The Haunting of Secrets by Shelley R. Pickens

She opens it, gets out her computer, and makes
herself at home. “If something bad is going to happen to these
girls, then I’m in. I’m not going to stand by idly if someone may
be in danger. Now you two get out of my hair for a bit, I’ve got
work to do.”
    Dejana and I look at each other smiling,
elated to finally see some forward progress in our quest to find
the killer, even if Leah has no idea that’s what she’s doing.
    Leah jumps right in and gleefully begins
researching. She stays at my house for hours, asking us questions
to gather as much as she can from us to use. She decides around
dusk that she would keep at it and hopefully, have something for us
in a few days. Until then, Dejana and I do our best to look through
missing persons on the internet to see if we could find the girls
Dejana drew from the killer’s memories.
    As it usually does, the world keeps spinning
no matter how awful the tragedy and no matter how much we don’t
want it to. I am just grateful to have something to do. I know that
school will be back in session soon and I want to be as prepared as
I can be for whatever may come. It is a crisp, cool morning,
roughly four days since I was in the hospital that we finally catch
a break.
    “I found her,” I say, my voice amazed and
relieved.
    Dejana turns from her computer and runs to my
laptop to see the picture of the girl I found.
    “It’s an older picture but look,” I say
pointing to the girl on the screen. “She is a dead ringer for the
girl I saw in the memory. No pun intended,” I add quickly.
    “ Wow, you did it, girl. You found her!”
exclaims Dejana, clearly as excited as I am.
    I scroll down to find the girl’s name. “Megan
Parnell. She was fourteen years old when she disappeared. She lives
in Hall County just north of us, but went to another school,” I
explain as I look at Dejana to gauge her reaction. “I guess he
gained more confidence with each kill since he’s hunting for girls
at his own school now. Problem is we have no idea exactly how many
girls he’s killed or what he’s done with the bodies. Without that
information, there is no way we can give the families any closure.
It’s tragic.” My elation at the discovery begins to ebb.
    Dejana pats my shoulder with her hand, trying
to reassure me. “We’ll get there. We just need time. And hopefully
Leah will come up with some hard evidence soon.” That’s Dejana,
always the optimist.
    Drowning in frustration, I slam my laptop
closed and cross my arms over my chest. For once, I long for
another memory to engulf me so I can find more information on the
guy we seek. In the past, when I’ve absorbed a person’s memories,
they were seared into my brain, unwelcomed and forever a part of
me. I’ve witness a lot of horrible things in my short sixteen
years, but nothing like this, nothing that has ever shut down my
mind so severely that I landed in a coma. I guess, to protect
itself, my mind has forced these nightmares into a box I can’t
access until it wants me to. Part of me is glad that it did; I am
not sure I could survive another onslaught like that. The only
memories I do recall with clarity are the normal ones he had early
in life. The ones dealing with baseball are the most clear. I
wonder fleetingly if Logan might know him. I debate whether or not
I should ask Logan about his teammates, but then immediately
dismiss the idea. This guy has managed to conceal his true identity
from the world and kill who knows how many girls without raising
the slightest bit of suspicion. If he were indeed on the baseball
team, Logan probably wouldn’t be aware of it.
    I have no idea how to call a memory to the
surface or I would since it’s been a while since the last one and
then nothing. This is new territory for me. Usually, I do my best
to repress the memories; do my best to forget them. I have seen
memories of death before, seen others kill as well, but this time
it’s different. This time the killer is one of