December 25th, 2019:

The room is filled with nothing but myself and inky black shadows that smell of death.  I sit in the corner furthest away from where I know the door is, hugging my knees to my chest.  It is the only way I know to protect myself from the horrors I had discovered here merely days prior. 

 I rock back and forth in this fetal position, letting the cold of the concrete floor beneath me leak into my bones as I try to dispel all other thoughts by humming a tune by Richard Dillon.  The metal door across the room from me screams open, letting light flood into the room. I ignore the light and the tall, muscular shadow outlined by the beautiful glow. I know I cannot leave, so I hum a little louder and close my eyes.

“Braylin,” The stranger’s voice purrs,” You haven’t turned on the light, but you know where the light switch is, don’t you?”  I hum louder, shaking my head and hoping that it will make him go away. I would do anything to make him go away. I hear him walking towards me, and I stop rocking back and forth. I feel a cold hand on my chin and stop humming.  The hand lifts my face to make me look at something in the dark, and I open my eyes to look at the stranger before me with cold blue eyes. He smiles.

“There you are,” He whispers, and I slap his hand away from my chin.  He smiles, sitting down next to me and fiddling with the chain connecting my ankle to the wall.  “You know, Braylin, I found something of yours in the mailbox today.” My body went utterly still.  He wasn’t supposed to find those. “It was quite disturbing to think that you, the person I love the most in the entire world, would try to send out such accusatory letters to the police station.”  I leaned away from the stranger, glaring at him defiantly.  I would not let him see the fear filling my chest. I wouldn’t let him hear my heart beat getting faster with every word he says. He leans closer so I can smell the mint toothpaste on his breath and see the shine of fresh gel in his hair.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mutter, not breaking eye-contact with him.  He rolls his eyes as he leans away from me and stands up to walk away from me. I hug my legs to my chest tighter than before.  I see him lean against the table next to the open door and lift up a thick stack of papers. Without thinking, I shoot up to my feet, rattling my chains. He found my letters. He chuckles.

“Maybe you do know about these after all,” He removes an elastic from around the letters and places it on the table. He opens the first letter and looks at me over the rim of the paper with a fury-filled grin.  The look of a psychopath. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?” I clench my jaw so hard my teeth could break before I sit back down. I have no way to prevent this. This is the end of my story, and he is going to make me relive how I got here.  

“December 20th, 2019,” the stranger says, making my head spin when I realize how quickly it had all happened.  My first letter was only five days ago,” I found a trap door in my grandparents’ basement with a stairway that leads further down into the ground and into a large room filled with my grandpa’s doctors supplies and some strange hospital beds.” I wince at the thought of finding this place and not welding the door shut,” I don’t know where it goes and I don’t think my parents know about it.  I’m going to bring Cole down here tomorrow and see if he can tell me what half of the stuff down there is.” The stranger chuckled and moved to the next page. 

 “December 21st, 2019; My twin brother and I found some letters in the corner behind some of the supplies in the strange room I found the day before.  They’re all dated back to 1947.” I take some deep breaths, trying to contain my building frustration and the feeling of betrayal I know is coming as he moves onto my next entry. 

”December 22nd, 2019; I read the letters.  They’re written by Elizabeth Short-- The Black Dahlia-- they’re about the man who kidnapped her in so much detail that I think it might be… No, it wouldn’t be him. My grandpa would never force a young girl to document her own torture sessions, let alone be her torturer.  At least I hope, my brother read the letters and doesn’t understand it much either. We’re still deciding on when we are going to tell our parents.” 

“December 23rd, 2019; Cole has been acting weird about the letters and doesn’t think we should tell our parents yet.  He wants to explore the basement more just to be sure that it was grandpa who kidnapped Elizabeth before we go and tell everyone what we found.”  The stranger takes a few steps forward and kneels down in front of me as he turns to the next part of my writings.

“December 24th, 2019; I think my brother has gone insane.  He started rambling about an awakening and how my grandfather was always right and how we must continue the tradition.  Then he tried to lock me in the secret basement and left. I think this will be my last writing to whoever is reading this for a long time.  My brother has killed our parents and my only hope of staying safe is if I mail all of these letters before he does something that will destroy him for eternity.  My name is Braylin Hodel, and my twin brother is Cole Hodel. Please find him before he hurts someone or himself.” I clench my jaw and begin humming to myself again to contain my fear and anger at my brother for not wanting to condemn my grandfather.  I try to breathe and force waves of calm through my body. The stranger across the room laughs hysterically at my efforts to ignore him.

“Sister, did you really think sending some letters to a police station would stop me?” He chuckles angrily before forcibly grabbing me by the neck and lifting me off the ground.  I claw at his arm, trying to loosen his grip around my windpipe, but he squeezes harder. A noise that sounds like a gasp, but is much more terrifying comes from me at the sudden use of force.  The stranger’s eyes gleam with joy at my struggling before he drops me to the concrete floor and snarls at the broken person beneath him.

“We could have been the most powerful people in the world together, you and I, but now you’ve betrayed me,” He squats down so that I can see his face better as I cough and try to catch the breath he had taken from me,” so I’ll just have to leave you here to die, all alone.  That way you will understand how I will feel, without you, for the rest of my life.” The anger in his eyes is wiped away when he spits those last words at me, and is replaced with joy that might come from a cat who’s cornered its next meal. It’s then that I realize that the eyes I am staring into are the windows to a soul that has been turned into something inhuman.  I realize that my brother, whom I love more than anyone, and have known for as long as I can remember, was no longer there. A thing composed darkness and horror has replaced him.

“Maybe if I leave you without food for a few days you’ll come to your senses,” he purrs, practically jumping back up to his feet and heading for the lit doorway.  

“And what if I don’t?” I cough, finally beginning to catch my breath as I push myself up onto my knees.  The stranger stops at the doorway and seems to ponder this question as he reaches for the door.

“Then I guess you’ll get to be my first experiment,” He whispers, chuckling as he slams the door shut and encases me in shadows again.  I swallow the tears rising in my throat and the hollow screams trying to claw their way up my throat. 

 I crawl as close to the letters on the table as I can and reach for them.  I feel and hear the bundle of them fall on the floor in front of me, and I pick them up quickly before reaching for the light switch and turning the dim, half-broken lights on so I can write one last entry on the back of Elizabeth Short’s letters. If you’ve gotten to this point, then you’ve solved the Black Dahlia murder.

My name is Braylin Hodel, granddaughter of George Hodel and sister of Cole Hodel.  I was born into a bloodline of murderers, and punished for not becoming like them. If you have found this letter and the others I have hidden behind the radiator, don’t hide them.  Show them to as many people as you can. Publish them. Make hundreds of copies. Save your society from the blue-eyed, tall, pale horror that once was my twin brother... Before it’s too late.