Skull Master

by William Massa

  Skull Master

  A Shadow Detective Novel

  WILLIAM MASSA

  Critical Mass Publishing

  Copyright © 2017 by WILLIAM MASSA

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Also by WILLIAM MASSA

  About the Author

  1

  Pale moonlight trickled through the church’s stained-glass windows as Father Jackson made his way down the nave toward the sanctuary. His footsteps reverberated on the stone floor of the empty church.

  A deep feeling of inner peace filled the priest. Despite leading a parish infested with crime, Father Jackson maintained a positive attitude. The world might be fraught with challenges, but he and his flock would face them head-on. He’d served the creator long enough to know that nothing in this world was meant to be easy. Saving souls and making the world a better place was an ongoing struggle. It demanded sacrifice. Resilience. Dedication.

  And, most importantly, faith.

  When he was younger, doubt had plagued him at every turn. But even though age didn’t always bring wisdom, it did add some perspective. The advancing years had dulled his once eagle-eyed vision and grayed his jet-black mane of hair, but they had also strengthened his faith in God. The people in his parish needed him. He was their rock.

  Without him, and the word of God, many of his parishioners would have felt lost and overwhelmed by all the social problems plaguing this neighborhood in need. The church had always been the heart of the community, and Father Jackson was determined to keep it that way. Come Hell or high water, he swore the New City Church would weather the storm wreaking havoc upon this beleaguered, beloved neighborhood.

  Earlier today, a teenage mother had shyly set foot in his church. The poor thing had been racked with guilt and was ready to confess some of the darker feelings she harbored for her newborn. Fighting back tears, she had told him there were times when she wished the wailing bundle had never been born. She hated herself for these thoughts, but rather than repress them, Father Jackson had convinced her to confront them. After all, she was barely a child herself—it was normal to respond to a newborn with mixed emotions even under the best of circumstances. An hour later, she’d left the church with a smile on her face. That was worth all the heartache and pain which accompanied his job like a hungry shadow…

  Father Jackson’s musings came to jarring halt as his eyes found the terrible sight waiting for him on the altar. It drove the air out of his lungs and he felt icy fingers run up his spine.

  Who would dare…?

  His pulse jackhammered and his hands grew clammy as he finally took his next breath. He stood, thunderstruck, as his mind grappled with the image his eyes were sending it. Someone had placed a skull atop the altar, its surface webbed by reddish-brown stains which gleamed dully in the church’s muted candle light. The death’s head seemed to be grinning back at him, its empty gaze following his every move.

  The skull had to be a replica of some kind. It couldn’t be real, could it?

  Who would want to dishonor this church in such a brazen way? More importantly, what would a vandal hope to gain from such a devilish deed? He had seen thieves vandalize and burglarize churches before, but no such criminal act had ever occurred under his watch. No matter how much his neighborhood might struggle at times, certain lines weren’t crossed.

  Father Jackson crept toward the altar, drawn almost in spite of himself to the skull. Inches separated him from the gruesome object defiling the altar like some false, mocking idol. Hissing candles framed the death’s head, bathing the bone in an eerie glow.

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His growing terror was irrational—after all, there was nothing to fear from the dead. If the skull was even real and not some Halloween prop. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t the dead he feared. Someone had placed the skull here for a specific reason, and he sensed it wasn’t meant to be a mere harmless prank. There was some sort of ritualistic meaning to what was happening here. The candles were not from the church—thin black tapers that seemed to have been placed with care.

  Choking back his mounting sense of dread, his trembling fingers reached out for the grisly object. The skull almost felt alive with a malevolent energy that threatened to invade his soul.

  Father Jackson didn’t want to touch the skull, but he could not seem to stop himself.

  Behind him, a whistling sound cut through the still, heavy air of the church.

  Father Jackson turned slowly, too slowly, his eyes boring into the dimly lit church. He probed the shadows, hoping to locate the source of the strange noise…

  And that’s when the sound repeated itself. This time it came from the sanctuary. Jackson felt a sharp disruption of air above him, almost as if some unidentified object had passed overhead. He couldn’t help but think of a bird that had been jostled from its perch, but he saw nothing.

  Mysterious skulls, invisible birds, he thought. What is going one?

  As Father Jackson tried to wrap his head around this baffling phenomenon, his gaze shifted back to the altar and he let out a strangled cry. The mysterious skull had vanished.

  Father Jackson swallowed hard.

  Another sound behind him. Much closer now.

  He whirled, his eyes going wide.

