A Samhain Birthday.

It is strange how the mind works, she spent a lot of time reflecting on this, it was as if she had lived two separate lives. The one that began when she came to this huge mausoleum of a house, and the one before that, the one her mind refused to recollect. The people she shared this house with were cold and distant; they were neither cruel nor loving. By and large, they were indifferent to her; this was the only way she could think to describe them. The woman of the house was petite with raven hair that she wore in a bun, her features were finely chiselled and she guessed that men might call her beautiful. The girl could never remember her laughing or even to crack a smile, but she had seen her angry on just one occasion and in truth just that once was enough to instil a hefty dose of fear in her towards the woman.

It was a simple thing that had provoked Tanya’s anger; the girl had unthinkingly referred to her as a mother. One moment the woman’s porcelain features were set in stone and the next her expression was filled with what she could only describe as hatred, her dark eyes seemed to grow darker until they looked like orbs of ebony against her pale complexion. Tanya raised both hands in front of her, the fingers slightly bent in a claw-like fashion and the girl could have sworn her fingernails looked like talons. The deranged woman advanced across the room with those upraised claw hands extended, as if she intended to strip the very skin from the girls face or gouge her eyes out. It was only for the fact the man of the house entered the room that saved her, Aleister was a balding portly man who always appeared to have a sad expression on his face. He stood between the advancing woman and the girl and said something to Tanya in what appeared to be a foreign language which immediately seemed to placate her. It ended with Tanya storming out of the room, but not before she hissed at the girl. “I am not your mother and never refer to me like that again”.

The only other occupant of the huge rambling house was the housekeeper, a small fragile woman that looked older than god. The girl had never heard the woman speak and she communicated with the girl in a serious of gestures, the peculiar thing about this was both Tanya and her husband appeared to communicate with the old crone with neither word nor gesture. It was as they had a telepathic connection with the housekeeper, the old woman looked after all the girl’s needs, preparing her food and even laying out her clothes each morning. To be honest, the old woman gave her the creeps; she had a peculiar scent about her, a mixture of candle wax and old moldy books. Sometimes the girl would turn quickly to find the old woman staring at her, much as a cat would stare at prey he was stalking. Whenever this happened the old woman would give her a sly smile that exposed her yellowing teeth that looked as if they had been filed into points, and a strange faraway look would fill those rheumy old eyes.

Tanya and Aleister spent a lot of time away from the big old house, and apart from meal times and occasional chance meetings in the hallway, the old woman seemed to disappear for hours on end. This meant the vast majority of the girls time was spent in solitude, a large part of this solitary time would be spent trying to remember what her previous life had been like. Sometimes she fancied that portions of dreams may have been glimpses of her past life, one dream, in particular, occurred on a reasonably regular basis. It was of an emaciated woman in ragged clothes, holding the hand of an equally thin child in filthy rags, while she haggled with a couple of people in fine clothes about money. It always ended the same way, with a small pouch of coins been handed over and the woman pushing the child in the direction of the finely dressed couple. In a breaking voice, she would say. “Go on Annabelle, these fine people will look after you now.”

So since no one that she could remember had ever addressed her by a Christian name, the girl had given herself the name Annabella. She would sometimes fantasize about leaving this place and going in search of the thin woman, the woman she had become to believe was her real mother. But a part of her mind told her that this would never happen, the expansive grounds of the big house were surrounded by dense woodlands, and what lay beyond those woods she had no idea, but she always felt the house was very far from any towns or even neighbors.  The big old house stood alone, a blot on the otherwise natural setting; she sometimes fancied that it was the only dwelling in a strange empty land, a world removed from the world of mortals.

When Annabella grew tired of contemplating her life and the one that went before it, she would explore the grounds and the myriad of outbuildings that were scattered about. They seemed to multiply every now and again and she was always discovery new nooks and crannies, when she was feeling particularly brave she would go to the stone church at the far north end of the grounds. Something about this building terrified her and made her curious in equal measures; she was never inside the building as the big oak doors always remained locked. But sometimes she would climb the yew trees that dotted the graveyard surrounding the church and attempt to see inside through the stained glass windows. But the interior of the building remained a mystery except for odd shapes that stood illuminated in different colored light depending on which part of the stain glass window the sun was shining through.

But the place that she spent most time exploring was the rambling old house itself, it was strangely laid out with rooms interconnecting with other rooms, and hallways that appeared to go nowhere; it was one of these hallways that were the biggest mystery to her. On a number of occasions she had spied Tanya, Aleister, and even the old housekeeper appear or disappear down this hallway. When she went to look thereafter she found the same thing, the narrow hallway had no doorways and ended at a solid stone wall. The wall was adorned with a strange and disturbing oil painting as big as any doorway, it was a dark and troubling scene of a group of people dancing naked about a fire on a dark hillside. In the beginning, she could just about make out the pale blurs of the naked bodies in the distance, but as the years went on, the details in the painting appeared to reveal themselves a little more with each passing year.

It was almost as if the distant hilltop and the figures on it were getting closer, or as if each time she viewed the painting it was from a point on the narrow trail that led up the hill, that was closer to the subject matter. Annabella had a frightening belief that someday she would be drawn into the painting and end up on the hilltop beside the naked people cavorting around the fire. This thought troubled her yet she could not stop herself revisiting the painting time and time again, to the extent that she would sometimes find herself standing staring at it without any recollection of walking there. On other occasions, she would wake from disturbing dreams with the smell of burning wood in her nostrils as if she had been standing close to open fire. It was on one occasion when she was alone in the house, that Annabella discovered the hidden doorway behind the painting. She had been tracing the elaborate patterns carved into the frame of the painting with her fingers, her hand brushed against a raised area depicting gargoyle-like creatures and she heard a faint click, like a latch being lifted.

The section of the wall that the painting was mounted on swung inwards like a heavy door, a dark hallway was revealed on the far side. Against her better judgement, she went back down to the kitchen and fetched a lantern, she was surprised to find the hidden hallway free from dust or cobwebs. A few paces inside, the hallway doglegged to the left and here she found the room that contained the large mirror, its surface appeared to glow with silver light. The frame was handcrafted from what she believed to be gold, and the carvings on the frame were even more horrible and elaborate than that of the frame surrounding the painting that concealed this place. She was immediately fascinated and somehow frightened by the large mirror; it stood in the centre of the room on a stand like the easel of a blackboard. It was the first time she had seen herself in a full-length mirror, and she was surprised at how she looked.

For some reason, Annabella had a vision of herself as a small thin child much like the girl in her dreams, but she was shocked to see the young woman that was reflected back from the surface of the mirror. She turned sideways to see the swell of her bosoms and positioned herself at another angle and wandered at the flare of her hips, her first thought was that she was not much different than the womanly figure that Tanya had. Just how long had she been here in this house, and what was her age? A myriad of questions raced through her mind, not least of all why was the mirror hidden away here. The rest of the mirrors in the house were small and poorly made, but this one provided a reflection that seemed far superior even to real life. As if the view of the world through this mirror was greatly enhanced, everything even down to the stitching in her plain dress appeared to jump out at her. The pale green colour of her eyes looked incredibly vibrant, and the pendant of dark crystal that Tanya had given her seemed to glow with a blue light.

That mirror was to become her new obsession, every time she found herself alone in the big house she would make her way to that room. At first, she was obsessed by her own image in the mirror and spent hours studying herself at different angles, but then she found even new ways to fill her time at the mirror. Annabella would light all the oil lamps in the room and take in every inch of the room with her eyes, and then she would turn to the mirror and study the reflection of her surroundings. It amazed her at how much clearer the reflection of the room was than her own eyes, it was as if each item and spot in the room was magnified and intensified. She spotted strange symbols and gold embossed lettering on the spine of a big book that stood on a pedestal in the corner of the room, she had looked closely at that book already but her eyes had not captured what the mirror had. A stain on the Persian rug beneath her feet in what looked like red wine and was in the shape of a cloud, it jumped out at her from the mirror, yet it had been invisible to her naked eye.

Around the middle of October when the surrounding landscape was filled with color and the days grew colder and shorter, things in the household began to change. Tanya and her husband began to look at Annabella in a different way, it was as if they had suddenly realized that she was present and was becoming a woman. She would glance sideways to find them studying her with a strange expression on their faces, an expression that bothered her somehow. It was as if they were seeing her for the first time, and she fancied they looked at her with a deep longing, almost as a hungry urchin might stare through a restaurant window at the fine food on display. Another peculiar thing began to happen, her clothes that were always plain and sensible, began to be replaced by fancy dresses. The old woman would have them laid out for her in the mornings, and now and again Tanya would come and fix her hair into a ponytail held with black velvet ribbons

Also at this time an even stranger occurrence happened, they began to have visitors. Annabella would be summoned to the study on some evenings, to find strange men and women gape at her while she stood in the centre of the room. Tanya would take her hand and have her turn slowly in a circle while the guest stared at her, these strange people made her extremely uncomfortable, as they stared at her with what she could only describe as hunger in their eyes. It bothered her so much that she finally got the courage up to ask Tanya what was going on, the woman stared at her with those dark eyes so intensely that for a moment Annabella believed she was about to attack her again. But then a cold smile flickered across her stony expression, almost as if she was remembering some joke to herself. “These people will be the guests at your special celebration, in a couple of weeks; it will be the feast of Samhain and your sixteenth birthday. A very special celebration will take place and you will have a special part to play in this”.

