9th Circle

by Carolyn McCray; Ben Hopkin

  Trey seemed to be busy looking at the part of the photo that depicted the fiery tombs. He put his face close to the photo, his nose almost touching the paper, and muttered to himself.

  “Wow. Dante didn’t like heretics much.”

  “Aristotle,” Darc corrected him without thinking.

  “Yeah, whatever, man. That’s harsh.” Trey moved his head back from the picture, then closer again, his eyes crossing. “So, which out of the thirty-seven local cemeteries are we going to search?”

  “That’s what I hope to glean tomorrow.”

  Trey nodded. “Right. The ol’ secret-message-in-a-kid’s-drawing ploy. Dude, I gotta tell you, sometimes you’re just downright sneaky.”

  His partner moved on to the next photograph in the group. The eighth circle. Once again, there were multiple levels or layers to this depiction, but the two prominent elements were a stark forest filled with leafless, branchless trees, and a large boiling pot. Darc could see his partner goggling at what was portrayed within the painting and decided to give him additional information, since it was clear he would ask in a moment, regardless of what Darc did or did not do.

  “The trees are formed of fossilized suicide victims.”

  Trey’s mouth made an O of understanding. He then pointed to the cauldron.

  “Okay, dude, but what’s in the pot?”

  Right at that moment, both their cell phones rang in unison. Trey glanced at the incoming number, then grunted at his partner.

  “Guess we’ll find out which cemetery a little early.”

  Darc only hoped it was early enough.

  *

  Looking out over the burning park, Trey couldn’t help but feel a momentary sense of déjà vu. It was the picture. Almost exactly.

  To be honest, as frightening as the picture was, seeing it come to life like this was infinitely worse. All of the scenes they had come across so far had been horrific, but none of them put the fear of God in Trey more than this one. It seriously was like looking at the beginning of the Apocalypse.

  “Down to the freakin’ number of graves.” Trey shook his head. “I’m telling you, this killer is on fire.” He stopped and peered sideways at his partner. “No pun intended.”

  Darc moved farther down the small driveway leading to the parking area, Trey trotting along behind him. The fires were more bright than any Trey had ever seen, searing his retinas when he accidentally glanced at them, making him see blue-green spots in front of him. The light from the blazes cast wicked, constantly shifting shadows around them both, causing him to feel like his footing was unsure.

  Not just his footing. It felt like the whole park was changing second by second. The cemetery he was seeing right now was not the one he had seen a moment ago, and it would morph again here as fast as he could blink.

  When they got to the parking lot, Trey stared around him. Everywhere he looked were fire trucks and ambulances. Oh, and firefighters. Lots of them.

  But here was the problem. Not a single one of them was moving. One of the firefighters was even smoking a cigarette. Trey walked over to a group of four firefighters who were sitting on the running board of their fire truck, watching the fires burn like they were fireworks and this was the Fourth of July.

  “Ummm…a city employee strike I don’t know about?”

  One of the firefighters, a big, burly guy with a long, curly blond mustache, grunted at him. “Nothing we can do but let them burn out.”

  “Wow,” Trey huffed back. “You guys are really at the top of your game here.”

  “Greek fire,” Darc interjected.

  Man, Trey hated it when he did that. No matter what, when Darc started spitting out words that made no sense, Trey could rest assured that he was about to feel really stupid. The firefighter glanced up at Trey’s partner, his face showing a glimmer of what looked like respect.

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait. Fire, who?” Trey asked, pissed that apparently he was the only one who didn’t know what was going on. Again.

  “Greek fire. Developed by the Byzantines.” Darc glanced toward the inferno, then nodded at the firefighter. “It is inextinguishable.”

  The fireman nodded back, his face getting more animated by the heartbeat. “Matter of fact, water makes it worse.” Trey stared at him in disbelief. Water making fire get worse? That didn’t sound right. The man must’ve seen the look, because he spoke directly to Trey this time, with almost as much heat as the fires themselves were generating. “Why don’t you go piss in there and see what happens?”

