Archive of Our Own ^beta

They found his body by following the birds.

The animals in the area had been behaving oddly for a few days; large flocks of black birds swarming the blue-grey skies above the Salinger Woods, foxes roaming the backyards of people who had never so much as seen one in person before. And the rats.

If not for these natural signs, they probably would not have found him at all. Maybe years from then someone would have stumbled upon skeletal remains by kicking up a rib from the autumn leaves or mistaking a skull for a rock to collect and take home.

In that regard, this was quite lucky. No local kids would be traumatised during their playing pretend in the forest, no hikers and joggers would have to call in a gruesome report. Instead, the forest fauna had four days to flourish.

There could be something beautiful and poetic about that, even. Something about healing, something about moving on.

Of course, there would rarely ever be anything rhyme-worthy about a dead kid in the woods.

When Agent Jackson arrived at the scene of the crime, she definitely did not think of writing stanzas about this. The local police had cleared the space between the leafless beech trees of the animals but the signs of their visits were clear; maggots gnawing on exposed flesh, teeth marks from sharp canines and torn apart fabric.

"Agent," a man greeted her, clad in beige and scanning her face with dark, watery eyes. The sheriff, Agent Jackson assumed and gave him a court nod in greeting. She didn't reach to try and shake his hand and he didn't offer.

"Fill me in," she said, crouching down by the body.

After fifteen years, the smell had been the most stubborn to get used to, but she'd learnt to breathe a certain way (in between pressed-together lips and teeth, out through the nose) that made it less upsettingly pungent.

The sheriff unclipped a notepad from his belt and flicked through the pages. There were three others there with him, though they kept a safe distance and muttered amongst themselves. When Agent Jackson had first arrived, they'd been around the body but retreated upon her stepping out of the car. A sign of respect, maybe. Or, more likely, they were glad they didn't have to concern themselves with this any more than they already had. She could feel sympathy for them. From the looks of it, they were barely any older than the victim.

"Victim's male, white, looks to be about 17 or 19. Died roughly four or so days ago, judging by..." he gestured to the signs of decay and wildlife involvement without truly looking at it. Agent Jackson nodded, again. The sheriff cleared his throat and continued; a small-town sheriff like him wasn't used to cases like this. He'd probably spent the better half of his career reprimanding kids for loitering in front of the local grocery store. Respectfully.

"Well, yes. So. Personal belongings we found a pocket knife and a lighter. There is no ID on his person, though we will be able to access dental records, thanks to the mask.” He squirmed, then, a little and pointed with the back of his pen at the victim’s head. “The, uh, the mask deterred the animals from... from going for the face."

The kid's face was semi-covered in a half-black-half-white facemask. Interestingly, Agent Jackson noted, even the exposed face above that looked relatively pristine. No birds had picked out the eyes, no rats had bitten the ears. Regarding just the head, the boy might as well be asleep.

"That all?" Agent Jackson asked. She was still looking at the victim's face which is why the second voice surprised her when it answered. She hadn’t noticed anyone approach.

"There was also this," a woman said. Agent Jackson turned to see one of the deputies hold out a plastic bag to her. She got up from her crouching position, taking the evidence with careful hands. The label on the outside declared the content as 'VHS Tape' and the inside obliged.

The black rectangle sat uncomfortably in her hands. There was no further labelling on the cassette itself. It was pure, sleek black. It was weirdly beautiful. Agent Jackson hummed, thoughtfully, and the deputy mistook it for an inquiry.

"He was holding it to his chest. Clutching it with both hands. There are signs that point toward him trying to set it on fire. It's singed at the edge, here." The deputy leaned in to point at the lower right corner of the tape. It was hard to see, what with the VHS tape being entirely black and the deputy's shadow on top on an already gloomy day.

But Agent Jackson saw it there, mere hints at creases in the plastic of the cassette tape. It hadn't caught. It hadn't exactly melted. But it was a start at destruction, and something about it rubbed her the wrong way. She felt her face form into a frown as she tap tap tapped on the plastic-covered VHS.

The sheriff and deputy looked at her. The dead body beneath them looked unbothered.

"That bad of a film, eh?" she said. "So bad, that he had to come into the woods to try and burn it, only to die before he could do so- What's on it?"

Her head snapped up from the cassette in her hands to the deputy's face, suddenly.

The thought had erupted in her mind out of nowhere like the birds had erupted into the skies above the dead body four days ago, spiralling downwards to feast. In the reflection of the deputy's sunglasses, Agent Jackson's own face looked curious, if not anxious. The deputy shrugged before saying that they hadn't yet checked because there should first be a dusting for fingerprints. She said more or would’ve if Agent Jackson didn’t cut her off.

Not necessarily rudely, but with coarse urgency.

"Couldn't a bigger clue be the content?" Agent Jackson said. There was something in her eye, she noticed, that made it hard to focus. It irritated her. That was why she was getting impatient. She rubbed at her eye. "What if this holds the key to figuring out the reason for the kid's death and you're wasting time dancing around it to confirm that it's his fingerprints on it when you clearly saw him hold it before?"

"It's proper protocol, Ma'am," the sheriff said, hesitantly. He was still holding his notepad. "Besides, I am sure your forensics team will find out how he died much more easily than interpreting a film. This isn't high school English class."

The last part was said in a sort of tone that indicated a joke, but Agent Jackson took offence instead. She huffed, tightening her grip around the evidence bag. Her eye twitched. Damn allergies.

