Persona - Chapter 2
Chapter 2 – A
Letter from a Friend
The next day, I
got dressed in fresh clothes and went to meet with Jessie at the front
door. It was strange. Right as I was about to head out to the door
to meet him, I saw him pacing out front, almost like he was ready to leave
already. I opened the door to greet Jessie,
only for him to hand out the letter outstretched. He was in a hot sweat, clambered up after
what I can assume to be having an unfortunate read of it. “Here!
Take it, Derrick! I can’t have
this thing on me anymore. I can’t look
it anymore.” His face was turned away
from me as he handed me the letter. He
was in a disheveled denim jacket, some sweatpants, and his hair was more messed
up than I remembered.
With a bit of concern, I reached out
and grabbed the letter. Jessie’s hand
was trembling as he handed it over to me.
He pulled his hand away quickly and put his hand up to his mouth to bite
his nails. It was clear that whatever
was written in this letter was making Jessie nervous. I needed to read it immediately to see
exactly what had him so nervous. I
unfolded the letter and read the text.
To whom it may
concern,
“Your beloved family
member is dead. As I make sure with each
of my marks, his death bears meaning and significance. He presented himself as a target, one that I
was sent to snuff out, like a candle that was too close to lighting up
sparks. He happened to be too close to
something greater than he could have imagined.
Invictus Persona is unstoppable, for we are many. Your plans to pursue action will fall silent,
like the throat of a deer in the maw of a lion’s mouth. Consider this letter your only warning from
the collective known as Invictus Persona, for we see all, we know all, and we
will not hesitate to kill all who stand in our way. You will not be able to pursue us. You will not find us. If you come too close, we will find you.
We
are Invictus Persona
We
are many, we are unconquerable,
And
no one will stand in our way.
They left what
appeared to be a stitched patch and a stamp of the symbol used by the
killers. I wasn’t sure what this
was. A murdering cult? A semi-secret organization? A government operation? There were too many questions running through
my head. One thing was certain though,
they didn’t want me finding out who killed Chase and were willing to go through
great lengths to ensure that they wouldn’t be caught but would still be
“seen”. I was starting to shake. Jessie spoke up right as I finished reading
it.
“You see,
Derrick! THIS is what they are. It isn’t just a single killer. It’s an organization! There’s got to be so many of them, man! It could be anybody, man. I didn’t see handprints anywhere. Whoever did this was thorough. Whoever did this made sure to make Chase’s
death mean something. He had to have
been close to something huge if they went to that length to do that to
him.” Jessie was borderline
hysterical. He was trembling like crazy
and seemed ready to book it straight home.
This letter seemed to get to him as it did to me. This was downright sinister. They knew that my brother was close to
something. They knew that he was on top
of something that he shouldn’t have been and that’s why they killed him.
“You’re right,
Jessie. It could be anybody.” I paced for a minute, thinking about what I
wanted to do next, knowing that my brother was killed by a faceless killer and
was likely a copycat killer like they talked about in college. “But that’s why I need your help to track
them down.”
Jessie started
freaking out. “Are you crazy,
Derrick? Have you lost your mind? Going after something like that is bound to
get both of us killed! Think smarter,
man! Just hand this over to the police
and they’ll sort it out. You’re not a
detective, Derrick. You’re just a
college student.” I wanted to argue with
Jessie, but I could tell that he was distraught.
“Alright, Jessie. I’ll hand over the letter to the police. Just let me head inside and grab some things
before we go.”
Jessie shook his
head. “No can do, man! I can help with anything else. I can bring you guys food from the
restaurant, run you guys over some groceries, help you walk the dog, that sort
of thing. But this, I’m not touching
this with a ten-foot pole. You’re on
your own if you’re going after Invictus Persona, Derrick.” I sighed and shook Jessie’s hand.
“Well, I
appreciate it a lot, Jessie. Thank you
very much for your help and for bringing me this letter. We’re going to need all the help that we can
get around here for the time being.
“Sure thing,
man! I’d love to bring you both some
food from the restaurant! The owner
plans on handing the business over to me here pretty soon, so it’s almost like
I own the place!”
I was surprised
to hear about Jessie’s success. It
sounded like he was really doing well for himself. “Wow!
That’s great news! Good for you
Jessie! Yeah, that’d be great! Bring by whatever you think sounds good!”
Jessie let out a
nervous chuckle and reassured himself to me that he would be able to make good
on his promise. “Yeah, man! If you need anything else, please give me a
holler!” And with that, he got into his
car and started driving off away from my mom’s street. Living on the outskirts of Houston wasn’t too
bad. We lived in a nice neighborhood,
and it was pretty easy to get what we needed, but it was still nice to have
people like Jessie around who could provide spare meals when we needed it. Regardless of Jessie’s help, though, there
was going to be a lot that needed to happen if I was going to figure out who it
was that ended up killing my brother. I
decided to head back inside with the letter.
The plan was simple; make a copy of the letter and hand the original
over to the police to see if they could use it to track down the killer. On my way upstairs, my mom stopped me to ask
me about what went on outside.
