The Man and The Mask

Bob Smithson traced the arcing lines across his papers, following his handiwork with his finger as he rated himself and his works. He took a few more strokes with his brush and created a few more black watery streaks that looped and circled around the page in their own curious fancy. His art seemed surreal to him, an alien trait he somehow had to wield without knowledge. He wasn’t much for art galleries or critics so he had nothing to compare his works to so he had to make do with his simple black lines. He should have never joined the police force; he should have kept his boyhood dreams of being a painter as he ran around his room with a paintbrush in his hand, painting walls and chairs and whatever else he could find. His parents had been hard to impress though and now here he sat at his mahogany desk, doodling with his brush in his spare time.

A knocking at his door interrupted his thoughts. It was three knocks, quick in succession with the last being slightly more forceful on its descent to the wooden door frame. He

recognized that knock for it was one that frequented his office space. “Come in Reeves.” The door was carefully opened by the nervous man on the other side; his slight frame and sharp features barely taking up the little crack he had opened. Reeves had been on the force for a few years but still acted as much a novice as he had the first day he arrived. His name was something of an oddity in England, or anywhere else for that matter and Bob was fairly certain it had been changed by Reeves some time ago.

“I hope I’m not intruding on you sir.”

“Well, nothing that could be rectified now anyway. It’s just me and my thoughts.” Reeves remained in the crack of the doorframe staring back with his timid eyes, one of which was blue and the other green. “Come in Reeves, I’m sure that’s why you came here in the first place.”

Reeves stared blankly for a moment as the words passed through his mind. He looked startled and shook his head. “Sorry sir, I was off in my own thoughts.”

“Well that’s great news Reeves, and keep me updated as you figure out more about how to think.”

“Reeves blushed a bit at the comment. “I’m sorry sir, I don’t normally do that.”

“Yes I know you don’t, I noticed you make quite a habit of not doing it.”

“Umm, sure sir. Anyways, I have a drink for you; I figured you would have gotten thirsty sitting in your office all day.”

“Actually I rather preferred sitting in my office, doing next to nothing, since it’s much better than any of the paperwork I’m sure you brought along with that cup.”

“No sir, I don’t have paperwork.” He placed a mug on Bob’s desk and backed away. The ripples from the vibration of being moved and placed radiated out from the center of the brown liquid. The aroma of the coffee rose up to meet with Bob’s nose. He loved the smell of coffee, any coffee be it mocha or cappuccino or French roast, or any other. He hated the taste of it; it was far too bitter for his liking but ever since he had first smelled it he believed that something that smelled so great must be drunken so he began drinking it and would just suffer through the agony of its tastes. He sipped at it, noting how Reeves had made it black like he normally liked it but with some extra flavoring to it. He couldn’t quite grasp it but it was actually quite nice and he preferred this coffee to any other he had had before.

“Hmm, this is nice. What type is it?”

“Just your regular dark roast sir. I didn’t add anything to it, just like you ask but I did let it sit a little while I was told of this new report.”

“You mean the dog attack last night? I signed everything through, we have a few men looking into it. It’s mostly just little disturbances, dispersed, too random to be anything planned.”

“But that many dog attacks all in the same day? They may be in different places and times but the chances of such a magnitude of attacks is too unlikely to be passed off as nothing.”

“Look, I just sign papers and investigate and arrest people. It’s the government’s call if they think there is a conspiracy or some terrorist organization. You know that, you’ve always known that because it’s always been that way. If that’s all you wanted then you’re dismissed.”

“Oh no, that’s not the new report, that’s old news now. We just got news of a murder down on 36 Tanith Street. We don’t have a full report right now, just a local who lives next door and he said he looked through the window and saw her lying on the floor.”

“So I still have to look over a report of this when it comes through?”

“Actually, you are going to have to make the report since all our other available men are covering thei rown cases, or this dog case.”

“We still had some extras around though didn’t we?”

Reeves shook his head. “Sorry sir but Jenkins called in sick this morning, Park has been off for the past three days, he’s due back in three more and I haven’t seen Williams all day. I think he injured himself in that rooftop chase.”

“Yes he was always quite reckless. So I guess that leaves you and me Reeves and I wasn’t much in the mood for an investigation.” He looked out into the dark streets of London, dotted with the specks of lantern light lit throughout the city, giving slight illumination to the parts they covered but it still left many dark alleys and streets. “Reeves, it must be near eleven o’clock, I’m not going out now, I’m going to pack it in. You can cover this on your own can’t you?”

“Sorry sir, but I can’t. Protocol says that at least two officers must report to the scene of any potentially serious crime and this is potential murder therefore two officers are needed.”

