“In your eyes I see a darkness that torments you and in your head where it dwells, I’d give you my hand if you’d reach out and grab it, let’s walk away from this hell.”
-The Juliana Theory, Into the Dark

 “I love him, everything about him.  He’s in my thoughts, my dreams, my life.  I would be nothing without him and he would be nothing without me.  Young love is funny that way, at least that’s what Lita Mansfield told me when we were talking about her engagement to Shawn McPhereson.  All my friends laugh at me when I talk about Peter, they say I get all moony-eyed and dreamy.  So what?  They get all dreamy when it comes to watching Dawson’s Creek and stuff so why shouldn’t I?  My guy just happens to be real that’s all.
 “I don’t know what attracted me to Peter.  He’s the police chief’s youngest son and somewhat of a bookworm.  He’s also the smartest person in the county, there were rumors circulating that he was going to go either Yale or Harvard on a free ride.  I know he got a sixteen hundred on his SAT’s the first time he tried them and he had won numerous awards, including one that was presented by the President.  He’s much smarter than I am, I do well in school but not as well as he does.  Anyway I’m a theater person extra-curricular activities are much more important to Emerson and NYU than getting all A’s in history.
 “The first time I saw Peter it was in my Advanced Placement English class last year.  He’s fairly short for a guy, under 5’10” and he had lanky brown hair that never seemed to be combed just right.  Behind his glasses he has soft brown eyes that I just melt in sometimes.  They always reflect caring and love and always understanding.  He’s not a very big guy, definitely too thin at times, but he’s a loving and caring person and we can overlook many things for love.  Even though he looks like a genuine nice guy there is something about him that I find different and mysterious.
 “Even to this day I always think that Peter’s hiding something from me, or laughing at some private joke.  He has these odd bouts of melancholia that I’ve tried to get him out of and can never seem to succeed.  He talks a lot about the dark and our existence, metaphysical stuff that I have problems understanding.  Sometimes I’d like to get into his head and find out what he’s really thinking.  I know I’d have problems understanding it all, but then Einstein would have problems understanding him.  I think he’s hiding something from me, from everyone and I wish I could help him, I wish someone could help him.
Lucy Walter, Journal entry, date unknown

**
Peter Morris
Writing Enrichment, journal entry
October 16, 2000

 Next week is the day, a day of joy and happiness.  It is the day that Lucy Walter and I, Peter Morris, celebrate our one-year anniversary.  It might not seem like much, but to us it is very important and very special.  I have been looking forward to this day for nearly a month now.  My plans are to take her out to an expensive dinner at The Meridian in Murbrook.  I’m going to buy her a beautiful sapphire ring, because blue is her favorite color, and give her a dozen roses.  I cannot wait.  I feel like a child on Christmas Eve waiting for time to move faster to the big moment where everything happens.  It must be funny to hear that a seventeen-year-old has fallen in love, after all I am still very young and I should not know what love is; but I believe that love has found me.
 Lucy and I first met last year in the first half of Advanced Placement English, junior year.  We were placed in the same group to study Hamlet and it is there that I fell under her spell.  At first I thought she might be a child prodigy as she barely tops five feet, but after talking with her I found that to be the worst assumption I could ever make.  As we continued to talk I learned that she was an amazing singer, an actress of great skill, highly energetic and genuinely happy about life, and amazingly beautiful.  After that one class she had me entirely enraptured and I could not stop thinking about her.  We started to see each other after class and hanging out, at first it was innocent, meeting at the library to study or hanging out after one of her performances.  Both our friends told us we wouldn’t make it because we had nothing in common, they were both right and wrong.
 We are two different people.  She’s an extrovert, you can tell what she’s thinking just by looking at her body language.  She’s open and sharing and is always looking to help someone even at her own expense.  I am a much more closed person.  I avoid sharing my feelings and thoughts and I tend to be a loner in some situations.  She opened me up to the world, made me more aware of who I am and who I wanted to become.  Our friends were wrong in that we did find something in common, and that was each other.  It took me nearly two weeks to get up the courage but I eventually asked her out on a date and I was quite elated when she said yes.
 We were together nearly every hour after that.  We became virtually inseparable and our families joked that they could not see one of us without seeing the other.  Lucy became as necessary as air, food, and water to me.  I would find it hard to survive a day without her.  She is everything to me she is my world, she is my life, I love her.
 

