Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency Year Five:
Case File No. 44-252
AMBER LOVE 14-MAR-2022 Find out how all this began. Catch up on Year One, Year Two, Year Three, Year Four and previous Year Five cases at the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency.
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Where We Left Off:
The Winchester-Nabu Detective team made a huge discovery for monster hunters! Gus captured and killed his first volepyr, a vampire meadow vole! If you like monster hunting stories, might I suggest you read one of my short stories on Wattpad.
Psycho:
I’m not a cinephile, but there aren’t any shower scenes I can think of that have the impact of Hitchcock’s Psycho. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never sat through that movie. I might not have a panic attack now that I know the spoiler. I can’t fathom what it was like for audience members in a public theatre when that came out on the big screen.
I learned something interesting about Psycho besides that it was a book first by Robert Bloch. The story was coincidentally timed around the infamous serial killer Ed Gein’s discovery. Supposedly Bloch didn’t know about Gein’s murderous history when he wrote Psycho. There are certainly plenty of similarities.
Don’t get too frightened. The Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency has not discovered a serial killer in the small hills of New Jersey. Our crimes have gone up and gotten more alarming. Armed robberies. Lots of drugs. It’s the crimes with firearms that have me most concerned. Nonetheless, our fine feline detectives have been handed another case — by me.
I went to get in the shower like any other day that’s not Hair Day. As a white woman, Hair Day is not the sacred ritual it could be like how Black women celebrate their hair and treat it well. I could do some kind of witchy ritual with it. I just don’t. I hate my shower. The less time in there, the better. I reached for my shower cap which I keep on the twin sink gooseneck faucet. I don’t need to use both sinks, so why not use the extra one for something practical, right? I picked up the shower cap and found several blood spatters!
WHAT THE HELL?
Sure, I cut up my legs shaving but — again with the honesty here — I hardly do that anymore. I’m more concerned about this menopausal mustache than the European hairy legs. Anyway, even if I were shaving in the shower, unless there was a lot of blood, there’s no way it would drip onto the top of my shower cap while rinsing the razor. It would have be so much more blood than what comes out from a shaving nick.
What is the source of this blood?
Why is it on my shower cap?
Should I be worried?
Is anyone hurt?
I first thought of Oliver to take the lead on this investigation. He’s more focused on things in the house. I spot him conducting stakeouts at key locations often. One of those locations is at the threshold of my bathroom. There’s a small step maybe four inches high. The riser contains a mesh-covered opening about two inches by six inches and was my only source of heat as a child. I used to lie on the floor in front of it and it was about as useful as a hair dryer on the lowest setting. Now this vent is one of Ollie’s favorite places for surveillance and intel gathering. Those old out-of-use ventilation shafts are part of the transportation network for the house mice gangsters. Since sound carries superbly through those vents, it’s excellent for spying.
Gus takes a strange backup role when Oliver is on one of these stakeouts. Gus will lie down in the bathroom and wait to see if anything interesting happens. Sometimes they overhear gangster plans and go running to another location. But I’ve digressed for a reason.
Mice are not involved in this crime, I can tell you that. However, since Ollie spends time right near the bathroom door, I thought he might have witnessed something peculiar. Now this is where Gus comes in. Like most cats, Gus stares at empty space, the ceiling or the wall, or maybe an imaginary friend. Maybe it’s a real friend, one of several ghost cats who still live with us. If you can picture this: Gus staring at “nothing” from the bedroom while Oliver is across the way at the vent listening.
They reported back to me that they heard a rustling sound by the window. The only window is next to that extra sink. Oliver has only jumped up on the vanity when no one is looking. I know this because I have heard him thump down when Gus is somewhere else. Gus often jumps up to that window mainly to reach up and dig his claws into the screen which he’s not supposed to do. The rustling sound could have been something disturbing the plastic shower cap.
Gus jumped up to the textured black countertop around the shiny black sink. He saw the spots of blood and called Oliver over. They looked around the bathroom and couldn’t detect rodent blood or a wounded animal.
When I arrived at the detective agency offices, they were waiting for me. I assumed that they wanted treats. Not a big leap. They always want treats. But that was where I made my critical mistake. I gave them treats and filled up the puzzle game with treats. They got distracted and forgot to tell me all about the disturbance!
When I finally noticed the blood on the shower cap, the drops were dry. “Huh. That’s weird. Slightly unsettling. I’m sure it’ll wash off when I shower.” No it did not! I’ve worn that shower cap several times in the shower and that blood does not come off!
Our theories now lie on the paranormal. To the best of my knowledge, nothing of the level of violence that would leave behind supernatural blood has ever happened in this house. On the land? Probably. It’s the United States and we’re on land that was used by indigenous people. I can’t imagine why something from back then would suddenly break through the veil and make an appearance.
What’s even stranger is that this is not the first shower cap we’ve had as evidence.
Case Findings:
Unexplained blood spatters on a shower cap seem to have supernatural origins. Gus and Oliver were almost eyewitnesses, but they were ear-witnesses. We didn’t get further in our investigation.
Case Status: Open
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.