Come, Seeling Night
Page 28
I blinked. That was a good question, to which I didn’t have a good answer. I had heard that deja vu was simply a matter of slow communication between two halves of the brain. Perhaps it was serious brain lag?
No, that explanation didn’t even work for me at the time, but since I didn’t have a good answer for him, I merely told him the truth: “I haven’t the foggiest notion.”
“Ugh. Do you gotta use all the big words, Tommy?”
Argh.
As we walked down Winchester boulevard, we had a brief conversation in which Anthony read me his rights, and we confirmed that he wouldn’t be getting a lawyer but a phone call to his mother.
Anthony was sulking by the time we got to 222nd street, and we passed in front of his public school on the way to my precinct. The school and the precinct were diagonally across the street from each other. An outside observer could tell that it wasn’t a typical precinct, since the patch of grass to the right of our walkway had a full-color statue of Our Lady of Lourdes about two feet high, and the left had a statue of Jesus. Did our Catholicism show any? Just don’t tell the ACLU.
This was the 105th precinct, otherwise known as the “French Bread” precinct. Since it was on the border of Queens and Nassau, Long Island, the boundaries of the Precinct followed the border. You could almost see that it was the last precinct established as the population went East—the 105 got whatever was left over. It went from Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Bellerose, Glen Oaks, New Hyde Park, and Floral Park. If you’re looking on a map, that means it stops at Rockaway Boulevard at the south end, Francis Lewis Boulevard at the west, and the Grand Central parkway to the North. Since the boarder on the East was uneven, so was our boundary. And, since the western boundary followed Francis Lewis, it came down at an angle. (Manhattan has the famous grid pattern layout to their streets. In Queens, they followed former cow paths that wandered all over the place.)
We entered the station, and I waved to the black woman at the front desk, Sgt. Mary Russell. She was 5’8”, stocky, with short cornrows that didn’t travel too far down the neck. As far as fashionable hairstyles for women cops went, it was probably the closest equivalent to a crew cut.
“Hey, Tommy,” she called. “You brought us a repeat customer, and you didn’t even sign in yet? You bucking for another promotion?”
I nodded at her as I tugged on Anthony’s cuffs, bringing him to a stop. “Mary, I found this wayward son on the way to the office this morning.”
Sgt. Russell rolled her eyes. “I don’t think community policing works like that.”
I smiled. “It is when you live and work in the parish.” I patted Anthony on the shoulder. “If you could call his mother? I think she’s number nine in the speed dial by now. I—”
At that moment, I was hit by the smell. It was so repulsive that when it hit me, I gagged, and nearly vomited. It was horrific, and ungodly, and those were adjectives I used before I knew the source. If you’ve ever found a rotted human corpse, perhaps one dredged up from a body of water, you have an idea of what the stench was like. Then add in rotten eggs, fecal matter, sit and stew on a hot summer day for six hours.
This was worse.
I spun around for the nearest waste basket, expecting to vomit. I gathered myself together, and slowly composed myself, struggling to keep my breakfast down.
“Hey, Nolan, you okay?” Russell asked me.
I stayed there a moment longer, then straightened and turned back towards her. Even Anthony looked concerned.
Hand over my nose, I asked, “Don’t you smell that? Smells like something died in the vents and cooked there.”
Russell and Anthony shared a glance and a shrug. “Nope.”
I took a slow, controlled breath, then scanned over the station. There wasn’t anyone there who appeared that dank, dirty and unwashed. For someone to smell that bad, the only presumption was that he, she, or it looked like they had slept in garbage. But everyone there looked relatively tidy. Even one or two of the obvious drunks (red noses, half asleep, barely responsive to the officers with them) looked cleaner than I expected for such a repulsive odor.
I cautiously moved forward, taking small sniffs every few steps, just to keep tabs on the smell. Even that little was unbearable. Anthony stayed with Russell, and I worked my way through the station methodically. Whatever it was had to be toxic—and if only I could smell it, that didn’t bode well in the long run for everyone else. If I were going insane, all well and good, but if it was real, things like a generally odorless, colorless gas, unleashed in a police station, could have all sorts of implications, and could end badly all around.
The source was what most civilians would picture as a “typical” junkie—the type who has obviously hit bottom, He was anemic, malnourished, scrawny, and painfully underweight. At 5’8”, he may have weighed all of one hundred pounds. His hair was black, stringy, and greasy, and his eyes were a pale, watery blue. I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry or bite someone’s nose off … or just curl up into a ball and die, since he looked close enough anyway. Sunken cheeks, protruding cheekbones, and he hurt to look at. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but the elbows were so bony, I was concerned he could stab someone with those alone. lol
And he smelled like death, decay, and made the stench of garbage trucks smell sweet in comparison.
“Okay, Hayes,” one of the officers told him, “you’re almost done. You can be in your cell in a bit.”
As I approached Hayes, he started, his back becoming ramrod straight. He turned to look at me. His face went from being passive and wishy-washy to a mask of rage. He roared loud enough to hurt my ears and make the cops around him flinch.
With a loud crack, his arms shot forward. He’d dislocated his left thumb to get out of the cuffs. He grabbed the nearest policeman, hurling him across the room with maniacal strength. The cop slammed into a desk, then smashed through a window.
The cop behind him grabbed on, and the perp whirled, smacking him aside. He grabbed the cop’s nightstick, and cut the leg out from under the officer.
Hayes whirled on me, bellowing, “Era uoy tahw wonk I!”
Then he lunged.
Keep Reading Hell Spawn now!
My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.
Tommy Nolan lives a quiet life. He walks his beat – showing mercy to the desperate. Locking away the dangerous. Going to church, sharing dinner with his wife and son. Everyone likes Tommy, even the men he puts behind bars.
Then one day a demon shows up and he can smell it. Tommy can smell evil – real evil. Now he’s New York City’s only hope against a horrifying serial killer that preys on the young and defenseless.
But smell alone isn’t enough to get a warrant. Can Tommy track down the killer and prove his guilt?
How do you do forensics on a killer possessed by a demon?
Can Tommy catch the killer before he becomes a martyr? Or will the demon bring darkness beyond imagination to the whole of New York? Read Hell Spawn today and find out!
Paxton Locke and Division M will return
In
The Sacred Radiance
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About Daniel Humphreys
Daniel Humphreys is the author of the Z-Day series of post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers and the Paxton Locke urban fantasy series. His first novel, "A Place Outside the Wild", was a 2017 Dragon Award finalist for Best Apocalyptic novel.
Dan enjoys sci-fi movies, target shooting, and tinkering with computers. He has spent his entire career in corporate IT and suffers from
elevated blood pressure due to a lifelong love of the Arizona Cardinals. Daniel lives in Indiana with his wife and family.
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COME SEELING NIGHT
PAXTON LOCKE BOOK III
By Daniel Humphreys
Published by Silver Empire
https://silverempire.org/
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods,
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover by Christian Bentulan
Copyright © 2019, Daniel Humphreys
All rights reserved.