Amberlyn, the recipient of my cousin Sam's final text messages, contacted me after seeing my original post. She was angry (rightfully) that I had shared their conversation without consulting her. After accepting my apology, she begrudgingly allowed me to keep the posts up, as we share a similar desire to bring Sam's abductor (killer?) to justice.
A few hours after our heated exchange, Amberlyn called me back to provide a piece of information absent from the police records. The night of the disappearance, the investigators arrived at her house to question her but she didn't have much information to share beyond the text messages. A few hours after the police left, at approximately 3 a.m., she looked out of her bedroom window and saw a stranger standing on the gravel road behind her house, about 100 yards away--a rare sight as Amberlyn lives in a relatively rural area. She was initially hopeful that it was Sam, but it soon became clear that wasn't the case.
The individual was tall and slim, but not immediately recognizable as a man or a woman. Their posture was stiff, almost unnaturally so, as if someone had asked them to "stand up straight." The figure stood solidly for several minutes, staring at Amberlyn's house from the edge of a ditch that separated her property from the road. The sky was black that night with the new moon; all Amberlyn could make out clearly was the sweater the stranger was wearing (on a balmy, 85-degree August evening, no less). She soon realized it was Sam's favorite white, cable knit sweater. It was almost as if this person was showing off. Amberlyn began to cry at this point in our conversation, but she eventually continued her story.
The stranger remained rigid for several more minutes as Amberlyn watched. When her fear finally subsided, she left the window and rushed to grab her shotgun. By the time she flung her backdoor open, the figure was gone. The faint rumble of a car engine could be heard in the distance and a thin cloud of dust was hovering above the road. She called the police, but the department had been thinned out due to the local "Eclipse Festival," which had devolved into several drunken house parties stretching early into the morning (a total eclipse of the sun had occurred earlier in the day, providing a big boost to local tourism as the "path of totality" stretched through the county).
When it became clear that the police weren't coming anytime soon, Amberlyn locked all her doors and hugged her shotgun tightly until first light. A pair of cops finally arrived mid-morning, but seemed quick to dismiss Amberlyn's account. They surmised the stranger in question had been nothing more than a wayward eclipse reveler, lost and likely drunk. Amberlyn protested, saying she had seen Sam's sweater. The tired officers remained disinterested, but promised to add the information to Sam's case report, which apparently never happened.
I asked Amberlyn why she had waited so long to share her information. She said that after the police left, she went behind her house to the gravel road, hoping to find something to confirm that she wasn't just paranoid. Unfortunately, she got what she wanted. Pinned to an elm tree near the road, she found the front page of the town newspaper. An illustration of the shrouded sun had been circled several times in red ink, with a frenzied note scrawled atop the accompanying article about the eclipse.
Amberlyn remembered every crazed word of the note:
TODAY GOD BURNED HIS GAZE INTO MY EYES
NOW I SEE AS HE SEES
A DARKNESS AT THE CORE OF ALL THINGS
HIS POWER IS NOW MINE
AFTER WEEKS OF CAREFUL WATCH
HE GAVE ME PERMISSION TO DO WHAT I MUST
FINALLY I HAVE MY PRIZE
I WANTED YOU TO SEE
TELL ANYONE YOUR CLINIC BURNS
YOUR FAMILY DIES
YOU DIE
DESTROY THIS NOTE
Terrified, Amberlyn did as the note demanded, which she now regrets. She said with the case becoming fresh again, it was time to reveal her secret. At the moment, this recent development does little to help find Sam, but we both felt it was important to share. We are planning to go back to the police with this new information and demand they engage in a proper murder investigation.
Thanks again.
-N
YOU ARE READING
targeted.
Mystery / Thriller(Note: Fiction) Hello Internet. Exactly two years ago, my cousin Samantha disappeared without a trace, likely abducted from her home in the middle of the night. The investigators have pretty much given up, but my family is still holding on to the ho...
