The search took all day.

His men tackled the first floor of the house, the barn, the field and the resounding woods to a certain extent. Campbell did the second floor, the loft she was living in, the attic and the basement. So all the really scary places that no one wanted to do. Eventually, he made his way out to the maze.

He hated Culverton house, but that maze was the worst part.

Oh, the house itself was bad. He always felt like he was being watched, and this time had been no exception. In fact, as he went through Angelica's personal quarters on that third floor annex it was worse. It almost felt like someone was standing right behind him the whole time. He kept turning around to see if he could catch anyone, but no one was ever there. He even checked to make sure that there weren't any peepholes, but he found nothing.

The maze, however, the maze was much worse than the house. The maze felt like the hedges were closing in on you, the maze felt like you had something following you at all times, in the maze he swore he could hear something talking.

He told himself it was whispers on the wind but he wasn't sure he believed that. Campbell always knew how to get through it, he always found the center no problem, but he hated how he felt in that maze. The heavy awareness, of eyes on the back of his neck, that feeling that something might reach out and grab him, it was always worse in the maze.

He never went in along, of course, he always took someone with him, someone who spooked and jumped and asked questions like: "What was that?" and "Did you hear that?"

He never knew what it was, and he always heard whatever it was they were worried about, he just pretended he didn't.

They got through the maze. Neither missing man was there.

They went through the barn, nothing there. They went through the corn field, no sign of any activity there either. They went through the woods near-by, still nothing.

The crime scene unit went through the house. Nothing there either. You know, except for blood in the kitchen. Nothing looked out of place anywhere else, either. If it weren't for the forced open window in the in the parlour he wouldn't have thought that anyone had broken in at all.

They did, however, find blood under the couch. Only a few droplets, seemed like spatter but there was no sign of blood anywhere else in the room.

It didn't smell like it had been cleaned, but maybe it had. He had them test the areas near-by to see if any chemicals had been used. Nothing.

When they ruled out them hiding in or around Culverton they moved onto their personal homes.

They went to Tommy's first. As the ring leader his apartment would be home base. Place was empty, trashed but empty. They might have assumed that it was trashed after his death, but no, Tommy wasn't that big into cleaning, so it looked about the same as it usually did.

They went to Dan's next. That place was a little cleaner but showed no signs that anyone had been there recently.

It was while he was at Dan's place that they got the call. The Martinez's reporting suspected domestic violence or at the very least a noise complaint. They wanted someone to come out and take a look.

That was interesting, because Sloan lived with his parents, in the garage attached to their house. It wasn't like them to turn their baby in, so it had to be bad for them to be calling to have them swing by and check-up.

When Jack got there, he found Mrs. Martinez out, pink bathrobe on, her hand clutching the neck closed, curlers in her hair.

"I heard screaming," she said. "Thought they were just fighting again, but then it all went quiet and now he won't answer."

Ah, so this was more of a welfare check, they just wanted them to come quicker.

"You have the key?" he asked.

"Course, but the door's blocked."

Well... wasn't that odd?

He told Mrs. Martinez to go back into the house before he had Brett and the other officer with him go around to block any other exits, Jack was the biggest of the lot anyway and he wasn't too old to break down a door.

He knocked first. "Sloan, it's Sheriff Campbell, can you let me in?"

Sloan, though a troubled boy, had always been a good boy. He cooperated when he got caught, Jack had lost count of the amount of times the boy had completed mandatory rehab. If he hadn't kept getting caught up with Tommy Black and his kind of crowd, the boy might have had a chance to become something.

There was no answer, though he could hear something moving inside.

"Right, Sloan, I'm coming in."

It was a courtesy, giving how squirrelly he was acting, considering his partners in crimes were either dead or missing, he had more than enough evidence to just burst in.

He tried kicking the door first, but it didn't budge. Right, so it really was blocked. It took a few hits from his shoulder to get the door slightly open, he could see that it had been blocked with a nightstand. He got the door wide enough to shove it away and then he could burst in.

To mass pandemonium.

The garage was done up in all whites, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all white. Oh there were other colors. His comforter was blue, his pillows green and one black. There were posters on the wall, videogames and clothes strewn across the floor.

And blood.

My god so much blood.

It was like he had walked into a slasher flick.

The blood splattered up most of the wall and up onto the ceiling, all originating from the bed. The bed was pooled with the blood, it had soaked into the mattress before it puddled on the floor.

