Excerpt from Dark Waters © 2014 G. J.
Owens
Pat woke to the sound of the
television. It pushed away the pattering
of rain against glass and the sharp-yet-hollow clank of the gun careening off
the metal catwalk as it did every night. Left in its wake was only a steady tone like
that of an alarm. He rubbed his eyes,
the television screen blurred by the remaining tendrils of the recurring dream.
Intertwining with the rhythmic
repetition of the sonic pulses he could not identify, Pat heard the voice of
the reporter to whom it seemed a personal mission to add to the torment already
bearing down on him.
"The police are stumped,"
her nasally voice droned from the small speakers with a whining treble. "Detective Collins pleaded for
assistance in the matter, so if you have any information that could help the
police in their investigation, please call the number displayed at the bottom
of your screen."
It was not until he untangled the
woman's words from the television speakers that Pat realized the persistent,
monotone rhythm underneath was the ringing of his phone, beckoning from where
it lay in the kitchen.
"Dear Christ."
Pat stumbled through the
darkness. The reaching rays of light
from the flickering television screen created the single source of illumination. He was unsure of the time but judged it
closer to proper morning than evening based on the quality of gray that
inhabited the darkness beyond the kitchen windows. The phone vibrated against the surface of the
countertop. He flipped it open and
placed it to his ear in one motion.
"Hello?"
"Pat," he heard Stan's
voice say, "We may have just gotten damn lucky. We got a tip.
Schoolhouse Number 2. He may
still be inside."
"I'll meet you there. I'm leaving now. Come in quiet."
Pat had never been so thankful for
passing out fully clothed in his entire life.
He swiped the keys from the counter and dropped the cell phone in his
jacket pocket as he walked out the door.
The screen door slammed shut behind
him and Pat stopped, breathed, and silently reached his left hand under the lid
and into the maw of the mailbox. There
was nothing inside.
Pat wasted no more time getting to
the car and heading toward the old schoolhouse.
His body was vibrating with the anticipation of putting an end to the
madness that had begun just over a week earlier, to stop the murderous hand
from striking once more.
The blaring of a horn broke the
miasma in which Pat was lost. Twin beams
of sharp white light pierced his eyes.
It took a split second to return his car to the lane it had drifted from,
which was all the time he had. An
eighteen-wheeled behemoth barreled by in the opposite lane, the force of its
passing sending a blast of air through the open window and across his chest.
Pat gripped the wheel tighter in an
attempt to control his confusion and the sharp rise of adrenaline that flooded
through his system. A few deep breaths
rounded out his procedure.
His composure, along with a modicum
of alertness, had returned by the time the schoolhouse appeared within
sight. It took up the corner of a town
block lined with ancient elm trees. Pat
approached it from the far end of the block.
The headlights of the car found
Stan waiting next to his own car, and Pat doused the beams as they began to
cross the shape of the other man.
"We're first," Stan told
Pat as he got out of the vehicle.
"Bromley and Jones are on their way, but I say we go in. We shouldn't take any chances."
The pair began walking toward the
far end of the block where the red brick, painted black by the predawn sky, and
the graffiti-laced concrete of the boarded-up school stood like a forgotten
sentinel of a simpler and more innocent age.
"One of the neighborhood watch
called in about flashlights in the school," Stan continued. "Thought it was kids, but because of how
early it is and what we know about the notes, I think this might be it."
Pat nodded his agreement. It made perfect sense. Perhaps this was the end, the final volley of
the murderous contest.
He surveyed the exterior of the
school. Windows boarded decades prior
displayed a riot of different color spray paints on all three levels of the
building. To the right side was a
loading area that must have once been used for delivering foodstuffs and
equipment. Bent metal pipes traced a
rusted railing around a black space in the ground. Straight ahead was the main entrance. Two stacks of cracked and broken concrete
stairs leaned against the building drunkenly, topped by a plywood door.
"Does this seem right to you?"
Pat quietly asked.
"No, but do we have a
choice?"
Pat nodded wordlessly, set aside
his trepidations, and took a step to the right. He pointed toward the service entrance. Stan signaled his understanding and ascended
the steps. At the corner of the
building, Pat gave Stan one last look, to which he received a nod, and he
continued down into the hole in the ground at the side of the building.
Most of the glass in the service
door had been broken out countless years earlier, although small, jagged teeth
remained in spots along the lattice of the frame. Pat could see where a long, straight board
had once been affixed across the threshold of the inward-opening door but now
lay on the ground to the side. It was
impossible to tell how long ago it had been removed.
