She breathed a sigh of relief, heedless of the fact that she’d knocked over the placard beneath it.
Determined, she turned and walked back toward the Ripper display. There had to be something that she could do that wasn’t obvious—some little change to make it not quite so perfect.
But even as she reached it, she felt as if someone were running cold fingers down her neck and spine. She could hear breathing.
“Hey, wait up, I’m coming!” she called. But she turned back quickly.
What could she do to the thing…?
The question fled her mind almost as quickly as it was thought. Once again, she felt cold fingers dancing along her spine, a rush of air like breath. In the dim light and macabre shadows, it seemed that everything had come to life.
Because, she saw, staring at the thing, it was alive.
It didn’t look so real because of the phenomenal talents of the fabricator; it wasn’t a mannequin. It was a man. A man-demon. It was real. Real, with burning red-gold eyes that seemed like something right out of a pit of hell.
It was alive…
And it smiled suddenly and reached out for her, the razor-honed knife in its hands slashing downward before the scream rising inside of her could escape her throat.
—
Maureen Deauville wasn’t able to truly study the most gruesome—and arresting—display on Jack the Ripper in the convention center hall at first. She was looking elsewhere—as a good friend and guest should.
“I’m so proud, Mo!” Chelsea said, using the nickname Maureen had gone by since she’d been a child. “My little studio did great work!”
Mo was there with her childhood friend Chelsea Marlborough the night before the exhibit was due to open. They had come specifically for a sneak peek at the work that had been done by Chelsea and her coworkers at their small studio.
Chelsea was busy gawking—with due pride—at her company’s tableau. In the display, a fantastic alien—with sharp teeth, dragon claws, and a face not even a mother could love—was attacking the hero of one of the world’s newest comic creations, the Revenant. The heroic Revenant, of course, was busy gallantly beating back the alien while winged wolverine-like creatures flew above the fight and a modern-day damsel in a short skirt and spike heels screamed with horror on the ground.
Mo had to admit that it was all fascinating and unbelievable, and she was delighted that Chelsea—who had been working her particular artistry in Hollywood for several years now—had invited her and Aidan out to see the display.
It was a little surprising to Mo that Chelsea had fashioned her hero—the Revenant—in the image of Aidan, but then Chelsea was an artist; she had been enthused when she’d met Aidan back in New York, telling him he had the perfect face to be chiseled in heroic form and that he had great eyes—strong ice-blue—and the dark hair of every woman’s fantasy.
Since Mo knew Chelsea’s appreciation for art, she hadn’t worried about her friend’s enthusiasm over her fiancé. Chelsea was a real friend and truly happy for her.
And yet…
Aidan as a comic-book hero. She couldn’t help but wonder what he would think, seeing himself so. Aidan was a die-hard agent, serious about his work. But, of course, all the agents she worked with were just people as well, people who had choices in music, movies, and books.
She hoped he would be amused to see himself in skimpy tights, bearing a sword and a shield.
As children, she and Chelsea had both been art students; Mo had gone on to design greeting cards and Chelsea had headed to Hollywood, knowing she wanted to be a fabricator all her life. She loved monsters.
Mo wasn’t quite so fond of monsters. She’d known enough real ones. From the time she’d been really young, she’d worked with a search-and-rescue dog, finding lost children and people, sometimes dead and sometimes alive. She’d only recently become involved in the bizarre case of a murdered politician in Sleepy Hollow—during which she’d fallen in love with Aidan Mahoney, then attended the academy, and gone on to become a member of a special unit known as the Krewe of Hunters.
Chelsea laughed softly. “And none of this scares you, I guess now. Not now that you are a gun-toting G-man, right? Woman, I mean. Honestly, if it were me…it is me. I do this for a living. And in the dark like this, I’m getting the creeps in here.”
“It’s very creepy,” Mo agreed. She hesitated. Very creepy—she felt completely uneasy.
But then, all her life, she’d also been able to see and speak to the dead—when they lingered behind, of course, and when they chose to be seen and to speak in return. It was a talent, gift, or curse that she shared with Aidan—and others in the special Krewe unit of the bureau they worked with. One would have thought that, since they did recognize spirits, specters, or ghosts, very little would be creepy to them.
But something here was, indeed, very, very creepy.
It was a modern convention center! It was attached to a nice modern chain hotel!
And yet there was something here…
There were lots of things here. Shrieking banshees, rotting zombies, vampires, skeletons, corpses in different stages of decomposition, aliens, mummies, gnomes, elves—anything that might be found in a movie. Some of the creatures were stunning, even in the poor light. Some of them drew a sense of awe and a childlike belief in heroes—like Chelsea’s Revenant.
They’d really come tonight specifically to see the Revenant display; Chelsea had worked on the costume and accessories for the actor who would transform into Revenant. Since Chelsea had volunteered to help with some of the organizational setup for the show for Lloyd Harrison, he’d finagled a key to the main display rooms and they’d been allowed in that night, before the place crawled with the artists and vendors—along with fans, nerds, and possible clients—who would arrive before opening to make the last check of their wares and displays.
“Incredibly chilling,” Mo murmured, turning to the display that had first caught her attention.
