“Looks like this is going to be another long night. Leon is not going to be happy about this”, sighed Marge as she got off her car near the still house. The house was already surrounded by yellow tapes as the local police unit controlled people from contaminating the scene. Marge walks up the stairs to the room with Miles, her junior officer and they enter the cold room where lies the body of Ms.Lockhart, a 34 year old, single Caucasian accountant. “Looks like this was a suicide”, says Miles who points to the pills all over the floor. “Did anyone find any note or anything during your search?”, Marge asked openly to the room filled with the first responders who were going through her place. “Nothing for now. The neighbours heard nothing. Based on the initial inquiry they felt nothing abnormal about Ms.Lockhart. Always smiling they say”, answered one. “Any family member we could talk to or report to?”, asked Marge. “Not so far. We plan to check at her workplace for better information”, another one answered. “Fine, if you find anything suspicious please flag it for investigation”, she ordered as she exited the house along with Miles. They both get into the car and Miles drops off Marge at her place before heading home. “It’s 11 P.M. Hope Leon is asleep”. Marge walks up to her son’s room and finds him sleeping. “Sorry I could not get home early as I promised. I will make it up tomorrow”, she whispered to his ear and kisses him good night. She then heads to her room, takes a shower and crashes in for what’s left for the night.
With the alarm going off at 6 A.M., Marge wakes up and heads to the kitchen. After losing her husband 5 years back she has been a full time unit doing both work and parenting. Also, being in the line of public service and that too with Cops is not an easy task yet, she somehow manages it and tries to not let things wear her down. With Leon and Marge at the dining table having their breakfast of eggs and cereals Marge tries to start a conversation. “I’m sorry for not making to the school play. I was not able to leave work in time due to a last minute thing. I hope you can forgive”. “It’s ok mom, I understand”. “How did the school play go? Did you have fun?” “It was ok, we made a few doozies here and there but everyone liked it.” “That’s wonderful to here. I wish I was there to see you. I will make sure to come next time.” “That’s fine mom. Your work is not easy so I know you do your best.”, said Leon. Marge knew her time with Leon’s life has been slowly been diminishing over the years so the guilt of not being there still remained. “Well! Let’s have a small party tonight. Just you and me. We can order pizza. How does that sound?”, she said. “Great!”, responded Leon. The both got ready and head out the door with a smile to catch upon during the evening. As they walked down the stairs she notices Leon to limp a little. “Honey, what happened? Why are you limping?”. “Nothing mom, I sprained my knee during the play. It should be fine in a day or two”, answered Leon. “Ok, be safe when you do things”, she responded while they both went their own way.
“Miles, which locker has the files from yesterday night’s investigation”, asked Marge as she went about looking for the files. “It should be on your desk. Mind you we still don’t have all the pictures and paperwork yet.” She pics up the folder with pictures and paperwork and goes by them. “Nothing looks out of the ordinary. I guess we would have to wait in for the report for the office colleagues to get a better idea about this”. Few hours go by and as she drops the file on the desk to pick up her coffee, she get a call. “Marge here”, she answered. After few minutes she hangs up the phone. “Miles, we got to go.”. They get into the car and head to town to reach 3rd Boulder’s Avenue. The scene is so similar the last one, pretty much every place where Marge visited happen to have the same gloomy atmosphere around it. “Hey, Marge. We have a Male African American in his late 40s. Doesn’t look like there has been anyone else besides him. Not much information from the neighbours. They say he looked fine when they last saw him few days ago downstairs. Looks like he has a daughter who has been married off. But doesn’t look she stays in this town. Based on his wrist look like he did it real deep and probably didn’t feel much after the first few minutes.” Marge walks around the bed to look for any notes and stubbles on a black wooden case kept underneath the bed. She wears her gloves and picks it up. It was old, more like a century old. ‘Must be an heirloom’, she thought. She opens it and finds two carved spaces and one of them had a transparent mask while the other was empty. On the inside of the box there was a metal plate with an engraving…
“Wear the one you want but know they wear over time, for your reflection remains till a crystal shatters it when hit by light. - C.S”
She looks at her watch and realises it is closing in on her time with Leon. She closes its and leaves it for others to add it to the report. “Miles I am leaving early. Please take over while I am gone”, she said. She reaches home after making a stop at the Pizza place to grab their dinner and finds lights in Leon’s room to be turned on. “Leon, are you home already?”, she asked. “Yea, the lacrosse practice was cancelled today”. “Alright, I have pizza at the table. Come join me after you have freshened up.”. Leon and Marge then had their dinner at the table however, it was awfully quite. Small talks here and there but nothing more. Once they were done, they each headed to their room. At night before hitting the bed, they crossed each other as they switched for the use of the common restroom. While walking across Marge see Leon all pale and drained of life in the mirror, a face that looked awfully similar to Ms.Lockhart. She quickly turn and calls for Leon. “What is it, Mom?”, he asked. She looked at him, paused for a while and the replied, “Nothing, maybe I am just tried from work. Brush your teeth and go back to bed.”
