Moving forward cautiously, he willed his eyes to adjust but they were being slow and stubborn and he cursed himself for the flashlight left in his car. He bumped into something and after a moment's panic felt the back of a couch which he used as guide, brushing his hip against it as he crossed the room, finding the front door and a set of switches next to it. He flicked them all and whirled around as the room lit up.
Someone was on the couch, the top of their head just showing above the back he had walked alongside; pale, hairless and gleaming under the light.
He pointed the gun and hesitated, wanting to say loudly and forcefully, "Police, don't move" as much to steady himself as to warn them, but this house was deathly still, the head wasn't moving, and he knew it would be worse than yelling in a graveyard. He moved around the couch until he had a full view, the mingled smells of cleaning products and spoiling meat growing stronger.
His team had been briefed on The Cherry Tree Killer, every cop in the city had been. It was well over a year now of missing children, pleading parents, finger-pointing, and no end in sight. The Cherry Tree Killer or just Cherry Tree, so called by some journalistic genius because the first two known victims were from opposite ends of Cherry Tree Road. The second child was really from around the corner on Donnito Street and subsequent victims hailed from all over the city but why let the facts get in the way of tabloid expressionism. He tried to remember the pictures of the missing children flagged as possible victims, but it was impossible to reconcile the figure before him with the few photos he could remember in any detail.
He had seen dead bodies before, part of the job, but never one that filled him with such sorrow or such pity. The hair on the boy's head had been shaved off, the eyebrows too. The eyes were mercifully shut but he was sadly sure it wasn't a figment of his imagination that the eyelashes were also gone. The child was naked, small hands resting in his lap, the nails cut painfully short, showing purple crescents of exposed skin that would have been red and sore had the blood been flowing.
The last three victims had been found similarly shaved and preened, profilers calling it a new development in the killer's progression. Owen thought progression was a dirty word for this sort of thing. He didn't entertain the notion that this had been the child at the basement window for the same reason he didn't reach out and shake a shoulder or put his head against the narrow little chest to listen for a heartbeat. The yellow sheen of the skin and the odour of putrefaction that defied whatever chemicals had been applied to the body meant the boy had been dead a few days.
He knew that by the time police discovered the body of Virginia Holcomb, the first child identified as a victim of Cherry Tree, she had spent a month in the killer's company. Signs of sexual assault but no DNA. Signs of beating but not enough to cause death. Signs the body had been gouged and invaded with foreign objects but not so viciously as to kill. As if he wanted to see how far he could stretch his new toy before it broke. The multiple stab wounds covering the little girl's face, throat and torso had done it. The official line was that the shock had killed Virginia Holcomb before the blood-loss could. He had been with the department long enough to wonder if this hadn't been a soft untruth offered for the family's sake.
He could see no wounds on the child before him, but they'd be there somewhere. Maybe Cherry had poured the same bleach used to clean the body down the little boy's throat first. How long had he been here before he was allowed to close his eyes for the last time? How many torments and mortifications to earn a look of nobility on his features that a hundred years of living wouldn't buy? A look that suggested death had in the end been accepted as the nearest thing to the warm embrace of his mother he could hope for.
If he had a final moment where his mind screamed at him to fall back, this was it.
His instincts told him to get out, his reason told him to listen to his instincts, and his training shouted at him to take his instincts and his reason outside and wait for back-up. His eyes took in the ruined, discarded thing left sitting in front of him, transfixed on the slightly puffy face that should have looked tragic and ridiculous but instead looked dignified, almost regal, and he thought of the hand in the basement window, of the child still alive somewhere in this haunted house, and the moment for last doubts passed.
Now, the gun shook in his hands, but it didn't feel wrong. It felt like an engine, humming and vibrating.
He headed into a hallway where the light from the living room showed doors on either side and stairs at the end climbing up into darkness. Like the kitchen and the living room, the walls were bare, no pictures, no photos of anyone, smiling or otherwise.
The first door opened to a small guest bathroom, just a toilet and sink. He turned on the light before moving on because if he couldn't have daylight, he'd take all the help he could get. If it had still been bright out, he would have ripped the coverings from every window he found, regardless of the danger of showing himself, just to get rid of the mess of shadows and black he was pushing through like thick, threatening undergrowth.
