The Corruption Within
Page 8
Tilley spoke quickly, cutting off whatever Lark was about to say. “All right, Wesley, and what title do you go by?”
I hadn’t planned for Tilley’s response and said the first thing that came to my mind. “Avenging Angel.”
Lark huffed in indignation, but Tilley smirked. “Okay, Avenging Angel Petterson, where did you get that bike?”
“I bought it.”
“From who?” asked Lark.
“A man.” I was being petty and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I also knew antagonizing a cop could make my life more difficult, but right then I didn’t care about that, either.
“Apparently, you have an affinity for stealing cars, Avenging Angel Petterson. It doesn’t take a huge leap in logic to think you might have lifted a simpler means of transportation,” Tilley said coolly.
“You looked me up?”
“Of course. I even spoke with Mr. Simons, your parole officer. Released early due to overcrowding, right? Mr. Simons is under the impression you are still staying in the shelter off Third, and that you haven’t found a job yet. You know you’re supposed to update him with any changes of address, right?”
I wanted to mouth off to the two of them and run away. I wanted to curse them for invading my life and harassing me, but they had all the power. They could burn me with my PO and have me sent back to jail, just when things were starting to go right for me. I was angry, but not angry enough to risk my freedom.
I sighed. “Look. I just bought the bike from the pawnshop down the way. He didn’t seem the sort to have a return policy, and it’s not like I need the tax write-off, so I didn’t get a receipt. If you don’t believe me, go ask him.”
“We’ll do that,” said Tilley. Nodding to Lark, the two moved out of my way and turned down the street. “Stay out of trouble, Avenging Angel Petterson. And check in with your parole officer.”
I, full of calm maturity, flipped them the bird behind their backs and pushed my bike inside the bar.
“New bike?” Gabe asked as I laid his keys on the bar.
“I paid for it,” I snapped.
“I didn’t ask,” Gabe replied with that cool, discerning look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I just got cornered by Starsky and Bitch out there. I guess I’m a little pissy right now.”
Gabe nodded. “They are skeptical, it’s their job. They aren’t all bad, it’s just a dangerous business to be in if you want to try to see the best in people.” He looked at me steadily as he continued. “It’s hard to improve yourself. It’s even harder to improve your reputation. You can do it, though, you’ve just got to keep at it.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” I said. The envelope of keys grew in weight exponentially, compounded by my guilt over snapping at Gabe. The fact that I felt guilty made me angry. I was fairly sure Gabe was hiding something—sure enough to be a little scared of him—but at the same time, I could not ignore all the things he had done for me. Investigating Gabe’s after-hour behaviors while witnessing the way he treated his customers led to a confusing mixture of emotions, and most of the time I couldn’t tell if I felt guilty, scared, angry, or hungry.
I pressed my hand tightly against my pocket to keep the keys from jingling. “Gabe, you sure you’re all right with me taking the rest of the day off?”
“Yeah. Get outta here, kid,” he said with a grunt.
Gabe didn’t live far from the bar, just a few miles out, on the outskirts of town. He had taken me one morning when he needed help moving some boxes, and I was able to find my way back fairly easily. His house wasn’t especially big or flashy, but everything inside felt well-made and looked a little bit more expensive than what Gabe should have been able to afford—or maybe I was being overly critical after hearing Barnett question how much money the bar made.
I parked my bike behind some bushes and looked around to see if anyone was watching before walking up to his door. I pulled the keys from my pocket and tried the first one. The key didn’t fit, but the sound of the doorknob jiggling must have woken Butch, Gabe’s eighty-pound yellow retriever, because he started barking and pawing at the door.
“Crap.” I’d forgotten about the dog. Standing there, I remembered how suspicious the dog had seemed of me until Gabe had introduced me. Yes, he introduced me to his dog.
“Butch, this is Wesley. He’s cool.” The dog’s low growls had vanished, making room for inquisitive sniffs, which morphed into a doggy grin and furious tail wags. Even after we bonded over ear scratches—me scratching his ears, not vice versa—I still remembered the fierceness in the dog’s stance when I first walked in. I did not want to risk entering the house alone.
I was walking to my bike, cursing myself for wasting a trip, when I noticed Gabe had a stand-alone garage behind his house. I hadn’t paid attention to the backyard before. I nervously looked around. I was sure I looked suspicious to anyone driving by, but no one seemed to be paying me attention. So I went to the garage and tried the keys. The third key did the trick, and I slipped inside.
After a moment of fumbling along the wall, I found the light switch.
And froze.
I had expected to find lawn tools, boxes of knickknacks, maybe some Christmas decorations—normal storage items. But what I found was a disturbing mix of a martial arts dojo and some kind of horror-cult shrine.
A section of one wall was full of swords and knives of every imaginable style. I didn’t recognize most of the styles well enough to name them, but I saw a Middle Ages-style great sword and a thin Japanese katana. One had a pointy hook at the end. One didn’t have a blade edge but instead a thin cylindrical blade that ended in a point. Another had a curved blade, like the old Arabian swords in movies. Every weapon on the wall was shiny and clean but also covered in nicks and dings from heavy usage.