Later that night as she lay in bed and sleep evaded her, she could still hear Tanya’s strange laughter ringing in her head. The next few days were spent almost entirely in solitude as neither Tanya nor her husband appeared to be present in the house, and the old lady only appeared at mealtimes. The weather outside took a distinct turn for the worst with incessant rain and cold easterly winds, so she spent a great deal of time in the hidden room staring into the silver surface of that mirror. It was also at this time the mirror began to show her things that she did not want to see, the crystal clear image would begin to waver and when it righted itself Annabella would see things that were not there. It was subtle at first; the color of her eyes might look slightly different, her hair might be different than she had fixed it. Or the rest of the room might fade out of existence, leaving her reflection standing alone in a dark surrounding. But soon she began to see strange and disturbing things in the background, like the distant glimmer of a fire and the pale blur of people moving around that fire.

Annabella would run from the room when this occurred and promise herself not to return, but like a moth drawn to the flame, she would invariably end up back there the following day. Sometimes she would find just her own reflection in familiar surroundings, at these times she would be relieved and somehow disappointed in equal measures. But when it showed her the visions as she came to refer to them, they slowly got darker and more terrifying. Sometimes her reflection would change to such an extent that she scarcely recognized herself, her light colored hair would appear dark as a ravens wing and her eyes would turn the color of pitch. But worse of all was the background in the reflection became the backdrop of the scene from the oil painting, and each time her reflection appeared nearer to the fire on the top of the dark hill. Annabella finally decided that she wanted to see no more, so she stayed away from the room until the night she went to bed only to find herself in her nightdress hours later standing before the mirror.

The blurring at the edges of the image alerted her to the fact it was happening again as if the mirror was the surface of a still lake. One moment the reflection was clear and sharp, and then without warning, it began to quiver at the edges. As if someone had disturbed that still water somewhere far off and the ripples had now reached the spot where her reflection stared back at her. The overwhelming reaction from within her was to turn from the mirror and run from the room, escape the room and the weirdness that was happening before her eyes. Run and keep running until this room and the very house was far behind her, keep moving until the horrors of this place were a distant memory. But just like all the times before she was frozen in time, forced to witness a sight that terrified her to the core.

It was different this time, it was still terrifying, but this time it stirred something different deep inside her. The fear and revulsion though still mind-numbing were somehow tempered now by another emotion she could not quite identify. Eventually, she identified the new emotions, as a type of morbid fascination and curiosity. Just like watching a horrific and bloody train crash, it horrified her yet she did not even attempt to turn away or even close her eyes. It was the other Annabella that stared back at her with those pitch-black eyes, she stood on the steep path that led to the hilltop. She could feel the cold breeze on her skin and her nipples strained against the material of her nightdress. She turned from the mirror and she could see the glow of the fire on the hill, the faint sound of voices chanting drifted to her ears. She wanted to scream and run from this place, but the dark Annabella wanted something else.

The coarse gravel of the steep path tore and lacerated the souls of her feet, but whatever was happening on the hill above her was more important than the pain or discomfort. Everything and every feeling faded into nothingness, all that remained was the overwhelming desire to witness what was taking place at the fire above her. It was when she finally stood in the shadow beyond the firelight that she understood, she watched the naked people dance around the fire and she recognized them. They were the visitors that had looked at her with hunger in their eyes, even the old housekeeper danced past, her leathery pouch-like breasts hanging down slackly from her chest. In the centre of the circle stood a flat rock adjacent to the fire, and she immediately recognised the naked form spread angled upon it. She stared in fascination at her own naked form, as Tanya stood above her, a wicked-looking dagger in her upraised hands.

The chanting of the dancing people reached a crescendo and something galvanised her into action, the blade in Tanya’s hand had already begun its descent when she caught her arm. The look of utter shock on Tanya’s face, as she took the blade and slit her throat brought a smile of pleasure to her face. Silence descended as the chanting ceased, and then one by one the revellers came and worshiped at her feet. Hands reached out and stripped her of her plain nightdress, and then Aleister came and draped the ceremonial cloak about her shoulders. Later as they dined on the flesh of Tanya, she realised it was the first birthday she remembered, but it was by far the best she would ever have.

Puppet Masters. Part 4. The strings that bind.

The warm sticky feeling of the blood spatters on his face should have revolted him, yet he could not prevent himself from flicking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and capturing one of the claret drops on the tip of it. He savored the coppery taste in his mouth as if it were the last morsel of a particularly fine meal; a part of his mind rebelled against this unnatural craving and screamed in protest. Yet worse was to follow, as hard as he tried to prevent it, the hand holding the blade moved inexorable closer to his salivating mouth, the claret liquid that covered the steel also contained small pieces of meat. The horror of what he was about to do hit him like a train now and a scream bubbled to his lips from somewhere deep inside him. The sound that uttered through his blood-stained lips was even more disturbing than the primeval scream he had expected, it was guttural growl that grew in intensity and threatened to push him over the edge into the darkness of insanity. Somewhere in his unhinged mind a small frightened voice pleaded for this madness to end, pleaded and cried like a child separated from its mother.

The sound of a voice crying and pleading awoken him from the hell he was forced to endure, he was not surprised to find himself weeping like a child. The dream had been so horrifyingly realistic that Costello for one terrifying moment could taste blood in his mouth, the image from the dream where he was about to lick that gory blade, flashed vividly in his mind’s eye. He immediately reached for the door handle and pulled it hard, all the while fighting against his gag reflexes. The door of the car was scarcely open when the contents of his stomach erupted on to the sidewalk, he had not eaten anything substantial in the last couple of days and the vomit consisted of stale whiskey and bile that burned his throat. None the less he continued to retch until his sides ached and the tears streamed down his face when it finally past he barely had the strength to sit upright in the car, and the view of the street through the windscreen was blurry and out of focus. Costello could feel it now he was fast approaching the limits of his physical and mental strength, if he did not get a handle on this pretty soon, he was heading for meltdown.

The clock on the dashboard read twelve-fifteen a.m. but Casey’s car was still parked outside the station house, as was the fancy motor belonging to the assistant police commissioner. Several times over the past couple of hours, Costello had contemplated walking into Casey’s office and demanding to know what exactly was going on. But the feeling that he was already stitched up for at least one murder, cautioned against him demanding answers without any proof as to his right to ask the questions. He had driven here to the station directly after leaving Catherine Boyce’s apartment; he had some vague intention of cornering Casey and confronting him with his suspicions. But just as he arrived he saw both men enter the building together, and the voice of caution in his mind told him to wait until he managed to get Casey on his own. Apart from whatever time he spent dozing and caught up in that horrifying dream, the rest of his time was spent watching and waiting to see if either man left.

What exactly he hoped to get from confronting his superior officer he really did not know, but desperation makes people do desperate things. Costello vaguely wondered whether when he looked back on all this, if he would regret not running from the whole situation. Thirty minutes later both men exited the rear of the building to the car park, Murray held an animated discussion with Casey who appeared to be almost cowering in the man’s presence. Eventually, Murray just turned on his heels and stormed off towards his car, before stopping just as he was about to get inside. He turned and pointed his finger in Casey’s direction and uttered another monologue, the other man just nodded meekly before hanging his head. It was plain to see that Murray was not happy with Casey for some reason, and it looked for all the world as if he was threatening his subordinate. For some reason this gave Costello a faint glimmer of hope, perhaps if he could make an ally of Casey, he just might still get out of this unscathed.

Murray had left about fifteen minutes and Casey still stood in the one spot, staring in the direction the assistant police commissioner had driven. His body language, even from this distance made him look like a desperate man; a man who suddenly looked up to find the world caving in around him. Costello was still unsure how he should proceed with this, his mind had formed a picture of what he believed was going on, but it was a splintered picture that made little or no sense when exposed in the bright light of logic. He could imagine Casey’s reaction when confronted by Costello’s suspicions, perhaps he would laugh at the absurdity of them, but one thing for certain was the fact that Costello would end up in an interview room. He had breached enough regulations in the recent past to see him at least lose his job, and more than likely end up on criminal charges ranging anywhere from perverting the course of justice, up to and including first-degree homicide.

Costello began to fret even more at his latest train of thought, it was clear to him now that even putting his head in the door of the station would be a bad idea. He watched Casey climb into his vehicle, when he drove off Costello followed him. What exactly he intended to do he was not sure, all he knew was he needed to confront Casey but as far from the police station as possible. A mile or so into the journey Casey pulled off the street into the car park of an all-night liquor store, he went in and reappeared moments later carrying a brown paper bag containing what Costello presumed to be bottles. Casey hesitated before getting in the car and looked furtively about as if he felt he was being observed, his gaze moved in the direction of where Costello was parked watching him, and for one horrible moment, it felt as if Casey was staring directly at him. A sigh of relief escaped him when Casey got behind the wheel and moved off; Costello followed him more cautiously this time.

Casey turned into a leafy street in an area of town that Costello was not familiar with; the houses here all had their own gardens and driveways. This was not the kind of place you would expect a man on Casey’s salary to be living; these were the type of houses in the area of town that would attract bank managers and company executives. Up ahead the blinking light of Casey’s indicator brought Costello back to the present, the house was on the far end of the street next to a green belt with mature trees covering it. Costello parked by the sidewalk a hundred yards back and watched Casey’s car disappear into the driveway. A myriad of questions ran through his mind now, who else lived with Casey, how would Casey react if he were to call to the door, and the most important question, what do I say to him. The indecision was causing paralysis in him now, and he found himself swigging on the whiskey flask without any memory of taking it from the glove compartment. The fiery liquid eventually calmed his racing mind, and he came to a decision, it was now or never.

