Oakhaven's scathing howled a sad dinner, shaking the skeletal branches of the ancient oaks that gave his name to the city. A perpetual twilight clung to the streets, even at noon, as a consequence of the dense canopy and the oppressive atmosphere that seemed to be filtered from the ground. It was a suitable backdrop for the sinister tapestry that Seraphina was about to unravel.

Seraphina Bellwether was not an ordinary FBI agent. His badge identified her as a special consultant, but her true designation was much more esoteric: a psychic detective. It had a rare confluence of skills: postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance and remote visualization), the talents that the FBI, in its increasingly desperate attempts to combat the growing wave of inexplicable crimes, had accepted scolding.

Tisserand's case was his breakdown. Five young women, each found with macabre art in the midst of the twisted roots of the Oakhaven Oaks, their vital force was extinguished with chilling precision. Conventional methods had not produced anything. The murderer, called "Tisserand" by the media for the intricate almost woven patterns of the victims' wounds, was a ghost in the machine, without leaving a trace but terror.

Seraphina appeared before the last scene of the crime, the air full of the metal spike of the blood and the cloying sweetness of the decomposition leaves. Local detectives, hardened with years on force, gave him a large position, his faces are a mixture of skepticism and morbid fascination. They had seen their work before, the disturbing way in which it seemed to go back layers of reality to glimpse the invisible.

She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, letting the chilling wind wash her. It was more than just wind; It was a duct, an echoes. He extended with his mind, without searching, but allowing himself to be.

Flashing images: a flash of crimson, the frantic drumming of a heart, the aroma of the wet earth and the lavender soap.

Seraphina focused, anchoring the sensations. Lavender soap ... an unusual detail. All the victims were working class, the soap was a luxury that probably could not afford. The weak aroma clung to the air, a whisper in the cacophony of death.

He knelt with the victim, gently touching the cold skin of his hand. Psychometry. The object, or in this case the person, maintained a residual psychic footprint in its history. It was like reading a book written in emotions, in fleeting snapshots of experience.

Panic. A look at a kind and worn face. The taste of cheap coffee. Then, a sparkle flash of pain, a distorted face that is coming above, eyes like fries of ice.

The image was fleeting, fragmented. She needed more. He needed to be closer, immerse himself in the psychic residue that clung to Oakhaven like a live.

"I need to see his house," said Seraphina, his voice just a whisper.

Detective Miller, an abrupt man with tired eyes, raised an eyebrow. "Who is the house, agent Bellwether? We have no suspicious."

"The murderer," she replied, her look fixed on the twisted roots of the oak. "He's here. He has always been here."

The following days were a descent to the labyrinthine corridors of the collective psyche of Oakhaven. Seraphina, guided by fragmented visions and intuitive pushes, directed the investigation into a tortuous route through the city. She visited the local apothecary, drawn by the weak aroma of the lavender. He spent hours in the city library, studying old newspapers and historical archives. She wandered through the extensive cemetery of Oakhaven, a silent city of stone and sadness, bewitting with a silver pendant, looking for a resonance.

The people of the town, initially cautious, became increasingly bewildered by their presence. The whispers followed her as shadows. Some saw her as a savior, a lighthouse of hope in the invasion of darkness. Others saw it as an omen of fatality, a reminder of the evil that festivated under the sheet of its picturesque community.

One night, while staying in a ruins, Seraphina tried remote visualization. She lay prone to the crispy bed, closed her eyes and emptied her mind. Guide for the faint echoes he had collected, projected his conscience beyond the limits of the inn, looking for the murderer's den.

He saw a Victorian house in ruins, his paint peeled like the skin burned by the sun. The ivy covered with the walls, obscuring the windows as blind eyes. A feeling of suffocating loneliness permeated the air. The aroma of the lavender was stronger here, mixed with the smell of moisture of the decomposition.

Inside, he saw a messy workshop, full of strange tools and half projects. A mannequin was standing in the center of the room, covered with an tattered dress. The face was obscured, but Seraphina recognized the fabric, the same material used by the last victim.

Then, a figure of the shadows emerged. High, emaciated, with hunched shoulders and a white hair shock. His face was hidden in the shadow, but Seraphina saw her hands, long and elegant fingers stained from what looked dry. The vision fractured, leaving Seraphina panting with breath, her heart was beating hard on her chest. She knew where she was. She knew who he was.

The house was located on the outskirts of Oakhaven, located deep in a forgotten corner of the forest. Detective Miller and his team, and detective Izzy Diaz, surrounded the property, their prepared weapons, on alert. Seraphina retreated, letting the officers violate the house. She knew what was waiting for them.

The house was exactly as he had seen in his vision: a monument in decomposition to isolation and madness. The air inside was full of organic decomposition stench and the tapping sweetness of the lavender. The workshop was a testimony of the murderous mind of the murderer, a macabre gallery of its victims.

The murderer, Elias Thorne, was found in the attic, surrounded by lots of old newspapers and photographs. He was an inmate, a forgotten son of a prominent Oakhaven family, led to madness for a lifetime of isolation and rejection. He had been weaving his death tapestry for years, selecting his victims based on a twisted and delusional logic, seeing them as exterior showcase mannequins of fashion stores in those years used in their grotesque art as if they were people.

Elias Thorne did not resist at the time of arrest. He seemed almost relieved, as if he had been waiting for someone to finally see him, to finally understand his twisted masterpiece.

When Thorne was taken, Seraphina stopped at the center of the workshop, her look at the tattered dress on the mannequin. He touched the fabric, feeling the residual psychic footprint of the victims: their fear, their pain, their fleeting hopes and dreams. The case was closed, but the echoes of Oakhaven's horror night persisted, clinging to the air as a persistent cold. Seraphina knew that she would take those echoes with her, a constant reminder of the darkness that stalked under the surface of the human psyche.

Later, sitting in his hotel room, Seraphina examined a small and intricately carved wood bird that he had found in Thorne's workshop. Psychometry again. While holding it, a final piece of the puzzle clicks on its place.

She saw Thorne when she was a child, creating the wood bird - a kind of mannequin - for her mother. He was smiling, his eyes full of a rare spark of joy. His mother accepted the gift, but fired him with a coldness that cut himself more deeply than any sword.

Lavender soap ... He had been his mother's favorite. He had been using it to try to recover the fleeting moments of connection he had shared with her, to at somehow atone for his rejection.

Tisserand, the weaver of death, had been looking for love, or at least one appearance, on the faces of his victims. But all he found was the emptiness of his victims' gaze, a reflection of the vacuum that consumed him.

Seraphina placed the wood bird on the nightstand. The Oakhaven wind howl, an unfortunate regret for the lost souls of the city. She closed her eyes, letting the darkness wash her.

He had resolved the case, but he knew that Oakhaven's terror was far from finishing. The darkness remained, on the stalking in the shadows, waiting for his next opportunity to emerge. And she, Seraphina Bellwether, the psychic detective, would be there to fulfill it. Because she was the shield against the night, the guardian of the invisibles, who dared to deepen the abyss and bring to light the dark. Its purpose was the most dangerous: navigating the dark corridors of the human mind and facing the monstrous shadows that lived there, alone.

By Carlos del Puente relatos