Well written paper Pete, very personal.  It shows who you really are deep inside.  Good luck to the two of you for your anniversary.  I enjoyed reading it.
A

 “Well, what do these tell us, Roger,” sighed Damian as he put the paper on top of the growing stack on the table before him.  They had been going over documents for the past two days, waiting for the lab results to come back about Peter’s body and the blood sample.  In the interim they had both decided to halt the investigation to see if Chief Morris would recover from the stroke he suffered when he found his son was the victim.
 “I have no idea.  Peter Morris and Lucy Walter were definitely in love though, at least they thought they were,” replied Roger as he rubbed his eyes.
 “Exactly.  Peter’s an excellent student all right but his writing needs to be spiced up, it’s a bit bland.  How about Lucy?”
 “Most of its very personal, I don’t know how she could have given up her diary that easily.”
 “Must have been shock from what she saw in her locker.  Imagine having your significant other turn up missing and then finding his face in your locker…freaky.  Well it was an attempt at least, I didn’t think we’d find anything interesting in their papers but then you never know what children are writing these days.”
 “I guess so.  I thought I caught a glimmer of something in one of Lucy’s entries but there was never any follow up.”
 “What did it say?”
 “Well there was a quote from a band about bringing someone out of Hell and seeing darkness in their eyes and then she mentioned something about him being mysterious and trying to find a way to help him.”
 “Not your usual ‘love’ fare.”
 “Not at all.  I think we should follow it up, start asking questions about Lucy and Peter’s relationship,” suggested Roger.
 “You think she might have done the deed?” asked Damian intently.
 “No, I don’t think she has to personality to do it.  I also think that she was too much in love to be regarded as a murderer.”
 “How about his father, the chief?  I’m testing your training.”
 “Well considering the information that we have, he has a solid alibi for the time of the murder and considering that he’s broken up by his son’s death to the point of being hospitalized I don’t think he is a suspect either.”
 “Then where does that leave us?”
 “That leaves us with exactly what we started with, a murder and no suspects.”
 “Exactly,” Damian agreed.  “Just remember, we shouldn’t rule everyone out just yet, but let’s just say that Lucy and Chief Morris are not very high on the suspect list and both have very good alibis.  Just a note though, never strike someone’s name off the suspect list, you never really know about a person’s true intentions.”
 “Well noted.  What are we doing next then?”
 “Tomorrow you and Edgar Jackson are going to go out and question these people on the list we’ve made, concentrate on Lucy Walter, Anna Johnson, and Andrew Peeler.  I’m going to take Shawn McPhereson and go back to the school to see if I can find out what went wrong.  We’ll meet back here tonight and see what we have.”
 “Sounds good.”

Roger Christenson met Edgar Jackson in front of Town Hall at eight the next morning. The school had been closed down for the week and rumors were circulating that it would stay closed until after Thanksgiving which would mean that the town hall would be very crowded for at least another month and a half. The story of the brutal murder had reached everywhere and in an effort to keep the populace as safe as possible the police had implemented many new strategies that Damian had suggested. These included a curfew of midnight for all people and a round the clock surveillance team of at least three cops. Although Edgar was not a cop, he had placed himself in Damian and Roger’s service and had become a member of the team along with Ranger Phillips.
Edgar looked exhausted as he got out of his car and walked up the steps to where Roger sat on a stone bench feeding some pigeons with pieces of a breakfast roll. “Agent Christenson.”
Roger looked up, “Damn, Edgar, you look like hell. You should go back and get some rest before you end up hurting yourself.”
“I wish I could. I can’t sleep anymore.   All I can ever think about is what happened to poor Peter.  He was such a good kid, I thought he’d go off to college and make something of his life, make a change in the world.”
“You really thought highly of him, didn’t you?” inquired Roger shrewdly.
“I did, he was the most intelligent person I have ever met in my life.  It wasn’t just the fact that he was smart though, he was also charismatic, funny; a natural leader.  The world will be a darker place without knowing Peter Morris.”
“I hate to ask this, but its part of the job.  Did he ever have any unsavory habits?  Did he have any enemies or people he didn’t get along with?”
“None that I can think of, people always got along with him.  Even though he was smart he was never resented in school, mainly because he wasn’t arrogant about anything.  He was very humble and modest and could get along with almost anyone.  Of course I was the principal of the school and his father’s friend so there might have been something in the undercurrent of the student body that I might not have noticed or that he didn’t want to tell anyone.”
“Who would know the most about him?”
“Probably Lucy Walter.  The two of them had been going out for almost a year.  Their anniversary was supposed to be coming up, I think.”
“Well, she’s the first one on our list.  Do you know where she lives?”
“Of course, she lives right behind the church.  Her father is a minister here.”
“What denomination?”
“Protestant, I believe.  I hate to say it but I’m not much of a church person.”
“It’s a rare thing these days,” Roger agreed.

