Witch of Fear [Mild horror, Isekai High Fantasy]

Tears like glass marbles tumbled down pale cheeks from eyes the color of the sky, reddened by days of grief and sorrow. Neglected night locks fell over them to alight upon a hunched over-neck; a body wracked by soundless cries. Hidden away from the world in a sanctity of cloth was a young girl. Only the demands of her body drew her from an isolated hideaway. 

The tears wouldn’t stop even when it felt like she had run out of breath. Even when it hurt, deep inside her aching chest, like a blade driven into her heart. 

Trian had been like this for almost a week now, ever since that fateful day when Autumn had vanished.

It had been raining and storming hard that night, lightning lashing down upon the world. She and Autumn had been minding their business, reading, writing, or simply listening to music when Trian had felt the call of nature. 

She’d been only gone a minute or two, but when she returned…Autumn was missing. 

Vanished into thin air. 

It hadn’t seemed that strange to her at the time; she just assumed Autumn had stepped out to get a glass of water or a late-night snack, not something uncommon. However, after ten, twenty, thirty minutes had passed, Trian knew something was wrong. 

She searched everywhere but found nothing.

The police had been called shortly thereafter. Everyone had treated it as another runaway at first, but the gnawing feeling in Trian’s gut wouldn’t go away. The windows inside her room were still locked and nobody had heard her leave through the front door. With the storm raging outside, it would have been even more obvious of a noise.

As time passed, the looks the police were giving them started changing, becoming more guarded and suspecting. 

The question they asked changed. At first, they were about Autumn: who were her friends (none), did she have any boyfriends (again none), were there any places she might go or hangout (there weren’t), but after a few days of no sign of her, they started asking about them instead. 

Specifically, about her foster father, Jean-Perre.

Asking about his whereabouts when Autumn had gone missing and if they had any conflicts. It soon became clear that Autumn’s disappearance was being treated like a homicide investigation and her foster father was their prime suspect. 

Trian didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it; he wasn’t that kind of man. She had known him for years and he was always there for any of them. 

But that left the question. Where was Autumn and if she was dead, who killed her?

She didn’t know. 

What happened to her sister when she had stepped for but a moment? She couldn’t help but think, what if? What if she hadn’t left? If she had seen what had happened to Autumn?

Would she have stopped whatever had happened or would she be missing too?

She didn’t know, so she hid and cried till it hurt, wishing she could have her sister back.

---

 

Cigarette smoke swirled in the air, flowing through the eddies and currents of the AC. Below the great clouds sprawled a dimly lit conference office. A long glass table stood awaiting purpose in the center. On its surface lay a lone ashtray, pin-cushioned with stubbed-out cigarette butts. In the very corner stood a solemn corkboard, festooned with pictures and red strings of fate, like a macabre art display.

Sat in the cloud of smoke and silhouetted by the embering glow of a cigarette was a man, brown of hair brushed by the gray of time. A strong jawline clenched tightly as a set of piercing eyes locked onto the corkboard across the way, seeking new connections they might have missed before. 

Detective Quinn sighed as he finished another cigarette, stubbing it out in the overfilled ashtray. The sixth in the last hour. A fact he silently lamented; he’d told his husband he was quitting. But some habits were hard to kick, especially now; a young girl had gone missing over a week ago and he had no leads. 

It was as if she had simply…vanished.

If he was unkind, he’d liken it to an old murder mystery or one of those gritty noir films. Hell, even the office blinds were playing their part as they sliced the light across the room. Of course, he’d never say it out loud as the captain would quickly have a reprimand so far up his ass he’d taste the ink.

One minute. 

That was his best estimate of how long the victim’s sister had been gone for. If she was telling the truth. Given the state of the girl now, he doubted she was a suspect. So, he was willing to bet she hadn’t lied, at least intentionally. 

So in a minute, a seventeen-year-old girl had vanished without a trace.

The initial report had suspected she was a runaway. When he was eventually called to the scene, he pursued that lead, if only to rule it out. 

So? How would a girl like that escape unseen?

It wasn’t through the window, that’s for sure. For one, it was still locked from the inside. She could have used a wire tool to re-lock it, but that begged the question of why? It wasn’t a question that mattered anyway, as the timing was too tight; he’d tested it himself with his partner. One minute wasn’t long enough to open the window, get out, and relock it before the other girl returned. And if it was a third party, they’d have to subdue the victim as well in the same timeframe.

All this would’ve had to be done during a storm too. 

That led to a detail that ruled out that part of the investigation: the windowsill was dry. 

The night the victim went missing was one of the worst storms this year, therefore rain would have been battering the side of the house. However, when CSI’s had gone over the room with a fine-toothed comb, there was no water on the inside of the windowsill. So, no, the window hadn’t opened at all.

That left the front door. It was a tricker detail to pin-down as the first officers on the scene had contaminated it when they’d entered. Their best recollection was that the entryway was dry when they entered, but that had to be taken with a grain of salt. Those sorts of testimonies were notoriously unreliable. The interviews of the other occupants were just as useless as nobody could recall hearing the door open, and with the storm raging outside, it would have been impossible to do that silently. The responding officers had reported that it swung open loudly under the wind’s force when they had entered.

With all that ruled out, all that was left was to be creative. 

