Dst – Chronicles of Malignant Mercies Pt 12 (1/8)
Intro: Yes! Finally another episode, though as you might note, it’s the last one for now. It’s huge.. I wanted to have a good send off, though I don’t know that it lives up to all of my expectations. But here we go, just in time for Halloween night, after a few days of heavy work on it, the reason I had no news this morning. 😉 Any thoughts on a return to the series are appreciated, I’ll he considering it, though might try a different story. Depends on my muse.
Special thanks to Luriena, my trusted personal editor. 🙂
The rest is here: Chronicles of Malignant Mercies Index
Dark Halloween – End Game
The Police HQ was bustling with noise and movement. Despite the maturing evening, sleep was the furthest thing from the minds of detectives, investigators and patrolmen. Only the rising body count and their determination to end it stood dominate within them all. Despite the focus, there was a sense of desperation in the air. In the slightly strained tone of a voice. In the consternation of a grim expression.
Briggs could see it all from his desk, watching his fellows pass by, and papers moving from one desk to another between extended sessions of deep scrutiny. Reports, like this that sat on his desk. Clues, yet not enough to track down their killer, nor detect a discernible pattern that could be followed. He’d checked, the murders seeming random, all across the city and on the fringes. In the last month, it had accelerated.. incredibly, to each day bringing another killing. Another body with its heart ripped or cut out.
The only common aspect besides that is that all were ‘bad’. Michael leaned forward to open the file in front of him, flipping through the pages slowly. Suspected murderer, drug dealer, pimp, gangers and thugs.
“Almost doing our job for us.” Conflicting thoughts battled within his mind as he muttered this. At the end, he came to the composite that had been delivered to every Inbox. The most wanted mystery woman who seemed to know where every patrolman was, avoiding their sweeps with embarrassing ease at times, escaping with hearts, he assumed, though he knew not why.
Briggs shivered faintly as he looked away from the image and closes the file. He couldn’t erase the images that lingered in his mind, however, the more real memory of his near encounter with her.
“Who are you, lady?”Head shaken in the wake of his softly murmured question.
*****
“And the muscle which makes up the heart?”
“Myocardium” Joseph responded softly, gazing up at the pale vision that hovered over him. Her soft smile was calming, her touch gentle as she smoothed his bedsheets over him.
“And the largest blood vessel in the body?” She leaned forward as she asked, gently kissing his cheek after.
Joseph half stifled a yawn before answering. “Aorta.” She nodded her approval and smiled. He liked her smile, but something was troubling him. “Are you going out again tonight?”
She nodded in response. “I have my work, you know that.”
“I know. But.. you’ve been working a lot more. Every day now. Is something wrong?” Joseph’s voice was earnest, worry in his eyes.
“..No, nothing is wrong. Don’t worry, I will take care of things. You need only worry for your studies. There will be a test tomorrow, remember.”
“I remember. I won’t fail.” Joseph responded. Questions remained, but his fatigue precluded their being voiced.
Her red lips curled into a soft smile. “You have yet to, I trust you.” Seeing sleep sneaking up on him, she sat for scant minutes more to watch his eyes close and breathing even out. When the young boy slept, she rose, her eyes dipped to linger for a few moments before she turned. A swish of her dark dress the only sound as her lips evened out, eyes intent as she noiselessly left the room.
*****
Warm dark satin envelops the weightless repose of deep sleep. Time fades, awareness settles into dormancy, yet stillness is fleeting.
“Waken unto me boy.”
A firm voice, evoking long forgotten emotion. Fatherly in its’ stern tone. Father? How long has it been since his own had gone? The roused subconscious regresses in search of images to go with the emotions.
“There is no time, boy. Your guardian is in grave danger. The night is young, but it ages with swiftness. Hearken, for I bear news grave and fortunate.”
This brings the attention of the young subconscious, idle musings of its random nature scattered before a more focused filament of the waking mind. The darkness recedes like a drawn curtain and Joseph finds himself upon a featureless stage so plain that his eyes gravitate automatically to the man who stands before him.
An elder gentleman of stern expression lightly misted by well-groomed beard and moustache, accentuating the weathered wisdom in his expression and poise. The eyes of an elder, yet not hard in their alert focus. He wears simple sackcloth robes, secured about his middle by a cloth wrap of only vaguely dissimilar color.
“Listen closely, for we have not time to waste, my boy. Your lady is in danger of losing herself to her obsessions. There is much to say, but I cannot tell it all to you by word. You must find my journal, that the knowledge can be given in whole. Go you now to the den of this mansion, and press upon the third sconce from the right of the fireplace. There you shall find answers to your worries. Now waken!”
*****
Joseph sat bolt upright with a deep draw of breath, his heart jumping from the shock. As the confusion faded from his young mind, the words of the strange elder echoed in his mind. “Your guardian is in grave danger..Find my journal, that the knowledge can be given in whole..”
Had this happened a year ago, he might have disregarded the dream as no more than that. Yet his guardian had opened his eyes to so much more than he had known in his days with Rosalie. Her home a paradox of the macabre and the cozy, she herself a dichotomy of cold fury and gentle caring.
And she was in danger?
The specter of harm to her caused a nauseous clutch in his belly, the young boy flinging away the sheets as he bolted from the bed and out of the room with all the haste his newly wakened mind and body could muster. Down the stairs and across the foyer he did run, knowing already that his guardian had gone on her business. Hoping and wishing that the danger was not there. For how could he reach her to help her?
He slowed as he entered the den, jogging up to the fireplace. He looked at it, then along the wall to his right of it. Or was it supposed to be the fireplace’s right? Uncertain for a moment, his head switched back and forth slowly between the third dark, iron sconce set to either side of the fireplace. Then logic struck and he picked his right, knowing he could try the other if it didn’t work.
Reaching up, before he could think better of the consequences, he grasped the curved bottom of the sconce and tugged on it. The heavy sconce tilted down slightly and a loud click sounded behind the wall. One of the sections of the den’s wood paneling shifted forward, and then slid to the side.