Trail

Detective Andrew Lowman investigates the most recent scene of Raker's slaughter...

 

Trail

The Dead Man does not remember going home.

But find himself there he does; pacing the floor without the threadbare condolence of a conscious thought. Instead he occupies the space between illusions and dreams, the only sound he makes like a long, low scream taken by its throat and torn apart until it only echoes inward.

He waits, but does not know he waits.

His footsteps slide softly over the floorboards, a steady four-four like the click of teeth in an old skull unceremoniously kicked down a stairwell. His room. His cell. He paces it like a caged animal.

How he longed to run headlong toward the next in line and simply have done.

“Soon,” whispers the voice behind his eyes. “But not yet.”

***

“Holy tap-dancing Christ.”

Detective Lowman ducked under the fluorescent police tape just in time to hear the responding officer’s blasphemous benediction, and let his eyes adjust to the brilliant xenon glare of the flashlight which hastily swung in his direction.

Apparently he’d startled him.

“What’ve we got.” He looked away from the flash and toward what was probably the living-room of this particular place. The stereo still shed its blue glow, though it paled in comparison to the riotous blaze of the high-watt search-light.

“Uh, one body, gunshot wound. Probable homicide. Sir.”

Lowman turned toward the source of the blinding glow. A scowl creased the weary lines and stubble which composed his face.

“Point that damned thing somewhere useful. I can feel my retinas detaching.”

“Sorry, sir.” The light swung away, lighting the far corner of the ceiling. “Neighbors reported a gunshot less than twenty minutes ago.”

Lowman grunted his understanding as he approached the responding officer, angling past a half-wall and through a doorway before reaching what might’ve been a dining room with a French door leading to the backyard.  He found himself finally getting a good look at him rather than the florid glow of his flashlight. He was young, thin, and more than a little ashen. Lowman glanced down at the body, flicking on his own flashlight, and understood why.

DOA. No doubt. Gunshot wound hardly began to describe the damage. The corpse at the young officer’s feet was missing its lower jaw and a fair amount of its throat. It slumped against the wall, sitting gangle-limbed like a marionette with cut strings. A spray of blood, black in the dim lighting, and tissue painted the surrounding wall, a heavy smear trailing down indicating the drooping path of the body. In the epicenter of the carnage, a neat hole punched through the wall, indicating the path and power of the bullet.

And above it all, the scrawled words, done in blood: “I know why Jesus wept.”

Lowman whistled through his teeth. “Very nice. Where’re the ghouls?”

“Fifteen minutes.” His voice shook.

“Good. Get them sweeping.” Lowman took a pair of latex gloves out of the right pocket of his black windbreaker and pulled them over his ham-hock hands. “Let me know if they find anything interesting.”

“Interesting? What about this is uninteresting?”

Lowman gave a rumbling sort of chuckle and pointed in the direction of the body. “When you see enough of these, they start to lose their effect.” He caught the other officer’s gaze with his own, looking for signs of stress. “This your first?”

The officer nodded mutely.

“You alright?”

Another nod. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Good boy.

“Keep it together until the coroner gets here. You’re doing fine.”

Another quick bob of the head, almost as if it was an instinctual response to the detective’s voice. Lowman gave him what he hoped was an encouraging half-smile and a light pat on the shoulder before he turned toward the rest of the house.

“Gonna have a look around?”

Lowman offered a grunt in the affirmative and a nod of his own as he walked into the living area, inquisitive brown eyes following the beam of his flashlight as he scanned the coffee-table. Three beer bottles stood as mute green glass sentinels, two on the side closest to the couch, the other resting on the end table a good six feet away from its brothers.

Two drinkers then.

The stereo had been paused, the digits of the fluorescent blue display winking slowly on and off. CSI would want to dust that one for prints, just in case it had been the killer who had put a stop to the music. Lowman looked away and turned toward the rest of the house, letting his flashlight’s little circle of illumination probe the darkness and trace the outline of walls and furniture as he wound his way into the kitchen.

Standard fixtures. Fridge, stove, sink, microwave, toaster, coffeemaker. Nothing unusual.

And yet.

The eye of his light scurried across the floor toward the breakfast nook and the doorway which still stood open like the mouth of a corpse.

“The house secure?” He called over his shoulder, never taking his eyes from the door.

“Yes sir, but the backdoor was left open.” came the disembodied voice of the young cop in the next room.