A squeeze of the handle and a push
against the broad surface of the door was not enough to set it ajar. Pat peered into the coalescing darkness,
tinged only by the promise of the soon-to-come daylight. He could see nothing.
He did not dare use a light. He squeezed the handle again and lowered his
shoulder into the door. It scraped the
ground as he forced it inward enough to pass his body through with a turn of
his shoulders. Reaching down behind him,
he felt the collection of grooves in the concrete, evidence that this was but
the latest of many times the door had been opened in such a manner.
Inside, Pat crouched and
listened. The air around him slowly
turned from black to gray as his eyesight adjusted. Small streamers of soft light filtered
through the wide passageway in front of him like the delicate webs of a
phosphorescent spider. He imagined the
weak breathed out by the walls, misting the space until Pat was able to make
out the disused hall.
Classroom doors were placed
alternately from one side opposite the other, all the way to the point in the
distance where the wheeze of light grew too weak to illuminate much past the
connecting corridor, which led to the rear of the building. Upon the ground, waste left by numerous
animals mixed with metal, glass, and paper detritus on the once-polished floors,
now abandoned to some dull, darker tone wrought by age. The smell of the air was pungent, and Pat
could hear no sound above that of his own breathing.
Pat decided the use of the small
LED flashlight from his pocket was a small but necessary risk. Its light colored the hall blue but reflected
white off the unbroken stretches of glass that trapped their secrets behind a
veneer of dark grime. Pat walked
forward, his feet crunching on the debris littered throughout the passage.
At the connecting hall, Pat
shielded the light and inspected the darkness.
He could see gyrating shapes throughout the corridor, but he was unable
to discern whether it was true movement or the trickery of the shadows.
He lifted the flashlight while at
the same time removing his hand from its bulb.
The shadows retreated, but there was no other movement revealed. Satisfied, Pat continued forward.
That part of the building quickly
devolved into pipes and insulation as it stretched out to the rear, exposing
its very innards in an unselfconscious manner.
Halfway to the end of the
schoolhouse, Pat heard the sound of metal striking metal. The reverberations of the noise came from
below and to the right. He wondered if
there was some sort of boiler room or furnace works beneath the level he
traversed. He pressed the face of the
flashlight to his thigh to smother the light and listened. Fainter, the sound came a second time,
ostensibly from the same source.
At the termination of the corridor
on the right stood a high metal door. It
was opened inward and its surface was flaked with rust in the large sections
where the paint had peeled away. Pat
slipped his pistol from its holster and clicked off the safety.
Light danced from within the space
beyond the heavy door, as if from flames.
Pat doused the flashlight and returned it to his pocket. He ducked his head around the edge of the
door, once, twice, three times, each for a longer period than the one
before. He saw no one or thing waiting
on the other side, only a passageway of rusting pipes.
In one swift motion, he slipped
into the passage, swinging the firearm out in front of him and clearing the
space behind the door.
He walked foot over foot to the end
of the corridor, where it turned sharply to the right. The light grew more intense and washed the
red and cream of the rusted pipes with soft, orange light. He was now able to smell the fire as
well. At the corner, he took a deep
breath and swung his upper body around it.
A small anteroom greeted him. Pipes ran in all directions and created a
ragged network of perpendicularity Pat felt it impossible to extrapolate. A small barrel on the far end of the floor
was home to a crackling fire, sparks rising from its metal circle as the wood inside
popped.
It was nothing. He had allowed himself to hope, to pray that
the one they were chasing had got sloppy, despite the dearth of clues left at
the previous scenes. He was wrong. It had been an empty chase.
Pat dropped his arms. His disgust may have masked the sound--if
there had been any to be heard--but he felt the hands fall on either side of
his face. He wanted to turn, even began
to feel his feet shift, but he twisted only into darkness as the room around
him was swallowed by nothingness.
The black lasted no longer than the
blinking of his eye before he was able to see again. The flame flickered as he carried the naked
body in his arms, its weight less than it had any right to be.
He placed the unmoving form on the
ground near the fire barrel, wasting no time in retrieving the braided wire
from his pocket. He looped it several
times around each of the girl's wrists, leaving a long lead trailing along the
ground. He felt the thrill of what he
was doing at the same time as it sickened him.
The two feelings were battering each other like the force of the water
against a seawall. Any attempt he made
to revolt against his actions proved fruitless.
He could not make himself stop no matter how much effort he exerted
toward the task.
