Hibernian Charm (An Occult Detective Urban Fantasy) (Hibernian Hollows Book 2)

by Dean F. Wilson

  The answer was both a relief and a worry. Her card came out in a different place and was not counted in the final reading, suggesting her role was a supporting one, that she was a circling issue, not the driving force. In the centre, though, was the Knight of Swords, seeming to almost orchestrate the cards in the order of his choosing, like a conductor. And there, yet again, was The Lovers, but now it was set directly between the Knave of Wands and the Knight of Swords.

  She wished her grandmother was there to give her insight. She was too close to the situation. She wasn't entirely sure she could rely on this at all. Yet, if she could—and her gut told her it was so—then the man behind these crimes was much closer to home.

  Chapter 19 – Brooding

  Melanie tried to sleep that night, but she couldn't. She tossed and turned. If anything, that was the symbol of her life. They could have made a Tarot card just for it. The Restless.

  The Knight of Swords rode through her mind, slashing as he went, using his shield and armour to hide his identity. Maybe it wasn't even a man at all, as Don had said from the beginning, though she got the impression it was. She wasn't sure if that was instinct or bias.

  She tried to doze, but the Knight rode on. He wasn't a knight in shining armour. He was a false knight, with no chivalry or code of honour. Or maybe he had his own twisted form of one. Maybe he thought he was somehow saving his damsel in distress. Melanie was no damsel, but she felt very distressed.

  Her mind wandered to her ex. She didn't like the thought of it, but The Lovers card made her go there. Stephen was a nice guy by all accounts, but he wanted to settle in a farm in the country. That wasn't the life for her at all. He dabbled in magic, after she introduced him to this other world of hers, and seemed to take a liking to it, though he never did more than dabble. She warned him about messing with stuff he wasn't ready for, or disrespecting it in the process. That was another of the reasons things just didn't work out between them. And yet, for all of that, they kept in touch. He called her weekly to catch up on things, and they met up monthly too. Eckhart called him “your ex-stalker,” and he had warned her off Stephen when they first met. She thought maybe she should have heeded his advice.

  Chapter 20 – No Rest for the Wicked

  Just when Melanie was starting to doze off, she heard a ringing. She instinctively hammered her fist at the bedside locker, but the sound didn't die down. Then she realised it wasn't her alarm clock at all. It was her phone.

  She hauled herself up just enough to grab her phone from the table and slump back down into her pillow.

  “Yeah?” she said with a yawn.

  “There's been another one,” Eckhart replied.

  Suddenly she felt frightfully awake. She sat up. “What? This soon?”

  “Yeah, I wasn't expecting it myself. Half of us are already in at the station.”

  “I'm on my way,” Melanie groaned.

  “And Mel, about last night—”

  “Forget it. We've got more important stuff to worry about.”

  Melanie hung up and started getting dressed, fumbling about for her shoes, leaving her shirt half-unbuttoned. Her hair was a mess, but then it always looked a little frayed. She tried to tidy it up a little, noticing the charms in the mirror. She'd never thought about them so much before.

  What does it mean? she asked herself. Her mind drifted back to the Knight of Swords. What are you trying to achieve? She'd been warned before about trying too hard to understand the mind of a murderer, but she had to keep on pressing, had to keep on digging. She'd dug herself a lot of holes over the years, upset a lot of people.

  Her phone rang again and she answered it without looking at the name.

  “I said I'm on my way.”

  “Hey melon. On your way where?”

  It was Stephen. She could hear him puffing away on his cigar. That was another reason things didn't work out. Melanie couldn't stand the stench.

  On any other morning, she would have blurted into tales about her day. She would have even told him about the case, about the paralysis victims. Not today. Today, at the mere thought of the Knight of Swords, Stephen called. Melanie could barely give a response at all.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What's up? Is something wrong?”

  “I can't talk right now.”

  She hung up, taking a moment to catch her breath. She could talk just fine. She just couldn't talk to him.

  Chapter 21 – Invoking Silence

  The fourth victim was a woman in her thirties. She could still move her arms and legs, but her entire face had seized up. Her eyes were clenched tight and her jaw was rigid. It was lucky she could even breathe.

  “I'm not going in this time,” Melanie said.

  “Well, I'm not going in after what you said happened last time,” Eckhart replied.

  “Jesus,” Don said. “You're a bunch of pansies, yous are.”

  Don went inside, tutting loudly as we went.

  Eckhart glanced at Melanie and back to the glass, then back to her again.

  “Are you okay?” Eckhart asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You look a little … frazzled.”

  “I got a call.”

  “Oh.” Eckhart paused. “From him.”

  “How did you know?”

  “It's always him. Didn't I tell you he's a stalker?”

  “I hate to think it, Toby, but … you might be right.”

  “Whatever he is, he's not good for you.”

  Melanie didn't say it aloud, but she thought it: I'm not sure he's good for anyone.

  They returned their gaze to the glass, watching as Don calmed the woman down and got her to write something on a notepad. Melanie wanted to go in now and ask her questions, but she fought back the urge. She didn't want to panic her again.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Eckhart asked.

