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The Hook Man

Lena and Dawn’s reading time was interrupted by the former’s phone ringing. The brunette glanced at the caller ID and saw that it was Casey. It looked like she wanted to be picked up from her date. Lena barely got a chance to say anything when she answered the phone as Casey started babbling the moment she picked up. "Casey calm down", Lena said cutting off her friend who sounded rather hysterical "what's happened?"

She heard Casey take a breath over the phone and listened as her friend told her everything again, at a much slower pace than before. Lena's eyes widened when Casey got to the part about Bryce being dead "Casey, call the police. I'll be there as soon as I can" and with that she hung up.

“What’s happened?” Dawn asked, sitting up, looking at her concerned.

“The guy Casey was on a date with, Bryce, was just killed out on Lovers Lane”, Lena explained quickly as she grabbed her keys and jacket “she wants me to come get her”.

“Well, obviously I’m coming with you”, Dawn said hopping up from the bed. Lena nodded, she was expecting that. The pair quickly exited the room, pretty much running to Lena’s car, a little Ford in Robin’s egg blue, so that they could get to Casey as soon as possible.

When Lena reached Lover’s Lane, she was forced the slam on the breaks when Casey suddenly appeared, running straight at her car. "Lena!" she cried when Lena and Dawn got out of the vehicle "thank god you're here!"

"Are you hurt?" Lena asked looking Casey over.

"N-no", the brunette stammered. As it appeared that Casey was about to keel over any moment, Lena opened the door to the front passenger seat and made her sit down.

“I know this is hard but can you tell me what happened?” Dawn questioned.

“You can see for yourself. He’s still by the car”, Casey answered “it was so awful!” she added with a sob.

“Shh, its ok”, Lena said softly, hugging the traumatised blonde. While the brunette was comforting Casey and waiting for the police, Dawn decided to take a look at the scene of the crime. She walked down Lovers Lane bracing herself for the worst. When she came across the Dodge Ram, Bryce was hanging by his feet from the tree that was next to it.

Upon closer inspection, she discovered long thin scratches across the body of the pickup truck. Dawn traced them with her fingers and paused when they ended at a bloody hook dangling from a wing mirror. “Oh, crap”, she breathed. She was fully aware of the legend…of the multiple urban legends of the Hook Man. She hoped that this was a macabre coincidence and not the vengeful spirit coming out to play.

~0~

Lena’s pen poised over the page but she couldn’t find the words to write. Bryce’s death had shaken the entire University and everyone was affected in some way, including herself despite not really knowing the guy. The brunette sighed and closed her journal without putting a single new word into it. Deciding to go see Casey, she got up from her chair and left her room.

Lena found the blonde in her bedroom, curled up on her bed. Shawna was sitting next to Casey, doing her best to comfort her. “Hey”, the black girl greeted to the brunette.

“Hey”, Lena moved further into the room “how’s she doing?”

“As well as can be expected”, Shawna replied, glancing at Casey “has there been any word about who was behind it?”

Lena shook her head “not as far as I know”, she admitted “but I’ll keep trying to find out”, she promised “can I get you anything Casey?” she asked the blonde softly.

“No”, Casey whispered, sniffling heavily “I just want this over”.

“It will, eventually”, Lena assured her, sitting down on Casey’s other side. She gently stroked her blonde hair, murmuring a spell of comfort as quietly as she could so that Shawna wouldn’t hear what she was saying.

~0~

Lena trudged up the road to Lover’s Lane, bag smacking against her hip as she walked. She shouldn’t have gone back there, not two days after Bryce had been killed, but this honestly couldn’t wait. She had the cleanse the area of the evil that surrounded it given the brutal nature of the jock’s murder.

The witch ducked under the police tape that cornered off the tree and the space next to it where Bryce’s truck had been parked. She tried to ignore painful twinge in her heart when she saw the blood stains on the ground and bark. She set down the bag, opened it up and took out a couple of white candles plus a bundle of sage. Lena placed the candles be the tree and ignited them with the word “ignis”. She then set the herb bundle alight too, letting it smoulder for a minute before she blew the flames out.

