Post series: Don't Look At Me

Chapter Ten

The hallway was vacant. The psych ward at 2 a.m. was as lively as the morgue, and Ferrill tried to look inconspicuous as he wandered his way to the lobby in plain clothes. He only glanced at the night staff and smiled. And then he was out into the stifling night air. It was easier than sneaking out of his own home. 

Helms’ patrol car was parked right up front, backed-in so he could tear out at a moment’s notice. Ferrill made several broad scans across the parking lot before approaching the vehicle. A jolt of excitement shot through his hands as the key turned and the lock popped. Breaking into a cop car. If only Grant could see this. Could he? Are you in there too, Grant?  

The driver’s seat felt like a jetfighter’s cockpit. Helms was a big guy and the seat was too far back for Ferrill to manage. After adjusting the seat, he instinctively reached for the mirror, but withdrew his hand and decided not to look. He slid the key in and hesitated. If he fires off the siren by accident, he might as well drive into a light pole. Don’t draw attention. You’re almost there. Don’t screw this up.

A turn of his wrist and the engine growled, then purred. He looked out each window once more, not a soul around but the one he was carrying. With a deep breath, he shifted the patrol car into drive and turned to the south side. A thought occurred to him as the city lights shimmered in the distance. He should’ve left a letter for his parents. 

***

Detective Marshall had commandeered the hospital’s chapel to work in solitude. Deep into the night, he had probed the city’s records on the Morris home and the family’s deaths. Growing cold, he revisited his naive profile of the South Street mutilator. Dull in the artificial light of the chapel’s stained glass, the false profile mocked him from the old file. A child’s scribbles. When the murders were fresh, he thought he could snag the killer on his own wit, piecing the signs together until it was whole.

He had drafted features based on the location of the killings, the victims’ similarities, and the ugly coup de gras. A true sadist, no doubt, who preyed on the poor, weak, and easy. It gave him power, superiority. There must be a haunting inadequacy somewhere in his life, maybe a physical flaw. A facial disorder that gave rise to those damned ghost stories. He didn’t like to be seen. The eye gouging could be a retaliatory act against the judging, pitying, superior looks he’d received all his life. Don’t look, don’t see, don’t look at me! 

But it was all wrong. Marshall had no clue what he was chasing. Surrounded by opaque signifiers and a bogus case file, he was lost. Sometime after 2 a.m., Marshall hid his head in his hands, his mind draining into blank space, thoughts going static. The chapel door shuddered, about to open. Marshall leaped alert and froze, watching the door. He wanted to shout them off, but couldn’t find his voice. The shuddering ceased and footsteps faded in the hall. He must’ve locked the door. With the altar to his back, he thought about praying. It was unlike him to ask for help. 

***

Nature had reclaimed the old neighborhood. Vines entangled porch bannisters and poured out through windows. Trees encroached on the abandoned homes, their roots disrupting the cracked sidewalks. Tall grass swayed as the patrol car passed. Ferrill knew where to go although he had never been here before. It was all familiar to the silver eyes looking through his pupils. It would guide him there.  

An awful pang gripped his chest when he saw the house. That’s it, a colorless Queen Anne towering ahead. He parked the cruiser and sat still a moment, trying to calm his pounding heart. This would be the end. The creature would be safely home, never to be seen again. And Ferrill would be its sacrifice. 

Trying to muster the will to act, he looked in the mirror. The thing allowed Ferrill to see himself. His own face looked tired. Dark rings around his eyes, the color drained from his skin. It was the look Grant often wore, strung out and wasted. At one time, it had seemed so glamorous.  

With one last look into his own eyes, Ferrill left the car and crossed over the home’s fallen gate. It was a grim sight in the blue moonlight, but the house must have been very nice once. Jacob Morris had amassed a fortune pioneering the city’s steel industry, and his death was widely publicized. A rotten wooden board lay at the foot of the front steps. Ferrill stopped to read the hastily carved greeting: 

The house of Jacob Morris 

Who left a corpse for us

With gold in his pockets

And silver on his sockets

Bloody rich and dead

With a bandage ‘round his head  

Splintered wood crackled as Ferrill climbed the front steps. Above him, light-blue paint chipped and peeled away from the ceiling. It was “haint blue,” a shade once thought to fend against restless spirits. Across the porch, the large door hung loose on its hinges, its brass knob stolen long ago. He felt electric eels slithering inside him as he pushed it aside. 

***

Tedious years fluttered away in an instant as Marshall shoved his open file off the chapel’s communion table. His wasted efforts came to rest softly on the carpeted floor, leaving only the psychologist’s notes. The boy shows the same signs as all the other victims. But the dreams—those are interesting. I shouldn’t have told him the house was real. “Don’t encourage belief in hallucinations,” the psych said. “Keep him here in reality.” 

“He’s watching you,” she said. “You and Helms are his grasp on the real world. He’s convinced that he’s been cursed with something awful, and may do something drastic to purge it. Show him that you’re not afraid, that there’s no need to act on fear. Avoid condescension. He’ll notice.”    

A sharp knock stole his attention. “You in there, Marshall? It’s Helms. Urgent.” 

The detective hustled up the aisle. He tightened his tie and unlocked the door. He loaded “What have you done,” but holstered his attitude. “What’s the matter?” 

The officer’s big, shaken frame filled the doorway. “The kid’s gone.”    

***

The dream, the investigation photos, it was all as he had seen before. Ferrill had brought a spotlight from the cruiser, a column of dust floating through its white beam. His sneakers padded silently over the foyer’s chessboard tile. There was a massive staircase by the door, but he imagined himself falling through it, disappearing in a burst of splinters. The churning in his gut was becoming unbearable, and looked for a place to lie down. 

Down a hall, he found the lavender parlor from his dream. Where the face was first taken. There would be a sofa here, where he could rest until the time comes. Something in him was ravenous, undeniable, more physical than ever before. He braced himself against the parlor doorway and lowered his beam to the floor. 

Ferrill was overcome with the sense of someone waiting for him in the dark. Growing weak, he raised the light to the fireplace mantel. Above it was a portrait of a young woman. Her face was smeared blank. Focused on the image, Ferrill set the spotlight on the sofa, projecting its beam upon the painting. His insides were roiling in a desperate rage. He approached the portrait and drew his knife. 

***

Marshall rocketed his unmarked car down South Street, Helms riding shotgun. He nearly lost control turning the corner into the old neighborhood, his palms slick with sweat. Let the boy live. Please let him. 

“There it is,” he growled to himself as they arrived at the crumbling house. Helms felt apart from himself as he rushed past his own cruiser, already at the scene. Ferrill had left the keys in the ignition. Two flashlight beams cut across the overgrown lawn, no sign of the boy. The front door was open. 

Helms entered first, pistol drawn and trialing the light. “Ferrill!” He called. “Can you hear me?” Marshall followed, watching the officer turn circles in a panic. “Don’t hurt the boy!” Helms shouted, the veins in his neck pounding. “If you hurt him, I’ll burn your damn house down!” 

