The atmosphere in the Eldridge police station remained dense, haunted by echoes of the night's tragedy. Even seasoned officers were unsettled; the crime scene raised as many questions as it answered. To them, John's death was an enigma—a tableau so perfectly staged that any definitive judgment, suicide or murder, was all but impossible. All forensic eyes raked every inch of evidence, searching for imperfections in a mask crafted for deception.
Throughout the night, the details remained stuck in the minds of both investigators and family. The plan had been orchestrated with chilling precision; the locked door, the rope, the note left in Braille—a language unreadable to the average onlooker—all were purposeful, silently demanding scrutiny. Yet, small cracks defied the narrative, the most glaring among them being the weakened state of the apartment's main entrance. The door had not merely closed—its fibers were splintered, as if having braced against a sudden, violent intrusion. Officers marked photographs, bagged potential evidence, and documented every scrape and dent. None could forget the resounding bam, a detail Noah had already mentioned, replaying in memory as the likely moment the barrier was breached by a hand not belonging to their son.
Surveillance remained inconclusive. The grainy footage showed nothing more than darkness cloaking the building's facade and swaying pine branches beneath faint streetlights. Each officer carried away a thread of uncertainty—how could a family's sanctuary become so easily vulnerable, and how could a death feel so impenetrable amidst such a thorough search for truth?
By sunrise, the weariness had set in for Luna and Noah. It was five in the morning, but daylight seemed reluctant to cross their threshold. Luna sat on the edge of their narrow bed, tears gliding quietly down her cheeks. She looked to Noah, eyes red-rimmed and hollow from a night spent between sobs and paralysis.
"Will we ever come back from this?" Luna's words were almost silent, trailing as mist in the dawn-lit room. She was not looking for comfort, but for confirmation that hope still existed somewhere beyond their endless ache.
Noah squeezed her hand, bringing it up to his forehead, pressing the combined sorrow between furrows and flesh. "Yes—even impossible itself says, I'm possible," he whispered, voice trembling with conviction burdened by loss. "Tomorrow will be a good day. I promise." And though the gesture was meant to reassure, it betrayed the depth of his own sadness—the mask slipping, the pain exposed for Luna alone.
Eventually, Luna drifted into a restless sleep, body curled defensively as if to shield her heart from further harm. Noah remained awake, the weight of fatherhood—now irreversibly marked by absence—holding him captive to memory and regret.
As the sun edged higher, bringing reluctant clarity with the dawn, Noah's phone startled him from reverie. The hospital was calling; a voice, formal and measured, relayed a simple directive. The postmortem had been conducted, and the time had come for Noah to review the findings in person. The clinical tone of the communication contrasted sharply with the emotional havoc within him, yet it sparked the hint of hope—a chance that science and careful record-keeping might shed light where human heartbreak could not.
Noah roused Luna, her body heavy from exhaustion as she struggled to shake off the vestiges of troubled sleep. He collected his thoughts; the day now belonged to answers, however cruel or comforting they might be.
The Ongoing Police Investigation
Simultaneously, across town, Michael and Andrew clocked in at the police station. Both men had spent the previous hours immersed in reports and scene analysis, minds swirling with hypotheses. The investigation felt stalled. They sat in the dimly lit report room, evidence bags on the desk and photos of John's room pinned to a corkboard. The forensic team had returned preliminary findings, including a translation of the cryptic Braille note.
Andrew turned to Noah as he arrived, his face unreadable. "Was your child depressed?" The question was not meant to accuse, but to probe the emotional landscape beneath the forensics. Depression was a common precursor in genuine suicides, and understanding John's state of mind was crucial to ruling out or confirming underlying causes.
Noah's reaction was measured, yet unmistakably shocked. He was certain of John's character—always open, perpetually smiling, never one to hide his feelings. The note itself, once decoded by expert hands, only intensified the confusion.
The Braille translation read: "I WAS WORTHLESS AND HOPELESS AND I GIVE UP."
Andrew shared the note without embellishment. The link between such words and suicidal intent seemed obvious to outsiders, but Noah could not reconcile the message with the John he had known. He insisted his son could not be distressed to this magnitude and that secrets were not John's way.