She felt it again! Even with her back turned to it, she’d had a chilled sensation—as if someone—something—alive and malignant watched her from the tableau.
“That’s a display for a movie about to be filmed—Rip,” Chelsea told her, walking closer to the display. “This really is some of the best work to be found anywhere,” she added with awe.
In the configuration, a tall killer in a porkpie hat and long black coat held a knife that dripped with blood. His lower face was masked with a scarf—only his eyes were visible. They seemed to burn, as if they were truly demon eyes, right out of hell. He was set behind a wall, as if he were inside an apartment standing over the body, which was a bloody mess on a bed. A dazed nineteenth-century English bobby stood on the other side of the wall, a lantern raised in his hands as he appeared to be searching for the Ripper—with no luck. The blood spattered on the convention hall’s wall—next to a fabricated fireplace—seemed to have come from the work of the crazed killer.
A placard read The final victim, Mary Kelly, Miller’s Court, November 9, 1888.
The display was gruesomely accurate. Mo knew, because she’d done the Ripper Tour in London with her mother and father years before, and seen the pictures of this death scene. The fabricators had gone to great lengths to get the entire scene down perfectly—the victim had nothing but a bloody mess for a body from the neck down; body parts—barely discernable as anything specific other than pulpy, bloody flesh—had been set on a bedside table.
“I gotta say,” Chelsea murmured, joining her, “that’s good. I mean, that’s really good. I’ve worked on some of the most amazing horror movies in the business and—wow. That’s good.”
“Too real,” Mo murmured, finding that she was looking at the Ripper mannequin’s eyes. They were truly frightening—they made it appear that a man indeed stood there, wielding a knife that really dripped blood.
It occurred to Mo then that everything about the scene didn’t just appear to be real…
It smelled real as wel
l. The tinny scent of blood seemed to be in the air.
“Chelsea,” Mo said, “I think that there really is something wrong here. I need to get back into the exhibit—behind the false wall—and take a look at the body.”
“Oh, Mo, you can’t do that. I mean, I can’t let you do that. We respect one another’s work around here. You could knock something over, change something—and people work really, really hard on these, you know.”
Mo felt ill; she didn’t want to see the ripped-to-shreds body. She didn’t want to go closer.
She had to.
Ignoring Chelsea, she walked over to the six-inch platform of the display.
Was it her imagination—or did the eyes of the Ripper mannequin follow her?
“Mo!” Chelsea said, astounded. “I just told you—please! I may be jealous as all hell of this scene, but we don’t mess with one another’s work!”
Mo had come around the false wall; Chelsea was looking at her through the fabricated window of the Miller’s Court scene.
But Mo already knew. She wasn’t sure about the Jack the Ripper mannequin; she was sure about the body.
A real victim lay there—the face so slashed that it was impossible to discern what had once been a woman’s features. The pulps of flesh on the table by the bed were just that—horrible soggy messes of flesh, cut from the victim’s thighs. There seemed to be nothing left of the abdomen area; organs had been removed, and Mo knew that they had been removed and placed under and around the body.
She’d worked on horrible cases, first in search and rescue, and then at Sleepy Hollow and as a newly minted agent of the FBI’s Krewe of Hunters.
But nothing compared to this total carnage…
For a moment, her stomach seemed to sink. Her limbs seemed frozen and useless.
She turned to look at Chelsea through the window.
“Chelsea, call the police; dial nine-one-one. Get officers out here immediately.”
“Mo—what the hell?”
“Chelsea, this isn’t fabrication; it’s real.”
“Mo, of course it looks real—that’s what we’re paid to do. But—”
Chelsea’s sentence broke off. She had come around to stand by Mo. She looked down at the body; she, too, could presumably smell the blood.
And she realized that it was real.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God—”
Chelsea’s knees were giving; Mo grasped her to keep her standing. She reached to her back pocket for her phone and remembered that she’d left her bag in Chelsea’s car—they weren’t supposed to have been here that long. They were supposed to meet up with Aidan and Jesse—Chelsea’s newest boyfriend—for dinner at a sushi restaurant down the street. Chelsea had just slipped in with Mo for a few minutes to preview the Revenant.
“Your phone, Chelsea. I need your phone!” Mo said.
Chelsea nodded, her hand and fingers shaking as she reached into her pocket; just as her champagne cup had dropped from her fingers, so did her phone. Mo had to reach down past the exhibit to find the phone—it had fallen into a pool of blood. She grasped it up anyway and quickly dialed 911.
A series of beeps was all that she received. She looked at the phone in the meager light.
No reception!
“We have to get out of here, Chelsea,” she said.
Chelsea nodded. Her eyes were glazed. She looked at Mo with sheer terror.
“Chelsea, come on, snap out of it—we need to get out of here. We have to get to where I can use a phone—and, and out of this place.”
She didn’t want to add the fact that the killer could well still be in the room. Hiding, somewhere. In or out of costume and makeup and monster prosthetics.
Chelsea nodded.
She turned to move and froze again. “Mo.”
“What, what? Come on, let’s go.”
“He’s—he’s gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Mo asked.
