Some color had indeed returned, but Jamie barely noticed.
Instead, his eyes focused on his grandmother, who stood only inches behind him.
Jamie wanted to turn but paralysis had gripped his body and all he could do was stare at Anna. She didn’t appear as she had in the tub, a pale, bleeding corpse. She looked as she had in life, her silver hair neatly groomed and gathered about her shoulders in loose waves, her blue eyes sharp and bright, her skin gently wrinkled with lines that conveyed wisdom and not simply old age. The only thing that Jamie didn’t recognize was the sentiment that her features conveyed. Normally jovial in life, there was a deep sadness in her face, a melancholy that pulled at the eyes and lips. A sadness he had never seen before, not even when she discovered that her son, his father, was an abusive beast.
He looked at her in the mirror and she looked back at him, and then she spoke, though her lips did not move and she made no sound. Instead, she spoke directly into his mind, burning six words into his brain.
I won’t let him have you.
The words were heavy with sorrow and anger and regret but Jamie did not have time to consider their meaning. As soon as the last word was uttered, his grandmother lifted her right hand and rested her thin, bony fingers on his shoulder.
I’m sorry.
There was a flash of coldness on his skin where the phantom touched him, the chill seeping through the material of his shirt. The sudden shock jolted him from his temporary paralysis and he quickly spun around. She was gone, of course, and once again Jamie felt his hold on sanity, which had been resolute just yesterday morning, threaten to tear away.
He turned back to the sink and grabbed the edges. Hung his head but did not close his eyes. Slowly collected himself. Searched for some shred of sanity to hold on to. He took several deep breaths, once again forced his heart to slow its breakneck pace before it burst in his chest. He ran a hand through his hair and looked around. No ghosts, no phantoms, no corpses. Just soothing blue walls.
All just a trick of the mind, he told himself. The migraine fucked me up. Making me see shit. That’s all. I’m not losing my mind. I’m just sick. Maybe a tumor.
A tumor. Not a sobering thought by far, but it was sure as hell better than thinking he was losing his god-damn mind. Better than thinking he was going crazy. Better than thinking that he was actually being haunted.
But deep down he knew what he had experienced wasn’t all in his head. Wasn’t caused by some misfiring synapses or a mass putting pressure on his brain. Or a chemical imbalance. Or even a burgeoning insanity. It was real. All of it. Something was happening to him. Something was happening around him. Something sinister. He could try to convince himself otherwise, but just wanting something to be true didn’t make it true. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was a confluence of events occurring that just couldn’t be coincidence. As if the pieces of some mysterious puzzle were beginning to fall into place.
He just couldn’t explain any of it.
Jamie looked in the mirror, saw nothing but the wall and toilet behind him. He considered peeking behind the shower curtain again, just to make sure. But he didn’t. Because he didn’t know what he would find.
As Jamie left the bathroom, flicking the lights off as he went, his grandmother’s ominous words echoed in his head, making his entire body tingle:
I won’t let him have you.
Remaining Episodes
Episode 2: Brutalization, will be available Tuesday, March 11th.
Episode 3: Corruption will be available Tuesday March 25th
Episode 4: Damnation will be available Tuesday April 8th
Episode 5: Extinction will be available Tuesday April 22nd
The easiest way to know exactly when each episode is released is to go to my Amazon author page (http://www.amazon.com/Bradley-Convissar/e/B0049E1IIG) and sign up in the upper right hand corner where it says “Stay Up to Date”. They will e-mail you the moment it is released.
If you can’t wait for Brutalization to come out and want something else to pass the time, feel free to sample Blood, Smoke and Ashes, Brad’s supernatural thriller. The prologue and part 1 follow the “About the Author” section.
Other Works by Bradley Convissar
Novels
Blood, Smoke and Ashes: A Supernatural Thriller
Short Stories
Pandora’s Children: The Complete Nightmares Book 1
(A collection of 11 short stories, 90K words)
Pandora’s Children: The Complete Nightmares Book 2
(A collection of short stories, 90K words)
Butchered
(2 Short stories, 13K words)
Blink (always free)
Las Dance of a Black Widow (always free)
Novellas
Dogs of War
King of the Merge
FotoShop of the Gods
I Never
Reflecting on Midnight (collects 4 novellas above in one volume)
About the Author
Brad Convissar is a dentist by day, a writer of dark fiction at night, and a father and husband all the time.
He is the author of several dozen short stories, four novellas, and the supernatural thriller Blood, Smoke and Ashes
He was born in Georgia, but moved to southern New Jersey before he could be forced to be an Atlanta Braves fan. He spent his formative years living outside of Philadelphia where he latched on to the Philly sports teams and was promptly disappointed for almost twenty years. He spent his college years in New Orleans, where he earned his bachelor's degree in evolutionary biology at Tulane University, then relocated to lovely Newark, New Jersey, where he earned his DMD.
