Cole sat up straight. “Oh, what about a—"
“No!” we all yelled at the same time.
“For the love of my sanity, please, please stop with the descriptions now,” I begged. “I don’t think my stomach can take it either.”
Rubbing his chin, Luke watched me for a moment. “This started as something I thought would be funny. We’d find a few areas that lit up, I’d be able to tease you about it, and that’d be it. Given what we’ve just seen… I think you need to call it in.”
“Agreed,” Cole said seriously. “I don’t see Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell killing someone and bathing in their blood, but you never know what goes on behind closed doors. Most of the killers who got away with their crimes for the longest were normal looking people.”
Sighing, I leaned so I could get my phone out of my back pocket and hit the number for DB.
He answered almost immediately. “Mark, is everything okay?”
“You know how I bought the Mitchell place?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, my brothers got their hands on some Luminol and sprayed the place down with Cole and Tom.”
DB sighed. “Listen, if you’ve found a couple of spots, that’s norm—”
“My house lit up like the forest in Avatar at night, man. Serious as shit, it’s everywhere.”
“I’m never watching that movie the same way again,” Tom muttered.
My boss made a noise that sounded like a cross between a sigh and a laugh. I knew what I was about to say would change that completely.
“DB, in the room I’m sleeping in, there’s a body print that lights up on the wall. You can even make out the tits and nipples. Next to it, it looks like someone used their hands to smear whatever it was across the wall.”
“Jesus,” he breathed.
“I’m not kidding about it being like the shit out of Avatar. I thought they’d tried to paint every star and constellation we know of on the ceiling.”
He finally groaned. “Okay, seal it off. I’ll call Bailey and get Palmerstown to send their crime scene techs.” I nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see me. “Keep your brothers and the Townsends there so we can get their statements and ask them some questions.”
My eyes focused on one of the GoPros. “Wait, they’ve recorded it all, from the moment they went in, through all the spraying, and when they discovered it all.”
“Fucking awesome,” he said dryly. “Hang tight, and we’ll be with you soon.”
“You might want to tell them to bring extra swabs with them, like a crate of the things.”
“That bad?”
Given that he sounded like he didn’t believe me earlier when I’d mentioned Avatar, I told him to hang tight while I found something for him. It just happened to be a screenshot from Tom’s phone that I’d already taken and a picture I found online of the forest from the movie.
“Aside from the glowing shit coming from the plants in the movie, how much of a difference do you see between the two?”
“Are you serious?” he breathed. Then, not waiting for an answer, he groaned. “Okay, I’ll tell them to make sure they’ve got enough swabs. Do not go back inside that house.”
I didn’t need to be told twice, that’s for sure.
Hanging up after I assured him that wasn’t a problem, I chewed on my thumbnail. I’d bought this place hoping to give Layla her dreams. What if all I’d brought us were nightmares?
Cole sat forward and grinned evilly at me. “So, what are you going to do if you find out they’re just love juices?”
Thankfully, I knew a couple of companies in the area that specialized in cleaning bodily fluids. I also wasn’t attached to any of the décors—obviously—so that wasn’t a problem. I just needed to find out if it was possible to do some sort of brain cleanse, too, so I wouldn’t have the memories stuck in my head.
Fuck, I needed Layla.
With what followed, I became a believer in manifesting. Turns out that if you said something often enough it happened.
Because I got just what I’d asked for.