“Cool it,” Marshall’s voice was low. He angled his light to the tile and illuminated footprints. In urgent silence, they followed down the hall. Breathless, they reached the parlor, decades of dust freshly stirred in the stale air. The cruiser spotlight lay by the sofa, casting white against the ceiling. 

Dread bathed Helms in icy cold as he shone his light upon the sofa. Ferrill lay on his back. His leather jacket was draped over his face. His shirt was shiny with blood. “Oh damn it,” Helms broke down, sobbing on his feet. 

Marshall approached and looked into the light. He stood frozen in place for a moment, then braced Helms by the shoulder. “Wait, step back.” He drew his gun and motioned Helms away. His hand shook as he reached for the leather jacket. Holding his breath, he pulled it away.

The boy was breathing. His jaw was intact. Something was on his face. Helms recognized Grant’s bandana, tied around to cover his eyes. “He’s alive,” Marshall whispered to himself, holstering his gun. The boy convulsed once and coughed red mist. His hands were over his stomach. Marshall pulled back the boy’s shirt and discovered a deep wound under his ribs. Ferrill’s switchblade fell to the floor. “I cut it out,” the boy spoke. “But I didn’t look.” 

“Get him back to the hospital now,” Marshall ordered with a shudder in his voice. “He can make it. I think he can.” 

Helms took the boy in his arms and bolted to the door. “You’ve done it, Ferrill. You’re free.” The boy strained to breathe. “I hope you can hear me now. You were a lot braver then me.”

As they crossed the foyer, the hair on the back of Helm’s neck froze like needles. In the rising light of the doorway, he turned to look into the house. Fully manifest, the creature was standing on the stairs, gripping the banister, eager to see them leave. Its face was hidden in the retreating shadows, but Helms caught an awful look at the body. Distinctly he saw it, the blackened, oozing, burnt skin. The boy was fading, but he stood still. He could kill it. Draw his pistol now and end it. He looked for its face, the body shining in light. As the sunlight climbed the stairs, the figure faded. No claws, no face, and the house was silent.  

The morning was warm at his back. Snapping aware, Helms turned and bounded across the porch to his patrol car. He laid Ferrill in the back, fired off the siren, and burned rubber toward the hospital. He wouldn’t know how to explain the night’s violence to Ferrill’s parents, but they should know he’s a good kid. 

*** 

In the parlor, Marshall kept his coat open, a hand on his pistol. After two years, he was in the killer’s lair, and he wouldn’t leave empty-handed. “I’ve been looking for you,” he called into the dark. “Show your ugly face. I’d love to see it.” 

His anger echoed in the tomb-like quiet. He dredged his flashlight through the shadows, ready to close his case. The light found a curious thing above the fireplace. He thought he saw a portrait of a woman, her face fair and beautiful. In the blink of an eye, though, the face was gone, just a smudge on the painting. The sting of fear flushed his veins and he turned to leave. He stepped into a heaving figure, towering tall over him, its skin dark and stiff like a body bag.    

Chapter Nine

Ferrill had been waiting hours to see a psychologist. The hospital’s psychiatric department was the first to bleed when the state calls for budget cuts, and the staff had dwindled to a handful of overworked professionals. If they could determine what’s gone wrong in his head, they would wrangle a psychiatrist to write his prescription. He was invited into a common interview space in the late afternoon.  

Dr. Spurling had been briefed on Grant’s death (documented as a hit-and-run in her file), and Ferrill’s behavior following the incident. Before he arrived, she repositioned the office lamps to illuminate the corners, eliminating shadows. She had studied the brain scans and the X-rays. She observed the way he grasped his black jacket for security, the way his eyes deflected from the officer’s face before he left. 

There were several tests arranged on her desk, but she didn’t acknowledge them. She asked what was on his mind. While he was waiting, Ferrill thought he would try to explain away the haunting face, but now he was thinking of Grant. The Grant from years ago, before beer and dope and leather jackets. Before they went exploring on the south side—when his family didn’t mind the young man showing up uninvited and everything was cool with his parents. He shared his memories through tears, walking backward from their final moments. Spurling listened, watching the boy let his guard down and very gradually loosen his grip on the stained jacket. 

***

Marshall returned to the hospital that evening. Helms waited for him in a covered driveway. A late rain shower had left the air thick and stinking of asphalt. Helms watched the detective cross the parking lot, walking on a sheen of hot rain, reflecting streetlight. He hoped Marshall had come back with some new insight that could save the boy. He took so long, he must know something. Marshall greeted Helms with a shrug and asked where the boy was. Helms led him to the psychiatric department.   

Marshall knocked once, then entered the psychologist’s office. “Excuse me,” he said. “I thought this would be done by now.”

Ferrill shrugged. “We’re just talking.” He glanced at Spurling, hoping that didn’t sound dismissive. Then he turned back to the detective. “Are you taking me somewhere?”

“It would be best if you stayed here another night, kid. The house is not an option.” Marshall tensed as he realized the psychologist may have heard all about Ferrill’s dream house. “Uh, you can’t go home yet.” 

“Well, are you going to keep me here until it gives up and breaks out?” Ferrill looked to Spurling for support. “Don’t say I can’t go. It can’t know that.” 

“He’s still on about the house,” Marshall sighed, looking to the psychologist. “He’s seriously troubled about this place. It has some history to it. What do you think is going on here?” 

“We can speak about that later,” she said. “Let us finish our meeting here and I’ll be right with you.” 

The detective slid his hands into his pockets and waited outside. Ferrill stepped out half an hour later looking for Helms. Spurling followed, standing in the doorway with a handful of notes for Marshall. They described a young man with a very troubled mind. 

***

Ferrill was moved to the psych ward that evening. The psychologist recommended a sleep study, but the personnel wouldn’t be ready for another day. The boy would just have to be patient. 

Marshall arranged for Helms to stay and watch over the boy, in-part to keep him unavailable during the aftermath of Grant’s death. It was patchwork, and Helms would soon have to come up with a grand explanation for the young man’s conspicuous wounds. There would be no other witnesses. The two paramedics occupied a room across the hall from Ferrill, admitted after questioning by Detective Marshall.    

Awake in the grey room, Ferrill felt his time slipping away from him. There was a constant gnawing in his gut. An impatient tic tic repeated in the back of his mind. It was watching him all the time now. He had become so vigilant, eyes probing the shadows, fearful that the twisted figure maybe near. It always was. The perpetual alertness had given to fatigue, and Ferrill fought to stay awake. If he fell asleep, the void may open underneath. Through the green Exit light, he watched Helms nodding, tapping his foot until the head sagged and his breathing slowed. The darkness overcame and Ferrill heard pages turning all around him. 

Adrift in nowhere, he heard his mother’s voice. “It’s time to go home.” Ferrill sprang up in his grey domed cell—the pysch ward, but not quite. As his eyes strained to open, he saw that someone was standing at the foot of his bed. Grant held his jaw shut with a bloody hand. Though clenched teeth he spoke. 

“Ferrill. Take it home. You know where to go. Get up and do it tonight.” 

Ferrill could only whisper. “Will I die?”