Lowman nodded to himself and stepped lightly over kitchen tile and toward the door. With one latex-gloved hand he traced the doorjamb and knob. No abrasions to the jamb, no scars on the lock…no signs of stress or forced intrusion.

But then why the hell was the door open?

He poked his head outside and ran his flashlight over the backyard. No heavy tread of a fleeing perp, no blood, no torn and mangled section of grass to indicate a failed attempt at escape.

“Detective!”

Lowman wheeled, “Yeah?”

The rookie waved him inside. “Coroner’s here.”

Lowman nodded and shuffled inside, puzzled. A reflex, honed by countless crime scenes, caught before he could close the door behind him. Wouldn’t do to go tampering with the evidence, now would it?

He broke into the glare of halogen searchlights which the rookie had been about setting up with a wince to see the coroner, a moderately overweight man in a blue windbreaker and wire-rim glasses, as promised, crouched over the body.

“What’s your prognosis doctor?”

“Not good.” The coroner offered somberly. “He’s dead, Jim.”

“Har-dee-har-har,” Lowman groaned.

“Ah, c’mon, laugh a little. You’ll live longer.” He pressed a gloved finger into the entry-wound for a purpose which Lowman could only guess at.

Ghouls.

“What can you give me?”

“Well,” the coroner drew the word out, letting it segue into a sigh before taking up the sentence again, “looks like a gunshot wound from point blank. See the powder burns?” He turned the ruined head obligingly. “That kind of stippling is text-book. Single projectile. Big one, too. A .357 or .44.”

“Least it was quick.”

The coroner chuckled. What he found funny was nothing Detective Andrew Lowman wanted to hear. “I’ve got this, Detective. I don’t need a sitter.”

Lowman was glad for the excuse to get away from the macabre spectacle of the doctor examining the body. After ten years on the force, seeing the medical examiners picking over the corpses still managed to…well “freak him out” wasn’t quite the right word. Nor was “made him queasy.” It was more of a moderately unpleasant sort of churn in the pit of his stomach. The way they treated the rag-doll remnants of humanity like any other slab of meat, it made him worry.

Suddenly he felt like apologizing to the rookie.

“I’ll be in the back.”

“Mmmhmmm,” came the absent-minded reply as the ghoul peered into the gaping hole in the top of the corpse’s head.

Lowman took the hallway which gouged into the wall just beyond the entry-way and into the remaining unexplored depths of the house. A guest bedroom, a bathroom, a laundry-room and entrance to the garage passed without incident.

“Where the f**k is that other vertebrae?” The coroner’s voice chased him through the hall. “Oh, wait…never mind.” Lowman tried not to picture the scene, but felt his stomach do a slow somersault anyway. Ghouls.

Only when the slightly-ajar door of what had to be the master suite loomed before him did Lowman take more than cursory note. Perhaps it was the five points of blood which stood speared in the illumination of his flashlight upon the pristine white of the door, just above the knob.

Lowman pushed the door open with the toe of his boot, angling the beam into the widening crack between door and jamb. As he’d suspected. Master suite.

The motes of dust which lingered in every house danced through the beam of his flashlight, bisecting the space between Lowman and the queen-size bed which dominated the far wall. A doorway to his left led into a well-appointed little bathroom with…

He started, one hand reaching for the comforting weight of his gun which nestled in its shoulder-rig beneath his coat, nearly drawing before he realized that it was only his reflection in the wall-length mirror over the dual sinks. Jumping at shadows.

Lowman let out a short breath, getting a quick grip. When he pushed one foot in front of the other, he resolved to steel himself. No use twitching about like a rookie. Thick pile carpeting muffled his footfalls, punctuated only by the slam of a door from somewhere else in the house. The coroner, no doubt, removing the body.

He pivoted smoothly when he reached the midpoint of the room, casting the light over the furnishings. A scarred oak dresser there. A nightstand there, holding the requisite and friendly glowing green numerals which seemed like such a fixture in every other home. A blue leather armchair and a brushed aluminum lamp in the corner with an adjoining little table bearing a telephone.

 Pretty standard. The same sort of fixtures which made life possible in every corner of the city. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary...certainly nothing which might prove a factor in the investigation.