  “No, thank—” Trey began, waving his hands to ward off even the idea. Then Darc strode directly in front of him, cutting off his view of the gathered firefighters. Darc continued walking toward the raging blazes. This could not be a good idea.

  “Hey! Darc!” Trey called after his partner. “Penis fire, remember?”

  Darc turned, his body limned in the flickering light of the burning grave sites. “Would he damage this perfect symmetry with a trap?”

  Well, there went Trey’s perfect excuse to hang out with the firemen until the flames went out. Crap. “No. No, he wouldn’t,” Trey muttered.

  Trey followed along after his partner, even though he knew he wasn’t going to like what he found.

  Not. At. All.

  *

  Darc studied the layout of the graves, the distances between the burning sites and the undisturbed ones creating shapes that glowed brightly in his mind. But there was no answer. No matching shape that fit all the information into a pattern. There was some piece of information here. He knew there was. But he could not see it.

  The flickering light from the fires did not impede his inner sight. If anything, it set it in sharper relief. Symbols and shapes, spinning about, dancing on the edges of the constantly leaping light of the conflagrations. The light warmed them, comforted them. But it did not cause them to settle into place.

  Trey danced from one foot to another in what Darc guessed must be impatience. He had found, in spite of his best efforts to encourage it, that Trey had an extremely limited capacity to figure conclusions out on his own. Darc’s partner also seemed impaired in his ability to keep his ignorance to himself.

  If Darc did not discover something soon, he would then have the added distraction of having to field Trey’s near-incessant questions. Darc did not want that to happen.

  He surveyed the area, his gaze catching on, and then firmly held by, three trees. No shapes or symbols darted out of the configuration of those trees, and yet…this was the piece of information Darc sought. It was clear that it must be.

  Blinking several times, Darc stared at the leafless forms, tracing their outlines in his mind. They quavered in the unsteady light, looking almost like they were moving. Like they were somehow human…

  Pointing to the three bare trees, Darc spoke to his partner. “Look familiar?”

  “Dude, I hate it when you—”

  “Leafless trees?” Darc pressed.

  Trey’s eyes widened as he apparently got the reference. His words confirmed it. “Oh, man. Circle number eight.”

  Darc nodded. His partner reached into his pocket to draw out his cell phone, flipping it open. Darc reached over and closed it shut once more. “Don’t.”

  “But we’ve got to get a crew out here.”

  “For what?” Darc watched as the confusion grew on Trey’s face. It was standard procedure, yes. But there was nothing standard about this case.

  “Hello? For—”

  “I don’t want anyone else to…” Darc’s voice trailed off as he relived the pain of second-guessing himself. “Eighteen dead at the meat plant. The rest in ICU. Another dead here. How many before that? I can’t risk it. I won’t.”

  “Whoa. Hold on.” Trey’s expression seemed almost…hurt, if Darc was reading it correctly. Hurt or constipated. “You won’t risk any backup, but you’ll risk me?”

  “I didn’t say you had to come.”

  Darc saw the conflict in his partne
r’s face, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to keep moving. The urgency was building to a fever pitch. Things were about to happen. Bad things.

  Setting his sights toward the trio of leafless birches, Darc moved toward the eighth circle of hell.

  CHAPTER 15

  Stepping up his pace to catch up with his partner, Trey stumbled over a root or something that was sticking up slightly above the rest of the well-manicured lawn. The light from the Gregorian fires, or whatever the freak they were, was dissipating as they got farther and farther away from them, and he couldn’t see much of what might lie in wait within the wavering shadows.

  And that wasn’t even close to his biggest concern here. They had just passed though the seventh circle, with its exploding coffins and ever-burning fires of hell and damnation. It’s not like the next one up was going to be filled with unicorns and pink peonies. Things were about to get real, yo.

  At each step in this investigation, the killer had zigged when Trey would’ve sworn he was about to zag. Even Darc was off his game with this guy. No one, no one, put Darc off his game. They had one time gone up against a grand master in chess. A champion at the most strategic game ever, and Darc had barely broken a sweat outthinking the guy.

