by Kevin Wright
Detective Winters kept his mouth closed, standing there in his gray trench coat. He knew what was coming; he did not care.
“I mean, the mayor didn’t give a shit when the guy was killing the Aces and the Samurai and the whores and the homeless. Really, who does care?” The Chief brought the full brunt of his gaze down upon the small man. “Hell, he was glad. Less work, less trash, less complaints. But he damn well cares when some nurse gets it. Not to mention that florist last week and that baker fella. Three in one week, all registered voters, taxpayers! All of them. Do you know how hard it is to blanket shit like that from the IRS? The FBI? The DAD? Of course you do. It looks bad for him. Looks bad for you, and even worse, it looks bad for me.” He took a moment to let the gravity of the situation set in, then continued.
“The mayor needs results. Election year. That means you need results. I told him two years ago you were a waste of taxpayers’ money. You’ve been here how long, now, and still nothing! God forbid some mailman gets it while you’re fucking around. The feds’ll drop down on us quick as you dare. And that’s all I need, your old chums charging in and pulling another Kingston.”
Detective Winters glanced down at his watch. It still read seven.
“Right!” The Chief slammed his fist down. “If they can’t erase it, or hide it, blow it up! That’s their friggin’ motto. Now,” he took a deep breath and waited for his face to turn pink again, “tell me something positive. Please.”
The corner of his mouth twitched in a tight grin, then Detective Winters said in his strained voice, “Same as the others, prints, finger and shoe. No witnesses except one patient, highly unreliable, drugged. Same M.O. as the others. Cause of death, same. We found DNA, again. It is our man.”
“DNA? Fingerprints? Blood types? Jesus Christ! What have you been doing? Do you have anything useful? Anything at all?” The Chief’s eyes pleaded. “You’re supposed to be good. Almost two years and nothing. What the hell are we paying you for?” He scribbled on the donut box. “I’m sending a memo to the mayor. I want you gone.”
Detective Winters grinned. “I have his scent.”
“Huh?”
“I have his scent,” Detective Winters said. “Sly quarry, but time only, now separates him and I.”
“Well, who is he? And more importantly, where is he?”
“In days of old, whether he is the same man or not, the Railwalker he was named,” Detective Winters said, pulling a bit of lint from his sleeve. “He is the one committing these atrocities. Urban legend. I have suspected it for some time, though still, I lack evidence. Black sacraments of the street upon fell winds have reached my ears and speak this name. As the leech bites into the skin of its victim, so too does this killer feed upon this city, sucking fear and dread as well as souls.” Detective Winters’s eyes blazed. “Careless in his blood lust, he ventures forth more often from his den. He has been seen. He will be seen. Word will spread. I will hear. I will find him, and I will burn him from this land.”
“Okay,” the Chief gulped. “Great, that’s great.”
From within his gray trench coat, Detective Winters drew a folded piece of paper. He tossed it on the Chief’s desk. “Have the mayor read it and sign it,” he said. “I want free reign. No more protocols. No more red tape.”
The Chief came back to life, stammering. “Those protocols are there to protect the lives and rights of the citizens.” The Chief puffed out his chest and slammed his fist down, “Why, the Bill of Rights—“
“Bill of Rights?” Detective Winters grinned slightly as though it caused him pain. “The Bill of Rights died with the Patriot acts. Tell him to sign it.”
* * * *
The Padre stooped as he slogged his way through the knee-deep chunks of sewer scum trickling past his legs. His shoulders nearly touched either side of the passage as he loped along.
The den was close. There was work to be done. Through the sewer grate, above, a velvet mist fell. For a moment, he let it fall upon his gray-haired head, and then once again he donned his preacher’s hat. His glance fell upon the black mouth of huge pipe jutting from the wall. Like drool from a gaping maw, thick black water oozed, splashing below. They were in there, not far.
“To labor is to pray.” The Padre’s deep voice rumbled. He made the sign of the cross and pulled himself up into the pipe.
Through the thin trickle of sludge, he trod, toward a blackness, a palpable foulness out of place even within the bowels of the sewer. It was dead worms in his mouth, and it grew stronger with each step. His cane swung in his fist with each step, but it made no clicks upon the convex floor of the pipe. The gallon jug of water in his other hand sloshed.
