“I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone and holstered his gun that was lying on the desk. He grabbed his jacket and took off in a hurry.
When he arrived on the crime scene a mob of reporters ran up to his car. Before he had a chance to get out, a woman blurted out, “Detective Davis, this seems to be another victim of the Angel of Vengeance. Are you any closer to catching him?”
He was irritated as he motioned for them to step away. “It’s two in the morning! Don’t you people ever get any sleep?”
When he approached the crime scene, his partner J.T. stopped him. “You better prepare yourself for this one… It’s gruesome.”
John remained silent and thought to himself, it can’t be worse than the other ones. Before he went inside an old abandoned warehouse, J.T. handed him a rag to hold over his mouth to help with the putrid odor that filled the air. The inside of the building was damp and cold, and as J.T. led him through the dark with his flashlight, he told him they had found the victim’s wallet and the body had been identified. He was a local thug and a paroled child molester.
Across the open building, he could see a lighted section where police and crime scene investigators were searching the area. With each step the air became more and more putrefied and the swarms of flies were getting thicker. When he approached the crime scene, he stopped and started gagging. The horrifying sight of a maggot covered, decomposing and ravaged body combined with the rancid smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming and made him instantly nauseous.
J.T. grabbed John’s shoulder. “You okay?”
John was holding the rag over his mouth. “This is one sick son of a bitch we’re dealing with.”
“I know. Take your time. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
When John regained his composure, he walked up to the body, and in a state of shock, just stood, staring in disbelief. The image he was taking in would haunt him for the rest of his life. He could not take his eyes off the gruesome sight, and they would not blink as he stared in horror at a nude man who was bound to a halite block wall. The man had been tortured and his body had been mutilated in ways that not even his worst thoughts could conjure up. His body was being secured to the wall by large spikes that had been driven through his shoulders and thighs, and his arms were stretched upwards from his body, bound to the wall with rusted nails that had been driven through his flesh and bones, from his palms to his elbows. There were hundreds of these nails. It appeared he had been beaten with some type of whip with sharp barbs on the end. His flesh had been ripped off piece by piece from each blow as he was being scourged. It was obvious he endured a horrendous and barbaric beating because there was blood and flesh stuck to the ceiling, which was about thirty-five feet high. So much of his flesh had been ripped from his body his ribs were showing and his organs were protruding through the huge gashes left by the sharp tips of the whip. His intestines had fallen out of a large wound in the lower part of his abdominal area and they were piled around his feet. The floor around the man was covered with all kinds of indescribable and disgusting body fluids, and the wall behind him was covered with blood, flesh, urine, and feces. Above him hung four intravenous bags that were partially filled with blood, and each bag had a plastic tube running down to a butterfly needle inserted into his neck. He had been beaten so brutally with some type of rigid weapon his bones were shattered like glass, and some of the broken pieces were protruding through the skin on his arms and legs. An old rusted railroad spike was sticking out of his right knee, and because of the square shaped wound it left, it was obvious it had been used over and over to puncture holes into the bones of his feet, legs, hips, shoulders and arms. The man’s penis had been cut off and was sewn tightly to his lips with thick, black thread. A large hole had been cut in his left cheek, and his upper and lower molars had been pulled out. Vomit covered the side of his face and head where it had spewed out. During the grueling torture, he must have started choking on his vomit, so his merciless and twisted attacker made a hole in his face instead of cutting the penis from his lips. His tongue was stretched through the hole and it was sewn tightly to his lower jaw. His eyelids had been stretched upwards and they were sewn to his eyebrows, forcing him to watch his attacker’s taunting. This was the same type of sick and barbaric behavior this killer had shown in the past with his other victims.
A crime scene investigator noticed John was staring at a strange device that was tied to the victim’s neck. He walked over and stood next to him. “I’ve read about that in college. It’s called a Heretic Fork.”
John wanted to look at the agent, but his eyes couldn’t pull away from the horrific sight. “It’s barbaric.”