And then the flashlight’s beam swept over the painting. The illumination caught on the jagged texture of the paint which looked as though it had been applied with a palette-knife rather than a brush. Thick slashes of black and silver became branches, which folded themselves about the upper edge and sides, trees which framed the figure which made up the painting’s focus. The background was applied with a soft brush, light stippling of blue-gray with the faintest haze of orange on the distant horizon created the effect of slowly breaking dawn behind the solitary figure of a man, surrounded by the scarred remnants of a burnt out building.

But it was the figure himself that was so arresting. It was the figure of a man, but vaguely wrong somehow; ludicrously pale, draped in a long black coat. The whipcord lithe frame of his body turned away from the viewer of the painting. Long black hair fell just past his shoulders as he turned to regard any who dared look upon him with vacant black eyes like gateways into a realm of liquid shadow.

It was the eyes that did it. Pupil-less, fathomless, achromatic, and wrong, they still seemed to follow Lowman as he stepped closer. The expression which prevailed over the figure’s face was no better. Under the glare of Lowman’s flashlight, the lips of the figure were set into a grim line, a frown of accusation.

A small silver plaque, stained red with yet more blood, stood in contrast to the matte-black frame. Lowman bent closer to read it, struggling with lettering which seemed to have been crossed out with blood in the same fashion with which a careful editor would use a red pen. The inscription read, “Remnant”.

The bloody smear beneath it read “Rage.”

Lowman backed away and took a cursory glance around the room, doing his best to ignore the creeping unease which began to gnaw hungrily in the pit of his gut. The hair on the back of his neck alerted him to a danger he could not see, but damn it all, he didn’t believe in spooks…and that was all that was left in this house. A couple chain rattling ghosts, nothing more.

“Rage…” Lowman muttered the word as though it would suddenly materialize as a key which would break the case wide open and get him the hell out of that blood-soaked house.

Nothing further in the Master suite. A sitting room with a sofa and a television, the victim’s bed, nothing obviously taken or missing. No evidence of theft. Nothing so simple. Only Rage.

Detective Lowman moved back into the front area of the house and found the coroner taking pictures of the spattering of blood against the wall, making sure that he got the initial spray from the exit wound as well as the broad streak which marked the victim’s descent to the floor.

“So?” Lowman asked.

“So, he’s dead. Pretty ugly way to go, too. Obvious homicide, and brutal at that.”

“Perp was probably close to the victim.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“No forced entry.”

“Trauma to the left side of the face. Argument.”

“Blunt force?”

“Probably pistol-whipped.”

“No weapon?”

“That’s your department.” The medical examiner turned his camera on the heavily scrawled words on the wall, the light of the flashbulb casting lurid shadows across the sticky red epitaph.

“Right. What do you think of that?”

The ghoul shook his head with a chuckle. “Product of a deranged mind.”

“More of the same in the back.”

“I’ll get it.”

“So what do we think?”

“I think our boy’s lucky. Halloween’s just around the corner.” The ghoul displayed a set of faintly yellow teeth in a wicked parody of a grin.

“At least a hundred comedy clubs in the city and you’re auditioning here?”

“I’m telling you, Detective, lighten up.”

Detective Andrew Lowman grimaced and headed for the door and a cup of coffee, a stream of variables and bloody scenarios rushing through his head, and atop it all, the empty black eyes of the figure in the portrait.

“You’ll live longer.”

***

            Raze sat on the end of his bed, clad in a pair of jeans and the black tube-socks which still smelled a little too heavily of boots. He rested his bare elbows on his knees and stared at the Ouija board. He’d reopened the box, returned it’s planchette to its upright position, and stared.

            It was creeping closer to that hour of morning which only college-students, insomniacs, and the shamelessly ironic still referred to as morning. In the east, the vaguest chill gray light began to peek over the horizon.

            Or perhaps he just hoped that it was.

            He couldn’t sleep. He’d tried. Hours had ticked by as he buried his head under his sheets, ploughed a furrow though his pillow, and tossed and turned in a vague attempt to find the magical arrangement of arms and legs and breath which would allow him to fall into that velvet oblivion, sleep. It hadn’t come for him. What’s more, it wouldn’t come for him.

            His chat with the dead man had seen to that quite nicely. 

            So there he sat, staring down the piece of plastic against the glow-in-the-dark board, now stripped of its stolen luminescence by interminable hours. He willed the chip of plastic to move, to shake…to validate his worry.

