EverFall

by Joe Hart

  Sullivan gazed past the shoulders of Stevens and the guard. The last door in the line was wide-open. Sour light cast a pale urine-colored wedge onto the floor of the hall. He could see one of the forensic specialists standing outside the swath of the door. Sullivan recognized the man as Don Anderson, a veteran and the technical head of the crime-scene unit. Unshakeable, Don was easily the most calm and collected man on the team. At the moment he had both hands shoved deeply into the wide pockets of the white smock over his street clothes; elastic booties encased both of his feet. His graying and partially bald head drooped toward his chest.

  The guard leading them suddenly stopped several yards from the open doorway and leaned back against the wall opposite the doors. Barry and Sullivan stopped before him and eyed the young officer, who seemed to want nothing more than to melt into the surface behind him.

  “Are you okay?” Stevens asked the guard.

  The young man nodded tightly and Sullivan saw his jaw clench, the muscles beneath his cheek going taunt. “I’m going to go back up. If you need me, I’ll be at my desk.”

  The guard tried to slip by Sullivan, but he reached out and snagged the younger man’s uniformed wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

  Sullivan leaned closer. “Are you the one that found the victim?”

  The guard’s eyelids fluttered, and then he nodded in a jerky motion, his head snapping up and down.

  “Are you okay?” Sullivan repeated Stevens’s inquiry, studying the pale unlined face of the officer.

  The man roughly pulled his sleeve out of Sullivan’s grasp, and without looking back, hurried away from the two agents and disappeared back up the stairway.

  Sullivan glanced at Stevens. “Shaken up.”

  “Hacking said he’s fresh here. Probably the first body the poor kid ever saw,” Barry said.

  Anderson turned toward the agents as they approached, and his eyebrows rose in surprise at the sight of Sullivan alongside Barry. “Wow, that’s not much of a mandatory leave,” the forensic specialist said.

  Sullivan shrugged. “I guess Hacking just loves me that much.” Don huffed laughter as both men stepped into the mouth of the doorway. Sullivan was about to ask what had been done so far, when he looked into the interior of the cell and blanched.

  The room was small, about half the size of the other cells on the level above them. A single incandescent bulb jutted from the ceiling, encased in a steel cover that leaked light through the gaps. A bed extended from the left wall, just wide enough for a man to lie on. A stainless toilet-and-sink combo sat against the far wall.

  Blood. Everywhere.

  Gore splashed each wall like a paint mixer had exploded within the room. Chunks of what could only be flesh and bone were speckled here and there among the stains. Something dark and misshapen protruded from a small heating-cooling vent in the floor. Two other members of the forensics team stood in the only bare patches of concrete within the room. Their eyes found Sullivan’s, and he registered the same thing he felt at the moment—revulsion. The room smelled like a slaughterhouse, coppery with a hint of decay at the edges.

  “What—in—the—fuck?” Barry said in a low voice.

  Anderson shuffled closer to the doorway and leaned into the threshold. “Yeah, my sentiments exactly. We were just beginning our layout, but I’ll tell you what we’ve got so far, and this is mainly from the file we were given by the sheriff when we arrived. Victim is male, Mexican descent, age thirty-four. As you can see, there’s not much left of the body.”

  “Not much left?” Sullivan asked as he stepped into the doorway, keeping the tips of his shoes a few inches away from the nearest pool of blood. “I don’t see anything.”

  Anderson motioned the closest forensic tech out of the room, and pointed to the spot he’d been standing in. “Step in there and look at the vent.”

  Sullivan moved carefully over a stream of blood and took the vacated position on the island of bare concrete. He bent at the knees, drawing closer to the vent in the corner of the room. It was three to four inches in diameter and circular in shape. A thick grate cover matching the vent’s width sat on the floor; the headless bolts securing it were snapped in the middle and lay strewn in the blood.

  The dark shape growing from the vent’s mouth looked like a squashed mushroom. The top was flattened and broken in places, and its sides were crushed and disappeared into the floor. It took Sullivan a moment to realize the dark top of the object had strands that were matted together, giving the illusion of a solid piece.

  Hair. He was looking at the top of a head.

  Sullivan sucked in a breath and leaned back, horrified at the state of the remains. Slowly, mangled features began to take shape on the decapitated head. A flattened nose here, two smashed orbital sockets there, fractured bone stained black with blood poking through flayed cheeks.

  Sullivan pivoted on the dry spot and looked at Anderson and Stevens, who still stood in the doorway. “They jammed his fucking head into the air vent?”

