I ran past him to the barn, readying my Winchester for whatever we might find inside. "You ready?" I asked Sam once he caught me up.
Sam gripped the gun tightly in his hand and nodded.
A smaller, man-sized, door was built into one of the two massive barn doors, and as I moved to push it open, I noticed bloody marks on it. The hands of whoever had closed it had been covered in blood. I kicked the door open and stepped inside, and the stench almost knocked me back.
Sam followed me and gagged at the smell of death and blood that sat heavily in the air. I removed the wooden beam that kept the barn doors closed and pushed them both wide open, hoping the fresh-air would help make searching the barn a little more palatable.
"Good God," Sam whispered, taking in a deep lungful of air.
"Stay here," I told him and walked back into the barn, trying my best to ignore the overpowering smell.
Blood saturated the floor, large puddles of dark fluid that splashed as I walked through them, but I found no bodies to account for the huge volume.
As I started to check each of the ten stalls in turn, I soon discovered the reason for the quantity of blood. It flowed from the stalls like ten rivers, all meeting in the middle of the barn. Bones and gore littered the ground, covering the hay and bare floors with yet more blood until there was barely an inch unstained by its presence.
I opened the stall furthest from the entrance and stepped inside. The number of bones accounted for a whole skeleton's worth, and it was easy to spot the skull and determine what had happened to the horse who'd been kept inside the stall, and by extension what had happened to all of the horses in the barn.
I avoided a small lake of blood and picked up a mostly clean bone. It was thick and large, probably something from the one of the horse's legs. I turned it over, and my horror at what I'd seen so far increased. There were teeth marks. Something had eaten the horse, and judging by the spray of blood, it had been alive when attacked.
I carefully made my way back outside, avoiding the worst of the gore, to inspect the bone further under the midday sun. Sam saw me, and his already green complexion appeared to worsen. "What is that?" he asked.
"I think it's the femur of a horse," I said inspecting the bone. "There are bite marks on it. Small sharp teeth, lots of them, a bit like a piranha."
"A what?" Sam asked.
"It's a small fish found far south of here. They hunt in groups and can strip an animal down to the bone in a few minutes."
"And whatever did this is like that?" The horror on Sam's face told me that the idea of small killer fish was up there with the worst things he'd ever heard of.
"I'm not sure what did this. I've got a few ideas, but nothing I can be certain about."
"What about the other barn?" Sam turned and pointed to the large building on the other side of the ranch.
"I'll check; you go get Valour." I threw the bone back into the barn, it made a squelching noise as it landed. "I want to be out of here as soon as possible."
Sam immediately ran toward Valour. I walked toward the smaller barn with considerable trepidation as to my mind as to what I might discover there, stopping only at a trough full of water to wash the blood from my hands before continuing.
I paused outside the barn, and glanced over at Sam who was untying Valour. I really hoped I wouldn't find what I was expecting inside the building. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and immediately wished I hadn't.
What was inside the barn wasn't what I expected. It was much, much worse.
It was one person's private hell.
Chapter 10
The word torture was not enough to describe what was inside the barn. Horrors had been inflicted upon the dead woman, and I couldn't begin to imagine how she'd lived for more than a few moments once they'd started.
I stepped inside and pushed down the part of me that screamed to leave, detaching myself from seeing what used to be alive. It was now just meat, in a human form maybe, but meat nonetheless. No different than any dead animal or human I'd seen in the past.
The woman had been brought into the barn and hoisted into the air by straps on her ankles. She swayed gently, her head roughly four feet above the ground. She would have had to have been already in the air when they started. The blood trails all went down, toward the slick floor beneath her swinging arms. Swinging, skinless arms.
I closed my eyes and let the sickened feeling that had built up subside quietly, before continuing my inspection of the body.
After being strung up, they'd removed the skin from her arms, fingers to shoulders, along with her legs, toes to thighs. A sharp knife and patience would have been required to do it, and she was probably dead before they started, so as to cut down on her moving around. God, I hoped she'd been dead. The killer had cut from her navel down to her sternum, in what appeared to be a clean cut with one sweep. They had then forced open the cut, allowing her internal organs to fall out. Her stomach and intestine remained on the floor by her hand, along with her lungs. The lack of blood on the floor, along with the scuff marks of something being dragged, meant that it had been caught and collected.
I searched the spacious barn. It was full of tools and supplies, everything needed to run a ranch. A trough sat in one corner, the inside coated with thick, black blood.
At some point during her ordeal, they'd scalped her, although I couldn't locate the scalp or the weapon used. I'd have to do a more extensive search of the barn's interior in case it had been discarded before the killers left.
A scream from the entrance brought me back to my senses.
I rushed over as Sam darted to the side of the building and vomited repeatedly. When all that was left was dry heaving, he started crying. Big, deep sobs of someone fearful and panicking.
"Sam, how old are you?"
"Wha?"
"Age, Sam. How old?"
"Six… sixteen," he said between haggard breaths.
"Your surname?"
"W…Ward."
"Tell me about your mum and dad."
Sam found it hard to catch his breath, but he forced himself to speak. "Mum was the daughter of a bank robber, Dad was a U.S. Marshal."
"Bet that made for an interesting upbringing."
Sam sighed, and took another deep breath. "Mum died when I was four. Smallpox."
"I'm sorry," I said. "How's your breathing?"
Sam looked surprised. "Better. I thought I was going to die."
"You just needed something to focus on until your breathing calmed. You stay here and concentrate on your breathing, okay? I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Stay a minute." Sam's voice was barely above a whisper.
I sat down on the soft ground beside him.
"That is…was Victoria… Missus Warren," Sam said and spat onto the ground. "Bad taste."
I'd already assumed that the person in the barn was the owner of the ranch, so I kept quiet and let Sam continue.
"Why did they do that? What was the point?"
"I don't know, but I plan on finding out.” I let a silence fall between us for a short time. “So, not much of a murderer then?"
Sam shook his head and tears fell in steady streaks.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No," he said firmly.
"If you ever change your mind, let me know." I stood up. "I need to finish checking inside. You going to be okay?"
"Is that the worst thing you've ever seen?"
I didn't know if lying would make him feel better or worse, but the truth was all that wanted to come out of my mouth. "No," I said. "What happened in there is horrific, and disturbing and wrong. But it's not even close to the worst things I've ever seen."
"How do you push them out of your mind?"