I don't even know if I should type this, but I feel like I am going insane here.
I talked to mister Claessens again, the retired policeman who is the only one who wants to talk about the case. He told me something very interesting. At least, I can't remember him telling me this before. Sometimes the little facts come into place when some time has passed.
Mister Claessens is a friend of my father. They like to go fishing. He sometimes jokes that I am an honorary granddaughter of him. He is a nice man, who has the looks of Sinterklaas lately.
My father asked me to bring mister Claessens some fishing gear he had lend from him. When I was there the conversation went to Maria. I don't even remember how it started.
He told me it had been very misty the day Maria went missing. And the police was busy chasing after an animal abuser who left dead animals near the edge of the village. The brute had put the animals in brine, before leaving them on the street to rot. Some animals were covered in salt. The police was clueless, because there was no pattern they could find. Sometimes the animals were wild life, sometimes they were missing pets. Except for the salt and brine the animals were covered in, they seem well fed and taken care for.
The only pattern the police could find was the weather circumstances at the time the animals appeared. It was always misty. This means they were all out looking for the culprit the day Maria went missing.
He told me someone had heard screaming coming from the forest. It had sounded like a woman. He kept telling me the person who had heard the screams had passed away shortly after that night (car accident) and that person was the only one who had heard the screams. And when they started investigating that part of the village, there was not a single sign of a struggle. They did find a dead dove.
Around the same time, before Maria was missing there was one more thing that mister Claessens could remember: people have been reporting strange sounds coming from the mist. Especially the sound of bells was reported a lot. But when they would follow the sound, they never found the source.
I keep hearing bells when I go outside around dusk.