My son's been acting weird lately, so this morning I checked his search history.

I shouldn't have done it. I know I shouldn't have done it.
But the thing is, Matthew's more than just a son to me. The kid's one of my best friends. It's been like that ever since his mum passed away. Lately, though -- ever since he came back from university a couple of weeks ago, in fact -- I've been worried about him. Really worried.
Matthew's changed. University's changed him. And I don't just mean in a "flown the nest", more independent kind of way. I don't mean in a partying too hard kind of way, either. I mean the kid looks ill. Seriously ill. When I picked him up at the train station he had bags under his eyes that were like bruises. As though he hadn't slept in weeks. His hair was greasy. Even his breath was bad.
Not my Matthew. When I dropped him off in Exeter, all those months ago, he was a different person entirely. Happy, excited. Not like now.
Something happened to him down there. And in the days he's been home, it's only got worse.
Over the past week I've hardly even seen him. He's out all day and home late. On a couple of nights he hasn't come home at all. Told me he was staying at his friend's, but he didn't look me in the eye when he said it. This morning he got up early and left just as I was getting out of bed. Said he was off down the park to meet some mates.
He didn't look like he was going to meet mates, though. He looked like he was off to face a firing squad.
Anyway, I know all this doesn't excuse what I've done. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that when I went into Matthew's room after he'd left this morning, and I saw that his laptop was open... well, I only planned to take a quick look. Just something to set my mind at rest.
Matthew's room is at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. As I sat down at his desk, a soft patch of morning sunlight spilled in through the curtains. Lit the whole room up. It should have been pleasant, but it wasn't. It only highlighted what a mess the place was. Clothes strewn over the floor. Dirty mugs. Textbooks and paper spilling everywhere. The top left corner of Matthew's desk was covered in soil, which had spilled from the pot plant his grandmother gave him. And there was a funny smell in the room, too. An unpleasant mixture of laundry detergent (I'd washed Matthew's clothes for him), old food, and... something else. Something I couldn't quite place.
I wrinkled my nose and resolved to get out of there as quickly as possible -- then to have a proper talk with Matthew when he got home. Sit him down. Ask him once and for all what was going on with him.
In the meantime, I typed in Matthew's password -- he's had the same one for years -- and opened up Google Chrome. Then I navigated to History, and hit Cmd + Y to Show Full History.
The searches from this morning were Google, Twitter and Outlook, and I skimmed straight by those without reading them. I don't really know what I was looking for, exactly, but I guess I'm a visual person. Rather than reading the text, my eyes were scanning the website favicons as I scrolled down.
The history wasn't too extensive, and I was already a few days back in time when something made me pause. A collection of darker logos that stood out among the rest. Porn. Quite a bit of it, too. From the looks of it, Matthew had spent that particular night browsing the stuff for at least a few hours. I stared at the logos and scratched the back of my neck. My skin suddenly felt hot. The light coming in from the curtains was making me squint.
What was I doing here, exactly? What had gone so wrong that I suddenly thought snooping through my son's computer was okay? The kid had browsed some porn a few nights ago. That was all. So what? He wouldn't be the first 19-year-old to do it, and I very much doubted he'd be the last. So far all I'd succeeding in doing was invading his privacy, and making myself feel guilty in the process.
No: enough was enough. I'd just have to have a sit down with Matthew when he got home, that was all. Parenting the old fashioned way.
Before I went to close the tab, I scrolled back to the top of the History page. Force of habit I guess. Thinking back now, I'm not sure what exactly it was that made me pause again. What it was that caught my eye. An unusual phrasing, maybe. A stray word that stood out among the rest.
Either way, I suddenly found myself staring at a collection of Google searches my son had made the day before yesterday. Ones I'd missed before. And as I read through them, I felt a worm of unease stir in my stomach.
​
20:30 the silent chapter - Google Search www.google.com
20:46 silent chapter initiation rituals - Google Search www.google.com
21:32 what is scrying - Google Search www.google.com
22:03 can i use scrying to open a portal - Google Search www.google.com
22:28 books of black magic spells - Google Search www.google.com
22:57 what is blood magic - Google Search www.google.com
​
There were other links in between those searches, too. Wikipedia. Email. A few websites that looked like obscure forums I didn't recognise.
I'll admit it: at this point I was disturbed. But I wasn't that disturbed. I'd already come up with an explanation for the searches as I was reading them. The thing is, Matthew's studying sociology at university. He's interested in different religions, too, and he's always been fascinated by conspiracy theories. He loves all that stuff. Re-reading those searches, I already knew what he was up to: some kind of university project. That was all. It had to be. Matthew had become interested in studying witchcraft or the occult, something like that, and he was doing a bit of research into the subject matter. Maybe even laying out the foundations for an essay.
Or at least that's the story I told myself before I scrolled to Matthew's most recent searches. The ones he made this morning. The same ones I'd scrolled past at first without reading them properly.
Now I read them, though. Now I looked closely at the text for each one. Followed the links, too. Aside from some visits to Outlook, there were only three other items in Matthew's History from this morning. And by the time I'd finished looking at them, I felt dread in my stomach that was worse than anything I've ever felt before in my life. Even worse than the dread I felt when Matthew's mum got diagnosed.
The first search was for a girl's name. Rosie Field. No-one I recognised. I popped it into Google, but nothing much came up. Some LinkedIn profiles, a few Facebook and Instagram hits. Nothing interesting. I just assumed it was some girl he'd met down in Exeter.
The second result was different, though. This one was a Twitter link. I clicked it and it took me to a recent tweet from the local police. A photo they'd shared only a few hours earlier, not long before Matthew left for the day.
The photo showed a little girl. Young, maybe around seven or eight. Big, gap-toothed grin. Blonde hair in a ponytail.
And one large word in red, just below her picture: MISSING.
Something in my chest tightened. My eyes flicked back to the text above the image. The girl had been gone since yesterday evening, apparently. She'd been out to play in the garden, and hadn't come back. She only lived a few streets away from us.
Her name was Rosie Field.
My hand was shaking as I clicked back on the History tab, and stared at the final item. The most recent one. It was another Google search.
​
08:57 best hiding places in a bedroom - Google Search www.google.com
​
I stared at it for a second longer, then followed the link. Scanned the top few results. After a moment of staring at the screen my eyes were drawn away from it again -- over to the soil scattered across the top of Matthew's desk. The soil from his plant pot. The soil which he'd clearly spilled in a hurry, and hadn't bothered to clean up.
It didn't take me long to find it. I fumbled my left hand into the top of the pot, digging through the dirt, and after a second of searching my fingertips brushed something that shouldn't have been there. A small plastic bag. Buried just enough so the top was covered. I fished it out.
It was see-through, what looked like a sandwich bag. Covered in dirt. I reached out with my other hand. My fingers were shaking so badly now I could hardly hold the bag straight, but eventually I managed to brush the soil off.
I wish I hadn't. I wish, more than anything, that I'd never gone into Matthew's room in the first place. That I'd never looked on his computer.
There were only two items in that bag. Two small, but unmistakable items.
The first was a miniature vodka bottle. It was filled to the top, but the liquid inside it was red rather than clear. It sat in the bag alongside the second item: a tuft of blonde hair, bound together with an elastic band.


Source.