The Noir Evil

by Richard Paul Caird

  Fronek then eagerly looked at both the engrossed Ness and Cowles beside him for moral support as if they understood his meaning of his peculiar metaphor but he got none as both just continued to look at him with an intriguingly blank stare. He then hastily continued, not wishing to dwell on his vague descriptions “Anyway! Then he lifted up his hand to reveal a small crumpled paper bag which I immediately took and opened it and to my surprise it contained a sandwich and a small bottle of whisky! So I frantically eat the sandwich and drank the whisky before I thanked him for his kind charity, I mean I’m not going to pass up on a free meal or booze right? Hehe! Then he turned and started to walk away and I chased after him because I had no idea where I was, being a bit tipsy, and so I asked him but he didn’t reply and strangely just motioned for me to follow him and so I did. I mean he seemed like a nice charitable guy you know? So I thought what’s the harm and I followed him. Oddly he didn’t say one word the whole time, not one! I tried making polite conversation whilst thanking him and telling him about my tragic life story and how I ended up on the streets blah! blah! blah! Because well? I don’t know? I guess I wanted more liquor, you get me?”

  The struggling Fronek now once again looked around for an understanding from the others but all four did not voice their understanding and remained silent because they were all keen for him to continue his interesting story where he had just left off and he immediately obliged them “Anyway! So I was just about to stop following him and leave because I was starting to get a weird vibe from him, like a creepy sort of feeling and then all of a sudden my apprehension disappeared and I suddenly felt that he meant me now harm whatsoever. It’s difficult to describe really but I just felt like this guy was a real swell kind of fellow and so he then motioned for me to follow him into this building, his home I think? Hummm?” The struggling Fronek now looked as though he was desperately trying to recall the sporadic visual memories that where so deeply rooted within his degraded mind that they were causing him to physically struggle in there recollection.

  Then he appeared to have succeeded in there recollection and hastily continued his story as best as he could “Yeah! His home was a large two story brick building which had four chimneys on the roof! Yeah that’s it!” The excitable Fronek was pleased that he had recalled such detailed memories from his chaotic thoughts and it showed within his weathered face as he hastily then continued whilst smiling, not wanting to dwell on his success through fear of losing it all again “Stairs led up to an elevated patio on the first floor and there was a strange sealed off brick area nearby? Like a private courtyard or something like that? Weird huh? I also think it was the back of the building but I’m not sure because my memory escapes me? Anyway! He went up to the patio but by this time I was a little apprehensive again and stopped at the base of the stairs and I guess he knew this because as he opened the door, he turned and silently motioned for me to follow him up. At first I was a little hesitant because, you know? Hehe! He could be some sort of ‘sexual pervert’ who wants ‘favours’ for drink or something like that? You understand?”

  A distracted Fronek then paused for a few alarming moments as troubling thoughts barraged his feeble mind before he continued, not wishing to dwell of such troublesome imagery “Then I thought what the heck else have I got to do right? Plus he may actually have a loads of alcohol like barrels of the bootleg stuff just like Capone did! Right Ness? Hehe!” The unimpressed Ness did not respond to his comment about his defeated and distant past enemy because he was eager to confirm his successful future and so the awkwardly smiling Fronek quickly continued “Sorry but I read about your Untouchables, the bootlegging Scarface and all that jazz and I’m kind of a fan Hehe! Anyway! Moving quickly on… so I took a chance and followed him up the stairs and went into his home and as soon as I entered the building I instantly smelt food. It was all waiting for me on this large wooden table in the centre of the room and just begging to be eaten! There was roast turkey in thick gravy, potatoes and even those little sandwiches that they give away at parties and man! Did they all taste good! Ummm! So I just sat my ass straight down on a chair and tucked right in man! It was like the fourth of July in there Hehe! I felt like I was in heaven!”

  A keenly listening Ness then asked a question as he irritatingly glanced across at the preoccupied Zalewski whom was now cleaning one of his treasured silver pistols with his handkerchief and spit, until he noticed Ness’s stern gaze and ceased immediately “What did the interior of this ‘home’ look like?” Fronek then stopped speaking as he noticed Ness’s small scotch flask within his lower jacket pocket and motioned to him with his beckoning eyes to give him it before he continued to divulge his alluring secrets. The confused Ness at first did not understand what he wanted until he looked down and understood as his suspicions where then confirmed when he then noticed that the vagrant’s nearby hand was shaking and that he was incessantly licking his dry lips in eager anticipation of his alcoholic reward. The curious Ness then obliged him because he wished to remain on good terms with the man and gave him the small silver flask which the desperate Fronek immediately drank whole before then wiping his mouth of the blessedly precious alcoholic residue. The satisfied Fronek then worryingly looked around at the silently observing occupants whom where all shocked at his instinctual reaction to Ness’s favourite drink and now eagerly wished for him to continue with his story.

