S.R. Hughes's Blog: The Froth-Mouthed Ravings of a True Lunatic, page 7

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Published on May 17, 2021 10:51

Ch. 7 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

While waiting in the back of a squad car as more and more first responders arrived at a crime scene, Paul Somers had glimpsed a frazzled, exhausted-looking Virgil LeDuff milling through the crowd. Virgil had met his eyes through the rear window of the police vehicle and had puffed out his weathered cheeks with a sigh and made no further indication of recognition. As detectives arrived, the arresting officers climbed back into their cars and took Deirdre and Paul to sit in a cell.

Chief of Oceanrest Metro PD Virgil LeDuff had vanished a DUI charge for Paul several years earlier. As penitence, Paul Somers, former federal agent and consultant to the NYPD, worked as a civilian asset whenever called upon for his expertise. Originally a series of under-table transactions, their favor-trading led to something almost a friendship. If a strained one.

More than that, years of regular contact with Virgil LeDuff had taught Paul a key tenant of the man’s existence: he always meant well. Dirty as he was—dirty as the whole department was—he had a code of ethics, a sense of decency, a notion that he bent the rules for the betterment of the Oceanrest citizenry, not its detriment. He had standards. After finding three neo-Nazi enablers among the fresh recruits from Maine’s Criminal Justice Academy, Virgil had removed them immediately. Ditto the five additional neo-Nazi enablers found among the rank-and-file of the department proper.

The speed and theatricality of Virgil’s response had distracted most of Oceanrest’s populace from the more dire facts: that the system that allowed these people to serve as cops in the first place remained unchanged; that the removal of current cancer did not promise a cancer-less future.

Still, Oceanrest PD looked better than most, and it owed much of its relatively-unmarred appearance to Virgil LeDuff.

So while it slightly surprised Paul that Virgil showed up at six-thirty in the morning to release Deirdre and himself from their cell, it did not shock him.

“You two, with me,” he’d grumbled gruffly, his tone escaping his facemask more than his words. “We need to talk.”

Six minutes later, Paul and Deirdre sat in two decades-old chairs in front of Virgil’s sprawling, cluttered desk. In a worn leather office chair across from them, Virgil removed his mask and massaged his face. Dim light hazed in from mostly-shut blinds hanging from south-wall windows. Beyond the glass, Oceanrest’s Historic District slouched southwestwardly into gray docks and warehouses, the remains of a once-bustling harbor long-rotten. Sunlight danced over Atlantic waves rolling into the bay.

Virgil let out a sigh that sounded like an era’s held patience finally lost. “The good news for you, Paul, is that sate prosecution is electing not to press charges, given your history and relationship with the department. I’d like to keep you on as a civilian asset or a consultant or…something…but you won’t be allowed to carry any kind of badge or ID anymore.”

Paul drythroat swallowed and lowered his gaze to the paperwork piling Virgil’s desk.

“As for you,” Virgil addressed Deirdre. “You were arrested for the unlawful possession of a firearm. Well. I don’t know what happened, what with all the noise and shuffle of a major crime scene, but somehow nobody managed to find the alleged weapon after the arrest.”

He opened a drawer in his desk and withdrew a padded envelope bloated with its irregular and obvious contents. He set it on his side of the table and kept one hand on top of it as he leaned back into his overcushioned office chair.

Sometimes the crookedness of Oceanrest cops broke the right way.

“Now,” Virgil continued, stopping both of them from asking simultaneous questions. “Considering how much I’ve done for the two of you, this morning, and considering I only know the one of you by reputation,” he nodded to indicate Deirdre, “I’m going to need something in return.”

Deirdre’s eyes lit up. Paul watched her bite off her words.

Virgil kept his hand on top of the bulging envelope. He brought it closer to his chest. “What the hell were the two of you doing out there?”

The flare in Deirdre’s gaze guttered out. She peered at Paul and Paul peered at her.

“Two people are dead, remember,” Virgil pressed.

“And the cops were too busy arresting us to stop that,” Paul replied.

Deirdre pursed her lips.

Virgil leaned back, fingers drumming on the bulge in the envelope. “I’m not the kind of asshole to argue that what happened wasn’t uglier than hell. If it comes around that I need to make some kind of official comment, the Mayor might prefer I say something different, but in earnest? I’d have to be dumb or blind. So I’m not asking what went wrong or who fucked up, I’m asking why you were out there to begin with.”

The spiel had given Paul time to think. “I was—I was working on a profile.”

“A profile that led you straight to the house of the victim?”

“No. No. But I thought the killer would be likely to hit Denton.”

“And you didn’t come to me?” Virgil asked.

“We haven’t had the smoothest relationship, lately.”

“And you’re not doing much to smooth it over, now.”

“Deirdre had a network of people willing to help. We had a few cars patrolling, people on cellphones and walkie-talkies, and one of them saw something suspicious.”

“The car that fled the scene?”

“I wouldn’t call it—”

“The car that fled the scene?” Virgil repeated, loudly.

