Riverwatch (12 page)

Damon didn’t blame him.

"There’s more, boss," a voice said from behind him. "The rest is worse, if that’s possible to imagine."

Damon didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just turned to look at Frank. The rest of it? Worse? What the hell could be worse than this?

Castiglioni motioned the Sheriff towards the bed and Damon followed, his feet as heavy as cement blocks. He didn’t want to get any closer, didn’t want to see what his fellow officer had to show him, but duty compelled him to follow. Frank ducked under a low hanging piece of intestine, and drew back the hanging curtains, exposing the bed itself and what lay atop it.

Damon felt the breath sucked from his lungs at the sight.

A human corpse was on the bed, and from its musculature Damon could tell it had been a male. From its chest gaped a savage wound, and it was from here that the internal organs had been pulled and stretched forth to the canopy around them. If that wasn’t enough, the body had also been dismembered.

And beheaded.

The sheer brutality of the act was sickening. Damon hoped to God that the victim, whoever he had been, had been dead long before the killer had performed his grotesque artistry. To even contemplate what the man might have endured had he been alive was unthinkable; his mind balked at the very concept.

When he had recovered sufficient breath to speak, Damon asked, "Where’s his head?" He noticed his voice trembled when he spoke, and wondered if Frank had noticed it, too.

Frank laughed, a strange eerie chuckle. Wilson instantly recognized it for what it was; the type of laugh you make to chase away the willies when you’re alone in an empty house in the dead of night. It was the sound of a man doing his best to reassure himself.

And miserably failing.

It was anything but comforting.

"In the bathroom," Frank replied. He hesitated, clearly considering how much to say, and then decided against saying anything at all, for he merely indicated once again that Damon should follow. The two of them crossed the room, to where a door stood next to the bureau.

It was not the extravagant master bath Damon had expected. An oval-shaped mirror hung over a marble sink. A toilet stood to his left, a claw-foot tub to his right.

Frank nodded at the open toilet.

Damon stepped over and looked down, peripherally aware that Frank had moved back out of the room.

The man’s missing head was stuffed in the toilet bowl, the once blue-tinged water a sickly purple hue from the blood that had been spilled into it from the leaking head.

The man’s white hair writhed about his head like living seaweed. His ghastly dead face was frozen in an expression of horror; his mouth open wide in a silent scream of pain, his empty eye sockets still leaking blood.

For just a split second, Damon’s mind told him it wasn’t real.

But it was.

And deep down inside, he knew it.

He turned away, unable to face that eyeless, accusing stare a moment longer, only to find he could still feel its gaze burning into his back.

"You poor bastard," he muttered under his breath.

Numbed by all the destruction, he stood there for a moment, seeing himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes reflecting the questions that were rushing around inside his head.

This was worse than anything he had imagined. That he was the best man to be in this position was beyond a doubt; the rest of the men on the force had never dealt with any type of violent crime. They were good, yes, but something like this was beyond the scope of their experience. They were police officers in a small town, and things like this just didn’t happen in a place like this. In the city it was different, and Damon knew that from too many years of personal experience.

Now he wondered if those years would be enough.

And then another, more chilling thought occurred to him.

What if the bastard killed again before they could stop him?

The thought of bodies piling up around him while the investigation floundered sent a stream of sweat rolling down his back, dredging up all the old concerns and self-doubts. The mountainous weight of responsibility settled about his shoulders like a cloak, and he was suddenly more scared of failure than he’d ever been.

What if my best just wasn’t good enough? he asked himself.

What then?

He forced his doubts away, knowing he needed to concentrate in order to get the job done. Frank was waiting for him in the bedroom.

Now that the initial shock had passed, Damon found he could think a bit clearer. He asked the first, obvious question, "The radio call mentioned two bodies. Where’s the other?"

Frank glanced away, uneasily. "Look around," he directed, waving his hand about the room.

Damon did. All he saw were bits and pieces of flesh everywhere.

The implication of his officer’s words sank in slowly.

He turned to face him. "You mean…"

"Yeah. There’s not enough flesh missing from the male’s corpse to account for all this mess, so most of it had to come from the guy’s wife. We can’t find the rest of her body though, so we think maybe whoever did this took it when he left."

"We got an I.D. on the body yet?" Damon asked.

"Yeah, but its still unconfirmed. Some of the pictures in the house match this guy here, near as we can tell. George Cummings. We have to wait until the coroner does the prints to be sure, but I’d bet next week’s pay on it. We’ve got an A.P.B. out on the wife, just to be sure she isn’t the cutter and that it wasn’t some young bimbo that got chopped up with him."

"Anyone call Strickland?"

"Yeah. Should be here any minute now."

Damon nodded approvingly. The officers were doing their jobs despite the atrocity around them, and of that he could be proud. "Okay then, let’s get out of here and let the techs do their jobs." He waved Frank out of the room before him, and the other man seemed more than happy to oblige. Damon didn’t blame him, if he had to spend another moment in that room he thought he might scream. Back downstairs, the two of them gathered the other officers who weren’t currently involved in securing the sight from the crowd that was beginning to show up, and assembled them in a loose huddle by the patrol cars.

Damon began giving out assignments, doing his best to get the situation under control and the investigation rolling. There was no time to lose. He knew the cardinal rule of homicide investigations; most killers will be caught in the first forty-eight hours of the investigation, if they were going to be caught at all. When he was finished, one of the men raised his hand.

"What do we do about the press?" the officer asked. "The local papers have got people already out there, mixin’ with the crowd and tryin’ to get inside. The TV crews can’t be that far behind."

