Hunter's Moon

Black shapes flittered across the midnight moons, dark wings against a darker sky. Robert Parker lay back, the crook of his arm resting against the cold stone of the cemetery monument. Above, the clouds passed like silent shadows across the frosted ground below.

Robert sighed, the red light of Mars peaked out from beneath gray clouds. The steely gaze of the moon sat tucked comfortably between spider-webs of gray and black.

Devil’s Night. He clucked his tongue against stained teeth; the one in the back hurt. He reached into his mouth, gingerly pressing against his broken crown. The nerves exploded in violent pain and he swore he’d make the bastard pay.

But his cash was light, the last was long gone to the plastic bag he fingered inside of his pocket. There was still time, of how much he was uncertain. School would be a bitch tomorrow. He thought idly of playing hooky. If he could stave off trouble long enough, just long enough to get his shit together. Maybe then he could bargain with the man.

After all, they had something the other wanted.

The needle flashed in pale moonlight. He stole a gaze up toward heaven’s door.

“Fucking weird.” He said to sleeping ghosts.

When no answer came from beyond, he shrugged, brushing crusted dew off the stone face of the cemetery stone. The name wasn’t important. But he figured the dead deserved to see the sky. This was an astronomer’s wet dream. Who knows when on earth this would happen again. Two moons. Two fucking moons. Parker couldn’t help but laugh. Maybe it was the high, maybe it was the cold seeping through his wet socks and tickling his toes.

The gray steel of the moon broke free from the clouds, red and silver light rained down on the empty graveyard. Above, trees flexed their skeletal limbs, reaching up to scratch the sky.

“Bastard owes me another bottle.” This one was light. Or maybe it wasn’t? It didn’t matter, a little high was better than none at all. He pulled up on the plunger and stuck the needle deep into the vial. Clear, red liquid drained up into the syringe. He tapped it twice and threw the bottle down the hill. He watched it twist across the air, glass sparkling in the midnight sky.

It fell to the ground with a satisfying splash. The pond drank it in. Robert cast another look down at the cracked stone beneath his arm, “cheers.” The words were simple as he plunged the needle deep into his flesh.

Minutes passed in an infinite crawl. The sky lurched and his arm throbbed with the sting of steel biting in.

Ecstasy in a bottle. He smiled a crooked smile and rolled the sleeve of his hoodie back down. It was black, darker than the sky above, darker still than the voices that called to him at night when he was all alone. Inside he felt alive. Warmth pulsed through him, worming its way from his arm to his head and down his leg. He closed his eyes, feeling the subtle shift of the world awakening. Through the blood-tinged night he could see shapes dancing on the surface of the water.

He thought the thin layer of ice cracked.

And then he heard the dead scream. Like the earth tearing in one single, torturous sound.

They called out all at once, a terrible wail of torture and fright. The world stopped swirling in tye-dye vortexes of happiness and warmth, everything grew suddenly cold. Gray haze flicked across his vision, twisting in the slow spiral of oil and water mixed.

The wail came once again, and Robert smiled despite the sound. Whatever it was, it sounded like freedom.

Mars looked beautiful in the evening sky, hovering just below the smiling face of the moon. It was like the bloody nose of God himself.

The haze shifted, fog rolled in. Coiling in gentle tendrils of a snakeskin vice grip. It pooled about his legs and he felt something pull. Robert panicked. His eyes went wide and he could almost kiss the sky. Above, the fog slithered between his slitted eyes, creeping like vines against frost flecked earth.

He shivered. Sweat froze on his brow and colors faded to gray. The bleeding light stopped, vanishing; it faded into a subtle brown, then an ochre red alighting the night sky in a brilliant inferno.

And then the world went dark and gray, cold and lonely. He stole a glance down, looking for comfort in the stone. The tombstone lay shattered, tossed on its side. A single skeletal finger reached up, grasping for the sky as it sifted through frosted grass. Boney fingers scratched at his feet as mist pulled away from the surface of the lake, creeping slowly up the hill.

“Fucking weird.” His voice sounded so far away.

The gray mist stretched out from his leg, dancing in the gentle eddies of air. A cool breeze blew from somewhere to the south. Wooden limbs scraped against dying bark. Shadows oozed out across the lake. In a blink and a flash, something hung from dead boughs.

And then the splash of his bottle striking already thin ice. He could taste snow on his lips, but knew it was too early.

With the splash came the light. And then the colors again, coalescing into one brilliant, beautiful slideshow of everything ugly in his sin.

The pain in his arm returned, pus oozed from the tiny hole and he saw the maggots crawling out of his flesh. They came out by the dozen, then in hundreds.

And they were all heading south, toward the lake.

Tree limbs came to life, green and red replacing brown and black. They sprouted in ones and twos, forming mouths, forming eyes.

The red light returned.

Devil’s Night. The weather grew warm. Robert couldn’t feel his limbs, he scratched dumbly at an itch he knew wasn’t there. His arms burned from the impact of nails run ragged against his skin.

The mist stretched out, the maggots crawled.

It all converged into one shadowy figure of a man hung to die.

And it pointed at him. Robert felt his stomach lurch, fought the urge to retch and shit his pants.

One skeletal finger reached out to touch him.

A dog howled in the distance and Robert’s blood ran cold. He looked down at his pocket-watch as the hands spun recklessly through an infinite loop of time standing still. And when Robert thought he couldn’t take it anymore, the shadows vanished in a flash.

Footsteps sounded in the distance, like rushing water racing into septic sewers. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but he didn’t want to take his chances. Paranoia took over, muscles stretched and popped. He took off down the hill, a slow trot aided by the wonders of gravity. His arms flailed as he struggled to keep his balance, a gravestone rose and almost tripped him up. He recovered, then fumbled and fell twisting into an awkward barrel roll as he tumbled down the hill. Brambles and thorns dug into his hoodie, he struggled to free himself and heard the pop of branches snapping and threads working loose. He stung from dozens of tiny bites. A thorn stuck into his side.

There was the gnashing, rabid cry of a wolverine out to hunt. Pale blue eyes met the violent red of a dog madder than hell.

Saliva dripped from fangs unnaturally large. The beast paused, hackles sticking up like porcupine spikes. Its hair was taut and its stance was low. Blood stained claws dug into the ground, ripping up rivulets of dirt.

Mars played peek-a-boo with midnight and faded into the aether above. The beast paused, placated by the vanishing moon. It sat down on haunches and stared at the sky, transfixed. Through the throbbing of his head and the pulsing of his heart, he thought he heard the creature howl.

Flashlights blinked into existence off to his right. He heard voices and the air filled with the sweet stench of burning herbs. Someone was laughing, a hollow wraithlike laugh. He vaguely remembered wishing for a joint.

This place wasn’t so bad. It was all in his head. He was just high. Stoned out of his mind and seeing things. It had to be. There was no way this thing was real. He laughed a shaky laugh and reached out to pet the shaggy dog in front of him. He felt his hand pass through air and nearly stumbled again. The needle-bite throbbed and he stood up, taking two unsteady steps toward the beast. His foot struck something solid, he stubbed his toe. Shadows stretched thin and red light peaked out from beyond the clouds.

Mists gathered around the lake. In his stupor, he thought he saw the surface roiling in a slow burn. Bubbles popped and and he heard that laughter again.

Sweet smoke sifted through the stench of grave dust. The voices were closer now. There were three of them, two boys and a girl. Shadows flicked on the outskirts of his peripheral and he squinted into the darkness.

Red light danced down from the sky. He thought the dog stirred, and inched away.

A mausoleum cut off his path from the west. Brass bars pitted from time shot through the earth and stabbed toward the sky. Marble glinted, reflecting the red and blue-grey of the moons above. Shadows stretched, creeping closer.

“We shouldn’t be here.” The girl was saying, fear dripping a slight tremor into her voice.

“It’s Devil’s Night. Come on. Don’t be a baby.” Red and white leather reflected in the moonlight. A varsity jacket.

Crap.

“I’m not a baby!” Exasperation strained her voice.

“We’re not scared, Jimmy. It’s just. We shouldn’t be here.” The three were just over the rise. Robert could barely make out the shadow of the shorter boy speaking.

“Shut up, Sarah. Do you wanna do this or not?” Varsity spoke, his voice full of gravel.

“Well. Wait. I mean. Do we have to be here ?” The shorter boy was looking around, his head bobbing about like a sparrow searching for food.

The grass crunched behind him. Robert spun, finding himself face to face with a large, angry dog. Through the shadows in the trees and the beast on the leaves,

Robert took the chance to shit himself and run for his life.

James sighed. The rose in her cheeks put shame to the red moon above as Sam Wilson brushed a stray hair to the side of her face and let her freckles shine through. Green eyes sparkled mischievously in the twilight as the steel smile of the moon poked through splintered clouds.

She found herself curling up closer to James, the heat of his body pushed the chill of the night away. Moonlight danced on cracked ice beneath the starless sky. The blinding of the midnight sun sent stars to sulking in the velvet black above. It hadn’t been that long, but she couldn’t help but feel that familiar stirring inside her heart every time she caught him looking at her.

“Stop smiling.” He said, pushing her playfully to the side, “you’re going to make the lake jealous.”

“Lakes don’t get jealous.” She giggled. James Wilson heard only bells.

Behind them, the steel of the gate creaked in the gentle breeze. Maple leaves began their slow spiral down from ancient branches. Frost licked grass crunched underneath as he shifted his weight from side to side. He paused bashful, eyeing her intently as he slid closer, lightly, almost accidentally brushing her jean-clad leg with the tips of his fingers. He felt a tiny spark and pulled back reflexively.

She twisted her hair lazily, there was a moment of awkwardness that sublimed to an almost effervescent bliss bubbling to the surface. When she didn’t pull away, he grew bolder and pulled her close. He wrapped his arms around her and draped his coat across her lap. After a moment she leaned back, pushing into him. Red hair tickled his cheek and he grinned from ear to ear.

“It’s so pretty.” Sam sighed.

“I know you are.” James heard himself say, he caught his tongue too late and the words hung heavy on the air.

“How did you?” She ignored the compliment, focusing instead on the moonlight dancing across the lake.

“Get so lucky to meet a girl like you?”

“Get a key to this place?”

“Oh.” He blushed, stammering stupidly, “I kind of work here. You know. It’s no big deal. Just don’t tell my boss.”

If she didn’t believe him, he didn’t care. It sounded good. Their moment of silence was punctured by the gentle splash of waves lapping the shoreline. The answer seemed to satisfy her and he relaxed the tension in his shoulders. If the city knew he was out here…

Dark thoughts danced across the periphery of his mind. He owed Parker more than twenty bucks. If this place let him score, he’d owe him his life. James knew she wouldn’t dig too deep into it. He wasn’t the coolest kid in school and Sam was in demand. Any chance he got to spend more than a fleeting moment of awkward silence at the lockers together was a few seconds he’d treasure. If he could get a little and get out without the city knowing - he might still have a chance at this job.

From the moment he first found this place, he knew this was where he belonged. Noble oaks scraped against purple sky as the twin moons circled above. The faintest calls of night owls stalking wooded expanses were tangled up in her relaxed breathing. Jasmine floated across the air, rising from her hair to his lips. He wanted to drink it in.

Fifty thousand years. And then never again. He couldn’t help feeling almost superior to be sitting lakeside with the most beautiful girl in school as they watched the most awe-inspiring phenomenon in humanity’s brief history. He only wished the Orionids were streaking across the sky tonight, but he’d settle for this moment to last forever.

This Martian moon was like magic to him; over the past week and a half his life went from misery to his present company. The warnings and urban legends creeping across Lyton were only emboldening his every move. The thought of hanging out alone in the woods while “creepers” skulked the darkness excited him.

“You think they’re real?” Sarah roused him from his thoughts. The world flooded back in a slow crawl. He gave her a slight squeeze and said nothing.

Creepers. Really? Scientifically it was impossible. Mists were incapable of sentient thought. And any chance that something even remotely close was the stuff of nightmares. No more real than Bloody Mary, the Wendigo, or the Barghast. He bit his lip and fought back a snicker.

“What’s so funny?” Her elbows dug into his side. It hurt, but her touch was soft.

He exhaled sharply, feigning a pretend injury. “Ow!” This time he laughed, a real laugh that echoed in the still of the night. “That hurt.”

“I’m serious. It’s not real, right?” She broke his embrace and turned to look at him. Doe eyes welled with tears ready to burst. He caught the faintest tremor in her lower lip and fought the urge to kiss her.

The night grew long and the temperature dropped. Mists coiled about his legs and feet, creeping toward the lake and rising like heated vapor toward the heavens. In the creeping shadows, he swore he saw a face; breath froze in his lungs. He hoped she didn’t see it.

The gasp sent her mind reeling. “What is it?”

“No - nothing. It’s getting late. And cold. We should go.” James rose in slow, deliberate motions. He pushed up slowly and his knee popped from the sudden stress. She stared up at him as a dog barked off in the distance. One shiver made her mind up and she rose decisively to her feet. James bent to help her up, but she refused his touch.

“You okay?” He asked only to break the monotony of sliding gravel as they hiked up the hill. Tiny dust clouds settled behind them, moonlit fading to black brought the chill in the air to life.

“Thank you for a lovely evening.”

What the hell did that mean? Shadowed wings floated across the moon, breaking the silhouette of silvery clouds. She reached out and took his arm with her hands, cupping them around his narrow bicep. They walked in silence up the hill to a rusted gate. He reached into his pocket, digging for the key to an aging MasterLock.

The crunch of gravel behind them made him regret locking the gate. Mist turned to midnight fog and settled into the bowl of a narrow lip beneath the ridge. The lake was almost invisible in the haze.

“James?” The fog grew thick and he almost couldn’t hear her from the thundering in his temple. A pinch on his hand brought him back to reality. He shivered, wiping a bead of perspiration off his forehead. The cold sweat continued as he fumbled with the lock. The creeping dread continued.

Crunch. Skitter. Crunch crunch.

And then the howl of a wolf at hunt, somewhere to the east. Another voice echoed the sound and soon he swore a whole pack was on the prowl. She dug into his hand, he felt her drawing blood. It bled a slow ooze and he could feel the bead freeze in unnatural cold.

He paused again, frozen like an effigy set to stone. The lock wouldn’t budge. His hands were numb. His mind was vacant.

The only thing he could focus on were the cold, red eyes of the beast staring through to his soul.

Lies. He fought the hallucinations from his mind. He was just nervous, that’s all. The lock finally gave way and the gate creaked open, revealing a deserted street beyond the tree line.

No light penetrated into the park. A canopy of yellow and orange blocked the twin moons in the sky.

The walk back was cold and lonely, despite the warmth and company.

Outside, houses stretched in neatly manicured rows as streetlights flickered and a bulb burst off to the side. James Wilson jumped and almost shit his pants. He found his composure in the poise of the girl standing alongside of him. Her arms were locked around his in a death grip.

Sirens sounded off in the distance, mingling with the howling of wolves on the prowl. For a moment, a fleeting instant, the clouds parted and the steel red light of twins above ignited the world in a Halloween glow.

In the distance, he heard a scream. Samantha heard it too. There was no mistaking that. James fingered the canister in his pocket and used his free hand to hold her tight. She didn’t fight it.

Blue lights twisted shadows into skeletal creatures skulking prey. Fog crept closer, shutting out the heavenly light, turning humanity into gray blobs in a sea of colorless dreck.

In that instant of parted clouds and heavenly protection, James caught the fleeting glimpse of a meteor trekking across the midnight sky. He pointed up toward the sky, but Samantha’s eyes seemed hollow and he never felt more alone. She shuffled along side of him, near catatonic in her fright.

He blinked back frozen tears and hugged her close. He relaxed his grip on the pepper spray in his pocket.

Mist coalesced into tangible form. Four legs, big black fur. Red eyes stared beyond him, dark fangs dripped a strange ichor that popped against the asphalt, sending wisps of steam upward. The air smelt of cordite and flames. In the distance, an orange glow stretched outward. The mist reached through him, ice pierced his soul and he began to cry. A cold hand clasped against his faintly beating heart.

Sirens echoed in the silence.

“What part of ‘I’m sick’ didn’t you get?” The phone was the last thing Michael Wilfrey wanted to hear at two in the morning. He faked a cough and sat up, scattering dirty sheets across his otherwise empty bed.

He did his best to ignore the strain of her voice on the other end of the phone. He knew she wasn’t going to bite. “Look, I don’t like it any more than you. I’ve got calls piling up and we’re spread thin enough as is. We’re one tone away from a total breakdown.”

“Lieutenant’s really calling me in for this?”

“No, Mike. Happy fucking Halloween. It’s just your average run-of-the-mill mischief night prank. We’ve got nothing better to do in the bat cave than wake your ass up in the middle of the night.” The dispatcher on the other end sighed. “Brokaw wouldn’t answer, neither would Thomas. You’re the only one stupid enough to wake up for this shit. So congratulations. The chief’s got eight hours of overtime with your name on it.”

“I don’t need the money.” Wilfrey reached up and pulled the rusted chain above his bed, there was a click and the lightbulb ignited the room in the piss-yellow color of dollar-bin deals.

“Right. Because you’ve got plans, let me guess. You’re out at The Den again. What’s her name?”

“Delilah. She’s shaking her ass for me right now. You’re killing my wood. Goodbye, Jim.” He smiled. She hated that name, it was an old joke designed to piss her off.

It didn’t work. “LT said you better be here in an hour or its both our asses.”

“I bet he’d like that.”

“Oh. Mike.”

Wilfrey grunted.

“The way they’re talking on the radio, it’s a messy one. I’d skip breakfast.”

Wilfrey eyed the half empty bottle of bourbon on the counter. “But, I’m thirsty.”

“When you lose it, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Six thousand block of Parke, homicide.”

“Can’t be worse than Genoa.”

“It sounds like a thousand times worse than Genoa. They’re kids, Mike.”

“Aren’t they all?”

The silence on the other end was uncomfortable. He overstepped his bounds and felt the flicker of sympathy for the old girl upstairs. “I’m sorry, Lori. I didn’t mean it.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve got an hour. Consider yourself called out.”

“Sweet dreams.” He hung up the phone and leaned back. An hour was a long time when you lived in Lyton, and it was even longer at two in the morning. Wilfrey planned a twenty minute catnap. The light sparked and went dead, his heater hushed and fell silent.

The room grew cold. He tossed and turned, pulling blankets up over his head, ignoring the chattering of his teeth. The ratty blanket was useless. He figured he’d take his chances with the cold water and freezing temperatures outside. It had to be warmer than this. Hell, Antarctica had to be warmer than this. He rose from the bed in a slow, deliberate stretch. His knee popped and his neck loosened enough to find his coffee stained post-it notes. The pen was harder to find. It took two tries before he found one serviceable enough to scrawl a note reminding him about the overdue electric bill. The bottle called his name, the solo cup was still where he left it the night before. His floor was a maze of dirty laundry and dirtier tile.

He beamed a tobacco smile at the dingy mirror and poured a glass. It went down smooth. He was down to his last smoke, and if the scene was as bad as Lori said it was, he’d need another pack. But, he might as well prep for the inevitable. It was burned into his memory. Always have a plan.

And right now his plan was to grab a few more shots and finish his cigarette. He had a cold shower waiting for him, and if his balls were going to shrivel up in the water, he wanted to at least have something to numb the chill.

Two shots turned to four before he stumbled to the door, kicking at a half-emptied laundry basket as he grabbed the wall for balance. Without light, he felt his way across the rough patched drywall and found the shower curtains dangling from the ceiling. He parted the plastic and reached inside, feeling against the wall for the cold water knob; it squeaked and a strangury drip inched its way through the narrow pipes to trickle onto the dirty tile below. The water was colder than he expected, but a shower was a shower. And he couldn’t remember the last time he had one. Not like it mattered anyway, he hadn’t seen the light of day in a week and a half. Wilfrey tossed his underwear into the spiteful hamper and fumbled his way into the tub.