The house was even more impressive up close, and the grounds appeared to be maintained by professional gardeners. He really knew nothing about Casey’s financial situation, but a halfwit would realize that his police salary would not stretch to cover this. A light burned in the window of a downstairs room, while the rest of the house remained in darkness. Costello was emboldened now by the whiskey, and he walked straight to the front door and rang the bell. The door opened almost immediately on to an unlit hallway, Costello had the distinct impression Casey had been standing waiting to answer the bell. Something about the whole situation quickly dispelled any false courage he had gained from the alcohol, and Costello was suddenly very nervous again. The unearthly silence that hung in the air was broken by the sound of footsteps retreating from the door down the hallway, and a door was opened flooding the darkness with weak light.

Costello was paralyzed on the doorstep now, and the adrenaline flooding his system with a fight or flight urge, made him feel giddy and even more unsure of himself. “Come in Costello I have been expecting you, I am only surprised it took you this long to get here”. Casey’s disembodied voice drifted ominously to him from the room that was the source of the light, Costello’s legs moved without bidding and he walked inside as if in a trance. Casey sat in a winged back chair by the side of an elaborate marble fireplace, his legs crossed; he held a glass of whiskey in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other. In stark contrast to how he looked in the car park a while ago, Casey looked relaxed and a faint smile played across his lips. Nothing about the man pointed to anything other than someone who was glad a friend had turned up to have a chat, a benevolent uncle that was glad to see his favorite nephew. The whole thing seemed almost surreal and Costello quickly shifted from being nervous, to be absolutely terrified.  

“Sit down and relax Costello you look like you have just seen a ghost, I am sure we can work everything out with a frank conversation”. Casey gestured to the seat opposite him, a glass of whiskey stood on a side table by the empty chair. It was almost as if the meeting had been pre-arranged and Costello had been running a little late, everything seemed prepared for his presence even down to the glass of whiskey and a clean ashtray. “Sit down Kevin, relax have a sip of whiskey, light a cigarette, you seem tense, we will explain everything to you in due course. In the meantime try not to be so uptight, it is bad for your health”. The faint smile on Casey’s face had morphed into a smirk now, and he checked his wristwatch as if he was expecting a call. As if on cue, Costello heard the front door open and footsteps approaching down the hallway, it came as little surprise to him when assistant police commissioner Murray walked into the room. Murray nodded in Casey’s direction before walking to the drinks cabinet and taking a crystal glass that he filled with whiskey, all the time he ignored Costello as if he was not even there.

Once Murray had taken the first sip of whiskey he again nodded to Casey, only then did he turn to treat Costello to a withering stare. Casey took a deep swallow from his glass and cleared his throat before beginning to speak. “Kevin you seem to have landed yourself in a bit of bother here, dare I say you have backed yourself into a very narrow corner. Now how you extract yourself from this is entirely up to yourself, we are quite willing to throw you a lifeline here, but like most things in life there are conditions attached to this lifeline.” Casey paused and took a deep drag from his cigarette, blowing a cloud of smoke in Costello’s direction while he allowed his words to sink in. “You see, Kevin your partner fulfilled certain tasks on our behalf before he was unfortunately murdered”. Costello was about to rebuke this statement until an evil look from Murray silenced him. “As I was saying, Kevin, Jack Conan handled some very important and delicate work on our behalf, and now we must replace him. This is where your chance comes in, if you are willing to take over those tasks in a diligent manner, then everything that has occurred in the past few days gets forgotten.”

A boiling hot rage erupted from deep inside Costello when he realized what they were asking him to do, he was almost to his feet when Murray moved with incredible speed. A hand like a steel vice clamped on his throat and lifted him from the floor before slamming him back into the chair, he could not breathe and was on the point of passing out before the hand was removed. The man’s strength was unnatural and later when he looked back; Costello could have sworn the man’s eyes glowed red with fury. While he gasped to regain his breath Casey sat calmly sipping his drink and waiting for him to recover, Murray had somehow managed to return to his former position in the blink of an eye. “I don’t think you are quite grasping the seriousness of your position Kevin”. Casey said calmly before handing him a manila envelope containing photographs. With trembling hand, Costello opened the envelope and looked through the photographs.

The first photographs he looked at were of him sitting in the car with the hooker, others showed him staring out the window of Conan’s apartment at his partner’s mangled body, while even more showed him fleeing the scene. The last set was of him standing naked in the window of Catherine Boyce’s apartment and more that showed him arriving and leaving her apartment when she was already dead. “Oh! By the way, Kevin just as another point of interest, that prostitute you entertained with coffee in your car, met a very grisly end that very night”. The absolute and utter hopelessness of his situation finally hit him, the photographs slipped from his limp fingers and he hung his head and cried for a very long time. Costello wept like a man who had lost everything he had ever loved, for in one way this job was all he had ever loved.

The young girl stood out like a sore thumb, while everyone one else hurried to someplace or other they needed to be. She stood frightened and disorientated in the center of the busy railway station, her few sparse belongings clutched tightly in her fist in a canvas shoulder bag. He watched the terrified teenager for a while to see if anyone approached her, but the busy people passed her by as if she was invisible. A, part of him wanted to turn on his heels and leave the runaway to whatever fate awaited her, but he already knew what fate awaited the pretty girl. It was too late for the girl and it was already far too late for him, he had walked the dark path that offered no return. He put on his most concerned look as he approached her, he could see she was getting ready to flee as he approached, but when he flashed the badge she stopped. Later in the car, she babbled on and on, about making a new life in the city for herself, he just turned up the radio and tuned his mind out.

Costello led the girl to the big limousine with the blackout windows, she had gone silent now and the nervousness had returned. He turned to her and gave what he believed was a reassuring smile; he knew by the way her body went rigid that she was not reassured. In the end he just shoved her into the back seat and closed the door, he heard the locking mechanism engage. He walked back to his car without as much as a backward glance; he had learned at the beginning that the only way to survive was to shut out all emotions. Now he had a better insight into what had made his ex-partner Jack Conan, such a bitter and disagreeable man. Costello stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of Jameson, he had gone through a quarter of it by the time he pulled over the car. The rest he kept for his special place, the place where he knew it would all end someday.

 Costello sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the rooftop parapet; the breeze up here was enough to rock him slightly backward. The view of the pavement far below was blurred and faded in and out of focus, the whiskey had left free of all fears now. “It is a long way down Kevin, but it only takes seconds, a brief instant of pain and it is all over”. Costello raised the bottle to his mouth and swigged deeply, before turning his head in the direction of the lisping voice. “If you keep swigging from the bottle you might not even have to jump, you are swaying already”. In the beginning the vision of Conan sitting here long side him, with his strange distorted head, really disturbed Costello, but that was only in the beginning. Now he almost welcomed the spectral figure, which came here time and time again to mock him. He turned from the street below and climbed back onto the roof, he was not ready to end his misery yet. “Next time Kevin, perhaps you will do it next time, remember one jump and your puppet strings break.” Costello left the roof with the strange lisping laughter of Conan ringing in his ears.

Puppet Masters, Part 3. Following the Strings.

He took the handkerchief that was covering the mouthpiece and hung up the phone, and pulling the brim of his fedora low over his forehead he quickly walked away from the phone kiosk. Keeping to the shadows he hurried towards the car, parked two blocks away in an unlit alleyway. His breathing was ragged by the time he made it back; he was unsure whether it was the brisk walk, or that disturbing scene that he had just witnessed, was causing his labored breathing and that tight feeling in his chest. All he did know was that his life had become a whole lot more complicated in the past twenty-four hours. The awful feeling that things were rapidly running out of control on him, jangled his already frayed nerves. A frightened voice in the midst of the panic that filled his head told him to drive away as fast as he could and don’t come back.

His hands were trembling so hard that the match he held quenched and he had to light two more before he managed to spark the cigarette into life, he inhaled deeply and held the acrid smoke in his lungs until his chest burned and his heartbeat like a bass drum. The act of slowing exhaling the smoke seemed to dispel some of the anxiety with it, and by the time he lit the second cigarette, he felt calmer. It took some effort but he finally managed to silence the myriad of voices in his head, which bombarded his mind with questions he could not answer, at least in his present state. Calm down and take this one step at a time, he kept repeating this mantra until he drove everything else from his mind. When the radio squawked into life, his heart almost stopped. “Jumper reported on Sycamore Avenue, will any cars in the vicinity please attend.” This was what he had been waiting for, but suddenly Costello was rooted to the spot in fear.

The radio crackled as a cruiser reported in the fact that they were available to attend, Costello forced himself to react to the call and reported to the dispatcher that he would attend. However he waited another twenty minutes before driving the short distance to Conan’s apartment, even then he drove slowly praying that he would not be the first to arrive. The sight of flashing lights from the cruiser went some way to make him a little less anxious. He parked the car and watched a uniform roll out the crime scene tape, as he approached the scene he could make out a pool of something darker on the pavement, by the bundle of clothes that was once his partner. It was not the first time Costello had come across a fatality from falling from a height, but he never remembered it being this traumatic. The nearer he got to the spot the quicker his heartbeat, and his mouth felt as dry as a saltbox. The uniform that was cordoning off the area threw him the evil eye, and when Costello flashed his badge the cop just shrugged his shoulders in a show of indifference. The second cop stood over the body but made no effort to even determine whether he was dead or not, Costello already knew why.

