They began to blacken, curl, and burn.
Crazy howlings in his head.
Hard to hear. For now, he's dead.
Asylum's child. Lost in the maze.
Nothing's clear. It's all a haze.
Doom is heavy on his brow.
Ready! Set! Go! The time is now. The time is now.
And he is lost. And he is lost to horrors unimaginable.
She caught a glimpse of these words before the flames devoured them. If she'd studied the verse a bit longer, perhaps she would have seen that the first letter of each line spelled CHANDRA. But, perhaps not.
The paper she'd scratched the results of her research still lay on her desk.
Chandra = shining moon Elanor = star sun
Dara = star Elanor = star sun
She saw the dark images of the flowers brown and burst into flames.
She did not realize the two signatures at the end of each essay were slightly different. Both were symbols, not of flowers, but of star anise.
The graphic in the center of each, not the same. If she had looked closely she would have seen the sun star in their center. And if she'd peered closer still, the four button holes in the center of the second graphic which belonged to the essay about the sin-eater.
The answers had been there all along.
Dara had known from the beginning and, in her way, was trying to tell the world that Chandra had destroyed Button Dudley.
YOU ARE READING
Nobody Can Say It's You
Mystery / ThrillerA monster is running down Main Street! An old mountain hermit, dressed as Death, drops dead at a Halloween festival in Hope Rock County. Nobody knows why. But mysterious forces are at work on the Appalachian ridges. Granny witches and the Ancients...