  The somewhat ashamed Fronek then hastily continued as the rich drink wonderfully lined his parched throat and satisfied his desperate thrust “Thanks! Mr Ness sir! Much obliged! Wow! That was great scotch! Hehe! Now where was I? Oh! Yeah! The homes interior! From what I saw it was just a normal looking to me man! There was nothing untoward or weird about it really but there were some stairs at the back of the room and a few doors leading to the room that I was in but all the lights where off in these adjoining rooms and so never took any notice of what was inside them. I was far too focused on my feast which was on the table in front of me and the usual plates and other nick knacks that lay around this dimly lit room. Actually I think the wallpaper in the room was red and had art deco owl images on it but I can’t be sure? Oh! There was a large grandfather clock in there also which ticked away as I eat but the time never seemed change because it was strangely always 3:13 in the morning? Weird right? So apart from that it was a rather dull room actually with the exception of the feast of course Hehe! Anyway as I was finishing eating and drinking at the table I suddenly noticed something really weird? He was just staring at me from the shadows and had not even left the room! I mean how weird is that? I was so hungry that I didn’t even notice that he’d been there the whole god dame time I was eating! Watching me from the foot of the long table with those god forsaken bizarre round glowing eyes! It was then that I thought that this was all a little too strange for me and I was sure that it was only a matter of time before he was going to ask me for some of those ‘sexual favours’ that I mentioned earlier, if you catch my drift?”

  A smirking Fronek then winked knowingly at Ness before he eagerly continued as all but the smiling Zalewski remained stoic “Then I started to feel funny inside, like dizzy and I knew that this was not the alcohol but something else, something more sinister like a drug and so I quickly asked him for some water. He politely nodded, slowly turned and walked out of the room and into the adjoining room and it was then that I took my chance! I tried to quickly sneak back to the patio door but my legs felt like wobbly jelly under me and my vison got all blurry but I made it by occasionally resting on the long table. But when I tried to open the door I discovered that it was locked and so where the nearby windows and it was at this stage that I began to panic. I quickly turned back, ran upstairs and went to the first window that I saw at the end of this long darkened corridor. I frantically slide open the window and desperately tried to crawl out onto the patio roof and as I crawled through, I just caught a glimpse of it staring at me from the foot of the stairs and… and…”

  The preoccupied Fronek
now looked scared as he looked into the unknown distance as though his troubled mind would not allow him to continue to describe the disturbing events that had taken place, until Ness pleaded with him to continue “Please continue Mr Fronek” This timely intervention appeared to have snapped the troubled Fronek out of his unseen torment before he scratched his large, hairy ear in agitation and reluctantly continued “Well! The strange thing is that I didn’t hear him rush up the creaking stairs after me because I was listening out for it but I mean everything happened so quickly so I guess I could’ve missed it? Anyway it was just staring at me with those hauntingly round glowing eyes which had a pure hatred within them and, I know this sounds crazy, but there was something sinisterly evil about those eyes!?”

  He paused as he recalled the hideously glowing eyes that watched his escape with a pure hatred that he could not fully explain, just understanding that it contained an intense malice was not justifiable enough for him to even mention it. The amused Zalewski smiled at Merlyo as he silently voiced the word “evil” back at his unamused partner whom was far more interested in the few details that Fronek could recall rather than his wild imaginations of an obviously wandering mind. After a moments pondering of those glowing eyes of hate Fronek then reluctantly continued, slightly irritable that he could not fully explain what he saw and also scared at recalling this haunting vision again “To be honest with you I can’t really explain what I saw rationally because I was drugged don’t forget! All I can say is that whatever it was, I felt that it hated me, a pure hate!”

  The shaking storyteller then looked around the rumbling Scarab for some glimmer of understanding from any of the listening four but simply got more vacantly blank stares of confusion before he decided to quickly continue, not wishing to dwell on the eyes that troubled him so “Anyway so naturally when I saw this shadowy man staring at me with those glowing eyes I panicked and rolled onto the patio roof and immediately slid down it, which took me completely by surprise! I completely slid off the roof and fell into the sealed off brick area that I had mentioned before and found myself covered in this stuff which I thought was tomato sauce at first because the lightening illuminated the red colour all around me. That is until I looked around this sealed off concrete area and discovered that I was surrounded by bloody human remains! Arms, legs, hands, feet, torso’s all dismembered and I even saw a decapitated human head of a little girl staring back at me from this pile of nearby body parts with this god awful look of terror edged upon her face! Jesus! The eyes on that poor girls head where bright green and they were silently pleading with me to run! I’ll never forget those eyes for as long as I live man! Seriously! It was like I’d been dropped into a nightmare and it was then that I became determined to escape the ‘thing’, this ‘demon’ or whatever it was that inhabited that god awful house of horrors!”