“In fact, it is. It was designed and used in the medieval days.”
“For what?”
“Exactly for this. To prevent a person from moving their head and jaw so they can’t scream while being tortured.”
John noticed the device had two sharp points on each end and it was rammed between the victim’s sternum bone and bottom side of his chin. The device was held in place by a leather strap that was tied around his neck. John turned and looked at the agent. “This man must have endured the most horrendous amount of pain that a person could endure.”
“Yeah, I would say so.”
John looked at the corpse. “Check out the ends of the Heretic fork. You can tell he screamed even though the device caused more pain.”
The investigator noticed one end of the Heretic fork had dug into the man’s chin bone and the other end was lodged deep into his chest. “You’re right. He must have endured a massive amount of pain to do that.”
John remained silent as he rubbed his neck. The C.S.I. agent kneeled and pointed to a wound. “He took his time and cauterized the wounds.”
John kneeled beside the agent. “I’ve seen this before with some of his other victims. It’s done to increase their survival time so he can inflict as much pain and agony as possible.”
“This man must have been tortured for hours, or maybe even days, before he bled out.”
J.T. walked up to John. “It’s no doubt it’s the same sick bastard that did this.”
John stood up. “I agree, but I haven’t found a mark on the victim.”
J.T. shined his light on the wall a little way down from the man. “It’s right there.”
John shook his head as he looked at the attacker’s signature mark that had been painted on the wall with blood. John knew he had possibly found a clue from his dream. “I might have a lead.”
His eyes got big. “What did you find? Did he slip up this time?”
“No, that’s not it. I think I’ve seen this mark in an old case file from many years ago.”
“Really? And you’re just now bringing it up, after how many….”
John interrupted. “Listen, I just had to look at the symbol from a different perspective.”
J.T. looked confused. “Enlighten me.”
“I’ll tell you about it later. I also think some of the cut marks on this victim and on some of the other ones could have been from a sickle.”
“A sickle?”
“It’s an old tool used to harvest grain crops.”
“I know what it is. I was being sarcastic. And how did you come up with that?”
“It’s just a hunch.”
“Hunch? More like the foul air is getting to you.”
“Whatever, but it’s all we have to go on for now. I’m going back to the station to do some research.” John turned and walked away.
J.T. shook his head, and as John disappeared into the dark, J.T. yelled out, “Thanks, pal. I’ll stay here and clean up this mess.”
The Man in the Dark Corner
Across town, Seth awoke from a peaceful nighttime sleep, and as he got out of bed, he stretched and yawned with a bit of joy, for it was a day he had been looking forward to for a long time. After he stood up and stretched again, he walked into the bathroom and washed his face. He was getting old, he thought, as he l
ooked at his reflection in the mirror while drying himself with a towel. He ran his fingers through his short, brown and gray hair, then he grabbed his flabby belly and thought how getting old sucks. Even his goatee was getting gray, but he was just like any other normal forty-something year old man, except for his eyes, which seemed to have a distant glare. He smiled as he flexed his muscles—it was satisfying that all his weight lifting had paid off—then frowned when he grabbed his belly again.
A few minutes later, he went downstairs in his pajamas to read the newspaper and drink a cup of coffee as he did every morning. A frown came over his face as he read the headline news that read Another Victim Found Gruesomely Murdered by the Angel of Vengeance. He read the victim was number fourteen and the police still had no leads. He flipped over the paper as he lost interest in the article, and as he read the funnies, he smiled as if it was a perfect world.