Damian drove back out to the school he was going to meet Shawn McPhereson there and see what had caused the water main to break.  Damian shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he drove.  The case should have been easier than it was turning out to be it was a small town and fantastic murders in small towns usually led to a small handful of suspects.  Yet here they were with no list of suspects, a brutal murder, a burst water main, and the sound of children laughing and crying.  Damian had been involved in some tough cases but he had solved nearly eighty per cent of them.  He had one of the best track records in the Bureau and was known for taking on some of the toughest and strangest cases that were out there.
This case was practically up his alley, odd murder, no suspects, all it needed was some of the infamous Cole logic, or illogic as his peers might suggest, and the case could be solved easily.  That’s how things usually went on his cases, but usually there was something to give Damian a little push in the right direction, some fiber or piece of human evidence.  Something that hadn’t been entirely wiped out and destroyed, yet the water main had destroyed any evidence that could be found on the body and the blood that Ranger Phillips had gotten tested had come back as Peter Morris’ blood, nothing was wrong with it at all.
It was all so infuriating, and any other agent would have most likely wanted to call back to Washington for reassignment.  Damian refused to do so, no matter how difficult the case became he promised himself, and Chief Morris, that he would stay until the murderer of Peter Morris was found and brought in.  Damian turned into the school parking lot, Shawn’s jeep was already there and he was sitting on top of it staring up at the clouds.  His fiancée, Lita Mansfield, lay next to him.  Damian remembered that Lita lived fairly close to the school and had called in on the assumed night of Peter’s death that had reported a noise violation.  The noise had sounded like children giggling but as soon as a police car had pulled up to her house the music had stopped and nothing was heard for the rest of the night.
“Oh, Agent Coles.  How are you?” greeted Shawn as he slid off his jeep, Lita in the crook of his arm.
“I’m confused, Shawn, very confused.  How are the two of you?”
“We’re fine,” replied Lita quietly.  “I should get going, Shawn, you and Mr. Coles probably have a lot of work to do and I have to get back to the store.”
“Okay, dear.  I’ll come visit after Agent Coles and I are done here.”
“Don’t rush, I’m pretty sure Mr. Coles is going to need you for quite awhile.”
“I hate to take him away from you, ma’am, but you’re probably right.  Shawn and I have a lot of work ahead of us,” smiled Damian.
“Its ok.  Just keep an eye on him for me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Bye, Lita, have a nice day,” said Shawn as he kissed her goodbye.
“Bye, Shawn.  Good luck, Mr. Coles.”
Damian and Shawn watched as Lita got into Shawn’s jeep and drive off, leaving the two men standing in the parking lot.  “Good girl you have there, Shawn.  Congratulations on your eventual marriage.”
“Thank you, Agent Coles.”
“You can just call me Damian, we’ll be working together for quite awhile and Agent Coles tends to remind of all the bureaucratic nonsense back in Washington.”
“Okay, Damian.  Do you know where we should start first?”
“To be honest, I have no idea.  I think we should definitely start at the scene of the crime, with the water drained there might be something that might have been left behind, although I highly doubt that.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“I’m hoping to find something that the perpetrator might have left behind, a clue or something.  We don’t have a full forensics team so it’s going to be up to us to look for the least little bit of evidence that there might be.  That’s why I chose you over your brother, you’ve had some forensic classes and experience.  Anyway your brother is very busy trying to keep the station up and running.”
“Yeah, it’s a tougher job than he thought it’d be.  I guess its because Chief Morris is such an easy-going guy that his job seems to be much easier than it appears.”
“How is the Chief doing?”
“He’s okay.  The doctor thinks he’s getting better but they’re not sure how he’ll come out of this mentally.  He’s going to be in a wheelchair for awhile and they plan to test how his mental faculties are working later on in the week.  Everything seems to be on schedule, though.”
“Good.  He’s a good man I hope everything turns out better for him.  Is Ricky holding up under the pressure?”
“Yeah, we had to rush him into his badge but he seems to be doing well, works a lot.  I guess it’s to keep his mind off what has happened.”
“Defensive posture, he knows if he thinks about it a lot he might be incapacitated like his dad and he wants to prevent that no matter what.  Work keeps his mind off of what happened.  Its typical for some people when they face tragedy to bury themselves in their job or hobby.”