“Look, the man said he saw her lying on the floor. She could’ve collapsed or fallen down or been sleeping or any number of things. There is no confirmation that she is dead, that anyone killed her, or even that she killed herself.”

“There’s no conformation either way so if I showed up and it was a murder then you’d be in big trouble wouldn’t you?”

Bob grumbled to himself a little and finished off his coffee in a few quick gulps as he grabbed his coat off the rack. “I hate it when you’re right.”

They walked along the lit streets, passing few people in the late hours. A couple of women gave them a shout as they passed their brothel but they continued onward without even noticing. They should’ve arrested those women a long time ago but too many men on the force used that building so it remained. The women in it were nothing special to Bob though not many prostitutes were anything special, just bodies to be bought for a period of time and the government officials who paraded through that building throughout the year sickened Bob to a degree that he would never enter that brothel without dire need.

They arrived at 36 Tanith Street, for it was just a quick walk down the street, no coach required. There was the light of a fire coming from the bottom floor of the old manor that both officers looked upon. Upstairs there was only a candle lighting the one window on the front side of the house. There was also the one on the side if the neighbor had been telling the truth but it couldn’t be seen. There didn’t appear to be anything else on the top floor, perhaps there was only one room on the second floor.

Reeves briskly stepped through the small gate in the fence surrounding the house’s border. The gate had been left slightly ajar by either the last one to enter or leave the house or by the potential killer. While Reeves took a sudden interest in the flower garden growing alongside the quick pathway to the house, Bob looked around the street that lay before him. He had never been much for the exploration of the city and had never ventured down Tanith Street, but it turned out to be just as boring as any other street, with a few lamps on the sides to indicate that it was just popular enough to earn light after dark.

Bob shivered a little and wrapped his coat tighter. The chill fall air would only get colder as the days passed and London had been experiencing some of its coldest nights in a long time. It wasn’t a cold achieved through harsh winds or rain or snow, but just a chill breeze and a general feeling of cold. It was a dry fall so the cold could not be blamed on the dampness of the air, there was practically none accept for the breath in front of a person’s face. Bob wished he had never left his paintings and was still sitting tracing his lines over and over. He wished he had some coffee with him to warm him up and he visualized it in his mind, wrapping his hands around the imaginary cup; feeling its warmth traveling through his fingers and up his arm into his head where it would then slide down his spine and warm him all the way to his toes on the ground. He sniffed the air around him for the non-existent smell of coffee and instead smelled the unmistakable odor of dog crap somewhere on the nearby street. He shook his head to clear his shattered visions and looked back at the house.

Between house 36 and house 38 was a lamp to keep things lit along the street and under it was a peculiar man leaning against the fence. He wore a black suit, one that a wealthy gentleman would wear to any occasion he could to show off his money and yet it looked like a mere casual suit, much like the ones of the gentlemen who stalked the streets in the daytime. He had matching pants and a black cane with a hawk’s head of silver on the top for a handle. He ported a faded purple scarf and topped it all off with a top hat that looked fresh off the store shelf. His face was angled down so that the brim of his hat caught the light and left his face in shadow and Bob could only see some of the skin on the bottom of his chin.

The man didn’t move, merely a figure standing alone in the night, his shadow cast across the street. It seemed to Bob that the man was looking right at him the whole time and it sent chills through him for an unknown reason, one that eluded his grasp at the moment. While he looked upon the man’s hidden visage he was struck with the thought that this man had committed the murder here tonight. Though it made logical sense since nobody should be just standing about at this hour and it was eerily apprehensive how he was standing just beside the house where the potential murder was committed. He dismissed the ideas swirling in his head as they would cloud his perception if he retained them during the investigation and would sway his opinion into the realms of being bias, and those were realms he dared not enter again as the last occurrence nearly cost him his job.

He ignored the man as he walked past him up to the house. The wind picked up a little as he made it to the door where Reeves was waiting. He looked back and could barely make out the figure by the lamp, his suit swaying in the breeze. Reeves turned to the door and knocked his three quick knocks upon it. They waited for two minutes. No answer. The street was deathly silent and the darkness here seemed somewhat darker than anywhere else, even with the assistance of the lamps. The moon must have been covered with clouds for it had been high in the sky and bright last night. The atmosphere of the night was actually quite terrifying to Bob. In all his years he had never felt such a way before from just the night air. He had been witness to horrible slashings and bodies thrown from buildings to land upon fence posts that would end up jutting out of their body at the point of impact. But this night was different. It was a truly scary feeling and he wished even more now that he was still holding that coffee and drawing.

Reeves turned back to Bob after another minute of waiting. “Well, it looks like nobody is going to come let us in politely. Should I smash the door or we just break the handle?”