CSI had torn up the carpet to look for hidden hatches, brought in a sonic-resonance device to search for cavities in the walls. He’d even looked inside the mattress for a body. The only thing of note was a few small signs of a struggle: a messy bed, kicked over books, scuff marks on the walls. 

Again, that begged a question: why didn’t anyone hear that? Sure the thunder was loud, but kicking a wall was too.

The prime suspect was the foster father, but that was a bust too. Multiple witnesses placed him in other rooms of the house. While that wasn’t a solid alibi, it all came back to the timing. Grabbing the victim and dragging her into the hallway would just make the timing even tighter. He’d also seen the devastated look in the man’s eyes when they informed him it was now a homicide investigation. 

That kind of look was hard to fake.

So they had nothing but a mystery on their hands.

Suddenly, the door swung open to reveal a younger female detective with a pair of coffees in her hands.

“Fuck it’s smokey in here, crack a window or something sheesh. Didn’t you quit?”

A youthful face scrunched up in distaste as she smelled the air. Curls of brown trestles framed her like a halo within the glow of the brighter hallway. She dressed far more casually than Quinn; a black motorcycle jacket and heavy boots paired well with her formal blouse and pants.

“Stow it, Collins,” Quinn grumbled as he accepted the hot black coffee.

Detective Collins gave him an exhausted sigh as she almost collapsed into the chair beside him. They had cooped themselves up in this room for days after they had exhausted all their leads, few as they were. The pair shared a moment of silence as they gazed over the corkboard and the raven-haired girl upon it. 

“Any luck?”

Quinn rubbed his face as he resisted the urge to light up his seventh. The prickly stubble scratched his palm as his eyes throbbed with the flux of new light from the hallway. 

“No. We’ve got nothing.”

Silence lingered like a grim shroud. Dark eyes stared almost accusingly from the victim’s photograph, but Quinn knew that was all in his mind. Hopefully.

“It’s going to be one of those cases, isn’t it?”

Quinn looked over at his partner as she spoke. The woman was relatively new to the job, not green, but still hadn’t met the cold reality as he had before. He hadn’t wished for her to encounter such a thing now, but it was inevitable. 

A familiar look of frustration and self-loathing washed over her face. He’d often see the same upon that damnable man in the mirror. 

“One of what?”

He knew exactly what she was going to say, but she needed to say it, and perhaps he just wanted a conversation right now.

“A cold case. We’re just going to shut all this stuff in a box and hope it doesn’t happen again. Let someone else solve it down the line if they can, but most likely it’ll just collect dust in some locker somewhere.”

Collin’s knuckles turned white around her coffee cup, untouched since she’d arrived. 

“We’ve done all that we can.”

Collins turned to him.

“It wasn’t enough.”

A mantra he was unfortunately familiar with. Quinn sighed once more. He’d been doing that a lot recently. 

“Yeah.”

After a beat of silence, Collins snorted.

“I guess we’ll chalk this one up to fairies or something. Cold comfort for their family. Poor girl, lost everyone she cared for, and now this? Fate sure is a bitch.”

Quinn couldn’t agree more.

---

 

On the side of the street in a quiet suburb was a lonely schoolgirl. Her white blouse and patterned skirt waved in the calm breeze. She was plastering posters on the street-lights, upon each was the striking photo of a raven-haired girl.

Missing posters for a missing girl.

Bright green hair slipped free of her headband to wave freely in the wind. While brushing it back behind her ears, she clutched the remaining stack of posters to her breast and away from the snatching hands of the wind. Green eyes stared at the missing girl before her. 

Liliana had been putting up these missing posters for a few days now, ever since she had heard Autumn had gone missing. It had proven to be rather difficult to find a decent photo of Autumn that didn’t have the girl scowling or cowering away from the camera. 

She only had the one.

A candid photo she had taken herself of the other girl sketching something that had taken her interest. Her eyes were lit up more colorful than ever before and a ghost of a smile crept upon her pale lips. 

A smile that caused Liliana’s heart to skip a beat at the moment.

Even now, there was a painful beat that had her in a haze. When she had heard Autumn was missing, it felt like someone had not only pulled the rug out from under her feet but the floor too. And she’s yet to hit the bottom. 

To think that just a few days ago, she’d been working up the courage to ask her if she had any plans for prom. Now a black rose corsage gathered dust on her bedside table. Hell, she didn’t even know if Autumn liked girls. 

All her anxiety felt so trivial now.

“Would you like to find her?”

Liliana jumped as a soft voice called out from beside her. She could have sworn there was nobody there before. And with a heart beating a mile a minute, she turned to the side to take whoever it was that had spooked her.

A rather short girl stood beside her. Red leather practically swallowed her down to frayed hems around her bare ash-coated feet. A wide hood cast deep shadows upon her face, leaving only the tip of her nose and cracked lips free as blood-red hair spilled free around a metal-collar-scared throat. The sight of the girl sent chills down Liliana’s spine, and the world quieted around them. She waited quietly for Liliana’s reply as she stared curiously at the missing poster, eyes alighting with recognition.

“Yes?... I mean, yes, I would…she’s my…friend. She went missing. If you see her, can you call the number on the poster?”

Liliana swallowed nervously for some reason unknown to her as the silence stretched.

“I don’t think you understand. Would you search for her if you had the chance? If so, I can help.”

The Devil in Red smiled.