by Tom Clarke
Keith went over and started reading over Darrel’s shoulder, “Jim, we know some of these folks” Keith said.
I looked at Keith who said, “Yeah some of the names in here are local targets, in fact we bought small amounts of meth from a couple of them. I recognize the majority of the names though from reports by patrol for arrest on paraphernalia and small possession charges.”
“Professor” I asked, “what’s the deal, you think that all these suicides, a really high number I will grant you, are related to our issue?”
Before the professor could answer Darrel spoke up, “Jim, this one here Becky Smith, she is an old lady for one of the LW’s.”
“Really” I said, “I met her one time at Rocket’s, she was dancing there I think. She killed herself?” I looked over at Keith, “Wasn’t she Jeff’s girl?”
After thinking for a second he answered, “Yeah, I think she was. Damn shame, she was alright, kind of hot in a dirty sort of a way.” Keith said.
“So, Professor, what do you think, are all these suicides connected to our situation?” I asked again.
Professor Cowley sat down in his chair, looked up at us and said, “Yes I believe they are, I mean it makes sense.”
“How so?” asked Darrel.
“He” Cowley started to say when I interrupted him, “He, Professor?”
“He, it, whatever you want to call it, sees us, you, me, and the rest of the humans on the planet as food and a source of entertainment” Cowley said. “Like I told you gentlemen before, it, for lack of a better term eats emotions, it feeds off of fear, despair, pain, and the more that it feeds the stronger it gets.”
“Professor” Keith asked, “Jim and Darrel briefed me about your last conversation but I’m still a little fuzzy on some stuff. The stronger this thing gets, what does that mean, what can it do?”
“The stronger that it gets the longer it can hold on to someone that it has possessed” Cowley stated. “The greater its ability to influence people, draw them into its circle. As its power grows it can start to manifest itself in different forms, play with your mind. It can start to induce fear, which in turn give it power. The more power the greater the fear it can create.”
I suddenly felt sick to my stomach, I sat down in one of the chairs in the professor’s office, “Jesus” I muttered. “Professor, if this thing can manifest itself, and it feeds off of fear, what would keep it from manifesting into something that someone is scared of and then feeding off of that fear?”
“Nothing” Cowley replied. “In fact demons such as this have been known to use that very tactic to attack people it sees as a threat.”
I could feel the color running out of my face, I looked up at Keith and Darrel, both of whom had a concerned look on their faces as they looked back at me.
“Danny” I said as I looked back at the floor. “Guys, he never told anyone this before but when he was a kid he was attacked by a couple of large dogs, they damn near mauled him to death. He told me one day on a call out where the suspects had a couple of big ass Pitbull’s they were fighting, he told me he was scared to death of large dogs.”
Darrel and Keith looked at me like they did not understand where I was going with that statement, “The paw prints on his cruiser” I said.
“Mother fucker!” Keith blurted out. “That piece of shit made Danny think he was seeing a big ass dog, then after he crashed his car they snatched him.”
I told Professor Cowley what we had learned about the damage to Danny’s patrol car. “Gentlemen” Cowley said, “I firmly believe that your friend Danny was lured to that house and into a trap, they had every intention of killing him in a ritual sacrifice in that basement.”
I looked at Keith, “That joker I shot in the basement, he said ‘that one’s mine’ right before I noggin popped him. He was going to cut Danny’s head off with that knife he had.”
“Professor” Darrel said, “we have reason to believe that there may be two of these things running around.”
“What in God’s name would give you that idea?” Cowley replied.
Darrel explained to Professor Cowley about the incident in Seattle and the pictures he had taken of the crowd. He then showed the pictures of Stevie to Cowley. The Professor sat back in his chair, looked up to the ceiling and said, “Jesus wept” as he made the symbol of a cross on his chest. “They do not work together, they are like sharks, solo hunters, they do not work together” Cowley said.
I leaned forward in my chair, put my hands flat on Cowley’s desk and said, “how do you know?”
Cowley looked at me, and then up at Keith and Darrel, I could see in the professor’s old grey eyes that he was scared. “Jim, when I was a teenager I saw one of them, we were playing with a Ouija board you see, kind of a joke to impress some girls. Well it turned out to be not such a joke after all. Ever since then I have had a kind of fascination with demons and the occult in general, my boy, I even spoke at the Vatican one time.”
Sensing that the professor may be on the verge of confessing something important Keith walked over and asked in a very calming voice, “Professor, did you turn this thing loose?”
“No” the Professor replied. “They have been interacting with us since the beginning of recorded history, probably well before that too.
Cowley got up from his chair and started to walk around the room.