  Don nodded. “It appears so. Severe blunt-force trauma to the top of the skull. The jaw was fractured as it was forced into the vent, but it looks like the zygomatic bones were too bulky, along with the rest of the skull’s rigid structure, to be pushed farther in.”

  Sullivan turned back to look at what was left of Victor Alvarez as he heard Barry curse under his breath. He ran through what he was looking at again, beginning the process of categorizing and committing the facts to memory. Head cut off, shoved chin-first into the narrow vent. Skull crushed.

  Skull crushed, blood arcing out in a halo around her body.

  Sullivan closed his eyes and shook his head. He blinked as the room swayed and then steadied. Not now. He had too much to think about. Not now.

  “So where is the rest of him?” Sullivan heard Barry ask behind him. Sullivan stood and faced the two men in the entry.

  Anderson rubbed his balding pate. “Off the top of my head?”

  “That’s not funny,” Barry said, grimacing at the forensic specialist. Sullivan smiled grimly.

  “I would say whoever did this dismembered the victim systematically, then shoved the pieces down the vent. I guess we’ll know for sure once we extract the remains from the floor and see for ourselves,” Anderson said.

  Sullivan turned in a circle and extended his arm, pointing at a large splash of blood on the wall above the bed. “Am I wrong, or does it look like he was bashed into the walls?”

  “It appears so. I think that’s the contact point for the first blow,” Anderson said, motioning to the spot Sullivan pointed out. “Then the wall behind you, and then perhaps off the floor several times.”

  “So you’re saying he was beaten to death against the walls? How strong would you have to be to do something like that?” Barry asked.

  “Or, how many guys would you need?” Sullivan said.

  “We won’t know for sure until we examine the tissue samples and extrapolate velocity, angle, that sort of thing,” Anderson replied. “We also might come up with an idea of a murder weapon that’s not currently obvious.”

  “Were you the first ones in, or was it open before you got here?” Sullivan asked.

  “From what the sheriff said, he took one look through the window and called the office, he wanted nothing to do with this. Other than him, no one’s said they went in before us,” Don replied.

  Sullivan looked down at the remains poking from the vent. “Why would they shove him down the vent in the first place? Why not just beat him to death and leave him here?”

  Both Anderson and Barry shrugged and stared at the blood coated floor.

  Footsteps echoed down the hallway outside of the room, and Sullivan stepped out of the cell and let the technician return to his position.

  Two men strode down the corridor toward the group. The man in the lead wore a charcoal suit and appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He was well over six feet tall and wisp thin. Feathery gray hair that might have been blonde at o
ne time was combed neatly to one side of the man’s head. His face was slightly horse-like, with large but even teeth that already were beginning to poke from beneath a pair of narrow lips in a polite smile. The second man, who strode a few paces behind, was a glowering Everett Mooring.

  The older man extended a hand to Stevens as he neared, the smile spreading warmly across his features. “Agents Stevens and Shale, I presume?” the man said.

  Barry shook the man’s hand. “Yes, sir. I’m Barry Stevens, and this is Sullivan Shale and our forensic pathologist, Don Anderson.”

  “David Andrews, I’m the warden. I believe you’ve already met my chief officer?” Andrews said, motioning over his shoulder at the impassive guard behind him.

  “He was kind enough to give us a lift earlier this morning,” Sullivan said congenially, hoping to crack Mooring’s stony façade. The guard only stared at him as if he were part of the wall.

  The warden nodded and smiled again. “Yes, I’m sorry that you’ve been called here on such grim circumstances, and with the current uncooperative weather conditions. I was just telling Everett that a possible evacuation might be needed if the rain doesn’t let up soon.”

  Silence fell over the group of men and Sullivan glanced at Barry before addressing the warden. “We were hoping we could have a word with you. Go over some basic information before we begin the investigation?”

  The warden closed his eyes and nodded. “Of course, gentlemen. Any help my staff and I can provide. We are at your service.”

  “Thank you,” Barry said, and turned back to Anderson, who placed a set of safety glasses on his round face and began pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Don, you’ll let us know when you’re done and if you find anything significant?”

  “We’ll be right here for a while,” the team leader said.

  The warden motioned to the stairs leading back up to the main holding area. “Follow me, gentlemen.”

  Other Books by Joe Hart

  Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

  Lineage (Novel)

  Singularity (Novel)

  The Edge of Life: A Short Horror Story

  Outpost: A Short Horror Story

  All interior artwork done by Wil E. Lee. See more from Wil on Twitter @NameBrandArtist.