Rebecca Bourth had been Sloan's on and off girlfriend for years. High school sweethearts, when he was with her he was usually clean. You always knew when he wasn't because they would break up. He had no idea why she had been there that night, but it hadn't ended well.

She lay on the bed, limbs splayed out, chest practically carved open, everything inside of her laid out almost categorically. Her blue eyes still open, shock on her face like she couldn't believe this was happening.

Yeah, neither could Jack.

He hadn't seen anything this bad in years. Not even Culverton had gotten this violent, well... not in his lifetime anyway.

Brett came in next and swore when he saw the room. Jack almost felt the same way, he just couldn't show it.

There came a whimper and both him and Brett jumped for their guns. They scanned the room and then spotted a mop of curly brown hair, just behind the bed curled up into the corner.

Jack gave Brett the signal to wait and then carefully made his way through the blood and towards the back wall on the other side of the bed.

There the blood stopped being splatters and started being something else. Handprints, finger smudges, like someone was trying to paint with it, but all they drew was eyes and teeth.

Sloan was sitting, eyes wide, crouched in the corner. He was rocking back and forth, head in his bloodied hands. His white shirt practically red he had so much blood on him. And there, right between his feet was the clock Angelica had said was missing.

"He was so angry. The pale man. Angry. So angry. I said I was sorry... the girl... tell her... tell her... tell him to stop... so angry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Sloan..." Jack said softly but his head didn't move. "Sloan, what happened?" Still nothing. He just kept rocking back and forth and muttering. "Sloan what happened here?"

"The monsters followed," he said softly. "They came with me."

"Came with you? From where? From Culverton? What happened at Culverton?"

At that Sloan paused. "I told him not to," he said. "Told him it was a bad idea. But he wouldn't listen."

"Who? Tommy?"

"Said that we could get away with it. That everyone'd blame the house."

Yeah. Jack figured that was what the thought process was. That they could break in, potentially hurt or kill Angelica if they had to, and everyone would just shrug it off as the house got her.

"But then... it started ringing. I couldn't get it to stop."

Did he mean the clock? Jack's eyes darted to the clock sitting at Sloan's feet. It's face pointed right at Sloan, like it was watching him. But it wasn't ringing now.

"He said he wouldn't hurt anyone but she came inside and he knocked her out. And then it came. He was so angry. So angry. Never... never seen anything like it. The pale man. The couch ate Dan and the pale man... he just... they were all so angry. "

The couch ate Dan? Yeah he was going to come back to that.

"Who was? Sloan, you're not making sense."

His hands dropped from his head and when they came back there was a knife in his hand. Jack instinctively took a step back.

"I ran. I had to. But they followed. I got one, I got one but not the others." Finally Sloan turned to him and Jack could see in his eyes that he was no longer all there. "Can't you see them? They're all over you."

No, Jack couldn't see what Sloan was seeing, only Sloan could see what he was seeing.

There was silence as Jack took all of this in. He honestly had no idea what Sloan was talking about, but it was clear that he had mistaken Rebecca for something else. The silence was heavy around them, blanketing the whole room.

It was oppressive, it was suffocating and it was into that silence that the ringing erupted. Shattering whatever sense of calm, no matter how heavy or dreadful it was.

It startled Jack, but Sloan, for Sloan this was something else. Sloan jumped to his feet with a yelp, his foot kicking the clock away from him.

"No, no, stop!" he howled. "No more, no more! Stay away!"

Jack had stepped back and away, which turned out to be a good thing when he started slashing at air. Each motion was a wild desperate attempt to cause damage to something, anything, but he wasn't aiming for Jack, or for Brett. In fact it didn't look like he was aiming for anything that Jack could see.

Whatever it was that Sloan was fighting it wasn't in the real world.

He waited for Sloan to turn his back and Jack grabbed him, one arm around his neck, the other hand going for the arm with the knife. It was surprisingly easy to disarm him, though less easy to get him in cuffs. He lost that knife and went wild, screaming for Jack to get off him, for the monsters to get away, that he was sorry.

It took all his power to keep him subdued enough to get the cuffs on him, and then Sloan was just screaming. Once he got him contained he handed him over to Brett who had just watched all of this with shock.

To be fair. Jack still wasn't sure that it had happened. He had never seen Sloan like this, he had seen the man high, drunk, tweaked out but not like this. Drugs didn't do that to a man, this was a straight psychotic break.

Andfrom under the bloody bed that stupid alarm clock just kept ringing, on and on,screaming, like a child having a tantrum while they dragged the shrieking Sloanout of that crimson stained room.