Elsewhere within downtown Cleveland but still with an impressively close view of the gloomy Terminal Tower, a sad Poppy inhabited a lonely hotel room dressed only in her bathrobe. Her packed bags where upon the hotels bed and a hot bath was being drawn by her as she gently skimmed her hand tentatively over the waters hot and calm surface. The combined warmth and steam from the hot bath had permeated every inch of the lavish hotel room as she adored the sauna like conditions whilst she loosened her comfortable red bath robe which effortlessly clung to her naked body. Strategically placed candles where lit everywhere within the small bathroom and rose petals effortlessly floated upon the clear water which only added to the pleasantly romantic atmosphere that pleasantly pervaded all her senses.
She was holding a large glass of vintage red wine in one hand and a razor blade in the other and carefully put them both down by the bath as she leisurely disrobed whilst admiring the bleak view of the Terminal Tower from her advantageous vantage point. As she carefully lowered herself into the luxuriously hot bath water she then picked up the glass of wine and drank it whilst looking at the turbulent sky outside, adoring the feel of the cool glass pressed against her moist lips and the heavenly nectar of a full bodied red wine quenching her parched throat. She delighted in the sensation of the rich wine trickling down her needy throat and relished the simplest of sensations no matter how trivial because she knew that they would ultimately be her last. She lay there for a few minutes and satisfactorily let the heat envelope her with its loving arms and only opened her eyes to view the comforting flames of the surrounding candles and the occasional impressive lightning strike that hit the distant Terminal Tower.
She had desperately wished to see the sun again upon this final day of her life but she would nevertheless treasure the lightning and rain which stood in its place, considering them a poetically ironic and fitting metaphor of her own turbulently troubled life. She had spent the last few days intensely thinking about that final night she had spent with Ness and Merlyo and had desperately wanted to stay with them but if she had then the infuriated congressman or Polizzi may have found her and killed her for her treacherous betrayal. This risk she had not been willing to take but now she ironically found herself trapped within a twisted prison of her own foolish making because she could not forgive herself for what she had done over the last few years or how many people she had hurt through her careless decisions.
She was also now so very tired of living a constant lie, an unending lie that was condemning the very people around her whom she loved to a prolonged life of misery and pain. She now felt that she had been rewarded for her years of deceit with a long life of loneliness and isolation, away from the very ones whom she had grown to love. She was tired of all the pain and suffering that her life had brought down upon her since she was born and now she faced a life without love or any friends to help her cope through this difficult transitional period. Her underlying depression was made all the more worse by this familiar feeling of abandonment and she felt like life had purposefully designed her for an unduly cruel existence ever since she had been left unwanted within the snow and with only a solitary poppy and rose for company.
Because of life’s cruel jest she would now treat death with just as much cruel distain that she had felt she had unfairly endured and had decided that she would deny this solitary existence of loneliness and kill herself whilst she could still recall love within her aching heart. She always hated herself when she felt sorry for herself and was eager to start the cutting process but also reluctant for it to begin, frightened not such much by the prospect of committing suicide but what mystery lay on the other side of death. She would soon simply lay here within this blissfully hot bath as the life seeped away from her, lovingly surrounded by the warmth and softness of the flickering candles lights that so reminded her of the stars that hung above her final dance with Ness. She would remember all the happy moments from her life as that life slower flickered out just as the stars effortlessly do like clockwork every morning since the dawn of time and just like they will continue to do long after she had departed this world. She suddenly felt a wave of sadness overwhelm her in her vulnerably sorrowful state and shed a tear for the lonely life that she was sacrificing and the precious love that she had been so cruelly denied since she was a baby.
