The moment my flashlight beam reveals the grotesque thing dangling from the branch, I’m forced to stifle an urge to both yelp like a startled dog and vomit simultaneously.

Fanning my flashlight back and forth for a better look, I squint up at the mass of organs and tissue hanging limply from a gnarled branch of a moss-covered live oak. They do indeed appear to be strung up by what can only be described as part of the intestinal tract. It isn’t a surprise since Rausch had already told me as much, but it’s one thing to ‘expect’ something so macabre. It’s another thing entirely to see it for oneself.

From what I can see, the thing that most resembles a stomach has been cut open. Its contents are now splattered underneath across the pine needles at my feet.

“This is the first one I found,” Rausch whispers nervously, as if whatever has left it behind might lurk somewhere nearby, nestled in the shadows of the forest. “I was curious about what was inside. Thought maybe I could identify the animal by the stomach contents, so I cut it.” He gestured to the mound of partially digested food on the ground. “That’s what fell out.”

Ignoring the stomach and its spilled contents for the time being, I take hold of the lowest tree branch, pull myself up, and scramble a few more feet into the tree for closer look. As Rausch had suggested, I’m not just looking at an organ or two, but an entire organ block, still attached by connective tissue, and partially concealed from the ground by strands of swaying Spanish moss.

Holding onto the tree with one hand, I quickly snap a series of photos from my phone, being sure to cover every square inch of the disgusting tableau. Satisfied with the photos, I toss the phone down to the wildlife officer, slip on a pair of latex gloves, then begin manually and visually probing the organs. After a few minutes, I’ve developed a mental inventory of every organ present within the block.

Two lungs, two kidneys, a liver, pancreas, adrenal glands, spleen, both upper and lower intestines, and the deflated stomach. I blink as I roll the inventory over in my mind again, then do a second search revealing the same results.

“The heart is missing,” I say, but not sure whether I’m speaking to Rausch or to my bewildered self. After taking a third and final look, I glance down at the FWC man and nod. “Yep. Heart’s definitely not there, but…”

“But?”

“Um…” I hesitate to tell him what I’m thinking as I exhale a column of smoke from my cigar and ponder my examination. It’s just too bizarre to even consider. Okay. This is getting freaky, I think to myself. Like Twilight Zone freaky. “You say there’s another set somewhere nearby?”

He nods again, and I drop down to the ground before slipping the gloves off and stuffing them in a red biohazard bag as I let out an exasperated breath.

“What is it, Dr. Barrows? It’s somethin’ bad, right?”

I give him a sheepish shrug. “First of all, seems like I’m going to be hanging out around here longer than I expected,” I say. “So, call me Jack. Dr. Barrows is my dad. And he ain’t a ‘doctor’ in the traditional sense of the word unless you want preface it with the word ‘witch’.” I glance up at the block of organs dangling about two feet above my head. “And yeah. We have a bit of a problem. Those are most definitely human organs, not animal. I think it’s safe to say we have a murder on our hands—and a grisly one at that. Two of them if the other set you mentioned turns out to be more of the same.”

A breeze shifts, blowing the stench from the viscera back into my face. I wince, biting down more on my cigar and drawing in a deeper puff before exhaling it. Still nauseated by the foul onslaught, I take a step back from the tree and shine my light across the ground around us. Other than the contents that had spilled out of the stomach, the ground is barren of blood or any signs of a struggle. There are no boot prints, other than ours, either. Even the stomach contents appear benign and altogether unremarkable. If there’s any identifying who the organs belong to, it’s not going to be from what they last had for dinner before their gruesome death.

“Are you sure it’s a murder?” Rausch asks. “I mean, couldn’t some kind animal have done this?”

I scrunch up my nose at the suggestion. “How long have you been doing this job?”

“Uh, I guess…about eleven years now, I suppose.”

“And in all that time, has any animal in this forest ever bothered eviscerating a human being and hanging their entrails up in a tree?”

