Dennison Bridge, Dunham Township
"They met Hunter here, walked the Burgess path north into Clowe Valley State Forest, and then Alyssa said at a large boulder, there was another man. Who she wanted to believe was Garrett."
Molly drove through Dennison bridge, pulled into the berm, and slowly crept his Crown Victorian alongside the overgrowth, searching for an opening in the weeds.
"How do you mistake a fully grown man for a 13-year-old boy."
June had a point, and Chris couldn't deny that.
"Alyssa said he was also wearing a mask, but the Garrett imposter's mask was high quality. Unlike Hunter's mask, who's was just a black ski-mask, Garret's was a Hawk."
June let out a repulsive groan, "These guys are weird as hell, but the fancy mask still doesn't explain the confusion. Unless we're dealing with child abducting dwarves."
Detective Molly got eyes on the gap he was looking for and put on the brake. He holstered the Glock to his belt, pulled out a flashlight from the glove box and stepped through onto the trail.
"June, I found it. How far out are the blues?"
"Let me check… Not sure, there's only two officers in your area and dispatch has one responding to a domestic. The other is about 8 minutes behind you."
Molly sighed, reaching in his pocket and checking the roughly penned map Alyssa drew on his note pad.
"Have dispatch let the officer know that once he enters the trailhead, to turn right at the fork and keep following it until he finds me."
June hesitated, "Maybe you should wait, didn't you learn anything from what happened with Greg?"
Molly came to the fork, double checked the map, and turned right. "It's not going to be like that, Demmer was goin' through some shit."
June understood the tone of a detective that didn't want talked out of a hard decision, and she grasped it completely, tomorrow the Feds would be in town, and most likely, Molly would be out. Which is why she was helping fill Greg's shoes as best she could.
"Well while you're out having a nice time hiking, I'll be in with Doctor Isaac, going over Sissy Clarey's remains. I'll let you know if we find out anything interesting."
A loud beep shouted in Molly's ear. He glanced at his phone.
The signal bars in the top right corner of the screen were slashed through with a small ex, signifying that Christian's contact with the rest of the world was no longer an option while in this forest.
'I hope June's on her way to see Isaac.'
The trail was initially wide and properly graveled when Molly first stepped onto the main trail head, but shortly after turning right, the large public path receded. Leaving nothing more than a dirt streak. A footpath likely carved into the earth be teenagers over the last few generations.
Christian fell into an old memory with every step in the darkness. One of him and his ex-wife navigating their way through a similar path during a camping trip. The bickering turned laughter, as the couple accepted the were lost and posted up their tent.
Molly caught himself feeling a bit of nostalgia. But flashes of darker memories started to rip through the good, as they always do… like a pile of film being torn apart in an old projector.
'Holding my wife in the tent that night, watching the stars through the net topper.'
'RIP.'
'Shanda lying on the bathroom floor with her bottle of pain killers….'
'RIP.'
Molly rounded a corner and found himself face to face with a giant. A massive slab of Granite. The Boulder, a large chunk of rock so jagged and large that it stood out from the soft organic life around it. As if this large rock was snapped from the top of a mountain and cast to the ground to lay hidden in the forest for a millennium.
The detective cast his light on the rock, running it down to the ground, back to his own feet and then to the left and right.
'The path runs flush to the body of the boulder, and then splits off into both directions. Hunter and Garrett would've made their entrance from one of those paths.'
Molly walked up to the face of the boulder, which seemed to grow larger as he approached, now towering in front of him, he took the full scale of the boulder in, casting his torch in an act of almost appreciation rather than investigation. The light illuminating blues within the pale surface.
'Alright big fella, it's just you and me out here. Show me what secrets you have.'
The detective removed his jacket and put his flashlight in his mouth. Using both free hands, Molly latched onto imperfections in the almost blemish-less rock face and began to climb.