Before he had a chance to try another of the hallway's doors, he heard movement upstairs.
He eyed the unopened doors before him, thought again about the basement and the bird-like hand in the window but when more noise came from overhead, the choice was taken from him.
He kept his back against the wall as he climbed the stairs in case one of the doors he hadn't tried burst open behind him. Upstairs, he was grateful to find a light switch straight away but much less so to find himself presented with even more closed doors. Five terrifying, frustrating possibilities that represented more time than he felt he had. Was the child in the basement still down there, bleeding out on the floor, or were they up here, behind one of these doors with a desperate and cornered Cherry Tree, a monster deciding how best to finish his own horror story?
The first door on his right led to an empty bedroom where he quickly established there was nobody behind the door, under the bed or in the closet. An unloved guest room; plain bedclothes, utilitarian furnishings.
The bedroom directly opposite was just that. Posters on the wall yelled loudly about kids' movies and TV shows while cartoon characters frolicked on the neatly made bedspread. A small mountain of stuffed animals occupied one corner of the room. Too much colour, too busy. As if an alien had made a shrine to what they thought human children might enjoy but had unknowingly constructed something to give even the most ADHD-afflicted kid a migraine.
A latch and open padlock hung off the door. The window was covered like the others but also had a series of long metal bars crossing it horizontally, set into the wall on either side. Other than the bed there was no furniture, even the door of the built-in closet had been removed.
He looked again at the stuffed toys. Nothing sharp, no hard plastic, nothing that a desperate child could use as a tool or a weapon. He didn't start to cry, didn't scream or fire his weapon into the ceiling, but he began moving much faster, sick of the dreamlike pace at which he seemed to be wading through the house. He moved faster than he knew was wise but the movement felt liberating, an action against the oppressive surroundings.
He marched across the hall and wrenched open the next door and, with a clock ticking in his head, launched in feet before eyes; never good.
The floor shot out from beneath him and he scrambled for balance on wet tiles but over-corrected and fell forwards instead, his chest colliding painfully with the edge of a bathtub while his knees cracked to the floor. One flailing hand bent backwards against the side of the tub while the other arm ended up submerged to the shoulder in the startlingly cold liquid within, the shock causing him to lose his grip on his gun.
He fished for his weapon frantically, causing the contents of the bath to slosh onto his face, into his eyes and mouth, and the harsh burn of chemicals was much worse than the cold of the water they were mixed with.
Crawling away from the tub, coughing and retching, he used the sink to pull himself to his feet. He wiped at his eyes with his jacket collar, but it was soaked and didn't help. He smacked at the light switch before turning back to the tub.
Through bleary, stinging eyes, he saw that it was full of a dark, reddish-brown liquid that was completely opaque. A small leg attached to an even smaller foot and nothing else moved obscenely on its disturbed surface.
He didn't allow himself time to be disgusted before he rushed over and thrust his arm back in. When the sound of breaking glass came from the top of the hall, he didn't waste time looking around, just registered where he needed to go next.
The fumes made his head spin, his throat want to close, but adrenalin did its best to cancel out these effects. He grabbed something that wasn't a gun and pushed it away, doing his best not to dwell on the flesh he had felt disintegrating under his grasp. He finally found what he was looking for and dragged it out of the mess, liquid pouring from its barrel.
As he ran out of the room, he slid involuntarily so he gripped the door frame and swung himself in the direction he needed to go, momentum speeding him toward the room at the top of the hall. Eyes swimming, blood booming in his ears.
He flung himself shoulder-first at the door, not caring that he knew better. When it didn't give, he hit it again with no more luck. When he grabbed the handle, he realised it wasn't locked.
In the second that hung in the space between turning the handle and throwing open the door, he had just enough time to wish goodbye and good luck to the part of him still heading home to Anna, and to hope that the dripping gun in his hand would still fire. He did not have time to think about the choices taken from him or to regret ever having learned about a shortcut through a nowhere street.
That would come later.
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I hope you enjoyed this prologue!
If you'd like to read on and discover the full story of How To Contact The Living, please check out my book on Amazon or visit www.bryanfarrellauthor.com 151Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVgtbonFBko
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