"He's done it again!"
"When?"
"Now!" the constable barked. "Upstairs!"
Poe turned to me. "The killer's in the building!"
The excitement in his eyes scared me slightly. What kind of world of pain was my friend in that the thought of a sadistic killer loose in the building was something to get excited about? I shook my head slightly. "What have you dragged me into, Poe?"
He made no reply but dashed after the mustached-constable, who had already given flight down the hall.
I turned back to the dead woman splayed on the Oriental rug. It is untrue that her death produced no emotion in me. I felt shame for the disrespectful way she had been laid on the floor like a spilled sack of potatoes. She had lived a life of servitude only to end like this. She deserved more. I took off my beloved coat and laid it over her body.
Then I begrudgingly followed the constables.
* * *
We took the stairs, not trusting a steel trap of an elevator with a murdering madman on the loose. The stairwell was gloomy and sounds seemed to reverberate off every surface as we climbed, single file. The constable led the way, I, the monkey in the middle, and Poe, pistol drawn, brought up the rear. As we climbed, Poe told me that the call had come over two hours ago from a terrified woman who was a maid for one of the other tenants. All the servants in the building took lunch together. Eliza, the dead woman, had gone back to work a little early to tidy her employer's office up. However, when Maggie, the woman who called, came to the office to speak to Elisa, she found her dead.
"How many staff are inside the building at this very moment?" I asked as we reached the landing for the third floor. I need not tell Poe that the chances that the killer was one of the staff was very high. He knew this better than I.
"There were five when we arrived," Poe answered. "Though, I imagine, there are four now..."
"Any constables other than you and—"
"O'Conner, sir?' the constable supplied from above.
"Yes, O'Conner, thank you."
"There are three others. They are downstairs talking to the staff."
"So the staff plus the constables makes seven people in this build—"
"Plus us," added Poe.
"And the killer," Constable O'Conner said as he reached the door to the fifth floor. He did not open the door, though. Only waited for us to catch up.
"So there are nine... possibly ten people in this building. And one of them is a killer."
Poe made his way to the door, pistol at the ready. He put his hand on the doorknob but glanced at me. "You really should have brought a gun."
Oh how funny he is! "You know I don't own a firearm!"
Poe shrugged. "Doesn't mean you shouldn't."
He opened the door and entered the hallway.
* * *
The second body was male, in his late fifties or so, and wearing a handsome suit that signified he was a personal valet. Slumped against the hallway wall, his hands hung at his side and his head was bent slightly forward. Like the woman, something had cut open his skull and removed his brain. However, unlike before, there was a misshapen hunk of grey meat lying just between his splayed legs, sitting in a small pool of blood. I knelt down and examined it with my glass: a piece of the aforementioned brain.
A shuffle of feet revealed O'Conner wandering off, watching the hallway and, it would seem, mostly averting his eyes from the dead man. Poe knelt down in front of the body and gave him the briefest of glances before making a noise like a mother duck clucking disapprovingly at her ducklings. "Can I have the glass?"
I handed it to him and Poe returned to his examination, making a noise much less disapproving and more... intriguing. "The skull was cut by a very sharp tool. It was done slowly and... with a very skilled hand, I would say."
"A hunter?" I asked as I noticed a strange coloring on the man's neck. Kneeling before the man, I quickly pulled a handkerchief from my vest pocket and covered my mouth lest I choke on the horrid smell. He had clearly soiled himself upon death.
"Do hunters often remove the brains of their kills?" Poe asked me, glancing up.
I did not meet his gaze but continued my line of examination. "I do not know. I buy my meat."
One handedly, I carefully pulled the collar of the man's jacket back to reveal the greater portion of a bruise. It was a dark, violent thing that bespoke of horrible pain and brute force. I began to search the rest of the man's person, speaking only when I had found a number of bruises. "He's covered in contusions as if someone repeatedly beat him down with fists."
"Beaten into submission," Poe began, "only to have his skull skillfully cut open and brain removed?"
All of a sudden, a stench more horrible than the dead man enveloped me. I instantly smelled rotten meat, something smoky like burned... flowers? The others smelled it too.
"What is that—" Poe exclaimed!
He never had the chance to finish his sentence for the electric lights lining the hallway flickered once then shut off completely. My vision gone completely dark, I quickly stepped up from the dead man and took two steps back. I heard Poe's voice not too far from me, "Blown breaker?"
"Someone shut the power off," Constable O'Conner said nervously as he rushed toward us, turning on the torch he carried on his belt.
I took out my own from my valise. I had an extra one for Poe, however I watched him turn his own on and sweep his circle of light across the hallway, searching for something.
Would the killer have turned off the lights? I said so to the others but neither of them commented on the question. Without a word said, we formed a very loose circle around the dead man, our lights slowly sweeping in different directions.
That silence – and vigilance – continued for a few moments until a sudden cry seemed to leap from O'Conner's lips. I swung my light around to see O'Conner's light suddenly jerk as a loud smacking noise exploded behind him. A flash of movement and I felt something wet and warm shower my face like an unexpected summer rainstorm!
Then something smacked into my left foot. I turned my flashlight down to see the Fightin' Jack iron fist still in O'Conner's severed arm resting against my boot.
