 That damn Sarah Hatley is dangerous. She's been dowsing for dead animals ever since the last of the winter snow melted. The Hatley girl is always carrying that same crooked bit of a willow branch. Sarah holds now in front of herself with her eyes closed and then makes faces like she's detecting something invisible in the air. She calls it her sense and stick. I've seen her digging things up too. She's telling everyone who asks that she can make the little corpses feel better again. I'll admit that I've noticed a strange abundance of squirrels and blue jays in the parklands this year. Maybe that's just an eerie coincidence though. The recent winter snowfall in Ashland was also irregularly heavy. Sometimes things are related and sometimes they aren't. Speaking of things that might or might not be connected, almost a dozen people went missing this winter. Not a single one of them has returned to Ashland or otherwise been found. The police are starting to think these incidents might all be related. In the papers, it's been theorized that a single unknown assailant might be living here in town. They've started calling this unknown person the Ashland Flayer. No official leads on a suspect yet though. That's even despite all the odd body parts that started turning up around town. It's ugly business to be sure. Sarah is 19 with a mind of an 11 year old. Physically, she's more like a young man. The girl is nearly 6 feet tall and broad in the shoulders. She's not just big. She's got muscles all over her body. I've caught Sarah on my property a few times now and each time I'm afraid to have her anywhere near me. She climbs the chain link to let herself into my backyard without my permission. I've had to chase her off every time she's done it. Her dowsen ride keeps bringing her back. I don't keep pets and I never did. I've told her that several times now, but she doesn't seem to believe me. Neighborhood kids have started saving up their lunch money and allowance to hire Sarah. They want her to bring back their dead pets. She's more than happy to accept all the pocket change and crumpled up bills they managed to bring her. Parents have started to worry and I've decided to start being more vocal about my own concerns. It's felt good to share my anxiety with others in the community. There's no question that Sarah Hatley will keep stirring up trouble in Ashland. If she hasn't done so already, she'll soon go way too far. The kids have started sneaking out after night. Even stranger, there's stories about pets coming back. Parents shrug it off mostly mundane explanations are quickly found because the only alternative is to believe Sarah's claims. It's not the same dog, they say. It's just that an oddly similar animal has wandered into town. Coincidences like that seem harmless enough at first. I've seen a few families chasing away animals, though, too. The father shouts and brandishes some makeshift weapon while standing in the driveway and the mother waits nearby until the animal is out of sight. Usually, she's trying to convince her crying children that it wasn't their dog that's being chased off. It's hard to tell how much Sarah understands because she's developmentally delayed. She could be a killer. That's certainly true. It wouldn't take a wild stretch of imagination to think of her bludgeoning in or stabbing a man to death. She's a remarkably strong girl. Sarah might easily feel the role of the Ashland Flare. The only missing piece is a demon in her heart. In my opinion, that's what makes someone lash out to kill a stranger. When you look at a person from the outside, there's no way to tell whether the demon is there. I heard rustling outside my window last night and retrieved my gun before heading to investigate. I clicked on the porch light as I stepped outside. At the periphery of the illuminated area, I found Sarah Hadley creeping near the side of my house. She looked daisily in my direction and I leveled my rifle at her. You damn girl. I hissed loudly. You're trespassing. She took her eyes a moment to adjust to the flood of light that I had brought outside with me. When she recognized the firearm that I carried, Sarah's face changed briefly into an expression of obvious anxiety. There's dead animals buried here. She stuttered out. Her face returned to tranquil blankness as I lowered my gun, but a trace of fear remained. Damn stupid. A thousand rod of hers was still pointing in the direction of my house. The tip of the branch wavered gently in the air as Sarah's hands began to tremble. I could tell that she was still thinking about how she had wrist getting shot. I don't keep any pets. I told her yet again, I never have. I shouldered my rifle as though I was ready to drive Sarah off my property by force. She made the same anxious face as before. I don't want to see you here ever again. I growled. Awful sorry, mister. She responded. But there's dead critters here that want healing. Looking crestfallen, she turned and started walking in the direction of her own house. I kept my gun in hand and the porch lied on as I watched her leave. Sarah lifted herself over the chain link fencing at the border of my property and continued walking into the darkness until I could no longer see her. Maybe I overreacted, but could you really blame me? The local newspapers published another story about the Ashland Flayer this morning. The Flayer has been connected to another disappearance that happened in the late hours of New Year's Eve. The police claim that they are narrowing their list of suspects, but they haven't arrested anyone yet. That's got me feeling scared. The last thing I need now are random townsfolk skulking around on my property. If I let my guard down, then I'm risking my own neck. I suppose that's true for anyone, isn't it? One of the strange dogs that's supposed to have been healed by Sarah caused some serious trouble today. They went berserk and started biting the kid that paid Sarah to bring his old dog back. By the sound of it, the kid took some really nasty bites. He was basically mauled. Finally, the people of Ashland are starting to organize against that weirdo clan of Hatlays, the mother and father, just as odd as Sarah is. Maybe they're afraid of their own daughter. Could that be why they never speak up about her behavior? The boy that was mauled returned from the hospital today. He wore some fresh stitches in his neck, down near the collar bone where the teeth had gone in. He's claiming that it's his fault that the dog bit him. He says that Sarah didn't do anything wrong. Apparently, he did something that used to bother his dog before it died. He did it to test whether his new dog was really the same one he buried last summer. He