Meanwhile back in the Hotel Cleveland’s luxury suite the questioning had finally concluded and Ness had taken Merlyo, Grossman and Keeler outside its restrictive four red walls to discuss the secretive results in the hallway. The elaborately decorated empty hallway continued the hotel’s love affair with the stylish art deco design as the wooden panelled floors liberally accommodated the vintage wallpaper that coated its walls in a blood red finish. The only unbecoming aspect of the attractive hallway was a bright “not working” sign which sat awkwardly by one of the two facing gold plated elevators with its doors open, echoing the distant conversations that emanated from the packed lobby ten floors below.
The whispering Keeler then spoke first once he could see that the lonesome hallway was unoccupied "If he’s not your guy then I’ll throw my machine out of the window because according to my data he’s being evasive about all the murders!" Ness nodded in silent agreement before he turned to Grossman whom then also spoke whilst being careful to keep his voice down "I believe that what we have here is a definite case of a classic psychopathy. A violent schizoid personality disorder aggravated by his chronic alcoholism. Getting such a cleverly deceptive individual such as him to admit to anything would be an achievement by itself, let alone a murder! I do have some ideas as to how to achieve this and perhaps we can continue after a break?”
A pondering Ness nodded in silent agreement and thanked them both as they left in the elevator to eagerly join the others in the hotel’s well stocked cafeteria downstairs. He then turned to a stern looking Merlyo whom then spoke with caution in his lowered voice as the elevator rumbled down the tight shaft “It appears that your confident experts have all but concluded his guilt but he’s still not giving us a confession and was literally running circles around those two in there. I think he was actually enjoying this whole questioning process and all the attention that he was getting. So what do you want to do now?” Ness thought for a moment in quiet contemplation before he replied “I can’t go to the country prosecutor Cullitan without a confession in such a politically sensitive case, especially a case with such massive publicity. It’ll simply look like I have a vendetta against the congressman so we’ll keep him here as long as possible until we get that confession. I’m sure that he’ll eventually crack under the pressure after a few days” A speculative Merlyo nodded in silent agreement before speaking again “You coming downstairs for that late lunch? I’m famished!” Ness nodded and then spoke again “Sure! You go on ahead and I’ll catch up with you. I’ll ask our ‘guest’ if he wants anything and be down there in a few minutes”
The hungry Merlyo nodded in agreement before proceeding towards the elevator whilst the anxious Ness re-entered the luxury suite alone and closed the door behind him. As soon as he re-entered the suite he noticed that the already cold room had grown noticeably colder within his brief absence and had visually gotten a lot darker also. He awkwardly smiled at the still seated Sweeney without looking directly at him for fear of his uncomfortable gaze whilst moving shadows pervaded the cold room, apparently emanating from a variety of unseen objects that where blowing around the turbulent atmosphere outside. He then apprehensively walked over to the table and slowly sat down where Grossman had been sitting to face the shadowy Sweeney, adamant that he wished to keep as much distance between himself and the beast of man as possible.
As the violent lightened raged outside it caused him to nervously look into the eye of the nearing vortex through the window, shaking its wooden and rattling frame as he did so. The lights then dimmed as yet another lighten bolt presumably stuck the Hotel Cleveland which was soon followed by a heavy gust of wind that slammed against the already
rattling window glass. This startled the already anxious Ness as lightning flashes fantastically erupted throughout the unseen heavens above, filling the darkened room before disappearing again and leaving only the fireplace’s warm orange glow as a significant constant. As Ness marvelled at the strange storms visual lightshow a shadowy Sweeney spoke in his distinctively deep voice whilst the lightening’s afterglow ominously illuminated his circular lenses "So am I free to go? Are you satisfied now?"
A huge distinctively fabricated grin then instinctively spread across the entirety of his shadowy face, only acknowledging its presence by showing his darkened cheeks raise within the black room. Occasionally lighting would light up his facial features which gave this grin a bizarrely malformed appearance within the constantly moving shadows but the preoccupied Ness was so mesmerised by the surrounding storms ferocity that he mumbled his observations “This is one hell of a storm isn’t it?” The motionless and fixated Sweeney then spoke again but this time with some agitation within his voice at not being acknowledged by the famed lawman “I said are you now satisfied about my innocence? If not then I would challenge you to prove it!"