The short glimpse he took of his partner before fleeing the scene earlier had left him in no doubt that he was stone dead. Conan’s head was a flat shape and speckles of brain matter, and bone splinters were spread around it like a halo. The second cop did not even bother to give a cursory glance at the badge Costello held aloft, preferring to just turn on his heels and walk away. “He is all yours Detective” he muttered over his shoulder without even looking at Costello. He would have much preferred to have gone through Conan’s pockets and the apartment when he was alone, but he would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do if he was spotted. So he had called it in, anonymously, and this way he would not draw attention to himself by turning up in answer to the radio call. He took a furtive look over his shoulder to see if the cops were watching him, but they were leaning on the patrol car smoking and gazing in the opposite direction.

For the briefest of moments, he wondered how anyone could be that indifferent to things like this, but the irony of this thought was not lost on him, he was every bit as cold and callous as the men in uniform. Except for this one and that was only because he knew the guy, but not only that, it was the fact Conan’s sudden demise could mean a whole lot of bother for him. In the distance, he heard the sound of approaching sirens, and he knew that within minutes the place would be swarming with cops and medical people. Kneeling over the body of his partner he was slightly disturbed that he felt nothing for the man, it was just one more mess that needed cleaning up. The sirens had stopped once the driver had seen the flashing light on the cruiser parked at the scene, but the place was now lit up like a fairground. Costello quickly searched Conan’s pocket, the guy’s wallet carried a little too much cash for the job he was in. But the only thing that interested Costello was the keys to the apartment.

Costello stood next to the body until the police photographer arrived; it was a different guy than last night, so before he took any pictures Costello informed him that the dead man was a detective. The guy did not seem impressed and just shrugged, before starting to click the shutter. Costello moved off and made his way to the patrol car, where he informed the cops of the dead man’s identity and asked them to contact Lieutenant Casey. As soon as the cop moved to call it in, Costello made his way into the apartment block. The first thing that struck him as he looked around the apartment with the lights on, was just how neat and tidy the place was. It was not what he would have expected from a man like Jack Conan, half the time the guy did not even bother to shave or brush his hair. The walls were covered with framed photographs of what he guessed to be Conan’s family, this discovery only served to make the situation feel even more bizarre.

If he liked to keep momentous of a past life, Conan was not much for gathering personal stuff. His wardrobe contained a couple of suits, some slacks and shirts and an assortment of ties. They were all the same make and cut, the only difference was the color and even that was a choice between navy blue or black, the shirts were plain white or plaid. His socks and underwear were neatly folded in the drawer of the bedside locker. Nothing to hint at what exactly Conan had gotten himself into, not even an address book. Costello broke off from the search as he heard voices approaching; he took one last look around the place before walking to the window and staring out. He was still watching the activity below when Casey and another guy he did not recognize walked in, one look at Casey’s face told him that he was far from happy with the situation.

Casey left without even bothering to introduce the man he was with, but not before making sure a uniformed cop was present to see Costello lock up. A last look around the apartment suddenly made him stop in the process of pulling out the door behind him, a single faded patch in the center of a wall full of photographs. Conan or someone else had removed a framed picture leaving the faded patch to identify where it had been, for some reason Costello believed it was removed very recently. Costello could not determine exactly why he felt the missing photograph was significant, but for some reason, he suddenly felt extremely anxious again. The body bag containing his ex-partner was being loaded in the rear of a coroners van by the time he reached the street; he was almost at the car when the two men approached him. He did not know them but he recognized one of them as a detective form uptown, this thing was getting stranger by the minute. “Keys for the apartment Costello?” One of the men Barked and put his hand out, the tone of his voice did not leave much room for argument. The guy just snapped the keys from his hand, and with a condescending smirk he turned on his heels.

Costello drove aimlessly around the streets his head filled with questions he could not answer, but the thing he kept coming back to was Jack Conan’s last words. “We are all just puppets, and the guys that pull the strings are really high up”. Those words had a chilling effect on him; it was an extremely disturbing feeling to realize that the enemy you sought may just be a superior officer. Costello found himself outside the all-night coffee shop he had taken the hooker to on the previous night; his mind felt as it was about to explode and the craving for the whiskey bottle was overpowering. Eventually, he forced himself to go inside, more so to escape the torture of his solitary thoughts, than any particular craving for coffee.

The bored waitress plonked the coffee in front of him and sauntered away without even making eye contact. The sprinkling of customers that were inside seemed to be all lost in their own thoughts, and he wondered just how many of them felt as disturbed as he did at this moment. Conan’s last bit of conversation continued to play a loop in his head until he felt as if he was inside his head, everything about his last words pointed to bad news for Costello. There was no way he could look at this rationally in his present state of mind, so he reached for the abandoned newspaper on the seat beside him. He needed something or anything to silence the voices in his head, it was a three-day-old copy of the local rag but he forced himself to leaf through the pages. The moment he set eyes on the photograph his heart skipped a beat, suddenly things started to fall into place.

The article covered the launch of a new police initiative to deal with runaway children that poured into the city in ever greater numbers; the photograph was taken at the main railway station. It showed a group of smiling people, pictured alongside a bulletin board depicting contact numbers for organizations and police departments that help runaways. Lieutenant Casey stood next to the man who had accompanied him to Conan’s apartment earlier that evening, the name below listed him as John Murray assistant police commissioner. In the background an even more disturbing sight was Jack Conan and a blonde woman, he immediately recognized Catherine Boyce. More pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were falling into place, but he now realized the finished picture may have him somewhere in the frame.

It came back to him like a baseball bat slamming into his head, Conan not only knew he had slept with Catherine Boyce, but he had gone out his way to explain that both  Boyce and he were just puppets. He knew there and then that he was being trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkey, and he knew just exactly who might have answers to this whole thing. The street was deserted when he pulled up, and a light was on in the bedroom of the apartment. It seemed a little peculiar that not a single other window in the building showed any light, well at least there was little chance of him being observed entering her apartment. That cold feeling down his back came over him again, the moment he saw the front door ajar. In this city, no one left their doors unlocked, and especially an attractive single woman. The moment he crossed the threshold he felt it, death had its own way of making itself known. She lay in the exact same place and position, he had last seen her. But the big difference was that her once pretty face looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to it, and the eyes were open and staring at the ceiling with a glazed look of horror.

Time suddenly lost all relevance as he stood rooted to the spot staring at the dead girl; the horror of it all was almost too much to take in. A little over twelve hours ago this woman had been alive and speaking to him, and now she would be forever captured in his mind in this terrible state. Rigor mortice had lent the illusion that the once pretty woman was now just some terrible replica of a living being beneath the sheet, the once pristine white sheets were now a disturbing shade of claret. A part of him wanted to touch her to ensure that this was not all some kind of a stress-induced illusion, but either way led only to the same conclusion, that insanity beckoned from somewhere very close by. An overwhelming sadness washed over him and he wanted to hold her and tell her how sorry he was, sorry for what exactly he could not say. Sorry for the fact that her young life had been so suddenly and brutally snuffed out or sorry for that the fact that their brief dalliance may have been the catalyst for her brutal murder.

Costello remained rigid in that one spot until his muscles began to ache; it was as if he had been turned to stone. His mind had somehow managed to blur out his surroundings and he was no longer tormented by that awful sight before him, instead, his mind played visions of the events leading up to this. The logic part of his brain had taken over and begun to analyze the past forty-eight hours, this part of his brain knew that to make sense of all this might be his one chance to step back from the precipice of utter insanity. At some stage during his frantic analysis of the situation, Costello must have taken himself from the apartment, because his next moment of positional awareness found him sitting behind the steering wheel of his car. Removed now from that awful scene he might have been forgiven for believing it had all been a terrible nightmare, but that logical part of his brain was still continuing to tease out the threads of everything that had happened. A picture was beginning to form in his mind and it was the face of a man, the man who had instructed him to work on this case solo.

John Casey had made sure and certain that Costello was out on a limb on this one, and then he shows up with the assistant police commissioner and hands the Conan case to detectives from uptown. Take into consideration the fact the both Casey and Murray appear in the same photograph as the recently deceased Conan and the murdered Boyce, then the coincidences were just a little too convenient. Conan’s words echoed in his head again, the bit about the guys pulling the strings being very high up. Well in anyone’s book an assistant police commissioner was fairly high up there, even Casey was several rungs above either him or Conan. Another thing struck him, was Casey purposely lying when he told him Conan was out of town. Conan could not have gotten away with the number of unexplained absences without the co-operation of someone above him, the logic part of his brain now told him to follow Casey and he would lead him upwards. 

Puppet Masters. Part 2. One Less Puppet.