  His mouth dropped as he finally caught a fleeting glimpse of the thing that had been making the noise. It was a second skull. The grisly object shot toward one of the stained-glass windows, turned, and then hovered menacingly above him like some aerial drone from Hell. A dark red light emanated from the thing’s empty eye sockets.

  Father Jackson’s knees gave way, and he had to lean against the altar for support. His breath now came in ragged bursts. Up until this point, he had clung to the hope that there was a logical explanation for what was happening here. The hovering skull made it quite clear that powers beyond his understanding were in play. Father Jackson believed in the evil of men, had confronted it on numerous occasions, but this was his first experience with the supernatural, and it rattled him to the core of his being.

  The air hummed and rippled once again, and the first skull burst from the darkness, joining the one above him. The two skulls orbited him as they drew close, circling faster and faster…

  Jackson backed away, all strength leaving his body. He had served God all his adult life, four glorious decades, but in this, his darkest hour, he felt as though he were alone.

  “Stay away from me,” he crie
d as he shielded his body with his arms.

  The two skulls circled even faster, humming menacingly.

  “Where is your God now?”

  The ominous question sent a shiver up Father Jackson’s spine.

  His eyes ticked back and forth, desperate to find the speaker. A moment later he did and wished he hadn’t. A tall figure peeled from behind one of the nearby confessionals. For a moment, it felt like the shadows had lengthened and taken on human form. But the figure looming behind wasn’t some trick of the light but a solid manifestation of pure evil. It wore a black hooded sweatshirt, the features cloaked in darkness, but Father Jackson could feel its gaze upon him. The stranger raised his hands, and the skulls froze in mid-air. “Who are you?’ Father Jackson stammered.

  What are you? he mentally added.

  “Don’t you already know, Father?” the ominous figure replied.

  The stranger stepped into the light, and Father Jackson gasped with horror. He wasn’t looking at a human face but an ivory skull stripped clean of all flesh. The priest could immediately tell that this wasn’t a mask or other elaborate disguise. He was looking at a creature that shouldn’t exist, a skull-faced abomination.

  The terrifying intruder lowered its arms. It was the signal the two flying death’s heads had been waiting for. Without warning, they dive-bombed the hapless priest. Everything happened so fast that there was no time for Father Jackson to react. The skulls descended on him like a hungry school of piranhas, mouths open wide.

  A scream burned in his throat as the skulls slammed into him. There was the brief sensation of his frame hitting the stone floor, and then the two skulls sank their teeth into his soft flesh. They weren’t trying to take bites out of him, merely pinning him to the floor like an insect in some museum display case, preventing him from escaping. Every time Jackson tried to move, the jaws tightened. He wasn’t going anywhere unless the skulls chose to release him.

  Father Jackson looked up at the skull-headed stranger as it inexorably closed in. Jackson’s heart hammered, a prayer flowing from his lips.

  “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon…”

  The skull-headed figure stopped, and his hands reached out for Father Jackson. Human hands, the priest realized, not those of a walking skeleton. Somehow the sight of those ordinary hands was even more horrifying. As the monster’s grip tightened on him, the two skulls loosened their hold and whirled upward. They hovered in grave silence, empty sockets fixed on the horror unfolding below.

  The monstrous presence lifted Father Jackson effortlessly into the air. The priest’s feet danged twelve inches above the floor as he squirmed in the skull-faced stranger’s steely grip.

  He stared into the demon’s bony visage, losing himself in the endless void beyond those yawning eye sockets.

  “Heavenly father, deliver me from this evil,” Father Jackson said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Your God won’t save you now. Your soul belongs to me.”

  And with these chilling words, the skull-man buried his teeth into Father Jackson’s throat.

  2

  Icy gusts of air blew through the subway station. I shivered and clenched my jaw in a vain attempt to stop my teeth from chattering. A quick scan of my illuminated watch revealed that it was a quarter past one o’clock. The subway platform was almost abandoned at this time of night. There was me, a few club kids on their way home from a night of dancing and debauchery, and a gaggle of homeless people who had sought refuge from the freezing rains sweeping the city.

  Normally I shied away from using public transportation. Nothing beats the comfort of your own wheels—especially when those wheels are a badass muscle car. I hadn’t spent the last three days staking out almost every major subway platform in the city because I was trying to cut back on my gas budget. Something evil had found a home within the dark bowels of the city, and it had already claimed three innocent lives.

  In other words, I was here to kick some supernatural ass.

  I hugged my arms tightly around myself and wished I had worn an extra layer for my nocturnal adventure. During the summer, this manmade underworld turned into a baking oven, while during the colder months, it transformed into a freezer. It stank of piss no matter the time of year, and the rats were the size of terriers. The cavernous, rundown surroundings, the constant screech of metal against metal, the garbled voices emanating robotically over the speaker system; it didn’t take much imagination to feel like I was stuck in some antechamber to Hell.

