The Beast of Brookville

Chapter 2

John spotted her hurtling up the driveway and felt a sharp strike of terror. If his daughter was running, something was chasing her. His morning coffee cup clattered to the table as he raced to meet her outside.

"What is it, what's happening??" His baby girl was white as a sheet, drenched in sweat, running for her life.

"B- BODY, call- CALL THE COPS" she heaved.

Opal flailed into him and he pulled her inside the house, kicking the door shut behind them. She used everything she had to race home and now her body was failing her, she crumpled to the floor as her father frantically dialed 911.

"Ok" he huffed, trying to quell the adrenaline fueled tremors and center himself.

"They're on their way, what did you see, baby?"

"I don't....I don't know...a man?" Opal winced at the word man. She was in shock, it had only been a few minutes but it felt like ages ago when she stumbled upon the person discarded in the woods, tossed in the rotting leaves.

She closed her eyes and everything came screaming back to her in the darkness. Shattered pieces of the image of a tortured person, laying on his side, head a mess of the pieces that used to construct it. He barely looked human.

Opal's eyes whipped open and her body tensed as if she'd been struck in the face, she couldn't do this.

The rancid smell of the body lingered in her nose, hanging tight to the back of her throat. The dampness of the morning dew seeped into her shoes, the sight of his tortured face, what was left of it, pierced her brain, she sobbed.

Thirteen of the longest minutes of their life passed before they hear the crunching gravel of approaching vehicles.A knock falls on the door - it's time.

Still numb, Opal lifts her body out of the chair as her father opens the front door and lifts her head to greet the officers.

"Forrest?" she couldn't believe her eyes.

There he was.

Opal stood eye to eye with Forrest Collins in uniform- her sort of best friend sort of boyfriend from high school that she sort of lost touch with when she went to college became a cop while she was away.

Opal hadn't thought of him as attractive when she first met him, plain is probably a better description, but the more she got to know him the cuter she thought he was. Forrest was kind but troubled, he struggled with alcohol in high school as only the neglected child of an alcoholic mother could. Thankfully he didn't inherit his mother's biting alcoholic rage but instead he'd suffered blackouts and lost time. He struggled to find common ground with his parents but with Opal he was always vulnerable and trusting and they had become so close that last summer before she left. Standing about 5'6" with broad shoulders and an otherwise lean body, leftovers from a childhood of swim team, he carried himself well. He'd had a growth spurt in middle school but that was probably the last time he grew. She'd never thought of him as a particularly short guy but standing there next to his tall oak of a father she realized how much he resembled his mom.

Sheriff Samuel Collins towered over his son, towered over everyone really, the man filled the entirety of their doorway. He was shaped like a refrigerator but moved with the ease of an athlete, unbound by weight, finely tuned to the capabilities of his body with the focus and practiced control to go along with it. He had always been a steady person, a 'no nonsense' man but with kind eyes. The man was a rock, literally and figuratively, and he never seemed to let his wife's cruelty affect him but wasn't always able to shield Forrest from her issues. That is, until the divorce.

When the sheriff and his wife were divorcing you would never have known his life was shattering. Once, and only once, did Forrest ever witness them arguing about the split. Usually it was his mom, on a custom cocktail of wine and mood stabilizers, doing her best to goad her husband into anger, and the ever-stable Samuel would absorb the verbal blows. No-one seemed to know what the final straw had been to warrant a divorce, but the whole community released a sigh of relief that Samuel and Forrest were soon to be free from Ann Collins.