His mind fled those awful visions that haunted his dreams and his first emotion when awakening was one of welcome relief. Relief from the terrifying visions of mutilated bodies, and the ominous silhouette of a crooked man that followed him in the shadows. But his relief quickly fled to be replaced by a different kind of fear, that awful feeling of having no idea where he was or how he had gotten here. Costello lifted his head from the pillow and the pounding headache hit him immediately, the room he was in, faded in and out of focus but he sensed it was an unfamiliar place. The effort of swinging his legs onto the floor and sitting on the side of the bed brought with it a new and unwelcome feeling, as a wave of nausea washed over him. The heavy drapes kept all but the slightest illumination from the room, his full bladder took precedent and he stumbled about the room in search of a bathroom.

The door from the bedroom led to a narrow hallway at the end of which another open door led to the bathroom, the stream of urine splashed loudly in the toilet bowl and seemed to go on forever, but the relief was tangible. Standing there naked in a strange bathroom brought on a feeling of vulnerability that grew in intensity by the second, his mind was racing now as he desperately tried to piece together last night’s movements. Costello stood waiting for the sink to fill and studied his reflection in the overhead mirror; his face was deathly pale beneath the salt and pepper stubble that covered his cheeks. In stark contrast, his eyes were surrounded by dark circles and the whites of his eyes were covered in red broken veins. He submerged his head in the cold water and held his breath for as long as he could; when he surfaced again it was to the sound of another stream of urine. The woman with the short blonde hair sitting on the toilet laughed softly to herself at his shocked expression. For one moment his heart skipped a beat as he remembered being in the car with the blonde hooker, but this woman looked nothing like the working girl he had spoken to last night.

The woman finished her business and brazenly stood before him, naked as the day she had come into this world, a smile played on the corners of her full lips as she contemplated his obvious embarrassment with the situation. Then she winked at him seductively and headed back towards the bedroom, he found himself momentarily mesmerized by the sway of her full hips as she walked down the hallway. By the time he got back to the room she had opened the drapes and the light of the grey morning, seemed to exaggerate his nakedness and he felt his face flush with embarrassment. All the while he dressed he felt her eyes on him; he could not remember having felt this awkward in a long time. Once he had finished dressing he glanced in her direction, the amused expression had left her face now and she gazed at him with a melancholy look on her face. “Catherine is my name, Catherine Boyce, and I don’t make a habit of bringing back strange men to my home. But I suppose things happen in our lives that are out of the ordinary, and last night was one of those things. Take care of yourself Costello and perhaps we will bump into each other again”. Catherine Boyce fell silent and her eyes shut as if she had drifted into sleep, he took this as his cue to leave.

Outside the morning was grey and oppressive and he felt it somehow matched his mood, he hated when he had these blackouts and they had started to become a common occurrence lately. He found the car parked a little further up the street on the opposite side, when he fumbled in his pocket for the key he found a small piece of folded paper, it was a phone number with the name Catherine above it. He opened the door of the car and tossed the piece of paper on the back seat, the driver’s seat had been moved forward and he had to readjust it before he got in. A vision flashed across his mind of the girl called Catherine moving the seat so she could reach the pedals; he knew then that last night’s events would come back to him bit by bit as was the usual case when he had been on a bender. In one way he was slightly relieved that the blonde girl could witness the missing hours.

The hand that held the key trembled just enough to make it difficult for him to place the key in the ignition, the headache had intensified too and he felt jittery. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice pleaded against what he was about to do. But he ignored it, he was feeling rough and he needed to be somewhere, so Costello reached across and took the flask of Irish whiskey from the glove compartment. His stomach rebelled immediately when the first swig of whiskey burned its way down, but he forced himself to keep it down. After the third swallow, he began to feel almost human again, a part of him wanted to keep going until he finished the flask. However, he mustered what will power he had, and capped the bottle before returning it to the glove compartment. His mind felt clearer now and he tried to remember where he needed to be, and then it dawned on him. Costello turned the car and headed across town to the mortuary, he hoped Hobbs would have more information on the dead girl.

Costello began to feel jittery again as he followed the man down the sterile-looking corridor, this place always made him feel like this but the hangover made it much worse. Hobbs walked ahead of him humming tunelessly under his breath and if it were anyone other than old Hobbs; Costello did not think he would be able to go through with this. But the old examiner had a matter of fact way in going about his business, which brought a certain calmness and dignity to the whole thing. Hobbs paused at the doors leading to the examination room as if he suddenly forgot why he was here, but Costello realized this was for his benefit. He was giving Costello a little time to compose himself before entering, then with a reassuring nod, he led him inside. The room was deathly silent except for the soft hum coming from the bank of overhead fluorescent lights; it was cold, sterile and impersonal.

 Off the three stainless steel examination tables only one was occupied, the sheet covering the occupant made the body look child-sized. Hobbs walked across and picked up a clipboard containing notes, and turned and beckoned Kevin Costello to come nearer. He pulled back the sheet covering the body and suddenly he was in official mode before Costello could even take in what he was looking at, Hobbs was giving a running commentary. “The subject is a female in her late teens; she appears to be well-nourished. There is no sign of sexual assault, and she is in fact technically a virgin. The contents of her stomach point to her last meal being a pasta and meat dish, what organs remain, show nothing remarkable. The cause of death, in my opinion, is loss of blood, ligature marks on her ankles point to her being suspended upside down while the blood was drained through a laceration of the artery in the neck. The skin of the facial area was removed post mortem, and the spine and heart are also absent.”

Costello could not drag his eyes from the waxen figure on the steel table; it was as if he was alone with the deceased girl and somehow connected to her. The utter horror of the situation left him cold, yet he felt as if she cried out for him to bear witness to the atrocity that was visited upon her. “Costello! Kevin are you alright.” It took Hobbs shaking him by the shoulder before he dragged himself back from that place he found himself in. “Are you alright Costello, I thought for a moment I had lost you, let’s get out of here we can discuss the rest of this in my office”. It was the act of Hobbs pulling the sheet back over the body that finally broke the spell, but he found himself walking robotically behind Hobbs as he left the room. It was only when they were seated in the office that he finally felt in touch with reality again, he looked up to find the examiner looking at him with a concerned expression on his face.

The silence in the room dragged out and Costello had the weird feeling that Hobbs was somehow accessing his state of mind. Finally, the medical officer began to speak. “We are still awaiting toxicology reports, but I am sure of the cause of death. This has all the hallmarks of ritualistic killing, the poor girl would not have died quickly. Her makeup was applied to make her look like a streetwalker, but in my opinion, this was done to muddy the waters. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to hide their tracks on this one, but he is not your common or garden killer. This is all too precise and planned out”. Costello was at the door before Hobbs spoke again. “The next time you drop by, I will show you the results of heavy drinking on the human liver” Costello did not bother to reply; instead he waved back at the man and kept going.

Back at the station, there was no sign of Conan and anyone he asked could not remember seeing him in two days or more, now that Costello thought about it, apart from the crime scene last night Conan’s movements were a bit of a mystery for a while now. He had not paid much attention up to this, because Jack Conan was a master of finding what sounded like plausible explanations for not attending briefings etc. Now that he thought about it Costello had a gut feeling Conan had been AWOL for a while, and when he checked the signing in book he discovered his partner had not been officially at work in over a week. He was about to ask the desk sergeant if someone had forgotten to mark down vacation time for Jack Conan. But something told him not to bring anyone’s attention to Conan’s absence, at least not just yet. Something in his mind was niggling him about this, but he could not put his finger on it.

The narrow alley and plot of waste ground looked far less intimidating in daylight, but the place still had a depressing feel about it. They had just finished the search of the area when he got there, Costello approached the guy in charge and inquired whether anything significant had turned up. “Just like I told your partner not fifteen minutes ago, apart from a number of used condoms and syringes we turned up nothing that looks like it will help in the investigation”. It took a moment for the significance of the man’s words to sink in, then that niggle in his head suddenly made sense. Conan had not signed in on the job in over a week, yet he was at the crime scene before Costello last night and again this morning His behavior last night was not what Costello would have expected from the man, it was almost as if had suffered a personal loss. Something in the man’s behavior was not sitting right with Costello, and he decided it might be time to track down his partner for a chat.

He started the engine with the intention of visiting some of Conan’s usual haunts, but before he even got a chance to put it in gear the radio squawked into life. Mabel the dispatcher’s bored tones told him he was required back at the station when he asked if she knew why he could picture her shrugging her shoulders with that bored expression she always wore. After a long pause, her irreverent answer ended the conversation. “How the hell am I supposed to know what the old man wants you for”? Was the curt reply in her nasal voice. A nervous feeling came over him now, as he wondered what the hell lay ahead of him. Costello made a quick stop off at the drug store, where he bought some Tylenol for the dull ache in his head and some peppermint mouth spray to mask the smell of stale booze on his breath. By the time he made it back to the station house, a deep sense of foreboding had settled over him.

Lieutenant John Casey was one of the few men left in the precinct that had made it to his position by working his way up the ranks, the last of a dying breed that had actually worked the coal face before getting an office. He was sitting behind the desk with his chair turned to the window when Costello knocked on the glass of the door, he gestured for Costello to enter without even swiveling his chair back towards the door. Costello stood in the middle of the floor feeling awkward and with growing trepidation, from the moment he had turned up at the crime scene last night he had a bad feeling about this whole affair. Eventually, Casey swiveled his chair to face him, in his hand he held a file and Costello immediately recognized Hobbs handwriting on the cover. He threw the file on the desk in front of him and gestured to Costello to take a seat, all the while he seemed to be carefully studying Costello’s demeanor.