In the middle of the room was a six-by-six wooden post, rising about seven feet from a bracket attached to a thick piece of plywood. It had dents and chips all up and down the sides, apparently from years of abuse. Beside the post lay two bamboo poles with white cloth wrapped around one end, obviously some kind of a practice swords.
The walls of the rest of the garage were covered in sheets of paper with drawings of—of monsters. Every square inch of wall was plastered with hand-drawn pictures of every hellish beast created in exorcism-inducing, hallucinatory nightmares since the dawn of time. Everywhere I looked were angry, red eyes and snarling teeth. There were pictures of hands with varying numbers of claws—always deadly sharp. One creature stood on two goat-like legs, another had the lower body of a bull, and still another had a bunch of tiny, needlelike appendages. Some of the creatures had nearly human faces, while others had heads like birds or rats or things unlike any animal I’d ever seen.
The dark colors of the drawings sucked all the light from the room, making it feel cold and cramped. The assortment of savage faces and outreached claws seemed to be trying to leave the paper to come after me.
In one corner sat a little table filled with candles of varying sizes and colors. Dried wax from old candles hung from the sides in eerie, colorful stalactites. In the center was a soot-blackened, silver picture frame with a single Chinese symbol displayed inside. I assumed it was Chinese, but I guess it could have been from a number of ancient scripts. Underneath the table was a large book with a worn leather cover.
My heart was racing so fast I could hear my pulse. My fight-or-flight instinct, leaning heavily toward flight, kicked into overdrive. I forced myself to not run away and slowly made my way to the tiny altar, careful to touch as little as possible. I tried to memorize the symbol inside the picture frame, even though I knew I’d never remember it well enough to replicate it. I picked up the book and flipped through a few pages. It was filled with pictures similar to the ones on the walls, but where the paper on the walls had bits and pieces of each monster, each page of the book had a single creature drawn from head to toe—or from horn to talon. Around the edges of each page, in shiny, gold ink, were more of the little symbols.
On the opposite wall was a simple black desk. I set the book back in its place and made my way over to the desk. A single neat pile of manila folders rested on the middle of the desk. I sat in the metal folding chair in front of the desk and picked up the top folder. Across the top of the folder, in blocky letters, was written Jessica Jenkins. Inside was a picture of a woman with long, straight blonde hair and fair skin. She looked to be in her mid-forties or -fifties. The picture showed her walking down a street; from the buildings in the background, she had to have been downtown. She was facing away from the camera, and it looked like she didn’t know she was being photographed.
Underneath the picture were several scraps of paper with notes scribbled haphazardly. The first had a list of three addresses in town. The second was the name of three stores—a fast food restaurant, an office supply store, and a pharmacy—and times, all within a couple hours of each other. The third had rough sketches of a house from the front, back, and each side. They were simple enough drawings, the basic shape of a house with windows and a couple doors, but something about the images was unsettling to me.
I set the folder down and took the second one from the pile. It was labeled Chanel Williams and had a picture of a young, attractive black woman. In the picture, she was exiting a grocery store and looking in her purse—maybe searching for her keys? Her list of places and times included the name of the grocery store in the picture plus a doctor’s office. The file also included a list of three addresses and a sketch of a house. The sketch looked about the same as the one in Jessica’s folder. Fairly basic structure with windows and doors, but in the second picture it became more obvious what was so unsettling. The landscaping. The drawings were so crude, with so little detail, that including bushes of proportional size was an odd contrast.
The third folder said Marie Pittman. The picture inside was of a short-haired brunette lady with the cheeky frown of a bulldog. She was sitting outside in a coffee shop, obviously in the middle of a conversation with another lady, of which I could only see the back of her head. Again, there was a list of places and times and a sketch of a building. This time the drawing was of a tall building—possibly an apartment complex—and just drawn from the front and one side. The drawing from the front was a simple small rectangle inside a simple large rectangle—a door and a building. The one from the side had a series three horizontal lines connected by zigzagging lines with one square drawn on the third horizontal line. A fire escape and one window?
The last folder was labeled Ida Burke. Ida had olive skin, a slender frame, and long, dark hair that reached to the middle of her back. At least, if the picture in her file was correct. The drawing of her house was just as simple and disturbing as the rest. Other than the picture and the sketch, there was only a single sheet of paper, with two addresses. The second of these caught my attention. Walshack Street. I dropped the paper and quickly thumbed through the other three manila files. I hadn’t paid attention to the addresses on each list, but there, on every single one, was an address on Walshack Street.
The street where Tilley had said people had been attacked.
The street where Gabe had been hunting every night.
The street where I saw Gabe assault a dude in an alley.
Just then I heard the sound of a car door closing. I almost screamed as the sound broke through the tension. I closed the folders and quickly tried to line them up as neatly as I had found them. I ran to the door and flicked off the light switch, hoping no one had noticed the lights through the window.
I opened the door and peeked outside. Not seeing anyone, I stepped into the yard, locking the door behind me. I flattened myself against the wall when I heard another car door close. I saw a mother, holding hands with her daughter, across the street, going from their car to the house.
