Janes and Johns

'The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I've seen that candle before, years and years ago, and several times after that. But I've only seen the man once.'

Marion Sawyer had said that. Emmelia Brock felt the hair on her neck rise. Marion had been ninety three when she'd given that statement in 2018, and ninety five when she died. Not by suspicious circumstances, just age, going peacefully in her sleep alone in her large cabin home. Her husband had built it with his bare hands when she was just nineteen. They'd reared three sons on the acreage with the undisputed best view of Lake Chelan. The sons had grown up and left, raised families of their own, and Marion had never sold. If anyone knew something sinister was happening out there, it would be her. But she was gone now. This was the most disturbing witness statement, and Emmelia had not been able to get much more from her at the time, the woman being partially deaf in both ears, her mind and body fragile. Emmelia continued reading.

Valerie Haynes, June 2019: 'A light was flickering in the woods, coming from the direction of that old cabin'.

She flipped over another page.

Gavin Shaw, March 2020: 'It was a candle I'm sure of it, as it had a weird glow and not so bright. Something told me to avoid that cabin'.

She flipped again to a different witness statement.

Michael Summers, September 2020: 'I believe there may have been someone staying in the abandon cabin around that time because there was a light in the window'.

Another flip.

Ellie Taylor, April 2021: 'We saw a light on in the cabin and snuck out to see if it was the boys. When we got there, there was a candle burning on the window sill. It was spooky. We heard a noise outside and screamed, because we thought someone was out there. The boys heard and came to get us but said they weren't messing around, which is probably a lie. We blew the candle out and left after that'.

The fluorescent light above her in the surveillance lodge flickered. The wind howled outside, and she was beginning to worry where Gareth had gotten to. She'd been alone in the lodge for hours. It had become her new home since the last victim had been pulled from the lake. She spent most nights here out in the woods, monitoring the activity through a live feed running from cameras strategically placed around the abandon cabin located just over three miles from her position. Not ideal, but it allowed for her to enjoy the comfort of heat and a soft bed to sleep on at night. The owners had been helpful in allowing the police to utilize the property for their ongoing investigation.

Rap-rap-rap.

"Let me in its freezing out here."

"Finally," Emmelia smiled, opening the door for her boyfriend. He welcomed her in his beanie and parker, with a steaming latte in one hand, tea in the other. The aromas immediately mixed and filled the cabin. She took the latte, and he stepped inside, shutting the icy wind behind them. Steam rose from their takeaway cups.

"What took you so long?" she asked him, settling into her seat in front of the monitor screens.

"Turns out everyone's getting takeaway coffee tonight. I also stopped by home to bring you this," he pulled her electric kettle out of a bag, and a tin of coffee. "So you don't have to keep sending me on missions."

"Thankyou, its probably better for my wallet too." They sipped their drinks.

"No boogieman while I've been out?" Gareth asked gesturing to the monitors.

"No." Emmelia answered, dismal. "I've just been going through these statements again." She re-read the last statement by the school-girl Ellie Taylor out loud.

"I remember, that was the camp wasn't it?" Gareth put his tea on her makeshift desk, a foldout table and watched the screens. Emmelia nodded her head yes.

"And this one is from our friend Roy, last week: 'I got up early with my rods down at the lake. The salmon were jumping already and I wanted to beat the boys to it- and the bears. Those grizzly's can be a fishermen's worst nightmare if they come down far enough. After I loaded up the kayak, I went to take a piss. The air was that bitey my cock curled up like a little snail'."

Gareth raised his eyebrows, "Charming."

Emmelia continued to read the statement. "'As I was doing my business, I looked up and across the lake I see smoke coming from that old cabin across the way. Might have been someone stayed there over night. Kids most likely- Sammo's boys are always playing about at night. Anyway- I decided to take the kayak over to the other side, have a walk around, and found the smoke coming from a little candle in the window. It was sitting in one of those dishes like the olden day folks used to have. It had just been blown out. But I didn't see hide nor hair of nobody'."

Gareth raised his eyebrows a second time, "Roy Wallen said that?"

"That was his statement," she confirmed.

He frowned at her. "And this was how long before the body was pulled from the lake?"

"Weeks according to this statement, it says here five to seven."

"Roy doesn't strike me as the sceptical type," Gareth picked up his cup again blew the top of his Chamomile.

"He's not the lying type either," Emmelia added. "He's known my family since I was a kid. If he said that's what he saw then that's what he saw."

"Along with twenty-six others over the last half-century. And his snail penis after a night of merriment," he added with a laugh.

"Facts," she smiled back.