Pointing to a big map on the back wall of his office Cowley said, “Just as an example, the Aztecs had Tzitzimime the bringer of evil and destruction, the Navajo Yenaldooshi who were shape shifters and evil witches that lived in caves. The Irish had Dearg Due a female demon that attacked men, they are all throughout our history, embedded in every culture. Even today, look at some of the greatest unsolved mass murders of modern times, Jack the Ripper for example, the Zodiac killer, who by the way wore a circle symbol on his chest.”
“Okay wait, Jack the Ripper?” I said.
“Yes” Cowley said. “Think about it, Jim. In 1888 there was probably the only, if not one of the only, witnesses to the Ripper. A young Jewish man was walking along when he interrupted the murder of Elizabeth Stride in London. The killer turned and saw the young man, yelled to another darker man who was with him, this darker shadow of a man then chased after the young Jewish male.”
“They feed on fear, but if they don’t have the strength to manifest themselves, or maybe just because they want to, it can use his assistant. The person they recruit with the promise of power to commit the murder for them. Since its in close proximity to the death it can still feed off of the fear that the victim experiences.”
“I see what you’re saying Professor” Darrel said. “If memory serves all of the Rippers victims were prostitutes.”
“Yes Darrel” Cowley said, “already living a life of despair and pain. Prime targets for a demon such as ours.”
“And a city the size of London at that time gripped with the fear of an unknown killer on the loose, plenty to eat” Keith said.
I stood up from my chair, “Okay enough of the history lesson, enough of the bullshit, how do we deal with this thing and its friend in the here and now?” “Jim” Cowley said, “If there are indeed two of these things working together then we have a very serious problem.”
“I’m listening” I replied.
“If there are two, it is like having two male dogs” Cowley continued, “there has to be an alpha and they will fight to determine which one that will be, and in order to fight they will be feeding.”
The professor started to become very animated and his agitation level stated to skyrocket as he continued, “They will feed, establish a hierarchy, and then they will move against anyone they believe opposes them and their newly established kingdom.”
“Okay, well we better see about a plan before that shit happens” I replied.
Cowley stood up from his desk and said, “Find the circles that were used to summon them, destroy the circles and you destroy their link to this world.” “Why the fuck didn’t
you just say that in the first place Professor, Jimmy, let’s go burn that shit hole on Hollow Crest down tonight!” Keith said raising both his hands up in the air.
“Take it easy bro” I replied. “Ever since Danny’s incident patrol has been hanging around there just looking to nab anyone coming or going from that place.”
“We need a plan” Darrel said, “I wish you the best of luck” interrupted Cowley. “Like I said, I am leaving and I highly encourage you to do the same, you can’t fight these things.”
Keith looked right at Professor Cowley and replied, “Watch us.”
Darrel, Keith and I left Cowley’s office, which was the last time I saw him.
We returned to my house and agreed that we would start working on a plan as soon as we were able to collect some more intelligence on the LW’s, Stevie, the house on Hollow Crest and the entire creepy ass deal. We then parted ways until we would meet again for church the next morning with Shelly.
Sunday came and church was a pretty interesting event. I think that my wife dragged us along just so she could be seen sitting in pews flanked by what had to look like members of a motorcycle gang in cheap suits. The entire thing was a bit of a show and she just smiled the entire time.
After church Darrel, Keith and I chatted for a bit, doing our best to avoid the other church goers so we wouldn’t have to tell them lies about who we really were. That was one of the downsides to being an undercover, more people knew you by your bad guy name than your real name, and that was a good thing. There was no reason to break that mold, besides something just did not seem right about lying to folks in church about who I was.
Sunday night I did not get very much sleep. As I lay in bed my mind was racing, thinking about what I would be walking into Monday morning, a three-day administrative leave and then the subsequent mental evaluations to determine fitness for duty. Three-days; under any other circumstances I would be okay with that, a few days to decompress, do what the three-days were intended to do and allow myself some time to come to grips with that had happened.
But these were not “normal” circumstances, if there was such a thing in law enforcement. The three-days that I was going to be away from the office were three-days that I would not be making moves. It would be up to Darrel and Keith to try and pin down as much intelligence as they could.
My thoughts started to drift from my pending three-day absence to the actions that lead me to this, the shooting in the basement. As I lay in bed re-playing the events in my head I could not help but to start remembering the other shootings I had been involved in.
I could almost smell the gunpowder, hear the yells of myself and my partner giving commands to drop the gun, the yells of the suspect back at us.
I started remembering how scared I was, not at the time I pulled the trigger, I was doing exactly what I trained and prepared for, but after. I was so scared that after it was all over I just sat there and shook, waiting for the sky to come crashing down, waiting for my supervisor to come and take my sidearm as evidence, knowing that I had just killed another human. Scared at what other people, especially my wife and family, would now think of me.
As the memories began to fade I started to drift off to sleep, I could hear that chant again, “He’s waiting for you” droning over and over in the distance.