When he finished, he got up from the table and went upstairs to get dressed. It was going to be a busy day and he did not want to waste a second of it. Several minutes later, he came downstairs wearing a roughly worn pair of black leather pants. The pants had leather straps with buckles that wrapped around his legs, four above his knees and three below them. His belt was thick and wide, and the buckle was a pewter skeleton with a large set of bronze wings. Heavy looking chains were hanging from his belt and they ran to different pockets. A large cross was hanging by a smaller chain and it was dangling by his right thigh. He had a black, short sleeved tee shirt tucked in, and a large medallion hung from a thick chain around his neck. The medallion was a large, bronze skull with the letters S.C. inscribed on the forehead. His pant bottoms were tucked inside of black, heavy looking boots, and the boots had several straps with buckles that were secured around the top. His arms were covered with black and gray tattoos from his wrists to where they disappeared under his sleeves. His facial expression was different from earlier. It was now very serious.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he walked across the room over to an ordinary looking security system keypad, then pressed a series of numbers. Within seconds a portion of the wall extended out, then slid to the right, revealing a staircase that went to a lower level. When he walked through the opening, heading downstairs, the wall closed behind him. It was dark, and as he slowly walked down the stairs, he could smell a musty odor and a slight scent of death. When he reached the bottom, the lights came on automatically, revealing a small room filled with usual items that most people would store in a basement. He walked over and sat down at an old desk with a mirror, and as he stared at his reflection, he slowly began painting his entire face and neck with dull white paint. After his skin was covered with a thin layer of white, he painted his lips and around his eyes with black paint. For the final touch, he artistically shadowed his face with different shades of black and gray. When he was finished, his face had the illusion of being the undead.
For this special day, he took out a razor blade and slowly carved the word vengeance into his forehead. Thin trails of blood ran down his face as he stood up and grabbed a black trench coat off the back of the chair. He put it on, threw a leather hood over his head, then walked across the room to a large mirror leaning up against the wall. He stared into it with a solemn look. His reflection looked like something from the depths of hell. His black and roughly worn leather trench coat almost hung to the floor. The coat had been sewn together with thick, black thread, giving it a heavy look. The leather hood hung out from his head and shadowed his face, which only revealed the dark stare of his eyes and his long black and gray goatee. His leather gloves were stained with blood and they were sewn together with the same thick, black thread.
He pulled a large weapon out of a leather sheath that was attached to the inside of his trench coat. When he pressed a button, a large blade automatically flipped open. The weapon now resembled a barbaric looking sickle. The handle was about ten inches long and made of human bone. A metal end cap shaped like a skull with jagged points was secured to the end of the bone handle. As the shiny steel blade left the handle it widened out as it curved to the right, and after it curved out to around seven or eight inches it began to narrow before it came to a sharp point, and then it curved in the opposite direction that formed the main blade. The main blade was a long crescent shape, razor sharp on the inside and serrated on the outside. He turned and walked over to a large antique furnace, and after he opened the steel door, exposing the dirty interior, he pressed a button that was hidden on the inside. The back of the furnace slowly opened, and as a putrefied odor filled the air, a secret passageway was revealed. He walked through the furnace and into a dark and eerie corridor. He paused for a moment until the door automatically closed behind him. It was almost pitch dark, but he could see a faint amount of light coming from the end of the stone passage; it seemed far away. As he walked toward the light, he could hear the agony and moans of people becoming louder and louder with every step. The temperature was slowly dropping as the passageway gradually sloped deeper into the earth.
Suddenly, the deafening sounds of pain echoed out when the dim light of a wall-mounted lantern struck his face. He stood motionless, and as he stared into a stone chamber filled with rusted cages and gruesome torture devices he could hear tormented souls as they moaned in agony and begged for death. He just stood and stared at the most unimaginable and horrifying things that not even the worst possible nightmare could conjure up. The walls of the room had decaying corpses of people hanging by shackles, spikes and rusted barbed wire. Their bodies were grossly torn and ravaged from barbarous torture.
Throughout the chamber, skeletal remains of people laid rotting in horrifying torture devices. Some of the corpses had their mouths still open from when they had died screaming out the last bit of air in their lungs. Grossly rotten and discolored bodies were suspended from the ceiling by barbwire, and some were nailed directly to the ceiling with large spikes. There were hideous sights of corpses that had been sewn to each other with thick, black thread, and their flesh was torn where they had tried to tear themselves apart from one another.