  “Can you?”

  “I don't want to, but … for you, sure.”

  “Thanks, Toby. You know what to ask.”

  Toby went inside, joining Don at the woman's bedside. He whispered to the boss, then took over with the pen and paper. Melanie couldn't hear what he was asking, and she paced frantically back and forth outside, biting her knuckles as she went. She was no telepath, but still she urged Eckhart to ask who did this, how they did it, how they knew her, how they got away.

  In time, Eckhart came back out with the notepad in hand. Don stayed for a moment, issuing false reassurances to the woman. No one could promise her it would be all right, but Don did it anyway. He never had a problem with lying.

  “Well,” Eckhart said. “That wasn't pretty.”

  “What did you get?” Melanie asked.

  “Here.” He handed her the notepad.

  Melanie scoured the text, which was difficult to decipher. “What does it mean?”

  “I don't know, to be honest.”

  “She mentions a man and a woman. Are we looking for two people?”

  “The way this is going, Mel, we could be looking for an army.”

  “But the man,” Mel said. She tried to look for any identifying features. The account didn't give much in the way of details.

  “This is a bit generic to go on,” Eckhart said. “We'd really want to get an artist in, but the trouble is she can't see. It seems we're back to square one.”

  Melanie sighed. “I'm not sure we're even at square one any more. It's more like zero.”

  Don came out, carrying a plastic bag.

  “Whoever this joker is,” he said, “it seems he went to a gift shop.”

  He held up the bag.

  “What is it?” Eckhart asked.

  Don shrugged. “Christ if I know.”

  Melanie studied the little gold figure inside, with its finger pointing at its mouth. “Harpocrates.”

  Eckhart blinked dumbly.

  “The Graeco-Egyptian god of silence.”

  “I knew she'd know,” Don said proudly. He wasn't so pro
ud of her in all the other cases. “I've got an eye for this.” It was just such a pity he didn't have an eye for the perpetrator.

  “So what does it mean?” Eckhart asked. “Does it even mean anything?”

  “To the person behind this,” Melanie said, “it means everything.”

  Yet, it also meant something to her. A bound hand. A blinded eye. A covered ear. A silenced mouth. Her last words to Stephen came back to her like a ghost. “I can't talk right now.” Maybe they were just idle words, a frantic declaration in the heat of the moment. Or maybe, just like the Tarot cards, they meant something more. Maybe, slowly by slowly, without any visible signs, the orchestrator of all of this was paralysing her too, in his own way, making her unable to see or speak, unable to do her job, unable to find him.

  Chapter 22 – The Devil in the Details

  Despite how tired Melanie was, she spent the next few hours in the forensics lab with Carla O'Brien, their specialist in occult forensics. She'd already went over the items for prints, DNA, and other identifying features, but everything came up clean. Melanie wanted a second look.

  “I presume you noticed the pattern,” Carla said.

  “Yeah.”

  “They've all got something to do with cutting off the senses.”

  “What sense have we got left?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Touch is gone. Sight is gone. Sound is gone. Taste is gone.”

  “So that leaves smell,” Carla said, smiling. She always did smile no matter how horrible the case was. She got as much of a kick out of solving things as Melanie did, perhaps even more. “I guess we know what our next charm will be then.”

  “And then?” Melanie asked.

  “And then what?”

  “There's space for six charms on the bracelets.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “So what sense does the last one cover?”

  Carla bit her lip as she ruminated on the matter. Melanie did the same.

  “The sixth sense,” Melanie said in time.

  “Many say that doesn't exist,” Carla replied.

  “It depends who you ask. I bet a survey of the Vowels would find most have experienced it in one form or another.”

  “So six symbols,” Carla said, “covering the six senses.”

  “Maybe not just symbols.”

  “Why d'you say that?”

  “I think there's magic involved.” She paused. “You could say I have a sixth sense about it.”

  “Good thing we're not at the last charm then,” Carla said. “So, you think the culprit is blocking out our senses with these? Hiding their trail?”

  “Yeah. That's why we need to be quick, or it won't matter what clues we stumble upon. We won't even notice them.”

  Melanie put on her white cotton gloves before inspecting the items. Often she would be holding up bullets. It wasn't every day you got people dying from charms.

  “They all have different origins,” Carla said as she came over. She pointed with her little finger to each in turn. “This first one has Middle-Eastern origins. The second one is potentially Eastern European.”

  “It has a Sinti flair to it,” Melanie noted.

  “Then we move Far East with the monkey, then to Alexandria with the figurine.”

  “I wonder if this mix of cultures means something.”

  “It's hard to tell. It might be that the culprit just couldn't find a full set of applicable symbols from one pot, as it were.”

  “Or it's supposed to hint at mixed cultures,” Melanie said. “Even Alexandria suggests that. It was the melting pot of the ancient world, where cultures met. My own background is kind of like that, a mix of cultures.”

  “I wondered about that,” Carla said, “with the name. Isn't it Jewish?”