It didn't take long for molly to understand that the flat face of the boulder was man-made, flattened for some reason long forgotten. After 8 feet up or so, the wall became natural and brittle, pocked with imperfections and weathering. Which made Molly's climb a lot more effortless.
Molly's mind began to wander again. Back to the Captain and Greg's breakdown. Back to Shanda calling the precinct. Molly fell into another memory.
A short woman with long brunette hair, streaked with a fiery-orange beam, sitting at the end of the bar. Remembering the conversation, she nosed in on between him and Demmer.
'Her eyes are what hooked me, those stupid manipulative eyes.'
'Rip'
The memory was torn away again, replaced with a screaming match the day Christian glanced her phone screen and saw the messages from 'Him'.
Molly snapped out of memory lane as he swung a hand forward, catching an angle above him. The moss under his fingers felt much cooler than the granite, which played with his senses. Swinging a leg up and over, the detective rolled himself onto the top of the boulder and laid still for a moment, catching his breath.
The sky was clear with hues of purple in the black, stars pocked the sky like a billion little eyes, watching Molly search for his answers. He stood and brushed himself off. Shining his light back down to the path, realizing just how far he'd climbed made his head spin, the jacket he had tossed to the side, now looking about the size of his thumb.
As he turned away from the path, the light momentarily caught a figure in the weeds below, the hawk mask made Chris drop the flashlight momentarily, but he managed to catch it just as it began to roll off the ledge and shine it back to the spot in the weeds. Only to find there was nobody there.
'it's never that easy… I need to focus and stop seeing things.'
Molly spun around and scanned his new location. The top of the boulder was more of a plateau and extended back a lot further than the front face gave away. Pale and white stretched out hundreds of feet in front of the detective, clusters of young Aspen trees spackling the granite landscape. Molly walked forward, swinging his torch left, then right, looking for anything important.
The rocky ground smoothed to almost a ballroom quality as he neared the other end of the plateau, which made Molly feel as though he would slip at any moment and slide off the far edge as if it were an ice sheet.
Coming to the drop off at the other end, Molly's heart raced, he could understand why the men chose this place for their "worship".
The other side of the Granite dropped considerably in altitude and then slowly rose again for what looked to be several miles, the entire canopy of trees before him looking like a deep green ocean. An ocean so vast and deep that shining his torch did nothing, as the light was simply swallowed up by that ocean forest and sky.
'If you were going to tie any kind of religious connotation to an act, depraved or not. This place would bring you closest to God.'
The detective turned around and scanned the area atop the boulder more closely. Just as he was about to concede his investigation, he noticed something very strange. To the right of him, in a patch of young aspens, hung a strange symbol.
Molly walked over and pulled out his phone, taking a quick picture of the rustic piece. The decoration was a thin twig, bent around itself with a barbed stick slid through the center.
'I wonder what kind of meaning this has.'
Scanning the torch around the tree branches a little more revealed another, and then another, and another until Molly figured out that he was following someones makeshift trail markers.
Not too far off from the center of the granite top, hidden just out of sight by the trees. He found it, meticulously carved steps, carved into the granite rockface. Steps that descended into the green ocean below.
"Molly!"
Somewhere behind him, a voice called the detective.
Retreating to the original edge and shining his light down, he came upon an officer, holding his jacket that he'd left on the path before he began the climb.
"Detective Molly, I'm officer McDonald. I'm responding to an assistance call."
Molly took a seat on the ledge and dangled his feet over.
"What's your first name?"
"Jared, Sir."
Molly looked up at the sky for a moment, trying to think of his next move.
"Jared, I'm going to need you to climb up here and give me my jacket, and then I'm going to need you to head back to the road and radio an extra unite. Contact a Detective Emily June from the 2nd Precinct and let her know what I'm about to tell you. Ask her for any information she's found about the Clarey Autopsy, and then return to me when the other unit arrives."
The officer nodded but hesitated.
"How exactly to I get up there with your jacket?"
Molly tapped his flashlight on the granite surface between his legs.
"Same way I did."