  So the question they all should be asking: who was this freaky-deek? If he was somebody that could twist his partner into mental knots, Trey wasn’t all that positive he really wanted to know.

  The trio of stark-naked trees was still a ways off. There was something resembling a path that seemed to be taking them right to where they needed to go. Apparently, the killer wasn’t making things that hard at this point. One more big ole red flag. Wherever the killer wanted them to go was definitely not on Trey’s top ten vacation destinations list.

  But somehow, he was still tromping along, headed up the primrose path—no idea what primroses were, by the way—straight into the jaws of the killer’s version of Art Appreciation 101. Trey must be crazy. Certifiable. He believed the technical term for it had something to do with flying mammals and excrement. That was the only real explanation he could come up with.

  The park was oppressively large. Their landmark ahead didn’t seem to be getting any closer, and Trey was starting to sweat. Okay, he sweat by even thinking about exercise, but still, this was a bit excessive. Maybe the killer’s idea was to make them hike themselves to death. Trey wouldn’t put it past him. Death by workout did not sound like fun.

  Although, come to think of it, it was a whole lot better than snakes. Yeah, that was something Trey was still hoping he’d be able to take out of the killer’s hide. A leaf rustled off to the side of the path, and Trey almost jumped out of his skin. Okay, no more thinking about snakes for a while. Good plan.

  They continued tromping along through what Trey could only describe as something straight out of a gothic story. White marble headstones, some of the oldest ones covered in moss and fungus, peered back at them like teeth thrusting out of the corpse of the earth. Old bones of monsters unknown and unknowable. Trey felt like he was walking through a Bram Stoker novel.

  But even worse than the gravestones gleaming in the intermittent firelight were the mausoleums. Large, whitewashed sepulchers, residence to the dearly and not so dearly departed, their entrances gaped open after Trey, hungry mouths waiting to be fed. On his blood and organ meat, probably. Trey’s neck hairs stood at attention, like he had just put his hand on a Van de Graaff generator.

  The trees scattered throughout the cemetery loomed over the two detectives like the nuns used to stoop over Trey while he was taking his tests back in his Jesuit school. Observing. Scrutinizing. Judging. That was it. Darc and Trey were surrounded by judgmental trees. Vaguely Catholic ones.

  As they finally neared the grouping of skeletal trees that were their landmark, Trey noticed a glow coming from up ahead. It was a different kind of light than the fires that were raging behind them, but it too flickered. It felt warm and homey, as opposed to the harsh blazes they had left in the possibly not-so-capable hands of the Seattle Fire Department.

  Okay, yeah, they knew all about the Goliath fires or whatever. They just seemed a little too happy to sit on their butts for Trey’s liking. He knew lazy when he saw it. There was no fooling him. Kinda hard to cheat a cheater.

  In that more welcoming light, Trey noticed that Darc had outpaced him. That man was an effing workhorse. “Man, you walk fast. You’d think with what we’re looking for…” Trey stopped talking in order to have enough breath to catch up to his partner.

  And then they settled into something just below a breakneck pace. At least, that’s what it felt like to Trey. Enough to keep his legs and lungs burning, not so fast that he would pass out. It certainly left him no space for idle chitchat. Trey began to suspect that maybe Darc had done that on purpose.

  The forest was a presence around them. Movements of small animals slipping through the brush set Trey’s nerves on edge. The shadows from the ever-brighter flicker ahead danced crazily around them, making it feel like a whole posse of insane, cannibalistic clowns was about to attack them from behind a bush. Not that the shadows looked particularly clownish. It was just the scariest image Trey could come up with at the moment.

  They crested the hill, and there in front of them was a campfire, burning merrily away. Hung on a metal framework above the flame was an enormous cast-iron pot. Okay, Trey was kinda pissed. After pulling the snakes out of the freakin’ background, now the killer was giving them this straight-up copy of the painting? Where was the out-of-the-box killer Trey had grown to despise and loathe? It’s like he wasn’t even trying anymore.