Paul nodded.

“I’d swear it was bullshit if you hadn’t just confessed to multiple goddamn felonies.” Virgil released the envelope, leaning both elbows on his desk, burying his face in his palms. “Jesus Christ. I should charge both of you. I should call the D.A. back and…” he blew out another sigh, put his hands back on the desk, and pushed himself up from his seat. “Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. First, both of you are going to tell my detectives everything you know and everything you saw. Second—you, Deirdre, you keep whatever PI work you do limited to the boundaries of Squatter City. After the detectives finish with you, come to my office, this office, and I’ll walk you out. I’ll hand you your personal effects at the door.”

Deirdre’s brow furrowed. She blinked. “You’re—you’re giving that back to me?”

“You’re a woman living alone in Squatter City. When you leave, you take it with you. If it ends up here, again, there will be a, uh…a more thorough response.” He swept the envelope back off the desk and into its drawer. “I heard people call you the Sheriff of Squatter City. Squatter City ends at Lafayette Avenue.”

“Understood,” Deirdre replied.

“A’yeah. Now, I don’t know how long my detectives will want to question you, but considering your ace profile, Paul, I’d recommend canceling any plans you have for the evening.”

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Published on May 17, 2021 10:49

Ch. 7 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Seven

Bob had arrived home panting, the drive from the scene to his new condo a blur in his carousel memory.

He hadn’t expected the kid. The kid wasn’t supposed to be home. He hadn’t expected a gun, either. Nothing in the family’s social media had suggested gun ownership. They hadn’t even had any photos at the range. Maybe that explained how Bob had gone unwounded in the boy’s hail of gunfire.

(Maybe.)

A lot had happened that he hadn’t expected. But he’d coped. He’d adjusted.

After parking his car in the lot at two thirty in the morning, Bob had had the wild luck to encounter no one on his way to his front door. Once he’d entered his unit, he’d found his clothes too slicked and blood-stained to save. He’d stuffed them all into heavy duty garbage bags. His black sneakers showed no visible traces of gore, but he’d cleaned them thoroughly anyway. Waiting for his shower to heat up, he’d stared at his reflection in the growing fog. He’d only remembered to take off the Mask when he’d opened the curtain to step into the heat.

Later, he climbed back out of the shower with a throbbing erection. He didn’t allow himself to touch it, at first. He returned to the mist-opaque mirror and the Mask. His left hand fell almost naturally onto the Mask’s visage, caressing it.

More than anything else, he hadn’t expected her.

She’d arrived before the police. Long before the police. Lying in wait.

He remembered that moment. He stared curiously down at her and she stared up at him with rage and sorrow and grief and fire. Her eyes had blazed galactic and he knew that if she could have spit on him from her position on the ground, she would’ve hocked a thick gob right into their face—his face.

Allowing his right hand to drift down, he gripped himself and remembered. Their gazes locked and a sea of sensation had rolled-rushed-crashed-flooded down his spine. Her. She’d been there, waiting. She knew him. She’d seen him. Not the Mask, not the Bob-mask under that, but the thing that lived beneath even that. She’d seen him.

He needed her. They needed her.

His breath husked and quickened. He wondered what masks that woman wore to protect herself. Every force of nature needed its anonymity. Could he peel them back until he found her nude? Would she spit on him, then? Pressure building at the base of his spine hoped she would.

As his breaths convulsed to shudders, Bob lurched forward over the sink. He thought he glimpsed some shadow form standing behind him in the glass, but when his head cleared and his lungs opened up again, he found his silhouette alone against the mist-smudged glass.

That night, he dreamt of chasing.

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Published on May 17, 2021 10:45

May 10, 2021

Ch. 6 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Police sirens blared. Deirdre felt the headlights on her back before she saw them cast her shadow.

“Drop the weapon!” a loudspeaker blared.

Two vehicles angled themselves toward her. She dropped her gun and stopped sprinting, hands already in the air.

“She’s with me!” Paul yelled uselessly, catching up. He waved a badge in the air. As a consultant to the local PD, he carried an emblem identifying him as such. It had helped him get out of a drunk and disorderly charge, once, but didn’t seem likely to apply here. Still, “She’s with me!”

“Stop moving!” the loudspeaker demanded. “Put your hands up!”

“She’s with me!”

Car doors popped open. Cops drew standard issues. Deirdre couldn’t see anything anymore. She went blind. The pounding panic of her pulse in her temples drummed over all other sound. She dropped to her knees.

“Who the fuck are you!?” someone yelled at Paul. “Let me see that — hey, hands up! — let me see that.”

Unless Paul planned to get arrested for impersonating an officer as a distraction…

and then what?

“What the fuck case are you consulting on, old man? Huh? Hands up! Answer the fucking question!”

“Get on your knees!” someone shouted at Deirdre, though she already was. “Hands behind your head!”

Gunshots sounded from inside the house.

“What the…” the cop screaming at Paul stopped screaming.

A home alarm system blared.

“What the fuck?”