Emmelia put down the report and refocused on the monitors. The abandon cabin was silent in the eerie green hue. Something flickered in the top left screen...

She waited...

It was an owl. Most nights you couldn't see anything out there during Winter. Just snow. And darkness. She appreciated that Gareth stayed out here with her, more than an hour's drive from town. They'd only been together two months, an unexpected whirlwind; but she'd allowed herself to be drawn into him. That inquisitive British accent, the intellectual mind constantly ticking, and the antiquated little habits, like how he always tucked a pencil behind his left ear. He was nothing like the guys she usually dated from these parts. The Roy Wallens'. Emmelia had recently been appointed as Senior Sergeant two months ago, around the same time they'd met. This, and a fresh body had turned up in Lake Chelan. Things happen in threes' she'd once heard, which wasn't the case for the bodies.

There were eighty-seven in total. All unidentified. "That's a lot of Janes and Johns," Gareth had said to her when she'd told him. Emmelia had been obsessed with the crimes since she was a little girl, as the lake had a reputation of turning up corpses. Most of these were related to water sports and boating accidents, drownings and drivers careening into the water off the road, but the disproportionate amount of unsolved murders was something of folk-law in these parts. The first one had been recorded in 1972, a male, age estimated at forty-four years. No sign of a struggle, no bruising and most shockingly, no DNA other than his own, the results inconclusive. One single gunshot to the side of the temple was the thing that implicated murder. This was the same for every single body discovered after that. Naked, with a bullet hole through the brain. The youngest body was found two months ago, a minor approximately fifteen. Female. No sign of rape. Just the entry and exist wound in her head. This was big news, and Emmelia had found herself thrust down into the rabbit hole that was known county-wide as the Lake Chelan Murders once again.

It was wildly believed that a serial killer (whom down at the station they called the Lake Dumper) was responsible for all of these nude, water-logged Janes and Johns. The police had zilch. The victims didn't even have proper funerals, because they didn't have families. They were nobodies. It was an incredibly strange case that had haunted the county for a long time. Emmelia felt a personal need to solve these murders, having a somewhat emotional attachment to the lake. When she was eighteen, Emmelia's mother had finished a late shift, and before starting her car, a man had gotten into the passenger seat and forced her to drive at gunpoint. He was a known criminal and high on crack cocaine. Her mother had purposefully driven the car off the bridge into the lake, the man had testified in court, labelling her as a 'crazy bitch'. Emmelia knew this was true. 'Never let a stranger take you to a second location', her mother had told her smartly, but unfortunately her decision had not worked in her favour. She hadn't been able to free herself once the car was under. She drowned, while the thief had survived. A case cut-and-paste clean it was. But not the Lake Chelan murders. These were different. Methodical. Elegant. The cleanest killer in the state. A ghost.

"Tell me what you're thinking, because I can hear you thinking." Gareth said as he scrolled through his phone. It was past midnight. The glass was frosted over the bedroom window and it was dead quiet, save for their fire crackling away.

"The candles," she said. "Its strange right? I mean, not the idea of the candle- but what I'm getting at here is that the killer, (hypothetically) is using a candle."

"We use candles."

"Its not the same. Why doesn't he use a torch? It's 2022."

"If he's been killing since 72' maybe he's just in the habit."

"Even so," she pushed. "If its light he wanted, a torch would have been way more effective. What's the purpose of a candle? Is it ritualistic? Or dos it hold some kind of special meaning?" She asked more questions until she grew tired and eventually they fell asleep.

*

The following morning was a dark one, with a cold that cut into Emmelia so deeply she felt its grip around her bones. She checked the monitors first thing after an unsuccessful evening of viewing, and the hours in which she had slept had been identical. Nothing but the owl, its eyes seeming to look directly at the camera, reflecting like two bright stars, alien. She sighed. Thermals were the first to go on, followed by multiple layers and her official police jacket. Gareth would be getting up for work soon, and she left him sleeping soundly, rugged up like a caterpillar who was content to stay that way. She made coffee, brought more chopped wood inside for the fire and then left, radioing in the station as she cruised the patrol vehicle through town. She did her office duties, signed paperwork that needed witnessing and checked in with the lab. She then stopped by the supermarket at lunch to get groceries to take back to the surveillance lodge. All the while, she kept thinking about the candle in the window, the bodies, the gunshot wounds, the lake. The cabin.

