Tagged: Serial Saturday

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.  

Chapter Two

Ferrill and Grant reached a block of derelict buildings just beyond the convenience station. They stuck to the sidewalk, but it didn’t look like cars used South Street much anymore. The traffic light was out. Ferrill noticed that the windows up and down the street had been broken, with long black fingers spreading out on the surrounding brick. The neighborhood had burned. 

Ferrill felt a chill as the sun disappeared behind the skyline. His mind fought to form an excuse, a reason to turn back and go home. Some other time, when I have the money. They were walking through a ghost town, but he had an awful suspicion that the next shady doorway, the next parked and tinted car could hide something dangerous. Real trouble, with a serious need and a bigger knife. 

His mind buzzing, Ferrill couldn’t compose an excuse that would pass Grant’s keen nose for bullshit. He could only follow. A few steps ahead, Grant came to a sudden stop at the mouth of an alley. Ferrill leaned around him from the edge of the sidewalk. A yellow line of police tape was stretched across the opening, askew as if it was placed in a hurry. A breath of stale air emanated from the path, tugging at the tape. 

“Do you see anything?” Grant asked. 

Ferrill strained to see into the alley, but the path was too dark to discern. He couldn’t help but imagine what might be there, just at the edge of his sight. He feared he might catch some glimpse of blood stains or a dead body or chalk outlines drawn around scattered human pieces. Do they really outline bodies?

Then a sound just behind Ferrill sobered him in a heartbeat. He knew what it was—the mechanical whine of a car window. He spun to face the street and backed against Grant. The young man laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Getting jumpy?” he brushed Ferrill aside and approached the vehicle. “We’ve found our man.” 

The car was as ugly as they come, an early ‘90s box of sun-damaged ruin, kept alive by salvage parts and dubious wiring, and begging for the day when its aftermarket subwoofers shake itself to death. The man in the window was older than Grant, but his voice was thin as gauze. “Hey baby, you workin’?” 

Grant laughed and pounded fists with the man. The arm reaching out the window was all bone. Ferrill saw a sleeve of tattoos running up the pale limb. He had none of his own yet. 

“I’m introducing a buddy to our friend,” said Grant. “You think I could get a little credit?”

The man whipped his head over Grant’s shoulder and eyed Ferrill with a crocodile gaze. Ferrill dropped his hands in his pockets. He tried looking back at the man, but the eyes made him itch. The man stroked a rusty patch of scruff on his chin, looking back to Grant with sour pursed lips.

“He’s not serious and you know it,” he said, withdrawing into the car. 

Grant pleaded with him, “Hey, he’s good, he’s fine! He’s gotta start somewhere. Look, I’ve got it covered.” He produced a wad of cash that wasn’t there at the gas station. 

A blue-veined hand snatched the money in a flash, and Grant held his hands back in submission. “Get in the car,” the man said. Grant complied. “You too, Jimmy Dean.”

Ferrill lowered the collar of his leather jacket as he climbed into the rattletrap. He slid onto the backseat and swung the door shut. The man spun his neck around. “Don’t slam the door, stupid!” 

Ferrill shrugged, “Sorry.” 

The man rolled up his window and mashed the door lock. “Just keep real quiet. We don’t want anybody looking at us.” His eyes darted outside briefly, then returned to Ferrill. He flipped open the glove compartment and produced a plastic bag of powder. A crooked grin parted his face. “I want to see him try it.” 

Ferrill’s head pounded. He’d have an audience. He’d bump his street cred. He’d look tough and he’d become tough. And it would be a high like he’s never experienced before. Maybe just once won’t hurt. 

Grant held out his hand and the man poured a generous line across it. “Go ahead,” said Grant. “It’s on me.” 

Ferrill wrapped a hand around Grant’s wrist and drew it toward his face. He could feel that Grant’s pulse was excited. He looked up to the dealer—neck craned and blistered around the lips. He hesitated and his mind wound up the excuse mill again. “What happened in the alley?” he asked, releasing Grant’s wrist. 

The man grabbed Grant’s arm and snorted the line himself. “I knew he wasn’t serious!” 

Ferrill tried to save face, “Hey I was getting to that.” 

The man stared him down with bloodshot eyes. “You were, huh?” he thought for a moment with elevated breath, the rotten grin slowly returning to his face. “You really wanna know what happened in the alley?” He unlocked the doors. “There was a killing last night. Somebody was cut up bad. They wheeled him out with red all over his sheet. There’s still blood on the ground. Why don’t you go back there and check it out.”  

“That’s sick, man,” Grant said. 

“If you go, we can talk about a refund,” the man offered, returning the bag to his compartment. 