Deirdre’s sight returned as harsh shadows, bright light. She blinked, searching for focus. She couldn’t find it on the ground.

Another gunshot. The officers still in their cars crackled radio communique back to the precinct.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I—I don’t know,” Paul replied.

“Get—get on the ground. Put your hands…” the younger man trailed off.

Deirdre turned her face toward the sky. Luna eyed the goings-on with narrowed suspicion.

Focus returned to the world first as a window, then as the monster behind it.

She saw him through the glass. She saw the Mask. When it peered back down at her, her body seized. Every muscle twisted and tightened at once. It felt like a powerful ritual triggering through her, like a final exhaustive sprint at the end of a race. Their gazes crossed briefly and Deirdre’s consciousness vanished beneath a single thought.

YOU.

“Face down on the ground,” the officer repeated, closer to her, now, and scared in a way that scared her. “Now. Face down. Now.”

She couldn’t shake the sixth sense rush of it all. She had such a weak sixth sense she’d rarely felt anything like it. The muscles binding her shoulder blades shivered and ached. Her lower back froze.

“Now!”

She hinged forward, joints groaning.

Overhead, the window shattered. Glass cascaded to the street in fractured daggers. Deirdre didn’t see what happened, but she heard the soft-tissue thud, bone-snapping crunch of a body hitting the pavement. She heard the fleshy tumble of its mass lose velocity against asphalt.

“Jesus Christ!” the one behind her recoiled.

Lying down, she closed her eyes and felt it. She felt It. The way Paul had. The way his sixth sense had echoed in hers after Rehani had linked them on a psychic network, she felt It. It was a thing lurking in the periphery, waiting for Its chance. The man was more than a man. She clenched her jaw against the sixth sense overwhelm.

“Someone needs to go in there,” the one behind her muttered. “Someone needs to…”

“We have to wait for backup,” the other replied.

“Oh, my God…”

“We have to wait. We should, uh…we need to get these in the back of a car.”

“What?”

“These two, in the back of a car.”

“On what charges?” Paul foolishly asked.

“Impersonating an officer, you. Her, uh, I don’t know. Possession of an unlicensed firearm.”

She had a license but said nothing. The weapon didn’t have a registration.

“I—someone should—I…” the one behind her cleared his throat. “Right. Right. Okay.” She felt him move closer to her. “You are under arrest for criminal possession of a firearm. You have the right—the right to remain silent…”

As the police arrested Deirdre and Paul, minutes passed.

A third car arrived and three men went inside too late. Minutes had passed and the man and the Mask had escaped out the back door and across a series of abutting lawns into the woods.

More cars showed up after that. A lot more.

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Published on May 10, 2021 15:06

Ch. 6 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

Bob had taken time to select a second victim. With the police already looking for a killer after the hanged judge, he had to avoid anyone directly connected to himself. Still, he wanted to paint the picture, create a narrative that felt obvious in retrospect. Even with a VPN, he’d done most of the research on the new victim at the library, tape covering any in-built webcams on the terminals. He’d first found her through a photo sharing app, tracked her down using two social networking sites, and dug up her home address from an e-vite event several years earlier, one she’d probably forgotten about, one she’d probably made before she’d known about privacy options; maybe before such options had even existed.

Five days after he’d hanged the judge, Bob crept through the forestation clinging to the peninsula’s westernmost edge. Two miles behind him, his car waited in a public parking lot. Half a mile ahead, his second victim waited in her house.

When he got to the chain link fence separating the forest from suburban backyards, he shrugged off his backpack and knelt in the moon-cast shadows. Besides the moon, occasional streetlamps glowed down on sidewalks and indoor lights still burned in a handful of houses. Otherwise, darkness prevailed.

Reaching into his bag, he retrieved the Mask. He turned it over in his hands reverently, inspecting it.

There was something to the Mask. It changed him when he put it on. It gave him courage. Hadn’t some famous Victorian said something about masks and truth before the bear-trap mores of his era had snapped around his life? Maybe, but Bob couldn’t quite recall it.

He lifted the Mask to his face. It made him feel like Bruce Wayne, Michael Myers, Iron Man, Jason Voorhees, all of them. Any force of nature needed its anonymity.

He pulled it on and felt New.

They climbed over the fence and crossed into the first dark lawn on the path between them and their quarry. Bob felt powerful. He and the Mask went over another fence, this one wood and white, and padded along the edge of the property. Kitchen lights glowed out over a deck but didn’t reach the yard. The crew of up-late teenagers crowding the table inside didn’t even glance out at them.

They reached their victim’s backyard unnoticed.

She had some statistical similarities to Bob’s ex Veronica, dark hair and blue eyes, but otherwise looked different. Bob and the Mask watched her watch TV in her family room, drinking a glass of something-with-ice. She and Veronica shared a similar height. But Veronica was slender and this woman, curvaceous. Veronica was 39, this woman, 49. Veronica had sole custody, this woman had shared custody.

The differences seemed stark enough.