After returning to lodge, she decided to walk the three miles to the abandon cabin. It was close to the lake's edge, nestled ominously on a high hill shrouded in forest, with a beautiful view of Lake Chelan. On the other side of the lake from this point, you could see the tip of Marion Sawyer's roof poking through the trees. All 87 of the victims found were in the lake here, or had surfaced farther south, closer to Chelan. The cabin itself was ramshackle, and uninspiring, except perhaps to the teenagers who'd left their mark by graffitiing their names or drawing profanities on the wood. One delightful soul had decided to engrave eighty-seven lines into the wood under the cabin's single window, grouped in fives with the fifth slashed into the other four as they counted upward. The newest mark still looked freshly carved, Emmelia ran her finger over it. Kids.

She'd looked out this window two months ago, when they'd gotten the call - two little girls trying out their new ice-skates given to them for Christmas, their family spending their holidays 'glamping' in one of more affluent lodges. They'd come back telling their parents that there was a lady under the ice. The forensic team had to use machines to get the body out. The cabin itself was never pronounced a crime scene, and never had been in the years past. Only marked as a 'place of interest' due to the slowly growing witness statements, namely about the light that could be seen emanating from it. Nine bodies had been discovered on the lake since Emmelia's indoctrination into the force, and each time, the police had come to this cabin, and found nothing but cobwebs and the shoeprints of a hundred hikers. Emmelia looked at the dust-free circle on the inner ledge where she'd had forensics remove the candle along with the small dish it stood in. It was an old-fashioned looking thing, like something out of a Keira Knightly movie; very British and would go perfectly well with Gareth's tea, Emmelia supposed. The thing was, the police were now in possession of nine of them, holder and candle both. It had been her idea to bag them to begin with. This was her only lead, with Roy Wallen's latest statement adding to her theory. It was the same candle holder, and the same candle unequivocally nine times over, but there was nothing like it you could buy in town. It was the kind of item you bought from Etsy, or an antiques dealer. That had to be significant surely. When the body of a man had been found last year, they had managed to retrieve a partial thumb print from the candle itself, not the holder. The results were not enough to match to anything in the database, and so they were inconclusive. And they were not Ellie Taylor's prints. She hadn't touched the candle according to her statement, just blown it out. But someone was lighting those candles.

Emmelia walked around and did a quick routine check on each of the four surveillance cameras. Two on the outside of the cabin, (the lake facing side and the opposite) and two on the sides, rigged up to a western redcedar and a birch tree. They gave a clean transmission back to the surveillance lodge, which Emmelia would be living in for a while. Nobody would be dumping bodies in a frozen lake. But when it thawed, she would be waiting.

January passed into February, and the lake had not completely unfrozen until mid March. The last of the snow that blanket the area had melted away and people were getting out onto Lake Chelan again for recreation. Two months worth of surveillance, and she still had nothing. Her nights were spent replaying the recordings of the day, and she watched people come and go from the cabin; hikers, teenagers, campers, small animals and birds flitting across the screens. It was in April one night, not quite 10:00pm; Gareth at home, and Emmelia alone in the lodge doing sit-ups on the floor when she saw something on the live feed.

It was a cat. A very big cat. Emmelia stood to watch it. It stalked across the monitor like it was hunting something. It was a cougar, a rare sight and she watched focused, as it circled the abandon cabin twice. It then sat at the door, waiting. Watching. Strange. It then left. And that's when she saw the candle light...

Her heart skipped a beat, and the monitors shook as she grabbed the edge of the table. Within seconds, she'd snatched up the car keys and threw her police jacket on, ran to the vehicle and drove to the abandon cabin with the lights on low. She had her gun on her, and took off the safety. It took her 7 minutes. She could feel sweat on the back of her neck as the adrenaline coursed through her. Emmelia swung the door of the vehicle open. Yep, she thought. Candlelight. The unmistakable flicker of orange glow pulsing inside the cabin. She held her pistol up in front of her, both hands clasped firmly around it. She inched closer, quiet on the foliage that littered the ground.

One step...

Another step...

She could hear something...something. But she unsure what. Movement... ruffling?

A step further...

SNAP!

Shit! She'd stood on a branch, so loud and sharp it almost had a echo. She'd been made.

"This is the police!" she said at once, walking closer now to the door. "Come out with your hands on your head."

No response.

"I won't ask you twice. Come out right now. We are armed." We. She didn't know why she'd said that, but she felt her voice betray the fear in her.

No response.

Should she call for back up? Was the person inside armed? The candlelight continued to glow from within. She followed her instincts and counted...

1...

2...

3...

BANG!

The wooden door swung hard and fast as she kicked it open and she took in the scene...

A body lying on the floor. A candle burning.

