“So that was you?” said Anderson. “The messages scrawled in blood?”

“Pig’s blood, from Poledouris’s Gyros and Deli,” Annelise said. “Those Keystone Cops sent it away for tests that won’t be done for months.”

“The apparitions?”

“Smoke and mirrors, literally. Fog machine, dry ice, and a projector with an image I printed out off of the internet.”

Anderson reeled visibly. “But…why?”

“Business was slow at the paper…we were in danger of going under. Don’t you see? Everyone was as bored with it as I was, and some Scooby-Doo shit was just what we needed.”

Anderson shook his head. “Then why come to me? You could have kept going indefinitely, until you were caught.”

“Well…” Annalise said. “You know the stuff that’s been happening recently? The screaming in the old Clarke Building, the mutilated squirrels in the park, and the people being stalked by shadows?”

“Yeah?”

“That wasn’t me. I didn’t do it,” Annelise sobbed. “I’ve been faking supernatural occurrences…but now they are happening without me. inputI’m afraid that in faking all this stuff…I may have awoken something that does it for a living.”

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