says that he's certain now that the creature that bit his throat open can only be his old pet. That irrational fool of a boy says that he still loves his childhood pet. Some people from the town went out to confront the Hatlays last night. I was among them. Sarah's parents were shy and did not seem to take our anger seriously. They meekly defended their daughter. They proclaimed that their family was innocent on all counts. The father claimed instead that the evil happenings around Ashland must be coming from somewhere else. The Hatlays mother even dared to whisper that there was something particularly strange about my own property. I spat an anger to hear it and then I loudly called the whole family devil worshipers. I said it right into their faces and did not grant any of them a single batted eye of doubt or sympathy while their family denied it. The town was mostly on my side by the end of it. We decided by now that the Hatlays were no good. The police continued to provide no real answers about the disappearances that occurred over this past winter. It seemed something of a not the routine for many people in Ashland to carefully check their surroundings before bed. Some from the community like to watch their yards from behind the barely painted blinds that obscure their upstairs windows. Other people are brave enough to step out of the sidewalks near their homes to talk with neighbors. Eventually, we all go inside and lock up extra securely as the dusk wanes tonight. I've started to complain more openly about that damn Sarah Hatlays. I think she's the sole source of all this trouble. That's what I tell the parents of those children who've asked for five or ten dollars to give the Hatlays girl. They want their dead pets back and she's playing along with a perverted sort of glee in order to keep pocketing their money. She's just a girl. Some of them respond, Sarah's a grown woman and stronger than some men. I tell them, my correction of this detail is stern enough to make most people's eyes flit nervously away from me. No one wants to look me in the eye because I'm saying things that disturb them. She's strong and strange enough to drive a knife into someone who doesn't suspect it. I've declared aloud more than once and she's sneaky enough to find people who would make good targets. It was a Sunday morning when Sarah Hatlays finally went too far. She found something in the town square that Ashland police had completely failed to notice. I was one of the first people to gather around as Sarah started prying up the cement pavers that were there in the public promenade. She looked to be keen on revealing a section of soil that was hidden underneath. Then down into the dirt with her bare hands, Sarah quickly uncovered the rigor stiffened arm of a corpse. It'd been buried only inches beneath the surface of the ground. The killer had covered the body with little more than a dustin of dirt and then simply crunched the heavy cement pavers back on top of the shallow grave that had been made there. Now, Sarah was gripping the corpse by its exposed wrist. She was heaving with all her strength to bring more of the body up and out of the ground. Those of us who were standing there with Sarah begged her to stop. The police will be here soon, we told her, you don't need to touch the body no more. Sarah kept digging, though. She was prying at the caked on dirt with her fingertips to reveal more of the corpse. It soon escalated and became even worse than that, though. Repeatedly, she drew her nose and mouth disgustingly close to the putrified flesh. Was she smelling it? No, it was even worse than that. Each time that Sarah's face went near the arm, I could see that she was leaving truth marks behind. That damn girl's biting the body. I screamed in pure revulsion. She's tasting it. My accusation was enough to draw Sarah out of her reverie. She looked up to all of us who were gathered there around her with a look of fear on her face. And she revealed that there were indeed gritty bits of rotten coagulates stuck in and around her mouth, solidified blood, stained the crooked angles between most of her teeth. The saliva from her tongue rehydrated some of the congealed mass, returning it to something like fresh blood flow. The liquefied red trickled down in rivulence from the pouton corners of Sarah's mouth. It's an misunderstanding. Sarah wailed. I found this fella down here, but I didn't do nothing to him. She let out a scream of frustration. He just needs waking up. I have to wake him up now or he won't get another chance. He wants to get up here along with the rest of us. He's begging me to help him wake up. Sarah brought her voice down into something like unintelligible sobbing and remained sitting by the corpse she had unearthed. She sat like that until the police arrived. They put Sarah in a holding cell down at the county jail and they brought the remains of that corpse to the morgue. It'll take a few days for the body to be identified properly. I reckon that we'll learn a lot more in the coming days, but it's already gotten to the point where the community of Ashland seems to have come to a final consensus. The Hadleys are going to be forced out of town. We'll drive them out with weapons and actual bloodshed if it's come to that. Even local police and churches seem ready to stand aside and let us take matters into our own hands. I suspect the newspapers won't breathe a word if we're all ultimately forced to kill them. We'd all be criminally complicit just for defending ourselves and our towns. What sense in there is airing an honest town's dirty laundry like that? Well, Sarah's back out of jail on a pathetically small bail amount. It was made clear to her that we mainly just never want to see her face again. The Hadleys are packing up everything in their house and they'll be on the road soon enough. I don't know exactly how much of a direct role I've had in purging that clan from my beloved Ashland, but I'm glad at least to see that they're finally almost gone. It's an undeniable relief. But I wonder whether this could really be the end of my restless nights. I'm finally safe. You and I are strangers, dear listener, and I'm confident that we will never meet. For this reason, I can at least admit this to you. I'm the one they call the Ashland Flayer. The remains of no fewer than 30 victims are buried in the cellar beneath my house. I work in the winter to stifle the smell. By springtime, I've cleaned and preserved all the trophies that I care to keep. I hope, for their own sake, that the Hadley family never tries to come back to Ashland if Sarah Hadley douses her way back onto my property. She's gonna find a lot more than she ever bargained for.