Grant sighed and gave Ferrill a hard punch in the shoulder. “Fine. You want us to bring you a souvenir?”

The man laughed, “The ground is still sticky. Get some of that blood on your jacket and wear it out.” 

Ferrill leaned forward, “There’s no way I’m gonna—”

Grant checked Ferrill hard to shut him up. “You’re on his bad side. Do what he says or you’ll find yourself in big trouble.” 

Ferrill looked back at the serious man. The red eyes jabbed back like daggers. Ferrill threw his hands in the air and stepped out of the car. “Let’s go,” he said. Then he pulled his jacket collar tight and ducked under the police tape. 

                                                                        ***

 Officer Helms stayed at the coroner’s office all night. He finished a pot of coffee and he didn’t want to sleep. He had seen horrible things before—car crashes, stabbings, gnarled burnt bodies. The mauled face wasn’t the problem. He saw worse at the cadaver farm. It was what he didn’t see that troubled him. It was the fleeting crooked thing at the edge of his vision. He couldn’t take his mind off it. 

Against his will, his imagination tried to fill in the blanks. The thing lingered in his thoughts, a persistent phantom in his periphery. He felt as if it followed him from the alley, tailing his cruiser in the night. In the cold white florescence of the coroner’s office, he thought he saw its long shadow limb stretch from the far corner, the boogieman emerging from the closet. 

Then he heard a voice call his name. 

“Helms…” 

He snapped back to consciousness. The shadow was gone and the coroner stood before him. “We’ll need you to come back now,” he said, professionally somber.   

In the morgue, Homicide Detective Marshall studied the vagrant’s body. He recognized Helms from previous arson cases and skipped the greeting. “You found him in the alley off South Street?”

Helms confirmed. “Against the wall. Forensics went over the scene and found no weapons, hair, anything that would identify a murderer. Not a drop a blood that didn’t come from this guy.”

This was the first time Helms stopped to take a good look at the wounds. The man’s eyes were gouged deep and his jaw had been unhinged like a snake. Something lethally sharp carved gashes around his neck and torso. 

“Have you determined the cause of death?” Helms asked, hoping it was quick. 

The coroner waved a hand over the body’s face, “Whatever was used to gouge his eyes was long enough to pierce the brain. It looks like some kind of garden tool, or scissors. Look at the other wounds. The cuts come in sets of two.”  

“It matches the wounds of several other homicides on South Street, prior to the fire,” the detective said. “I was hoping whoever was behind the stabbings would’ve gone up in smoke.” He stared down at the sightless eyes, “No such luck.” 

Helms was well aware of the murders on South Street. Months before the neighborhood burned, the morgue had accumulated several bodies, each with the eyes gouged and the mouths pried wide open. This was the first one he discovered on his own. 

“He’s all yours,” the detective said. Then he turned to Helms. They stood eye to eye, but Marshall seemed a foot taller tonight. “I heard that you wouldn’t go back down the alley when Forensics showed up.” There was a smirk hidden just inside his stern jaw. “Did you get spooked?”

Helms was silently grasping for an explanation that wouldn’t make him look yellow-bellied. 

“Or did you see something?” The detective leaned in. “Did you see its face?”

“No,” Helms answered. 

The detective gave him a pat on the back, not as hard as Helms had braced for. “Then you’ll be alright.”

“Not its face,” said Helms, his voice trailing off. “I caught a look at the profile, but it covered its face with its …uh, hands. With these long, sharp hands.” 

Chapter One

Officer Helms rolled up to the curb without his lights. He intentionally neglected his siren when he cruised into the neighborhood. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself tonight. He was already too obvious, his sleek white Dodge hissing through the dark like a shark at dusk. He was the first responder, and there was no backup.   

The cruiser door slammed with an echo, a repeated bark fading against the tall buildings above him. South Street was empty. The whole block may well have been deserted. Helms knew that fires had cleared out much of the neighborhood, leaving the dead husks of brick slums to crumble and rot from the inside out. He looked up into their blackened windows, wondering if anyone remained, anyone who didn’t make it out. 

Someone had to be here. Helms was dispatched following a 911 call about screaming in the alley. Now he stood at the opening of the long, narrow path between decaying slums. The downtown alley led back into a labyrinth of brick corridors with no easy way out once you’re in deep.  

Officer Helms could conduct himself like the man in charge, even if he had no idea what was going on. It was a trade skill, and standing over six feet with a buzzed top, he was sufficiently intimidating. Shoulders up, chest out, there was enough bass in his voice to command compliance. And if all else failed, he had his belt full of tools. He had his pistol.    

