S.C.I.谜案集 (Special Criminal Investigation) Book 4

Case 4. The Murderer Who Returned From Hell: Chapter 01. Wheel of Caleb

July 13th, 1993.

A small town in the mountains of northeastern Romania, located on the border with Ukraine, was cut off from the outside world because of the collapse of a tunnel.

Rescuers and a town's officer contacted the people outside through wireless telegrams.

The first telegram from the officer read, 'A lot of food reserves, but something is wrong.'

As for what was wrong, the officer did not say clearly.

On the first day of being trapped, the outside world received two telegrams from the officer saying that many people had gone missing.

On the second day, a third telegram read, 'Hurry! Come and save us, he is going to be resurrected.'

On the third day, the fourth and final telegram read, 'Quickly come and save us! He's crawled out...'

After that, there were no more messages.

Three days later, rescuers finally entered the small village. However... It was eerily quiet. There was no one, not even a dog or a cat... No bird flew by, no calls from insects, it was dead silent.

Rescuers searched the entire village but found nothing. It wasn't until they noticed a church in the northwest of the village that they found something strange.

There was a graveyard at the back of the church.

Rescuers found that one of the graves had been dug up. There was a hole in the coffin board and the coffin was filled with sand. There were also traces of scratch marks all around the coffin. The strangest thing was... There were footprints on the mud near the grave... It was a trail of footprints walking out of the grave. According to the length and size, it most likely belonged to a skinny man, or a woman with large feet, or... a teenager.

The tombstone in front of the grave was a white cross with no name and no epitaph.

Afterwards, the rescuers once again searched the whole village and the surrounding mountains and forests. However, there was still no sign of any living creatures.

After that, the police conducted a series of investigations, but failed to solve the case.

This mysterious disappearance became known as the 'Four Telegrams' incident.

..............

20 years later, an expedition made up of scientists and archaeologists once again went deep into this mountain area to find out the truth of that year.

After a week of investigations, people found a cave halfway up a mountain nearly five kilometres away from the village.

In the cave, there were bodies of all the villagers. After 20 years, all of them had become skeletons.

Among the dead bones, there was one thing that had attracted the attention of the archaeologists.

The bones were not scattered at random, but were neatly arranged in the shape of a cross. In the middle of the cross was a crouched corpse.

It was the body of a teenager who looked to be 16 or 17.

Oddly enough, all the other bodies had turned to bones, except his body, which was air-dried and blackened.

The head of the body was buried between the legs and the hands were clasped around the knees. The bones were completely twisted from the posture, forming a wheel.

One of the archaeologists who studied the customs of Eastern Europe took a glance at the scene and shouted with surprise and delight, "Wheel of Caleb!"

Early March in the year 2013.