It was best to get it over with. After he showered, he stole a fifth shot from the bottle. The brown liquid burnt his insides and gave him a comfortable warmth. The flashlight was waiting alongside his bed, he grabbed it and popped the lid, pushing down on the button and casting a thin beam of clean, white light across his studio apartment. It found the blinds and he stepped over dirty clothes to the cord and pulled the shade. The twin light of the midnight moons cast a narrow glow across the room. He flicked off the light and dropped it on his bed as he moved from one end of the narrow apartment to the other.

He found his suit still neatly pressed, the windsor knot on his black tie was still perfect. It looked just like the last two weeks had been nothing more than a fucked up nightmare. He slicked his hair back, pushing the scattered strands of gray forward, letting them settle back into his bangs. He felt almost important again. When he was finished, he paused to take a look at himself in the mirror. Despite the bags under his eyes and the worry lines criss-crossing his face in jagged scars, he was looking good. Wilfrey took a moment to straighten his tie and adjust the shoulder harness he wore tucked underneath his left arm.

When he was satisfied and feeling half human again, he grabbed the keys dangling near the door and slid open the center drawer of his console table. He found his gun under some junk paper and distracting jewelry. Wilfrey pulled the slide back, press checking for a live round. He seated his magazine again just to be sure and stepped through the door to face the waiting world below.

It almost felt good to be back to work.

Almost.

Zero, three hundred. No one in their right mind was awake at this god-awful hour. Yet here he was, driving the solitary grid of a street map he wished he never knew. Through liquor-laced eyes, he saw the passing of the world as no more than a gray blur. Mists coalesced around his car, blocking the penetration of his one good headlight. The repetition of the red and blue dashboard light punctuated an otherwise gray night. Tiny skyscrapers faded into a blur as he rounded the highway and made his way into suburbia. Less than two blocks outside of downtown, sixteen stories became two, and then petered off into tiny ranches and boarded up bordellos.

Wilfrey took the scenic route across Danse Highway, through the laughing stock of a thriving artsy district. Tiny green aliens and gaudy monsters with four eyes waved, flashing sardonic smiles at the few sheep still wandering the streets this late at night.

Girls walked between flickering streetlights, waving eagerly at his company Chevrolet. He needed to get the exhaust fixed; the din and purr of the emphysemic engine droned on in a monotonous chatter of the perfect, nails-on-chalkboard squeal as the timing belt stretched thin. A red light shone at the intersection of Danse and Fate, the only color in an otherwise magical land of broken toys.

Lyton was as close to a cesspool as he’d ever seen. Wilfrey couldn’t figure out how he’d lasted twenty years in the dark. But, a job was a job, and he wasn’t one to complain when he was getting paid. No matter how dim the light at the end of the tunnel was, it was always better than no light at all.

Or so he told himself between bottles.

He checked to make sure the streets were empty as ever before blowing the red light at Danse and Fate. Dim light peaked through rusted over burglar bars and windows long turned to gray haze as the frost settled. Inside, he caught the shadowed figure of another lost soul barely struggling to get by. Two people stood in line, probably waiting to buy their last minute poison to make things that much more passable. A vagrant skulked the sidewalk, his wild hair blown back by a gust of wind. He dodged from garbage can to garbage can, picking through the detritus for newfound treasures that he gingerly stacked onto a rusted out grocery cart.

Wilfrey was lucky enough to grab the green at the next three intersections, he ignored the burnt out shell of Genoa as he passed by. It still stung to see the building hollow and alone. Memories can be terrible things.

Less than a mile down the road took him to Red Mountain Boulevard. Wilfrey took a right and accelerated through the single-lane street, paying no mind to the stray dog skulking the mists. The street lights were dim, half weren’t even working. Maybe when he got back to the station, he’d consider telling the city about it. But work orders were paperwork.

And Wilfrey hated paperwork.

The carnival of lights at Red Mountain and Parke were all but impossible to miss.

Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the wind, two rookies in midnight blue stopped his car a block and a half from the scene. Apparently red and blue lights don’t mean anything when you still spit shine your boots and have a training officer ready to unscrew your head and shit down your throat.

It took a minute for Wilfrey to find his ID. He couldn’t remember the last time that anyone had even stopped to consider asking him for it. He hoped the rookies didn’t smell the bourbon on his breath. If they were dumb enough to question his identity, they were dumb enough to bitch to internal affairs.

And he didn’t need another one of those letters in his jacket. There was no point in learning their names, half of them wouldn’t make it to week twelve. If they made it that far, maybe he’d consider introducing himself. But for now, they were just background images in an otherwise unimpressive scene.

Lyton Police Department had a new thing called “standards”, if they’d existed when he was in training, he wondered if he’d even still be standing here. All the testing and questioning, it was a little too much to wrap his mind around. The job was hard enough without worrying about going home to study for some test that didn’t mean dick come week seventeen when you finally see the streets for yourself.

And all the second guessing the kids were doing today. Wilfrey sighed. There’s enough of that going on with the brass upstairs and the media outside the gates. You didn’t need it when instants mattered.

But they lived in a kinder, gentler time. This was a time where kids don’t get dead creeping through cemeteries, this was a place where everyone would sing songs like that stupid purple dinosaur as they held hands in the circle jerk of life. No, kids don’t get dead for no reason and shit didn’t run downhill. Everything was always happy and perfect and wonderful in lollypop land.

The vultures gathered around the exterior perimeter, flashbulbs echoing in a syncopated dance of blinding light. Some guy in a two sizes too big duster was barking questions at him like he was some celebrity on Trash TV. Microphones thrust into his face and it took all of his resolve to not smack the damn thing out of the reporter’s hand. You don’t go sticking shiny things in somebody’s face.

That’s impolite.

They should have at least bought him dinner first.

Wilfrey’s stomach grumbled in protest. He couldn’t eat pork and beans much longer. They tasted like the aftermath of a weeklong bender. He wished for coffee and donuts and hoped LT was nice enough to buy as he fished around his pockets, pulling lint from the cloth.

“Evening, sir.” A young buck in gleaming metal and perfectly pressed cloth grinned at him.

“Turn that smile down. We’re at a homicide, not a damn carnival. You don’t plan on riding the Himalaya today, do you son?”

“Er.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“I’ve just. My FTO told me all about you. It’s an honor.” The boy thrust his hand out, “How bout them fish?”

“They suck. Sign me in, won’t ya. If I stand out here in the cold any longer, I might just end up pissing icicles. Michael Wilfrey, badge 786.”

The boy scribbled onto the yellowed paper and stepped to the side. Inside the inner perimeter was an even bigger circus than the drama he left outside. Here, the ancient cemetery gates stood noble in the moonlight. The fog had all but burnt away under the pressing heat of dozens of bodies come to work the engine of justice. A gentle hill rolled north and east over a crest, a single mausoleum rested atop the summit, sitting like a cockeyed crown. Tiny granite stones punctured the earth like the shattered teeth of a smiling ghoul. In the center of the cemetery sat an ancient, iron oak. Its boughs all but bare in the crisp autumn air. Vines hung like drooping tentacles stretched down from the highest branches. And off to its left was a gaping expanse of the blackest maw he’d ever seen.

Lake Magnolia.

This place was beautiful in the daylight, a perfectly modern interpretation of the ancient cemetery park. Hand carved stone benches sat at strategic points, tucked under the shade of perfectly manicured maple trees. The last of their leaves drooped like bloody lips in the solemn air. A star streaked across the sky as the twin moons came out to play.

Wilfrey found Jake Hodges waiting for him near the hill. He smiled dangerously at the lieutenant. “Good morning sunshine.”

“Cut the crap.” Hodges thrust a steaming cup of coffee into Wilfrey’s waiting hands. “Or did you already have your morning pick-me-up?”

Hodges was one of the few men who knew the truth. Wilfrey brushed his free hand through his rumpled hair, “Just five.”

“For the day?”

Wilfrey nodded. “Well, considering I was rudely awakened recently, I think five for the day sounds pretty damn good.”

“When you going to get help, Mike? That shit’s going to kill you.”

“No sooner than the streets, or a knife in my back.”

“There’s no knives anymore.” Hodges laughed, it was cold and hollow, “We live in a kinder, gentler more modern time. They’re psychic vampires now. With just one goal: Leech the last drips of sanity and humanity out of you.”

Poor bastard was still bitter about being passed over for a promotion. Wilfrey nodded, placating his boss. “You’re not a big enough asshole to be captain.”

“Only your average, run of the mill dick bag, huh?”

“Yeah. That sounds about right.” They’d known each other a long time. Twenty years tomorrow, but who’s counting? Classmates have to stick together. Because everyone else can go to hell.

“Jim tell you what we got up here?”

“You know she hates that name right?”

“So I hear.” Hodges turned and walked up the hill. Wilfrey watched his fading form for a moment as the stars peeked out from beneath a cloudless night. Weather had been weird since Mars showed up, but there was no point in worrying about that. Snow in October. Who’d have thought? Mists that vanish in hours, clouds that fade into gossamer dreams, things were getting stranger by the day.

The cemetery was lit in a bloodied glow. Granite steps cut into the narrow hill, glowing an awful light from the unnatural sky. Flashbulbs blinded him as he rounded the hill. Beneath him, CSU was working to photograph the scene. When the light snapped, he got his first look at the horror below.

And for a moment, Wilfrey’s stomach lurched.

It almost made Genoa look like a walk in the park.

Or a cemetery. Whatever.

This was a psychopath’s wet dream.

Two steps down the hill and he felt like he was ready to retch.

“What do you think we’ve got here?” Lieutenant Jackson was all blue balls and teenage fears. Poor guy found himself in a specialized unit for the first time in his career the day after he got promoted. Wilfrey almost felt bad for him. Almost. But you can’t suck off the chief and not expect to get what you wanted. Thing was, new guy didn’t quite know what he wanted.

“Too early for turkey.” Wilfrey’s grim face went taunt as he bent over a bloodied corpse.

“Never too early for turkey.” Sergeant Bunchyard rounded the corner, popping out from a nearby mausoleum. His fat jiggled as he stepped and his gear sounded like Christmas bells.

“Or Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick.” Wilfrey grinned. It had been a while since they saw each other last. “Hey, LT - why don’t you be a sport and go grab us some coffee?”

The junior commander lost a beat, freezing in his tracks; the tension was palpable, almost comical. Lt. Jackson’s eyes darted back and forth, passing from scene to detective, blood to sky, Wilfrey caught the subtle blanching as the boss cast a final, wary glance down at the corpse beneath their feet. He left without looking back.

“Think he’ll ever get used to it?” Bunchyard asked when they were alone.

“You never get used to it.”

“What d’ya think brought him here?”

“The boss or the dead guy?”

“We’ll go with both.”

“Shit. The corpse just wanted to get high.” Bunchyard pointed toward a yellow counter, it had a big black three reflecting in the red moonlight. “Some vial, newest shoot ‘em up I guess. My boys in the street haven’t even heard of it yet. Thing is, there’s no needle to go with. So either stiffy over here was going to drink the thing, or it ain’t his.”

“And the other two?”

“No needles. No marks. Clean as can be. I mean, as far as our usual, run-of-the-mill junkies. Look like your usual suburban kids from out west of downtown with too much money and too little sense.”

“But?”

“Whatever it was, shit man.” Bunchyard paused, rubbing his hand through grimy hair, “Thing was hungry.”

“As in…? Eat the rich?”

“Or the dead. There’s no way these kids were still living whenever whatever it was decided it wanted a midnight snack. Here. Look.” Bunchyard bent to point out a series of puncture wounds on the young man’s corpse.

It took a minute, but Wilfrey finally gave in to curiosity. If the view from above was any indication of the mess, he figured he might as well get a good look. Because chaos like this only comes once a year. Still, though. Genoa was bad, he’d been in his own kind of therapy ever since, he figured after this one, he might as well go ahead and dig his eyes out with a wooden spoon.

Pieces. Everywhere. He walked the length of the cemetery as one piece led to another and another before finally revealing the second victim. It was like Hansel and Gretel’s twisted breadcrumb trail. The boy was mauled. There was no other way to adequately describe it. Like a hungry beast had torn flesh from bones. He found those scattered to the east and west. Flesh still covered them in splotchy patches, a tendon hung limply from what Wilfrey could only guess was the boy’s foot.

Medical Examiner was going to have fun with this one. And for once, he actually felt bad for the body snatchers.

With a foot pointing east, Wilfrey had no choice but to follow it below the rise. The mausoleum and hill faded into a black blob in the bloody night. Tiny shreds of skin and meat spread out in a circle, they formed two concentric ovals, like a misplaced eye staring up at him. Inside the eye was another bottle. Wilfrey bent low and fished through his pocket for a penlight. He found it and pulled his keys with an awful rattle as he fumbled for the switch on the bottom. It lit the eye in a pale, grayish light. On the bottle was a label with handwriting in red ink.

He could barely make out the letters through the dew.

But there was no mistaking the symbol on the back. His light passed through a break in the paper to shine on a squiggled Caduceus. The red light sloshed as he moved closer, accidentally tipping the bottle onto its side.

In the distance, he heard the faint call of dogs at play as they saluted their evening masters.

Devil’s Night could go straight to hell for all he cared.

In the shadows of the night, he caught the strange silhouette of a wicked hand pointing the way to the girl in state. It called to him and he followed.

The sight of her all but killed him. The boy was bad enough, with his torn up letterman and chewed up flesh, but the girl broke him in two. She lay at peace lakeside, with her hands splayed at the ten and two. Eyelids weighed down by two coal black stones, her hair askew and her pristine white blouse soiled in blood, she was a miserable figure. The red thickened in the chest. He didn’t need to know what happened there. The evidence was obvious enough by turning his head to the right. Two tiny bite marks were barely visible on her dainty hand.

Strange symbols encircled her, written in blood and carved in dirt. Two alternating circles of blue and black cloth shrouded the outline of her body. The writing around her swirled together into one red mess of jumbled up thoughts. A line of blood drew a tangled “S” across the grass, like the coiled snake around her boyfriend’s letterman. The girl’s heart sat off to her right, her left hand pointed the way. It sat on a silver platter, illuminated by the faint flickering of three green candles.

“I got nothing.” Wilfrey whispered through dry lips.

“No one does.” Bunchyard fell in line as they stood beneath the twin moons. Clouds encircled the white one and the red light remained.

“Any idea of who they are?”

“No ID, no missing persons. No witnesses or suspects.”

“Any chance we can get DNA?”

“In that mess? The girls are trying, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There’s not enough swabs in the city. Same with fingerprints.”

“How’d we even get mixed up in this mess?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Trespassing.”

“No screams, missing persons, shots fired? Nothing?” Wilfrey blinked, confused.

“Old lady that lives across from the hill, said she saw a flashlight in the cemetery and wanted it checked out. Priority five, it held for about an hour and a half.”

“But somebody saw something.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Please tell me it wasn’t called in by a little mouse.”

“Nope. Name, address, and phone number.”

“And?”

“And nothing. No one home. Place has been vacant at least six months.”

“So - squatters called this in then?”

“Not even vagrants, man the place was a ghost town.”

“So…” Wilfrey paused, scratching his head, “We get called to go find a ghost in a cemetery, called in by another ghost. We go there and find this weird shit?”

Bunchyard nodded, his jowls bounced in the pale moonlight.

“Christ. Sounds like something out of a book.”

“Yeah. The Black Bible.”

“Don’t even fuck with me about that stuff.”

“So we got nothing.”

“Not even a fly on a horse’s ass.”

“Great.”

“What’s your pleasure?”

“Well, Egon. We start by finding that ghost.

“Really? Another barking dog complaint?” Roberts sighed as he picked up the microphone, “Adam 12, show us responding.”

“Adam 12, en-route at 0400.” The dispatcher’s voice sounded just as strained as he felt.

“Could be worse.” Robert’s partner turned to look at him, they passed under a narrow streetlight that illuminated their dark eyes. From the center console, a dim glow burned in the night’s stillness.

“How ya figure?”

“Well, you about shit yourself on that last call.”

“Did not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I call bullshit.” Roberts steered the Crown Vic, making a left hand turn down Adams Street. He tried to bite his lip and hide the truth. But a partner knows.

“That was bad, dude. It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone you cried.”

“I wasn’t crying.”

His partner’s quizzical eye shut him up.

“Okay. But seriously, who does that to a kid?”

“Fucked up people the city pays us to kill.”

Roberts steeled himself, shutting his memories of Genoa down. It hurt to think of it. Two weeks ago, his world changed. And as much as he wanted to go back to naivete of yesterday, he knew he had to press forward. That was his job. Blowup decorations shifted their weight against the cold breeze; their bonds creaked with the wind. But decorative severed heads and limbs sticking out of the ground don’t compare with the reality of his everyday existence. It was like one train-wreck after another. He wondered how much longer he could pick up the shattered dreams of the young and innocent.

He rounded the next block and crept up on suburbia. The aging black and white groaned as the wheels passed over speed-bumps designed to keep teenagers from doing stupid things. The kidney-shaped roundabout came up suddenly, he swerved to avoid catching the curb.

Colonial houses lined the street in stately rows, like cornfield stalks of red brick and white wood rising up to pierce the sky. Perfectly manicured lawns summed up the perfect lives of the people living within. Doctors, lawyers, hard-working, every-day Joes.

Roberts’ parents lived a couple blocks away, if it wasn’t the middle of the night, he would have stopped by. That’s if they even wanted to see him. It had been a couple weeks, he hoped that his family wasn’t mad. Their last meeting didn’t go quite so well, but dogs bark and people fight.

The world moves on.

Two blocks and turn right. Roberts signaled and shifted the cruiser into the cul-de-sac.

“Sounds quiet to me.”

“Adam 12, show us arriving.”

“On scene, 0412.” The computer beeped and the status screen refreshed.

“Think Dunkin’s still open?” His partner asked, “I could go for a cup after this day.”

“Depends. They haven’t been robbed lately, so we might get lucky.” Roberts parked the car and stepped out, leaving the keys in the ignition. The warning chime gave him a headache, but he paid it no mind.

“So, where’s this dog supposed to be?” His partner passed the flashlight beam around, listening for anything out of the ordinary.

“Ghost dog.” Roberts laughed.

“Fucking hellhound? Really? You’re going there after the night we’ve had?”

“Why not?” Gallows humor always made him feel better.

“It’s just, since Genoa, things have been weird. Come on, man. Admit it. That red moon up there ain’t making life easy on us.”

“The sooner the crackpots go away, the sooner we can get back to sleeping under our tree.”

A wolf howled in the distance.

“Cerberus himself awakens. After you, fearless leader.” Roberts differed to his partner, “You’ve got a couple months on me, age before beauty.”

“Fuck that. I’m pulling rank. You go, rook.”

The howl came again, closer this time. Shadows flittered across the twin moons in the night sky. Roberts shivered and broke leather, “I don’t like this.”

“Barking dogs, remember? It’s just a CAD. Don’t go making us write paper. It’s Friday, man.”

“It’s not the dog I’m worried about.” The howls were getting closer. They stepped behind an oak tree and paused a moment, listening to the night.

“Adam 12?” The radio on his shoulder crackled to life.

“Go ahead.” Roberts answered, lowering the volume.

“So, we’ve got two more calls about dogs creeping around out there. Anything showing?”

“Negative. Just some howling from a backyard.”

“Copy that. Can you check the area of 122 Forest Lane? Got a call about a big black dog running loose and tearing up people’s lawns.”

“Animal Control is en-route too, right?”

“They’re call out only.”

“I think this counts as a call out. We’re not dog catchers.”

“That’s what I told them, but. You know how the county can be.”

“Four Alpha, Lyton.” Sergeant Bunchyard was speaking over the radio.