He watched as he lifted the corpse
at the waist, pinned it against the wall so that he could bind the wrists to
the pipes. Once she was in place, he
looped more wire around both of her ankles and bound those to the low pipes in
the same manner he had with the wrists.
The body of the girl dangled in a mockery of crucifixion. He nodded in admiration of his work, twisted
round, and returned to the dark.
~~~
How much time passed while Pat was
lost in the impenetrable black pit he had fallen into he could not say, but the
next thing he was consciously aware of was his name being called. It started as a muffled and indistinct
exclamation, soon resolving into the single syllable of his moniker.
The darkness was slowly pushed to
the edges of his vision like ripples in a puddle. Through the watery surface of his eyes, Pat
saw Stan's face pressed close to his own, lips moving to match the repeated sound
of his name.
"I'm okay," Pat
said. He tried to blink away the
residual darkness and concentrate on the features of his partner's face as the
dancing light turned his skin ten different shades of orange. "What happened?"
"You tell me."
Stan took his wrists in his hands
and pulled them up into Pat's line of sight.
Smears of blood wove patterns on the skin like a macabre application of
incarnadine camouflage, or as though he had only his hands to staunch the flow
of a particularly bloody nose.
"I don't feel anything? Is it mine?"
Stan shook his head. Pat did not misinterpret the resignation with
which his partner confirmed it was not he who was injured. He shifted from where he crouched in front of
Pat, revealing the end of the room that had been blocked by his body.
Beside the barrel in which the fire
guttered, trussed to the wall of winding pipes, was the body of a young girl,
naked and torn. Her dark head lolled
forward against her chest, and the wash of her long, matted hair covered near
the entirety of her nude form, all the way to mid-thigh. The skin that remained exposed was stained in
much the same way as Pat's hands, which he inspected a second time.
"No."
"Bromley and Jones will be
here any second. They can't see you like
this. We need to get you out of
here," Stan said as he slung Pat's arm over his shoulder.
"How long?"
"Five-ten minutes at
most."
"But I did it, Stan. I put her there."
Pat felt the older man handle his
weight as the pair started moving toward the exit of the boiler room.
"Don't be silly," Stan
said. "You're delirious. You just need some fresh air."
Pat began to get his legs under him
as they returned to the corridor down which he had first come, but Stan steered
him in the opposite direction and toward the rear of the school.
At the back of the school was a
large metal door with a rectangular window filled with bent steel mesh that
must have once also held glass. On the
other side of the door was a sort of covered portico with an inset staircase at
one end. Before helping Pat sit, Stan
swiped a foot across the concrete of the broken steps in order to clear away
the remnants of smashed bottles.
"You just stay here,"
Stan told him.
Pat watched Stan return the way
they had come, and then he looked at his bloodstained hands. Even now, he could practically feel the soft
flesh of the girl on the palms as he wrapped the cord around her wrists and
ankles. He vigorously rubbed them
against the legs of his pants to remove the sensation. He found it was impossible to scrub his mind of
the pleasure the sadistic act had given him in the same way.
"I didn't. I know I didn't," he muttered to
himself. But if not, then how can I
recall it in every detail, he wondered.
He had to concentrate his breathing to keep from hyperventilating.
It was some time before Stan
returned, but Pat had not moved. He had
been dimly aware of eyes turned in his direction a time or two, but he had not
paid them any mind, much the same as the fact that the rising sun--chasing away
the night--had barely registered as the air all about him lightened.
"Come on," Stan said to him. "Let's get you cleaned up."
"Did they take her?" Pat
asked.
"They're coming now."
"What about me? What did you say?"
"I told them you weren't
thinking and tried to get her down."
"But--"
"But nothing. That's what happened. It must have done. Let's go."
"To the station?"
"Home first, I
think." Pat nodded, unable to find
the energy to argue.
The drive was quick and
silent. Pat's thoughts continued in
contemplation and Stan seemed content enough not to speak. Pat could make no sense of what he felt or
remembered, and now was too afraid to speak of it in any greater length. The throb in his head added to the lack of
appeal conversation held, and he was thankful for the reticence of his partner.
Their silence continued even after
arriving at Pat's house. It was not
until they reached the door that Pat broke it, when he saw the ear of a piece
of paper poking from his mailbox.
"Stan," he said, pointing in its direction.
"Don't touch it," said
Stan, pulling a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his jacket. He tweezed the paper between pinched fingers
covered by the cloth.
Pat opened the door to his kitchen
and switched on the lights. Stan
followed close behind. He carefully laid
the fragment on the counter where they could both read the words written on it.
Did you enjoy it?