Grant, his eyes like silver dollars, paused a moment. “It is sorry.” 

Ferrill began to cry. “Could I keep it in here forever? Does it have to come out?”

“I could not keep it. Every moment captive is misery. You feel it suffering inside, don’t you?” He opened his jacket, revealing a twisted mass of emaciated flesh. Below the ribs, he was hollow. “It will eat away at you until it can break free. Send it home and no one else well ever have to see what we have seen.”

“They won’t let me go,” Ferrill protested, hoping to bargain with his friend.

“Then I will leave you.” 

Grant’s voice deteriorated into a rasp. A familiar snap filled Ferrill’s ears and Grant’s body fell beneath the bed like a marionette, the strings cut and jaw slack. The silver eyes remained, suspended in the dark, and Ferrill discovered the face hiding just behind. Like a bat unfolding its wings, it stretched its leather-tight limbs over Ferrill’s body, the pale face following in a hateful scowl. 

It climbed over the bed, the eyes open wild and jaw agape, just above the boy’s face. It spoke slowly, to measure its words across the boy. “I’ll… leave… you…” The switchblade claws walked up Ferrill’s legs, up his torso to his lips, prying them apart. “And… the man… will see. The officer will take me.” 

Ferrill looked around for Helms, asleep in the room. It would serve him for striking Grant, but now he’s trying his damnedest to help.  

“I’ll go!” Ferrill shouted. “Wait for me and I’ll take you myself.” Eyes clinched, he felt the gnarled body’s weight ease away. “You don’t have hurt anybody else.” 

Tic tic just above his face. He opened his eyes to see its cracked palm spread. The clawed hand caressed his sweat-soaked brow. With a wave, his eyes were closed again.

“Go tonight.” 

Ferrill was again bathed in green Exit light. Helms was asleep in his chair. The curtain was drawn in the grey room. Knowing his every move was under surveillance, he wasted no time rising to his feet and finding the officer’s keys. Helms had removed his belt prior to settling down to rest. It rested on a meal tray by his chair. Ferrill worked slowly to remove the keyring from its secured clasp. Quietly, carefully. A glint of silver made him flinch. It was his pocket knife. Helms had confiscated it at the curb. The boy tied his shoes and returned the knife to its worn groove.   

Chapter Eight

Maybe it was the overwhelming dread he felt that night, or a direct invitation from the thing itself, but somehow, Ferrill found himself drifting back into the void. He could hear the floor groan underneath as he stepped through the fog.   

He had never been here before, an old Victorian parlor, but it felt unexplainably familiar. Everything from the frayed furniture to the lavender walls was coated in ages of dust. The room’s only light filtered in through slits in the walls, as the windows had been boarded shut. 

Ferrill gradually became aware of another presence, someone hidden in the fog and watching. Bracing himself, he turned to face it. There was an image on the wall, but the fog wouldn’t clear. The dust wouldn’t settle. He knew it was looking, but he couldn’t see the face.   

As he approached the parlor’s mantel, the fog grew thicker and the needle-thin rays of light began to fade. Though something in him wanted to stay, the void was spitting him out. 

***

The hospital room was white with daylight when Ferrill returned. Sitting up in bed, he found Helms still snoozing in his chair. He felt a strange compulsion to slip out of bed and hide somewhere safe. He could steal the squad car. Ferrill searched his bed for the keys, but they were nowhere to be found. 

He groped frantically, yanking up sheets and lifting the mattress. No use. Now on his feet, he looked to the officer. The gleaming keys were still looped to his belt. The creature’s visit must have been a dream, he figured. 

Ferrill approached hesitantly, slow to lay his feet across the cool tile floor. He reached out to the officer, a plan forming in his exhausted mind. He laid a hand on Helms’ shoulder and shook him awake. “Hey man, listen,” he felt the sturdy frame jolt alert. “I know what it wants.” 

Minutes later, Marshall joined them, steam trailing from his foam coffee cup. “Whaddaya got for us, kid?” 

Ferrill knew that the logic of his dreams wouldn’t win the detective’s confidence, but he had a feeling that Helms would take him seriously. He watched the officer as he spoke. “It’s trying to go home.” 

“Go on,” Marshall said, flipping open his folder. 

“I had dreams,” Ferrill wrapped fingers around his head. “I think it was in there, showing me things.” He saw the detective sigh to himself. Helms watched him with earnest eyes. 

“First I saw it here in the room, while you were asleep. It took your car keys and begged to go home.” Helms stiffened and reached for his keys. Still there. 

“Then I was in a house,” Ferrill continued. “An old, old place. So musty I could smell it. All the windows were boarded up and there was something looking at me, but I couldn’t see it.” 

“Do you know where it was?” Marshall seemed to snap awake. 

Ferrill shrugged, “I didn’t take down an address.” 

Marshall scowled and swiped a sheet of paper from his folder, handing it to Ferrill. The sheet held several photos depicting the room from his dream. “That’s the Morris house, a few blocks from South Street.” 

Morris. The name churned up something deep within Ferrill, like dropping a stone in a riverbed. It mirrored the same sorrow he felt last night, crying at the thought of his parents. He studied the photographs, taken straight from his own mind. “This is the house. I was standing right there in my dream.”  

“This was the house our first victim came from before dying in the alley,” Marshall said. “A team of investigators searched it up and down, but didn’t find anything but a few empty bottles with his prints.” 

Looking through the photos ached Ferrill. He longed for the comfort of his family, and he felt that his pain had an echo. Averting his eyes, he handed the sheet back to the detective. “This must be its home,” he said. “The homeless man must’ve found the thing while he was crashing there.”

“He could have looked right at it… and internalized it,” Marshall added. “Shaken up, he then fled to the alley, taking the killer from its home…” His face furrowed in thought. “It escaped, killing him in the process. Loose on South Street, it tried to hide until someone else happened to look.”

“It’s been trying to claw its way back,” said Ferrill. “So let’s take it home.”

Marshall took a deep breath. “Well, we don’t know what it will do when we get there. Say that’s what it wants. When you walk through the door, how’s it going to get out?”

Ferrill’s eyes fell low. “Nobody’s ever lived after seeing its face, right?” 

Helms wanted to interrupt the thought. He grasped for an alternate conclusion. “No one’s ever tried taken it home before,” he said. “If you give it what it wants, it might not turn out like the others.” 

It was a pitiful appeal to make the boy feel better. The detective shook his head. “Let’s not worry about that yet,” he said. “I’m going to look into this Morris place. If this house is where it came from, I’d like to know what the hell happened there. You should stick around here until I’ve got my answer.” 

The answer was clear, but Ferrill squirmed at the thought of wasting time in the hospital room. They couldn’t help him here, and the presence in his mind was growing restless. “Why wait?” he protested. “I swear it just wants to go home. Let’s go there and get it over with.”

“I’m not driving you to your own death, kid!” Marshall thrust a finger at the boy. He held it in air as he heard the anger in his own voice. He knew it stung the boy, and he felt Helms watching him. He took a moment to disarm himself. 