"With all due respect, sir, this is my case, now. And I say that the next step in this investigation is to examine the contents of the VHS."

"Yes, Ma'am," the deputy said. The sheriff remained quiet, a mix of shame and anger lingering on his face.

"Agent Jackson,” she corrected.

"Yes, Agent Jackson."

--

The sheriff's station was located on the main street that cut through the middle of the elongated town. A seamlessly ordinary building with sliding glass front doors and a brick front and desks of deputies on the inside that were wasting their time away playing solitaire.

On the drive there it had started to rain and even the dreary light that had shone through the clouds before had been extinguished along with it, rendering the city dark and empty at 3 PM on a Saturday. Deep in the woods, the two policemen left behind were hopefully done setting up a protective tarp tent above the body before it could be washed of any further evidence by the afternoon rain.

Once inside, Agent Jackson waited on the sheriff and his sunglasses-wearing deputy, arms crossed, and mouth drawn tight for the deputy to roll in the television into the sheriff's office. She blinked violently but the sting in her eye remained. She pressed the heels of her hands into it until static flickered before her. The door opened and she let her hand fall from her face. An echo of the static remained.

The television on its wheeled stand was bulky and the colour of the sky outside. The deputy busied herself plugging it in as Agent Jackson slipped the VHS tape from its protective plastic bag. It felt heavier in her hand without it and she tested it by raising it up and down, carefully. Agent Jackson turned the tape in her hand, running a thumb along the burnt corner of it, getting caught in the grooves left by the flame.

She could imagine the boy standing amongst the trees with his lighter, orange light flickering in the inky blackness and reflecting off of the surface that he wishes to destroy. And in the night beyond him, between the trees from where imaginary Agent Jackson is watching him, the killer waits for the right moment to strike.

There hadn't been any wounds on the body from a weapon, no knife-marks, no bullet holes, no blunt force trauma, Agent Jackson had thoroughly inquired and looked him over herself to confirm.

So how, then, had he died? She imagined herself not next to but as the killer, eagerly observing the man in the forest. It was so clear in her mind's eye as she crept closer to him, keeping to his back and out of the firelight, reaching out with a pale hand and an arm clad in a dark red that matched the kid's own sweatshirt -

"Agent Jackson? The tape." The deputy's voice was accompanied by an outstretched hand. The woman’s face moved directly into Agent Jackson’s eyeline despite the sunglasses creating a dark barrier between the both of them. It was unnerving.

Agent Jackson did not entrust the VHS to her. Instead, she pushed it into the player herself listening to the electric whirring as it was being read. The TV sizzled to life when the deputy clicked the remote.

The sheriff had yet to come in with them, Agent Jackson thought. And then she thought that she remembered the click of a door being locked behind the deputy.

The thought left her when the TV came alight with images.

On the screen of the television, she saw a forest scene. There were pixelated beech trees, and everything was blue with evening fog. Everything except for an orange glow and a man immersed in the colour of it. The camera work was shaky and glitchy; frames of pure static interrupting the tape. It almost instantly made Agent Jackson sick to watch.

Possibly more upsetting though was the perfect absence of sound, leaving plenty of room for the whirring and hissing of the tape being played to amplify inside the small office. Even the sound of the rain was drowned out. Even the sound of the deputies outside of the small office, with its glass windows blinds drawn shut.

Agent Jackson felt tears well up in her eyes. Or eye, rather. Singular.

"It's beautiful," the deputy said, and it sounded like she was crying as well. Agent Jackson couldn't break away from the TV to acknowledge the other woman. She was entirely consumed by the film playing before her.

More shots of trees, rough-barked and eerie with glimpses of a moonless sky above. There was no sound of breathing. Not from the tape. Not from behind her.

And then the cameraman broke into a sprint, and then the recording device fell, hitting the forest ground with a crack. Its lens pointed upwards, recording the struggle of two identical men; save for one detail. While one of them wore a black-and-white mask covering the lower half of his face just below the scared, scared eyes, his attacker did not.

A cut in the tape, a corruption of visual and the boy was pinned against the tree he would be found below, the hands of his attacker, his twin, his clone, wrapped around his neck. He kicked and kicked but his hands were white-knuckle clutching the very tape that was playing before Agent Jackson. The very tape that was recording the attack from the forest floor. How?

The attacker turned to face the camera on the floor as if he’d suddenly become aware of the impossibility of these things happening simultaneously.

The sick feeling in Agent Jackson’s stomach became one of empty dread.

Agent Jackson took a step towards the TV in ice-cold disbelief, closer and closer until she could feel the warmth of the screen and hear the hissing of electricity across its surface.

The attacker's face was impossible to make out because he did not have one.
Instead, a grey, blank expanse stretched across where his - its - face should’ve been. It was hard to tell. Really hard to tell. But the ‘face’ glitched, ever so slightly, as the two boys fought. It looked, almost like a TV screen. An ant-like static accumulated where eyes and nose and mouth should be; an analogue test pattern turned human.

In between the static greys, flashes and scenes. A car pulling up. A woman in a dark coat stepping out of it and approaching a sheriff awaiting her above a body in the woods.

And if Agent Jackson had stood less close to the TV, she might have seen the reflection of the deputy behind her twist and her face melt into pixelated madness that matched the static in her own iris that had begun to take hold.

The boy on the screen died and Agent Jackson died along with him.