“Go ahead sir.”

“Adam 12’s right. Call out ACC once we get confirmation. This night’s way too strange for us to approach. Let the dog catchers handle it.”

“Understood. Standby.”

“Well, that’s that.” Roberts said to his partner when the radio chatter died down.

“Coffee time?” The hopeful glimmer in his friend’s eyes made him smile.

“Guess I could grab a hot tea.”

“Tea? Really?”

“You know coffee gives me gas.”

“Good point. If you smoke me out of that car, I’m going to shoot you myself.”

“Fine.” Roberts threw the keys at his partner. “Your turn. I’m done for the night.”

They settled into the cruiser and left the cul-de-sac, turning to the right as they exited. Forest Lane wasn’t too far, maybe two minutes tops, providing they didn’t wreck out on those stupid circular medians.

“Hey Tony,” Roberts’ said to his partner when they left Adams and got back on Parke.

“Yea?” His partner asked, turning up the wipers as the heavens opened up and the rain fell, hard.

“I don’t like this night.” There was no slow start, no drizzle, no pitter-patter, it was just a straight downpour from an otherwise clear sky.

“Me either bud. Me either.” Tony took a left on Parke and headed east for three blocks, crossing back over Danse to the one hundred block. “You’d think the yups would leave their dogs inside.”

“Adam 12?” The radio chirped.

“Go ahead.” Roberts picked the microphone up.

Windshield blades danced across the haze.

“What’s your ETA? I had to upgrade the call to a P2. Apparently Fido’s taken a hostage.”

“Say again?”

“9-1-1 open line from a girl, says that there’s a nasty dog blocking her path. I refreshed your screen.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Tony said as he flipped the switch and turned on the strobes. “Who the hell is out walking this late at night?”

“Zombies?”

“Don’t fuck with me.” Tony reached up to the handle on his spotlight and fingered the rosary he kept wrapped around it. “Dios Mio.”

Roberts couldn’t agree more.

“Adam 12 arriving.”

“Copy that. On scene 0415.”

Black shadows passed under yellowed streetlights. Clouds dripped across the sky in narrow spiderwebs as the red and white of heaven above cast the evening in a strange pallor. They parked the car at an angle, using its bulky form as cover. Tony figured that no dog would jump that high. Which meant it would probably come underneath. The frantic screams of a terrified girl were interspersed with the angry growl of a dog madder than hell. Its hackles were up, standing like sharpened spikes. The animal was massive, bigger than a mastiff, smaller than a dinosaur.

“This is a joke right?”

“Halloween over yet?” Roberts said as he stepped out of the car and moved toward the engine block.

“Couple more days.”

The girl’s screams grew louder, more pitiful. The dog’s growling rose with menace as her eyes welled up with fear; tears dripped down, splashing onto the dirty concrete in black pools. The animal’s saliva frothed and filled her puddle with a roiling heat, almost sizzling the concrete.

“Hey!” Tony shouted, stepping out from behind a lightpole. “Here, puppy, puppy.”

Roberts broke leather and drew down on the beast. He had no clue how this was going to work. He didn’t want to shoot the thing, but it didn’t want to listen to Tony. The girls hair was matted with sweat, blood caked her elbows from where she fell. He hoped the thing didn’t bite her.

“Come here doggy. There, yea. Nice doggy.” Tony dropped his center and pulled his pepper from its holder. “Come here. I’ve got a nice treat for you. Yea. Doggy want dinner?”

The creature turned, its attention temporarily off of the girl it had been terrorizing. Tony tried to wave her to run, but she stood transfixed, frozen in place under the lone streetlight. The car’s spotlight angled down, shining onto the creature’s slick fur, it glowed in an almost unnatural light. The dog seemed to flicker like a candle, almost a nebulous mist.

As the dog turned, Roberts caught sight of its unholy eyes: Red, deeper than the martian moon, they stared through him, piercing his heart and turning his blood to ice. He felt the temperature drop, saw the dewdrops on grass frost over and his breath caught in his lungs. Teeth the size of his fingers flared out. Saliva dripped in rivulets down the creature’s muzzle, dropping to the ground and sending wisps of steam up from the cold concrete.

Roberts vaguely heard a voice, somewhere off in the distance. He couldn’t make out the sounds or hear the words; it sounded like the mechanical drone of a honeybee hard at work. The world slowed to a crawl as motion blurred together. He saw the creature move, slowly, almost like it was a slideshow of single frames half-spliced together backward and upside down. Colors faded to black and white. The world went suddenly dim, silent.

Agonizing moments passed in the blink of an eye. The creature lunged, Roberts fired. His finger tensed on the trigger, pulling back slowly in an exertion he barely could feel. The muzzle flashed, white light pierced his heart and a thunderous boom sounded in his head.

He thought he saw Tony go down, he heard a scream and hoped he didn’t miss. The creature staggered and reeled back on its hind legs. It thrust forward and then fell in a heap, the violent shock of the bullet tearing through its body dropped it into a tangled mess of wet fur.

Cold sweat dripped down his head and he could feel the warm splat of blood hitting his face.

Against the silence, a grown man cried.

There’s nothing like an irish coffee to get the morning going. Wilfrey sat back in the crowded donut shop, surveying the crowd as they came and went. It was time for the morning rush and the people watching was plentiful. He couldn’t help but marvel at the sheep stepping into the store, each completely oblivious to the night’s events, out of tune with their city and the creatures that skulked their nightmares. Wilfrey stole a glance up at the static on tv, a newscaster was doing an on location report outside the cemetery gates. But so far everything was coming out clean. Blocky subtitles translated the report into tiny bitesize chunks that the average half asleep commuter could digest. Something about the strange rain storm last night, bodies were popping up from their eternal slumber. It was the biggest bunch of bullshit that he ever heard.

And he loved every moment of it. Jake Hodges wasn’t good at much, but he was a damn good liar. Probably the best bullshit artist Wilfrey had ever met. It was perfect. And with the freak weather since Mars showed up, it was damn plausible.

Not even the newspaper caught on yet, which was good news considering. Somehow they managed to keep last night mostly off the grid. Today’s top story above the fold was the Steel Dragons of Lyton winning a football championship. Big news for a small city. Either way, it was better than last night’s news plastered top fold for thousands of nervous citizens to ponder, piss and moan about. He wished they had done as much when Genoa went down, maybe then the mayor wouldn’t be trying to castrate the city’s shoestring police force. Money was hard enough to come by without the citizens screaming foul because of a little overtime. He figured tomorrow would be open season.

Gotta love technology. With the late night chaos, it would be at least a day before the media frenzy overtook the city in its virulent paranoia. That’d buy him some time.

And Wilfrey figured he’d need a lot of it come the next few weeks. Ghosts are funny things. They flitter in and out of consciousness, traveling between reality and fantasy. He kept his radio tucked into an over-length trench coat and stuck the bluetooth in his ear. It paired within moments. He didn’t want to be seen.

When you’re tracking a ghost, it’s easier to become one. Only problem was, Wilfrey didn’t know who or what he was tracking. Nothing made sense. An old lady hobbled up to the counter, she bent one frail arm and dug through a threadbare purse, hunting for a long lost penny.

“Dollar, twenty-five.” The snotty barista said, smacking gum between her lips.

“I’m sorry?” The old lady asked almost apologetically.

“Large coffee. It’s a buck twenty-five. We don’t take credit for anything less than ten.”

What a bitch. Wilfrey grunted and rose from his seat, tossing the paper on the table. He wondered idly if the snooty girl even had a family that cared about her. Probably not. He’d been watching her for the better part of an hour, observing every detail. From her rumpled, unwashed orange shirt to the way she scratched idly at her arms and clawed at her hands when no one seemed to be looking. He caught the far out look in her cold, green eyes, and even heard the cough once of a terrible sickness.

It was withdrawal.

He knew the feeling all too well.

But, Wilfrey couldn’t get close enough to check her arms. That is, until now.

The old lady stumbled and stuttered her way through trying to buy coffee. It hadn’t been working out too well. As he rose, he caught the strange look in the young girl’s eyes as some part of her body switched over from predator to prey. It was like that strange, far off look of a deer staring into the headlights of an oncoming truck.

“Here you go, sweet-heart.” Wilfrey’s face veiled into a thin smile as he dug out two dollars from his wallet.

“You’re so sweet.” The old lady grinned, crow’s feet danced at the sides of her face and worry lines creased across her brow. “Back in my day, coffee was a nickel.” She licked her lips and pulled the hot brew up to her face, blowing softly on the steam rising from the tiny hole.

“Keep the change.” Wilfrey winked, the girl stutter-stepped, unsure of how to respond. “That’s a beautiful bracelet.” He traced rough fingers over the leathery skin of an addict. “Where’d you get it?” At her confusion, he changed tactics, “My daughter’s birthday is coming up and she’s been begging me for a silver bracelet for the longest time.” He traced his hand across the smooth metal, feeling the carvings etched atop it. In the artificial light, he could have sworn they glowed.

“My boyfriend made it. He has a shop down by the lake.” There. That was it! The tell he was looking for. She smiled a faint smile and brought her other arm to bear, brushing lightly against the dark tassels of her hair. When she pulled away, he caught the fresh red markings of a girl on death’s door.

“Give him my card. I’d love to get one of those. I hope it’s not too much.” Wilfrey slipped a hand into his pocket, never letting his grip slip from her bracelet and wrist. He found one of the fakes, the number was still good. But, he didn’t think Chase Donovan was still in import/export anymore.

Although, it might not have been too late for a deep cover investigation of his own. Her eyes lit up at the thought of taking a rich man’s money. How many drugs could she buy for the price of one chintzy bracelet? Wilfrey knew he could find out. All in time.

The old lady was still staring at him. Wilfrey’s face burst into flames as he blushed away his investigative mind. He replaced it with the stoic smile of a man happy to help. It was the face of a businessman. Shrewd and contemplative, it seemed to placate the lady.

“Thank you, young man.”

“My pleasure.” He slipped his hand from the girl’s wrist and suddenly felt dirty, very dirty.

Wilfrey didn’t have a chance to think it through. The radio was annoying him again. He did his best to ignore the din of internal affairs arriving on scene somewhere.

“Bravo Six?” Lori must have been working overtime.

“Bravo Six, Lakeside and Talvern.”

“I need you for a missing persons report.”

“Go ahead, Lyton.” Bravo Six acknowledged, Wilfrey didn’t recognize the voice.

“Six sixty-two County Line Road. Make contact with Mrs. Jones, advising her daughter and dog did not come home last night.”

County Line Road? Now things were getting interesting. It was on the opposite side of town, but a missing girl was a missing girl. And after last night’s scene, he’d take any lead he could get. He picked up his phone and pretended to dial a number with one hand as he fished for a pen inside his pocket. He dropped the phone back in and grabbed a fake business card, scribbling the name of the barista on it as he walked out of the donut shop, cursing about a package that was shipping late.

“Delta Three to Lyton.” He lit a cigarette as he stepped through the door.

“Go ahead, Delta Three.”

“Cancel the road unit. I’ll take that call.”

“What’s the disposition on your previous dispatch?”

“Just cross reference the two. I’ll check in later.”

“Understood. I show you en-route at 0714.”

“Thanks, Jim.” He took a long drag and turned the radio off. Morning brought little relief from the chill of the night before. Though the frost had burned off with the new come sun, it was still colder than a witch’s tit. Either way, he was thankful that the bloody eye of God wasn’t watching his every move anymore. “Gimmie the sun any day.” He said to himself as he unlocked the company Chevrolet and stepped inside.

The heat didn’t work. Wilfrey didn’t expect anything more than the old workhorse to get him from point A to point B, but having heat on a day like this would have been a miracle in itself. His coffee was cold and his flask was nearly empty. Though a little voice inside his head told him this was a good thing, he still had his doubts. Going through the day sober had gotten harder since Genoa. He couldn’t quench the demons inside of him. They tore up his insides like a stomach full of razorblades.

If only. If only he’d been more careful. More concerned. Maybe things would have been different. You can’t tempt fate, just like you can’t catch the rain in a rusty bucket or bathe in the hot sand. And you can’t turn back the hands of time. What’s done is done, and you have to live with the regret of missed opportunities. But still, two seconds played out in an infinite loop inside of his head, flickering across the empty theater of his mind.

Wilfrey sighed, watching his breath vanish inside the chill of the car. He settled back into the repetition of a daytime drive. Inside, his brain was black.

Shadows flickered across the recesses of his mind. He stood point, calling out orders as best he could, watching as line after line fell underneath the assault. He’d never been outgunned and outclassed before. But, there was a first for everything.

And it was a first he wished was a last that never came.

Skyscrapers passed alongside of him, their massive forms boxing him into a grid of one-way streets and honking horns. Men in suits milled around, running into traffic to catch elevators that would not wait. A lady in a smart business suit dropped her file on the sidewalk. No one moved to pick it up as a college kid ran past yammering away on a cellphone. When he saw the man’s knee catch the poor girl in the side of the face, he knew he had enough. He pulled his visor down to shield his eyes from the angry glare of the sun. When her face stared back at him, it took all he could not to cry. Red turned to green and he passed through the downtown hub into the southern ward.

The South Ward of Lyton was a newer expansion as the city infringed on the county’s landholdings and annexed as much property as they could get their greedy little hands on. Only problem was the city managers in the golden tower didn’t foresee the foreclosure crisis and the end of the American Dream. Once a thriving suburb of a rapidly advancing downtown, now the ward lay in despair. Boarded up McMansions sat on zero lot lines, their stately rosebushes now nothing more than a sprawling mass of weeds and dead vegetation.

A red and yellow snake crept by, slithering into the tangle of thorns as stray cats luxuriated in the warmth of the sun. He caught Stan the Can Man digging through the trash as one of his friends popped out from underneath a house, the new guy caught sight of the company Chevrolet and dropped his haul of copper, fleeing into the wooded lot behind whatever subdivision this was.

Wilfrey made a note to hunt the Can Man down later and squeeze him for some info. Providing, of course, that this girl turned out to be just who he thought she was.

He hoped she wasn’t.

The house he was looking for came up almost too quick for him to notice. It was an otherwise unassuming structure of white wash and red brick, like all of the other unassuming structures of red brick and white walls that surrounded him. He figured this subdivision won an award for the least offensive neighborhood in the city.

All the damn buildings looked exactly alike. It was a wonder the homeowners made it back every night. A candle sat on the bay window that looked out onto perfectly brown grass, one of the few houses in the neighborhood still intact. Wilfrey followed the trail of broken dreams down three or four houses before he gave into the sinking feeling inside his gut.

This was just business. Don’t get yourself all worked up. Wilfrey told himself as he parked the Chevrolet and walked up to the door. The brass lion head was a cute touch to a house owned by a family doing the best that they could.

It crept open and an unassuming, almost plain, lady peered out from the crack. Wilfrey fished for his badge and showed it to the woman, who appeared relieved at the cheap tin. The door opened and he stepped inside, carefully wiping his feet on the welcome mat below.

“I’m sorry, detective.” Her voice had a singsong quality to it that made him think of his own mother worrying herself at home. He needed to call that woman. “They told me I was getting a police officer, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, we’re all police officers. I just look better out of uniform than in. The blue and gray makes my thighs look big.” He smiled innocently, returning the otherwise blank stare of the poor old woman.

She didn’t know how to respond.

Wilfrey thought it best to drop the subject. “How can I help you?”

“It’s my daughter, Sarah.” She wiped a tear from her eye as she dropped into an oversized couch. “She’s never gone missing before.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen. She’s a good girl. On the track team and everything. Would you like to see her medals?” Mrs. Jones stood up hastily, smoothing the creases in her apron and busying herself with a hutch.

“Sure.” Wilfrey nodded. “That would be great.” She needed a distraction, he was glad that he left the monkey suit at home. Seeing a uniformed officer would crush her. Pictures on the mantle confirmed his suspicions. He didn’t want to break the news to her.

“This one was from last year’s cross country meeting. She placed third.” Happiness beamed out when the woman spoke. “And this one is from the local newspaper. She gathered a fundraiser together to help the less fortunate. Everyone needs a helping hand now and again. Sarah was always there to give hers.”

Wilfrey coughed, choking on his tongue.

“Would you like something to drink, detective?”

“No.” Wilfrey stammered. “I’m. Fine. Who does she hang out with? Maybe I can go knock on a few doors and see if they’ve seen her around town?”

“Oh no. It’s just her and her boyfriend. I’ve already called his mother. Jake’s been home all night. She never once saw Sarah.”

“Are there any other friends or family members in the area? Somewhere she would go?”

“Not that I know of. I mean. Well. There was this one place.”

“Anything could be of help, no matter how trivial it seems.”

“She liked to go downtown. Spent a lot of time at that ice cream shop off of Sterling. There’s that shopping center there, with the big fountain.”

That wasn’t all that was in that shopping center, but Wilfrey didn’t have the heart to tell the lady the truth.

“What was she wearing last night?”

“Well. Pajamas. I mean, it was bed time. We all watched some tv and then she went upstairs to bed. And now this morning she’s not there.”

“Did she leave a note or anything?”

“No, she would have at least called us or sent her father a text.”

“May I see her room? There could be something there that would help me find her.”

“Of course, detective.”

She led him downstairs to the basement. Sarah’s room was far enough away that she could have snuck out and her parents would never know. The door leading out to the backyard all but confirmed it. Sarah wasn’t as sweet and innocent as her mother thought. Wilfrey figured she’d been running away ever since mommy dearest moved her downstairs. But, he couldn’t tell her mother that.

No more than he could tell her that the girl was dead and on a slab downtown. He’d need to give it some time, and hopefully the media wouldn’t fuck that one up.

The room was dark. Black curtains hung from sliding glass windows. The white crosses inlaid into them stood in stark contrast to the symbols painted on the plywood that sat in the center of the room. Six burnt out candles lined the circle. A strange, almost cursive “L” stood in the center of it, concentric circles traced out in a triangular symbol stretching beyond the lettering.

“What’s this?” Wilfrey had to ask, afraid of the answer.

“Oh. Sarah was an artist. She told me it was her rendition of Mike the Mouse.”

Wilfrey blinked, shutting his eyes tight from the stupidity of the woman before him. He felt a sudden headache burn across his forehead. Mike the Mouse? Really? And this lady bought it. He thought about selling her his flat. If she was naive enough to believe this was a harmless kid’s drawing, then she was dumb enough to buy just about anything. He wasn’t sure of the symbolism himself, but after the ritualistic appearance of last night’s scene and Genoa, Wilfrey was all but sure he could guess the reference.

“You said your dog is missing too?”

“Yes. A black lab. We haven’t even bothered to go out looking for him yet, Sarah is more important. You’ll call if you find her right?”

“The dog or your daughter?”

“Well. Both would be nice.”

“She has her shots right?”

Mrs. Jones nodded.

“Great. And a tag?”

“Of course We would never let our dog run wild in the streets.”

“I’ll check the coffee shop off Sterling. Maybe her friends have seen her. Don’t lose sleep over it. I’m sure she’ll turn up soon.”

“Is there anything else I could do to help?”

“Actually. Yes.” Wilfrey gave his best bashful look, “do you mind if I use your restroom?”

“Of course. Sarah had her own bathroom. It’s down the hall and to the left.”

“Thank you. I’ll show myself out as soon as I’m done.” Wilfrey handed her a business card with a case number and his cellphone on it. “We’ll be in touch.”

When the old lady climbed the stairs, Wilfrey snapped a picture of the strange wood. And then used the bathroom.

A quick check of the medicine cabinet made things all the more clear. He pocketed the vial and hurried out the door.

He knew where he needed to go.

Third period was her least favorite. Samantha Marlowe slammed the locker door on her egg baby and turned to find Robert behind her.

“Jesus! Parker - the fuck are you trying to do?” James Wilson leaned lazily against the red steel of the locker wall. “You know she scares easy.”