He shook his head but didn’t say a word.

“Any animals around here even capable of doing something like that?”

One of Rausch’s eyebrows arches. “Maybe the monkey colony…all acting as one and…”

I shake my head bringing his hopeful supposition to a screeching halt.

“Even with every monkey in the colony working as one, it’s just not in their nature. They might kill a human, sure…if the human happened to encroach on their territory and threaten them, or if they’re rabid. But they’d just leave the corpse where it dropped and move on. Unless the monkeys are part of the cast from Planet of the Apes, they’re just not going to do something like that.” I scratch at the stubble covering my chin.

The question running through my mind right now is ‘why?’. Why kill someone, hide the corpse, and hang their organs up in a tree to rot? If it were hunters who accidentally killed someone, they might run away from the scene and not report it, but they wouldn’t take their time pulling a connected organ block out of a chest cavity.

Serial killer? That seems like the most likely answer. I’m not a cop or a detective, but I’ve seen enough Forensic Files on Discovery Channel to know serial killers love leaving little displays to be found. Signatures, they call it. Something that points directly toward the killer and sensationalizes the murders. Problem is, we’re out in the middle of nowhere and the organs are partially obscured by leaves and moss. It was pure chance that Rausch happened to stumble on them today. Doesn’t seem very likely this would be a staged dump site for a serial killer.

So, what does that leave us?

“Jeffrey, do you know if there are any cults in the general vicinity?” I ask.

His eyes widen at the question. “Cults? You think a cult did this?”

Truth is, Florida is a virtual hotbed of cult and occult activity. It wouldn’t be unheard of in this region of the state for practitioners of Santeria or Pablo Mayombe to be in the area—although from what I understand, neither are known for performing human sacrifice. But it is very possible we could be looking at the remnants of some ritualistic killing. I explain as much to Rausch.

“No, not that I’m aware of anyway,” he says. “I mean, there’s that old hippie commune about ten miles south of here, but I wouldn’t exactly call them a cult. Just a bit odd, is all.”

“How so?”

“Well, they claim to follow what they call the ‘Old Ways’. The ways of the Seminole and other tribes who lived around here back in the day. Commune with the nature spirits and all that malarkey.” Rausch runs a calloused hand through his thick mop of hair as he contemplates this commune. “They’re most a bunch of old people. Hippies from the sixties and seventies, I’d say. Flower children. I can’t see them doing anything like this, no matter how weird they…”

But his words are now lost on me. The moment he mentioned the Seminole tribe, my mind has already begun racing back to my childhood, and stories told me by Granny Crane, my grandmother, of the old Native American legends. Stories that describe something very similar to what we’re dealing with now…but for some reason, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Can’t quite remember the legend.

Not that I’m ready to even entertain such notions. Those old myths are nothing but superstitious nonsense. I can forgive Granny for buying into them since she was raised in an old hollow in backwoods Kentucky and had little more than a fourth-grade formal education. She was wise and smart as all get out in many things, but still lacked the academic sophistication to know when legends were only legends. And I imagine this commune Jeffrey Rausch is telling me about is little better.

“…doubt they’d harm a hair on anyone’s head. Just a bunch of…”

“Look, Rausch.” I hold up my hands to shut him up. “I think you need to call this in. The medical examiner needs to take a look at these organs. Maybe I’m wrong about the whole thing. I’m a vet, after all, not a human doctor. But I’ve taken enough anatomy classes, I’m pretty sure I’m right. And if I am, someone needs to initiate a homicide investigation. I’m guessing the FWC isn’t equipped for that kind of thing.”

He shakes his head.

“And while we wait on everyone to arrive, I don’t guess it’ll hurt too much if I have a look at the other set of organs you found.”

“Uh, the other what?” The big man seems nearly about to fall apart. If he was beside himself when we first met, he’s practically unhinged now.

“The other set of organs,” I say. “I’d like to look at them before the cops and medical examiner show up. Call it professional curiosity.”