  “My family adopted a new name after the War. We were said to have a variation of an Indian surname before that, but my grandparents wouldn't disclose it, for fear they'd be ostracised in the post-War events. There was a general feeling that Romani who fled the Nazis wouldn't be allowed to return or seek reparations. My grandmother kept referring to her family as 'the forgotten'.” Melanie sighed. “I guess even I forgot them, forgot my roots.”

  “You were born here in Ireland though, right?”

  “Yes, my grandparents moved here during the war, then back to Germany after, but my parents stayed in Ireland. So I really do have a mix of roots. It's always made me unsure where I belong.” She paused, staring at the charms. “Anyway, sorry. I got off track.”

  “No worries. I'm always curious about people,” Carla said.

  “So am I. I'm most curious about this killer.”

  “They're not a killer yet. The victims are still alive.”

  “For how long, though?”

  “The first two … I wouldn't say long. Probably days at most.”

  Melanie's heart fell. “Let's focus, then.” She really meant to just tell herself. The longer this went on for, the harder it was to focus, the hazier things became. It wasn't just her lack of sleep now. Her senses were getting blurred. Those little calling cards were working like a charm.

  Chapter 23 – A Little Universe

  Melanie spent the next two hours studying the charms, turning them around, putting them under a microscope, bringing out all of the machines and tools Carla had used before, including x-rays, orgone generators, and dowsing rods. No matter how scientific or occult, nothing seemed to pick up anything. There were no fingerprints or identifying marks, no manufacturer's stamp or hint of origin, bar their distinct design. She told herself to consult some historians or specialists in this area, but wasn't sure that would turn up anything either. She kept looking, even when Carla closed up shop and left for the night.

  “Sometimes it's better to go home and come back with fresh eyes,” Carla said.

  That was a problem for Melanie. Once she got it into her head, she couldn't get it out. Don sometimes called her “the bulldozer.” She just kept on going, knocking away everything in her path. She feared that maybe the real clues could be found in the debris.

  “Yeah,” Melanie responded. “I could do with fresh eyes.”

  Yet still she stared at the charms.

  “I guess that's a no then,” Carla said with a laugh. “Well, just make sure you turn the lights off before you go. If they're left on all night, they could damage some of the specimens here.” Carla had a bit of a museum curator in her. She said every human being was a collector at heart, but if that was so, then she was more human than most. To her, solving crimes came second to collecting evidence. Melanie just wanted the solutions. The means didn't matter. She'd bulldoze her way to the end.

  Melanie gave a distracted wave goodbye, returning her full attention to the charms. She studied them further, until she started to doze off. She didn't even realise it when she found herself resting her head on her folded arms on the table, right next to the charms, dreaming evil dreams.

  She dreamt of Stephen, dreamt of them fighting, yelling back and forth. She felt his strong hand on her arm, digging into the muscle, and her shaking it off. Then the feeling faded, until she felt nothing at all. One sense down. Then he seemed to fade into shadow, until she couldn't see him. Two. Then she couldn't hear his wrathful rebukes. Three. Then she couldn't speak her own. Four. Then, strong as anything, she could smell the horrid stench of his cigars. It was so strong, she could almost smell it off herself, like she often did when she left his apartment before they split up. She asked him many times to quit, but he always refused. As much as she bulldozed through, he was immovable. It was always doomed to fail.

  The smell of cigars became so overpowering, it seemed like nothing else existed except the fumes. Men and women were made of it. The world was made of it, with rolling hills of smoke. The sky was made of it, the water too. Even God was made of it. Somewhere, in that little universe, aroma was everything.

  She woke, finding herself staring at the charms right in front of her nose. She blinked the sleep away
, but noticed that the smell didn't fade. She sniffed deeply, still getting the whiff of cigars. She perked up, eyes wide, mind racing.

  With only four charms there, not all of her senses were paralysed. Smell was perhaps the most overlooked of the five. Sometimes, no matter what you tried, you couldn't escape it. Melanie couldn't get it out of her nostrils. She couldn't get it out of her mind either. Now she knew who the perpetrator was.

  Chapter 24 – Paying a Visit

  When Melanie finally left the occult forensics lab, she found Eckhart waiting for her downstairs.

  “You're late,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “You said you wanted to check out some of the trinket stores to see if there are any matching charms on sale.”

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry, I forgot.”

  “You forgot?”

  “I've had a lot on my mind.”

  “Yeah,” Eckhart said. “I thought these charms were too.”

  “They are, but … can we take a rain-check on that? I think I need a nap first. I've been up all night.”

  “Okay, sure. Give me a call when you're ready. I might see if I can scout out these trinket shops myself.” He grinned. “Who knows, might find a charm of my own.”

  Melanie headed off, but she didn't go home. She needed sleep, but she knew she'd never drift off now. She'd had her nap already. She didn't need more disturbing dreams.

  She headed for Stephen's place. Normally she didn't make surprise visits, not to friends, but this couldn't wait, and she needed to catch him off guard. She also needed an excuse to be there.

  She banged on the door.

  “Who is it?” Stephen shouted from inside.

  She decided not to answer, and ducked out of view of the spy hole.

  Stephen opened up.

  “We need to talk,” Melanie said, pushing past him. She could bulldoze her way into a room as well.