Sincerely, Jennifer x

Personal Log – Detective Rachel Morgan – 21st February 2068

This was supposed to be a new start, but it’s all screwed up already. 

I don’t even know where to begin, but getting it down here might clear my head a little so I can think clearly. 

I took this posting for the kids. London was too dangerous, no matter how much I or my colleagues tried to improve things, so I thought they’d be safer out in the country. 

I’m not sure how true that is anymore. In fact, I feel stupid. How could I have moved my family all the way out here, assuming everything would be fine? 

Everywhere has a secret, and nowhere is ever guaranteed to be safe. I should have known that. 

There’s something strange here that I can’t quite put my finger on, and I don’t like it. 

A man is missing, and nobody seems to care. That’s weird, isn’t it? I know that missing person’s cases can be challenging, but we have to put a bit of effort in, right? I’ve raised it with everyone I can think of but I can’t get anyone to take it seriously. 

A man is missing. 

Just saying it out loud makes my heart race. It feels urgent, and as if we have to do something, but… I can’t. His wife has been calling me every day for a week, but nobody but me seems interested. I can’t get any energy from anyone. They just don’t care. 

My superiors just told me not to worry when I asked for some assistance with the search. I’m not exaggerating, they told me not to worry, as if there wasn’t a man somewhere out there lost and possibly in danger. 

They were a new couple, just moved here in the last few months like me, and I can’t quite shake the feeling that they made a mistake moving here, just like me. 

Everyone here is so close that it’s easy to feel like an outsider no matter how hard you try to reach out and make friends. It’s like they’ve got so much history together that it’s impossible to catch up, so eventually, you stop trying and just accept that you’re going to be a newbie forever. 

I guess that’s what happened to Mr Ripton and his wife, and to me and my family too. Sometimes I wish I’d have bothered to get to know them before all this happened, but I can’t change the past. 

He’s missing and everyone is telling me not to worry. That’s my focus right now. I’ve got to find him. 

Every time I bring it up in the morning briefing or ask another officer about it, I’m told that it’s all fine, but nobody is looking for him. 

None of this makes sense. I’ve asked everyone I can think of and escalated it to everybody you can imagine, but nobody seems to care. 

I can’t just leave it. 

If they won’t look for him, I will. 

-x-

Personal Log – Detective Rachel Morgan – 23rd February 2068

Mr Ripton’s missing persons file has been closed, and I was ordered to tell his wife that he had died by suicide. 

I asked for evidence, but there was nothing. 

All they could give me was a vague theory about him jumping off the cliffs. 

It doesn’t make sense. Everyone I’ve spoken to about this stupid decision tells me that he used to go walking by the cliffs and probably jumped, but it doesn’t make one bit of sense. 

There isn’t a body, or a note, or even an indication that he would be considering such a thing, but I’m expected to go to his wife and tell her that he took his life, even though she has no body to bury. 

I can’t. 

I just can’t do it. I’ve told so many families and loved ones that the person they loved is gone, in all kinds of circumstances, but this time is different. I can’t do it, because I don’t believe it. 

He’s still out there. I just know it. 

Maybe he’s not alive, but there must be something of him for me to return to his wife, surely? 

None of this makes sense. 

I know I shouldn’t have, but I contacted his wife and asked about locations he tended to go again, pretending as if I was just double checking, and obviously avoiding the fact that I’d been told to drop the case, and she didn’t mention the cliffs at all. I mentioned them myself, on the off chance she had just forgotten, and the poor woman laughed, saying that her husband was afraid of heights. 

I can’t do this to her. I really can’t. This feels wrong. Like a stitch up or something, but the one thing I can’t understand is why? 

I’m holding off on the visit to her house as long as I can, but the pressure is really coming in from all sides. It’s like everyone else wants this situation over with, and for his wife to stop asking questions. I won’t let that happen. I have to know what happened to him. He deserves for someone to give a damn. 

-x-

Personal Log – Detective Rachel Morgan – 24th February 2068

One of the other officers told her. The poor woman was in my office when I got in this morning, begging me to do something. She didn’t believe it either. 

