From Darkness It Comes

Junior Detective on the Move

Darrin couldn't get what he read in the paper out of his mind so he headed to the computer banks in the Computer Science building to get on the network. They are located on the main floor, just off the main entrance hall, which is full of students milling around. Many of them are still reading and discussing the events from the paper this morning. This just further spurs him on to find out more.

Ignoring the lot of them he makes a beeline for the first empty station in the long computer room. Easing into it he starts on the paper's home page to see of the story was any longer on-line than what was printed. Unfortunately he was greatly disappointed there, but it did have a few interesting links to other related articles from their archives and a couple outside resources. It was a good thing they appear to have transferred all their old microfilms to digital and put them on line.

Darrin smiles to himself while thanking modern technology.

It seems as though a similar unsolved murder happened on campus about forty years ago. Just like last night it was said to most likely be an animal attack, but nobody could find any real evidence of an animal large enough on campus. It appears, however, that the investigation was halted less than a week later when the library was blown up in a gas explosion. The explosion caused serious damage to a large area of the campus, including areas where the attack happed. They believed the explosion would have killed or scared off whatever animal it could have been, so the case was closed.

Next he headed onto the school's own intranet to see if they kept records digitally, and how far back they went. He quickly found out that the computer science department had been putting a lot of the schools records on line, but nothing father back than ten years, and even past five years was spotty. This was not going to help his case at all.

Darrin frowned to himself while cursing them for not using modern technology.

"Why so down?" a soothing voice sounded from over his shoulder.

He spun around and found himself staring at his dream girl, Lisa. She smiled down at him and he couldn't help but smile back.

"That's better." She coos, with a wicked grin. "So what was with the sour puss?"

He looks confused for a moment, having completely lost his train of thought after seeing her. His face then blinks with recognition. "Oh, I was looking up stuff about the murder last night."

"Murder?" She raises her eyebrow. "I thought it was an animal attack. Isn't that what the papers said?"

"Well, I am not so sure about that. I was looking into things and the animal angle seems to be more of a convenient excuse to blame it on, but may not be what happened. It also seems like it's happened before."

She raises an eyebrow with interest but says nothing as he continues. "Then there have been the strange things happening the last couple days. Stuff I can't really explain, but are starting to freak me out. It's like I am being drawn into this and have to find out what I am up against here."

"What kind of strange things?" She asks with mild trepidation.

He explains some of the basic things he has seen and heard to her and her face grows pale. He finishes up by saying, "So I think my next step is to really dig into things back at the library. Perhaps with your help I will be able to figure this out."

She blinks and tries to look comforting before speaking with a slightly raspy voice. "If that's what you really think you need, but I think you could use some time away from all of this. How about the two of us head downtown to find some fun and leave this ugliness behind for the afternoon? The choice is yours."

He thinks about if for a minute and then his mind is made. He rises from his seat and takes her hand, feeling the rush of warmth from her touch pass through him, and head out to...