  By now the intensely listening Merlyo was more focused on Fronek’s epic tale of escape rather than the unruly road ahead of him as he sporadically hit some irregularly large potholes which caused the silver Elegant Mess’s interior to rattle. All paused as Merlyo’s startled attention was immediately refocused back upon the barely visible and rain soaked road ahead of him before Fronek then reluctantly continued with his unbelievably dramatic story “I screamed like a little bitch when I saw that head man! I mean I never seen stuff like that before! I just thought he was a creepy pervert up until I landed in that pile of horror and then I knew he was a psycho and that I was in deep trouble! So anyway I clumsily got up, slipped all over the place and turned around to look up and it was staring at me from the upstairs window! Not moving or anything like that, just staring! You have to understand guys that I never saw him chase after me, creepy as hell right? Anyway I turned and ran, slipping all over the place as I fell on various body parts until I managed to see an exit, with the lightening’s help, and stumbled towards it. The concrete wall disappeared at the rear of the property and was replaced with a wire fence which led to god knows where? And so I frantically climbed over it and as I fell over the top of that rickety fence I slipped down some wet mud and uncontrollably rolling down a steep and grassy hillside for what seemed like a lifetime!”

  The troubled Fronek paused for a second as he relived the unrelenting fear he had experienced that memorable night and after a few hesitant moments he continued with a shaky voice as his eyes seemed to be vividly recall the final moments of the traumatic events of his narrow escape “I vaguely remember the moment just after I fell whilst I glanced back for a mere split second and I saw the huge thing’s shadowy and hairy clawed hand reaching out towards me! Reaching… Reaching out to get me!” The troublingly preoccupied Fronek used his shaking hand to express his visual representation of the troubling recollection as he continued to speak in a shaky voice “This claw was reaching out towards me as I tumbled uncontrollably through the mud and downhill. A second later and it would have had me for sure!” Merlyo looked at Ness’s eyes through the mirror and vice versa as they both found his remarks about its hairy claw like hands to be alarming but both put it down to the drunken imaginations of a desperate man who was fleeing for his life whilst also being under the influence of some heavy and unknown drugs.

  They both then silently re-engaged with the troubled Fronek as he continued with his story “The strange thing is that it didn’t say anything as I fell? It didn’t even shout or scream after me but simply just stood there by the fence and watched me with those godforsaken eyes as I uncontrollably rolled down that muddy hillside?” Fronek then paused as silence reverberated throughout the Scarabs interior whilst his eyes where transfixed upon an imaginary point ahead of him as he relived the traumatic events that had so nearly ended his opportunistic life.

  After a moment’s hesitation he began to drift back into the present and heard the comforting sound of rain as it thundered off of top of Ness’s newly acquired glass sunroof. The troubled Fronek eagerly watched the rain droplets as they impacted the clear glass, leaving only streaks afterwards as Merlyo speedily powered on towards their selected destination. He now noticeably became more relaxed as the comforting rain nurtured his disturbed thoughts whilst he drifted from the alarming imagery that he had so reluctantly recalled and continued his story in a less shaky voice “I can’t recall anything after that until a few days later when an old homeless guy woke me up in the chilly morning. I slowly came around to find that I was under an empty boxcar by a derelict railway line and was covered in dried blood, dirt and grass. I felt absolutely awful and my head was still spinning and then I asked the homeless man what time it was and he replied with the time and date. I was shocked because when he told me what day it was at first I didn’t believe him but then it was then confirmed when he showed me his newly crumpled up newspaper that he was using to carry around his liquor bottle in. It’d been there for three whole days since that night! Can you believe it? Geez! Well! I had no doubt then that I had been drugged and er? Well? That’s my whole story gentlemen and it’s the god’s honest truth!”

  Merlyo then motioned to Ness that they were arriving at their selected destination of East 50th and East 55th street as all four men then looked out of the slowing silver Scarab and into the now familiar setting of Dr Sweeney’s medical practice. This practice was an impressive two story red brick building which had four chimneys protruding from its roof and this in turn facing a two story white and wooden funeral home which sat directly opposite it and across the street. Ness then spoke to the preoccupied Fronek whilst the gliding Scarab gently slowed down and rolled past the two buildings “I know it’s been a while Mr Fronek but please take a good look around here as we drive by slowly ok? Tell us if any of this is familiar to you”

  The curious Fronek worryingly looked outside as both flanking buildings slowly passed by and all the time the on looking Unknowns keenly observed Fronek’s nervous facial features which twitched with alarm as his tired eyes frantically scanned the alien environment. As the Scarab slowly passed the white wooden Raus Funeral
Home and the accompanying red brick Peter-Sweeney Medical Offices, the excitable Fronek then recognised something and eagerly pointed out the medical office’s four distinctive chimneys which dominated the surrounding skyline. The alert Fronek then also recognised the old wire fence that led behind the back of the building and excitedly spoke whilst not breaking eye contact with this recognisable feature “That’s it! Right there! That’s the building! I’m sure of it!”

  Merlyo immediately stopped the slowly moving Scarab and Ness asked him again to be sure “Are you positive?” An agitated Fronek then looked at him in anger for not believing him before he spoke again, but this time with an assured certainty of knowing what they will find “Let me show you! We just need to get behind it and you’ll see! You’ll all see!” Ness curiously looked at the listening Cowles whom in turn looked at both of the detectives at the front of the spacious automobile before he replied, eager to confirm this unassuming man’s extraordinary account “Ok! Let’s go see what’s at the back of this medical practice and if anyone asks any questions where just some nameless government officials whom are simply inspecting the fire safety of this particular facility ok? I’ve used this excuse successfully before”