“This girl that was murdered last night, I have a bad feeling about this one. Something tells me it is not going to be an isolated occurrence, I want you to clear your desk and work solely on this one, give any open cases you have to the rookie detectives. Not only that, but I want you to report your progress directly to me, and I mean any thought or hunches, I want to know everything you even think about this one.” Casey fell silent again and a faraway look came into his eyes, it was as if some thought had suddenly distracted him. Costello waited for him to resume but the silence just grew. Eventually, it became oppressive in the small office and Costello cleared his throat and asked about whether Conan would be working with him on this. The question seemed to halt Casey’s muse and he looked at Costello as if he had just asked him whether Unicorns were real. Something about his boss’s reaction sent a cold shiver down his spine, and he was reminded of the feeling that had come over him in the alley the previous night.

“Conan is out of town for a few days, gone to visit a sick relative upstate. That means you carry the can for this one, and I want to know your every movement on this. As a matter of fact, I want to know your whereabouts at all times, if you take a break to go have a shit, I want to know about it.” Casey’s answer left Costello with a sinking feeling in his gut, and he studied the older man and wondered whether he actually believed Conan was out of town. But Casey was too long in the tooth to be easily read by his expressions, and for some reason, Costello felt like he had been chosen as the sacrificial lamb. Casey turned his chair again towards the window effectively ending the meeting, Costello was almost through the door when the man spoke again. “You look rough Costello, you better make sure you get enough sleep in your own bed to stay sharp for this one.” This cryptic statement intensified his feeling of foreboding, and his mind suddenly jumped to Catherine Boyce.

Sitting in the car Costello smoked one cigarette after another as he tried to get his head around this, when he began to question whether he had imagined talking to Conan last night, he had an overwhelming urge to reach for the whiskey flask. However deep down inside he knew that everything depended on him having his wits about him for this, something about this whole thing was rotten to the core. His gut feeling told him that one false step would see him take a big fall on this one, but he was still no closer to getting a handle on the politics of this. That little analytic voice in the back of his mind kept going back to the appearance and disappearance of Conan, and a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that the missing hours and waking in Catherine Boyce’s bed cold have some great significance yet. Cursing to himself he started the car and drove off in search of the illusive Conan.

Costello was just about to call it a night when he saw the car approaching, he had been sitting outside Conan’s apartment for hours. Hours of solitary thoughts had only served to fill his head with the terrifying scenarios, each one worse than the next and every one of them ending badly for him. He had spent the daylight hours searching every bar he knew that Conan frequented; he had even put pressure on some of the hookers that Conan bullied into sleeping with him. But it had all been a waste of time; nobody remembered seeing him for days. So, in the end, he had driven here to the apartment block where Conan lived, he was just about done when the car came down the street. The beat-up old Chevy weaved over and back erratically across the street, before coming to a stop by bumping into the wall outside the apartment block. Conan practically fell out of the car before steadying himself, and then he staggered towards the building with a crooked gait.

“A crooked gait for a crooked man” The voice in his head left him with a giddy feeling, as a piece of the jigsaw seemed to fall into place. Costello waited for what seemed a very long time before the light came on in Conan’s apartment on the fourth floor, then he left the car and headed up to confront his partner.  The door of the apartment was ajar but the interior was in darkness now, he wondered why Conan had switched off the light again. He hesitated on the threshold wondering what he was facing into in the darkened room, he had an inclination to draw his gun but before he could Conan’s voice called from the darkened room. “Come in Costello, I knew you would turn up here sooner or later. I guess I owe some kind of explanation”. Conan’s words were slurred and there was a certain resignation in his tone, and Costello had the feeling that Conan was at the end of his tether. The door hinges made a slight creaking sound as it swung open, and the center of the room was illuminated by the light from the hallway, leaving the rest of the room in darkness.

The sound of curtains being drawn brought Costello’s attention to the far side of the room; Conan was silhouette against the window in the weak moonlight. He made a movement and the chilly breeze that entered the room told Costello he had opened the window. His eyes had adapted to the low light conditions now, and he had a clear look at his partner. Conan had a haunted expression on his face and looked for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car. He looked disheveled and the stink of stale booze carried on the breeze to Costello, Conan looked as if he had trouble staying upright and he really did look like a crooked man. Conan reached in his jacket pocket and Costello’s heart skipped a beat, but all that appeared in his hand was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. The flame from the lighter illuminated more details of his partner’s face and Costello realized that Conan was already dead but was yet to lie down. He had that expression on his face of a man who knew he had reached the end of the line.

Costello caught the cigarette pack and lighter that Conan threw to him, he took a cigarette and sparked it up. Costello made to cross the room to return the cigarettes and lighter, but Conan immediately held up his hand in a halt gesture. “Keep them, Costello, I am giving up smoking, and I won’t need a lighter where I am going.” The ironic laughter that followed his comment carried not a hint of humor. “I knew it wouldn’t take you long to put me in the frame, and I guess I helped you as much as possible. You see that girl was never supposed to surface again, but I made the mistake of being nosy. To tell the truth Costello I had just grown weary and I wanted out, I thought at the start I could continue to do this and walk away into the sunset when my time came. But guess what Costello even evil bastards like me, sometimes get a twinge of conscious” Conan took a drag on the cigarette and Costello was shocked to see the tears pouring down his cheeks, there was something terribly disturbing about this sight.

“I guess I was the perfect candidate always in trouble and with little chance of ever seeing my pension, so they told me if I played ball I would sail through until retirement. It was a piece of cake for a guy with a badge to pick up the runaways at the train station, frightened little girls all alone in the big city. I mean to say if they couldn’t trust a cop, then who could they trust? So I would pick them up and hand them over, then I would climb into the bottle and forget about them until the next one. I was just about getting through it until they started having me dispose of packages, packages wrapped in plastic and the shape of bodies. She was the only one I ever opened and something snapped inside of me, so I painted her up like a hooker and left her on the waste ground. Maybe the family will come looking for her and she will be buried near her home”. Conan took an unsteady step backward and sat on the window sill, it was as if someone had just let all the air out of him.

“You see Costello we are all just puppets, and the men who pull the strings are very high up. They are sick deranged bastards and they worship a different god to us, I mean, you saw for yourself what they did to that girl. She is just one of many over the years, it was happening ever before I was drawn into it. Do yourself a favor Costello turn in that badge and get as far from this place as possible, but then again I fear it may already be too late for you”. He paused again to finish the cigarette, before pitching the butt over his shoulder and out the window. “We are all just puppets Costello, you and I, even the blonde you shagged last night. What was her name? Oh yeah, Catherine.” Before Costello could react to this latest bombshell, Conan got unsteadily to his feet and either staggered or threw himself backward through the open window. Costello had only moved a couple of steps in the direction of the window when he heard the dull thud from the street four floors below. 

The Crooked Man. Part 1 of Puppet Masters.

The first thing that struck him was that all too familiar smell of violent death, his mind immediately took him back to another place and a different time. He was young back then and it left an indelible mark on his psyche, but like most things in life, familiarity breeds contempt. The young uniformed officer that staggered from the shadows had an unhealthy pallor; the tell-tale smell of vomit was strong on the man. Costello vaguely wondered if his reactions had been much different back then, but in the intervening years, he had seen more carnage than most people would ever see in life. If it was possible for anyone to be immune to such things, then he was that person.

The narrow alleyway dog-legged to the left and widened out into an area of waste ground, the yellow strip of crime scene tape vibrated in the wind with the sound of a colony of bats leaving a cave. The uniformed cop standing guard looked like he was due to retire any day now; he had that bored and indifferent appearance, that only those who had experienced the evil that men were capable of on a daily basis, could muster in such circumstances. Kevin Costello paused watching the small group gathered twenty yards away, around what he presumed to be the victim; a sudden urge came over him to turn around and head to the nearest bar. Weariness had suddenly flooded his mind, and in a moment of strange clarity, he realized that this case would be his last.

The strange thoughts had a disturbing effect on him, and he shivered involuntarily as if an ice-cold hand had caressed his spine. Where had these peculiar feelings originated and why now? Costello’s mind tried to fathom out his reactions. Feeling the sudden onslaught of anxiety, he took the cigarette package from his pocket and lit a smoke before offering the old cop one. When the uniform asked for a light, Costello was shocked to see the hand he held the match in begin to tremble. As if sensing Costello’s troubled mood the older cop looked him straight in the face for the first time. “It’s a bad one alright, the worst I’ve seen in thirty-five years. Do yourself a favor son, and get off these streets. Look for a nice handy desk job, these streets are hell and the devil runs the show”.

The old cop turned his head and gazed in the opposite direction to the crime scene, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth smoldered down to the butt. Costello wondered what was going through the man’s mind and what visions played in his mind’s eye. The older man was standing less than three feet from Costello, yet his mind had taken him to a place and time very distant from where they stood. Something about this whole thing felt surreal to Costello, and for the second time in a few minutes, he felt the urge to leave here for the comforting numbness of the whiskey bottle. Costello crushed the cigarette butt beneath his heel, before lifting the strip of tape and walking under it.

“Detective” The sudden sound from the cop startled him; he turned to see the old cop gesturing towards the ground. “Watch your step, the rookie left his lunch somewhere over near the corpse”. Before he got a chance to thank him, the man had turned his back to him; once again the old copper was lost in the darkness of his memories. The flashbulb lit up the area just ahead of him, and for a split second, the grimy brickwork of the walls became home to monstrous shadows. “Jesus Christ, this fucking city is turning into a fucking lunatic asylum, with deranged fucking butchers running about the place.” The wind carried the profanity to Costello’s ears, and he immediately recognized the voice of his partner Jack Conan.

