"Beyond Dark" excerpt of the month (April 2025)
Wanting to let off some steam, Alyssa and Thayer go to the local hotel bar to drink. She ends up outside talking to the victim who dug herself from her own grave.
In the March excerpt, we got a glimpse into Thayer’s point of view when he talked to Randy, the property owner where the bodies were found buried. Randy and his wife, Marie, aren’t suspects immediately, but Randy is paranoid that something is out there. In this excerpt, Alyssa and Thayer got to the local hotel to have a few drinks after their long day. Thayer wants a game of pool, Alyssa wants to snoop into more local gossip with the bartender, but ends up outside talking to Kirsten Jarroll, the woman who dug herself from her own grave.
Silence fell over them. Alyssa gladly let the irritating small talk lapse. More relief washed over her when that stupid song finally faded off. Kirsten avoided looking at her, the caged bird also seeking solitude without expectations. Perhaps, Alyssa surmised, she would be more vulnerable right then.
“You have some explaining to do, by the way,” Alyssa said.
Kirsten tensed when Alyssa’s stern gaze landed on her.
“About… what?” Kirsten asked, her voice going more high-pitched.
Was she really feigning innocence? Alyssa rolled her eyes and took a long drag from her cigarette.
“In our initial interview, you told me you had no secrets. You lied to me. Your affairs are quite the talk of the town, young lady.”
Kirsten’s shoulders slouched, her free hand spreading against the wall behind her. She leaned her head back. Alyssa spotted tears glinting against the orange street lights.
“Are you aware of how many people know about your extra curricular activities?” Alyssa continued.
Kirsten shook her head, her shoulders tensing. “Fuck off. Judge me all you want. You don’t have a clue what I’m going through.”
A sardonic laugh escaped Alyssa. “Oh, honey. I’m a profiler. Judging is exactly what I do. You feel stuck here, with a husband you aren’t happy with and kids you maybe never really wanted. You never got to go out into the world. Never got to see anything beyond the walls of this dump of a bar and the county line. Your version of adrenaline rush is fucking however many men are willing to do it and letting Ethan be mad about it and giving no cares when your kids suffer because you two are fighting all the time. You dismiss them as possessions you’re obligated to keep around but don’t ever want to bother with. You come here to escape being a mom and a wife because leaving permanently will make you look worse than being a promiscuous housewife does. You’re right. I don’t know what that’s like. Because you’re just like my mother and I never became like her.”
Kirsten’s gaze snapped over to Alyssa when she turned to her, shouting. “So what? I’m a bad mom. I know it. I never wanted to be a parent. It’s a living nightmare but no one ever asks how I’m doing. No, I got married at 18, then knocked up at 19 and my mother said no to an abortion. Ethan said no to it. No one would listen to me. They were content with ruining my life and not caring what I wanted. I hate this. All of it. This town. My marriage. My kids. Everyone. I hate it.”
Alyssa didn’t move, content that she got to see Kirsten’s true colors. “And this is your solution?”
Kirsten mashed her cigarette butt against the wall of the hotel and scoffed. “Nothing else in this stupid place. I keep getting told I can’t just leave my kids. I never wanted them but God, my mother and Ethan never shut the hell up about it. ‘When are we having kids?’ ‘When are the babies coming?’ But no, my mother said I’d be throwing my life away by going off on my own. Why do that when I had a perfectly good man wanting to marry me right out of school? I’d never have to worry about dating again. Now, I’d rather be alone.”
Kirsten banged her fist against the wall, tears falling down her face.
“That’s the problem with home towns,” Alyssa said. “They have one specific vision of you, and anything else to them is not authentic. Ethan and your mother had a specific idea of who you were and you conformed.”
“I loved him at the time,” Kirsten said. “I married for love. But love wasn’t enough. It still isn’t. I don’t think it ever will be.”
Alyssa contemplated the words. Love wasn’t enough. If that wasn’t enough, then would anything ever be?
“What did you envision for yourself before all this? When you were young, and thought you’d get out of here?” she asked.
“Oh what, now you want a conversation? After you tore a strip off me?” Kirsten scolded.
“I’m just irritated that you lied to me. What you do is on you, but these are things I need to know. The other women who were murdered also had affairs and unhappy marriages and some had kids they didn’t want,” Alyssa said.
She looked over at Kirsten, who’s blond hair fell messily around her shoulders. Dark grey eyeshadow smudging from the tears in those blue eyes. They’d been dim with trauma the first time Alyssa had seen her. Under the moonlight and street lamps, they glistened with tears falling from a depth of long-term sorrow. A small town girl, too reckless for those same old streets and mundane crawl of slow days, escaping into booze and cigarettes for all the years the highway couldn’t take her away. She’d chained herself to this place, as had the rest of the victims.
“Well, lying is what I’m good at. It’s all I seem to do. I conformed so hard to my mother and husband’s wishes that I don’t even know who I am anymore,” Kirsten said. Her voice lowered and quivered. “I’m thirty-three, cleaning motel rooms for minimum wage, stuck at home and wanting to disappear with every temper tantrum and argument. I can’t stand my own kids. I don’t love them. And I’m going to be a middle aged motel maid who never left her hometown and meant nothing and loved no one. I am everything everyone else wanted me to be but to myself, I am nothing. God, I don’t know why I dug myself out of that grave. I should have let it kill me. It would have been better than this.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Maybe your life hasn’t changed dramatically, but you are the only one left who can speak for the women who are gone,” Alyssa said. “And we need that. If you had stayed beneath the ground, we wouldn’t have known there was a serial killer. People would have assumed you finally ran off, like the others. They wouldn’t have really bothered looking for you, maybe not until Ethan eventually wanted a divorce. But you… because you dug yourself out of there, we know that they aren’t just runaway mothers. And that matters more than you think.”
Kirsten looked to the ground, then back to Alyssa, eyes wide. She tilted her head. “I can’t help them, though.”
“You already have. You telling your story to the RCMP is why I am here. No one would have even known it was a woman doing this if you hadn’t of escaped. You are the only victim who could tell us that. The others are dead and gone,” Alyssa said. “That means your survival is not in vain. It matters. You have to make it matter. Right now, you can. But you need to be absolutely honest with me going forward. I don’t care what you tell your husband, your mother, or whoever else. But be honest with me. And help me help the other women who never came home.”
Alyssa gave her a stern look. Kirsten crossed her arms and glanced away into the shadows. The door behind her opened and Thayer quietly stepped outside with a worried look. Alyssa held a hand up to motion for him to stop.
“There’s one more thing,” Kirsten said. She sighed.
Alyssa tilted her head in keen intrigue. “Go on.”
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