O'Conner howled, his voice torn with intense pain. He jerked forward as if something had shoved him. A jet of bright red liquid sprayed out from an arm that now seemed never to have left his torso. I dashed toward the constable but got no more than two steps when something literally sliced through O'Conner's chest and cut the man in two.
Poe drew down with his pistol and opened-fire before both parts of the constable's body had even hit the carpeted floor. His gunfire revealed a massive darkened shape that bounded down the hall, retreating from them. Poe stopped firing and barked at me, "Let's go, Adams!"
I stood in that suddenly-still hallway and felt my feet unable to move. It wasn't fear, at this moment, but an inability to think of what to do next. The hallway had been alive only moments before with a grotesque dance of outright slaughter, O'Conner having been cut down no differently than a steer on a cattle ranch. Yet now nothing stirred in the darkness. Nothing moved. No sound. It was as if nothing had happened before. As if a man had not just died.
But one... actually, two... had.
The question was: what was I to do about it?
Poe took away the need to answer that question at that moment by grabbing my elbow and yanking me in the opposite direction. "Adams!"
I know not the reason why I decided to do this but I grabbed the Fightin' Jack iron fist off the ground, severed appendage and all, and tucked it under my own arm.
Then I ran down the hall with Poe, dashing for the stairwell that we'd used earlier. It seemed miles away, though, and getting further even though we were running as fast as we could toward it. The hallway reverberated with our footsteps and things horrible: a high-pitched keening like some wild animal and fingernails raking across plaster! It seemed to be everywhere: in back of them, to the left, suddenly coming from the front.
&
nbsp; We finally arrived at the stairwell, Poe reaching for the door. But a flash of light drew my attention back down the hallway as ten... fourteen... twenty small round lights suddenly turned on. They went from small, intense beams to a massive flash of bright white as if the full candlepower had been switched on. Poe stood beside me, as transfixed as I was.
And a rumbling grew out of the stairwell, the very floor under us shaking. The door suddenly flew open and shapes bounded out, enveloping us.
* * *
It was a collision of bodies. I felt like a wave in the ocean had suddenly barreled me over. However, it wasn't water but solid flesh rushing into more flesh. Limbs intertwined, feet were tangled, and we all rolled painfully to the floor. Grunts escaped mouths and curses flew like fireworks. But no one fought and it was only when I had regained my torch and brought it around on the assaulting group, did I see that there were six people: three constables and three men in liveried clothes. Servants. Two of the constables and a valet had pistols, while the others carried clubs or strong pieces of wood. The constables immediately peppered Poe, their senior officer, with questions, trying to find out about everything from the gunshots, the dead people they'd found, and where Constable O'Conner was. Poe was succinct and – perhaps you might say – a little cold with his responses. But the men needed Poe to tell them what was going on so that they could prepare for what might lay ahead.
Unfortunately, they never got that luxury. Poe was drawing up the better parts of a plan when the lights that we had seen earlier came on again down the hall. Instantly, that horrible keening sounded out. Valiantly, the three men with pistols stepped forward and knelt, forming a firing line. Constables were no more than British soldiers in a different costume. The men with clubs, Poe, and myself held up the rear. I took the moment to carefully take the severed arm out from the Fightin' Jack. I set it as respectfully as I could on the ground. Then I slip the fist over my own, trying not to be too conscientious of the liquid lining the inside. I fastened the brace on my arm and reset the pistons on the side. It was ready.
Poe, pistol drawn over the heads of his constables, scanned the hallway, the white lights pulsating at us not twenty feet away. "Wait for my signal men! Then open fire."
The pulsating stopped. The lights went dark and the hallway returned to its pitch black existence. No sound could be heard whatsoever. Everything was still and black.
"Where'd it go, si—" one Constable began but Poe smacked him on the shoulder.
"Say nothing!"
I watched my friend carefully; glad to see the natural-born leader in him finally getting a chance to shine. Most people found Poe to be unsocial and cold. However, I always found the opposite. In certain company, Poe could be a fine conversationalist, amicable, even gregarious. He understood most men perhaps more than they cared to be understood. Most men found that offputt—
Something about the door on the constables' left side seemed to suddenly change. Not the door itself but... I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then the light seen through the crack at the bottom went dark all of a sudden as if... someone was standing before the door! "POE!"
The door seemed to bulge outward as if something was trying to climb through it like an open window. With a nerve-gnashing rip, the wood began to literally tear as the door exploded off its hinges in pieces. Shrapnel assaulted the line of constables like a cannon barrage. One large piece slammed into the closest constable, hitting him at the juncture of his neck and head where the bones inside cracked like dry branches on a lit fire. The man slammed into the other constables, barreling them over to the ground. They turned to the door, guns drawn around as a dark shape leapt out of the maw of the doorframe. Screams of horror filled the hallway and gunfire crackled, spent gunsmoke suddenly engulfing us all.
I watched Poe step forward, firing off the remaining shots in his six-shooter. His bullets, though, sparked off some metal chest plate as the smoke-shrouded shape dove at them.
Then it was among them.