He stopped. The ever-present trickle of water masked something he could barely make out, the echo, the whimper of a child. Twisting the head of his cane to ensure the blade within was loose, he moved on quicker, silent, and reached the end of the pipe.
Down, he gazed. The pipe let out into a large room with a high vaulted ceiling. Smaller pipes stuck out of the walls all over, drizzling ichors to splash and swirl slowly towards a drain, central to the room.
They were within, four of them, ghouls. The pitch black of sewer-night concealed no secrets from the Padre’s balefire glare. The light of God was in his eyes tonight, and not the soul of Satan himself would protect them.
They were feeding, ghouls, junky-sucks, on children. Easy prey, weak. Some were dead, in pieces and whole littering the floor. Like vultures, they gobbled and sucked and licked and squabbled. Bones cracked and marrow was scooped.
One of the children chained to the wall sobbed the slow pitiful sob of a young girl without hope, lost in her darkest nightmare. The Padre watched her in the dark, her chained arms wrapped about her small frame, her huge pupils straining to see what was going on around her. Thankfully, she could not see. Only the noises of the ghouls feeding could reach her, and perhaps she was too young to know or imagine what they might be.
The Padre popped the cap off the jug of water and poured it slowly over his body, soaking his hat and head, his coat, and body. He dropped the half-empty jug, thud.
The ghouls, startled, mouths gaping mid-chew, gawked up as the Padre unsheathed his blade and withdrew a wooden cross from within his long black coat. Snick, snick, he lit the cross; it blazed, and he leapt, then, into darkness.
“I AM THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA!” he roared, landing. His voice reverberated throughout the chamber as he hurled the pyro-crucifix, exploding, into the ghouls.
Arms and legs were seared off, and bodies and heads sizzled, twitching, cooking in their own undead juices. Three were wiped from existence, annihilated in that very second. One had escaped the holocaust, burning though he was.
An incinerating rat, it bared its once human teeth, pink with blood. In the corner it huddled, flesh sizzling, blazing, fumbling for something as the Padre strode forth smoothly, his keen blade held before him. The Padre raised a hand as the ghoul pulled a revolver from inside its rotted shirt and fired.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A ricochet and five thuds answered the roar of the gun as the Padre was knocked back, sliding into the muck. His blade flew off to land point down, quivering in the floor.
Smoke oozed from the muzzle.
The Padre lay still.
Children screamed.
Steaming, the ghoul crept forward, charred flesh cracking. It cast the spent revolver aside and grinned. Crooked sharp teeth drizzled foam and blood upon the Padre as the ghoul rose over him, triumphant. Its seared face was half skull with char; the other half was worse. A hideous black grin that none would ever see descended to the Padre as though for a kiss. “Who sent you?” it hissed close.
A twisted, clawed hand laid upon the Padre’s shirt and pulled to tear it open, but the shirt, woven of Kevlar, would not rip. Smoke poured from the hand of the ghoul as it tried to tear the garment.
“AAAAAAAAAAARrrrrrrrrrr!” The ghoul snatched its smoldering hand from the holy-wate
r-soaked body of the Padre. It clutched its smoldering hand and recoiled as the Padre’s steel-shod foot shot up and caught it in the chest, crunch!
Corpse ribs cracked and the ghoul fell back into the chained children wailing in the dark. The ghoul crawled for the gun and grasped it as the Padre, pursuing, hurled a stake at it, thunk! The ghoul screamed, clutching the wound.
“Misil me dominus,” the Padre said.
Snarling, the ghoul sprang forward, teeth and claws bared.
Pivoting, the Padre caught the ghoul in mid-air by the impaled stake and throat, spun, and slammed it to the floor. Kicking and scratching and biting, the ghoul struggled, pinned by a thick boot on its neck.
The Padre’s sword was near. He grasped it, swung it. The ghoul stopped thrashing. The children sobbed. The Padre inhaled deep, exhaled, and with a splash, the ghoul’s head landed nearby.
Chapter 8.
AS PETER SLID PAST the mountain of trash bags and broken two-by-fours, he saw the car again. It was far but closer than last time. Long and gray, it was a great shark cruising the misty night, tasting, sniffing for prey, for weakness, for blood. It had been trailing him the past half-hour.
