Detective Evan Sampson woke up to a knocking at his door. His sheets were on the floor, unusual but nothing too shocking. What was shocking was that his window next to his bed was open, the same window he always closed. Based on his room’s situation and the fact that it was 3:30 in the morning, so he was concerned by who needed him. When he opened the door, he broke into a nervous sweat. It was his friend, police officer Dylan White. Normally, he’d be happy to see Dylan, but given the situation he was in he was in fact quite scared to hear what Dylan had to say. “Hey Dylan, what do you need?” he asked cautiously.
“Sorry to wake you Evan, but there was a murder down at Everest. We would like you to take a look at the crime scene,” Officer White explained.
“Who was the victim?” Sampson asked. “Tristan Theroux,” White answered.
Sampson was upset at the news, as he knew Tristan well. He had attended his wedding four years back and regularly played poker with him. But being a detective, he headed down to Theroux’s house.
Theroux was lying face up in his bathtub with a knife wound in his chest. White explained that the next door neighbor heard a scream from the house followed by silence. By the time White and the other officers arrived, Theroux was lying right where he lay now, dead. The knife had not been found and it was believed that the killer escaped through the basement, as the cellar door lock was broken. With this in mind, Sampson started his work in the basement. He found nothing in the cellar itself but when he stepped outside he saw muddy shoe prints that went on down the street but then suddenly disappeared. The prints were, Sampson decided, from a pair of Northface Chilkat boots. When he told this to White, he also told him to check recent purchases of Chilkat boots from the intown Northface. Back at the site of the death, Sampson noticed that the only odd thing, aside from the dead guy in the bathtub, was a large circle of blood, about the size of a human head, on the bathroom mirror. After analyzation, the blood was found to be Theroux’s blood, which Sampson had expected. Aside from that, there was nothing that even remotely helped Sampson decide who the killer was, which made him mad. Sampson stayed up for 3 straight days trying to find something, anything, that would give him a lead, but found nothing. The murder of Tristan Theroux, it seemed, was unsolvable.
A week later, Sampson was awoken to a phone call. His sheets were thrown onto the ground again, but that was becoming more common due to his frequent nightmares. “Evan, there was another murder. This time of Andrew and Kendra Potts,” responded a upset-sounding Dylan. When he got to the Potts’ house, the Chief of Police was there. He must’ve seen the confused expression on Evan’s face because he said, “three murders in two weeks in this town seemed super serious so I came down here to take a look.” While investigating, Evan realized that it had to be the same killer. The cellar door was once again open, with muddy footprints of Chillax boots. “I saw those too,” Dylan said “There was no record of any bought Chillax boots in the Northface. In fact, they didn’t even have them in stock.”
“Check all the Northface stores in the nearby towns then,” Evan responded. This time the corpses laid in the bedroom, sprawled out on the floor. The bed was on its side and the sheets were ripped. In both Andrew and Kendra, the stab wound was in the same spot Theroux’s had been. Through analysis, Evan concluded that it was the same knife. And just as Theroux case, there was a bloody circle the size of a head on the bedroom mirror. Once again, Evan found nothing giving him any lead on the murderer. Because of this, Evan and the chief decided to set a town curfew of 9:30 PM. The town was under attack.
Even with the curfew, the situation got worse. The next week, Eli Henderson was murdered with the same situation: muddy boot prints, knife wound to the heart, and a bloody circle on the mirror. Again Evan found nothing, although Dylan did find one pair of Chillax boots, sold to a Freddy Betancourt in a nearby town. He was brought in for questioning but was found not guilty due to the fact that he had never received the package. There was no murder the next week, which was a good thing since in was Dylan’s birthday week. The next week however, Allen Kowalski was murdered. Again Evan and the police found nothing except the same situation. Evan was furious he couldn’t catch this guy. The cameras he set up around were always hacked into and on top of that, there was no clear pattern to who was going to be killed next. Evan stayed up almost the entire next week with no sleep looking through past crime scenes but couldn’t find anything. That next summer was awful for the town. Thirteen people were killed: Lizzy West, Oscar Cooper, Octavia Baldelli, Kathy Daniels, Anna Davis, Thomas Johnson, Yu Matsusaka, Olivia Minton, Ulee Sherman, Reilly Sanchez, Sam Alfredsson, Ethan Hanks, and Lucas Gordon. The people were leaving the town in bunches. Many stores were going out of business. It became so bad that Evan was let go of by the town’s police force.
“I’m extremely sorry Evan, but we don’t have the income to keep you on staff,” the Chief told Evan. Evan was heartbroken. He had lost everything because he couldn’t do his job. He was barely surviving. He lived off of Dylan’s family, who had generously helped him out. A week later however, disaster struck.
“Dude wake up and get out of my way!”
Evan woke up falling onto the pavement. “Where… what happened?” Evan wondered aloud.
“You were sleepwalking in the middle of the sidewalk and just randomly stopped,” the stranger said “now move over, you’re blocking my path to the train station.”
Evan was confused for two reasons. One reason, he had never sleep walked before and two, there was no train station in the town he lived in. He walked around and found a restaurant he visited from time to time called Tom’s Pub. Tom’s, Evan knew, was in Woburn, the town over from where he lived. So now that he knew where he was, he sat on a bench and tried to remember what he had done last. He remembered going to bed on Dylan’s couch, but that was it. All of a sudden, he noticed something that sent all kinds of emotions through his body. He saw a trail of muddy Chillax boot prints that came to a stop at the train station. This was his chance, Evan thought, no more ruined life. If I catch the killer, maybe even just get some lead, I can regain control of my life. He sprinted and followed the trail of mud back to a house on Thompson Road. The cellar door was open, so Evan went in. He searched every room until he found a room with a closed door. Taped to the door, was a knife and a note. The knife was clean so Evan could see his own reflection. That seemed weird to him, but not as weird as the note. The note had every name of a person who had been murdered, with one added name. The note looked like this:
Tristan theroux
Andrew potts
Kendra potts
Eli henderson
Allen kowalski
Lizzy west
Oscar cooper
Octavia baldelli
Kathy daniels
Anna davis
Thomas johnson
Yu matsusaka
Olivia minton
Ulee sherman
Reilly sanchez
Sam alfredsson
Ethan hanks
Lucas gordon
Freddy betancourt
TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF.
Evan started to panic. He looked down at his feet and screamed. He was wearing a pair of Chillax Northface boots. He sprinted around the house in terror. No way what he was thinking was true, he thought, he had always been asleep. He eventually opened the closed door. It was a bathroom. The shower curtain was closed and Evan was too terrified to open them. He looked to his left and saw the bloody circle, the size of not just any head, but his head. To the left of the mirror he saw a video camera that was recording. Evan stopped the recording and after mustering all of his courage, replayed the video from the beginning. What he saw made him faint. The video was of him, Evan Sampson, half asleep, driving a knife through Freddy Betancourt’s heart.