Once he finished with school, Brad finally settled down back in south Jersey, only miles from the house he grew up in. He is happily married and the proud father of two children.
When not filling cavities or performing root canals or extracting teeth or fabricating dentures, or writing, he spends his time playing with his kids, playing video games, reading comic books, reading non-illustrated books, and rooting on his beloved Philadelphia Phillies and less than beloved Philadelphia Eagles.
His favorite authors are (but not limited to) Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Simon Green, Jim Butcher, and Jeffery Deaver. He likes to think he learned something of the art of writing from each of these wonderful authors.
Blood, Smoke and Ashes excerpt
(Prologue and Part 1)
Prologue
“So that is the infamous Jane the Ripper,” Jack Shaw said to Detective Laura Goodspeed. “Scourge of men looking for a casual night of paid sex. Hardly looks the type, don’t you think?” The FBI agent sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup as he watched the medics heave the gurney holding the unconscious girl into the back of a waiting ambulance. If she felt any of the violent jostling as she was moved, she offered no sign.
Laura nodded. “She can’t be more than five-foot-four, a hundred and twenty pounds. Hardly seems possible that she killed four men almost twice her weight. But she did. There’s no question about it. We’ve already matched her fingerprints to those found at the other crime scenes. We don’t have an ID yet, but it’s her.”
It was two-thirty in the morning, the night clear and muggy, a full moon hovering low above the entrance to the alley where a circus was slowly assembling. Two ambulances, four marked police cars, two unmarked cars, and Shaw’s Expedition already clogged the street. Two news vans were just coming into view and a small congregation of people had begun to gather around the black and yellow police tape, the spectators whispering in hushed tones and pointing. If this had happened even three hours ago, the circus would have been in high gear already. But in the middle of the night, it took the news outlets more time to mobilize, giving the authorities more time to deal with the situation unmolested.
“I guess when you’re dealing with drunk men with their pants around
their ankles, even a small girl can take down Goliath,” Shaw said, turning back to his Miami connection. “How was she caught?”
Laura shrugged. “Some guy wanting to be a hero. His name is James Wilson. Big guy, a little over six feet. And heavy. Told me he’s basically wandered the streets every night since the first murder two weeks ago, pretending to be drunk. Wanted to be the one to finally catch her. When he knocked her out, he called 9-1-1. They called me, I called you.”
Shaw stood a respectable six-foot-two, thin and wiry in build. Like always, he wore a suit that fit his body so well, followed his movements so perfectly, it may as well have been a second skin. That evening it was a charcoal gray affair with white pinstripes, a white shirt and a fuchsia tie that adorned him. Combined with his perfectly coifed salt-and-pepper hair, piercing blue eyes that commanded respect, and a rugged, tan face with just enough wrinkles to say that he had been around the block a time or two, he practically oozed authority.
Laura Goodspeed, lead detective from the Miami Police Department, was Jack Shaw’s antithesis in most respects when it came to appearance. She was five-foot-eight and slender, the top of her head just coming up to Shaw’s chin. The navy pantsuit she wore was wrinkled in numerous places, as if she had recently slept in it. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a sloppy pony tail and her face was simply haggard from the many late nights she had recently pulled. All the make-up in her house couldn’t cover the bags that hung under her eyes like bruises. Though forty-three, she looked closer to fifty than forty these days. This case had put her through the proverbial wringer and she was ecstatic that it was finally over. She would take a week off, maybe go to a spa, and try to recover some of her lost youth. She envied Shaw, envied the way he made looking good—no, not good, perfect—appear so effortless, even after the stress of working for the FBI for so many years. She imagined he jumped out of bed every morning looking flawless. It wasn’t fair.
But life wasn’t fair, and she was old enough to not only know that, but accept it. So instead of punching the man who had treated her with nothing but the utmost respect and professionalism since he had arrived in town two weeks ago, she simply sighed slightly and turned her attention back to the topic at hand.
“Surprised no one else thought to do what he did over the past fifty years,” Laura said. “Dangerous and stupid but effective.”
“Who’s to say no one has tried? He may have been the first one to actually encounter her. Or the only one to survive the encounter. It’s more serendipity than anything that he actually did. He was in the right place at the right time, and he was lucky enough to not get himself killed. He couldn’t have planned this. There are too many alleys and too many whores in this city, and there was no way for him to know where she would be.”
Neither Shaw nor Laura said anything for a moment, just watched as the forensics people and the uniformed officers swarmed around the scene, a deep dark alley between a bar frequented by locals and a bicycle shop. They watched as the paramedics closed the back doors of the ambulance that the newest Jane the Ripper copycat had been loaded into, then turned their attention to the second ambulance where James Wilson, hero of the night, was still being treated by another set of paramedics. Though he had subdued the girl, he had suffered his share of injuries during the struggle, including several superficial and glancing stab wounds. He would be taken to the hospital as well, but since his injuries weren’t life threatening, Laura had spoken to him here before his memories began to become hazy. Now that she was finished with him, the medics would transport him to St. Vincent’s for treatment.