Their victim’s children were both with their father that weekend. Bob had made sure of that. He’d checked social media posts from every family member to confirm it, finding all of them linked on each other’s profiles—provided a person actually looked for the links.

And they had.

He had.

Like so many other properties in the area, this house had an attached deck. Bob and the Mask stepped up onto it, coming just short of the lambency filtering out from the glass back door. They watched the woman wander into the kitchen. She walked by the paneled glass, ten feet from them, and turned off some lights in another room. She returned to flick off the kitchen lights and turned to leave the area.

Bob and the Mask rushed forward and plowed a gloved fist through a doorpane.

The woman stopped walking but didn’t seem to register what had happened.

They took the momentary shock as an opportunity to reach over and unlock the knob.

“Back door open,” a Malleus alarm system intoned from somewhere in the house.

She turned and saw them. Her face blanched, whiter than white, and she stumbled backward. She banged into a chair, almost tripping, and threw it down in front of Bob and the Mask out of instinct. They stepped over it easily.

“Call 911!” she screamed.

“What? What’s happening!?” an upstairs voice yelled back. A male voice.

Whose?

Her son’s?

Bob and the Mask walked swiftly. They didn’t run. They caught up to the woman on the staircase leading to the second floor. The Malleus alarm system beeped a countdown. Bob and the Mask grabbed her ankle and pulled. She flopped teeth-first into a stair, breaking a shard of bone loose with a shout. They sliced at her calf as she kicked at them, shearing the cloth from her pajamas and putting a long red trench in the muscle. She kicked again, freeing herself, and scrambled on all fours up the stairs.

Bob and the Mask followed.

Some commotion happened in the neighborhood outside. It didn’t matter.

At the second floor landing, Bob and the Mask caught the woman’s arm and threw her against the wall hard enough to bust the plaster. She rebounded and they grabbed her hair, yanking. She screamed, strands tearing away from her scalp as she lurched forward away from them. “Help!” she yelled. “Somebody help me!”

At the other end of the hallway, a teenage boy stood with a pistol shaking in his hands.

He fired and missed, blasting another hole in drywall and plaster.

Bob and the Mask got a hand on the back of the woman’s neck. They wrenched her back and shoved their knife forward at the same time. It pierced her flesh with a sickening pop and slid inside. They moved their free hand from the back of the woman’s neck to the front; they wrapped their elbow around her throat. A spurt of crimson sputtered from between her lips.

They used the knife to help drive her forward.

“Mom?” the teenager shouted. “Mom!?”

The Malleus alarm started wailing. The teenager pulled the trigger as if in response, barking a bullet into his mother’s chest. She seized, another jet of blood spitting out of her, and Bob and the Mask let her go. They threw her into her son’s shaking arms.

The kid dropped the gun, unbalanced. His mother tried to push herself off of him and Bob and the Mask speared her with the knife again for her trouble. Even as she wailed, however, she shoved herself back, buying feet for her son.

He grabbed the gun from the floor. They threw his mother on top of him again. This time, they didn’t hesitate—they rushed in blade first. The knife caught on something that felt like a rib and went skittering through skin. The kid screamed. Blood poured out of him.

Bob—

The Mask—

—the next thing Bob remembered, he and the Mask had the kid by the leg. They dragged him toward the master bedroom windows.

“Who are you!?” the kid begged. “Who are you!?”

Bob peered down at him.

no, a surge of something shouted through his nervous system. we don’t talk yet.

we don’t talk until the end.

Bob nodded for the Mask. He continued dragging.

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Published on May 10, 2021 15:03

Ch. 6 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Six

…the night of the deadline… (so loud and so real, almost flexing, but still not yet not quite—)

It had only taken two days for them to figure out the meaning of their first unknown number. During some esoteric chapter of Paul’s history, he’d discovered how to reference lots and developments on tax maps. The second sequence Rehani had auto-written corresponded to a cul de sac in northwestern Denton on one such map, a circle sliced into eleven uneven properties.

To Paul and Deirdre, the last unknown sequence resembled a police case reference number. But neither of them had a reliable way to access such things, at least not that they knew about, and so its meaning or context remained a mystery.

Rehani spent the first part of the week helping to organize a rally in support of the nation-wide police brutality protests spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement. Oceanrest Metro PD had been on best behavior since the year before, when a weeks-long internal investigation had revealed a half-dozen badges connected to a neo-Nazi militia group funded primarily through human trafficking, but most precincts across the country didn’t seem so wary of obvious eggshells.

Paul, Deirdre, and Rehani met that Thursday morning to deliver supplies to people who planned to push the demonstration through the weekend. After sunset, they drove Rehani’s car up to northwestern Denton and looped the area, searching.

They slept at Deirdre’s, Paul drowsed by a combination of over-the-counter and at-home-herbal allergy remedies. Samedi woke him anyway, curled on his chest, purring until Paul sneezed himself awake. Rehani drove back into the city for a couple hours in the morning and returned to pick Paul and Deirdre up in the afternoon.