  Let’s just say I wasn’t a fan of the city’s subway system and keep it at that.

  I fought back the temptation to bum a cigarette from one of the nearby club kids who were enthusiastically puffing away, clouds of smoke swirling around their dyed, perfectly coiffed ‘dos, and focused on the shadowy tracks ahead.

  Ever since my return from Switzerland, the craving for nicotine had become stronger. I had successfully managed to kick the habit a few years back. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and that means a lot coming from someone who hunts demons. After being sick every day for the first week and shaky with nicotine cravings for another month after that, I had vowed to never pick up the nasty habit again. But damn, what I would do for a smoke right now…

  A chill wind blew across the tracks and slapped my face. Immediately my heartbeat kicked up a notch. No train was expected for another five minutes. Could the long hours spent below ground be finally paying off?

  Gingerly, I took a step closer to the edge of the platform. My eyes took in the multiple tracks that vanished in the blackness beyond. I spotted a rat skittering down a rail in the tunnel’s dim light. Yet there was no sign of the lost soul which had brought me here tonight.

  Who was I looking for a hundred and eighty feet below street level on a Wednesday night, you ask? Her name was Lenora Sommers. I say was because a month ago poor Lenora threw herself in front of an onrushing train when her fiancée broke off their engagement. I know how much a break-up can hurt, but slamming into a 85,00O pound train moving at fifty-five miles per hour is not the way to cure an aching heart. Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of Lorena’s tragic story. But then the bodies started piling up.

  Three young men around the same age as Lorena’s fiancée had followed her horrific example in the last two weeks and flung themselves into the path of oncoming subway trains. It could have been nothing but a coincidence except for a few disturbing details. Each time, the suicides had occurred at one-thirty in the morning, the exact same time of Lorena’s suicide. More importantly, a few eye witness reports had admitted seeing a strange woman on the tracks mere seconds before the men ended their lives.

  Could Lorena’s tormented spirit be haunting these tunnels and luring young men to their deaths? In most places, merely asking such a question was grounds for a quick visit to the local shrink. But things were a bit different in the Cursed City.

  My churning gut told me that Lorena’s spirit lingered in these endless, shadow-soaked tunnels. She had died violently, and like other souls before her, it seemed likely that she was unable to find peace. I felt bad for anyone who’d suffered like Lorena, but her tragic backstory wasn’t an excuse for murder. Someone had to stop Lorena’s restless spirit.

  And that someone, for better or for worse, was me.

  My breath clouded in front of me and goosebumps erupted on my skin. It felt like someone had spilled a glass of ice down my trench coat. The temperature must’ve dropped more than ten degrees. A beat later, I spotted the ghost who’d brought me down here tonight.

  At first I could only make out a hazy silhouette on the tracks, her form partially obscured by the tunnel’s maze of steel columns and inky shadows. Then the ghostly figure drew closer, gliding over the tracks. The dead didn’t have to fear accidentally stepping on a third rail or being run over by a train.

  Even in death, Lorena was a vision to behold. Wh
y the hell had her fiancée let a girl like that go? She looked like most guys’ dream babe. Huge dark eyes and silky hair, a body to die for and sex appeal to spare. But despite the veneer of perfection, I sensed a deep-seated vulnerability inside of her, a broken quality. She had refused to let go of her failed engagement and move on.

  I could relate. My last relationship had ended when the woman I loved was nearly killed by the ghost of a psychopath, turned into a vampire, and then cured so that she could live with the guilt of having murdered innocents. Did I mention that all of this was my fault? And why couldn’t I remember her name or picture her face?

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. What was happening to me?

  The ghost had drifted closer. Our eye locked across the tracks and suddenly all I wanted was to be with the forlorn spirit. To hold her, to comfort her, to tell her that everything would be alright.

  I love you, baby. I will never leave you again. Never.

  I took a step toward the edge of the platform.

  Almost as if on cue, the tunnel came alive with the cacophony of the fast-approaching subway train. A wave of panic shot through me. I had to reach Lorena before the train did.

  I took another step.

  And another.

  No one paid me any mind. All that mattered was the beauty trapped on the tracks below. I needed to reach her now, before the subway train came barreling into the station.

  I will save you, Lorena.

  I would do anything for my love, even sacrifice my own life.

  The tracks rattled and the walls of the station shook. Any moment now, the dark tunnel would spit out an iron monster that would devour the woman I loved.