Next morning, at work Miles walks up to Marge and says, “Nothing from the colleagues, they are pretty much shocked with what happened. Looks like her parents passed away few months back so nothing from that angle either however, you got look at this” as he hands over the remaining files from Ms.Lockhart case. Marge goes through pictures and spots the same case. Again, the transparent remains but the other one missing. “There is one more thing, check the video from the Disk. It is taken from the security camera outside her door.” She quickly play it and find a dark figure, probably a man with sharp eyes wearing a top hat and a large jacket outside her door dropping off the case and then, vanishing into the darkness as he walks away. “This video is barely a week old”, he said. “Miles, we got to find this man. Look at all cases we have and see if we have anything of similar pattern”, she said as she paces to the record room to pull up all the other files. Both Miles and Marge spent the entire day and found few older cases dating across several decades. All having the same black wooden case. Marge gets so absorbed into her work that she drops a message to Leon to inform him to have dinner on his own so she could squeeze in as much as she could before crashing for the night at the precinct.
Next day, Marge head home to grab a shower before heading to the town to investigate the case. She takes it to a local antique shop to see if she could find the origin of the wood. “Ebony”, he said. “Excuse me!”, said Marge as she felt triggered by his words. “I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t mean to offend you. The wood is called Ebony because of its rich black colour. That’s a pretty expensive piece of wood that most carpenters don’t usually get to work with. Tough to find within our town for sure. Also, this looks very old. I would say at least a century old.”, said the dealer. “Do you think can find where this might be from?”, asked Marge as she handed it over him. The dealer closely disassembled the box and when he removed the metal plate it had a name, Cornelius Silvester Craftsmanship. Marge thanks the dealer and decided to head back to precinct to look up any available records about this place. As she was heading back, her phone rang. It was the school principal and they had called for her to discuss something about Leon. She heads over to the school and finds out that Leon was caught up in a fight and beat the other kids black and blue. She asked him to apologize but he wasn’t going to, so she apologized to the parents of the other kid and told she will work with Leon on this. Before heading for work she only stated how disappointed she was with him right now.
Marge reached the precinct and started to go through all sources to look for anything that matched the name found in the engraving. She kept tracing back all the old cases and finally she did find something, there was a news article that had that name, ‘Cornelius Silvester’. But, this article was old, very old. From 1908 from a town called Stowe, few hundred miles away from Manchester where Marge is currently at. “Miles, I am heading to Stowe now. If you get any more details about the guy from the video then, call me”, she uttered as she rushed outside to the car. She drove for an hour and an half to reach Stowe. She heads straight for the local station to get more details about the person but the sheriff of the town did not know about this. However, he did point out where the property of Silvester was present. She headed over there only to find a partly burned old house next to a disserted workshop. Disappointed while standing at the front of the house she heard a voice “My child, what are you doing out here in the cold?”, an old lady called out for her. “Would know anything about the Silvesters?”, Marge asked. “A little, I do. My mom had talked about them when they were still around. She is no more though. But let’s talk inside sweetie”,said the lady as she welcomed Marge to her house. “My name is Matilda”, introduced the lady. “Now, tell me dear, what are you doing out here this late evening.”, she asked. “I am doing an ongoing investigation and I wanted to know about the whereabouts of the Silvesters.”, replied Marge. “Well my dear, I’m afraid you won’t be able to find them. The last descendent of Silvesters, Mr.Cornelius Silvester is missing and they did not have a next of kin that we know of. But we believe he is no more. Tragic story if you ask me.”, she said. “I don’t get. That should not be true cause we suspect there might be someone still left behind.”, replied Marge. “Well my child, their story goes like this. Mr.Cornelius Silvester was married to Elenor ‘Rose’ Silvester with their son Edgar Silvester and were quite the lovely family of the town. However, one evening when Cornelius was out of town a fire broke out at their place. While Elenor suffered burns across her hands and face, their son did not make it through due to the smoke. Elenor was crushed and hated herself after this. The burnt face only reminded her of the pain of her losing her son. Cornelius made a wooden mask for her, one that resembled her a lot, one that always smiled like she used to. Apparently Elenor wore it always and she became more calm as what reminded her of her pain was masked by it. But, I think deep down it wasn’t the same. Overtime, the mask began to crack and it lost it appeal. Seeing this Cornelius made another mask, one that was more real and would show her face. Something that would allow him to see what she was going through, so she can be more open to him. But, Elenor had other plans. She decided to end her pain when her old mask fell apart. No one knows what happened to Cornelius Silvester. Some people say he left for the woods and killed himself while others say he decided to settle in another town but it would never change the fact that he didn’t know what wife was going thought until it was too late and that guilt would have haunted him till his end.” Marge had a chill run down her spike and it was for the worst reasons possible. She rushed for her car without even giving a proper thank you to Matilda.
She drove her car as fast as she could, skipping red lights and overtaking other vehicles. She headed straight for her house and ran straight to Leon’s room while calling for his name. It was dark, she hit the lights and ransacked the room and found what she did not want to find, the black wooden crate. She scatters around and heads back to the hall only to find the light in the bathroom to be turned on. She walked in slowly towards it and finds her heart to drop dead. “No.. No.. No.. Please, NO!”, she cried. She quickly reached for Leon only to find his pulse to be down. She tries and tries and tries but CPR did not work. “She wanted to know reason but there was only silence she heard”. As she cried next to his body, she sensed someone walking up to the door. “What do you want now! After everything you did!”, she screamed. A hand extended and placed another black wooden case. “What is the point in having this ANYMORE?”, she screamed again. “Masks can be worn by everyone, but not all masks are for meant everyone. So, choose what you want to wear.”, said the presence as it walked away back into the darkness.
All Marge could do was be besides Leon and wail for her sound could never fall on anyone but her own.
FIN.