Conan like the old uniform standing guard by the crime scene tape was just ticking off the days until his retirement. He was gruff ill-humored and downright lazy, as far as Costello was aware Jack Conan hated everybody and everything he came across in life. However circumstances had thrown them together, and to be honest, Costello had never cared much for any of his partners anyway. In a lot of ways working with Conan suited him down to the ground; Conan did not like working and preferred to sit back and criticize the efforts of those who did. But at least that left Costello to take the initiative, so most of the time he went about investigations solo, while Conan whiled away his time with one hooker or another that he could pressurize into giving him a freebie.

The crime scene photographer finished up his part in the pantomime and walked past Costello as if he was invisible. The photographer was a small hard-faced Asian guy who never seemed to show any emotion whatsoever, no matter how gruesome his subject matter. Conan watched the small man leave with a hateful expression. “Have a good night Wang” he called loudly after him even though Li was the man’s name, as Costello approached him he heard him mutter under his breath. “Fucking Japanese prick” even though Conan was fully aware that Li was third-generation Chinese American. None of this surprised Costello because it was pretty much how his partner dealt with most people, but for some unknown reason tonight he had a strong urge to punch Conan in the throat.

Everything about this night seemed to jangle his nerves; normally he managed to shut out Conan’s bigoted behavior. He needed to get a grip on his emotions or things would end badly for them both, so he willed his mind to get into work mode. He turned to Conan and asked him to bring him up to speed; it was only when he looked closely at his partner’s face that something struck him. Conan looked even edgier than he felt; the indifferent expression on the man’s face could not hide the expression in his normally deadpan eyes. Whatever had happened here had really disturbed Conan, and not only that, by the look in those eyes he was terrified. “Some lunatic butchered a hooker” his voice broke before he could go on, and he had to stop and clear his throat. If Costello did not know the man better, he would have sworn Conan was holding back tears.

Conan finally composed himself enough to continue. “He cut her bad Costello; she looks like something from an abattoir. Only for the body, you could not even tell it was a girl, the fucking freak took her face with him”. Conan fell silent again and Costello waited for him to continue, but the coroner arrived in the meantime and Conan looked relieved that he didn’t have to say any more about it. Costello followed the medical examiner in the direction of the victim but stopped a few feet back to give him room to work. Up close like this, the smell of death was overpowering, it was a strange acrid smell. A mixture of the coppery smell of spilled blood, human waste and the hot smell of offal. It assaulted the senses and caused a stinging sensation in his nostrils, a wave of nausea washed over him and he thought he might vomit, but it passed off quickly.

Once the medical examiner had finished, he nodded in Costello’s direction. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, as he approached the scene of carnage. He viewed the body by the light of a small torch held by the examiner, for some strange reason the scene was so horrible it felt unreal. It was as if he was viewing a prop from a Horror B movie, the girl had been flattened out as if her spine had been removed. She looked for all the world like a butterflied chicken carcass, and just like Conan had said the perpetrator had peeled her face off. The torch moved to take in the area directly surrounding the dead girl, there were no body parts to be seen, so once again Conan had been correct, the killer had taken her face with him.

Costello looked inquiringly at Jake Hobbs and the old medic just shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t tell you a fucking thing until we get her back to the lab; nothing about this one is ordinary. There are two things I can hazard a guess about, the first being this was not the place of death, and the second one is I would not think she died of natural causes. Other than that, come and see me in the morning, and we can have a closer look. Now if it is all the same to the city police force, I am getting out of here, that wind is freezing my balls off”. Hobbs gave him a wry smile and a reassuring pat on the shoulder, before setting off humming tunelessly under his breath. To be honest, he could not blame the medic for wanting to be gone from this place, it was cold alright but something other than the stiff northerly breeze was contributing to the cold atmosphere.

Costello watched them load the body bag in the coroner’s van and once they had driven away, he went in search of Jack Conan, but as per usual when it was time to do some leg work, Conan had done a disappearing act. The old uniformed cop just gave him a blank look when he inquired as to whether he saw Conan leave, so in the end, he thought it better to get on with things by himself. A part of him hoped that Jack Conan had disappeared from the face of the earth, in a lot of ways that scenario would make Costello’s life a loss less complicated. A quick chat with the two uniformed cops, proved less than helpful just as he thought it might. The call reporting the body was made anonymously and the dispatcher could not even say whether the caller was male or female. The young cop who smelled of puke was the first to see the body, and neither saw another living soul anywhere near the scene.

The girls huddled in small groups in doorways trying to keep warm, considering the scanty clothes they wore, there was little chance they would find much warmth out here tonight. Every now and again a car would slowly cruise down the street, and some of the girls would break from the huddles braving the biting wind. Trying their best to look sexy and inviting they would stand with a provocative posture until the would-be punters cruised past. Then hurriedly return to the warmth of their huddled colleges, business seemed slow tonight and the few cars that did pass appeared to be merely window shopping. Costello watched the pitiful sight and the prophetic words of the old cop came back to him, there was a certain truth in those words, the streets of this city really could be hell.

Costello watched the working girls plying their trade, in the hope he could isolate one by herself. His idea was a girl on her own might be more willing to talk, none of them wanted to appear too cooperative to the cops in front of her friends. The area surrounding the waste ground where the body was found was a maze of streets where homeless people congregated, and hookers, pimps, and drug dealers plied their trade. These were the kind of people that doing their civic duty by helping the cops would not be top of their list of priorities. Normally it would be the uniformed officers who would be sent to canvass the area, but the sight of a uniform on these streets would immediately send all the locals scurrying for shelter. So even though his shift had finished hours ago, he continued to sit here waiting for his chance to have a word with one of the girls.

As the night dragged on the biting wind had intensified dragging the temperatures even lower, and to add to the misery of the girls the wind now drove sleety rain ahead of it. The radio played softly in the background, as he watched some of the girls give up the ghost and make their way home from the sodden streets. The program played the top billboard hits of the day, and Tab Hunter cheerfully belted out “Young Love”. Costello wondered if the butchered girl had ever known young love, or for that matter if the freezing girls on the sidewalk knew anything about young love. He lit a Lucky Strike and looked at the clock on the dashboard, it was creeping towards midnight now and the last of the streetwalkers began to disburse. He started the engine and followed a blond girl, who had moved off in the opposite direction to the rest of the girls.

Costello followed her for two blocks before pulling alongside the pavement where she was walking, it was dark here as the street light was not working, which was not unusual for this area of the city. Public amenities in this place were not a priority for city hall, and it would not have surprised him to learn the light had been broken for a long time now. He leaned across and rolled down the passenger side window, he could hear the distinct tap, tap of her high heels above the moaning of the wind as she approached. The tapping sound stopped as she hesitated before drawing level with the car, he knew she was nervous now that she had not the safety of her companions. Looking out for each other was a big priority for the girls who worked the streets; even so, a large number of them disappeared without a trace every year.

The sound of heels on the pavement began again but they were slower now and more cautious, the girl approached hesitantly trying hard to make out who was in the dark interior of the car. Her features were just a pale blur in the darkness of the wet street, but he could see by her demeanor she was frightened. Costello reached over head and put on the light, before leaning across so she had a good view of his face. She stared at him for quite a while before she began to relax; Costello had been told by a number of women over the years that he was handsome. But he guessed as long as he did not look like a total monster, this would be good enough for the girl on the pavement. Eventually, the girl approached the open window; the clothes she wore were skimpy and wet through. She crossed her arms as if in the hope this would generate some warmth, and she leaned her head in the window.

It was hard to put an age on her but he guessed she was no older than her mid-twenties, once upon a time she could have been described as extremely pretty if not beautiful. But the years working the streets had taken a toll on her prettiness, she was still good looking but there was a hardness to her features now. Costello had seen this look a thousand times before in people of her profession, it was as if her face had begun to turn to stone and there was a faraway look in her eyes. “Are you looking for a good time mister, cause for a few bucks I can take you to heaven”. She treated him to what he presumed she thought to be a seductive smile, but that smile never quite managed to reach those sad eyes. “Get in girl, I just want to talk. At least it is dry and warm in here”. She quickly dropped any pretense of a smiley happy girl and began to turn away. “Get in girl and I will pay you for your time” Costello waved the twenty-dollar bill at her, and she shrugged her shoulders and climbed in.

The short skirt she wore rode high on her thighs, and before she yanked it back down Costello caught a glimpse of the needle tracks on her thigh above her stocking top. “What’s your name girl”? But she would not even answer this until he handed over the twenty bucks; he guessed she had been ripped off too many times before. Costello drove to the parking lot of an all-night café when he returned with the coffee and sandwich he was mildly surprised to see Anna was still in the car. He had been half expecting her to do a runner with his money, but he also knew if he jumped straight into asking questions he would be wasting his time. He watched her greedily wolf down the chicken sandwich and when she was finished she licked the Mayo off her fingers, there was something childlike in her actions, and he was once again reminded of the comment about these streets being hell.