Roger sat back and stared at his yellow legal pad.  He stared around at the pale rose wallpaper in the Walter living room and sighed quietly.  They had barely gotten through one question before Lucy had started to cry, from the looks of it she had been doing so ever since she had found Peter’s face in her locker two days earlier.  It was understandable that she was upset, it’s not everyday that someone finds the face of a loved one in their locker.  Roger looked back at Lucy, she was exactly as Peter had written about her, very small and right now very defenseless.  She had shoulder length brown hair, delicate features, and sparkling hazel eyes.  If she wasn’t so short she would have been a model, thought Roger.
Edgar looked up from where he was comforting Lucy and motioned to Roger.  “We might want to talk to Reverend Walter, he might know something about Peter, and he did take him camping the weekend before Peter died,” whispered Roger.
“Sounds like a good idea.”
“Lucy?”
“Yes, Principal Jackson,” sobbed Lucy.
“We’re going to talk to your dad, ok?  Do you know where he is?”
“I think he’s in the dining room.”
“Are you going to be ok , Miss Walter?  Edgar can stay here if you need him to.”
“Thank you, Mr. Christenson, but I think I’ll be okay.”
“Okay, Lucy, just remember if you ever need us don’t be afraid to call, okay?”
“Okay, thank you, Mr. Christenson.”
“Well?” asked Roger as stood up and walked to the dining room with Edgar.
“She seems to handling the pressure rather well, I think.  No suicidal thoughts, which is good, Joseph told me that all she does usually is cry and talk to Anna or Andrew about Peter.  The usual response to pain and loss.”
“Ahh…Mr. Jackson and Mr. Christenson,” greeted Reverend Joseph Walter as Edgar and Roger entered the dining room.  “Have a seat the both of you.  Can I interest you in some coffee?”
“No thank you, Reverend Walter.  We just have some questions about what’s happened,” replied Roger.
“I’ll see what I can do to answer them.”
“How long have you known Peter Morris for?”
“I’d have to say nearly four years, although I got to know him well over the past year.  He was a good young man, treated Lucy really well.  Considering she’s my only daughter and the only woman in the family I was very happy that she chose a good upstanding citizen.”
“Was there anything about Peter that you didn’t like or that you found unnatural?”
“Are you trying to implicate me?”
“No, sir.  I just want to get your full opinion on Peter Morris.”
“I see.  He was a fine young man, went to church every Sunday with his family and knew his Bible well.  I got along well with him and his family.  He seemed just like one of my very own sons.  My wife and I hoped to have more kids, unfortunately she died giving birth to Lucy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, it was God’s will to take her away from me and she’s in a much happier place right now.  She’ll always be with me in my heart anyway.  Speaking of religion, why don’t we ever see you in church, Edgar?”
“I’m not a very religious man, Reverend,” answered Edgar.
“I see.  Well, God accepts all men as his worshippers, ” replied Joseph with a slight tinge of disdain in his voice.
“Of course, Reverend.  I’m just not all that religious ever since Maria died.”
“Of course.  Well I do hope to see you at church sometime soon and may I offer my condolences?”
“Thank you, Reverend.”
“How about you Mr. Christenson?  Are you as religious as your name suggests?”
“I’m afraid not, Reverend.  My parents weren’t very religious and I guess it just passed down onto me.”
“We should never let the faults of our parents get the best of us, Mr. Christenson.”
Roger looked up from his legal pad and stared at Joseph Walter.  “Reverend, my parents might not have been the most religious people in the world but they did raise me and my six siblings with lots of love and care and in the end that’s all that matters, right?”
“Of course, Mr. Christenson, of course,” placated Joseph.
“Anyway,” interrupted Edgar uncomfortably.  “You said that when you took Peter and your sons camping you heard some weird noises that night.  You even filed a violation.”
“Yes, we were up near Lake Claire and had just settled down for the night when we heard what sounded like children crying.  We went out looking to where it was from and to see if we could provide any assistance, ‘children are the lambs of God,’ but we couldn’t find anyone.  I eventually called in the police but as soon as I did the crying stopped.”
“Strange,” murmured Edgar.
 “Sounds familiar to what happened to Lita Mansfield.  She heard a similar thing the night before Peter died but it was the sound of children giggling and when she called it in the giggling stopped as well,” said Roger.
“These things don’t happen in good Christian towns, gentlemen.”
“What’re you implying, Reverend?” asked Roger cautiously.
“I’m saying that the seeds of darkness have been planted in the town of Danford and that the Lord will take exception to it and a battle between good and evil will rage in the streets.  There is an evil floating around here an evil from the lack of religion in this town.  Danford is falling into sin and it is up to us bring the light of God back to Danford.”