This change in tone caught Ness’s immediate attention as he looked across the table and into the vacantly reflective eyes of the large unseen man as lightening occasionally lit up his bizarrely grinning face. His continually glowing round spectacles where an exception to this rule and constantly carried an otherworldly afterglow of the lightning which reflected from the mirror behind him, giving him the troubling appearance reminiscent of Ness’s recalled nightmare. Ness no longer saw the man whom they had been questioning but something else entirely, something that was sinisterly evil now appeared to inhabit the chair at the other end of the long table. No discernible features could be made as his distorted face fleetingly came in and out of the sporadic light, revealing that he no longer exhibited a warmth that they had all been accustomed to whilst under questioning. It was now filled with something else that was far more alien to him and far more abhorrent, a vile hatred and tangible malevolence that was covertly unseen until now.
Sweeney’s frightening black eyes where now focused with the utmost clarity upon Ness with extreme precision and whilst Ness tried to rationalise this strange and otherworldly vision that he now faced, Sweeney’s spectacles suddenly lit up in a blinding flash of lightening so completely that it momentarily blinded him. Sweeney’s deeply strange and echoing voice then rang throughout the surrounding cold room as Ness listened and frantically rubbed his star seeing eyes “I like the suffering that I cause and I adore there screams of pain that they all make as I slowly and satisfactorily rip off their beautiful pulsating heads! I can honestly say that when they look at me with those vacantly lost eyes as they slowly die, they thank me for freeing them from the cruelty of life. Did you like what I did with those two frozen sacrifices near your office? I had to freeze them for weeks before I could drop them off nearby your workplace and your fiery fear induced retribution on the poor was priceless. What about that Nazi carving on that corrupted flesh in the New Castle boxcar? I’d like to claim that one because my beloved cousin loves the Nazi’s but that was the crude work of his friend, Polizzi who was trying to divert attention away from me. I also thought that my macabre curiosity ‘gift’ that I sent to the coroner’s office was thoroughly amusing and I bet that it gave him wondrous nightmares for months”
A speechless Ness listened on in disbelief as the unseen Sweeney continued, squeezing his eyelids tight as his vision was still blurry “I scrubbed them all clean after I killed them and bathed some within my own devilish chemical concoction to eliminate any trace evidence but I did plant some enticing ‘clues’ to throw you of my track, such as the initialled underwear and even six blonde hairs from one of your former work colleagues. They all suffered Ness, suffered beautifully but the ones that stood out where that nigger Rose Wallace and the young girl whom you know now as the Lady of the Lake. Her innocence was so ripe and so pure that I had to extinguish it just like the little abandoned girl that you left me that night of burning in the shantytown. You don’t know about her do you?”
A twisted smile then appeared within the lightening as Sweeney continued with a newfound relish within his frightening voice, lapping up the horror that was quickly developing upon Ness’s face “I found her at that ‘coffin’ workhouse that you had forsaken her too and took her in, fed her and made her feel welcome before I ripped off her pretty… little… head! And then extracted her pretty… little… heart! I swear it still beat as I skilfully incorporated it within the stitching of the morbid curiosity that I sent to the coroner. So I actually sent her back to you after all and make no mistake about it, she only died because of you! I’m not a bad person, not at all! I just follow my natural sadistic instincts and was it not you who said that ‘You cannot legislate against human behaviour’ and I completely agree! After all, we all wear two faces but what really counts is what horrors they mask!”
The horrified Ness finally regained his vision which was reluctantly greeted by the horrendous sight of a black silhouetted beast like monstrosity that was now seated where Sweeney had once been only a few moments ago. Its huge glowing owl like eyes where focused directly upon him and its maddening smell of putrid flesh emanated effortlessly from his heavily feathered and hairy body. As the petrified Ness clumsily went for his holstered revolver, the hideous thing spoke again in an otherworldly voice from the horrendous darkness that had spawned this monstrous abomination “So you can see the real me now? The being under the mask, Good! I tire of this false charade!”