Chelsea turned to stare at her with her eyes wide with sheer panic.
“The Ripper. Jack the Ripper. He’s—gone.”
—
Aidan looked at his watch; he was early. But then, while he was accustomed to driving in New York City, where traffic lanes were seen as mere suggestions, he had yet to accustom himself to Southern California—where lanes became pure parking lots.
Mo had told him how to get to the restaurant by passing the Burbank airport, and so he found himself right in front of the convention center with fifteen minutes to spare. It had been important to Mo to come out here and applaud her friend’s work, and he admired Chelsea’s work as well. Maybe he could reach them and get a sneak peek at her work for himself.
Banners all over the center advertised the grisly, the beautiful, and everything in between. Times when well-known or once-well-known actors would make appearances were posted on support walls around the building as well. A connecting hotel seemed to have a full parking lot, but the one assigned to the convention was almost empty—he saw Chelsea’s car next to a few others, but that was all.
Aidan parked and looked at the building. He blinked, thinking that the dark, malevolent haze surrounding the convention center had to be caused by the brightness of the hotel connected by a covered pathway.
But still, the cloud instantly gave him pause and caused a sense of unease to stir within him.
He stared at it for a moment. Then he noted a woman standing outside the hotel; she seemed to be imploring guests to stop and speak with her. No one would.
She was dressed in jeans and a scoop-neck T-shirt; she had sandy hair in a ponytail and appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties.
Aidan watched her.
And then saw that a man seemed to pass right through her.
His heart sank, and he knew. The woman was dead, and trying to reach someone.
He winced; he and Mo were away from home, away from work—tourists in sunny California. There to support the work of a friend—visit the tar pits and shop on Sunset and…
She was in trouble. He walked toward her. For a moment, he thought he saw something like a lightning flash sizzle through her. And she was no longer an attractive young woman…
She was a corpse. A corpse with a ripped and shredded body and a face so mutilated that the features were gone…
The sizzle stopped; she looked like a young woman again. Disgusted that no one could see or hear her, she turned and ran down the division between the hotel and the convention center.
“Hey!” Aidan called, racing after her.
She passed through the connector; he followed. And then she disappeared through the doors that led into the convention center.
Mo was in there. Mo and Chelsea. Aidan raced toward the door, reached for the handle—and then crashed against the door with the impetus of his attempt.
It was locked.
His heart was racing; he pulled out his phone to dial 911. Then he thought about the action.
What the hell was he going to say? “I think there’s something wrong at the convention center. I just saw a bloody corpse rush in. Well, no, not a corpse—the ghost of the corpse.”
Even if he could think of what to say, his phone registered that he had no service.
The ghost of a bloody corpse had just rushed in…
And Mo was in there.
He reached into his pocket for his custom Swiss Army knife. The lock was nothing to pick. A moment later, he had entry. It was a side door from the hotel, he realized, not the main entry. It was a side door, and he’d entered right into the exhibits.
The world inside was bathed in an auxiliary-lit pale glow and shadow. And in that shadow, monsters roamed. A rabid ten-foot bear towered over him, claws out, dripping fake saliva. A cluster of zombies nearby ate the brains of a businessman on his knees. Aliens, gnomes, bats, vampires—all staged in different tableaus, or standing by tables that sold models or jewelry—were all around him in any direction he might turn. Killer dolls were sold at one table, steampunk masks at
another.
He looked at the particularly creepy figure of a killer-clown puppet.
And then he heard a scream.
—
He was standing there—Jack the Ripper—now facing Chelsea just beyond the exhibit; he was real and live and moving.
His knife hand was raised high.
Mo gave her friend a hard push. “Run—get out!” she commanded her.
Chelsea must have relied on some sense of self-preservation. She sidestepped the figure by a foot and went tearing down the darkened aisle, past the Revenant display and down an aisle filled with zombies and a line of horribly decaying mummies.
Her shriek seemed to fill the whole of the convention center.
For a moment, Mo stood still, stunned and staring at the Jack the Ripper that had come to life.
She stared at the Ripper.
And it stared at her.
Still, the eyes seemed to glow, like some kind of demon eyes. They were alive with an inner light that seemed to burn with perversion and hatred and twisted cruelty…
Her heart thundered. She’d learned to use a standard-issue Glock very well at the academy; she didn’t have it with her. She didn’t have a thing with which to fight.
And yet she wondered, even if she did have her gun, would it have made any difference? Was this thing real, or…
She was letting panic take hold. She had to fight.
There was a fire poker in the exhibit. She picked it up and swung it with all of her might, catching the thing in the rib cage.
It barely seemed to matter; it gripped its ribs, and she was certain, beneath the concealing scarf around its neck, it was smiling.
And so she ran as well.
What door? What door? What path out?
Mo followed Chelsea’s run through the zombies and mummies. In armor and helmets, the mummies seemed to be marching, ready to move out to do battle against her.
She nearly slammed into a werewolf that was snarling and growling—its eyes, too, seemed to glow as she raced through the darkened room. She forced herself to stop before knocking the creature to the floor and bringing herself with it. She tried to listen over the thundering of her heart.
Dark Screams, Volume 4 Page 9