“What do you see, Shawn?”
“Absolutely nothing, Damian.  Its too damn dark down here.”
“It’s a good thing I brought flashlights with me then,” replied Damian as he handed a flashlight to Shawn.
“That’s much better…Jesus Christ,” swore Shawn.
“Hmm, taking the Lord’s name in vain…that’s a sin I think…what the…” started Damian jokingly.
“Have you ever…”
“Can’t say that I have Shawn.”
“Why would anyone…”
“I have no idea, no idea whatsoever.”
“Did you bring a camera?”
“Yes, looks like we won’t have enough film though.”
The basement was still slightly flooded in water but that was negligible.  It was what was painted on the walls that caught their attention.  Damian and Shawn walked down the rest of the stairs and into two inches of dirty water.  The walls were covered with various sayings and phrases, all done in blood red.  Damian stared intently at the walls, recognizing the phrases as similar to the ones that Roger and Edgar heard when they chased Peter Morris to the basement, or at least who they thought was Peter Morris.  Along with the sayings there was a symbol scrawled on the wall.  The symbol was a triangle with three prongs sticking out of the top of it superimposed on a square.
Damian handed his camera to Shawn and stepped closer to the writings.  The material used to write on the wall was a dark red and looked wet, new.  Damian gently rubbed his hand along the wall and rubbed the substance between his fingers, it had the consistency of blood.  The substance was still warm and wet, which meant that whoever had done this, had done it within the past three hours.  Damian stared at the ‘I know’ scrawled along the wall his mind pondering what it was that Peter Morris did know.
“What does ‘I know’ mean?” asked Shawn interrupting Damian’s thoughts.
“That’s a good question.  If you figure it out you get the prize in the Cracker Jack box.”

“Well, that was definitely one of the oddest things I’ve ever experienced in my life,” sighed Roger as he walked out to Edgar’s car.
“I should have warned you about Joseph Walter, he’s a religious fanatic as you may have guessed.  Named his sons after the four writers of the Gospel, Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark.  Rumor is that when he found his wife, Mary, was having another child.  He was going to name it Peter and start going down the list of apostles.  He found out it was a girl though and got really upset, started to rant and rave.  The story goes that he accidentally hit her, or an accident happened in the house as she said, and she died giving birth to Lucy.”
“Damn, and he’s a reverend?”
“Yeah, scary, huh?”
“I thought I felt a hint at racism in his voice when he was asking you about religion.”
“Yeah, he was one of the few people in town against having me as principal of the high school.  He’s always on my case about being black, but he never comes out and says anything about it, just insinuates that by joining his church I’d find God and be saved.”
“That sounds seriously screwed, are the rest of the family like him?”
“Not really.  His sons are very religious but don’t have many of the same mantras as Joseph does.  Lucy was ignored in the household, she’s not religious at all, her father thinks her acting and singing are sinful.  Actually he finally started to show her affection when she went out with Peter, probably because Peter is a fairly religious person, at least he was when he was younger, and his name was going to be the name of his fifth child.”
“Is the town very religious?”
“Well the church isn’t full every Sunday but it gets up there, probably about seventy per cent capacity on the weekends.  Most of the older people go to church but there hasn’t been much of a youth movement for church, but that’s to be expected.  It’s funny, though, the high school is very spiritual and a lot of students appear religious, but never go to church.”
“That’s odd.  I wonder what they practiced then.”
“There was a fairly large Neo-Pagan club but it died out really fast for some reason or another.  We’ll have to ask Anna about it.”
“First thing tomorrow, we spent a lot of time here and Damian and Shawn should be back by now.  They might have some information that could clear this whole thing out.  What in the world is that?!”
Edgar stopped and looked up to where Roger was pointing at a window in the Walter house.  A pictogram was stuck to the side of a second story window.  It was a triangle with three prongs on top of it superimposed on a square.  “What is that?”
“That’s a good question.  Damian might know.  Do you know whose room that is?”
 “I can’t say for sure.  It might be Mark’s, he’s an artist and was always interested in stained glass windows.”
“We have to find Damian and tell him about this…”