In a neutral voice, Marshall dictated, “We don’t know what would happen if you brought it home. We only know what it can do. Before we do anything to provoke it, I want to dig up as much as I can. We’re waiting for your own good, kid.” 

Ferrill sighed in acceptance. “Alright, we’ll wait,” he said. “But please don’t take long.”  

***

The sun was high when Marshall left, but there was no natural light in the city archives compartment he had reserved. He was not a young man, but the discoloring glow of the microfilm reader carved severe crags into the features of his face. His work had aged him. He was only a few years ahead of Helms, but he’s earned the distance between them. Helms was the little ankle-biter with a bark like a Doberman. The tough guy who cradled his gun like his manhood, but winced at the firing range. A punk ass. He still wore his heart next to his badge. Marshall thought he should have left the force after the South Street fires.   

Helms was still green, on the beat for less than two years. In that time, Marshall had taken a knife to his side and been painted in a hostage’s arterial spray. He had also stuffed his first body bag. But he took his licks like a man. He stuck it out and made detective because he had the guts for it—the fortitude that Helms only wished he had. Marshall had opened doors on sights no one should ever see, but he choked it down because somebody had to. The images come back sometimes, but he’d always been able to fight them off. Until now, he was certain that nightmares couldn’t hurt him.  

As he scrolled through scans of old housing records, he couldn’t rationalize the boy’s story. The house was real. The murders were real. And there’s an intangible conduit between it all. 

Grainy photos of Victorian homes cycled upward until he found what he was looking for. He had never set foot there himself, but he recognized the crumbling front porch from forensic photos. Built in 1880, abandoned in 1931. Its last occupant, Jacob Morris was found dead on the front steps. His wife was later found buried on the grounds. Marshall removed the film from the projector and quickly loaded a reel of death records. 

The body of Jacob Morris was discovered on the morning of August 14, 1931, with his coat draped over his head. His jaw had entirely separated and both eyes were gouged blind. A note was found in his breast pocket:

I cannot bear another night. The nightmares never cease. I tried to endure it as Anna did, but the burden is too great. Do not enter our home, but shutter the windows and lock the doors. Let it be a tomb for our memories and nothing more. Bury me with Anna, who rests beneath the oak tree. And know that she was innocent. We did not conceive our fate. It was brought to us by some infernal inception.  

Shutter the windows. Lock the doors.

A bottle of poison was left discarded on the porch behind him. Authorities concluded that Morris ingested it prior to receiving the fatal wounds. The front door was open. His family made only a cursory inspection of the front foyer before hastily boarding the home. 

Anna Morris was disinterred under the home’s oak tree, as the note indicated. Six months after the home’s construction, she was rendered bedridden with illness. Jacob allowed no visitors to their home. Though severely decomposed, Anna’s body was examined prior to burial with her husband. There was a deep tear running the length of her abdomen. Authorities suspected that Jacob Morris murdered his wife, but never named a suspect for his own death. 

Marshall read their medical reports with learned disinterest, harshly familiar with Morris’ wounds. A prototype South Street mutilation, decades before the first drifter turned up. He ran through reels of death records looking for similar reports, anything to set a precedent for a modern-day copycat. There was nothing of the sort from 1931 until his current case. Not a trace of the vicious modus operandi until someone entered the Morris home two years ago. 

Marshall stepped back to gaze at the gap in time, searching for a murderer that claimed its first years before he was born. Someone who hides in dreams. In the long shadow of an ageless killer, he felt small.      

Chapter Seven

Marshall shut the door behind him and laid his old folder on Ferrill’s bed. “Don’t open that.” He turned to the door and looked out the peephole. He thought a long moment before he began. “Your friend wasn’t the first to die that way.” 

“His name was Grant,” Helms corrected. He glanced to Ferrill. The boy was indifferent.  

“Over the last two years, we’ve found five other bodies, each with the same wounds. They were all recovered around South Street. The most recent was just this week.”

“I uh, found a homeless man in the alley,” Helms added. 

Ferrill turned to the officer. “We were in the alley the other night. That’s where Grant saw that thing. I thought he had lost his mind.” 

“Erratic behavior seems to follow the encounters,” Marshall said. “Witnesses say the victims would start to unravel in the days before their deaths. They would often see figures in the corner of their eye, or hallucinate threatening faces in the mirror.”

“I think Grant was seeing things, too.” Ferrill chose not to mention the face he saw in the window earlier. “How long did the hallucinations last before they…” he thumbed at his eyes, “ended?”   

Marshall tapped at his folder. “We spoke with friends of the victims. Four of them lived the apartments on South Street. One only lasted a night after claiming to see a ghost in the basement. Another suffered hallucinations for a week. That one started a big fire.” 

Helms sat quietly, recalling the smoke-covered night and the row of bodies carried out in red dancing light, one with a face cut to hell. 

“What about the other two?” Ferrill asked. 

“Drifters,” Marshall answered. “One is still cooling in the morgue, yet to be identified. The other was our first case of facial mutilation on South Street.”  

“He was a part of that big vagrant camp that used to fill up the alley,” Helms added. 

“Yeah, but he wasn’t a fulltime squatter,” said Marshall. “He’d only come to the camp when he needed a fix. Otherwise, he’d take up shelter in the abandoned homes on the edge of the neighborhood.” The detective stopped to ponder a moment, rolling his tongue behind his teeth. “The night he died, they say he showed up spooked.”

The detective’s eyes were aimed into space. He didn’t see Ferrill reaching for his folder. When he opened it, the dead face didn’t scare him. It was like starting up a home movie somewhere in his mind. The hospital bed fell away into a void. Helms and the detective were gone. Through a rolling fog, he could see the first victim, the drifter, alive and terrified, looking up from a dusty wooden floor. He heard a pained scream all around him, and he felt as if he were being pulled down a drain. The fog grew thick until there was nothing but a soft, distant sobbing.

Then a wash of light cleared the fog and there was Helms over his bed. The detective was watching behind him. “Ferrill! Can you hear me?” the officer shouted. His grip on Ferrill’s shoulders was shaky. The boy looked around, now back in the hospital, no sign of the drifter.

“Yeah I’m fine,” Ferrill answered, his mind slow to return. 

Marshall slid his folder from the bed. “You left us for a minute, son. It looks like you may have found a bad trigger in there.” 

Ferrill strained to understand what he saw, but hoped he wouldn’t see it again. Thinking about it made it seem near, like he could fall back into the void if he lingered too long on the edge.  

“Try to get some rest,” Marshall said. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me. Helms here will be by your side all night,” he turned to the officer, “so don’t worry.”  

As Ferrill watched the detective leave, he couldn’t ignore the faint, mournful sobbing that lingered in his mind.

***

The night refused to end, and Helms struggled to stay awake. Sometime after midnight, the boy rolled over and said Helms could turn out the light. The officer complied, but opened the curtains to allow streetlight. He didn’t want to sit quiet in pitch dark.   

The same thoughts had been running a circuit in his head for hours. Grant’s next of kin. The horrible legal mess that will follow. His career was doomed. And then shame would set in, shame for worrying about himself when the boy had a monster in his mind. Helms had caught only a shade of the killer, but he understood the fear that followed. The poor kid was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, tagging along with a bad apple. 