Peter clutched the knife in his pocket, his only comfort in the cold. His feet shuffled on. He had nowhere else to go. Going back was not an option; it was only a few blocks to the river, the Joyce bridge, Brudnoy’s. He walked faster. The mist shrouded the splash of his footsteps as he quickened his pace down the industrial street.
Huge factories, once thriving centers of creation and commerce, were now nothing more than great ashen skeletons. No windows graced the sills of the mighty giants. Graffiti, some of it quite ornate, covered the walls and doors, all of which were boarded up.
Peter glanced back as the gray car made a left hand turn into one of the barren lots far behind. A weight lifted off his chest as it disappeared. Hurrying on through the parting mist, he could see the mouth of the bridge open up ahead, twin obelisks flanking it.
“Well, where now?” asked Peter of no one in particular. He looked up at either of the obelisks. Prickles on his back suddenly rose before he even saw it. Behind, an engine revved.
The car had returned.
Peter turned.
The gray car, long and sleek, windows fish-bowled opaque with smoke, crept forward from the bone-yard of factories. Smoothly then it took off, revving faster and faster, a cheetah exploding toward a gazelle.
Shit! Peter sprinted to the concrete parapet on the side of the bridge and vaulted it without breaking stride.
He hit wet mud, slid, stumbled and rolled down the embankment until the earth leveled out. Tires screeched to a halt above. His coat ripped on a jagged block of ferroconcrete, but he hadn’t stabbed himself with the kitchen knife, so that was good. He glanced up. The sound of the river rushing past was all he could hear.
A car door slammed above, then two more. Footsteps paced about; voices hushed by mist and concrete called to one other.
Pulling his coat tight around him and gripping his knife, Peter crept into the darkness under the bridge. Crawling through rubbish, he made his way forward, parallel to the river. Not far ahead, he could see out the other side of the bridge. Trash littered the ground in heaps. Peter couldn’t see any of it in the black beneath the bridge, but he felt it as he groped his way along through soft wet trash bags, old tires, shopping carts turned upside down, squishy stuff Peter was glad he couldn’t see.
Glancing back, Peter tripped and sprawled upon something large and hairy. For a moment, he lay there unmoving, exhausted, staring up at the black underbelly of the Joyce bridge. Adjusted to the darkness, Peter could make out dim shapes, trash-heaps, all around him. Then, the large hairy thing that Peter was lying on suddenly shifted, and Peter rolled off onto concrete.
“Ringo? Hhhrrrrrm, that you, old boy?” came a voice, a deep voice that sounded like huge boulders shifting. The voice echoed deep with a British accent. “You smell like Ringo, but you smell also quite unlike Ringo.”
Peter clutched his knife as a huge shape eclipsed everything in front of him. Mounds of trash collapsed in an avalanche. Twin points of yellow light flashed before Peter’s eyes, and he stumbled backwards onto another heap of trash bags. He clutched the knife, shaking, before him.
“You killed Ringo,” the voice said, “and stole his coat, and his pants, his shoes.” The shape advanced slowly, cool. A chain clinked in the dark with each of its steps.
What the hell is that? A fucking bear?! Peter scrambled up, but something huge and furry batted him back down. Wind knocked from his chest, Peter lay gasping. Chains rasped across the floor as the huge shape moved.
“Hhrrmmm?” rumbled the bear-thing, moving closer, sucking deep breaths in through its nose. “You’re tainted, old boy, infected. This does not bode well for your case. Not well at all. Can’t have you running loose. A menace. But are you worthy?” It seemed to reflect for a moment, then continued. “Your defense will have a difficult time. Yes. Who, though? Bofrey? No. Salazar? Yes. Grand theft? Perhaps. Murder? Certainly. We shall require witnesses.”
Panicking, Peter tried to speak; his lips moved, but no words would come to them.
“Have you no words to speak in your own defense?” the bear-thing asked. “Hmmmmm, you do have the right to remain silent; this is America, after all. I, however, have the right to tear your lungs from your body and cry bloody havoc. Should I deem it necessary. Do you have asthma?”
Peter, finally catching a breath, croaked, “No.” He still clutched the knife.