Tonight though, as he set foot in the alley, he couldn’t seem to arch his back. He didn’t feel so tall under the towering walls. He kept a hand on his belt. Moonlight poured down where the rooftops allowed, casting the skeletal shadows of pipes and wires and fire escapes. It lent a haunting translucence to the fluttering ghosts of tattered clothes, hung out to dry and never pulled back. 

The air was painfully dry. It was stagnant with the stench of garbage and desertion. Helms recognized the lingering scent of burnt housing—ruined drywall and roofing and chemicals. He had worked on a number of arson cases in these run-down neighborhoods. Half the time, it was a desperate property owner, hoping to collect insurance. There were still people in there.  

Helms tried to shake ugly memories from his mind as he shone his flashlight from wall to wall, up and down the broken concrete path. Gradually, he became aware of an uneasy sound, a voice, somewhere in the dark. It was a pitiful, sobbing sound, and it was hoarse. He followed slowly, not eager to find its source. It seemed to grow more persistent, more intense as he approached.  

Moaning, trembling, crying somewhere in the abandoned alley. The unsteady beam of his flashlight betrayed a shake in Helms’ hand. It shivered across a dingy brick wall, and over a face with no eyes. Helms recoiled with a shout, pulling his beam from the ghastly sight. In the pitch dark, he felt his chest pound. His stomach twisted. He had found his crime scene. With anxious breath, he returned his light to the face. It had belonged to a man, middle aged, with a great deal of wear and tear prior to the events of the evening. He was likely a vagrant, squatting in the alley. His beard was sticky with blood. His jaw hung slack and the eyes were gory sockets. The smell was rank.  

Helms reached for his radio, and realized that the sobbing had stopped. Whoever had been crying had now hushed to observe him. His ears rang as he felt the gaze of someone unseen, the presence of another in the dark. A murderer was with him in the alley—a mutilator. As he turned away from the corpse, Helms thumbed the clasp of his pepper spray, but settled his palm on the pistol. 

The flashlight cut a hole through the darkness, against the endless brick walls, until he caught a glimpse of something crooked. In a brief moment, Helms saw the gaunt limbs of a fleeing figure, thin and hunched, darting around the corner. It seemed vaguely human, but little more than a shadow. Helms did not want to know exactly what it was. The six-foot officer turned and ran.  

***

Ferrill perched on a concrete wall, watching the sunset glow in the city smog. His home was on the other side of those buildings, but he felt the need to venture out to the rough side, where his parents told him not to go. It really was a great place to find trouble if you’re looking, but he wasn’t looking. Not seriously. He only wanted to look like he was looking. He stuffed cigarettes in his leather jacket and kept a knife in his sneaker. When he propped his leg up, you could see the handle.    

A pasty young man stood at his feet. Grant was taller and his hair was longer, kept out of his eyes with a red bandana. He grew his hair out first, and Ferrill like the look. His parents did not. That was the best part about Grant. Ferrill’s family hated him. 

Grant had been pestering Ferrill. “Try it once and you’ll love it,” he’d say, then he’d snort at his finger like bumping coke. Booze is one thing, but drugs are different, right? Ferrill could score a case of beer any time he wanted, no problem. Grant was great for that. But lately, he’d been pushing dope on him. And harder stuff. Ferrill was only in his teens, but he knew kids that got into that and never came back. It seemed like fun until it wasn’t. 

They had lined up a row of empty cans along the wall. And Ferrill was about to add another. A few years older, Grant had bought the case at a gas station down the street. He used Ferrill’s money, but called it “halfsies.” It was part of Grant’s sales pitch. A few more empty cans and Ferrill might warm up to the idea. 

Blinded by the breeze, Ferrill pulled a lock of straw-brown hair off his face and turned his wallet over. It was empty save for a couple of bucks and a condom older than his driver’s license. “I’m already spent,” he laughed. “You blew it all on the beer, man.” 

Grant grabbed him by the ankles and yanked him off the wall. “The first time’s on me,” he said. “If you don’t love it, you’ll never hear about it again.” 

Grant’s buying? The thought flattered Ferrill. He swirled the idea around in his head for a few minutes, letting it breathe. He half-suspected some sort of trick, that the career deviant would come collecting one day, rolling up to his safe suburban home with a pistol in his pants. A piece. They call it a piece. He looked Grant up and down. There was a pre-assured grin parting his permanent stubble.  

“Let’s go,” said Ferrill. “Why the hell not?” 

Grant gave him a jarring slap on the back. “That’s my boy! C’mon, I know a guy just around the corner. I do a lot of business with him. He’ll make your first time real special.”

Ferrill felt more like a kid on training wheels than a punk, or a junkie, or whatever he was trying to be at this point. The arm across his shoulders was not reassuring, and he couldn’t seem to stand up straight.