“Do not.” She shrugged her backpack on and sighed, “I’m so sick of this class.”

“Mr. Godfrey’s?” Parker sniffed at her hair, she cringed. “Skip it.”

“I can’t do that. Mom’s gonna kill me as is.”

“Who’s your daddy?” Robert quirked an eyebrow and laughed in a vain attempt to cut through her defenses.

It didn’t work. “Immaculate conception. Get a life.”

“Shouldn’t you be bringing your Jesus Baby to class?”

“It’s nap time. Grandma’s watching her.” The hallways were starting to thin, she glanced uneasily at the watch on her wrist. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah. With us. Come on, Sam. You’ve got to see this place.”

“I’m not skipping school to go hang out at make out bluff with you two.” Samantha stepped across the cookie and cream tile, carefully avoiding the cracks.

“How about just one?” Wilson smiled. His teeth were the perfect shade of white. “Please?”

“Text me.” She gave her sweetest tease of a smile.

“Of course.” Parker followed. She hated when he did that. But, they were going to the same class, and any company was better than none at all. School was cold and lonely since she moved here and Parker was one of the most popular boys in school.

“You know,” Robert said when they were all but alone. “You need to relax a little, learn how to have fun. Why rush through life? You don’t want to grow up too fast.”

“I’m already grown.” She squeezed her arms together, hugging the textbook. Around, the bustle of between bells had all but vanished. They stood alone in the awkward buzz of fluorescent lights. The hallway spread out into a narrow “T” with corridors branching to the left and right. They stood against the wall across from Godfrey’s class.

“You know that you don’t have to hide with me, right?” Parker’s eyes twinkled in the artificial light. “I can make it all go away for you.” He pressed something in her hand. It was cold. “Just put it on and everything will stop. No more late night calls, no more randoms.”

She rubbed the circle around in her hands. She knew what the ring meant, but it was a promise she wasn’t ready to keep. As much as the attention sucked, it was nice.

“I can think of about two dozen guys that want to get in your pants right now. That’s a lot of ass to kick. But they won’t mess with you if you tell ‘em you’re my girl. Think about it.”

“The attention’s nice.”

“Not as nice as mine. Give me a shot, I’ll give you the world.”

“No. For the last time, no times infinity.” She pressed the ring back into his hand, “I can’t.”

“Fine.” Robert sighed.

She knew he wasn’t going to go down that easy. He had to be hiding something. Seconds turned to minutes and spread out into the maggot crawl of uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. For the third time today, she felt sick.

“Just answer me one question.” He bit his lip while two students passed by.

“You hear about Rebecca?” A letterman was asking a second jock, they muscled their way past a kid who wouldn’t make room. His body smacked against the thin metal with a simple thud.

“Heard some nasty dog bit her face off or something. She’s supposed to be in the hospital.”

“That sounds like a good thing.” She listened to the two jocks’ laughter as it faded down the hall.

When the hallway was theirs again, she answered. “I’m not going to Cotillion with you. Can it. Don’t bother asking, don’t waste your breath. We’re friends, Robert. That’s it. And that’s all we’ll ever be. What don’t you get?”

“What’s he got that I don’t have?”

She fought the urge to answer as the buzzer sounded; she pushed the door open, rushing in to find her seat in the front of class before Mr. Godfrey noticed. She snuck by when the teacher had his back turned. She crept on cat’s paws in front of his desk, hoping that he didn’t stop defacing the board with his terrible handwriting. White chalk squeaked against the slate with every press of his hand. The class was full, and she had been thankful for the chance to get away from Parker for an hour. He was really starting to give her the creeps.

It hadn’t been that way always though, she liked the guy fair enough until she met James. There was just something about him that reminded her of home. Not the home she had now, but the one she left behind in Ohio. Her glasses fell over her nose as she bent down and found her notebook inside the book bag. When she looked up, the kid next to her was gone and Parker sat there smiling.

“Look, okay. I know I don’t come off as the greatest guy in the world. I mean look at me. I’m pretty much the world’s biggest fuck up. I don’t have your pedigree. I’m a mutt. I get it. You’re so-o much better than me. I’m sorry.”

She ignored him and focused in on Mr. Godfrey’s droning, monotonous voice. “Now class, please open your textbooks to page 153. Today we’re going to talk about the socio-economic classes of Europe and some of their cultures and practices. When you finish today’s lecture, you should have a better understanding of the rituals and rites as well as the symbolism of today’s date.”

“Coke or Pepsi?” Robert whispered.

“Sprite.”

“Can anybody tell me what Sunday is?”

“Halloween.” She raised her hand and spoke out of turn. If today was going to be this easy, then she was damned sure going to do her best to get an “A”. If nothing else, she’d be able to shut Parker up.

“Very good. Halloween, also Hallow’s Eve, and All Saint’s Eve.”

“What’s he got that I don’t have?”

“Humanity.” She hoped her retort stung. It wasn’t so much his personality, or lack thereof, it was more in the way he dressed - from the baggy clothes to his greasy hair. Hoodies weren’t hot. “I just don’t see what the big deal is. You’re nothing special, but yet you walk around like you own this school. Would it kill you to be a little humble?”

“I do own this school.”

“See. That’s the thing, Robert.” She turned to look at him for the first time since class began.

“The traditions of Halloween can be traced back to…” Mr. Godfrey was droning on, but she couldn’t listen.

“I’ve known you for what? Three - four months at the most? Do the math. That’s like twelve weeks. And all you’ve been trying to do for eleven of them is grab my tits and fuck my brains out.”

“Well.” Robert paused, scratching the billy-goat beard on his chin, “In my defense, your tits are pretty awesome. And you’ve got the kind of brains a zombie would break a door down for.”

That made her blush, the redness bled down into her cheeks, burning her dimples and turning her frown into a half-cocked smile.

“…Believed that on All Hallow’s Eve the dead and the living walked the same paths, and for one night of the year, life and death were all but synonymous. Some cultures believed that supernatural beings walked the earth and…”

“I’m just saying, any guy in this school would be lucky to date you. Shit, I feel damn lucky that you even talk to me.”

“Only because you’ve got something I like.”

“My body? My charming smile?”

She cast him a sidelong glance that almost read like a warning against speaking any more.

“I do make parties more fun.” Parker crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair.

Her phone vibrated against the wood of the desk. She reached down to grab it, silencing the ringer before Mr. Godfrey got mad.

“Come outside.” It was a text from an unknown number.

She looked around the room, everyone was too busy falling asleep to be playing around on their phones. She raised her hand and waited for Godfrey to stop rambling long enough to notice her. When he nodded at her signal, she stood up and pocketed her phone, brushing the wrinkles out of her blouse as she stepped through the door, letting it fall silently shut.

“Has anyone seen Miss Jones today?” Godfrey moved to sit down finally, he opened his book and began marking off attendance. She didn’t hear the answer, and though she was wondering where Sarah was too, she had kept her thoughts to herself. Sarah Jones wasn’t the type of girl to miss three classes in a row.

And Samantha Marlowe wasn’t the type of girl to get strange texts in the middle of class.

As she exited the classroom and took a left down the hall, both of her questions were answered.

A balding man in a rumpled uniform was walking the hallway with the principal, and from their gestures, it didn’t look good.

But nothing looked as bad as James Wilson kissing Susie Geats.

First stop: The 49th Street Diner. Wilfrey had his priorities in order. It wasn’t half past seven, and the ice cream shop wasn’t open. It didn’t open until the sun went down. That was the thing about ice cream shops, sometimes the product melts before the buyer. He fingered the vial inside of his pocket, feeling the cool metal of the stopper as he spun it around in slow circles.

He wasn’t quite sure how the cookie crumbled, and the desert melted…but he was sure that he’d find out before the end of the day. He didn’t think the girl was hanging out at the local shop, after the strange artwork in her bedroom, he figured she was visiting a different kind of shop. And if the vials in the medicine cabinet were any indication, she was a regular customer of a local street pharmacy near the fountain. So much work to do. So little time.

The next 48 hours were critical, he needed to visit the school and meet with her teachers. But, he needed something in his stomach first.

It hadn’t been a good couple of weeks, what with the bank calling constantly, the lights turning off, and he didn’t even want to think about the rotten milk in the fridge. But call-outs meant overtime. And for the first time in a long time, Wilfrey afforded himself a chance to take care of himself.

Two pancakes arrived on a steaming plate, blueberry compote dripped down the golden fluff to pool in a purple mess underneath. He gave it a quick sniff and his gut leapt at the sweet smell of fresh crushed fruit. The bacon was crisp, just the way he liked it. Wilfrey frowned at the poor selection of jam, deciding instead to fill his nooks and crannies with butter and a pinch of salt. The eggs were cheesy and scrambled, the cholesterol was delicious.

Wilfrey brought the teacup to his lips and inhaled the steam, tasting the lemons on the gentle breeze from a nearby open window. He couldn’t help but admire the almost kitschy feel of his brother’s restaurant. Though the diner was mostly deserted, a few of the regular old timers had meandered in for their early bird breakfast and the dining room was filled with the pleasant din of conversation. Across the way, a fat weatherman was smiling into the camera as he reported on the strange temperatures that the sunlight had brought. He already could feel the warmth of a summer day, except it was way too early and way too late at the same time. He glanced up, his eyes catching the green of an oxidized pot.

It had been in the family for years. The sight of it made him smile as he surveyed the dents and dings of a crock pot with character. Across from the cookware sat a wooden bear in a wooden chair. It lounged on the ledge above a near perfect rendering of the western mountains. The teacup’s handle started to burn his hand and he set the mug down, leaving it to cool.

Genoa flashed back across his mind. Blood everywhere. Gunshots. The constant, percussive sound of terror emptying its clip. He shook his head to ward off the encroaching headache as the knife flashed behind his eyes, severing him from reality. For a brief moment, he was back. The monsters charged, axe in hand; he fired. The ox-headed man fell, two smoking holes in his chest.

Someone tapped him on his shoulder. Wilfrey almost broke her hand. She shrieked at the iron grip of a man possessed and he returned to reality. The waitress was rubbing her hand with sadness. “Flashback again?”

Her voice was like honey. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. Have you even talked to Doc?”

A plate broke somewhere in the back. A man was cursing in Spanish. Wilfrey laughed.

“Don’t ignore me.”

“Sorry, Janice. You’ve been great. Really.”

“But?” Her hands were on her hips. She held the black folio pressed close against her body.

“I don’t need my head shrunk. I’m fine.”

“Fine enough to break my damn hand?” Janice’s voice rose on the question mark. Her southern drawl was obvious.

It was too damn cute.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself. Sooner or later, the demons break loose. And then you’ve got Devil’s Night all over again.”

“Only this time it’s worse.” Wilfrey grumbled, wishing he could keep his damn mouth shut. But company was nice. He didn’t get that very often.

The radio crackled. “Delta Three?” It was Jim, still at work. He wished he had her tenacity. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so broke, maybe he could actually afford his breakfast. Even at fifty percent off. Still, he was all but thankful for the break. It’s when you’re trapped in memories that the reality becomes all the more real.

Wilfrey picked his teacup up and blew on it again; he leaned back, finishing his tea before she called for the third time. After that, he knew the annoyance would come. He hated that ring. But not because of the obnoxious, almost theremin sound. It was the connotation of the ring. Beeps meant trouble. Theremins meant someone wasn’t answering.

“Boss told me not to charge you this time. Says you’re all fucked up enough as is and don’t need to stress over money. You can’t keep eating from a can every night. Why won’t you let us help you?”

“Spam is delicious. And nutritious.”

“Not when it’s older than my daughter. Come on, Mike. Bobby said he hasn’t seen you in months. When you going to come by again?”

“When I’m ready.”

“We’ll all be dead and buried before that happens.”

“Probably.”

She smacked him. Hard.

Wilfrey rubbed the sting away, “I’ll try and get out there this weekend. Give my regards to mom and dad.”

“Tell them yourself you lazy fuck.”

“Delta Three?” Jim didn’t seem too happy. “All units stand by for a priority welfare check.”

Wilfrey answered the radio before the noise came.

“You okay out there, Delta Three?”

“Never better, Lyton.”

“I guess this means I gotta let you go, huh?” Janice sighed. “Don’t be a stranger. Please. We’re supposed to be family. Remember that.”

It was another thing on his growing to-do list. He didn’t have the patience for family. Or the time anymore. Not today. Not after everything.

“Delta Three, we need you at four fifteen number twelve street. Medics and road patrol are requesting a callout.”

“What’s the nature?”

“Deceased male. Suspicious circumstances.”

“Not again.” Wilfrey threw the five down and stood on shaky knees. He took a deep breath and pushed the transmit button. “Show me responding.”

“Understood. Delta Three, I show you en-route at zero seven thirty.”

Never a dull moment.

Wilfrey hated going east. There was way too much money on that edge of the city. When names become numbers, people get bossy. He wished the laptop in his car actually worked. It would be nice to know what was going on out there. Now he had to find out when he got there.

And he hated surprises. Wilfrey drove the company Chevrolet down through suburban sprawl, passed old concrete buildings left filthy and un-repaired, past broken windows boarded up. He passed two local supermarkets and an empty community whose gate was rusted and half falling off its hinges. A lone Toyota petered out of the broken gate, its exhaust belching black smoke upwards toward an increasingly gray sky.

He stopped for the red light to let the aging Toyota by, the driver waved at him in thanks. He saw nothing but empty expanse of roadway before him. the foothills rose like jagged teeth to the west. There was nothing on the radio.

There was never anything on the radio.

Bare trees dotted the medians, stabbing through un-mowed, brown grass. Before him, the city's skyline rose beneath the hill, his aging Chevrolet trudged down the narrow hill as he descended into the valley below. That crane needed to go. The skeletal guts of an incoming condo complex took prominence in the center of the skyline, squat buildings flanked it on three sides. The gaudy, pink dome in the center of town reminded him of a flamingo. Wilfrey laughed, picturing city hall more like a crane with its head buried in the sand.

The overpasses of the interstate and the two thoroughfares out of this hellhole encircled the city on its outer perimeter. Rush hour had come and passed and the best of the traffic was left far, far behind him. He passed through the concrete cavern of monoliths that rose high into the sky, just inches from the one way roads. Wilfrey hated downtown.

It wasn't the congestion, it wasn't the traffic, or the thousands of people crammed into one tiny district. Well. It was sort of that. Mostly, it was just the people. He was never much of a people person, but now that he was alone, he was even less of one.

He followed the road's twists and curves around Ochee Mountain Road and turned left onto Perimeter. Skyscrapers gave way to open fields and gentle hills. Farm country spread out at every direction, cows stood in pastures munching on grass and languishing in the autumn sun. Two bicyclists passed him by, smiling and waving like he was a friendly neighbor out for a morning drive.

He wasn't a neighbor. He was a working man. And though he secretly wished for their riches, he hated the thought of it and the problems that follow it. Rich people were alcoholics.

He was a drunk.

Old yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze, tied off against the trunk of a large maple like a soldier’s knot.

And that was it. The fraying lines of the yellow tape exploded like fireworks against a midnight sky. He was back at Genoa Middle School. Black shapes played against his periphery like fluttering butterflies carrying dread on their colorful wings. All around was the chaos of screaming children as the angry red paint of their arterial blood colored the walls in strange shapes.

Cloaked figures crowded over a crumpled form on the ground below. Wilfrey didn’t think. He called out, got one word in, turned and fired.

The explosion rocked him back into reality, he hadn’t noticed the uniformed officer standing in front of him.

“You okay sir?”

Wilfrey shook his head and checked the name tag. “It’s, just. Nothing. Old ghosts. What we got here?”

The young man started, confused. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“They never do.” Wilfrey cleared the cobwebs in his head, focusing on the patch above the rookie’s heart. Must have been new uniforms ready for winter. The patch of Lyton’s Finest was front and center, and the kid wore it proud. He was probably the only guy on the job with a starched and pressed sweater. At least the patches were the same: Ugly dragon, ugly sunbeam. It was the perfect patch for a city of snakes.

“You didn’t check your computer?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Oh. It’s on the third floor.” The officer dropped his head low, as if finding it all but impossible to believe that there were cops working without computers.

Wilfrey only used them when he had to. And right now, he didn’t need to. He let the officer simmer in the uncomfortable silence as he surveyed the brownstone in front of him. It was nothing special, just a three story apartment building. He figured there’d be a decent view of the mountains from one of the windows out west. Old white paint circled the filagree of what couldn’t even pass as art today. He almost laughed at the white lion roaring above the brass laid doorway. The gargoyles above made him uneasy though.

They were sitting there, watching him.

It was an almost tiny building, like a child’s toy maybe. It reminded him of the old dollhouses his sisters used to play with. Across the street, an old lady in a pink coat was shivering against the unnatural cold. The pink mittens didn’t seem to be working. Her little dog wouldn’t shut up.

Wilfrey turned around before she could ask him a question. He was too late. “Excuse me, officer.” She was waving vigorously now, Wilfrey pretended it was to keep her fingers from freezing off.

“Hey kid, she’s looking at you.” He grumbled, pushing past the officer, leaving him, the lady, and their little dog too. The door opened silently as he passed through. It sat heavy on its axis, he almost strained to push at it.

Mediocrity continued inside. A granite slab sat on cherry wood, all prettied up to look like a desk. Brass mailboxes sat behind it along with a doorman who was smiling and pretending to be important. Red carpet lined walnut colored floors. The carpet stretched out, its golden threads separating the red from the wood as it led its way down the hall to an old elevator. There was an archway above the stairs off to his right, carpetless with marble tile stretching up to the floors above.

Okay. Maybe the place wasn’t too bad.

It was more than his government check.

Such was the life of the rich.

He pushed the button for the elevator, they didn’t pay him to take the stairs. That was what firemen were for.

The metal door opened to reveal a gilded corridor with ancient buttons. Brilliant calligraphy decorated the entrance and filled in for the roman numerals. He pushed the button for the third floor and the door slid silently shut.

Soft music filled his ears with the contemporary instrumentation of some radio hit he didn’t really care for.

As the door slid open, he caught two more uniforms standing guard off to his left. The hallway twisted out into a t-intersection with only two double doors. Guess that meant his stiff was left. Large mahogany doors stood slightly ajar, flanked by two grim faced uniformed officers.

“You sure you wanna go in there, Detective?” The one on the right said.

“No. I’m never sure I want to go anywhere that’s not my home or my bed.”

“Good answer.” Wilfrey actually recognized the one on the right. It was a welcome relief.

“How the hell are you, anyway, Jeff? Long time no see.”

“Living the dream. Just living the dream.”

“Sure it ain’t a nightmare?”

“Somedays I wonder.”

With that, Wilfrey nodded curtly and pushed the doors open. If the hallway had been posh, the main apartment was over-the-top with gaudy furnishings that wouldn’t look out of place in a 1920’s noir film. Its door opened out into a lavish living room with plush carpet of the lightest blue and a floor to ceiling window that all but stretched the length of the wall. Its view revealed the gently rolling hills of the eastern half of the city and the slight crystal of the Pax River.

Blue. Blue. From the paint on the walls, to the rugs on the floor. Little boy blue sure liked his color.

And that’s what color he was when Wilfrey found him in the bedroom, propped up and bloated on a chaise lounge. The stench was overwhelming. His bowels had released and the guy was left to rot for a day or three.

Just another day in paradise.

Dirty sunlight filtered in through the cracked blinds. Wilfrey strode over to the window and forced it open. No way he was going to suffer any longer. Rotting meat is a foul smell of the highest olfactory offenses. So rank was it, that it tipped the charts at vomit…squared.

And if there was one thing a drunk hated more than vomit, it was vomit squared.

Wilfrey wasn’t going to go digging. Death was obvious enough. He’d let the coroner figure out all the gritty specifics. It took a man at a far, far higher pay grade than his to screw around with that shit. He saw all he needed to see.

