Ocean View Hills


Ocean View Hills


Ocean View Hills

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In Ocean View Heights, a suburb of Los Angeles, on the night in question (December 16th), a middle-aged woman with short grey hair and glasses was watching television from the recliner in her living room. She wasn’t paying much attention to it as she stared vacantly at the screen for what seemed like an eternity before finally nodding off to sleep.

It had been another long day working as a receptionist for the local doctor’s office while trying to raise two teenage boys by herself. The woman was alone, but that didn’t bother her too much; she liked to keep busy even when there were other people around.

But today she hadn’t done anything much except sit through the usual holiday commercials about Christmas trees, ornaments, wreaths, and presents—not that she’d seen any of those things in years, and not many families in this neighborhood did either.

A knock sounded on the door. Her heart skipped a beat for a moment before resuming its rhythm. There was no telling who might be standing outside waiting for some kind of response from her. She looked over to the clock on her dresser: 10:40 p.m.

A little late for visitors, although maybe a neighbor might have something urgent they needed to discuss with her. With that thought, she turned towards the front door.

Her husband had passed away four years ago after suffering a heart attack brought on by a stroke. He’d been such a wonderful man and father, so good-hearted and patient despite having very little education, especially now that he was older.

The woman felt terrible thinking about it, but sometimes she missed him terribly during these moments of loneliness and despair. His passing meant her kids would never get to grow up with their dad, which was a shame since they were all growing up into young men with strong personalities and a sense of independence that didn’t suit them well enough to ever live at home again.

The doorbell rang again; the woman sighed as she walked towards the front door and reached out to pull it open. To her surprise, however, there was nobody standing beyond the threshold of the small foyer.

Instead, the interior light from the hallway illuminated the silhouette of a young boy dressed in a green hooded sweatshirt with the name “Logan” written on it in white letters against his black pants. The child appeared confused for a moment, staring back and forth between the woman and the closed door, before quickly turning around and making a dash for the living room.

‘Hello? Is anyone else home?’ the woman shouted behind the retreating figure but received no reply. She followed the boy into the living room and watched him disappear behind the dark drapes across the wide window that looked out onto the street.

Then she saw what made him do that; someone was standing in the center of the road right below the house—a person who appeared to be in their early twenties wearing a red hoodie under an olive-green coat. The figure had drawn its arms tight around its torso and seemed to be shivering, although whether from fear or cold could not be determined from this distance.

Whatever the cause, it was obvious to the woman that something strange was happening outside.

As she stared out the window, the shape of the figure grew larger; it must’ve been standing still for a few minutes, she realized. What the hell are they doing outside so late? The woman shook off the question as she went to the telephone on a table beside one wall of the living room and called the police.

She asked for officers to respond immediately but was told that there weren’t any units available at this time and that dispatchers couldn’t send anyone until the following morning. The woman hung up without saying anything further and returned to the couch where she lay down to try and sleep.

It was a couple of hours later before she heard someone knocking on her front door. She looked over to see two policemen standing behind it; they must’ve arrived, after all, she figured. They were both smiling warmly and seemed quite relieved upon seeing the woman in the chair.

One of them stepped forward and introduced himself as Sergeant Richard Williams and his partner, Officer Robert Halsey. The second officer also spoke: “My name is Detective Mike Rourke,” he said. “I’d like you to come along with us.”

They led the woman to the dining room where she was shown a large piece of cardboard with a crude sketch of a tall figure in a red jacket. The figure stood next to a small girl in a blue nightgown with her hands raised as if being held by some invisible force.

The two figures were positioned beneath a large tree with branches reaching up toward the sky above and a moon hovering overhead, casting a soft glow on them. The image looked to have been created with chalk, though it was somewhat difficult to make out because of the way it was painted on top of a layer of snow that covered most of the lawn and garden area surrounding the tree.

Detective Rourke asked the woman to describe how she knew it was her daughter’s drawings that had been found. ‘This figure,’ the detective explained, pointing at the drawing, ‘is called the Dark Man.’

***

After a short drive, they parked near the corner of the quiet street and began walking through the woods that ran alongside the property. In places, the ground was covered with deep drifts of snow that reached just below the waist.

The detective explained to the woman that it would only take a moment to find the spot where her daughter drew the figure with the red coat. As they trudged deeper into the woods, the detective continued to talk about the case while his partner took notes.

‘We’re still investigating the details, ma’am, but we’ve already confirmed that this was no suicide and that your daughter is definitely dead.’ Detective Rourke stopped talking and pointed in front of him to indicate a place on the path ahead.

They’d come to a bend in the trail where the ground rose slightly, giving way to a view of a clearing beyond. There, framed within a circle of bare trees, was the exact image of the figure with the red coat and small girl. The only difference was that the girl’s face had changed. She had become much younger; the features were more rounded, almost babylike.

And the hair, which the mother had seen depicted on her daughter’s drawing, had grown longer and now reached all the way to her shoulders. The eyes were open, and the child’s mouth was pulled upward in a smile.