8. Officer Dan Swanson
“Jim!” Shelly yelled as she shook my feet, “Get up, you’re going to be late.” I looked over at the clock, I must have slept right through the alarm. “I’m out the door” Shelly said, “I will call you this afternoon.” With that my wife was on her way to work and I was trying to find my way to the kitchen to get some coffee.
I walked into the kitchen and saw that my work phone was flashing telling me that I had a message. I just smiled to myself and shook my head as I poured myself a nice large cup of coffee. The first message was from Keith from 1:30am saying that he had a weird dream, that I had been hurt, and he was just checking in to make sure that everything was okay. He also sent some text messages, alcohol fueled text messages by the looks of them.
The second voice mail was from a number I didn’t recognize.
It had come in at 11:45pm. The voice on the message was cold and calculating, yet very business-like, “JT…..this is King. Desie gave me your number, we should really get together, call me when you can.” I swallowed hard, grit my teeth and set the phone back on the counter. The good news was that I now had a phone number for King and that was one of the pieces of the puzzle that we had been missing.
With this new piece of intelligence, and the voice message, I, or rather Darrel or Keith, could get a subpoena for the cell phone records for that number. We could see who else that jack-ass has been talking to. Phone numbers like that were often the starting point for neat little conspiracy cases, I just smiled as I took another drink of my coffee.
I finished my coffee, showered, and headed to my office. I made sure that I left early enough that I would be there when Rick arrived, but still early enough so I could slip out before the rest of the crew started to show up.
As I pulled into the parking area I saw that Rick was already there, his car parked next to an unmarked unit from the Police Department. When I walked into our building I went straight to my office, got a cup of coffee and then headed down to visit with Rick.
Rick’s door was closed so I knocked, “come in” said Rick. When I walked into his office I saw that he had been joined by Commander John Amada, the Commander for the Police Department’s Detective Division. “Jim, come on in, you know Commander Amada?”
“Yes sir” I replied. “How are you Commander?” I said as we shook hands. The entire time thinking that this was all we needed, attention from the big brass.
“Hanging in there Jim, good to see you again….how are you doing?” “I’m here, Sir.”
I noticed an odd vibe in the room, both Rick and Commander Amada were having a hard time looking at me.
I sat down and said, “Listen Rick before we get down to business I would like to finish telling you about the occult connection we came across.”
Before I could say another word Rick looked up at me and with a stoic look on his face said, “Jim, last night Dan Swanson killed himself.” I just sat there, it took me just a second to process what I had just heard,
“Jim, I’m sorry, I know that you guys were friends, and after what went down on Hollow Crest….I’m sorry” the Commander said as he put his hand on my shoulder.
My heart was racing, I found that my teeth were clenching I just could not sit still. I stood up and turned away from Rick, I didn’t want him to see me starting to tear up. “What happened?” I asked.
The commander said, “After you and that ATF agent pulled him out of the basement he was taken to the hospital via ambulance where he was stabilized.”
“Jim, we are not sure when he left the hospital but all indications are that he left under his own power. He walked out to the roadway and threw himself in front of a semi-truck, he was killed instantly.”
I leaned forward and put my head against the wall of Rick’s office and just muttered “oh my God.” I felt weak, the Commander and Rick were both talking to me but all I could hear was white noise. I took a deep breath trying to contain the nausea I was feeling, I felt disconnected from myself, almost like I was having an out-of-body experience.
I pulled myself together as best I could. I didn’t know what to say, “Rick, Commander, thank you for telling me. Yes, Danny and I were friends….I don’t understand how this could happen.”
Rick looked at me, nodded, and said, “Jim, we need to talk about that day that you and Darrel pulled Danny out of that basement.”
“Of course” I replied, “what can I tell you?”
“Jim” Commander Amada said, “Rick tells me that you guys have developed some sort of an occult inspired connection between some of our crooks here and that mass killing over in Seattle the other year.”
“Yes sir” I said, still doin
g my best to choke back my tears. “Darrel….the ATF agent, and I started seeing some ideology reflected in graffiti that we thought was occult inspired. It was Danny that had turned us on to it.”
“You’re talking about that graffiti in the basement at the Hollow Crest address?” Rick asked.
“Yes sir, Darrel had seen a similar graffiti at the murder scene in the Port of Seattle. We had gone to consult with a relative of his…of Darrel’s at the university, an expert in their religious studies department. Anyway, we were going to the house on Hollow Crest so our contact could see the graffiti first hand, that’s when we discovered Danny’s patrol car, and, well, you know the rest.”
“Jim, what do you think Danny was doing at that house?” the Commander asked.
“Sir, I have no idea. I know that he had been involved with the installation of a VARDA at that location. That’s the only thing I can think of, that he was following up on that.”