Fatigue took hold and Helms found himself nodding off. The bounce of his head would jolt him awake long enough to start the circuit again. To distract himself, he would tap his foot to a mental beat. Tap tap tap tap like a metronome. It became an absent-minded motion as his thoughts ran together, growing weaker until the rhythm was lost. 

***

Lying awake, Ferrill wondered if Grant was below him, down in the morgue. Silently screaming in a cold coffer. He imagined that he would be taken down there too before long. Following blindly to the very end. It shouldn’t be a surprise, he figured, that Grant would be the death of him.  

He pictured his parents, standing over his body, with his eyes and mouth stitched shut. I told you that boy was dangerous! He hoped they wouldn’t see the awful thing too, freed from his corpse to lurk in the morgue. The thought made his eyes water. He was a threat to everyone around him, a time bomb ready to release something evil into the world. He didn’t want to unleash the devil on some hapless bystander, not even the cop. 

Ferrill sat up in bed. He strained through the dark to see Helms, asleep and slumped in his chair. You did what you could, he thought. He was surprised—if not embarrassed—that Helms had bothered to stay. The officer had been tapping his foot for what seemed like hours, but now the room was uncomfortably silent. The yellow light from the lamp outside cast black shadows on Helm’s face, like deep dark sockets. Ferrill would rather see nothing at all, and reached to close the curtains.

But he stopped. His eyes were fixed on Helms, and he was afraid to move a muscle. He knew, without a doubt, what he would see in the window. It would be there, waiting for him to look. As it had been there in the rearview mirror of the squad car, and the TV screen. Now as he sat up in his bed, arm out and frozen still, it must be watching, aware of his fear. 

Like driving past a car crash, he caved to temptation and looked. The face stared back from the window, deathly white, with bitten, grimacing lips. It couldn’t be, though. Ferrill’s room was on the fourth floor. 

In the room, Ferrill heard a sound, tic tic. He looked to Helms. Fast asleep, his foot was still. Tic tic, just behind him. Ferrill whipped his head around and found the misshapen body standing by his bed. In the lamplight, its skin was like leather wrapped around long bony limbs. 

Its deep red lips quivered like it wanted to speak. Not breaking eye contact, it reached an overstretched arm across itself. Over its shoulder, the creature pointed a switchblade finger to the door. “H-h-home…” it struggled to vocalize, raspy and weak.    

Ferrill felt his fear give to fascination as he fought to understand. He watched as the creature crossed the room, its movement like bare tree limbs in a winter wind. Its face appeared over Helms. Ferrill felt the urge to shout as glints of streetlight danced across slithering claws, down Helms’ torso. His voice had given up, though. He couldn’t wake the officer as the wicked blades played across his belt like a spider. Tic tic as they walked across his body. Until they found what they were after.

The thing slipped its claw through the loop of Helms’ keyring, and raised the shining pieces into the air. The creature shook the keys with a jingle, then tossed them onto Ferrill’s bed. “H-huh-home,” it pleaded. 

Ferrill took the keys in hand and studied their emblem. They were keys to Helms’ squad car. He looked back to the creature. Still watching, it covered its face with switchblade hands, disappearing in the dark. 

Ferrill sat stiff upright for as long as he could. He moved only his eyes from Helms to the window until he could no longer keep them open.  

Chapter Six

Detective Marshall was on his way to the coroner’s office he when received a message. 

“We’ve got a witness. Firsthand and alive. The South Street stories are true.”  

That evening, Marshall met Helms at the police station. Waiting in his office, the Helms had a shaky little kid beside him. 

“I just saw the body,” said Marshall. “You saw it happen?”

“The boy saw it all,” Helms answered. “He saw its face.”

“And then what happened?” Marshall turned to the boy. 

The detective was asking for the unbelievable. Ferrill looked up from the tile floor. His voice ached. He hadn’t spoken since Grant’s death. “After it killed Grant, it tried to get away. Everyone else had shut their eyes, but I looked.” 

He choked back tears. “It must’ve noticed, like it could feel me watching. It turned and looked right at me. It yelled like I scared it, then it felt like I was breathing it in. I couldn’t see it anymore, but I could still hear it babbling and crying. All the way deep down somewhere.” Ferrill looked up at Helms. “Is it gonna come out of me?” 

Marshall swore to himself, somewhere between daunted and disbelief. Helms didn’t like this kid from the moment he saw him, but now he felt obligated to offer some comfort. At least to himself. “Not if you help us figure out what it is.” 

Marshall studied the boy’s face. He wasn’t making this up, and he was scared. “We’ll take you to a hospital and put you through some tests, alright? That should determine if there’s anything harmful inside you now.” It sure beats an autopsy. “If they do find anything, they can put you to sleep and take it right out.” 

The detective opened the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a dog-eared folder. “I’ll make arrangements.” He stopped and stood over Helms on his way out. “Somebody should call his family.”  

***

Late that night, Helms stood in a cold white hallway, waiting for the boy to finish his tests. The family had arrived earlier, now in the waiting room, trying to make sense of whatever bogus story Marshall had provided. He couldn’t stay with them. His nerves were raw by the time the boy had been laid down on the examining table. The sound of the young man’s jaw popping in the ambulance echoed in his head. We got to this one early. The kid has a chance.  

Marshall approached with a physician. “There’s nothing down his throat,” he said. The detective handed Helms an X-ray. The boy’s insides were displayed in black and white, no sign of trouble. 

“We’re running a CT scan now,” the physician added. “The boy wasn’t in pain when he arrived, but his behavior was a cause for concern.” He led the two into the lab. “He showed signs of severe paranoia when we checked his vision. He may be seeing things, flashbacks from the incident earlier today.” Helms shot a glance toward Marshall. 

Ferrill held still as he was moved into position. The machine’s steady drone surrounded him as his head entered the scanner. He had once heard of the magnets in these machines pulling piercings right out of the skin. He wondered if the thing’s claws were metal. 

On the other side of a mirrored barrier, Marshall and Helms watched colorful brain scans develop on a monitor. The physician grimaced. 

Ferrill wanted out. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but he was aware of something alien in his mind. He felt fear, but not his own. 

***

When the scan was over, Ferrill was taken to his room. He’d stay overnight, and the physician assured his family that they would be notified of any developments between now and sun-up. Then he took the two men aside. The prognosis was troubling.

“The scan shows irregularities in the occipital lobe,” the physician said. “That may account for the hallucinations he’s having, and the talk of strange faces.” Helms and Marshall exchanged a glance. “It doesn’t stop there. His entire network seems haywire. It’s as if his neurotransmitter signals are being intercepted… or misinterpreted. The operator has gone rogue.”    

“Can you do anything about it?” Helms asked.

“We can treat him,” the physician assured, “but it’s not a clear fix. We’re not mending a broken bone, here. It would be helpful to know what happened earlier to cause this.” 

Helms hesitated. Marshall stepped in front and led the physician down the hall. He held a hand behind his back, clenching the dog-eared files. 