“Do you want to talk to him?” Laura asked.
Shaw shook his head. “I’ll get to him tomorrow when the adrenaline is gone and he’s patched up. I’ll take a look at your notes, too.” He paused, then asked, “Did he have any neck wounds?”
“He says she went for his throat but he was able to keep her away. He says she was strong. Stronger than a girl her size should be. And fast. But he managed to strike that lucky blow before she could gut him.” Another pause, then Laura asked, “Do you think this is the original Jane the Ripper?”
“The first? Molly Blackburn? She was caught and executed in fifty-five.”
“Not her. I mean the first after her. The first copycat?”
“The one who killed the priest in Carson City? That was fifty-six, only a year later. Even if the girl was twenty back then, she would be seventy now. And that girl was not seventy. Even if she looked good for her age, she couldn’t have been more than fifty. And that’s pushing it. She definitely looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties.”
“I know, I know. Stupid question. Just felt that I should ask. After all, you’re the expert.”
“There’s no such thing as an expert when it comes to the Jane the Ripper murders,” Shaw said. “You can’t have an expert when none of the murderers have been caught.” He sipped his coffee and sighed.
“So you think we’re dealing with a copycat of a copycat?”
He nodded. “Or a copycat of a copycat of a copycat. We have no idea. Jane the Ripper has shown up five times since Molly Blackburn’s execution. Each time in a different city: Carson City, LA, St. Louis, Detroit and now here. The first three were never caught and their identities were never discovered. The fourth was identified but we never found her. She disappeared when she was finished. We don’t have prints from the previous murder sprees. So we may never know how many copycats there were. The only thing I can say with any certitude is that this is the only time we actually managed to stop her before she hit the magic mark of eleven bodies. She only got to four.”
“So we did good.”
“I think if you asked Mr. Wilson’s opinion, he’d say that he did good, not us. And you know what? He may be right. Either way, Detective Goodspeed, after hunting Jane the Ripper for over thirty years, it will be nice to finally interview one of them.”
“Mr. Wilson, you really should come to the hospital with us and get checked out,” the medic said as he cleaned and bandaged the last of James’ half a dozen wounds.
James shook his head adamantly. “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine. You bandaged me up nice and good. Just give me some antibiotics and Oxy and I’ll be on my way.”
“Sir, you were stabbed. Six times.”
“Flesh wounds.”
“Any of them have the possibility of getting infected, sir. You should be on IV antibiotics at least overnight.”
“I’d prefer not to go to the hospital.”
Actually, he very much wanted to go to the hospital. Relax for the night and get some very nice pain meds pumped directly into his veins. The type he could control by pushing a red button. (He knew how it worked; he had had his appendix out a couple of years ago and the drugs were wonderful) The wounds he had suffered, they burned and they hurt and they fucking itched, and lord knew he didn’t want to get an infection. He remembered stepping on a nail at sleep-away camp when he was a kid. He hadn’t told anyone at first and the wound had gotten infected. So bad that he spent two weeks in the hospital, missing the last week of camp. He didn’t know how dirty that crazy bitch’s knife had been, but he didn’t want to risk getting sick.
But he knew that if he went straight to the hospital now, if he surrendered his clothes to the hospital staff, they would find it. Find what he had taken off the girl’s body before the police had arrived. They would know it wasn’t his and someone would either confiscate it as evidence or take it and sell it, like he planned on doing. So there was no way he was going to the hospital where sticky fingers roamed until he went home first and got rid of what he had taken.
“How about I meet you halfway, boys,” James said. “I’ll come with you to the hospital if you let me swing by my house and get some stuff.”
The paramedic working on James looked at his partner, who was playing around in the back of the ambulance, then said, “You could always have someone bring your stuff to the hospital, Mr. Wilson.”
&nb
sp; “I don’t have anyone to bring me my stuff,” James returned. He noticed that the paramedic sighed as he put the wrapper from the last piece of gauze into a small trash bag, a clear sign that the man just wanted to get this over with and get home to bed. So he pushed. “Please.”
“I’ll have to clear it with the police. One of them will probably want to come along for your own safety. If they say it’s okay, I guess it’s okay. But it’s their decision.”
James smiled to the ground. Perfect.
* * * * *
Laura looked through the window as Shaw and another FBI agent talked to the girl, identified as twenty-eight-year-old Morgan Wright, in her hospital room. She still couldn’t believe that this woman, this wisp of a thing, was the one who had gripped the town of Miami in panic for the past two weeks. That this girl could be a Jane the Ripper copycat.
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