Anna bummed a cigarette from him and inhaled deeply before expelling the smoke with a sigh of satisfaction, and then she sipped the coffee while staring him in the face. Costello felt as if she was trying to see beyond his eyes and into his soul, whatever she saw there she slowly began to relax and some of the hardness left her face. Just for an instant he saw her in a different light; he could easily imagine her in a prom dress posing with her proud Middle American parents. But if she ever did then it was in another life, he wondered if her Mom and Dad still stared out the window of her home hoping she would return. Did they still hold out hope every time the phone rang, that it was their Anna and she was coming home? As if she had read his mind she laughed sadly before adding. “What you see is what you get mister; I am a hooker, nothing more or nothing less. Now tell me what you want to know, twenty bucks don’t buy you an all-nighter”.

Anna’s reaction was not what he expected when he asked her whether she had seen or heard anything strange on the streets lately. Her laughter was just a little too contrived, and her answer that everything on these streets was strange, sounded just a little too glib. But it was that sudden look of fear in her eyes that caught his attention most, and the sudden darting motion of those eyes as if looking to see if they were being observed. Anna was halfway through the second cigarette and a prolonged bout of silence when he realized that she was contemplating whether or not to tell him something she considered important. He had just told her why he was looking for information when she clammed up, now he was desperately trying to think of something to say to get her talking. But to his surprise, she turned to him and blurted it out, and something in her voice told him she was telling what she believed to be the truth.

“Look mister I knew from the first instant that you were a cop, news travels quickly on the streets. We had all heard about the butchered girl, even before you parked across the street watching us. No one is going to take the risk of talking to you, there are rumors spreading like wildfire that something dark and unholy is going on. That poor girl you found is not the first and you can be certain she will not be the last, but here is the kicker, one of your lot is rumored to be involved. I am not saying he held the blade, but it is said he provides the girls. Another thing that you might find interesting is your murdered girl was not a hooker, she was dumped here to throw you off the scent”. As abruptly as she started talking she fell silent again before he had a chance to react she had opened the door and stepped out of the car. She was moving away from the car when she stopped and turned back. “Look for the crooked man, and you will find your killer”.

Costello watched her walk across the parking lot; she looked even smaller and more vulnerable. Her head darted from side to side constantly as she walked; it was as if she was expecting to be set upon at any moment. He had a bad feeling that this particular girl would not live to old age, for a moment his mind took him back to a different time when he watched another blond girl walk away from him. There had been a lot of girls since then, far too many to remember, a lot of them had been blonde but none of them like the girl he had just remembered now. When he looked again the parking lot was empty, the blonde had disappeared into the shadows, and he vaguely wondered what monsters awaited her in the dark. Costello suddenly wondered why he felt so melancholy tonight, but he could not quite put his finger on a reason. He switched on the engine and drove to Murphy’s Bar and the promise of a cure from his melancholy in a whiskey bottle.

No Rest for the Wicked.

He awoke to the terrifying feeling that he was drowning; the water he had inhaled carried the taste of soil and decaying vegetation. He inhaled deeply again desperate for air now, only to draw yet more of the foul liquid into his lungs. His gag reflexes kicked in and he was wracked with a bout of violent coughing, he just managed to turn his head sideways before vomiting. He continued vomiting until there was nothing left to come up but the bile from his stomach, which burned his throat like acid. The clothes he wore were soaked through, and the fit of vomiting had driven a cold clammy sweat through his skin.

It took every last ounce of will power but he eventually dragged himself upright, first on to his hands and knees, and then into a standing position. His legs felt as wobbly as a newborn foal, and but for a low hanging branch he grasped instinctively, he would have collapsed again onto the sodden earth. It was dark and the heavens poured cold rain incessantly on the already saturated earth beneath his feet. It took a while before his eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, but when they did he could vaguely make out his surroundings. He was standing in the tree line on a slope, and below him, he could just about make out a straight line of darker substance, the moon broke briefly through a gap in the clouds and he saw the reflection from the wet asphalt below. The dark line below him was a road, a road running through a forest.

He felt like death warmed up, his first thought might have been, that he had never felt this bad in his whole life. The only problem with that assertion would be the fact he had nothing to compare how he felt against. It was as if he had just now come into being, his mind was an empty vessel, a dark and empty place without memories. No matter how he searched inside his mind, he could find nothing. Not a name, an age, a reason for being here on this desolate night, nor any inclination where he had come from. Inside that empty void in his head, there was only one thing, a strong and overpowering emotion, and he somehow recognized this as fear. Slowly other thoughts appeared in the darkness of his mind, thoughts, and urges driven by that primeval emotion he knew was fear.

He needed to get away from this place his mind told him, away from the cloying earth that seemed to want to draw him downwards. “The sodden clay will take you back from whence you came”. The small voice somewhere in his mind caused the fear inside to intensify, and with the spike in fear came a burst of energy. The energy that he had not realized he had, suddenly his feet were moving forward and down the slippery slope. Faster they moved until he no longer had control over his movements, even when the earth refused to allow him to lift his feet he continued to move. Sliding ever faster towards the dark line of asphalt below him, when his feet hit the gravel margin at the side of the road he was catapulted upwards and forwards away from the greedy earth.

The sudden impact with the hard surface of the road was bone-jarring, he braced himself for the onset of pain, yet none came. Lying on the wet road all he felt was an overpowering feeling of relief, relief that he had managed to escape that prisoning earth that wanted so badly to keep him in that place among the trees. He would gladly have lain there caressing the cold wet asphalt, but the small voice urged him to move on. “Get on your feet and move as far from this place as possible.” The small frightened voice in his head pleaded with him. Thoughts began to flood his mind now, filling the vast emptiness that was his mind, thoughts, and emotions but still no memories.

Thoughts, emotions, and questions were all that defined him now, questions without answers and emotions void of memories. But the overpowering process inside his head was urgency, urgency driven by an all-consuming fear. The nameless man knew beyond doubt that he was in great danger, everything else could wait, for his first priority was to get away from this place. He needed to get up and keep moving, it was imperative that he leave this place of death as far behind him as possible. Here in this forest, he was a prisoner and the very earth beneath his feet had conspired to prevent him from leaving, if he did not move soon he would be returned to captivity and it was this thought that gave him the strength to rise and start walking.

Without any inclination as to which direction he was going, he began to walk. Nothing about his movements felt right, it was as if his muscles and joints were working against their will. His body was working without muscle memory, moving frustratingly slowly with the awkward gait of a mechanical thing. The breeze that rustled through the branches on either side of him created a disturbing whispering sound, whispers that told him he would never escape this place. Incessant little voices followed him from the dark forest, and they told him his attempted escape was futile. Those voices served to increase the fear and the fear drove him onwards, one faltering step after another as he tried to make good his escape.

How long he was walking he could not say, nor had he any idea how much distance he had covered. The incessant rain had intensified but still he kept moving, a part of his mind told him he should feel cold. Yet all he felt was a peculiar numbness, logic would dictate that hypothermia would surely have set in by now. But the nameless man felt nothing but fear and the overwhelming need to be gone from this accursed forest road. “Keep moving and don’t look back”, the urgent voice in his head kept up the mantra and he forced his legs to move. Other things found their way into the darkness of his mind now, fractured images of skeletal figures and strange burial grounds. Disturbing images of places where the very soil was a living entity, clay that was a living and vengeful thing.

The bright lights reflecting from the wet asphalt brought a new emotion that drowned out everything else, a deep and devastating feeling of hopelessness. The beat-up old pickup truck slowed down beside him and the passenger door swung open, suddenly the energy drained from him and his legs refused to move. A soft voice called to him from the dark interior. “Get in Sam; it is time for you to return”. The urge to turn and run was overpowering, but his legs moved unbidden towards the truck. With a great effort, he managed to drag himself into the passenger seat, a hand reached across him and pulled the door closed. “Do you remember Sam, or do I have to remind you?” The simple question filled him with a deep and debilitating fear, and a strange whimpering sound issued from somewhere deep inside him.

The driver reached up and turned on the light in the cab, he was an old Native American with a sad expression and this frightened the nameless man even more. The old Indian held out his hand and in it was a copy of what looked like an old newspaper, the thing that struck the nameless man most, was the condition of his own hand when he reached out and took the paper. His skin was mottled and parchment-like; it looked almost as if it was mummified. The stirring of memories somewhere in his mind disturbed him, something was terribly wrong but the memories would not reveal themselves. That was until he began to read what was in that paper, then the memories came and he wished they had stayed away.

The headline was enough; he did not need to read anymore. “Samuel Epstein the man behind controversial development on Indian burial ground goes missing” Now the memories came flooding back to him, they had taken him on a night just like this, a night of incessant rain. The old medicine man had pleaded with him and warned him of the consequences of disturbing the resting places of his ancestors, but Samuel had only laughed in his face. It was this same old man who had cursed him. Just before they killed him, the old man said the words. “We will bury you here in the sacred forest, but you will know no rest in the prisoning earth”. The light in the cab went out and the old Indian turned the truck, they headed back to whence he had come.

Samuel so badly wanted to cry and plead, but the years in the cloying soil had withered his vocal cords and shrank his tear ducts. He was a dead thing now, a husk that would be once again consigned to the damp soil, but even then he would know no rest. Time and time again he would claw his way from the clinging clay, he would stand there with no recollection of how or why he was there. On dark rainy nights, he would force his dead limbs to carry him from that place of death, he would claw his way from the soil and walk that lonely road. But time and time again they would return him to that place, the place where he would never find rest.