Little boy blue’s fingers were curled in a death grip, the body lay supine on the chair, one stone cold hand half hanging off the side. Red liquid dried long ago was splashed onto the wood floor beneath. It wasn’t blood. It wasn’t guts.

Wilfrey had all but become accustomed to the strange, thick red color of the dried liquid. And if he needed any more proof, the same little clear vial with the same little symbol was laying underneath, where it had rolled out from the man’s dead hand. The needle stood straight up, still in the opposite arm; that more than answered whatever questions anyone could have had.

There was no need for a detective. Wilfrey wished this one was left to the road.

“Had enough rotten meat for one day?” Jeff said as he stepped into the room, cupping his mouth and nose with his hand.

“Ya know, I kind of wish I didn’t eat today.”

“Come on, man. It’s delicious.”

“Sure. Sure it is.”

“You still haven’t seen the best part.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“You think I’d call a dick for a junkie dropping dead in his penthouse?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Well, I wouldn’t bug ya for that. That much is damn sure. Any guess who he is?”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Except when they’re maggot soup.”

“He ain’t exactly maggot soup yet.” Wilfrey choked. It wasn’t maggot soup yet, but it was damn close.

“He’s a good friend of ours.” Jeff grinned, “it’s good news for us, really.”

“Dead bodies aren’t ever good news for anybody.”

“Except when we need the job security.”

“Or when they come back to life.” Wilfrey’s laugh was uneasy.

“Father Tyme.”

“The bastard that turned Genoa Middle into a devil’s playground?”

“Looks like he wasn’t God’s chosen after all.”

“Guess that is good news.” Wilfrey’s grim face remained stoic. “Figures he’s a tweaker. Don’t believe kids even bought into that shit.”

“Everyone wants to be a super hero. To live forever.” Jeff’s voice was uneven. “You never dreamed of something like that?”

Wilfrey kept his mouth shut, instead he focused on the room. Following the lines of the ceiling down to a gothic canopy style bed where brass and ironworks decorated the awkward, unmade lumps of sheets. He shuddered, remembering the interviews after the State cleared him. The chief refused to put him on the case, but Wilfrey took it personal.

Everything had been personal ever since. He had friends there. And family. Frustration lined his face with their crow’s feet. It was another failure of the infinitely spinning wheels of “justice”.

It made him sick.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet. C’mere.” Jeff said from across the room, stepping through the bathroom and into a walk-in closet nearby.

“Do you really want to see where that piece of shit took a shit?”

“Come on Mike, everyone’s gotta go. Even things that shit sulphur and stone.”

Wilfrey followed begrudgingly. He had enough of this place. Though there was some sick satisfaction in seeing Father Tyme dead and rotting, needle in his arm. He fought the almost unhealthy urge to piss on the corpse.

“Guy didn’t just fuck with kids. He liked animals too.”

Wilfrey had enough. He didn’t need to see dogs with batwings or fish headed cats. But there they were, clear as the golden sunlight filtering in through the skylights above. A whole closet full of things that should not be. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the kids suffered at this madman’s hand. He had to fuck with the animals too.

Taxidermy wasn’t putting puzzle pieces back together into whatever weird shit you wanted to please whatever urge you had at that particular moment. No, his mom had a taxidermy dog once. Snuggles, she called him. He almost cried the day the dog died again, it didn’t belong in that garbage dumpster. Just as much as wings didn’t belong on dogs, or little bushy squirrel tails on little baby rabbits. A coal eyed snake, banded in scales of blue indigo and almost too bright violet stared at him. It was coiled around the torso of a big, black mastiff. Red eyes stared unblinking through his soul.

Wilfrey fought down the urge to piss on the dead man’s corpse again. He humored the dangerous thoughts of of shoving the coal eyed snake so far up the dead man’s ass that it poked through his throat.

And sometimes Wilfrey wondered why he was so screwed up. He needed a drink, bad. When he thought he saw the mastiff wink, that was when he had enough.

Let the fucking coroner deal with that shit.

He was done. There was a bar down the road.

The white one came first. It hung low in the autumn sky, looming over the lego block skyline of empty buildings. Condos stretched across the horizon, all but obscuring the mountains in front of him. Wilfrey stood in the courtyard of District I, the main precinct of the department. It sat perfectly nestled between the saccharine poison of downtown, city hall and the parks and hills to the west.

District I was the geographic center of the city, which sat in the middle of the county. In other words, it was the solid waste treatment facility of a county full of shit. And the positioning of the police station put it in prime real estate for pissing in the wind and filling people’s heads with gumdrop dreams and lurid fantasies of a place that wasn’t broke.

He sighed and touched the granite wall in the center of the courtyard, feeling the etchings on the cold stone. His mind flashed back to Genoa and he fought the urge to cry. Pale white light filtered down through the boughs of the great oak tree, and for a moment he felt normal.

Like the past two weeks were nothing more than a twisted fantasy, a nightmare he could wake up from any time he wanted.

And then the bloody nose came next, Mars was closer than ever. The sheer size of it put the whole world into perspective. The planet had shown up last week in some weird astronomical phenomenon that set the crackpots loose. Since then, it was full moon times twenty. The city had been running on overtime, vacations were cancelled, and road units were riding two in a car. It had gotten so bad over the weekend, that the two SWAT units had been summoned and were now policing the streets in their armored BearCats. Field force was assembled and had taken up perimeter positions all around the downtown entertainment district.

Yet the yuppies couldn’t give two shits less. The stoners were having a field day, the rich were pissing away money like it was going out of style. And Wilfrey hadn’t seen a cent from his paycheck in over two years.

Divorce, like life, works in funny ways.

It should never have come to that, but he didn’t have much choice. Half the time he was lucky to still wake up every damn day.

He tapped a yellowed fingernail against the name of his training officer and wondered what the old firebird would say to this.

“Well piss on Mars and piss on them. Shit’s still shit, and that ain’t gonna change!” Wilfrey grinned a jack-o-lantern smile, his voice picking up the old military cadence and southern drawl. “AIn’t no different now than it was two weeks ago, issit?”

Like a bad hallucination come straight out of fiction, ol’Firebird was there standing next to him. An ethereal form flickering between reality and illusion. “Listen to me son.” The ghost was speaking to him.

Wilfrey blinked at the figure and wondered if he was going through withdrawal again. How long had it been? Five? Six hours?

“You’ve got a job to do. I know this don’t seem right, but it is. You made me proud at Genoa. I couldn’t have trained a better recruit. No matter how crazy this shit’s getting, it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

“It’s just not cool, Firebird.” Wilfrey didn’t know what else to say. He felt silly talking to ghosts, but he figured maybe someone would listen, it would be the dead.

“Fuck her. “She’s gone and that’s it. Just wasn’t the one. You gotta get off your sorry ass and do something for me, kay? Fucking do your job.”

“I’m working on it.”

“How? By sitting here and talking to yourself?”

“No. Well. Yea.”

“Listen, I can’t do much from out here, but watch and wait. Somebody needs your help. You gotta do it. Don’t let ego get in the way, don’t worry about jurisdictional boundaries or any of that other bullshit. Just do what’s right. Do what the fuck I taught you to do.”

“Sir.”

“There’s two calls holding. Check ‘em out. Give road a break. They’ve got enough shit to worry about keeping the city out of civil unrest. This ain’t no Christmas Carol shit. You ain’t seen nothing. Trust your eyes. Trust your gut.”

Blue light shimmered on his periphery, almost like a door cracking open. Light spilled out in waves. Waves became blobs and coalesced into strange shapes that escaped the night.

“Oh shit.” Firebird said as the wave washed over him. Wilfrey reached out, desperately trying to hold on to the only anchor of his past. But the shape was gone before he could move. As Firebird faded like leaves blowing in the whispers of wind, Wilfrey watched the rest of the shapes vanish in boreal light, his mouth hung open and his arms flailed limply at the dying breeze.

Red and blue lights twinkled in the autumn air as the wail of a siren pierced the otherwise still and silent night. Three blue and whites raced down the street, their engines howling like uncaged beasts as they tore east and to the north. All around came the piercing shouts of gunfire as chaos erupted in the streets.

Wilfrey did the only smart thing he could think of.

He ran inside, when he knew damn well he should be running outside. He was a trained warrior, he wasn’t supposed to run from the chaos and disorder. But, the funny thing about that was they never gave him his job back.

It was some weird, unwritten policy. WIlfrey was acting outside the scope of his authority, though the State had cleared him from Genoa, the city was still leery about the way he did business. Something about an altered mental state or some nonsense. It didn’t matter much. He didn’t think Firebird had any idea either. He couldn’t figure out why they even wasted their time with him. What’s the point in calling out a detective that isn’t even supposed to be a detective?

But, he wasn’t always a detective. Back before Genoa, he had been working in a specialized unit of patrol, focusing on the mentally unstable and the weirdest of the weird.

So, he guessed, it only made sense that they were making him pick up the pieces of shattered lives upstairs in the bureau. After all, what was more mentally unstable than someone ripping out the heart of a young girl? Or smearing the walls of a middle school with dark blood as you spelled out your messages in tongues and impossible demands.

Such was life.

Such a shame.

He stepped through the narrow arch of the courtyard and into the lobby of the precinct, the glass doors opened with a subtle whoosh and the air became stiflingly hot. Strange blue streaks permeated his vision as they danced from room to room, piercing through solid wood doors and appearing both above and below.

The moon was really fucking things up.

He fished for his access card between the folds and pockets of his coat and swiped it across the black key reader. He heard the Atari beep and the magnetic lock released, he pushed the door open and passed through the sanitary hallways and turned the corner. This place reminded him of a nursing home. The chemical smells of bleach barely covered up the ancient odors of dust and mold. He pushed the button for the elevator, too lazy to take the stairs. It rose from the basement with the groans of ancient machinery. He could have walked the length of the hallway and scaled all three stories twice before the door opened and the car appeared.

Wilfrey’s office was on the third floor, he took a left and walked down to the dead end. Inside the office was still in the disarray he left it in. He grumbled, not wanting to straighten up. He pushed the aging red blinds open and watched the dust motes float in the gray light streaming through the slats. More dust streaked across the floor like tiny tumbleweeds. He stole a glance toward the yellow leaves of his barely hanging on plant.

“Sorry, Seymour. I’ll feed you soon.” He said to the pot. After the past few days, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the old spider plant turned and spat venom on his shoes. Or tried to eat his feet. The creeping leaves all but obscured the rear corner of his office. Wilfrey sat down and booted up his old PacBell, listening to the protested clicking of an ancient hard drive spinning up. A blinking white cursor greeted him as an hourglass spun in time with the boot sequence.

In the time it took the computer to finish booting, he managed to find something to eat among the moldy science project of weeks old lunch. He sniffed the jar, figuring it would take an apocalypse to kill his peanut butter. The bread was a different story. He humored the thought of scraping mold spores off his month old bread. Common sense prevailed and he dug a packet of crackers out from his drawer.

His computer dispatch screen showed almost 120 officers dealing with the chaos unfolding around the city. The notes read like a horror novel. Devil’s Night was in full effect. Thirteen shootings in thirteen minutes. At that rate, the city would need the National Guard to help clean the streets. He sighed, opening his locked drawer and checking the cylinder of his revolver. Patrol had shifted away from revolvers toward more powerful, faster weapons.

Wilfrey liked his revolver. It reminded him of all the old detective stories he read growing up.

But Wilfrey wasn’t a fool. Six rounds wouldn’t get you very far in a firefight. And he wasn’t fast enough to speed load another six. So, he slung the revolver into his shoulder holster and grabbed the semiautomatic he bought before the government put a stop on the second amendment. As gunfire erupted around the police station, he couldn’t help but laugh at the great job they did.

There were two calls holding. A burglary and a vandalism complaint. He felt bad for the callers, but he knew there were other things going on in the city that required a more priority level response. He reviewed the notes that dispatch had typed in and called upstairs to make sure he was reading them right.

“Lyton Police, Operator Six.” He knew the voice on the other end.

“Jesus, Lori. You’re still there?” He kept her pet name off of his lips. She sounded stressed enough as it was.

“Going on eighteen hours, Mike. Boss said it’ll be another six before they’ll even consider letting us go home. We’re in trouble out there.”

“Any luck with the bosses?”

“We already called the chief. She didn’t really seem to give a damn. So we woke the mayor up. He wasn’t too happy about a three am phone call, but it is what it is. He promised to call the governor, but that was almost twelve hours ago. We haven’t heard back. Looks like we’re on our own until this shit storm blows over.”

“Figures.”

“Boss said she’s going to have our asses if we can’t clear the board either. Makes a whole hell of a lot of sense, considering we’ve got almost the whole force cleaning up a riot. So, it’s like excuse me if I let a vandalism complaint hold for an hour or two. I think reclaiming the city’s streets are more important than some nonsense.”

“Yeah. Lori, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. There’s something weird about that call.”

“You sure? Seems like just bored teenagers again.”

“No. Bored teenagers smear feces or write dirty words with red paint. The notes say the caller doesn’t seem to think it’s paint. And there’s no words. Just weird pictures?”

“That’s what it said. I didn’t take the call. Want me to get with the call taker for clarification?”

“No. Don’t worry about it. I think it’s got something to do with my cluster from the graveyard.”

“You’re going to handle?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“That’s going to be piss somebody off.”

“When did I start caring about what the brass thinks? What are they going to do? Fire me?”

“Probably.”

“They called me out to handle the homicide, that’s what I’m doing.”

“This isn’t a homicide. It’s a road call.”

“It’s connected. I know it.”

“You sure you want to do this, Mike?”

“Positive.”

She laughed into the phone. Wilfrey felt himself smile, the heat of his grin blooming across his cheeks.

“So, since you’re out there clearing calls - I’ve got a burglary for you too.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“I don’t know, Mike. It may be connected.”

“Go to hell, Jim.” He snuck the nickname in.

She didn’t like it. “No. I think I’ll stay up here where it’s warm and safe. Seriously, take that auto burglary for me. There’s something weird about that one too.”

“Burglaries happen all the time, all over the city.”

“Not this one. It’s like three blocks from the cemetery. It’s kind of in a weird diamond if you put the cemetery at the peak and then throw in your burglary, barking dogs, and the vandalism at the far southern end of it.”

Wilfrey pulled a crumpled map out of his desk, he unfurled it and traced the locations with the eraser point of a pencil. They lined up almost perfectly. It was odd.

“The only thing taken was a pair of red and white marbles? Really?”

“No forced entry. Victim swears he locked his car and left it in the garage. Only call for service last night was a barking dog complaint just down the road. One of Bunchyard’s boys killed the dog when it lunged.”

There was no doubting it was weird.

“Fine. I’m only doing it for you.”

“Thanks. Hey, if you get jammed up on this, it wasn’t my fault.”

“Sure it wasn’t, Jim. I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll check in when I’m on scene.”

No sooner did he hang up that his phone rang again.

“Is this Mister Donovan?” The voice on the other end was full of dust. It was the voice of an old woman lost and alone.

He started to say he had the wrong number, but something pulled at the back of his mind and he forced the smile into his vice. “Yes. How can I help you?”

“I’m scared.” Something fell in the background. It sounded like metal striking stone. “You were so nice to me the other day, I didn’t know what else to do.”

The donut shop. He cursed, the snooty bitch didn’t even want to humor his lies. He’d need a new lead.

“There’s demons in my house.” Her words bordered on eccentric. He bit back a laugh.

“They want me to do things. Terrible things. Can you talk to them for me?”

“Have you called the police?” Wilfrey considered the thought of checking her in to a padded room somewhere.

“I have something they want me to give you.” Her voice was cold.

Wilfrey shivered. Something wasn’t right.

“Please, Mr. Donovan. They won’t leave me alone.” Her voice changed, the dust disappeared and a black wave washed over the room. Suddenly the old lady wasn’t there anymore. Something was speaking through her with a voice hollow and decayed. “Mr. Wilfrey. Find me the stones. If you want the woman to live, you will do this for me. Three-thirty two West Elm Street. Two hours.”

It had to be a joke.

The line went dead before he could respond.

Through the symphony of gunfire erupting all around them, the three stood together in a silent pact. Above, the twin moons of Devil’s Night glared down almost disapprovingly at their trespass. Silvery light stretched across the length of Lake Magnolia, an illusory path between the park and the cemetery.

“I don’t like this.” Samantha shivered against the unnatural cold. All around, their breath wisped like tiny ghosts flittering between the trees.

James came up to her, putting his hands on her shoulder. “It’s okay. I don’t like it either.”

She brushed him away. “Don’t touch me.”

“But.”

“I said don’t touch me. And I mean it.”

“Babe?”

“So help me God, if you so much as take another step toward me, I’m going to cut your dick off.”

James Wilson stood dumbfounded. She left him with his mouth hanging open.

The trail beneath her feet was slick with frost. Dead leaves crunched beneath her feet as the stars twinkled merrily above. She was here for Sarah. The boys could go to hell, for all she cared. Wilson was a liar and Parker was a creep. Samantha pulled her coat tighter about her body and shivered in the unnatural cold. It had to be freezing already and it wasn’t even November.

But even if he was a creep, at least he didn’t lie to her.

She hated liars.

Samantha fished for her cellphone, the blue-green light illuminated her face in a sanguine glow. Her fingers worked across the touchscreen keyboard as she sent a text to Sarah. “Where R U?” She hadn’t seen her friend in school today and hoped she was here.

They were all supposed to be here. It was all Sarah’s idea. For the past two weeks, they’d been preparing for this one night. She didn’t place her faith in hokey religions and magic, but the cherubic look on her friend’s face after her first “success” had already sealed the deal. She couldn’t help but smile at the excitement in the girl’s face as she told them all about the birthday presents her grandmother had given her.

It wouldn’t have been unusual, except Sarah’s grandmother had been dead for twenty two years.

So, here she was late on Devil’s Night trying to contact her own dead father. The boys had their own dreams of the seance. It seemed easy enough in the book she looked at the other day. Couple candles, stand around and sing a song or two…wait for the lights to turn on and the dead appear. Samantha cast a wary glance toward the lake, imagining it bubble with the awakening of spirits.

“I think we’re all set.” She heard Robert’s voice from beyond the ridge. She rounded the bend in the trail and found herself in a clearing. The view of the lake was perfect in the rose-hued light. Samantha looked down the ridge toward the beach she spent the other night at with James. It was amazing at how quickly things could change. And it only took a kiss.

“Where’s Sarah?” Samantha dug her phone out again and checked the screen. No new messages.

Robert only shrugged. “Haven’t seen her since she went to the shop with Bobby.”

James Wilson rounded the bend in time with Robert’s words. The night crackled with the agitated energy of teenage hormones.

Around her, the clearing stretched into infinity. Tiny red candles encircled a path laid out by archaic letters Robert had scribbled into the sand. She didn’t understand any of them. But she knew what that diagonal x carved into the ground meant. It looked like a crucifix tossed aside. The top point was angled toward the surface of the lake, where mists had already begun to form. They crept across the ground in a shrouded fog. Three concentric circles of broken and bent branches lined the center of the ring of candles. Runes were carved into the ground at the top, middle, and bottom of the circle. Three runes for three people.

“Aren’t there supposed to be four?”

“For the elements, the directions, the sea and the sun.” Wilson spoke as if channeling rote memory.

“There are to be only three.” Robert’s voice was hollow and inhuman as he stared into the mists.

“James, where’s Sarah?”

He shrugged.

She looked to Robert, his eyes closed and he rocked back and forth.

“Damn it. Stop that!” She threw a rock, it caught him in the chin.

Robert blinked and returned to reality. “The fuck was that all about?”

“Where’s Sarah? I’m not doing this if she’s not.” Samantha turned to walk away.

“Look.” James sighed, coming up to touch her again.