  “Dude. This guy is literal.”

  Shifting around so that they were approaching the cauldron from opposite sides, Trey and Darc moved closer and closer to the bright and cheery center of what looked like nothing so much as a Boy Scout camping trip.

  Okay, the big black cast-iron pot was a little creepy, but even that just looked like some awesome Dutch-oven cooking was on its way. From the metal container, Trey could hear the sounds of boiling liquid burbling away inside. He had to stop himself from chanting, “Double, double, toil and trouble.” A giddy giggle also seemed to want to erupt, his body’s way of venting the sheer panic that threatened.

  Tiny wisps of steam issued out from under the massive lid covering the pot. Trey had no desire to open it up. That’s how he knew it was what he needed to do.

  Trey grabbed a stick to help pull the lid off. He looked up at the huge cast-iron crock and then at the thin switch of wood in his hand. Lifting his eyes up to meet his partner, Trey grimaced as Darc gave a sharp shake of his head. Yeah. There was no way that twig was going to budge something as heavy as the manhole-cover-of-a-lid that topped this sucker. Trey sighed and tossed it away.

  Back into the jungle he had to go. He took a deep breath, crossed himself, and plunged into the undergrowth surrounding the clearing.

  After thrashing around for a moment, he came back out with twigs in his hair, a new bruise on his hip, and more scratches than he had gotten once when he fell into a rosebush while trying to pick a flower for his girlfriend back in high school. At least he’d obtained what he’d gone out there for. He was clutching a large branch that had fallen to the ground off the huge and obviously ancient maple behind him. Hefting the cudgel and squaring his shoulders, Trey advanced on the fire once more.

  “Ready?” Trey asked, lifting up the branch.

  Darc nodded, but Trey let the point of his bough tip back down to the ground.

  “Sorry, I’m not,” Trey said, trying not to hyperventilate. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what was in that pot. No, scratch that. He was positive he did not want to know what was in that pot. His partner directed a look at him that could have frozen lava. “Okay, okay. Jeez.” Sometimes Darc could be such a little priss.

  Edging his way forward with extreme caution—hey, the graves had exploded, right?—Trey eased the point of his lever forward in one hand, trying to keep it from
shaking too much. That was just because of how long and big the stick was. It had nothing whatsoever to do with fear. His other hand, he kept firmly on his gun. He knew there couldn’t be anything alive inside the pot, but somehow, having his hand touch metal was a tiny bit comforting.

  Sliding the tip of the wood through the ring on the top, he started to lift up, but the circle of metal slipped off the end of his branch. Trey overbalanced and almost went face-forward into the fire. That would not have been a pleasant ending to this little field trip.

  “Crap.” Trey could feel Darc’s disapproval all the way from the other side of the campfire.

  Setting the branch completely down for a second, Trey shook his arms out, rolled his shoulders around, and cracked his neck. This time, he gripped the branch firmly with both hands and managed to ease the cover up enough to see that the liquid within looked to be blood. Floating in the viscous sludge was the back a human head.

  “Ah,” Trey gagged. “That’s just—”

  And then the head rolled over. It was the black guard at the hospital.

  “What the…? No, no, no, no, no…”

  The metal lid fell with a loud clang as Trey backed away from the cauldron, trying desperately to rid his vision of what he had just seen. As the branch fell and bumped against the pot, the contents sloshed around inside, causing more heads to bob to the surface.

  There wasn’t even a flicker of acknowledgment from Darc. It was like his partner was a stone. But then, with no change in posture or even a shifting of his countenance, Darc let five words fall from his mouth.

  “He was protecting the girl.”

  Trey’s mind exploded into a million gibbering fragments. “Oh dear…No. No. No.” He picked up the twig he had abandoned earlier and ran back over to the pot. Swiping the stick through the gory stew, he managed to turn another head around. Father John.

  “Oh, no. Please, God. I’ll repent. I’ll do anything. Just no.” Trey babbled incoherently as he continued moving around the horrific contents of the iron pot.