***

Helms sat across from Ferrill’s bed, under a TV bolted to the wall. He had draped a towel over the screen at Ferrill’s request. The boy had found its black reflection discomforting. Helms was allowed to stay the entire night. Now he was trying to keep the boy awake. Neither of them wanted to fall asleep. 

The kid didn’t talk much beyond terse little requests. Draw the curtains. Shut the closet door. He wouldn’t look Helms in the eye. When Helms looked away, he could feel the kid glaring at him. The day had been cruel to both of them, but Helms began to feel a weight in the boy’s company. Where the hell were you going?  

“I really didn’t see your friend,” Helms said. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.” The power in his voice was gone. 

His words grew stale before Ferrill turned his head. “You didn’t kill him,” Ferrill’s tone was confessional. “That thing did. Grant was gonna die anyway, and I guess I am too.” 

Helms remembered the bodies hauled in from South Street, each with their bloody eyes and open mouths. Now he knew what happened to them, but he had no clue how to stop it. “I’m sorry about Grant.”  

Ferrill glanced at the officer, but withheld his response. He was trying to forget Grant’s face. Then something odd occurred to him. He leaned forward in bed. “You told everyone not to look. You knew not to look at its face… How?” 

Helms didn’t know how to begin. The ghost stories had always been dismissible, but he had come to believe the worst since he discovered the vagrant. He never could let on how real it had seemed, but if anybody would believe him, it would be the boy. He called the detective into the room.

Chapter Five

From the wall, Ferrill could see that something was off with Grant. He wasn’t the sobbing mess that he became in the alley, but he was far from himself. Eyes still, slow to turn, nervous. He made a point not to bring up the previous night. Not even the matter of Grant’s money, still in the possession of the dealer. Ferrill paid for the beer.  

Grant leaned his back against the concrete. It was a sound barrier shielding the downtown neighborhood from the rumble of railroad tracks. At least here, nothing could sneak up behind him. Across the wall, layers of graffiti catalogued generations of ephemeral gangs, each leaving their colorful marks on the concrete before succumbing to the new blood. There was no fresh paint in this neighborhood. 

Ferrill watched as his drinking buddy absently stroked the contours of his face, lingering on the mouth. His eyes were elsewhere, as if he was studying his own image in a mirror. Grant had already accumulated a pile of empties, but didn’t line them across the wall today. His motions were automatic—something was heavy on his mind. 

It was like a grain of sand, stuck in the eye and stubborn to leave. No matter how much probing and how many tears welled up around it, the intrusion would persist and burn. Each glance, each effort made to ease the pain would only make it worse. 

The can in Grant’s hand had been empty for a long time, but it still rose up to his lips on occasion, lowered again with no thought paid. 

“I need to go home.” Broke the silence.

Ferrill looked down to Grant. “Whenever you’re ready. Take the rest of the beer with you.” 

Grant eased out of his stupor and looked back at Ferrill. “What are you talking about?” 

Confusion turned to concern on Ferrill’s face. “You said you wanna go home. You might as well take the case back. I’m sure not letting my family find it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Grant stuttered. But he did feel the urge to go home. He didn’t think of his neglected apartment as a safe place, though. Not after the visitation. His mind caught flashes of the dusty old house from his dream. Something in him longed for it. 

Ferrill studied him from the corner of his eye. “Maybe you should sober up before you go anywhere.” I’m one to talk. Not trying to judge, here. “I’ll stick around until you’re ready.” 

*** 

Helms was eager to leave South Street. The detective had concluded that there was nothing left for them in the alley and stripped the tape as he left. The whole neighborhood seemed brighter, but he didn’t look in his rearview mirror until he had turned the corner. 

Grant felt the wall behind him vibrate. A train was coming. As it approached, the rumble of tracks drowned out all other sound. He began to feel ill. With his hearing overwhelmed, he couldn’t sense the thing creeping up on him. Now would be the perfect time for it to rear its ugly head. It was imminent. He stood away from the concrete. He had to escape the noise. 

Ferrill watched as Grant walked stilted across the empty lot. He tried calling for him, but the train snuffed his voice like a match in the wind. As Grant reached the street, he passed a parked car, a rusted relic that had been left there for some time. He heard a sharp tapping on the inside of the window. Louder than the train. Deafening. Just for him. He glanced into the car. Reaching from the tinted haze, a gnarled, rotten hand rapped persistently against the glass with needle-sharp claws. 

Grant quickened his pace, his head spinning as he fled the old car. He distinctly heard the window shatter behind him and took off running. He didn’t see the police cruiser coming down the street. Helms was going too fast, himself fleeing the demon presence of South Street, and preoccupied with the rearview. He stopped just in time to bounce the young man off his hood. 

From a distance, Ferrill watched Grant’s leg snap backward and swing limp as his body collapsed. He was off the wall and running in a heartbeat, the sound of the train lost in his head. Helms instinctively switched on his lights and leaped out of the car. 

Grant was dazed on the asphalt. He would live, but his leg would be a surgeon’s nightmare. Ferrill booked it past the vacant car and begged Grant for a response. 

“Let him breathe, kid,” said Helms in unsteady baritone. He pulled the radio and calmed his voice. He’d have to sound composed to call rescue, and he’ll likely have to correct this witness’ understanding of what just happened. 

“Where’s the damn fire, man?” Ferrill shouted. “Where the hell were you going? You could’ve killed him!” He took a closer look at Grant’s leg and choked. The young man on the asphalt groaned, but he didn’t move. 

Helms called for an ambulance and addressed the panicked teenager. “He ran out in front of me. You saw that,” he inspected Grant for another second. “And you’ve both been drinking.” 

Ferrill fought to clear his mind, but the beer had done its job. Anything he said now would be digging his own hole. Helms directed him to sit on the curb until rescue came. 

***

A familiar siren wail preceded the ambulance. When Helms saw the red lights flash around the corner, he felt a sinking in his gut. He called in the accident, but they were responding to his own negligence. Ever since he saw Ferrill bounding over, his mind had been drafting explanations. The case of beer by the wall would help. 

Two EMTs carefully loaded the young man onto a stretcher and wheeled him into the ambulance. The teenager was off the curb and following. “Is he gonna be ok?” he asked. 

“It looks like his leg got the worst of it. They’ll check him out at the hospital,” a tech answered. “He won’t be up and walking for a while.” 

Helms stood behind the vehicle as they loaded the stretcher in. The young man sat upright, and as the dazed expression left his face, his eyes found Helms. It was a hateful, accusatory glare, crawling under his skin and demanding a reaction. Helms didn’t look away, his palm grazing his pistol before clasping his belt buckle. 

As he glared, the young man’s breath became shallow. Helms noticed his face begin to contort, like he was putting on a mask of himself. There was movement in his throat like bugs under the skin. The young man gasped.

“Something’s wrong with him!” Ferrell shouted, grabbing the tech’s arm. The other EMT was already in the ambulance, trying to secure Grant’s head.