She shot him a look that would shrivel the stiffest dick. James didn’t back down. “Parker threw her out of the group.”

“What? Why? This whole thing was her idea.”

“She’s been hooking up with Bobby for weeks now. He didn’t like it.” Wilson shot Robert a withering look.

“You mean like you and Susie Geats?”

And that was that. The secret was out. The woods grew suddenly cold and silent. The three stood around, sharing an awkward moment.

“I didn’t-“ James started to plead.

Samantha cut him off. “Don’t even start.”

“Look, James.” Robert dropped down off the stone and stepped through the center of the circle. Branches cracked with his weight, the circle broke.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Wilson sighed. “You’re mad at ME for kissing Susie Geats when here you are screwing around with Parker for God knows how long.”

“We’re not -“ Robert opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t lie to me.” Wilson’s voice wavered on frustration. “I know about the dance.”

“There was no dance.” Samantha wiped her eyes, the cold was frosting her tears. “He asked me. I said no.”

Night birds fluttered across the sky on silent wings as the fog crept in, shrouding the midnight sky. She looked up at the sky, it was the one thing that hadn’t done her wrong yet. It was black as the cancer on her heart. Breakups were hard, but she didn’t imagine that she’d be dumped twice in the same day. Robert had disappeared into the shadows. James stood alone halfway down the hill.

She thought about Cotillion and why she even thought of turning him down. Robert was a good guy. He had money and personality. He was so much better than James. Wilson was too boring, too perfect. Samantha fingered a cigarette, pulling it slowly out. She sparked it and inhaled the sweet vapor. It calmed her nerves and gave her a much needed break.

High School was hard.

She couldn’t play these games for two more years. It was already too much work to keep up the school’s drama. She didn’t need her own. She was always even, this stuff shouldn’t bother her. There’d be more boyfriends. There always were more boyfriends.

But Robert and James were her closest friends, she was sick of her mom putting her two cents in.

“Why can’t you keep a boyfriend for more than a week? You should date that Robert boy, he comes from a good pedigree.” She twisted her nose up and coiled her mouth into a tight sneer as she imitated the nasal voice of her mother’s constant nagging.

The smoke went down smooth. The world faded into a blur of relaxed shapes as a bat nested in the eaves of a picnic shelter. She stomped over to it, crumpling onto the wooden bench. Her feet kicked angrily at the dirt, breaking the frost and sending it up in little mushroom clouds of rage.

It began to snow, white flakes fell like tiny scabs scratched off from the moon’s cratered face. She checked her phone, the screen mocked her.

No new messages.

Where the hell was Sarah?

Footsteps sounded in the distance. She hoped for Sarah and found Robert instead.

He smiled his crooked smile and held out a joint. She tossed her cigarette aside and sparked the joint. The air filled with the sweet, herbal aroma of troubles washing away.

“I’m sorry.” He said, and for a moment she forgot that she was mad.

The air grew cold, she shivered and pushed against his body for warmth, resting her head on his shoulder. Robert didn’t stir.

She liked it. Samantha didn’t need him to move, she didn’t need him to comfort or touch him. She just needed him to not be James.

And when he appeared, silhouetted in the light of twin moons, her blood ran cold. James did not look happy.

She caught the faint outline of something in his hand. Gunshots erupted all around as Devil’s Night played out its finale in a grand display.

Sirens sounded in retort.

There was an anger in the air, electricity flicked across the sky, she could feel the charging of a change in attitude.

As James Wilson stomped down the hill, she could barely make out his words on the trailing winds.

“If I can’t have you, no one can.”

Well, this was something he didn’t see every day. Connected or not, Wilfrey made a mental note to give Jim a ration of shit when he got back to his office. Mrs. Mahoney was waiting outside her house on the south side of town. And she was madder than hell.

“Three fucking hours I’ve been waiting for you clowns!”

“I’m sorry, we’ve got a city to save.”

“Bullshit. I saw three of you assholes parked down the road at the donut shop.”

Wilfrey didn’t have the heart to tell her there were six cops there because the place was just robbed and shot to shit. “It’s been one of those nights.”

“Yeah! Look around!”

He did. The front windows and sidewalk were smeared in a thick red paint that he could only speculate the nature of. Brown goo coated the steps leading up to Mrs. Mahoney’s McMansion. Above the door, burnt into the threshold was a strange rune that vaguely resembled a cursive lower-cased letter ‘r’. He couldn’t understand how it was burned so perfectly into the doorframe without singeing even half a millimeter outside of the design.

“You better fix this shit.” Her portly form was heaving with her anger.

“If it bothers you so much, why not clean it the fuck up?”

“That’s not my job.”

“You don’t expect me to do it for ya? Do ya?”

“What the hell else are you going to do?”

“Scratch my ass and write your damn report.”

“A report? How the hell is that going to fix this?”

“I don’t know. Find yourself a friendly neighborhood insurance adjustor.” The crotchety old bitch looked familiar. Wilfrey couldn’t place her face.

“This writing mean anything to you?”

“Yeah. They’re words.” She was holding something back.

“Looks like just a bunch of scribble to me, the local kids are too busy shooting in the streets and robbing stores, like your local donut shop. They’ve been popping rounds at everyone and anyone for the past three hours. We’re working thirteen shootings in thirteen separate parts of the city, they all happened within thirteen minutes of each other. Last night, two kids were carved to death in the cemetery about three miles from here. I’m seeing all sorts of scribble scrabble here like I saw in the graveyard last night. So, if you’ve got something to share, now would be a good time to talk.”

“Why, I never.”

“Would you rather me serve a search warrant on your new age shop downtown? I find it just a little - ironic, Mrs. Mahoney, that the day after I get two ritual murders is the day someone decides that they want to paint all over your front door. This ain’t paint, Mrs. Mahoney.”

“I know.”

“So unless you want me to start digging up dirt around your house, I think you should be a little more cordial.”

The rosy light of the moons above shone down on the browning grass of Mahoney’s otherwise impeccable lawn. Two large magnolia trees spread their leafless canopy across the yard. Underneath the tree is where he found the corpse.

A little piglet with its throat slashed lay unstaring at the sky above. Two buckets and a paintbrush were hidden in the thorny underbrush of her yard plants.

“Mrs. Mahoney?” Wilfrey turned and gave her the nastiest stare he could come up with.

She waddled over to him and gasped.

“So, you weren’t expecting Miss Piggy to be sliced and diced on your front lawn? It don’t look like somebody’s been making bacon.”

Clouds played across the light of moon, casting shadows across the ground below.

“Detective, right?”

“Yes ma’am.” They shook hands over the desiccated corpse. “Detective Michael Wilfrey.”

“We’ve got a big problem.”

She invited him inside and poured two glasses of steaming apple cider. Wilfrey leaned into the wingback chair and ignored the scratchy fabric of a chair most likely older than him. The living room was almost lavishly decorated, in a weird sort of way.

If you consider lavish to be dead.

And mummies to be art.

All around, the room had been decorated in an almost Book of of the Dead kind of Egyptian motif. Gilded wallpaper showed a tiled display of a strange, almost catlike creatures. Maybe a jackal or something. Wilfrey sucked in geography and history.

And he had enough of fucked up animals for a lifetime. He shivered, remembering Father Tyme’s apartment.

Blue urns flanked a granite fireplace; their gold painted decorations seemed almost too gaudy for a pyramid. His eyes followed the line of the wall upward, where an iron sword was crossed with what he could only guess was a willow branch. Mrs. Mahoney sat across of him, her cow-like ankles were crossed and milky white. It was disgusting.

Her floral print dress was starting to ride up.

Wilfrey shook his head, trying to shake out the images burned into his brain.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

So did he.

“A couple kids came by the store the other day. They wanted to know about ghosts and stuff, you know your usual curiosity-killed-the-cat kind of crap. I showed them a couple of books I had on the subject, but this one kid wanted more. He was looking for books on summoning. That’s the kind of stuff you don’t mess with.” She crossed herself. “Bad things happen if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“So you gave this kid these books?”

“He paid triple the cover price. Cash. I couldn’t say no to that kind of money, we’ve got bills to pay. You know how the economy is.”

“What’s triple the cover price?”

“Something close to six hundred dollars.”

Wilfrey’s brain had a mental disconnect at the thought of that much money in the hands of a kid. He didn’t even have that kind of money in his bank account.

Or his pension.

“Do you happen to have another copy of this book? Or any idea who the kid was?”

“I do, but I’m afraid that I don’t see how that helps my problem.”

“Well, you said the writing on your walls were words. What were those words?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“It’s a spell.”

“Like magic?”

“Of the darkest kind.”

“What kind of magic?”

“The kind you don’t ever wake up from.”

“Like a death threat?”

“You could say that.”

Now that was cute. Pig blood makes for a great threat, like waking up to the severed head of a horse in your bed, or two bullet holes in your front door. But even that was a stretch.

“Why would anyone want to kill you, Mrs. Mahoney? You seem like a lovely lady.”

She didn’t bite into his sarcasm. She just grew silent and cold as she shrank down to cover herself in a tasseled blanket. He bit his tongue to keep from laughing. She was cuddled up under a tapestry of holiness. The witch didn’t strike him as a Christian kind of woman.

“Mr. Wilfrey,” she said after a moment, “have you ever broken a promise?”

It was a personal question he didn’t feel like answering. Those were fresh wounds that hadn’t yet cauterized.

“I owe somebody very powerful something very important. And if he doesn’t get his own way, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get any better.”

“Who?”

“It’s not a question of who, Mr. Wilfrey. It’s a question of what.”

That didn’t make any sense.

“I can’t say anything else, that mark above my door, it knows. It can hear everything. And come and go as it pleases. You need to leave, Mr. Wilfrey, before it gets any other fantastic ideas.”

“Is there any way I can speak with you if we have any more questions?”

“You know my shop hours.”

Wilfrey nodded, closing his notebook. He rose to stand. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Mahoney. If there’s anything else, let me give you my card.”

“I don’t need it. You should go to your other call now, Mr. Wilfrey. They need you more than me. Much more than we.”

He blinked, confused by the syntax. But before he could ask for a clarification, she was ushering him out the door.

WIlfrey hated when he overstayed his welcome.

He started to drive down the road when a shadow flicked across his back. It wasn’t obvious, but he knew when he was being tailed. He adjusted his mirrors and checked his blind spots, but there was nothing except the infinite blackness of broken streetlights. The siren calls had drained away to an occasional wailing, like a tortured banshee crying for a lost lover. He turned right onto South Oak when he felt the familiar shadow that had been tailing him since he left the vandalism complaint. A little voice in the back of his head told him to keep driving.

He decided to follow that voice, unsnapping the revolver from his shoulder holster, he placed it next to him on the passenger seat. He turned down Maple Street, two blocks from the burglary and followed his new detour back to Ochee Mountain and Perimeter Road.

Something about the strange voice that wasn’t a sweet old lady and the circumstances surrounding this night made him head back to the station. He could handle that complaint from his office.

The doors to the garage slid closed with a squeak. He parked his Chevrolet under a flickering ceiling light and rode the elevator back to his office.

The feeling of unease never left.

“What do you mean you’re not coming out here?” Wilfrey couldn’t get how this guy even had a car. The voice on the other end didn’t sound like it hit puberty yet, nothing more than squeals and crackling.

It reminded him of the desiccated pig.

That thought sent ice down his spine. “I’m sorry you feel like we don’t care, sir.” Wilfrey bit his lip. “Really, I do. But you see, we’re kind of short staffed. And if you couldn’t figure out that we’re a little busy from the gunshots tearing through the city right now, I assure you that your auto burglary is Lyton PD’s number one priority.” More like one hundred and three. But he couldn’t say that. Customer service, and all that jazz. Lyton Police Department was kinder and gentler now. The days of crushing skulls with flashlights and telling assholes to go fuck themselves were long behind them.

Wilfrey couldn’t help but wonder if that was why Wulfe Avenue was such a train wreck. But Maple Street was as far from Wulfe Avenue as you could possibly get. Even forgetting the two dead kids inside the cemetery, the auto burglaries were even rare for doctor’s row. Which made things even weirder.

“So, you say your car was parked inside your garage?”

“Yeah. Locked up tight.”

“And your door?”

“Closed. Always locked up, like Fort Dix.”

That didn’t make sense. In this part of town, people were too stupid to lock up. Why did this guy need to keep his place so secure? What was he hiding?

“What did they take?”

“Two marbles.”

“Marbles?” These were the assholes that left hundred dollar bills tucked into their seat cushions just in case they needed to stop at the local grease burger. If it’s not the money, it’s the GPS, the video player, the iPod, anything but this.

“They were very special to me.”

“Grandpa’s winning shooters? From nineteen dickity two?” He regretted it as soon as he said it.

“Something like that.”

Wilfrey wasn’t expecting that response. “And these marbles? Why did you keep them in your car?”

“I just bought them. This afternoon, actually.”

“Wait - didn’t you?” He knew the guy was full of shit. Now he had him right where he wanted.

“Mr. Wilfrey, I’ve spent the whole of my adult life looking for these things.”

Wilfrey seriously doubted it was that long. “And where did you find them?”

“Charms. Down in the Village.”

Now, that was unexpected. “And how much are these marbles worth?”

“They’re priceless. How can you put such an arbitrary figure on something so rare, so perfect. So personal.”

The question was almost too easy. “And how did grand dad’s favorite toy end up in a place like that? And are you going to give me a monetary figure for your report? Or can I just put down whatever bullshit I want?”

The voice on the other end let out a long, drawn out sigh and was silent for several minutes. When he spoke again, the squeaking falsetto had all but drained out of his voice. “Thirteen thousand, each. Cash. They never should have disappeared in the first place. But they did. And I promised him I’d get them back. No matter what.”

That voice was serious. Wilfrey almost cared.

“I bought them and took them home. Left them locked up in my glovebox. Locked my car. Closed the garage door. Locked the house. Left every light on in there too. Tomorrow we were going up to the hill. I was going to show them to dad. Just to let him know they were safe and we’d never lose them again. And now here they are, gone just as easy as they came. You need to find them. Please.”

“We’ll do our best. Does anyone have access to your house, your garage? Your home?”

“I live alone.”

Yeah. That was creepy.

“No boyfriend, girlfriend? Favorite pet? Weird blow up doll?”

“I don’t find you amusing. Not in the least.”

“Who would want to take your marbles?” Wilfrey asked the question, already figuring the guy lost his a long time ago. He wondered if his were gone as well.

“Who wouldn’t?”

Yeah. This guy was nuts. But Wilfrey figured he already had this mystery solved. You don’t go flashing twenty-six thousand dollars around and not expect to get screwed. And this poor guy didn’t even get the benefit of the reach around.

“You’re absolutely certain they were in the bag when you left the store?”

“I held them in my hand the whole time. Watched the lady behind the counter drop them in the felt myself.”

“And now?”

“Nothing there but flint and coal.”

Yeah. Okay. Maybe this was a little weird. But Wilfrey figured the poor guy got gypsied. Sleight of hand is great for separating stupid people from their money. If Mrs. Mahoney could make twenty-six thousand dollars in one shot, he wondered how much more money she could bilk from the stupid and the insane. He owed her another visit.

“Look, do me a favor Mr. Roberts. Don’t touch anything. Not your car, not your garage, not anything. When it stops raining bullets, I’ll be by to process. Maybe we can find out just how you lost your marbles.

The voice on the other end didn’t like that remark. There was a sudden click, followed by an angry scream as the phone went dead.

The steady groan of a disconnected line rose up into a wail.

No sooner did he hang up that his phone rang again.

“Stop fucking with me, Mr. Wilfrey.”

He didn’t like apologizing to a ghost, didn’t even know where to begin. So he did the smartest thing he could think of.

“But you make it so easy, grave dust.” It was pretty stupid.

“Tick tock.” Grave dust seemed amused. “Tick tock.”

The phone disconnected. Wilfrey wasn’t amused.

He was curious.

The needle stabbed into her arm. She pushed down on the plunger felt the cool liquid ooze into her vein. Parker was too busy being stoned to care that she did it. She didn’t do it for him anyway, she did it for her. High School was such a drag. She needed a quick fix, a pick-me-up, she wanted to just get high and forget the world existed for a minute, just long enough for her to float on in the infinity of an hourglass tipped on its side. Time stretched before her like the black expanses of Lake Magnolia. The stars erupted into a rainbow of colors and the world tasted sweet like summer rain.

James caught her at a really bad moment. He slapped the needle out of her hand, it tore from her flesh and left a bite mark in her arm. Blood bubbled up to the surface and she bit back the urge to slap the shit out of him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Trying to save your life. You know that stuff’s bad for you.”

“I don’t care. It feels too damn good to be this damn bad.”

“That’s how it always starts. Look at Robert.”

She did. He was so stoned that he was just about drooling on his coat. He had the slack face of a man fast asleep. He looked like a corpse and she didn’t care.

“He’s so chill. Why do you always have to be so uptight? Can’t you just be a kid for once? Why’s it gotta be that you’re always going around trying to suck the life out of everyone and everything. Just…relax man. There’s plenty of time for being an adult later.”

“Girls just wanna have fun, man.” Parker said through his stupor.

“Parker, shut the fuck up. Just shut up. Look, I gave you guys the key to this place so you can do your thing. So let’s do it and get the hell out of here. I don’t like this night, this cold, or the chaos around me. I just wanna go home already.”

“Relax, man.” Samantha’s voice was lethargic.

“Jesus, I can’t believe I let you guys talk me into this crap. I wish Sarah was here, she’d at least have the balls to set you straight. Maybe you’d listen to her, because you sure as fuck don’t listen to me.”

“Why would I do that? All you do is lie. Liars can’t tell the truth, that’s why they’re liars.”

“Samantha! I-“

“Don’t bother.” She rose, stumbling off the picnic bench. It was a chore to navigate the narrow path down the hill to the summoning circle they laid earlier in the evening.

“Here, let me help.”

Samantha was too stoned to say no. James wrapped her in his coat and led her down the narrow path into the shadows of the trees and the clearing beyond. The circle looked scuffed and all but forgotten in the rose-hued light. It played in shadows, coiling about the boughs of the tree, the last of the snowflakes danced in the cone of moonlight. She looked down at the pair of circles, their forms all but painted over by the white-gray ash of a newly fallen snow. She stepped between the circles, feeling something crunch beneath her feet. With a lopsided flourish, she bent and drew a second circle with a broken branch. It stretched out along the sides, leaving her firmly in the center. She tried to draw the runic symbols, but was too stoned to get it right. In her eyes, it looked perfectly better than the one Robert had drawn before.

“Give me my ghost, dammit.” Her voice slurred, the cold made her tongue numb. It wasn’t the high, it couldn’t be. It was the damn cold.

So very cold.

Parker stumbled down the hill and found his backpack tucked against the great ironsides of the ancient oak.

“You got the book, right?” James asked, more statement than question.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Like a picture out of focus, she watched dumbfounded as eternity stretched away and James rooted through his backpack; every twist of discarded paper sounded like thunderclaps in her ears. The pounding in her head rose in an almost concussive din. She didn’t feel right. This was a different high.

Payn was supposed to numb the pain.

Why was it making things that much worse? Ir crested the seawall of her mental dock and boiled over the sides, washing everything out, turning happiness to puddles of muck and mire, favorite memories, hopes, and dreams were all lost in the concussive mudslide that followed. She fell into a heap. James rushed to scoop her body up, but it was all dead weight.

“She’s too tired. Guess that means we both gotta play the part.” Robert paged through the yellowed paper.

“Thought we needed at least one girl.”

“Then you better put her dress on.” Parker said as if it wasn’t an odd request. “You’ve got one of those right?”

James hoped he didn’t need to hit his friend.

“Fuck it, take her clothes for all I care.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Parker smiled. “Well, she does have nice tits.”