Noah's thoughts began to race. If John wasn't depressed, what then? Why use Braille—a language foreign to him—for such a declaration? Who could have crafted the scene?
Michael, ever pragmatic, noted that no resolution was yet possible. "We don't know till now," he remarked somberly, stacking the evidence for later review.
Noah announced his plans: he and Luna would proceed to the hospital, driven by the hope that the postmortem could confirm or dispel the possibility of murder.
Andrew's skepticism showed through, "What do you expect to find?" he asked.
Noah replied that the physical report might expose discrepancies invisible to the casual observer—whether the act was self-willed or forced upon his child by another.
With a heavy heart, Noah roused Luna once more. He informed her that the postmortem report had come; hope flickered in Luna's expression—a fragile smile puncturing the blanket of sorrow, if just for a moment.
The Car Ride and Hallucinations
The journey to the hospital offered only unease. As Noah drove, both he and Luna found themselves haunted by fleeting images. Noah blinked rapidly, suddenly seeing John in the periphery—a spectral afterimage, too vivid to be real. Luna, too, caught sight of the same vision, and voiced her confusion.
Noah realized they were hallucinating, the mind's desperate attempt to conjure comfort, or perhaps a warning amid trauma. He admitted the unreality, and Luna confided that even in sleep, she'd been racked by disturbing dreams.
Her recounting was poignant. In her dream, John had come to her, urging that grief over "small things" was unnecessary, that they should not obsess over the past but look to the present. Life, according to John's apparition, was without intrinsic meaning; not all lives were equal, and the illusion of fairness was reserved for those on the outside of true suffering.
Luna pressed him in her dream, chasing the justification for such beliefs. John, acting as a guide, exposed slums and those left behind by society—illustrating that inequality and racism carved irreparable rifts in their world. The conversation had turned to the question of the afterlife. John denied its existence, reducing all hope of death as respite or reunion to a human invention. He existed now only as a fleeting guardian, sent to help uncover his own demise.
Luna awoke with tears streaking her cheeks. She relayed to Noah the haunting message from her dream—the sense that nothing they could do in the present would restore the past or guarantee justice. Grief, she now suspected, was both empty and profound, a shield and a burden.
Noah replied with calm certainty, his mysterious demeanour barely concealing a tempest of doubt. He asserted that sometimes, things perceived as unreal are real enough to shape lives, and suggested they would investigate further together.
The Hospital and Revelation
The hospital rose before them, its five stories looming in the crisp morning air. Noah and Luna surveyed the sprawling structure—a bastion of security and modern design, precisely why Noah had chosen it for their needs. The facilities were unmatched in Eldridge, with each level meticulously divided into 100 rooms designed for privacy and efficiency.
Upon entering, the couple navigated through polished corridors and joined the reception queue. Noah inquired after Dr. Voss, who was stationed in room 407. The receptionist directed them toward the appropriate hallway.
Room 407 was used for reports; its walls lined with filing cabinets and charts. Dr. Domain Voss, characterized by his sharp jawline, black hair, and formal attire, greeted them professionally. He gestured for them to enter, acknowledging their arrival with a polite tilt of his head. No dialogue, just formality and process.
Noah began the administrative ritual, filling out the necessary victim details on the provided forms. It was a moment of transition—one that signified the cold intersection between clinical record-keeping and irrevocable loss.
Finally, with all documentation complete, Dr. Voss handed them the postmortem report. Noah accepted the envelope, hands trembling from anticipation and apprehension. The paper inside held the promise—or threat—of closure, not just for them, but for the investigation as a whole.
The answers were poised to shatter illusions or carve the way for truth's arrival.
End of Chapter
As Luna and Noah stepped out into the corridor with the report grasped tightly, the wind outside seemed to carry the faintest whisper of John's memory, entwined in sorrow and the slow advent of hope. For the family, the next steps were uncertain, guided only by belief in each other and the unwavering need to know: who had truly taken John away, and whether the cruel perfection of the night could be unraveled by reason, science, or in the quiet visitation of a haunted dream.
The mystery remained, unsolved and deepening, but the path to resolution pressed ahead—one forensic fact, one fragment of memory, one promise between survivors at a time.
Chapter 3 ends
To be continued