Cursing myself for needless panic, I stood motionless, trying to regulate my breathing, until the two had entered the house. I briefly considered going back into the garage, but fear was still causing my heart to race, and I knew I didn’t want to enter that den of horrors ever again. So I ran to pick up my bike and headed down the street.
Crazy. Gabe was insane. Were those women the victims Tilley had talked about? Was it possible Gabe was the one who attacked them? No, that couldn’t be right. He definitely had his creepy secrets, but attacking women couldn’t—but why did he have pictures of them? Was he stalking them? That didn’t make sense either.
Neither did the mural of monsters covering his walls. Or the racks of swords. Or a—a what—a shrine? A shrine to who—or to what?
After several minutes of hard pedaling, I realized I had no idea where I was going. I vaguely recognized that I was headed downtown. I turned down a side street and then another. I continued riding aimlessly, trying to collect my thoughts.
After twenty minutes of riding, the buildings began to look familiar. I passed a street sign and realized I had circled back around to Walshack Street. The street felt so much less mysterious in the daylight. People were leaving stores with newly acquired shoes, watches, or insurance policies. People were walking down the sidewalks talking on their phones. People were darting between cars as they tried to cross the street. People were everywhere, doing everyday things. The normalcy of it all softened the sense of foreboding I felt at night when I followed Gabe.
I pulled up to the alley where I had witnessed Gabe pin the guy to a wall, and without even making the conscious decision, I swung off my bike, leaned it against the kickstand, and walked into the alley. I don’t know what I was looking for. I guess I was hoping to find some clue—huh, “clue,” like I’d been some kind of world-class detective so far—something that would help me make sense of everything.
I walked down the alley to roughly the spot I’d seen the men fighting and found it depressingly empty of anything resembling a clue. There were no discarded cameras or smoking guns. There were no scraps of paper reading “Today I attacked a complete stranger after attempting to stalk random women because the drawings in my Temple of Devil Worship told me to,” signed by Gabriel Huggins.
Resigned to frustration, I turned to leave when the air filled with a whoosh. Something large and heavy struck me in the back, throwing me to the pavement face first. I hit the ground hard, my chin striking the pavement with enough force to send an explosion of pain through my jaw and lights flashing before my eyes.
An enormous weight pressed into my back, pinning me to the ground and forcing the air from my lungs. I turned my head just enough to see a foot, nearly as big as my head, with long talons wrapped around my arm. It squeezed my arm hard enough that I thought the bone was about to shatter. The claw itself looked like it could come from an eagle the size of a refrigerator, but it was attached to a leg covered in thick, matted, black fur like a bear’s.
The monster shoved its head close enough that I could smell its putrid breath. I tried to thrash my body to escape, but its weight kept me from doing anything more than kicking my legs uselessly. I shut my eyes tight, not wanting to see the horror that was surely about to eat me alive.
And then it spoke. Its voice came out in a snarling, gravelly sneer like the sound of turning the ignition in a car that was already running. “You have been seen here before, prey. You have been seen with the tutuvar. You will tell me of the tutuvar or you will die.”
The claw squeezed even tighter around my arm, and I screamed in pain. “I don’t know!” I yelled.
“Liar!”
“I don’t. I promise. I don’t know what that is.”
I felt the creature lean closer to me, and a drop of foul-smelling saliva dripped on my cheek. I heard the creature take in a deep breath as if sniffing my neck before taking a bite.
“I do not smell deception on you, little prey. I smell only your fear.” I felt the creature lean back, and it released the pressure from my arm. “You will find the tutuvar for me, and you will bring him here at midnight, one month from today. Or I will find you. The hunter always finds its prey.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees and laid my head down. My head was swimming, my eyes blurred, my breath short. My chest felt tight, like the creature was still sitting on me. I remember thinking I was too young to have a heart attack.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually my vision began to clear and the tightness in my chest eased. I tried to take a deep breath, but pain lit up my side again and a wave of nausea swept over me. Slowly I pushed myself to my feet, holding my throbbing arm against the fire in my side.
I stumbled over to my bike and pulled up the kickstand with my foot. I knew I wouldn’t be able to pedal back to the bar, so I used the bike as support as I began to push it down the street. It took me almost an hour to stumble my way to the bar like that. People gave me stern, judgmental looks and circled around from me as I went. One old lady scowled at me as she crossed the road, obviously wanting to be as far from me as possible.
When I made it to the bar, I let the bike drop to the ground and shuffled inside. The little bell above the door caught Gabe’s attention, and he looked up, smiling from behind the bar. “You decide to work to—” he cut himself off when he saw me leaning against the door.
There were only three or four customers inside, but every single one of them stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I didn’t have the strength to say anything, so I pushed myself off the door and stumbled my way to the back room and into a chair at the break table.
A moment later Gabe came storming into the room. “Wesley!” he demanded. “Are you drunk?” He must have finally gotten a good look at the dried blood on my face, because he immediately followed that with, “Good lord, kid, what happened to you?”