One of the Constables was cut down by the killer's sword like a scythe through a wheat stalk. The three men with melee weapons leapt into the fray, their clubs drawn back for the strike. What were clubs against a sword? Beyond that, what was an Iron Fist? One of the men was drawn upward by a powerful arm and thrown towards Poe and myself. I scrambled out of the path of the living cannon fodder but Poe wasn't so lucky. He was slammed back though the open door and I heard his body tumble down the stairwell.
I fled the gruesome battle. Not out of cowardice nor to go in search of reinforcements. I fled the battle to find my friend. I knew him hurt and possibly defenseless against, what was clearly, a skilled warrior. You may think me craven, but I care not. I know why I left that battle.
I hurried into the stairwell. Poe lay at the bottom of the next landing, his head resting against the wall, blood flowing from a gash in his forehead. Carefully, I gathered up my unconscious friend and slung him over my shoulder. Sporadic gunshots, horrid screams, and that high-pitched keen echoed down through the stairwell. I ignored them all. Carefully – but hurriedly – I made my way down the stairs. I found my way back to the office that we had first gone to, the office that held the dead woman. I would treat Poe's wounds and hide him and myself. We would wait out the killer until reinforcements came looking for us. There we would be safe.
For why would the killer return to scene of his first kill?
* * *
thump... thump...
The killer is in the room with us.
The feet that shuffle across the floor do so uncoordinatedly, as if they are too big for the legs that use them. Such power in each step makes the very floorboards under me shiver.
thump... thump...
I need to flee. I need to draw the killer out of the room, if only for Poe's life. Draw it somewhere else into the belly of this great building and... contain it, somehow without fighting it. For why kill a beast, if only to become one?
Poe's pistol lies beside him. I know that it's spent, however, he always carries an extra set of cartridges. The bullets won't hurt the killer; that much I know. However, it might anger him enough to keep after me and save others. Yes, that is a lie I allow myself as I carefully shift my position and began searching my friend's pockets. I find the paper cartridges and pocket them in my vest. Taking the pistol, I tuck it under my arm—
thump... thump...
—and leap from my prostrate position to my feet. I make a mad dash for the door, hearing the killer make a strange noise that seems part auditory 'question mark' and part grunt behind me. Suddenly, the room erupts in that horrid high-pitched keening and heavy footsteps explode behind like a breaking dam releasing its waters. I keep my head down and eyes on the floor so that I do not step on the dead woman as I run like the dickens. I clear each hurdle, glancing up and seeing the door ever closer, knowing that freed—
That’s when the killer grabs my arm, wrenching me backward. My arm feels as if it's in a vise, someone recklessly turning the wench. I spin around like a top, my natural instincts wresting control and my body moving like one of those automatons serving the food in Wanamaker's restaurant: quickly, precisely, and without independent thought. The pistol in my hand whips across the killer's face slamming off the multi-eyed helmet and cracking two of the portals. The vise-grip lessens for a moment and I wrest myself free.
Immediately, I bolt in the direction of the door. Throwing it open, I fling my body out into the hallway with such force that I lose my footing and hit the wall. Bouncing off the plastered hallway, I recover just enough to plant one foot in front of the other and run as if the devil himself were after me. As I had planned – and hoped – there are explosions of sounds from behind me as something large knocks over furniture, rips wood out of the doorframe, and spills framed photos off the wall. Its thunderous footsteps clamber behind me but I do not look back.
No, I press on, turning the corner and barreling down the hallway that leads to the grand staircase. It is now, though, that
I allow myself a glance back. The killer is a stone's throw away, the massive form turning a small hallway table into kindling—
Instantly, I discover that of all the times to glance back, this moment was the worst... for I cannot see the dead body suddenly at my feet before I am tripping over it. I have a moment's conscientious thought regarding that I am about to fall down a flight of stairs before I am actually falling. In that time, I tell myself to tuck my body into a roll, eager to put my torso between the stairs and any vital organs that probably shouldn't connect violently with wood. I plan to use my hands as rudders that I will use to direct my fall. I am ready. But reality is far worse than fiction. I learn instantly, that it makes no difference, one cannot control chaos.
The fall is graceless and disorienting. I can scarcely tell which end is up and which is down. My world is just a succession of spinning horizons and painful spasms as limbs connect with stairs and banisters. The pistol goes crashing off somewhere and I feel the iron fist strike wood with a thunderous tattoo, splinters showering my body. A white searing pain explodes on the back of my skull.
Just when I think that I will roll forever, like some twisted backwards Atlas, I plow into the bottom landing and my battered frame stops on the marble floor. The stone feels cool under my warm skin. I have no idea what kind of damage my body has sustained for I hurt everywhere. It seems impossible to tell if one place hurts more than the other to indicate more severe wounds. All the pain can tell me is one thing: I'm alive.
creak...
And that the killer is at the top of the stairs.
Turning painfully toward the steps, I can see the shape of it approaching the top of the stairwell. Though the building lay in the shadow of the airship, which I can make the shape of it out in the evening sky, an evening light filters down. It renders the world in shades of a blue as if I donned one of those fancy colored-lens spectacles.
The Franklin Incident (Philly-Punk) Page 2