“Dude. Really? You’re way too stoned to do this. Maybe we should try again tomorrow night, you know, when you’re not oozing Payn out every damn pore.”

“I’m fine. This is awesome.” Parker bent at the waist and started fumbling with Samantha’s blouse. “I bet you’re her size. Come on.”

“Dude, don’t.”

“What? Touch her? That’s nothing new man. You know you had your chance, she told me that the last time I fucked her brains out. She loved every damn minute of it.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Have a joint man, slow your roll and calm the fuck down. Last time I tried this, it worked awesome.”

Samantha came to, her lopsided grin was full of haze. “Did we do it?”

“Of course you did, Samantha. It was so friggen cool.”

“Stop trying to impress her.” Robert’s voice was hard. “Nothing happened, Sam. Nothing.”

“But I saw him. And I got a puppy.” She had a strange, almost childlike innocence about her words. For a moment, James almost believed her.

In the distance, he heard the barking call of a dog at play. And then the sharp crack of gunfire all but silenced the dog’s bark. A new sound took its place, low and forlorn, howling like wind through the trees. It didn’t sound right.

Neither did trespassing on city property, taking a whole bunch of drugs, and then vandalizing the park as they tried their hand at magic that wasn’t even going to work.

But, yet here they were. On Devil’s Night, nonetheless. The whole night had a nasty reputation, but it had never been this bad. Gunshots sounded closer, he heard the screams and laughter of teenage pranks.

He really wanted to be home.

Bad. Like real bad. If Santa Claus were real, all he wanted for Christmas was a quick trip back home to a safe place where he could hide under his covers and wait until the morning light came.

But Santa wasn’t real. And neither were ghosts, goblins, or any of the other things that crept in the midnight hour. But the money was good. Parker had paid him in cash. Two hundred dollars just for sneaking them in. It was a king’s ransom for such a simple task.

But when the lights went out in the heavens above and the ritual began, Wilson felt the need to get out of dodge. Because the dead shouldn’t walk.

And the way they were talking, walking corpses weren’t far behind. It was a terrifying thought made all the more frightening and real at the sight of a white light flashing down.

The dagger caught skin and drew blood. It dripped down in a slow pool that oozed into a crevice of snow. He heard her voice mumbling in tongues, the thrall of the ceremony was lulling him in. He almost gave into the poison as the temperature rose and the crying wolves crept closer to hunt. The smell of burnt iron filled his nose and turned sulfur in his lungs.

And that’s when the insanity began. The last thing he heard before he ran for his life was the crying of a girl in a terrible fright.

Three days before Halloween and when things were already strange enough, Wilfrey found himself outside a haunted house at the edge of town known for haunted houses. It wasn’t the five dollar admission kind of house. Those spiderwebs weren’t fake. Rickety wooden steps led up to a porch that had already rotted away when he was still in diapers. The only light sputtered above, yellowed sodium phosphorous predating civilization. Flickering candlelight illuminated the interior in a soft glow that bounced off stained and swollen windows.

Across the yard, a hill rose black against the dim red light of Mars peaking his head out. Wilfrey couldn’t wait for the damn planet to go back to space where it belonged. Beneath the hill was the crest of Lake Magnolia, and Thornhill Cemetery. Wilfrey shivered.

He left the Chevrolet running, just in case. Just like the semi-auto he pulled from his waist and held at low ready. Just in case. The strobing of blue lights in the street was somewhat reassuring. He made sure to tell Jim about this fucked up call. At least dispatch knew. If things went south, maybe he’d get lucky.

His idea of lucky was not bleeding out before the calvary showed up. Wilfrey gripped the bannister in an unsteady hand that dislodged at least a year’s worth of cobwebs and dust from the railing. The place looked deserted. An old yellowed newspaper was barely legible from within its decomposing plastic bag.

He banged on the door. Two loud raps to wake the dead. It was a cop’s knock. And it was pretty good. Maybe he still had it.

Maybe.

The second knock dislodged the door from its jamb. It slid open with the nails on chalkboard groan of hinges in desperate need of oil.

Maybe not.

He fished through his pocket until he found his flashlight. Wilfrey smacked it once against his thigh. Pale white light washed over the room. He slid the light onto the rail underneath the barrel of his gun.

“Lyton Police,” Wilfrey shouted with what he hoped was enough conviction to disguise the quiver in his voice. After a moment he added, “Canine unit. Come out or you will be dog bit.” Yeah. That sounded good. Except his voice trailed off at the last half a word. Any bad guy with any balls would call his bluff. He thought faintly of barking like a dog.

But then realized that would be crazy.

Like creeping through a vacant house in the middle of desolation row with nothing but a peashooter and a flashlight. Like hearing the voice of death itself call you a name it should not know. Like coming out onto desolation row because some crazy old woman wants you to talk to the demons in her house.

Yeah. Maybe he did need some help.

He took a step through the threshold, cutting right as his light cast across the empty house. He flashed briefly up the stairs and flicked it off. It took a minute for his eyesight to come back. Candlelight flickered through an empty house. Old furniture covered in dusty cloth squared through the room, tucking itself in a neat little box surrounding a fireplace older than time itself. If he closed his eyes, he could just about see ghosts of old hens sipping tea, chatting it up in their Sunday best, while an old phonograph scratched out Billy Murray’s latest. Wilfrey dropped his center and duck walked through the empty great room, banking left as he passed into a narrow hallway where he dropped his butt against the wall.

Candlelight faded to shadow and all was dark again. The hallway led to a narrow galley kitchen. Pitted and rust stained Frigidaire appliances stood as silent sentinels to time marching on, their pale green paint now dull and faded.

The galley led out to a large dining room. Fine china was set on white cheesecloth, flickering tapers illuminated the room in a warm glow. Massive thrones surrounded a mahogany table.

Dust motes flittered on stagnant air.

The woman’s parlor was secondary to the man’s study. Towering bookshelves overflowing with leatherbound books created the perfect dead end for fate to rear its ugly head.

She was sitting there, cold and alone. Barely breathing, her fragile chest rose in soft gasps. Blood caked the crevices of her mouth, turning it up into an angry smile. Shadows stretched the height of the shelf, their black forms swirling and twisting with the subtle ebb and flow of the woman’s dying gasps.

He reached behind his back and grabbed his radio, it beeped out of range. The shadows swirled, encircling the ceiling.

“Did you find her, Mr. Wilfrey?” Her voice was raspy.

“Ssh. Don’t talk. Help is on the way. Save your breath.” He checked his phone. No service. He hoped Lori listened. His directions couldn’t have been any more clear. If I don’t check back within the hour, start road patrol, start the bus. Shit went south. He guessed that was something like thirty-six minutes ago, but the actuality was anyone’s guess. His watch wasn’t worth a damn anymore. The hands stalled out at 0200.

“No. There’s no time. She needs your help. That boy is trouble. You’re going to find her, right? The future of our world is up to you.”

Wilfrey just nodded. There was nothing else to do when a delusional old woman just called you the savior of the masses.

Her eyes snapped shut. The breathing stopped. Wilfrey stepped close, looking for vitals. The clock was ticking. Three steps and they snapped open again. The white-blue of cataracts was gone. Piercing green eyes replaced the milky stare of the old woman. Shadows swayed, lunging down and then vanishing in a sudden, blinding light. Almost as if someone had finally found the power switch and turned it on. Or maybe it was the aerial ladder of rescue finally here to save the world. Either way, he couldn’t see.

“Listen to me, detective.” Her voice was hollow and emotionless. “You see that man up there in the sky? Whatever he wants, don’t give it to him. I can handle him. You need to find the lady in the lake. The stones are secondary to the whole. Do not give in.”

Skittering of claws behind him.

Maggots crawling forward. Black tide overtaking mahogany floors.

“Don’t look at them. When you look, you acknowledge they exist. And when they exist, they become real. And when they’re real…” Her voice trailed off.

Closer.

Scratch scratch. The wail of a wolf.

“Don’t trust the ghost. His intentions aren’t pure.”

Wilfrey smelled burning. The coal fire stench of something nearby. A hollow laugh came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

He tried to pretend that the creepy red eyes swirling in the shadows were just his overactive imagination. He tried to ignore the shadows coiling around the floor like thousands of black snakes slithering toward him. Everything was fine until maggots poured out the eyes of a yellowed skull he didn’t believe was real.

“The crone will not, cannot help. You don’t need her. Everything you need is inside. Come close.”

Wilfrey obeyed. Her nails were long and yellow. They traced across his coat, pushing through into his heart.

Something hurt. And then everything was too loud.

Concussive blasts. Screaming.

Pain.

“Trust yourself.”

The world faded to black. Michael Wilfrey felt himself falling. Voices were all around, but their words were meaningless and faint. All he knew was pain.

The fog on the ground dissipated long before the fog in his head. Last night was a blur. Robert shielded his eyes from the sting of fluorescent bulbs above, the hum was almost too much to bear. As he stumbled through the corridor, he did his best to ignore the frequent stares. Every step brought him face-to-face with another student and their inquisitive eyes.

So what if he looked like a mack truck ran him over? His clothes were rumpled and dirty; and if anyone asked, the red stains on his pants were from painting his bedroom all afternoon. It was no big deal to see him high, half the school knew he was the go-to guy for all things pharmaceutical. He had a reputation of selling only the finest quality tinctures and potions. A vendor with such esteem as he had did not get that reputation easily. No.

Robert had to taste test his own wares. After all, if he couldn’t trust the stuff he sold, then who else would? It was the sign of a quality product.

He spun the combo to his locker and pulled the metal tab open. He ignored the books on the floor and threw his backpack inside. What he wanted was far more important. It sat on the top shelf in a mahogany box. As he depressed the sides, the center swung out. It was a clever box, and its ingenuis had paid off more than once.

That’s the problem with being the go-to guy. Everyone in school knew what he did. Everyone.

Random locker searches weren’t so random when you had the perfect target in mind. His lockless box was the only thing that kept him out of expulsion or juvie.

Inside the box were his breath strips. You can’t go to class with garlic breath. What if the teacher asked you a question? He dropped the tablet onto his tongue and felt the familiar numbness wash over him.

Things were going great.

He had the plan to have a good day today. That is, until James showed up.

Wilson always screwed up his mojo. And his moral high ground was really starting to get old. The kid was no better than him. Just because James had himself some fancy job and a mother didn’t make him any better. No, the kid was still a nerd. An outcast.

A reject.

Nobody was as cool as Robert Parker.

Nobody.

“You seen Sam today?” James asked when they were alone.

Robert only shook his head, he wasn’t going to waste time looking at a kid like James. He had places to be, things to sell.

“Last night was weird, man.”

“I know. You totally puss’d out.”

“Well, shit yeah. I don’t trust you with a knife anymore than I trust the mystery meat in the cafeteria.”

“It’s ham.”

“Huh?”

“Today, it’s ham. I already had some. Get the mac and cheese. The corn sucks. Damn, I’m hungry. You eat yet?” The Payne was starting to run its course. Robert felt his mouth start to move faster than his brain. He took a moment to remind himself to just calm down.

“What happened to your boots?”

“Painting. Bedroom needed new coat. I like red. It’s the color of apples. Let’s go get some grub. Come on, I’ll buy. Treat ya!”

“Think I’ll pass. You know we’re still in school, right?”

“Until three. Always until three. Three fifteen, let’s go get ice cream. You and me. We’ll go talk. Talking’s good, when you talk to Sam last? Is she okay? I miss her.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Jim, I think I love her. Crazy right. Wait, don’t tell her. Promise me you won’t tell her. It’s supposed to be a secret. She’s not cool enough for me, it’ll crush my rep. But she’s a good people, man. Tell ya what, go tell. Tell everybody. It’ll make her look good. So what if I look like shit? I mean look at me.”

“You sure do look like you stepped in it.”

“Doesn’t smell. Can’t be shit. Maybe mud. Think it is. Brown, right? Hey. You should check out my room. New paint job. It’s awesome. Putting stars on the ceiling, it’ll be great after I do some. You really gotta try this shit man. It’s top notch. Comes with the Robert Parker Guarantee.”

“Think I’ll pass.” James turned to walk down the hall.

“Double your money back if you don’t like it. I even give free samples. I just had two today. Two samples! Customers love it. I’m the king of the school, man. People love me.”

“That’s the problem with you, Parker.” James wheeled back around, lightning flickering across his eyes. “You don’t know how to grow the fuck up. Sam wasn’t in first period today. Sarah hasn’t been to school in like three days. And you couldn’t give two shits.”

“Sure can. Just dropped a deuce. Double wide down the hall.”

“What happened when I left last night?” Wilson stepped closer.

Parker shrunk back, he wasn’t a fan of hot breath on his face. “You need some of my breath mints dude. Trust me. You stink.”

“What happened last night?”

“The dog liked it man. Totally dug it. He didn’t know what was going on, but he was still totally cool with it. You won’t tell PETA right? Promise me you won’t tell PETA.”

“Where’s Samantha?”

“Relax dude. She’s fine. Still in my bed. You missed a bitchin’ party last night. I wore her out so much she couldn’t get up this morning. It was cool man, totally cool.”

“If you so much as hurt a hair on her head…”

“You’ll what?” Parker’s voice grew serious, deathly serious. There was no high strong enough to mask instinct. “You won’t do shit.” He tilted his head back and coughed.

Spittle pooled on James’ collar. Parker smirked, contorting his mouth into a sadistic grin.

“That’s what I thought. Pussy.” Parker turned to walk away.

“Don’t you walk away from me. This isn’t over.”

“Oh, it’s over. It’s done man. Fuck off.” And with that, he was gone.

The buzzer sounded overhead, a warning bell for the impending classes. Third period wouldn’t be the same without Sam there. Guilt stabbed through his heart and pierced deep. If only he wasn’t so afraid. If only. If only. If only.

Thousands of thoughts fluttered through his head, each an image more disquieting than the last. Despite the tiny voice in the back of his head reminding him he was not responsible, he couldn’t shake the unmistakable feeling that something just wasn’t right.

And as the baying of hounds sounded in the distance, piercing through the concrete walls of the school, James Wilson couldn’t help feel like this was all his fault.

The second bell sounded, followed by a third, almost more urgent sound he hadn’t heard in a long time. Red lights flashed in the hallway. The last stragglers of the school day paused, lockers half open and eyes wide with fear. The bells grew louder, the hounds crept closer. It didn’t sound like one lost and wounded dog. No. There was more. This was the call of a hunt.

Something was wrong.

“Jesus Christ, you look like hell.” Lori flashed him a smile that did little to hide the worry lines crossing her forehead.

Wilfrey groaned. “Look who’s talking.” The bed linens were scratching at his skin. Dawn filtered through the half slats of blinds that couldn’t be any farther from sanitary white. It almost made the sunrise look ugly and unnatural. He squinted, rubbing grit from his eyes.

“Want ‘em popped?” Lori rose to tug on the wand. Green gray sunlight filtered through before he could object. Once the blinds were open, there was no doubt that something ugly and unnatural was brewing outside.

He grunted and tried to lift an arm to point at the sky. Something pulled him back. That hurt.

Everything hurt. His brain was mush. He thought he woke up in his beat up Chevrolet, behind Joe’s Tavern & Grill. He could imagine the stink of whiskey and cigarettes. But he didn’t remember going to Joe’s, couldn’t recall the last time he even stepped foot in that dive. But somehow, that’s what he thought when he woke up. And with the raging headache that crawled across his temples, down his jaw, and seeped into his neck and chest, he could only imagine that it was another bender.

The gentle ping of steady, almost robotic, hum filled in the white noise of air recycling through the vents above. He was almost lightheaded and giddy, despite the pain traveling down his skull.

“How much did I drink last night?” Wilfrey asked when the silence started to make him uncomfortable. He was speaking to fill the silence, secretly hoping that he didn’t drink his last bottle.

“Probably a lot less than me.”

“So? It was a good night?”

“Good night? Jesus, Mike. You scared us half to death. What the hell were you doing there alone?”

Mike’s? Or his apartment? Wilfrey didn’t have a clue. Everything was a blur. “Mm..not a good night then? Did I at least get some?”

“You got a lot more than some.”

He beamed a wolfish grin. His lips curled halfway up as he lifted one arm above his head.The pain in his chest told him to quit while he was ahead.

Outside, dark storm clouds swirled in purples and grays, twisting around in a spiral like an other worldy vortex. The sun struggled to pull itself out of the abyss and cast its sickly light down on the world.

“Christ, I told you this was a bad idea. But do you ever listen? No. Never. For fifteen long years I’ve been dealing with your crap. You’d think by now maybe, just maybe you’d start to trust me? Not even a little.” Her sigh was angry, like all the exasperation and frustration flittered out on one long, drawn out breath. “I hope you polish that medal real fuckin’ good.”

She coughed. And that’s when he realized where he was. The curtain swayed in the artificial heat. “Lori…” He paused, trying to remember. “What the hell am I doing in the hospital?”

“We are not,” her voice was hard, angry, “playing that game. If you want someone to stroke your ego ’til you blow your load all over those pretty white sheets, go pay one of the girls downtown. Don’t drag me into your bullshit. I’m the only friend you got left in this shithole.”

“Seriously? Lori? Don’t fuck with me. What the hell happened?”

She turned away from him.

“Lori? Please.”

“Your damn luck, Mike. It was just your damn luck. ‘If I don’t check in within the hour, send the calvary. Shit just got real.’ I did it. Sure as shit and real as real. There you were, bleeding out your damn face like someone took a hammer to it and tenderized you real good. This morning, not a fucking scratch on you. Doc said he thought you got shot, took a graze in the head, but they can’t find anything of it. You just got damn lucky. So now they think you had some sort of stroke or blacked out, fell and broke your hip. Some sort of bullshit.”

“In other words they don’t have a fucking clue?” Wilfrey shuddered.

“CID’s working it. You’re on leave again. Soon as the city is back under control.”

“Again? They never took me off.”

“This time it’s real.”

Wilfrey laughed. Lori didn’t.

“Last night, you killed some old man. The old lady’s house you were following up at? Vagrant thought it was empty. Went to go strip her bare. What I hear, you found him after he found her. Upstairs doesn’t care. Your kill was number twelve last night. Bosses are up to their asses in shit. You didn’t hear it from me, but they want to see you soon as the city calms down. Me? I don’t know if I ever want to see you again.”

“So? I’m fine?” If Lori didn’t like him making it a point to ignore everything, she did her damndest not to show it.

“How many more, Mike?”

The room grew suddenly cold. He didn’t know how to respond.

“Was it justified? Probably. I’m not here to second guess you. But, if the chief is looking for blood, you’ve got more than enough of it on your hands. Be careful. Please.” She rose and moved toward the door.

“Lori. Wait.”

She turned around, the overhead lights cast her in an almost angelic glow. “One more thing.” Her smile was pure. “You were never here. Shift change is in thirty minutes. Unless you’re dead or dying, you might want to get out of dodge.”

And then she was gone. The room had gone silent. Wilfrey traced a hand down his body, feeling for holes that weren’t there the night before. When he came up even, he pulled the picline from his wrist and dropped it onto the tile. He flipped a switch on the monitor and killed the hum.

“Thanks.” He said to an empty room.

There was work to do.

Tall shadows of tall buildings darkened an otherwise gray day. Sunlight hid behind clouds and hadn’t been seen since the crack of dawn. It crept through the alley, red eyes never leaving the ground as if it was searching for something. Behind him came the padding of dozens of paws marching in a single, syncopated line. The black dog sniffed the air, tasting the subtle texture of a morning rain, sandwiched between the Lyton smog and mountain air.

Here, the streets were cracked, great fissures ran east and west across the alleyway, concrete rose in gentle ridges lined with the fangs of earthquakes past. The black dog stopped mid-stride; the sun began to cautiously poke its head out from behind the clouds. A single ray of golden light filtered through the clouds, passing to the streets below. Small insects danced in the beam, their minniscule forms barely more than motes of gray and brown.