The brunette slowly started to walk around the tree, wafting the sage around, reciting a purification spell as she did so “Smoke of Sage , purify and cleanse this tree of any and all bad energies”. Sage scented smoke curled around the tree and where it landed on the blood stains, they glowed briefly and then vanished. Lena buried the sage at the base, blew out the candles and popped them into her bag. She shouldered it and walked away from the former crime scene.

Meanwhile, in a diner in St Lois, brothers Daniel and Jordan Wesson were busy scouring the papers, looking for their next case. The older sibling froze when he came across an article which made involved the University that their half-sister was currently studying at. “Danny, you better take a look at this”, the sandy haired man said turning the newspaper around.

Daniel read the article and cursed under his breath  “Jordan we have to go there”, he stated.

“Yeah, I know”, Jordan agreed, taking some money out of his pocket and dropping it onto the table.

“Though, you know she won’t be too happy to see us”, Daniel pointed out as they gathered up their belongings and walked out of the diner.

“Yeah, I know”, Jordan repeated “but I’d happily take all the tongue lashing from our little sister if it means being around to make sure she’s safe”.

“Maybe we could…I dunno make amends for what we did”, Daniel suggested. He honestly hated the way they’d left things with Dawn and wanted nothing more than to mend his relationship with her.

“That would be nice”, Jordan admitted. Like his younger brother, he wanted to fix things with her too.

~0~

Dawn’s knee jiggled as she scoured the internet for anything to do with the Hook Man legends as the details of Bryce’s death seemed to fit with a variant of the urban myth. She’d been doing that for the past two days, filling up pages of a notepad as she did so.

“Holy crap”, she breathed as she read about Mathew Drummond, the murderer who’d escaped a prison in the Sixties. A prison that wasn’t too far from Cranmoore University. Drummond’s weapon of choice, a hook.

With a bit more investigating, she discovered that hunt for Drummond came to a head at Lovers Lane of all places. “Curiouser and curiouser”, she murmured as she scrolled down the page to read that the killer had been shot fleeing the police and died under the tree Bryce was hung from.

Dawn sat back and thought about what she had just learned. All these details, Drummond’s weapon being a hook…his death at Lovers Lane… she couldn’t deny that this man was a very good candidate as a Hook Man ghost.

Unfortunately, this was where the electronic trail ended and Dawn had definitely tried to search for more information. It appeared like she was going to have to go ‘old school’. The blackette grinned to herself, she actually loved it when she had to go to the library to scour the books while helping out with cases of the supernatural kind that her father and half-brothers solved as they travelled up and down the country. She didn’t know what they were doing now and quite frankly she didn’t quite care. With the way she left things with them, she would rather pretend that they didn’t exist. As far as she was concerned she had a mother, who sadly passed away when she was young and Martha, her foster mother who’d looked after her for years. 

“Next stop, the library”, Dawn said, getting up from her bed. She started toward the door, thinking about where she needed to look for records on what happened to Mathew Drummond after he was killed. Once she found that out, it would just be a case of finding the body/remains and then doing a salt n’ burn.

The eighteen year old was about to pull the door closed when she noticed a sticky note stuck to her sleeve. Dawn pulled it off and saw it was a reminder for the Sunday service that was about to start. She cursed under her breath and ran towards the church. The young woman wasn’t normally religious but she’d decided to make an effort in order to support Casey through this trying time.

~0~

The service went as it usually did though this time the Reverend added a small speech about how it was his belief that Bryce had given his life to protect Casey. Utterly embarrassed, the blonde felt like she wanted the ground to swallow her up.

Once it was over, Dawn left the church with Lena and Casey. It was then that she saw the last two people that she ever wanted to see. One tall, gangly brunette and one short with sandy blonde hair. Both pains in her ass. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she griped and stormed towards them. As soon as she was gone, Tyler walked up to Casey with a daisy.

“Just wanted to say how sorry I am”, he said holding it out “and I don’t believe for a second that you had anything to do with it”. Casey gave him a small smile, taking the flower. 

“Thanks Ty”, she said, grateful that there was one other person on her side. By this point, Dawn had reached her brothers.

“Leave”, she ordered, arms folded.

“I’m afraid we can do that, Dawnie”, Daniel said “strange death…it needs to be investigated”.

