Shade

Chapter 20 - Death Means Change

The story was barely a blip on the news. Anke, Jonas, and I were treated at a hospital. We gave statements to the police. We gave statements to the reporters. And we had to lie.

We had to paint Evelyn as a villain. No one would believe our story of shades, or spirits or demonic possession, or whatever it was. Anke hardly believed it herself. It felt awful to not be able to share the complexities and remaining mystery of the truth. That was, perhaps, one of the worst parts of what we went through. There could be no solace, no known reason why people we cared about died. Only theories and guesses.

Some people had questions, of course, about Hector and Alessa. What had brought paranormal investigators to the property in the first place? But the answers reported by the news were unsatisfying and left to scrutinize by online forums dedicated to paranormal cold cases.

Evelyn's work became particularly notable among collectors. Especially those that possessed a morbid fascination with murderers. Specifically of interest were the surviving pieces from her final collection; vessels that bore an abstract resemblance to human skulls.

Angie let Jonas and I stay on her couch for as long as we wanted. We stayed for a couple of weeks until we found an old RV for sale and took off on the road. Angie assumed that I was on the run again, up to my old patterns. I tried to explain to her that I had changed. I saw my life with Jonas for the long haul. We were bound together by our trauma and also by love. I had fallen in love with him. And home was wherever we were together.

Occasionally, we would stop and camp in rural, desolate places. I would pause and stare into the shadows cast by gray derelict farmhouses or dark patches of wood. I'd listen to the wind hush softly through dried fields of grass. I'd think of the bloodied history of humanity and the stories of trauma that linger on every patch of earth we've inhabited.

I still see movement in the corner of my eyes. I expect to see Jack or the pale sunken face of another restless soul. But I've never seen a shade again.

We fell quickly out of touch with Anke. She moved back to Germany to live with her family. Before she left, she sent an email. "Just something I thought was interesting," she wrote. What she sent was a collection of articles written about the property that had become the commune. Sandwiched between Bonnie Dunham's murders and the one we had survived were three more; one in 1919, one in 1948, and one in 1977. All featured a female murderer and seven victims.