She was alert, aiming the gun steadily. But nothing moved in the abandon cabin, save for the slight flicker of the candle in the window. When she was sure there was nothing that could harm her, she bent to check the pulse of the person on the ground, a woman, middle-aged and pale looking. She'd been shot clean through the head. Emmelia cursed. The woman was still warm to the touch, but it was too late. Why had she heard no gunshot? There was something else about her too. Something off. It was her hair. It was styled...strange. She walked back to the vehicle, and radioed in two of her patrolling officers with her location. She hoped they'd hurry; there was a large cougar around here somewhere and she didn't think she'd be quick on the draw with it if it attacked. Emmelia locked herself in the car, headlights blaring straight at the cabin, and waited.

*

Zero matches.

Her lab guy, Seth had told her that the following week. Its not what Emmelia wanted to hear, but she'd been expecting as much. The news of the body was already out, but the police hadn't released any details publicly yet. The lab had added another wax candle to the collection, along with its brass holder, an exact match to the others. Seth had found something else however, something far more valuable than she would have anticipated. He'd shown her the bottom of the brass candle holder after finding no finger prints. There were two grooves so small and fine it was very easy to miss, and Emmelia had to squint to see. Two curved lines interlocking. Seth had informed her that this, was indeed a signature. A signature of an artisan. An artisan, of which he'd taken the liberty of finding for her after many nights scouring the internet, only the results were not so helpful.

The signature on the candle holders was made by an old English company called Saxby & Sons. It hadn't been easy to find, having operated in the early 1800s. Emmelia didn't know what she was supposed to do with this information, but there was a theme here; the woman she'd found, her hair was in the style of that time period. It was a reddish-brown hue, piled high up on top with tresses falling down everywhere in tight curls. And there were other things Seth had mentioned, like the fact that he didn't think it was just murder, but that he believed based on his lab data that these people were being assassinated. He only wished they could get a body with the bullet still lodged. Then they could determine the exact weapon used. This new body was the freshest corpse examined yet, and he believed the woman had died minutes, potentially seconds within Emmelia's arrival which she thoguht was impossible. There had been no gunshot. It was his belief the woman was stripped naked and killed elsewhere, then brought to the cabin in transition to be disposed of in the lake. Emmelia took all of this in and began to wonder if this was some sort of weird cult, it was out of her depth. There's no way the killer would have time for that. Someone would have reported gunshots, not candle light.

*

Emmelia and Gareth wandered around the property of Marion Sawyer the following weekend. Her sons had finally decided to sell, and so they had held a garage sale, all of their mothers personal items on display for Chelan's residents to see and take home for a bargain price. Emmelia didn't realise the old women had acquired so much, and didn't really like the idea of purchasing something from a former witness, but she felt drawn to the house and had dragged her boyfriend along. There were a lot of antiquated items- no candles or holders reluctantly.

"Maybe your killer is a vampire?" Gareth said, holding up a yellowed, paperback copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Emmelia made a face.

"What?"

"Vampires' bite people, they don't shoot them."

"Yes but what if the victims were werewolves, and so the vampire had no choice but to shoot them with a silver bullet!"

"Walking away now." Emmelia turned and leafed through magazines and old newspapers Marion had kept while Gareth invented theories and found books. That's when she thought of something, something she'd never thought to ask several years back. She went looking for one of the sons. A well dressed man in his late thirties stood at the doorway, overseeing. He looked too young to be her son. Must be a grandson. Emmelia approached him. She led with her badge, despite being off-duty.

"Hi, Senior Sergeant Emmelia Brock. Are you a relative of Mrs Sawyer's?" she asked with authority, yet polite.

"Yes, Nathan Sawyer, her grandson. How can I help?"

"I spoke to your grandmother several years ago during a case where I took a witness statement from her."

"Oh right, sure."

"I'm wondering if your grandmother kept a diary?" He frowned and scratched his head.

"I couldn't say to be honest," he laughed nervously. "My dad might know more but he's not actually here...um...tell you what; my wife and I boxed some of her things upstairs in her bedroom that we didn't think were sellable. There's a bunch of photos and stuff too. Maybe that might be helpful?"

"Can I?"

The grandson stepped aside for her and gestured towards the staircase. "Last room at the end of the hallway, the big one with the view of the Lake." Emmelia thanked him and found the bedroom easily enough. There were open boxes labelled MARION- BEDROOM. She began to look through them carefully, taking her time. In the second box she found them, multiple diaries, some small and leather, some with faded floral fabric. She opened one, thumbing the pages quickly. Marion had beautiful, neat handwriting, and she'd conveniently dated the tops of each page. Perfect.