There is no body to bury. There is no evidence and no reason why. She can’t accept it, and neither can I. 

I know there is something more to this, but I don’t know what. I have to keep looking, for her. She needs answers, and I’m starting to realise that so do I. 

I don’t think I’ll get them from anyone around here though. They won’t tell me anything useful, but… they are speaking. 

It’s strange. People seem to shut down when I walk into a room, all sharing a smile between them but saying nothing to me… nothing except… 

Well, I don’t know, I’m probably overthinking it. 

Christ, maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing. I mean, I am new here, and maybe they knew something I didn’t about the family and their lives. Maybe they had insight I didn’t, and I’m looking for things that just aren’t there…

But, there’s something on my mind… something I’ve heard again and again lately. 

“I’ll never tell.” 

I don’t get much out of people, beyond those strange few words. 

“I’ll never tell.”

What does it mean? 

Never tell what? 

I’ve heard it from colleagues, and from people I’ve asked about the case. Shopkeepers and passers by. 

They all look at me the same way, with that slight smile and piercing eyes. 

Nobody saw anything, and nobody knew anything, apparently, but they’ll never tell? 

Never tell what? 

This is what I can’t get my head around. 

I keep thinking that I’m overthinking, or even slipping a little, but then someone else says it, and I know that something strange is going on. 

-x-

Personal Log – Detective Rachel Morgan – 25th February 2068

I’ve been thinking about those words again, and hearing them wherever I go. 

I swear, I can hear it whispered as I walk down the street, in my office, everywhere. 

Those same words, beating against my brain, pulsing like a coming storm.

“I’ll never tell.”

I went back to the cliffs today. The ones by the old lighthouse where they said he liked to walk. I was hoping to find something. Anything.

And I did.

A smell first. Damp and metallic. Like blood, but older. Like something had been lying in the rocks too long.

I followed it down past the no-entry sign, into a crevice between two jagged boulders that the tide doesn’t quite reach. There were birds circling, low and lazy, like they knew.

He was there.

Or what was left of him.

He was curled up in the rocks like something tossed there, forgotten. His skin, what was left, was grey and tight, like paper soaked and dried again. And the markings. God. They weren’t natural. Not injuries. Not tattoos. Symbols. Carved deep. Too precise to be anything else.

I tried to make them out, covering my nose with my jacket sleeve, snapping pictures on my phone with a shaking hand as I thought back through everything I knew about the case.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring. I think I said his name. Maybe I screamed it. I don’t remember. But I knew, then. I knew something I shouldn’t. He didn’t jump from the cliffs. 

He was given.

The rocks around him weren’t random either. They were arranged. A circle. Small stones, pale and smooth like river pebbles. At the centre of the circle of stones was his body. 

His eyes stared up at me, grey and milky. He had been dead for a while, but still, his eyes seemed to stare as if they were still afraid, and I returned their fear, my gaze falling again to the deeply carved symbols as I acknowledged, at last, what this poor man had become. 

A sacrifice.

I kept taking photos. I collected some of the stones. I don’t know why… I just needed to take something, to prove this was real. That I’m not losing my mind.

I called it in. Told them I’d found him. Told them exactly where.

They told me to leave… Not to touch anything… To go home and get some rest.

I knew that they would. 

I’m not resting. I’m recording this, because I need to remember what I saw before they make me forget.

And they will try to make me forget.

I know too much now.

And I think… they know I know.

Who could have done this to him? Well, I know. I think there is a part of me that had some suspicions but I always told myself that I was crazy. This place is strange but… it couldn’t have been that strange, surely… except, there is a dead man at the bottom of the cliffs, mutilated by monsters… except, they weren’t monsters, they were smiling, well to do people, with small businesses, and social clubs, smiling at me, all the time, with those same, sickening words. 

“I’ll never tell.”

I can’t get it out of my head, and ever since I got back from the cliffs, I’ve heard it even more than before… I think I’ve made a mistake and I…