A strange brown ooze dripped from the awnings of a four story apartment to the dog’s right, green liquid dripped out of the gutters and pooled into a bubbling mess trapped inside a concrete trough. The streets belonged to the strays and the addicts, nothing else would dare to question that authority. It had been passed down from stray to stray and addict to addict since before the new people came and brought with them new pets and stranger animals that would lay down and bark on command.

This dog did not bark on command. It bared its teeth as a rat skittered past, oblivious to the beast above. The dog inched closer to the pool, stopping to sniff it briefly. It smelled dirty, but it tasted like desert rain. He had been walking a long time, and any chance at any break had been few and far between. The dog swallowed the puddle with a few laps of its lazy, black tongue.

A woman was babbling to his right. Her dirty clothes and unwashed body stank of sweat and soil. Through the gray haze he saw her hair wild, almost alive like thousands of snakes coiling about her head. The coat she wore was tattered and torn with stains of long travel and longer nights. In her psychosis, the dog found something strangely comforting. She screamed, flailing her arms at the nobody that had been listening to her manic cries. As he approached, the shadow slinked off to his right. He saw the nobody hand something to the old woman, she replied in twisted tongues. The nobody vanished back into the shadows of a nearby redstone.

Bells sounded in the distance, faint on the afternoon breeze. A metal door slammed and the nobody was no more. He stood alone in the alleyway, eyeing the strange woman with his own strange eyes. They were both wild, common folk. She had the stink of death lilies and dusty bones. Her hair flailed in the wind, he caught the faintest whiff of iron on the southern breeze.

The dog’s muzzle flared with disdain. The two shared a silent moment, only punctured by the rattle of steel and wind as an awning creaked and groaned.

Iron was a terrible thing. The stench alone made him sick. Memories flicked back to the staff and the brand, and the maniacal laughter of another nobody with a needle.

A sudden gust kicked up, blowing across the rooftops and scattering the leaves from gutters. They fell in gentle pirouettes to nest on the ground below. His large paws stomped across the ground, crushing the fallen leaves with a satisfying crunch.

The strange lady with the strange hair was beckoning him forward. She bent down, her tattered clothes fell like a train onto the dirty asphalt beneath her plastic bag shoes. Grimy fingers traced across the dirt, drawing sacred circles in the muck.

The dog felt something snap behind his head, there was a sudden, great popping sound that stunned him momentarily. The lady was smiling a crooked tooth grin now, humming a sweet song to herself.

“Here puppy puppy puppy.” The lady’s voice sounded so far away, like his head was underwater. But he could not ignore the lure of her voice, like siren song calling sailor’s home, he bowed his head obediently and drooped his tail between his legs. It painted the dirt and dust with a long trail as he crept forward, commanded by a voice that was not hers and a power far above his.

The nobody was there again. He didn’t know where it came from, but compulsion drew him onward. The nobody stepped to the side as he approached, the dog bowed his head low in reverence.

Something smacked him in the back of the neck, he felt a clasp shut and almost squeaked out a terrible cry as the collar went on, leather straps cutting into his mangy fur and biting skin beneath. He reared, baring teeth at the nobody who dared to control him. Paws lashed out, sharp claws ready to rip flesh from bones. But each movement became agononizingly slow. And as the seconds drew on, he forgot why he was mad anyway.

Calm bathed his unwashed body in an almost holy light. The lady was smiling as something fell into her hand. Like a man paying his ferry home to paradise, she bowed low and faded into the shadows once more, melding into nothing but a blur as she rocked back and forth, pleating like a baby goat suckling on its mother’s tit.

He tried to bark, to call for the lady to return. But she was long gone to the ghosts of this world. Instead, he fixed his fury on the nobody that dared to control him.

Words, ancient and unheard in this time of man were whispered on silken air; his consciousness snapped and the madness returned. Flared forward by the rage of his heritage unfurled across this new land.

The screams were silenced by the ringing in his head.

The funny thing about days is they always end at the most inopportune time. After last night’s chaos Wilfrey figured he’d had just enough of the heebie-jeebies. Ghosts don’t follow you home like little lost puppy dogs. If Lori kept her histrionics in check, then that meant he should be dead. Why he was still walking was beyond his comprehension. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the subtle flicker of movement and thought he saw Stan the Can Man on the corner digging through trash.

Harmless, crazy old Stan. Dead by his hand? It didn’t make sense. It didn’t seem right. He still had his gun. He still had his badge. He counted his rounds twice and they all checked out.

He couldn’t shake that absolute feeling of wrongness. It stopped raining bullets about a half hour ago and the city was slowly coming back around to what passed for normalcy in a place as violent and disturbed as Lyton. He knew that he needed to go process the auto burglary. Everything kept leading back that way. But he knew what he’d find. And it wasn’t anything he was ready to look for. Not yet. Let the road guys go out there and see for themselves. Maybe then they can call a different detective. Maybe someone with something to prove.

Find the stones, Mr. Wilfrey. Only he wasn’t Mr. Wilfrey to the old lady. He was Mr. Donovan, and the old lady didn’t sound like a forty-three year old man who smoked a carton a day. The voice still shot chills down his spine, the kind of chills that crawl like spiders on a web. Up and down.

Up and down.

His whole life had been like that since Peggy left. But really, he couldn’t blame her for going. And now this. Genoa seemed so long ago, and nowhere near as strange as Father Tyme’s apartment or the deaths of two teenagers late at night.

Kids die all the time. Shootings, stabbings, stupidity. But, these kids seemed innocent enough. He got confirmation from AFIS, God bless the CSI that rolled those prints. How they got anything identifiable off of mostly flayed skin and tall bone was beyond his comprehension. In the end, Wilfrey was still a cop. And forensics was like magic to him.

The boy was Jessie Donovan, small time quarterback for the varsity team. He wasn’t going anywhere except Kelsey Community College next year. Mom had been a regular down at Precinct II. He couldn’t get how the kid’s head was screwed on so tight when mom’s was ready to roll off her shoulders and fall to the floor. Of all the skels he had seen, Jessie Donovan’s mom had been the worst.

She took it well though, all things considered. The lady took it with the kind of casual grace usually reserved for the most hardened family in some of the roughest neighborhoods.

“Ma’am, I have some bad news. You may want to sit down.”

“Go ahead, out with it Mr. Wilfrey.”

“We have reason to believe your son was murdered.”

At that point, he was expecting the full on influx of grief and emotion. Instead, all he got was an “oh.” It was almost disappointing, really. She didn’t want to know any of the grisly details, Wilfrey was glad for that. He was still waiting for the autopsy report. After Genoa, he didn’t go to them anymore.

The paperwork was already a day late. If you want something done, you need to do it yourself.

Which is why he was out on the town this morning. There was way too much to do, and he wasn’t going to wait around for somebody else to type a report up of something he could find out all on his own. So, now that Dr. Baker had his sick fun, Wilfrey made it a point to visit and save Detective Flannigan the trouble.

The Medical Examiner’s office was a nondescript building in the right part of town for nondescript buildings. Wilfrey called it Alphabet City, every acronym you could think of had an office here off of Highway 60. Alphabet City was all cold and professional, not a tree to be found. Just block after block of stucco buildings with numbers, no letters.

Letters weren’t allowed in Alphabet City.

He parked his company Chevrolet down the road where an unassuming guard waved him methodically forward. He knew he was on camera and felt an overwhelming urge to moon the sky. But, he was in enough trouble already. No sense in pissing off the rest of the world. Feds didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He kind of liked it that way.

It kept his conversation to a minimum.

Dr. Baker’s office was tucked into an “L” shaped strip mall on the west side of town. The Medical Examiner found itself short of cash when dead bodies stopped piling up, so now they leased office space from the local branch of the FBI. He hated coming here.

“Hello Gina.” Wilfrey said, feigning enthusiasm. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” He made it a point to ignore the peeling green wallpaper and the dust motes dancing through the slats of light, filtering through what he guessed used to be white blinds. It was better than looking at Gina.

“It’s cold and gray.” She said with her usual nasal monotone.

“Like I said.” Wilfrey grumbled, “Doc in?”

“Always.” The girl’s jowls bounced up and down, bobbing like a bucket floating down the river. She fixed her coke-bottle glasses back onto the beak she called a nose and waved halfheartedlty at the visitor log on her desk.

Wilfrey signed his name in the ledger. A drawer opened and Gina went through the motions of digging for the little plastic pass. It was all so mechanical. The music of the fax machine coughing out another dead body filled the room with its electric burble. Gina didn’t bother looking up from her cellphone as she pressed the little button under her desk.

“Tell him we got another stiff when he’s done with you.” Her lips stopped moving long before the fat in her face did. “Oh. Looks like its yours.” She pressed the wrinkled up paper into Wilfrey’s hands while he did his best to avoid the sharp claws of the receptionist.

“Yeah thanks.” He shoved the paper into a pocket of his coat and stepped toward the door.

“You’re forgetting something.” She tsk-tsk’d him like a mother disciplined her child. Wilfrey was repulsed.

“What else can I do to make your day a magical experience, Miss Gina?” Wilfrey laid the sarcasm on thick. She didn’t take the bait.

“You know the rules, detective.” Accent on detective, like it was a naughty word that made her stomach sick. He could just imagine her spitting the taste out of her mouth. There was a loud buzz and the door slammed shut.

“No pass, no doc.” She smiled for the first time. Like playing this stupid game was the highlight of her day.

Wilfrey sighed and clipped the pass onto his coat.

“Now, don’t take it off. We’re watching you.” She leaned forward; her glasses were dirty.

Wilfrey shook his head and waved her off.

“Have a wonderful day, detective.” The door whooshed open to the scent of bleach and saline. Wilfrey coughed as the cold air filled his lungs, imagining the grinning cheshire behind him as the door slammed back shut, trapping him in the land of the dead. He walked down sanitary hallways full of white tile and green walls. Metallic doors opened and closed with an obnoxious clang. It was almost as if they were trying to hide something from him. The hallway stretched out on the horizon of his vision. He could barely make out the end, it seemed to flutter on his peripherry like a mirage. Doors slammed shut and people in white lab coats vanished behind him, never doing so much as raising an eyebrow or a hand in a friendly greeting.

In the land of spooks, Michael Wilfrey was an outcast, a pariah to the tribes of well-educated statesmen and heroes to their mothers. He didn’t imagine their mothers dared to speak of what kind of doctor their wonderful son was.

Mothers don’t like hearing that their sons and daughters cut up dead people for a living.

Science or not. It was still strange.

You’d think that agencies all got along, like it was some secret society or clique that you just wouldn’t understand.

Problem is, somewhere along the way people forgot how big their dicks were. And you were nothing if you weren’t one of them. Adversarial societies go far to solve crime and save the day. At some point, everyone forgot just who they were fighting for.

It wasn’t alphabet city.

If he was a pariah to the doctors, the doctors were a pariah to the feds that surrounded them. It was the food chain of pride. Oh? You only work for the county? How sad for you! Here, have some candy. It’s not that bad.

He almost felt bad for the squints shouldering the burdens of a society that fueled itself on ravaging every last thing that life stood for.

Then again, humanity had been killing itself for years. It was only recently that they found new and exciting ways and reasoning.

He tried to remember that the good doctor wasn’t a mad scientist from a horror movie as he stood outside the gray metal door of Dr. Baker’s office.

At least he tried.

Dr. Baker was an odd man with an office straight out of a horror movie. It was a windowless box frozen in time. Maybe it was the red over white Chevy and the posters of Elvis filling every spare corner of whitespace, or maybe it was the stupid blacklight lava lamp on the desk.

Wilfrey nodded to the skeletal Frankenstein butler standing to the right of the door frame. Sitting across from Dr. Baker was a small skeleton posed with crossed legs on a red armchair. There was a skull on each of the bookshelves behind Baker’s desk and volumes of old medical tomes spilled over the edges and down from the shelves to form a pile on the floor. Wilfrey stepped over a pile of bones and the rumpled tuxedo that held them together. As always, the room stunk of pale amonnia and the faint mint of formaldehyde.

“Well, good morning sunshine. You’re late. Some other swinging dick already got my file on our linebacker.” Dr. Baker’s bespeckled face peaked out from above the top of a manilla folder.

“So I hear. How ya been, Doc?”

“You know, living the dream. Hanging out with some friends.” Dr. Baker dropped the folder onto his green ink blotter and waved across the room. “Sit down, damn if you don’t make me nervous.”

Wilfrey eyed some of the good doctor’s friends and decided to stand. “I’d hate to interrupt some of your friends. They look comfy.”

“Hogwash! Barnaby could use the exercise, couldn’t you?” When the skeleton in the red chair did not move, Baker shrugged. “Think he’s taking a nap. May as well sit down next to him. Go ahead. Don’t mind the books.”

Pleather wasn’t his favorite choice, and the cracked legs on the chair looked about to give. But, he was getting old. And a seat was a seat.

“Margorie just cleaned the office the other day, don’t worry. Nothing’s going to bite you. Dead is dead. And death is harmless. Mostly.”

When Wilfrey finally sat down on the rickety old chair, Baker steepled his fingers and almost smiled a crooked kind of smile.

Michael Wilfrey adjusted his coat around his legs, it wasn’t meant for sitting. “Death may be harmless, but the moments before look like some of the nastiest, most uncomfortable moments of your life.”

“Not always. There’s a chance of the good one. Like taking a shit, or getting a blowjob.”

“Or getting your head blown to pieces.”

“Well. There is that.”

Seconds passed in uncomfortable silence.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a pleasure trip for you, huh Mike?” Baker eased forward. “It’s been what? Two months? Three?”

“Two and a half.”

“And you’re still blaming yourself?”

“Not for nothing, Doc, but it’s kind of awkward visiting your ex-wife’s brother in law.”

“Come now. Sheila wouldn’t find it awkward.”

And therein lied the problem. Different strokes for different folks, and all that horribly marshmallowed cliche crap.

“How is she doing, anyway?”

“My guess is you don’t mean Peggy.”

“Fuck her.”

“Sheila’s doing good. She asks about you, you know. Just because you’re not still married to her sister doesn’t mean you can’t not be friendly, ya know. You only get so much time. May as well enjoy what little you got left.”

Wilfrey coughed, demonstrating his health. “Strong as a bull, Doc.”

“You need to quit. Barnaby said so too.”

“A plastic skeleton told you to tell me that he told you that he wants me to quit smoking? And Marlene said I’m crazy.”

“Well, she never liked us much anyway. Me, Barnaby, or Sheila.”

“She didn’t like much of anyone.”

The air grew heavy, for a moment it seemed like there were storm clouds pushing through drywall and ready to rain down on Baker’s tiny office. The chair creaked in the silence, a book rocked and gave way, tumbling down onto the hard tile beneath. That settled it.

An exclamation point on an already shitty visit.

“So. The girl.” He didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

“Right. The girl.” Baker smiled and readjusted his glasses, he picked up the file with an almost gusto and started rifling through the pages like a child would tear the paper off a Christmas present. “You gave me a good one! A real good one. Problem is, I think you sent it to the wrong doctor.”

“Dead body goes to the creepy perverts like yourself, right? Or did the protocol change?”

The light in his eyes dimmed for a moment, creases formed across his brow. The storm clouds darkened. “I’m not creepy.”

That was awkward.

“It’s just. Sure, we can rule her a homicide. But, the problem is, most of them cuts just aren’t natural. Well, I mean they are. But not a weapon. Here.”

Baker pulled a photograph from the file, the tiny periods of a paperclip formed a line down the white strip. The image was a close up of the girl’s arms. What he had previously thought were no more than pinpricks of an emerging addict now looked like a vicious puncture not made by human hands. It almost looked like burning, blackened flesh. Like a magic picture, the more he stared, the clearer it became. These weren’t defensive, they were sadistic.

Post-mortem.

“Bite marks, like from an animal. My guess is large dog. But they’re in a strange place. Tore her and her friend limb from bloody limb.”

Wilfrey nodded. “Vampire dog? Drinking the blood of a dead girl?”

“And I’m the crazy one?”

“What’s up with the blackening there?”

“Burning.”

“Thought so.”

“Like the damn flames of hell itself came out to charrbroil our pretty little girl. But they’re only on the wrists. And the pattern is wrong. They almost look like somebody’s hand was gripping hers.”

“So, the devil grabbed her hands and let Fido suck her blood?”

“Sure. Why not. It gets weirder though.” Baker replaced the image of the girl’s arms with the one that Wilfrey did not want to see.

When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back. Wilfrey shuddered and looked up, staring at the leather spines of aging books resting against the wall. Gilded lettering stared back. It was better than the abyss.

“Now this.” Baker paused, “this is fucked up. Mostly because she was still alive when it happened. This. This is what killed her. But it looks like it happened so fast. The human body is remarkable. Kind of like a failsafe on a switch. When something bad happens, the body does its best to recover and prevent a massive system-wide failure. She didn’t have time. I’d hate to say it, but that just looks painful. When the blade went in, the bad guy twisted it. See.” Baker pointed to the fishtail style cut on the girl’s chest. “Wrenched it wide open. The chest cracking is what worries me though. Ribs aren’t meant to spread like that.”

“Sadistic surgeon?” Wilfrey’s face was blanching, his voice was strained.

“Doubtful. There’s no perfect pattern, it almost looks like it was done by hand. But you can’t crack the human ribcage like you can the bones of a roasted chicken. It just wouldn’t work. This, this is almost like massive jaws clamping down and cracking bone. Actually, it is more consistent with a canine bite than a homicide. But the pressure alone. Shit, unless there’s a velociraptor on the loose, I can’t think of anything that powerful.”

“What about…” the pause hurt “…what belongs inside the ribs?”

“That. Now that’s the interesting part. Definitely a puncture weapon. Like maybe a screwdriver or an icepick.” Baker looked up, seeing Wilfrey’s face, he decided to go with candy. Everyone liked candy. “Our —care package—was removed with a quick, almost thrust like manueuver from something without a sharp edge. Almost like a butterknife, or a decorative dagger. You know, the things that aren’t supposed to kill somebody, but somehow always do.”

The euphanism sucked. But Wilfrey didn’t like hearing it anyway. “Please tell me she was already dead.”

“Just about. I think her heart came out as she took her last breath. That’s not the problem though. Whoever took it out, decided they wanted to take a bite. Like a fucking apple, Mike.”

There were no words.

“Good news is, she probably didn’t feel a thing. Poor girl was high as a kite. You should have seen the toxicology. It’s amazing the drugs didn’t kill her first.”

“Maybe they did.”

“Who’s the doctor here, Mike?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Any luck on figuring out who my pretty little corpse is?”

“Unfortunately.”

“You going to go break the bad news?”

“Gotta. She deserves to know that Lyton PD fucked up and we couldn’t find her missing kid until it was too late.”

“From what Lori told me, it didn’t seem like it was your fault at all. Mom didn’t report her missing til she was long dead. What? Eight hours later?”

“Genoa killed enough kids, Doc.”

“You can’t take it personal. You did the best you could.”

“Best wasn’t good enough. It never is.”

“Look, I told you about that.” Baker opened his drawer, the sound of wood sliding was like thunder in the room. He found a small piece of cardboard and held it between his fingers. “Here. You need to talk to somebody. Please?”

“I don’t need a shrink.”

Baker dropped the card in Wilfrey’s pocket. “It’s not a shrink. Trust me. She’s good.”

“I’m not crazy, Doc.”

“I know, Mike. I know.”

That was that. Some things can break a man; this was one of those things. Wilfrey stood up and stepped zombie-like out into the maze of hallways and cubicles of the offices beyond. He paused to brush a cold tear off his cheek.

“Please call her.” Dr. Baker called out to the fading form of a friend he no longer knew.

The walk back to his car was a haze of memories he wished he left in Genoa.