“Was that Jessie Everson
outside?”
“Yeah, mom. He came by to drop off a letter to me.”
“Oh? What kind of letter was it?”
I started to feel
a bit dismissive, as I wanted to get upstairs to make a copy of the letter.
“It’s a letter
that was found at Chase’s place after Jessie found him. I plan on taking it to the police. I just need to get some stuff from my room
before I go.”
“Well, you better
get that to them soon. I don’t want
anything to do with that killer in my house!
That letter carries dark energy about it. As soon as you’re done up there, get it out of
my house, you understand?”
“I understand,
mom. I’ll have it out of the house
ASAP.”
My mother had
always been a woman of faith. Her
loyalty to her faith led her to be quite particular on which churches my
brother and I would attend as a kid. She
only wanted the best environment to be in so that she could, as she put it “let
the Lord in”. Anything that was deemed
to be evil wasn’t allowed in her house, and something like this would
definitely not be allowed to stay under any circumstance. What she didn’t know about involving my copy
of the letter wouldn’t hurt her, though.
Besides, I needed that letter so that I could study it further.
I went upstairs
and immediately went to put it underneath the scanner for my printer so that it
could make a copy of the paper. I set it
to print on both sides and got my jacket as it the machine prepped to print out
a copy of the letter. I felt nervous
looking at the printer. There was just
something about getting that letter out that made my skin crawl. Whoever did this to my brother wanted to make
sure that I stayed away, and all that I wanted to do was the opposite. It was enough to keep Jessie away from this,
but I wasn’t content. I needed to know
who was behind this, why they wanted my brother dead, and how I could bring
this killer to justice. The best place
to go to get more clues on this would be to take this letter to the police and
see what they could do with it.
The copy of the
letter came out of the printer and seemed to be an almost perfect copy of
it. The only thing that was different
about it was that I accidentally chose to print in black ink instead of in
color. The symbol on the back of the
paper looked different after I printed it out in black and white, almost like a
ghost outline. There were different
colors in the original letter, but this one looked eerily different, almost
like the symbols formed a mask. I
thought that was weird but tried not to put too much focus on it at the
time. I took the original copy of the
letter and was ready to head out the door when my mom stopped me on the way
out. “Remember, Derrick. You tell them only what’s necessary. Don’t give them any more than you need
to. I know how you like to overshare, so
only share what you need to.”
“I understand,
mom. I’ll only share what I have to.” My mom had a bit of a distrust of the local
police, due to her having some issues with the police after something happened
with my father years ago. I never
learned what that was, but it always seemed like something that she didn’t want
to talk about. I don’t blame her for her
distrust, I just didn’t bear the same distrust that she does. I walked my way out to the car and made my
way to the police station near where Chase lived. Chase didn’t live too far from where my mom
lived, so it was easy to get over to the police station that was holding his
stuff. I made my way inside and was
greeted again by the same cop who had greeted me last night. His name was Lieutenant Gerald Boyd, and he
was the one to who I turned in the letter.
“Hello, Mr.
Boyd. I have something that might be of
interest to the investigators involved in my brother’s case.”
Lieutenant Boyd’s
face perked up. “Oh, and what might that
be?”
I handed him over
the letter that I received. Within a
matter of seconds, that grin that was on his face faded away fast and was set
with a sense of dread. What this meant
to me was one thing, what this meant to someone like Lieutenant Boyd was a
whole different matter. He gestured to
pull me aside away from other people so that we could speak. “Do you happen to know where you got this
letter?”
I made sure to
not reveal that it was explicitly Jessie who gave me the letter, that way this
wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
“I just got it from someone who was in the area. They were aware of the incident and happened
to think that the letter was addressed to me.”
Lieutenant Boyd
sighed and gave me a look that looked almost pitiful. “Well, if this letter is addressed to you, it
certainly seems grim. In this case,
however, I think that this letter is addressed to us and think that there is a
lot for us to investigate with the case of your brother.”
He started to
walk off with the letter and handed it off to another cop. “Make sure that this gets taken to evidence
for me. I want to save this for when she
shows up.”
I saw the
Lieutenant walk back over to me with a fake reassuring smile. “We’re going to be working with the FBI on
the case of your brother. You should be
receiving a call from an agent regarding information about your brother soon. Your information and family are in good
hands.”
I tried to take
what he said to heart, but I knew that what he was telling me was said to try
and make me feel better and nothing more.
It didn’t provide me anything and neither did he. I was just going to have to wait for this
agent to get back to me on the information involving my brother. Hopefully, they wouldn’t take long, and
hopefully, they’d have more information.
The FBI was the top agency in America for crimes like this. All the top crime shows that I ever watched
growing up involved them and if anybody was going to be able to track down my
brother’s killer and be able to bring them to justice, it would be the FBI. They were often spoken of as being the grand
jewel of the American agencies involved with investigation. If anyone was going to be able to help me, it
would them. Now was the time to practice
a great virtue, patience.
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