By Friday sundown, they’d driven back up to northwest Denton to drive loops, to search.

As night curtained over the day, they parked on the shoulder of the slender neck of asphalt leading into the cul de sac. With two pairs of binoculars between them, they took turns surveying the darkness, watching the houses and the lights inside of them, waiting for Rehani’s prophesied deadline to pass.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of her decade-old hybrid, the only functional car any of the three of them owned, Rehani lowered a set of binoculars from her face and passed them to Paul in the backseat. “You sure this is the right neighborhood?”

“If you’re sure the number you wrote down was right, then yes.”

Rehani clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

“Sorry,” Paul offered. “I’m just…I don’t think we had to get involved with is. But ever since that night, I’ve felt…”

“Different?” Rehani asked.

“Yeah.”

Rehani nodded, facing away from him again. “Yeah. Same.”

“I’ve never heard the dead so quiet…”

“Spit and shake on it,” Deirdre interrupted, sitting shotgun with a revolver at her hip. “I’m glad you two feel ready to start respecting each other and all, but I’m trying to focus.”

“Whoa, sorry,” Rehani replied.

Paul said nothing, only sat awkward and quiet for a second before bringing the binocs to his eyes.

Squinting through her own pair of lenses, Deirdre saw exterior lights flicker on outside one of the houses. Someone moved around on the first floor but she couldn’t make out anything specific. Frowning, she leaned back. “Any way we could get closer over there?”

“What, you want me to park in their driveway?”

Deirdre pointed through the windshield, “That place over there, no lights yesterday and today. We could park in their driveway and get a better angle—”

“Are you crazy? You want me to—”

“This is just normal stakeout boredom,” Paul interrupted. “Back forever ago, after I got out of Quantico and before…everything else,” Paul had gone from FBI profiler to NYPD consultant before losing his daughter. Always on the edge, his grief and addictions had whittled everything else away bit-by-bit, job and social life and marriage and NYC itself. That was how he’d come to live in Oceanrest in the first place. He cleared his throat. “Uh, I had a couple of these. And people get punchy.”

“Did this boy just call us ‘punchy?’”

“Gaea please,” Dierdre muttered. “This is the dumbest argument. I need to get closer.”

“I’m forty-four, by the way.”

“Boy, what?”

Deirdre popped open her door and slipped out of the vehicle. Rehani and Paul both called out after her but neither immediately followed. She stepped over the narrow sidewalk and onto someone’s lawn. Staying away from the streetlamps pouring glow down onto the asphalt, she tracked across grass in search of better vantage.

She double checked her holster, her revolver secured. In one of her jacket pockets, she had a speed-loader.

Halfway between the car and the houses, she found a driveway that gave her lines of sight through windows and into interiors. Squinting at one house, she saw a couple toasting champagne for some special occasion. At the other, she saw a teenage boy at a computer upstairs and a whole floor lit up below him. She swiveled her gaze between the two settings, waiting.

“Hey,” Paul whispered.

She jumped. “Jesus.”

“Are we sure about this?”

“What—we’re already here.”

“Yeah, but you’re not the one with the knife.” Paul carried a six inch knife when he imagined he might need protection. He’d once owned a small three-shot pistol, an antique, but had allegedly lost it while allegedly drunk on a boat with other alleged university faculty. Deirdre hadn’t asked for the whole story and he’d never offered to tell it.

“That’s why I take point.”

A sharp noise clattered distantly.

“What was that?” Paul asked.

Deirdre brought the binoculars back up to her eyes. The celebrating couple still seemed celebratory, drinking bubbly and laughing. At the other house—

She dropped the binoculars and unbuckled her holster.

She started running before thinking to answer. She didn’t even notice Rehani’s engine rumbling as the car pulled away. She didn’t hear the thing Paul whispered after his question, either. She snatched her gun out of its holster and sprinted for the house.

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Published on May 10, 2021 14:59

May 3, 2021

Ch. 5 / Pt. 4 : When They Wear the Mask

When Deirdre had first walked into the salon, not even a facemask could disguise the stylist’s expression of horror. ‘Teesha, Rehani’s stylist, had all but recoiled at first glance. Deirdre had almost turned around and walked right back out. ‘Teesha had apologized, saying that she’d seen worse. Deirdre had hesitated. ‘Teesha had told her that everyone had let the quarantine get to them in one way or another. Deirdre hadn’t corrected the woman. What would she have said? Oh, don't worry, this started way before the quarantine.

Clippers had buzzed off most of the weight. The wash and condition had taken forever, though the scalp massage helped, but the initial attack happened quickly. Half of Deirdre’s hair hit the floor before any real work even began. After that came the questions. Deirdre had worn the same high-top fade since sixteen. She’d considered changing it several times, especially recently, but everything she thought looked good seemed like so much work.

“You’ve been going through some shit,” ‘Teesha had observed.

And maybe because she didn’t know this other woman, not in any real way, Deirdre had admitted in a quaking voice, “I really, really have.”