The whole thing seemed somehow more disturbing than the original figure with the red coat as if this one had been placed there deliberately to frighten whoever approached. But despite how unsettling it appeared, the mother recognized the little girl and felt a wave of relief wash over her.

Her daughter was okay, she thought. She must’ve run away and decided to return when she was safe.

The woman noticed that the sun had set and that darkness surrounded them; the woods had grown very silent, except for the crunching sound their footsteps made on the snow-covered path. A sudden chill raced up her spine.

Something is watching me, she realized, turning around to look up at the branches overhead. She could hear nothing in response, but there was a sense of something lurking in the shadows; an intense feeling of being watched from everywhere.

The hairs on her body stood on end. She looked back again and saw that the detective and his partner were staring at her with wide eyes. She felt as if they were expecting her to do something—say something. She wasn’t sure what it was or what kind of statement would be appropriate, however; so instead, she simply smiled at them, hoping they wouldn’t think she was insane.

“Is everything okay?” the detective asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied, nodding as if it had all been a terrible nightmare that had finally ended. She walked over to a nearby boulder and sat down; it gave her an opportunity to catch her breath. It had been a long day and the mother felt worn out.

As she rested her head against the cool stone, the sounds of the woods seemed very loud. She closed her eyes for a moment and let herself feel the cold air rushing across her face. When she opened her eyes, it was dark.

She glanced around and couldn’t tell where they were. Had they come too far? Maybe they should start heading back, she wondered. ‘Can I take a few minutes?’ she asked.

The detectives agreed and told her to wait in silence until they returned. After waiting for several minutes, the mother stood up and moved over toward where they’d left the path leading back to her home. A few paces later, her foot came down hard on something soft underfoot. She looked down and saw that she was standing atop a frozen grave.

It was a shallow hole, only about six inches deep, and covered by a layer of thick snow that extended to her waist. A white sheet of paper lay crumpled at its bottom. The mother bent down and picked it up. She held it between her fingers; it was dry and flimsy like an old newspaper page, although it was clearly not a normal news report; it had been folded over and tied with string.

The headline read: THE DARK MAN. Below the headline were the words, ‘THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEATH OF KELLY HARRIS’, and beneath that was a single line of text written in block capitals with a penciled signature: BRIAN MCCANN.

Beneath the last word were three letters that had been crossed out. Then another set of four letters had been added. They were circled and had also been crossed out, forming a different phrase underneath the first set.

‘MY NAME IS NOT SCUM’. The mother took a closer look and read the article more closely. It described exactly what she’d already known—that the death of her daughter was being investigated as a murder and that it was connected to the disappearance of two young boys, one named Kevin Harris and the other, Brian McCann.

She knew this information already, but reading it in print suddenly seemed much more real than before; it was something she could hold onto as opposed to a dream, which always evaporated after she awoke.

The woman turned back to the grave and looked into the darkness. It seemed as if someone was standing directly behind her, staring down at the body that lay buried there. With each step she took, the shape grew larger; and when she looked up, she saw that there was no sign of anyone else nearby.

The woman continued walking until she reached the edge of the clearing, then stopped to look back once again. No one was in sight. As she stared into the woods, she thought she heard footsteps moving away. She waited for several moments and when nothing appeared, she headed back to where the others were waiting; her heart beating faster with every step.

As soon as they’d finished telling their story to the police officers, the three siblings were driven straight to the morgue; they weren’t allowed to see the dead bodies of their parents. The coroner examined the bodies and confirmed that both Kelly and Mark had died from gunshot wounds to their heads.

He told them they didn’t have much time to say goodbye, so he quickly removed their clothing and laid them in separate refrigeration boxes, then left them for the funeral home to pick up on Monday.

Once in bed, Kelly’s sister fell asleep almost immediately; it was as if she’d exhausted herself during the course of the long day. But it wasn’t easy for her brother and his baby sister. They’d lived with this reality for so many years that it seemed impossible to believe that it really happened.

Now that they knew exactly what had killed their parents, they began reliving their memories again and again. They kept seeing the gun in their father’s hand, hearing him shout, ‘No!’ and the shot ringing out through the woods.

They’d never understood why they’d seen their mother run from the house screaming at night, and they’d often wondered how they’d even gotten up and out of the house when they’d awoken hours earlier; it had always just seemed to happen. But now, it became clear. They had been forced to leave because there was someone inside who wanted to kill them all, including their mother.

They slept poorly that night, unable to get over the shock of the revelations they had learned. And while they tried to shut out the thoughts of the terrible truth, the images haunted them endlessly throughout the rest of their childhoods.

When Kelly’s brother went off to college, the images disappeared for a period of time, but then returned as he watched films about serial killers or sat alone in front of a flickering television screen late at night. His sister was not as easily distracted, and she often found herself sitting in front of the same images on television screens too small for her The End

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