As Helms approached, he saw a deep red trail of blood pour from the corner of the young man’s cheek. Helms froze. Grant gagged and threw his head back. In a nightmare bloom, two rows of long blades sprang from his mouth. The EMT leaped out of the vehicle in a panic. Grant strained to scream as the blades spread, his jaw ready to separate. Something in his throat made a sickening crackle. Then the blades reached out from the mouth, leading a long black figure like a snake. Another followed. They were arms. 

Ferrill collapsed in a fit, begging someone to stop the bloody tableau. Helms drew his gun. “Don’t look! Don’t anybody look at it!”   

Through the sights of his pistol, Helms watched as the arms cracked Grant’s jaw wide open, making way for something hidden in his throat. Helms closed his eyes. He heard a frenzied wailing, but it wasn’t the young man. In the ambulance, Grant gasped for breath around the slender arms slithering from his body. The claws rose and spread, and a gnarly, bone-thin creature emerged. Bracing itself on the stretcher, it studied the broken leg, then turned to face him.   

The face was pale as death, and horrified. It looked over Grant for a moment, then with a gnash of its teeth, it plunged its claws into his eyes. Pistol in hand and eyes clinched tight, Helms heard a horrible splatter, then a scream. He fired his weapon and opened his eyes. The young man was motionless on the stretcher, drenched in blood. The creature was nowhere to be seen. The two EMTs were huddled behind the ambulance, hands over their faces. The teenager was trembling on the pavement. He clutched Grant’s bandana, torn loose in the violence. He turned to Helms, “I saw it.” 

Chapter Four

Grant must have fallen asleep at some point, because the sun’s return woke him from a strange dream. His hazy mind recalled an old house, cobwebs and dust, silent and still. But he was back in his apartment now and had to shake the creeps from his head. He got up and looked around. There was nothing unusual about his room—his sweat-stained mattress on the floor, clothes gathered in a heap, a glass bong beside it. The window was locked, no sign of his visitor.  

In the bathroom, he wiped the grit from his eyes and flipped on the light. The face in the mirror wasn’t his own—it was white as bleached bones with sunken eyes like silver dollars. Blood-red lips and saw teeth parted in a scream stretching his jaw so wide it hurt.

Grant recoiled and collapsed into the bedroom, grabbing his face with sweaty hands. On the floor, everything seemed normal—his stubble, his broken nose, his lips, his jaw. He panted in a quivering heap until he caught his breath. Then he stood and looked into the bathroom mirror. It was just him. He shut the light off and closed the door. Grant didn’t want to see the mirror again.  

He lifted his mattress and found a plastic bag with a small dose of coarse powder settled in one corner. He bought it from the man in the car. It was always a good time, but as his heart raced, he began to contemplate its side effects. Rolling the last of it back and forth in the bag, he thought about going down to South Street and confronting the bony bastard. You sold me a bad batch. I’m seeing things! He’d probably get himself killed.   

But if it wasn’t the drugs, then what? Had something followed him from South Street? Was it really there in the dark, or in his head? Grant could still vividly see the grotesque face from the alley, and now the mirror. He wondered if Ferrill had seen it too.

***

Ferrill was moving slow that morning. The phone rang and he staggered after the sound. His body ached all over, thanks to Grant’s knobby limbs, and his mind felt like Swiss cheese. His feet padded softly down the plush carpet of his family’s home. Now he didn’t want to leave it again. 

From the comfort of his room, Ferrill could hear his mom visiting with friends downstairs and the noise of his dad’s TV, the volume always too loud. He realized for the first time that he found the sounds soothing. He had seen enough of downtown’s cruel underbelly. It wasn’t for him. He lost his interest in shady deals and back alleys. Ferrill didn’t want any part of whatever got into Grant. He took his time answering the phone. 

“Hey …uh.” Grant’s voice was uneasy.

 “Morning, douche.” There was no trace of levity Ferrill’s greeting.  

Grant felt his face warming red, thankful that Ferrill couldn’t see him. “Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday, My bad. If it makes you feel any better, I think you broke my damn nose.” 

“That’s great,” Ferrill laughed. “But I’m walking like an old man today.” The beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips. Without looking him in the eye, Ferrill remembered that he enjoyed shooting the breeze with Grant. Maybe he won’t write him off just yet. 

“You started it with that sucker punch,” Grant waded into a tease. “I’ve learned my lesson. No picking a fight with you.” 

“Don’t take me back to that street and we’ll be fine,” Ferrill’s tone darkened momentarily. 

“Don’t worry,” Grant said. “I think I’m done with all that. I don’t want to go back either.” He paused for a long breath. “When we were in the alley… did you see anything?”

At once Ferrill recalled the disappearing figure. First as faintly as a dream, now flooding back to him. “So that was real,” he spoke to himself. 

Grant’s heart pounded in his throat, “Did you see its face?” 

“I couldn’t see anything but its back,” said Ferrill. “And then it was gone, into thin air.” 

“It was horrible,” Grant’s voice dropped to an whisper. For a moment, he debated whether or not to divulge everything. He wondered if it could hear him now. “I still see it. At first, I thought it must’ve chased me home, but then I saw it in the mirror this morning.”

Ferrill didn’t want to believe him. It should be easy to dismiss Grant as delusional, but he felt his skin crawl at the thought of that thing. Creeping, following. I’m glad it picked you, Grant.    

Grant began to speak, but his voice choked. The bloody fluid draining from his nose irritated his throat. His sputtered gasps carried over the phone and Ferrill began to worry. 

“Sorry about that,” Grant regained his breath. “Hey, listen. That thing’s got me pretty creeped out. I need to get out for a while. Want to split a case?” 

Ferrill opened his sock drawer and dug out a ten dollar bill from the bottom. He delayed a moment, then responded. “Sure thing, see you at the wall.” 

Grant thanked him and held on to the phone long after the call had ended. When Ferrill’s voice was gone, he grew wary of the silence. How pitiful, he thought. Scared of being alone and the only friend you have to call is a kid. He turned to the door slowly, afraid he might glimpse something awful. Not this time, but he had to leave. His apartment felt haunted and his nose burned with the presence of dust and the mineral scent of blood. 

***

The alley wasn’t so bad in the daylight. Helms had arrived with the Detective Marshall to give the scene a definitive examination, in case something had been overlooked in haste.  Helms pulled the lopsided barricade tape away as Marshall passed underneath.

“It looks like the crime scene techs were as anxious as you,” the detective said. Then he looked back to Helms and felt a hint of his shame. “I guess I can’t blame them.” 

As they made their way down the desolate corridor, Helms noticed that the entire atmosphere of the neighborhood had changed. It still stank of smoke and garbage, but the lingering sense that he was being followed had gone. The difference between night and day, perhaps. 

Marshall surveyed the surroundings, up and down the walls, to the fire escapes, around every corner, but Helms kept his eyes trained forward. The detective noticed. “Ease up,” he said.
“Nobody ever saw it in the daylight.” 

Helms would rather avoid the subject, but he also felt the need to unload the burden. He hoped the detective wouldn’t find him crazy. Or naive. “Always in the dark. Always in a place they shouldn’t look.”