She hadn’t cried. Sometimes the not crying was the only way she felt she had any power over everything that had happened. So she hadn’t cried. But the impulse had rolled through her anyway, all the way up to the ridges of her eyes. She’d cleared her throat.

“Let me show you some pictures,” ‘Teesha had suggested.

And Deirdre had nodded assent.

As evening shaded toward twilight, as Deirdre drove Rehani’s car back to her squat, she glanced at herself in the rearview. ‘Teesha had told her that the top-heavy mantle of undercut finger curls required frequent attending, routine and regular maintenance. Deirdre had to spend the next night sleeping with oil in her bonnet. She’d had to buy a special spray to tame unexpected frizz. And while Deirdre had more expendable income than most of Squatter City’s desperate residents, she preferred to avoid unnecessary expenses, frizz-taming sprays included.

Still, she hadn’t felt pretty in a long time. ‘Beautiful’ in even longer.

So there was that.

Parking on the ragged border where the cracked asphalt of her street me the ankle- and shin-high overgrowth of her yard, she saw Paul sitting on the steps to her front porch. He waved as she climbed out of the car. His own thin hair curled and shagged, shapeless save for barely-there hints of a natural mullet. He’d washed his clothes, at least. And judging from the freshened scent Deirdre noticed on approach, he’d showered.

“Wow,” he said, standing up as she came near. “Uh…yeah, wow.”

He wore the slightly-lidded and faintly-grinned expression of someone high on cannabis and swaddled in psychic depressants.

“Wow, what?” she asked.

He hesitated, dropped his gaze. “Nothing. Really, nothing. Nevermind.” He gestured toward her front door, “Rehani’s just about done with dinner, I think.”

“And you?”

“Avoiding the cat,” he said. He sniffled and swallowed. “You know, the allergies.”

“The allergies, yeah.”

“I’ll tell you, they didn’t help the hangover.”

“The hangover?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what else to call it. Whatever that spell did to me last night, I woke up feeling like…well, like I’d spent one half the night puking up the other half. I couldn’t even get out of bed until after noon.”

“Do you feel okay now?”

“Okay enough to go over the notes.”

“And you’re down for whatever happens next?” she leaned against a railing, mirroring him. “If we go over everything and it turns out this is dangerous or something, or it turns out we need you to do something serious on the other side…”

“I made a promise,” Paul said. “And, uh…I can’t be the person who breaks his promises anymore. Not the important ones.”

She nodded, stepped away from the railing. “So…ready to face the dander?”

“I’ll get through it, I guess.”

They headed inside.

###############

After dinner, after the dishes were cleaned and left sinkside to drip-dry, a silence fell over the kitchen. Paul and Rehani spread out their notes, shuffling things around, making small anxious gestures. Deirdre watched, not wanting to ask any leading questions. They’d shared food as friends and now had to prepare to somberly address a dread and dark conflict ahead. Nobody knew how to begin.

Paul spoke first. “I saw—or felt, or whatever—something out there besides just the dead. Something that wasn’t a ghost or a geist or a minor spirit or anything else I’ve seen or felt or communicated with before. And it…it scared me. Not as much as when I felt the Devourer last year, but still. I knew it was malignant instantly. Without a doubt. And I knew that all the ghosts that usually clamored and shrieked and cried out…I knew they were being quiet so that it wouldn’t hear them.”

“So this thing is already here?” Deirdre asked.

“I don’t know,” Paul admitted. “I don’t know how literal everything was, especially with the dreamer. But if it’s not here, it’s well on its way. And since, as far as I’m aware, the dead can’t exactly die again, I’m not sure why they’d hide from it.”

Leaned against the stove while Paul and Rehani reviewed their documentation on the eat-in, Deirdre wrote notes about the notes in an old memo-pad. “Is there anything else?”

“It was slender. It felt powerful but I could tell it wasn’t big. At least not yet. It had limbs as thin as swordblades, knife-edge fingers…every part of it felt sharp except…something about the face…”

Pencil poised, Deirdre waited for more.

Paul shook his head. “That’s all I wrote down. Everything I could make sense of, anyway.”

“Thanks for going through that,” Deirdre said. “I know it’s hard for you.”

Paul shrugged, slouching in his seat. “No problem.”

“Rehani?”

Rehani leaned forward, shuffling through sheets of automatic writing. “In the cards, I saw someone strong as stone, of the earth,” she bobbed her head to indicate Deirdre, “someone who rises when called upon,” she waved her hand so-so at Paul, “and…a widow. Do we know a widow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“The cards warn of strained relationships, conflict, and, ah, bad luck. A powerful party stands with us and against us, maybe a man. And the cards warn of death, of course. Death, great change, or shifting worlds.”

“What, is it multiple choice?” Paul asked. “Do we have to pick?”

“See this, Haley Joel?” Rehani held up her middle finger.

Paul chuckled.

It relieved Deirdre, seeing Paul laugh. It eased at least one of the many anxieties tightening vice-like around her ribs.