            Would Raker kill again? Would the corpse go on another blood-hunt?

            Raze ran a hand through his hair, wiping away the nagging sweat which clung to his brow. It came away like the scum from the top of a neglected pool. It was autumn. The heater was on too hot. He wasn’t nervous. 

            He hazarded a glance toward his window, through he minute cracks in the mini-blinds, praying for dawn. He could be tired today. No one at school would notice. He’d nod of in Geometry. Pay off a little of his sleep-debt.

            Dawn didn’t look as near as he’d hoped. He didn’t dare turn back toward the digital clock to check the time. That would just beg for the planchette to move. If he turned around, it would jump all over the damned place…he’d hear it, but he’d miss it. He couldn’t risk that.

            “I’m nuts.” He breathed it like a ward against evil. You couldn’t be crazy if you thought you were crazy. Right? Right?

            The planchette didn’t respond. It sat perfectly still against the gray surface of the board, partially eclipsing the only slightly darker figures of the O, the N, the U, and the V. Raze folded his hands in front of his face and stared harder.

            “Come on.”

            He wasn’t crazy. He’d met the dead guy, Raker. His name was Raker. His name was Rage. The dead guy’s name was Raker…and Rage. He wasn’t crazy.

            Good God, he sounded f*****g batty.

            For a moment, Raze was very glad that no one was privy to these little internal monologues. He didn’t need anyone else to call him crazy. That had the opposite effect of calling yourself crazy.

            The planchette moved.

            Didn’t it?

            Raze got down onto his knees, peering down at the little triangle of plastic set on its three felt-tipped feet. He brushes aside an inside-out t-shirt which reeked of dope and Doritos and drew closer. He held his face only a foot away from the board, straining to see what the planchette spelled out.

            Seconds ticked by and became minutes.

            Movemovemovemovepleasefuckingmove. He wasn’t crazy. This had to be real.

            It moved.

            Felt rasped against textured laminate over pressboard and dragged like steel wool over satin. Raze heaved a sigh of relief and immediately thought better of it. Raker would only contact him if…

            “T-w-o-d-o-w-n.” The board began, moving with the languid slowness of a triumphant lion with a belly full of buffalo.

            Raze reached out and placed his shaking hands on the planchette. Obligingly, the plastic tile stopped it’s tugging toward the inky mark of the “T” and waited patiently for Raze to ask a question.

            “Rage?”

            The planchette, if this were any other spirit, would have whipped itself to the space marked “Yes”. As it was, Raze and Rage were beyond all that, and the injection-molded marker instead nearly vibrated with a willingness to answer the coming question.

            “Did you just kill someone?”

            This time the planchette did whip itself to “Yes” with an obvious air of triumph, nearly wrenching itself out of Raze’s hands with its eagerness to answer.

            Raze wet his lips with a tongue only slightly more moist than a sheet of sandpaper in the Serengeti. Dry season. He lowered his voice and asked the million dollar question.

            “Who?”

            And Rage showed him.

            Raze, when he was no longer a prisoner in his own mind, viewing the murder from the ink-soaked black and white of Raker’s own eyes, found himself gasping and heaving on his floor. He could still smell the fruity, copper-penny scent of blood cloying about him in thick clouds and he felt his gorge rise into his throat. It was all over him. Under his skin.

            Raze hurled open his door, racing for the bathroom. He fell to his knees and retched into the toilet, digging his fingers into the firm white porcelain until he knew his fingernails were going to break.

            “Alright, Wally. Geeze…you can stay home.”

            His mother stood in the doorway as his body forced more bile from his throat. Dawn had come.   

            “Back in bed.” Came his mother’s no-nonsense voice, as stern and authoritative as a five-nothing secretary can manage.

            Wally went back to bed, pulled the sheets over his head, and prayed to forget all that he had seen.

***

The Dead Man does not notice that his Demon is elsewhere, only that his thoughts are remarkably clear as he checks and rechecks the revolver. The sun emerges again and he moves to the room without light, the chamber with the blackout shade.

He’d always worked in darkness, even when he’d drawn breath.

Looking down at the canvas splashed in his own blood, he balls his hands into fists. So much was left undone. So many beautiful things.

But now the Dead Man has a new canvas on which to fashion a masterpiece.

In a dark room in a house abandoned by all but the dead, a man envisions himself a monument to the uttermost depths of Misery, Spite, and Rage.