“That’s what they said,” Marshall replied. 

“Do you believe that?” Helms asked, forcing an incredulous tone. It wasn’t convincing. 

“Well, I find the whole story hard to believe,” Marshall sighed. “All those murders are related. I’m sure of that. But the walking nightmare bit? The face in the corner of your eye, damned if you look? I probably shouldn’t take that too seriously.” 

“Of course,” Helms spoke. “But I see where they’re coming from. You’ve worked some damned-awful cases around here. Dead folks stuffed under the floorboards for months. Heads in the freezer. People trapped in burning buildings…” Helms swallowed hard. “Do you ever see something so terrible that it sticks with you?”

The detective grimaced, like he held something bitter under his tongue. “You should know better than to ask that,” he reprimanded. After a long while, he spoke. “I have dreams sometimes, like we all do. But I don’t let it get to me. Everything I see in there is already dead.”

Chapter Three

A nauseating stench held thick in the alley. The light wouldn’t last much longer, and soon the two young men would be prowling along in pitch black. They cautiously turned each corner as the street was lost behind them, but there was no sign of the murder scene. 

“A souvenir?” said Ferrill, avoiding Grant’s eye. “You had to make a joke.”

“Hey, we wouldn’t be back here at all if you had just followed through,” Grant said. “I vouched for you.” 

“You didn’t have to,” Ferrill clenched his fists within his pockets. “You pushed me along too much in the first place. I told you no and we still ended up in a dealer’s car. I had to get out of it.”

“He’s right,” Grant said. “You weren’t serious. But you come downtown and act tough. I see that little knife in your shoe. First chance you get, though, you turn out chicken.”

“Shut up and let’s get your damn refund,” Ferrill sneered, his voice as unsteady as his stride.    

“Face it. You woulda never come to see him on your own,” said Grant. “I’m tryin’ to help you.” 

“This is help?” Ferrill shouted. “I’m gonna ruin my jacket tonight because you were trying to turn me into another customer. I’d owe and you’d make sure you collect. I know you would. You’re not a friend, you’re a damn mule!” 

Grant spun him by the shoulder. “And you’re a punk ass—”

Ferrill shoved his fist into Grant’s gut. Grant groaned and buckled, but grabbed Ferrill by the shirt and pulled him to the ground. The two traded blows in the filth. Ferrill cut his knuckles on Grant’s teeth, but landed a solid hook against his nose. Grant’s knee hammered his ribs again and again. They may break. Ferrill couldn’t catch his breath and found himself on his back, the young man straddling his stomach. 

With one hand on Ferrill’s neck, Grant sat back and cocked his fist. Then something caught his eye and his face drained pale. With a hand frozen in air, the corners of his mouth dropped and his jaw quivered. His eyes shone wide open. 

“What is it?” he whispered. “What the hell is that!?”

Ferrill heard something in the alley, just ahead of them. Still pinned under Grant’s hand, he couldn’t turn to see. But the sound was close, a frenzied voice that began to wail. “No… No… No!” 

Grant let go of Ferrill and tried to hide his face, now white as a sheet. Ferrill wrestled out immediately and snapped around to see. The fleeing shape in the alley was like a man, but too thin. And the limbs were all wrong. It seemed transparent, like a shadow or smoke, then Ferrill realized that it had disappeared. The wailing had stopped. The clamoring footsteps had fallen silent. 

Ferrill stood to his feet, unsure of what he saw. Behind him, Grant wept into his hands. “What was that?” he asked.

Grant couldn’t compose himself. “It won’t stop. It won’t stop yelling.” 

Ferrill held his breath and looked up into the fire escapes. There wasn’t another sound in the alley above Grant’s whimpering. He looked into the dark path ahead of them. There was nothing there. He helped the young man stand. 

“Home. I’ve got to go home,” Grant cried. “It’s still here.” Shivering, he held on tight to Ferrill’s jacket, smearing his blood across the back. 

***

For his own peace of mind, the coroner always closed their mouths when he worked on them. The South Street bodies always came in with a big scream on their face, as if whatever did them in gave them a real cheek-splitting fright. A little glue was all it took until it was time to set the features and cinch the lips tight forever. 

Today, the vagrant was on his table, with seams around his jaw like a ventriloquist dummy. The detective says that the jaw mutilation must be a calling card, the killer’s signature. It was always the brain trauma that killed them, though an autopsy showed one victim was in the middle of a heart attack. 

The coroner was making his way into the vagrant’s chest. The circular bone saw gave off a strong vibration, and it made the whole cadaver hum. He was almost through the sternum when the body’s mouth opened. 

He shut the saw off and held still for a moment. The silent howl in his periphery made the coroner’s hair stand on end. He had to speak. “What are you trying to say?” he asked. Then he set the saw down and peered into the gaping mouth. 

Gashes, identical to those on the vagrant’s torso, reached down into the esophagus. The coroner examined the wounds and determined that the same weapon must’ve been shoved down the victim’s throat. Or else something had clawed its way out. 

***

The only light in Grant’s apartment came in through the window. It was a streetlamp on a timer, switching on at dusk and taking breaks throughout the night. It often woke him up, but he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. It was well after midnight, but Grant’s mind couldn’t rest. He could still see the face in the alley.

He caught glimpses of it all the way home, its narrow form in shadows, its deep glaring eyes in the rearview mirror. Walking up to his building, he noticed a slumped figure in the doorway, but it was gone when he turned his head.  

Lying on his bare mattress, Grant struggled to breathe through his nose. Ferrill had broken it during the fight—the kid may be a little tougher than Grant had given credit for. It was sour with the smell of blood, and the sensation of fluid draining in his throat turned his stomach. He turned his head for relief, his eyes landing on the bedroom wall. There he noticed the crooked shape. 

The streetlamp cast a black silhouette against his wall, tall but hunched at the shoulders. Its long fingers spread wide. The shadow was no thicker than bones, and motionless.  

Grant’s wide eyes stayed fixed on the shape. It was the awful thing he came face to face with in the alley, now outside his window, hands against the glass, watching at him. Waiting for him to look back. He couldn’t control his breath. As his body trembled, he knew his fear was obvious. It knew. And on schedule, the streetlamp shut off.  

In the dark, Grant was surprised by the pitiful sound of his own breath, unraveling into an involuntary whimper. He fought for composure and held silent. He heard something. It was a sharp, scraping sound, like scissors switching back and forth. Tic tic in the room with him. Tic tic by the window. Tic…tic…tic.

The streetlamp flashed back to life and cast weak grey light through the window. The thing was standing in the corner. As if a part of the very shadows, its body was undefinable, all but the moon-white face. Scowling like a tragedy mask, it looked upset, almost afraid. It stared at Grant, switching its long, hidden claws. Tic tic, from somewhere beneath the face. 

Beads of silver light dripped across the long, needle-sharp claws. He felt the overwhelming urge to retreat, to flee somewhere safe, but he was already home. Grant watched as it surveyed the room, no change in its expression, then it covered its face. The streetlamp cut off again and he felt fluid slither down his throat.