He nods at this but doesn’t say anything. Instead, his eyes drift back up to the organs and he shudders.

“Jeff?”

“Huh?” He starts, then returns his gaze to me. “Oh, the other set. Yeah. Sure. I’ll show you.”

Rausch motions for me to follow, and we push another hundred or so feet further into the woods before coming to another block of organs hanging from a limb of an ancient tree. Despite another shroud of Spanish moss covering part of it, this time, under the bright beam of the flashlight, I can see the thing hung unmolested. Rausch didn’t bother to empty the stomach contents of this one like he had the first.

As I set to work with my examination, the FWC officer calls into headquarters and explains what I’ve told him. After a few minutes, he’s patched through to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and their on-call Major Crimes detective, where he has to repeat everything he’s already told two tiers of dispatchers. After a few minutes, he gives the detective the GPS coordinates and hangs up the phone.

“They’re mobilizing now, but it’ll probably be a couple of hours before they get here,” he says. “For now, they want me to stand guard and keep the place secure.”

I nod, but I’m not really listening to him. I’m too busy inventorying the organs of this set and keep coming up with the same results as the first. All internal organs accounted for except the heart.

“The heart is missing in this one too.”

“Uh, Jack?”

“That’s got to be significant somehow.” My mind whisks back to those old stories Granny used to tell me. Something about missing hearts. What was it?

“Jack?” Rausch’s incessant voice tears me from my train of thought. “I’m sorry, but I was told not to let anyone near the…the crime scene.”

I whip my head around at him. “Seriously? You called me here to look at them?”

“Yeah, but that’s before I knew this was an active crime scene. It’s my job to secure it, which means no unauthorized personnel should be pokin’ and proddin’ the evidence, ya know?”

Although I’m miffed, I can understand his predicament. I snap a few more shots of the organ block with my phone before slipping it into my shorts pocket and backing away. I then turn back to Rausch. “Any more of them?”

The officer shakes his head. “Not that I’ve found anyway.”

“And this is the first time you’ve seen anything like this?”

Rausch nods, just as his radio crackles to life.

“HQ. 3705,” the dispatcher on the other end of the radio announces.

Rausch palms his lapel mic, leaning his head to speak into it. “3705. Go ahead.”

“10-47. We have at least two Signal 33s at the Take Out Point. Sgt. Timmons is requesting you respond to investigate. We’re not sure if it’s connected with your current situation or not. Other units will be in route to maintain your scene ASAP.”

Rausch glances from Jack to the set of organs hanging precariously from the tree.

“10-4. I’ll be 10-97.”

“What?” I ask when the FWC officer refuses to take his eyes off me. “What is it?”

“We have some missing people. Kids. At least two that we know of.”

Now it’s my turn to glance up at the organs. A lump begins to swell in my throat. Two missing kids. Two sets of organs. Fortunately, as I give them another once over, I can’t help but think they’re far too large to belong to children…depending on the ages of the missing kids, that is. Still, the coincidence isn’t lost on me and I find myself slightly off-kilter at the news. This does not bode well.

“Take Out Point?” I ask.

“It’s where the kayakers and canoers launch for their tours along the Silver River. It’s like Grand Central Station here.”

My throat continues to constrict as near panic threatens to overtake me. This can’t be a coincidence. There might not be a connection at all, but something in the back of my mind is firing on all cylinders. I’m getting spooked. Worse, my mind returns to the old stories my grandmother used to tell me…horrible tales of terror and carnage among Native American tribes. Although I gave up superstitions years ago, they were still very much entwined into the fabric of the person I’ve become. A part of my heritage. The notion about those legends, no matter how ridiculous it might seem, isn’t going to go away until I dispel the myth with the truth.

“Mind if I tag along?”

Rausch throws him a nervous smile. “Doc, I was hoping you’d ask that.” The FWC officer began making his way toward the ATVs. “Come on!”

Next Chapter: Chapter 4