“Good. Do you need medical attention? You don’t seem able to breathe all that well. Have you visited China recently? Toronto? SARS, you see?”
“Wnnnd … wind, had the wind knocked out,” Peter said, catching his breath back. “Brudnoy, I’m looking for Brudnoy.”
A deep growl suddenly shook the very roots of the earth. Peter’s knees went weak.
“Slander, libel, defamation of character, don’t take that route with me boy. It’s already been done. I see you’re in league with the bloody mayor.”
“No.”
“Doesn’t matter, does not matter. Not knowing the mayor won’t absolve you of this. Poor Ringo, you killed and ate poor Ringo.”
“I didn’t kill Ringo.”
“Poor, poor, Ringo,” the bear-thing said, “I was going to kill and eat poor Ringo. We never had the chance. It would have been an honor.” A sniffle in the dark.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Of course you did. You’re wearing his things.”
“He gave them to me.”
“Nonsense,” the bear-thing said. Then it reconsidered, “Prove it.”
“He’s at the shelter, the, uh, Happy Valley Shelter.”
“You know, Ringo was a great friend of mine,” said the hulking bear-thing. “You’ll have to stand trial for his murder. Tonight. Due process, old boy, that is your right.”
“Look, go ask him yourself. He’s fine. He was eating sardines last time—”
“I’m sorry, old boy, but as you can’t see, I have this chain around my neck. Severely limits my wanderings. More of a reminder, really.” The chains rattled as the beast shook them. It looked more dog-like than bear-like, not that it mattered. Whatever it was, it chose that moment to pounce, pinning Peter against a shopping cart. “Can’t have you running. Not tonight. Not safe outside. Have to stand trial. Then I’ll kill you. Due process, that is your right, old boy.”
Chapter 9.
RAYMOND GURLEK was a failed abortion. To be fair, at the time, technology just was not on his mother’s side. Sadly, she resided in the days of old country science, where cocktails of crushed flower potions, herbs, and foul poultices were followed, if need be, by long sharp metal hooks wielded by men with intent, if not actual medical knowledge.
Raymond Gurlek’s mother was not evil. At least she did not believe herself to be. She was simply a young woman with an eternal problem and only one real solution. Her decision was made early, and
she stuck by it firmly till the end.
Nothing worked on poor unborn Raymond, who was not even Raymond at the time and would not be Raymond for years. The potions hurt, yes, but they only hurt mom. The salves and poultices did nothing. Even the metal hooks, ungently handled by unkind men who would have made a butcher blanch could not rid the woman of the thing growing in her belly.
That was what she called it, too, while she could, the thing. The thing in her belly. Well, the thing in her belly, Raymond that is, would carry scars for all his many days and often wonder at their origin. Perhaps as a kindness from above, or below, or wherever, he would never know. Though he might guess.
After six months of efforts, Raymond’s mother started going mad. She was completely so by the ninth month, and after the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth months, she was able only to mumble short sentences whose only discernible words involved pain and teeth. The town barber and part-time dentist, a man of intent, could not help her, though he tried.
Raymond Gurlek’s mother died in childbirth. To say Raymond killed her might be an exaggeration. When the midwife pulled Raymond forth from the mess that was his mother, she made the sign of the cross. Raymond Gurlek was covered in blood. More blood than the midwife had ever seen, or would ever see, except perhaps until the day she opened her wrists, though that is neither here nor there.
The boy, like some reptile, had been born with one tooth, one jagged tooth. The midwife noticed this, too, and though she guessed at what it might have been used for, she never knew for certain, and no one could ever corroborate what she saw.
The midwife, eyes wide, was taken away and placed in a mental hospital, and rightly so. Even as they held her down she shouted the whole time, “Un Diente! Un Diente!” which means, “A tooth! A tooth!”
Unfortunately for young Raymond, many a townsperson heard the woman’s screaming that cold night, in that small town on the coast. None of them spoke Spanish, let alone understood it.
A legend arose that day of the woman who died in her fifteenth month of pregnancy, and her son, the boy who was born with shark’s teeth, and the midwife who was sent off crying, “Un Diablo! Un Diablo!” This of course, as even ignorant gringos should know, means, “A Devil! A Devil!” Perhaps it was not far off the mark.