Damon swore under his breath. He knew he couldn’t contain this for long, but letting it out now would just cause panic in the streets. He thought hard for a moment. "Okay, listen up. I want all of you to keep your mouths shut on this one. If they get one hint about what we got upstairs, I’ll come down on every one of you, you got that? At the moment we’re the only ones who know how bad it is, and we’ve got to keep it to ourselves until the P.R. people can assemble a press conference in the morning. We don’t know if this is a one-timer or not, and we don’t need any other loony out there starting to act like a copycat. Keep the details to yourselves. If anyone asks, let ‘em know we got a suspicious death, and leave it at that. If anyone gives you any trouble, you send ‘em direct to me, got it? Questions? Okay then, get to work."

The men moved off to follow their orders, leaving Damon alone for the moment. He slumped against the side of his vehicle, suddenly drained. He stood there and stared out into the night, wondering about the killer.

Who was he? What did he look like?

More importantly, where was he now?

At the moment, Damon didn’t have any answers.

But he would discover them in time.

He had to.

Chapter Fourteen: A Summons in the Night

Midnight.

The night was still.

Hushed.

Expectant.

The moon hung low on the horizon, looming there as if poised on the edge of a long drop. Since it was early in its ascension, it filled the sky, a vast ball of incandescence that punched a hole in the night’s blackness.

Standing on his balcony, the smooth flagstones beneath his feet damp from the evening’s chill and glistening with the silvery blue light of the moon, Hudson Blake gazed out into that darkness, watchful and vigilant.

As he watched the darkness, he felt it watching him in return.

He sensed it was hungry.

Turning away, he reentered his study through the set of French doors that led to the balcony, and crossed the room, picking up the withered journal that lay open on his desk. The book’s leather binding was stiff and laced with cracks, its pages fragile, yellow with age and neglect.

He read aloud the entry written on the open page.

"To summon the Beast, one must make a true and worthy sacrifice. An offering of that which is most precious to the denizens of the pit must be made swiftly and without hesitation. Once the blood has been shed, if ye are of sound mind and valor, you must take up the Bloodstone in both hands, cupping it between the palms, with the left hand, the Hand of Vengeance, above the right, the Hand of Righteousness. Repeating the words of the unholy incantation contained herein, reach out with the very essence of your now damned soul and call forth that which you desire."

He’d read that passage more than a hundred times, and the words fell from his lips with the ease of long familiarity.

Having made a substantial study of ancient, mystical traditions, Hudson dismissed most of the text as bullshit. Such rituals were mainly for show, to bolster the performer’s image in the eyes of the uninitiated.

But as the best lies often contain a kernel of truth, so too did the description of the ritual contain the clues needed to bring it to its proper fruition. And in this instance, Blake was certain he had correctly identified them.

The remarks about the crystal were the key.

Carefully laying the book back onto the desk, Hudson reached up under the collar of the shirt he wore and removed the necklace that was hanging about his neck. The dark stone that dangled on the end of the chain spun in the air like a pendulum, sending off tiny flashes of crimson whenever it was touched by the room’s light.

This was the crystal to which the journal had been referring.

The Bloodstone.

He stared at it now, wondering as always where his ancestor, Sebastian had obtained it. Years earlier he’d shown it to several prominent jewelers. None of them had been able to identify the type of stone or its country of origin. Ever since, it had held a particular fascination for him and he’d often gaze at it for long periods of time, attempting to unlock its secrets.

What he did understand was that it was the stone itself, not the ritual or its flowery incantations that would allow him to communicate with the beast his ancestor had known as Moloch.

He held it up to the lamp, shining the light on its ruby surface. Deep inside the stone, he thought he could see movement.

His eyes narrowed as he looked closer.

There! Something had shifted position deep within its depths.

But what?

While he yearned for the answers, he knew they were really not all that important. Only what the stone would allow him to do was.

He leaned over the desk and reread the vital line in the journal.

"…reach out with the very essence of your soul and call forth that which you desire."

At first, the line had confused him. How does one reach out with the essence of his soul? But after a time he came to realize that he was seeking a deeper meaning than necessary, that the words needed to be taken in the literal sense. Medieval writers had seen the mind and the soul as one, so the passage was actually referring to the mind. Thus reaching out with his soul really meant reaching out with his mind.

He believed that somehow the crystal channeled his thought patterns, much the same way as an antenna will channel radio signals.

All that he had to do to reach Moloch was think about him.

It should be that simple.

He’d tried it before however, without success. His failure with the stone and his inability to find the hidden vault had caused him to dismiss the entire legend of his ancestor’s winged familiar as so much fantasy.

But now that the vault had been found, he was convinced that the journal’s contents were true.

Maybe it was my doubt all along that prevented the connection.

The discovery of the body in the basement of Stonemoor had added fuel to the flames of his beliefs, and after getting all the information from Caruso that he could, he decided that there was only one possible explanation.

The journal was true; the beast did exist.

And with the death of that vandal, it seemed to have returned to the world after hiding itself for so long.

Not that he cared about the fool who had been killed, that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that at last he’d be able to prove the family legends that had intrigued him all of his adult life. The end of his search was finally in sight.

His fingers itched to seize the power in their bony grasp.

He first learned of the beast’s existence when he’d found the journal years before, hidden in a niche in the fireplace in one of the mansion’s unused rooms. Upon reading it, Hudson scoffed at the information it contained, but later found himself irresistibly drawn back to its musty, yellowed pages again and again, his mind alight with the possibilities he saw there. It was in the journal that he also learned of his ancestor’s pact with the Beast, and the awesome powers it employed for him. Dreaming of possessing such knowledge for himself, he set about to learn if what the journal contained was true.

Tonight he would finally know.

It was time to begin.

Holding the crystal in one hand by its slim gold chain, he moved to the center of the room.