Who Am I?

Chapter 8 - The Case

Madisen sat up straight in her bed. A scream came from her lips as her nightmare had finally ended. She drew in a shuddering breath as she wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart and quickened breathing. Madisen reached over and clicked on the light of her lamp sitting on the stand. She placed a hand on her heart and flopped backwards onto the bed.

"It was just a dream," she told herself over and over. "It's just a dream. It's just a dream."

Except she knew it wasn't. Dreams of her past more than always turned out this way. Times of when she got scars, and not just physical ones. People she knew turning on her, facing her and doing things to her. Things that had already happened and some that she blamed on how well she really knew those people.

Madisen sighed. She knew that there was no point in going back to bed. Not that she could at any rate. Glancing at the clock she saw she had gained six hours of sleep. That's the most she had gotten in one night in a long time. Still, she readied herself, and climbed out of bed. It was time to go.

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Madisen's long drive took as long as she had guessed the minutes before that nightmare days ago. Sure, not the entire 30 hours, giving in to the fact that she had only stopped three times for food and bathroom breaks. This case was one of her strangest yet. But she found this town particularly strange. For one thing, the name.

"Dinosaur? What kind of a town was named Dinosaur?"

But one other thing that she found strange, was that the town had no past. Well it did, but not much of one. Aside from the missing persons and cattle mutilations there was nothing. Some of the history was in its National Monument, how it was named Dinosaur, and that it was in a Dark Avenger comic book as the home of one of the heroes. That was all she could find and it sort of unnerved her. What kind of town doesn't have history? One that kept secrets that's what.

The town itself wasn't as rundown as one would think. In fact, it was just, dry. But not so dry that nothing would ever grow. Well, the town wasn't dry, just the area around it. It was sort of in the middle of nowhere. The closest places to it was a city almost hour away to the West in Utah, or half an hour East to another town, near the Blue Mountains. The population wasn't too big but it was small enough that Madisen was sure everyone knew everyone and gossip was spread easily enough.

If you came in town from the East, from Utah, you would notice a large dinosaur sitting in front of a park. Across from the park, and next to it as well, were two different convenient stores. There was a post office following after the store across from the park. There was a pterodactyl sitting atop the roof of the small building. Then there was an ice cram shop, and then strangely enough a liquor store. She only found it strange that the two buildings were next to each other. The rest of the town consisted of houses, a library, and a shut down school atop a hill.

Her first stop inside the town was at the Main Hall, seeing as she couldn't find the police station. Actually, it seemed as though this town didn't even have one. The one good thing she could think of coming from the small town would have to be the fact that she wouldn't, or couldn't, get lost. The officer there gave her the file and directed her towards the nearest motel.

The room she had was somewhat nice. White walls, two beds, a stand with a lamp between the beds, a remote to the tv sitting across the room from the beds. A bathroom was just off to the side of the second bed away from the door. There was a window next to said door, and a two person table sitting just under the window. It was a little better than what she was used to. A little.

Madisen threw her bag onto the second bed and sat down at the table next to the window. The file read that the couple that went missing were from the town half an hour away. Rangely, she remembered. The man, mid thirties, had black hair and brown eyes. He was tall in stature and the only defining thing the man had on him was a tattoo above his left eye. The woman, mid to late twenties, had auburn hair, and brown eyes. She was only a few inches shorter than her husband. She had no defining marks that a person could identify her with had she actually gone missing. Turns out the couple were camping up behind the school in this town before their camp was found abandoned by a couple of teens riding around on four-wheelers.