With that hellishly voiced statement the last vestiges of the human that was once Sweeney faded as it then used its left claw like talon hand and forcefully grabbed the right side of the table. It then powerfully flipped it away from itself and Ness with so much force that it caused the table to fully rotate within the air before it impacted upon the wall and shattered the window glass. The wooden table instantly splintered and broke apart, letting the ferocious wind and rain freely roam within the maddening room that contained both the Mad Butcher and his nemesis, the untouchable Eliot Ness.
Outside the room Merlyo was still patiently waiting for the slow elevator to arrive when he heard this violent impact and instinctively spun around whilst going for his holstered revolver. However as he turned he was instantly impacted upon the face with a tremendously powerful blow that sent shockwaves throughout his entire body. The stunned detective dropped his revolver and felt another powerful blow impact his stomach which instantly forced him to collapse upon the ground as unimaginable pain overflowed around his already oversaturated nerves. As blood liberally flowed from his nose down onto his quivering lips, he heard the distinctly unpleasant voice of Polizzi ring within his ears “I bet you thought that you’d seen the last of me didn’t you? You fucking cock sucker! After what you did to me and my mob you really think you’d be allowed to get away with it? I actually came here for Ness but I’ll finish you first as an appetiser before I get to the main course!”
The triumphant Polizzi then briefly inspected his blood splattered silver owl knuckle dusters and his clothes, adamant that he did not wish to get them dirty before grabbing the quivering Merlyo by the tie and pulling him up towards himself. The veteran brawler then effortlessly blocked a punch from the resurgent detective before he sent him straight back down to the floor again with another powerful facial punch, instantly countering the wily detective’s futile attempt at gaining the upper hand. Polizzi then had a delightfully wicked idea that filled his black soul with joy as he grabbed the defeated detective by the back of the collar and unceremoniously started to drag him towards the open 10th floor broken elevator shaft. Polizzi then voiced his delight at Merlyo’s upcoming demise whilst smiling and violently kicking him in the back “You’re going on a little ride asshole with no return journey! Courtesy of The Owl!”
Back within the privately hellish suite whereby the howling wind and rain filled its darkened i
nterior a petrified Ness stood there whilst still clumsily fumbling for his revolver, unable to believe what his eyes where clearly telling him. The chaotic room’s only constant light source was now the electric fireplace’s orange glow that emanated from behind him whereas everything else was amerced within the moving shadows of a maddening reality. He then bravely mustered up all his remaining sanity and strength to pull out his revolver as he faced the blackened beast which was just staring back at him, breathing deeply in his fresh fear as steam came pouring out of its rancid and foul smelling mouth. As the petrified lawman finally managed to remove his holstered revolver, the otherworldly black creature then unnaturally glided across the room towards him. He just managed to get off two shots square into the ungodly creatures chest before its large talon like hand mercilessly gripped his neck.
The unearthly grip had such an overwhelming force that he thought that he might go unconscious within a few seconds as he felt his eyes bulging out of his eye sockets and his tongue quickly vacate his dry mouth. He was then effortlessly lifted up and off the floor with ease as his two bullets appeared to have little to no effect upon the ungodly monstrosity that was now attacking him. He looked at the creature’s maddeningly indiscernibly hairy feathered face as its clawed hand squeezed down upon his neck, cruelling denying his airways the life giving oxygen that he now desperately craved. As leaves and rain howled around the battling pair the abomination then slowly began to pull Ness in and unnaturally started to open its elongated and stinking mouth from which oozed an unspeakable slobber that emanated from the very depths of hell itself. Ness desperately tried to break free of its vice like grip as he saw the widening mouths saliva and unsightly maggot infested interior slowly nearing his face, saturating it within a wave of foul odour the likes of which he had never experienced before.
The Noir Evil Page 72