sinables

[sinables]

I was assigned a new case today. Anna Limon, a home health worker previously employed by the now deceased Sally Martin, disappeared from the building that used to be her place of work.

Talk of it has been buzzing around all of the station. Apparently the circumstances of the disappearance were dramatic, and who doesn’t love a good mystery? The chief has instructed us to not speak with any media until further investigation has been done.

The preliminary research will hopefully yield more substantial information

Sally Martin died a month and a half ago. Her will stipulated that ownership of the estate be given to her caretaker, Anna Limon. Shortly after Mrs. Martin’s funeral, Anna was absent from her workplace for a while, citing a family emergency and personal issues. However, her colleagues and friends say that she seemed completely fine with going right back to work afterwards, and that she did her job splendidly.

Some weeks later, Anna Limon completely vanished.

I was curious as to why Sally Martin left her house to an employee and not a family member. The building has belonged to her family for several generations, so it would make more sense. I looked into her family history and learned something interesting. Sally Martin had a daughter. The investigative team sent to the house found an old newspaper cutout detailing the tragic disappearance of a young woman, decades ago.

Sally Martin became the legal guardian of her granddaughter, Mabel Martin. According to previous caretakers employed by Mrs. Martin, she had an estranged relationship with her granddaughter, and while she occasionally spoke of her, it did not seem as though she ever spoke with her during the time which they worked there.

I was told by one of the relief workers that Anna Limon had tried to contact Mabel to inform her of her grandmother’s rapidly declining health. The woman told me Mabel’s phone number. She did not tell me whether or not Miss Limon had been successful in contacting Mabel using this phone number.

Taking a proper look around the house now. CSI team found bottles of needles and blood, and locks of hair wrapped around twigs that seems to have been ripped off by the root. Reminiscent of buildings in abandoned areas that have been reclaimed by nature, vines are growing into the house. I keep thinking i can see them move in the corner of my eye. It’s just the wind. Kitchen was a mess. There was a pot on the stove filled with wilted flowers. K-9 unit has started to search the surrounding areas. Conducting an interview with friends and family of the missing person tomorrow.

Spoke with T. Reyes of the disappearance. Was told that Anna is not the type of person to just up and leave without telling anyone. Anna seemed to be doing really well, Reyes said. She wouldn’t leave her friends and family like this.

Reyes mentioned receiving two odd phone calls before Anna disappeared. The caller, who introduced herself as Mabel, Reyes recalled, was convinced that Anna wasn’t, well, Anna. During the last call the girl rather fervently shouted into the phone, “It isn’t her! what’s wrong with everyone that you can’t tell–“.

I asked Reyes if I could see the number from which the odd phone calls had come from. The number she showed me was the same one as I’d been given yesterday.

K-9 units have been searching the hills behind the house all day. Unless they’ve found something, they have been there for a disproportionate amount of time. It’s just a hill, there’s more ground to be covered isn’t there? They won’t let anyone else near the hills for now.

Speculation has arisen on the internet. This is completely unsurprising; a full CSI investigation team with dogs and uniforms doesn’t go unnoticed for long. All it takes is one noisy neighbour making a facebook post and suddenly every conspiracy theorist is knocking on the front door offering their hypothesis.

I assumed Mabel had moved somewhere else, as people often do when they grow up. There’s no record of her living anywhere other than the estate and residing at boarding school. In fact, her current adress is the one of the old estate. No bills are tied to her name, no bank account is in use, and when I spoke to locals most of them only had a vague recollection of her.

There is no record of Mabel Martin dying, but trying to find records of her living is proving a difficult task as well. Her phone plan went out years ago, yet her phone can still receive calls.

The sequence of events, summarised: 

Anna tries to contact Mabel > Mabel contacts a friend of Anna’s [before she disappears] and says “it isn’t Anna.” > Anna then goes missing. 

Reading old newspapers. Just how many girls have disappeared from this place?

K-9 unit has been investigating the hills for four days. Chief looks thoroughly spooked. Chandra and Johnson said they’ve been instructed to set up surveillance gear inside an old oak tree. 

When I asked why on earth they would be doing that, Johnson shrugged and said that my guess was as good as hers. Chandra thinks they might have found some type of tunnel or secret entrance, and at this point it doesn’t even seem like a stretch. The CSI’s found some incredibly off putting items during their search of the house. 

 The gear Johnson and Chandra picked up consisted of cameras, monitors, torchlights, and wires in abundance. I overheard one of the field agents talking about ‘going in’. Going in where? Heading back to the station to review files. Long evening of paperwork ahead.

I took another look at the pictures of the missing girl. The most recent one is from when she took time off her work for a family emergency. There’s another from six months ago. Something is off putting about the recent image. Spoke to a woman at the funeral home, asked her if she’d noticed anything about miss Limon that could be of use. She shook her head, said only that Anna was a polite girl. Just out of curiosity I asked her if she’d seen anyone else visit Mrs. Martin’s grave. The woman contemplated this, and after a while she told me of a girl, that slightly strange girl who asked about Anna and walked around the graveyard speaking to herself. 

She didn’t give me a name, but I’m convinced that must have been Mabel.

Most of the non-field agents were benched for undisclosed reasons. I’ve been in the office all day and must be going stir crazy, because I whenever I look at the most recent picture of Anna I swear there’s something wrong with it. 

She’s smiling, looks happy enough, and it’s for every intent and purpose a perfectly normal photograph. But next to the slightly older picture of her, it feels wrong. It’s already unsettling on its own, but you’d look past that because there’s no frame of reference, and you’re just glossing over it not paying any attention.

It reminds me of that painting, the one that at first glance looks like a happy serene forest depicting intimacy between a lot of women, but as you look closer it becomes more and more disconcerting. 

There’s something wrong with her eyes.

That’s how it is in the painting too, the eyes of what you thought were regular background figures are just... wrong. They’re everywhere in the picture, blending in between the people. At first they look like they belong there, but then they begin to look off. 

I spent all night looking at the picture of Anna Limon and more and more details are creeping out from the shadows. 

Hypothesis: It isn’t her. It isn’t Anna.