Free Buried Slaughter by Ryan Casey Page B

feeling rose inside Brian as he stared at her dark brown hair and smooth skin. She really was gorgeous. He was lucky. So, so lucky.
    He turned away and walked down the landing area and the stairs. The muddy-brown doormat that Hannah’s sister had bought them as a moving-in gift was already stacked up with the day’s newspapers for Hannah to scour and write a story about. Brian winced as he crouched down and scooped the papers up under his arm, barely taking any notice of the headlines. Stupid, really. All that free access to the Internet and she took out bloody paper subscriptions. Ah well. Something to burn in the garden, or wipe their arses with if loo roll ever ran too low.
    Whistling as he staggered into the kitchen area, he plonked the pile of papers onto the side and made a move for the kettle. As he did, one of the papers tumbled from the top of the others, the interior spilling out and covering the floor.
    “Fuck,” Brian mumbled as he turned back to the paper and lifted it up. Stupid free leaflets were a pain in the arse. He tried to piece the paper together again as the kettle roared to life. He was having second thoughts about getting up quite so early after all.
    As he dropped the fallen paper back on top of the others, an image caught his eye. At first, he shrugged it off‌—‌dismissed it as yet another report about the Pendle Hill Massacre.
    But this wasn’t Pendle Hill. It was somewhere else.
    He pushed the paper to one side and opened it up so he could see the rest of the headline.
    His skin crawled.
    City Stunned by Copycat Killing.
    And in the accompanying image, beside the forensic teams in their special coats, a van was embossed with the words Brabiner’s Archeological Group.
    The kettle clicked. The water had boiled.
    Brian was completely still.
    After a few seconds attempting to read the words on the paper, he tossed it to one side and made a break for the living room. He couldn’t take in anything he read right now. It just didn’t make sense. The Pendle Hill Massacre had all the characteristics of an isolated event. And Mr. Davidson of Davidson Archeological Contractors‌—‌he’d been convinced that Brabiner’s was dodgy in some way.
    But now they were dead. The murderer had struck again.
    Brian fumbled with the remote and flicked on the television. In a panic, he accidentally switched over to radio mode first time around. Cursing under his breath, he changed back to the rolling news, where the bold headline reinforced everything he’d read in the newspaper.
    “…‌And three men were discovered at the bottom of a trench in what can only be described as ‘similar’ circumstances to the mass murder at Pendle Hill three days ago…‌”
    The shots were of an area that looked similar to Pendle Hill but were at the other side of the forest. Large, barren grassland. Dark grey skies. It was another place Brian used to visit as a kid. A place where his mother used to order him not to stray too far in on his own.
    Another creepy place where a murder had occurred.
    “We’ll speak with our North West correspondent, Dominic Cocker, who is at the scene. Dominic‌—‌can you describe the circumstances for us?”
    Dominic, a familiar face on North West television, had his eyes narrowed. He was biting his lip, and although he was already greying and balding, he looked like he’d aged a few years in the past day or so, as he stood with the forensics-laden backdrop of the murder scene behind him. “Sorry, I…‌Well, it’s another truly awful scene. And no matter what…‌no matter what anybody says, there are some harrowing similarities between the murder of these three men and the Pendle Hill murders.” His eyes widened. He looked in a world of his own. “The…‌It’s the bones. The pattern of the bones and the…‌the heads. It’s the‌—‌”
    The transmission fuzzed away and reverted back to a studio shot of the dark-haired female presenter, who looked rather taken aback.