Rehani continued, “It’s more ‘up for interpretation.’ And after what we caught off the spell, it’d be weirder if the cards didn’t warn of death.”

“Fair enough.”

Deirdre tapped her pen against blank paper. “Anything else?”

“Some numbers,” Rehani flipped a few papers around. “These two don’t mean nothing to me, might as well be Greek, but the last one’s a date.”

“A date?”

“A deadline,” Rehani corrected. “Five days from now.”

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Published on May 03, 2021 14:39

Ch. 5 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Booker sat at his desk, flipping through notes. His original theory had fallen apart in under a day—Judge Howard Lesser predominantly oversaw divorce and family court cases. While possible that some half-mad party enraged by a short-shrift ruling over shared assets or child custody could have savagely murdered the man, it seemed unlikely. The fiancee’s tears felt immediately warm-blooded, at least to Booker, and she didn’t look like she had the sheer physical strength to perform the act, herself. As far as they’d uncovered, Howard had made few personal or business enemies in his life. And even the ones he’d made seemed unlikely to kill a man.

Ten feet away, staring at the white board where they’d scribbled what they’d figured as ‘important details,’ Alejandra Castellanos idly worked a Rubik’s cube. Castellanos always carried some kind of puzzle with her. Her black hair frayed and tangled down her back, waves and curls wisping apart and knotting together. She wore black jeans, an olive windbreaker, a black shirt.

Minutes had passed since either had spoken. The day shift had passed over to the night shift, the precinct quiet with its bare-bones crew. On the top floor, where they silently brooded, only Virgil’s office light kept them company. Booker could almost feel the man through the wall.

“This is going to get bad,” Castellanos muttered.

Judge Howard Lesser had been left out hanging as a portent, as a sign.

Booker turned back to the autopsy report on his screen. He read, for the twentieth time that day, the details they’d kept hidden from the press.

The hanging had happened almost an hour post-mortem. Before then, the killer had sliced off the man’s face, unpeeled the skin from its moorings, and stapled it back on again. The medical examiner felt uncertain whether the carving of the face or the numerous stab and laceration wounds served as the ultimate cause of death. Bloodloss, in any case.

“There’s going to be another,” Booker said, half to himself.

The Rubick’s cube clattered as Castellanos twisted and racked, twisted and racked. “No prints, no DNA, no suspects…there’s going to be more than just one other.”

An ancient memory shifted in the silt bottoming Booker’s mind. It stirred but didn’t wake. Cool anxiety prickled through him at the sense of it—of its nearness, of its size and proximity. The moment passed; the forgotten thing remained forgotten. Booker stared at the autopsy report. The killer had carved off the man’s face and then put it back on again. “Why did they put it back on?”

The memory stirred again.

The Boston PD had suspended Johnathan Bowman Booker after a troubling incident. The day after it had all happened, he’d forgotten it. He couldn’t remember. (children rattling chains) Why had he done it? They kept asking him why he’d done it (a slap and a whimper a slap and a whimper), why had he done it? He’d had a duty.

“Maybe they were checking for something,” someone said.

Booker’s pulse throbbed in his temples. Every ascent was also a descent. He’d had a duty to apprehend.

“Book?”

The heavy layer of blackout repression cracked; the coastal shelf at the back of Booker’s skull shifted. Sweat bristled across his entire body. He stood outside a condemned, once-industrial building with his gun drawn.

“John?”

He stood outside a condemned, once-industrial building with his gun drawn. Inside, cement-block stairs led up. Every ascent was also a descent. Why had he done it? Why?

(a lock and a key)

“John!”

Castellanos grabbed his shoulder

He blinked, still staring at the official autopsy for Judge Howard Lesser. He sat in a police precinct in Oceanrest, Maine, on the top floor, the Chief’s office at his back. Alejandra Castellanos had one hand on his shoulder, the other on a Rubick’s cube mostly-solved.

“Hey,” Castellanos said. “You okay?”

Booker shook his head. “Just…I don’t know. Back in Boston…”

“I know what happened in Boston, Book.”

He peered up at her. He couldn’t tell her that he didn’t remember it, that he only knew what had happened second-hand, himself. They’d known each other for too long for him to confess such a thing now. “Sometimes I get these panic attacks…I feel like I’m still there, still on that same case.”

She nodded empathetically. “Yeah. I get that.”

“Doesn’t happen often. Usually if I forget my meds for a few days.” After what had happened, Booker’s lifelong, low-grade anxiety ratcheted up. He’d started taking escitalopram daily, clonazepam for more intense symptoms.

She repeated the nod. “I get that, too.”

“There’s something about this case…”

“Feels familiar?” she asked. “Like something you’ve seen before?”

“I…” he hesitated. “No, not like anything I’ve seen. Face cut off, reattached? No way.”

“But the way it feels…”

“What kind of question is that?”

Castellanos eased away from him. Her hand left his shoulder, joining her other back on the Rubick’s cube. “Different people have different triggers. I was just wondering if there was something about this case that hit something in you.”