The chamber was filled with every type of torture device imaginable and unimaginable, from the smallest to the largest, from the oldest to the newest. Living and deceased people lined every wall, filled every torture device and covered every part of the ceiling. All of them were nude. In the back of the chamber were seven medium sized cells divided by stone walls. The front of the cells were made of vertical steel bars spaced six inches apart with a horizontal steel bar at the top, bottom and center. Each cell had a door made of steel bar, heavy looking hinges and a beefed up locking mechanism. There were several smaller, solid steel doors mounted in the adjacent stone wall from the cells, and they looked as if they hadn’t been opened in a long time.
The air was filled with a putrid odor from decomposing flesh and human waste. Splatter marks of dried blood and other human fluids stained the walls, floor, and wooden ceiling of the chamber. Feces, urine, flesh and blood slowly flowed through shallow channels that were in the stone floor, and the channels ran to a large cesspool in the center of the chamber. It seemed as if he had walked through a time warp and into a dungeon from the darkest and deepest parts of hell. Seth began to walk through the chamber, and as he focused straight ahead, pleas for mercy begged for death, but he ignored them. When he came to one of the cells in the back, he grabbed the rusted bars and leaned in until his forehead rested on them. “I’ve waited a long time for you.”
A man’s face moved in the dark corner of the cell. “Why am I here?”
Seth glared at him. “To pay for your past transgressions.”
The man stood to his feet, remaining hidden in the dark corner. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing more than you deserve.”
He sat back on the floor and covered his face with his hands as he began to cry. He was around sixty years old. His grey and white striped shirt and pants resembled prisoner style clothing. He was barefoot and his
feet were filthy. The top of his head was bald and his remaining hair was gray. His cell was around ten feet wide by eight feet deep and it was very dirty. The floor was covered in old stains, which appeared to be blood, feces and urine. The ceiling was made of wood and it was around eight feet tall, lower than the twelve-foot high ceiling of the main chamber. The bars were rusted and covered with spattered blood and feces. The stone walls and wooden ceiling were covered with old drawings. They were very unusual and made no sense. The drawings seemed to have been done by an incoherent person, and they appeared to be made of feces.
While the man in the dark corner looked at Seth and all the gruesome things around him, he mumbled in a scared voice, “I must have died and gone to hell.”
“Not yet. That’s something you can look forward to after I’m done with you.”
A long silence fell over the chamber. The man looked around for a moment, then looked down. “How could you do such horrible things?”
Seth closed his eyes and thought back to when he was just a young boy. He remembered the last day he was with his family. It was on his fifth birthday. His mom and dad had saved up enough money to buy him the bicycle he had wanted. It was wintertime and the days were short. It was close to sunset and his dad wanted him to ride his bike on his birthday. Seth could still remember his dad’s voice like it was yesterday. “Come on, Sethy boy. Let’s take your new bike out for a spin before it gets too dark.”
Seth rode his bike up and down the sidewalk with excitement while his parents watched proudly. A few minutes later, his parents noticed there was a car speeding towards them. The car was swerving all over the street and sideswiping parked vehicles, so without hesitation they ran in fear towards Seth, screaming for him to get out of the way. The car swerved, missing Seth, and crashed into a nearby tree.
Seth got off his bike, and as he stood in uncertainty, he watched the driver as he was frantically trying to restart his car. When the man turned his head, Seth saw he had a large gash across his forehead and around his left eye that resembled the shape of a backwards question mark. Seth pushed his bike to the ground and quickly ran towards his house. Before he made it to his driveway he found his parents lying on the grass, and when he approached them his dad reached out to him. Seth knelt and grasped his dad’s hand as tears ran down his cheeks. “Are you and mommy okay?”
The complete “A Glimpse into Hell” series - 5 books, 195 chapters, 1700 pages, 600K words of pure gore Page 2