That afternoon, Emmelia returned to the lodge to read. So did Gareth, ecstatic about his new purchase of Dracula. She hadn't bothered with anything after 2018, instead working backwards through the diaries. She was quick to navigate, glancing at the pages unless a strange word or sentence stood out amongst Marion's musings of daily movements, books she was reading, her children, her friends children. It was an hour before she found it.

November 13th, 2018: seven-thirty, morning.

The candle was burning in the abandon cabin last night. I could see it from my bedroom. I cannot remember how many times I have seen it now, but it frightens me. Something frightened me more last night. I saw a man take a woman down to the lake. It was past ten, and I couldn't sleep. I think it was because the moon was quite large last night and so it lit up the whole of the lake. Freddie bought me a digital clock for my night stand, so I can see the time better. I hated that google thing he bought me last time, but this clock has big red numbers and is much better. I used Henry's old binoculars. The man was walking downhill, a naked woman draped over his arms. He wore a top hat and a long coat all in black. I couldn't not see much else. He took the woman to the waters edge, began to walk in. That is where I could no longer see. But I saw him come out. After that he disappeared into the trees, and then not longer after...the candle went out.

Marion

Emmelia shuddered. She new what she had to do.

*

Six months past, and Winter would be on them soon enough. Fall had well and truly arrived, a nip slicing the air and the colour of the trees waning as they shed leaf by leaf. Emmelia had moved back into her own house for the majority of this time, but had recently returned to the surveillance lodge again. The timing of the murders was always inconsistent but instinct told her, like last time that the killer would return, especially before Lake Chelan froze again. She understood that last time, she'd made her move too early. She knew she'd heard something in that cabin, however subtle and somehow the killer had gotten away. Marion's description fit the running theme of the current evidence, but was still very peculiar. This time, Emmelia would wait, and watch for the candlelight to appear, and for this man to exit the cabin with a body. One thing still eluded her, the tapes showed nothing of a man arriving to the cabin that night she found the body in there. And so, in preparation this time, she'd rigged a hidden camera inside.

*

October 21st, was the night it happened. The night she found her killer. And the night she shot him.

The monitor being fed from the hidden camera was pitch black...until it wasn't. She nearly spilled her coffee when the room brightened suddenly, and she could see a man standing in front of it. He had lit a candle, with gloved hands, and placed it on the window. He was dressed just as Marion had said; top hat and coat. He was bearded, his posture elegant. It was as if he was in costume. There on the floor of the cabin, was the naked body of a man, also bearded. He was already dead. Emmelia watched with equal parts horror, anger and fascination as the man began to move his hands over the body, saying a prayer or doing a ritual- she couldn't which. There was no audio. He then took the dead man by the ankles and dragged him outside. She watched them both turn green as the outside cameras picked them up and he dragged him downhill, out of site. She waited for a moment, knowing it would take some time for him to deposit the body into the lake at the bottom. She ran to the car, speeding to the cabin, but parked at least fifty metres away. She ran the rest, the candle light still visible through the trees.

She ducked down behind the cabin, and seeing he had not yet returned, walked in and slid behind the door, gun at the ready. After minutes of her heart pounding in her chest, she heard his boots walking up to the door way. She heard, and felt the first step into the cabin- and she stepped in front of him; gun pointed at his face.

"Stop right there, and put your hands up." To her surprise, he did.

"Ah...so, you are the one responsible for interrupting me upon my last visit."

...Visit? What the hell?

"Get down on your knees!" she yelled at him.

"That will not be happening I am afraid," he began to lower his hands. "I am an important man, with an important job to do, and quite frankly my dear, you simply do not know who you are dealing with." He spoke with such conviction her mouth dropped open. He was English, the same inflection as Gareth.

"I don't negotiate with killers."

He laughed at her. "Oh, you are a difficult little creature aren't you. "It looks like I'm going to have to change my...final destination, now that you have been so annoyingly inquisitive. I can't have that effecting history now can I."

What was this nutjob on about? Emmelia refocused. "I said hands up!"

He sighed, smiled, pulled the cuff of his left sleeve down and held her gaze. He tipped his hat with the other hand.

"Good evening."

He tapped his wrist at the same time her gun went off. She saw him flinch at the shoulder, then disappear into thin air. She screamed, and stood for a long time afterwards in silence.

*

The events of that evening were recorded on tape, but could not be explained. Not long afterwards, Senior Sergeant Emmelia Brock handed in her resignation and moved from the Chelan County area. The Lake Chelan murder cases were never closed, and remain open to this day. She never saw the man from the cabin again, and there were no more bodies found with bullet wounds in their heads.

No reports of candles in the window were ever made again.