He stared at her for a moment, trying to puzzle her out. Partnered for five years, the machinations of Alejandra Castellanos’ mind still eluded Booker’s interpretation. He turned back to the report, the boards, the loose threads and dead-ends and lead-less questions. “We’ll see.”

“We should talk to the Chief, coordinate our next moves.”

The burgeoning memory subsided, settling back into silty dark.

“Yeah,” Booker agreed, standing. “I guess we should.”

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Published on May 03, 2021 14:38

Ch. 5 / Pt. 2 : When They Wear the Mask

Bob awoke sore and stiff, aching in a way he hadn’t ached in a long time. He felt worked.

Pushing aside the sheets, he sat on the edge of his mattress in a shirt that bagged around his paunchy frame and boxers stained with night-snacks. He buried the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed. Mid-day sun slanted in from the half-closed blinds.

Picking up the remote, he turned on the small flatscreen in his bedroom and flicked to the local news.

He stood, only half-hearing the high-school-drama delivery provided by the news anchor. He grumbled over to his closet. In his new ‘home,’ the condo, mirrored doors tilted his reflection back at him. He accordion-fold-opened them, multiplying himself in the angular. He caught a glimpse of his face in close-up, eye-to-eye.

Jesus, he looked—

Wait.

He looked good. He felt sore but he looked better than ever. The overlapping bags that usually bruise-shaded his sockets had tightened to near-restedness. The paunch he’d over-developed over the course of the lockdown had shrunk overnight. And had his hair gotten thicker?

Had it?

The news anchor’s voice brought his attention back to the TV. His work had caught headlines. Someone had found the body of a murdered judge, viciously stabbed, hanging from a condo balcony. Bob bobbed his head along with the narration. Seven stab wounds. He’d slaughtered his prey over the course of ten minutes. Afterward, he’d twisted an extension cord around the dead man’s cut throat and thrown him overboard.

Was there a gap between those events that Bob couldn’t remember?

If there was, they didn’t cover it on the news.

Did he remember cutting Howard Lesser’s throat?

Of course he did, he told himself.

Turning away from the television to make ‘breakfast,’ he caught his reflection in the—

ohmygod—

a man stood there, his height if he stood up straight, his breadth if he’d spent the years weightlifting instead of tabulating hedges, wearing the Mask he knew so intimately, himself. The man wore casual, secondhand clothing, mis-matched and ill-fitting. In his right hand he carried a knife, long and sharp.

The knife swept up and Bob screamed backward—

It was just his own reflection, he realized, bumping into the bureau the TV-stand sat on. The flatscreen shook, the news anchor trapped inside. Bob laughed and coughed and panted, shaking his head at his own reflection. He looked so much better than usual that he’d mistaken himself for someone else. He put the knife down next to the TV.

When had he picked up the knife? Had he slept with it?

It didn’t matter. He felt good. He felt worked.

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Published on May 03, 2021 14:37

Ch. 5 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask

Chapter Five

Deirdre woke to birdsong and morning haze. Her shoulders and neck told her she’d slept on them wrong. Of course she had: she’d slept on the couch. Why? And when?

A waft of searing steak and onion brought her from reclining to sitting, sitting to standing. Careful not to knock the table holding Rehani’s cards and scribblings, Deirdre padded out of the den and into the house’s main thoroughfare. The scent brought her to her kitchen, where Rehani cooked breakfast. Deirdre noticed that Rehani had ‘borrowed’ one of her leather jackets but didn’t mention it.

“Your boy had a rough night,” Rehani said, stirring vegetables in a pan.

She remembered that she’d slept on the couch so that Paul could take her bed. “Did that all feel…off to you, at all?”

Rehani bobbed her head, locs echoing the movement. “Oh, shit yeah.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No. I’m pretty sure it’s not. But I know the cosmos called me up and told me you and that white boy can do something about some evil shit happening, so what am I gonna do? You can’t just hang up on the universe.”

“Yeah…I guess not. Is Paul—is he, I dunno…conscious?”

“Conscious, yes. A little green around the gills and paler than I thought a person could get, but…conscious? Yes.”

“We should go over everything we gathered last night, everything we wrote down. We need to start reviewing—”

“Nuh-uh.”

“What?” Deirdre balked.

“Your boy up there is gonna need something to eat before he’ll be able to do anything besides whine and groan and grumble. And me, I’d be happy to tell you everything I wrote down in all those readings, last night…right after you get back from the salon.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“What, you wanna keep that nest?”

“Wow. I—wow.”

“Take care of yourself,” Rehani ordered. “Your appointment’s in an hour. You can borrow my car. I’ll split lunch with what’s-his-name while you’re gone.”

“Paul. You know it’s ‘Paul.’ And since when are you so psyched to split lunch with someone?”

“Half the reason I came over here is ‘cause I know you buy from the farmer’s market. Have you tasted these tomatoes? I mean, have you tasted them? Here.”