“Yeah, and I’m doing that so do yourselves a favour. Get in that dumbass camaro and drive out of town”, Dawn shot back “also don’t ever call me Dawnie. You lost that right, both of you”. The case that had driven her away was one where the culprit was a witch. For some reason, her family believed that she was involved in the ritual sacrifice  of six people. It was no surprise that their father, Henry Wesson jumped to that conclusion. He always seemed to hate what she was. The thing that hurt the most was that her half-brothers sided with him. They’d always defended her, no matter what.

“Dawn, it’s far too dangerous”, Jordan spoke up “we don’t want you getting hurt”.

Dawn laughed, sarcastically “oh that’s rich. You don’t want me getting hurt. I got news for you two, it’s not the supernatural creatures that have hurt me the most, it’s my so called ‘family’. Dad hated what I was and the second he believed that I was part of some ritualistic killings, which was utterly absurd by the way, you took HIS side!”

“Dawnie as soon as we realised you had nothing to do with it…” Daniel started.

“Yeah, you apologised but it was too little too late”, Dawn snapped “I knew it wasn’t going to be long before something like this happened again and it wouldn’t have been words you used, it would’ve been your weapons. So I left”.

“Dawn we would never…” Jordan tried.

Yes. You would’ve”, Dawn cut in, her hands curling into fists as her anger rose “if I hadn’t been your half-sister, you would have killed me on the spot and you know it. So do yourselves a favour and get lost otherwise I might have to remind you what I’m capable of”. The blackette made her eyes flare brilliant blue to signal that she was being very serious about it.

Daniel looked at his younger sister sadly. He really did love her and he screwed up royally on that case. Deep down he knew she wasn’t capable of killing innocent people. Her eyes glowed blue for Christ sake! That only happened for white witches. If she had been a dark witch, they would be red. It was one of the reasons that he had defended her to dad.

He exchanged glances with his brother, knowing that he felt similarly. “Ok, we’ll go”, Daniel agreed.

“Danny, we can’t leave!” Jordan exclaimed. They had no clue what they were dealing with so there was no way in hell he was leaving his little sister in a University where a student had been murdered by potentially supernatural means.

“Dawn is a big girl who can take care of herself and a witch to boot. If she says she’s got this, then she’s got this”, Daniel said calmly. He turned to his half-sister “if you need anything, let us know”, he added.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t”, Dawn said “now, shoo”. She waved her hand in a shooing motion. Daniel took Jordan’s arm and led the protesting man away from the teen.

“You do know I’m the older brother, right?” Jordan asked his younger brother, pulling his arm out of his grasp.

“I know”, Daniel replied “but I’m also aware of what Dawn is like and you do to. When she’s got her sights on something, you cannot stop her”.

Jordan sighed “yeah, that’s true” he stopped walking “we really treated her badly, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did”, Daniel replied “The second we discovered that witches were involved, dad assumed the worst and like idiots, we agreed with him. The one time Dawn needed our support the most and we turned her backs on her. Jordan, we have to make this right”.

Jordan sighed again, running a hand through his hair “Yeah, you’re right”, he agreed “we’ll let her take this case and only step in if she wants us to”. Daniel nodded in agreement, though he highly doubted that she will ask for help and he didn’t blame her.

Dawn shook her head at her half-brothers as they walked away. She turned to head back to her friends only to see Shawna in a heated discussion with Tyler. “Whats going on?” she asked, joining them.

“Just Tyler being his usual stalkerish self”, Shawna replied, glaring at the young man.

“Come on, Shawna, he was just being nice”, Casey said, defending the fellow student.

“Nice my foot”, Shawna sassed, putting her arm around the blonde “let’s get out of here. There’s a tub of ice cream with your name on it”. With her free hand, the black young woman grasped Lena’s hand tightly and pulled her along as she ushered Casey away.

“Are you all right?” Dawn asked Tyler, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m fine”, the curly haired brunette replied sharply, shrugging off her hand. Dawn watched him leave with a frown on her face.

“What the hell is his problem?” she murmured. The blackette didn’t dwell on it though as she had more pressing matters, like finding out where Mathew Drummond was buried…if he was buried that is. She hoped he was as it would make things more complicated if he’d been cremated.

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