Bob looked at Reeves then at the door. He pulled his pistol out and fired a quick shot into the door handle, blowing the wood apart and sending it flying off. The sound of the bullet echoed down the street, shattering its stillness like the bullet broke the door. And then it was gone, swallowed by the blackness of the night. The door had opened inward slightly from the force of the shot. “It looks open to me,” Bob said to Reeves. He reached forward tentatively fearing what might be waiting on the other side on this night.

The door slowly inched open as Bob laid slight pressure to it, his pistol still remaining in his hand, another shot cocked, hammer in place and ready to fire. In front of them was the inside of a house, one decorated by people who must have been of middle-upper class, with a fire still glowing red hot embers to the side. Directly in front of the door were the stairs leading to a closed door at the top, with light sneaking out through the crack in the bottom. 

Bob looked around what little of the house he could see. He knew that the woman who was murdered was up on the top floor; the neighbour had said he had seen her through the second story window. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t study the house first. There might be a clue, a disturbance, a trace of the murderer. Perhaps the murderer was still in the house…

To the left of the door and stairs was a living room with the fire still lit and two upholstered armchairs facing slightly towards the fire yet still towards the other. Beyond that appeared to be another hallway into some back room, maybe a kitchen or bedroom, but the light of the fire could only go so far and the shadows clouded the hallway. To the right was another room in faint light, but Bob could make out a table and chairs and assumed it was the dining room. Maybe there was another doorway in the room leading to a back room like the living room; Bob couldn’t tell. As his view returned to the stairway, a flash in the dining room caught his eye, like a pair of eyes staring out from the shadows.

He whipped his pistol out and barely kept himself from loosing a couple shots into the darkness. He stared for a full minute, but the flash of eyes never returned. When he turned his head slightly though, the light caught a silver coated foot of a table leg and reflected in a flicker. He shook his head and gave up on the eyes. Reeves placed a trembling hand on his shoulder. “Everything alright sir?”

Bob was breathing deeply, tension flowing through his body with the adrenaline. He was scared and he knew it. It was something about this house, this night. How it felt, how it was. In this pure darkness, anything could be hiding; waiting for the chance to strike. He shook again. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Thought I saw something, that’s all.”

This night wasn’t right, nothing was right tonight. The air inside the whole of the house was heavy with a macabre feeling. Something dark and sinister just waiting to be found. He feared every moment he was outside the police station this night. If it had been just him he would have left by now, fleeing the scene to a safer haven and claiming the murder hadn’t happened, then cleaning the body up later. It was classic, he did it all the time, everyone did. It’s not like he was a criminal. Everyone was.

Reeves turned back to the stairs and a peculiar sight caught his eyes. Something was very slowly trickling down the stairs and pooling at the bottom. A red pool. Reeves took a bit between his fingers and held it up to his eyes. “It’s definitely blood sir. Either she fell and split her head, or someone split it for her.”

Bob shuddered. If she had lost enough blood to have it running down the stairs then this wouldn’t be a pretty scene. Of course, there could be other possibilities. She could’ve fallen right beside the door or this could be one of those drama queen head injuries that bleeds profusely regardless of size or depth. Or it could be the worst case, where she had been indeed murdered and Bob trusted in this evil night to make sure it was a gruesome murder.

“Well we better get this over with.” He took in a deep breath and brought his pistol up beside him, cocked and ready. He began a slow ascent of the stairs, learning that they were fairly creaky and must’ve posed quite a challenge for the one who tried to stalk up them earlier. If that had happened. He turned and looked back at Reeves who was still staring down at the blood. Reeves had never seen anything like this before; he was mostly a desk worker and had been lucky enough to miss out some of the more hideous crime scenes. “Come on Reeves, that blood isn’t going to go anywhere.” Reeves still stood staring at the blood, his mouth slightly agape. “Look Reeves, it’s probably a head injury. She might have just fallen and cut her head on the corner of a desk. That’s all.”

That seemed enough for Reeves and he reluctantly began moving up the stairs, careful to avoid the thin trail of blood that ran straight down the middle of the stairs. Bob stopped to look at it for a moment. Interesting how the blood took a straight path down the stairs without any curves or twists or any other following drop of blood breaking away and choosing a different path. No, this was not a tributary of blood but merely the one trickle. What are the odds of that? Bob thought. He brought his mind back to climbing the old stairs to the closed door at the top.

Reeves caught up with him in the time he had stopped to observe and they finished the rest of the stairs off. There was a bit of hall before the door; enough space for both of them to stand together at the top. Bob had his ear pressed to the door to listen for any sounds of life on the other side. On more than one occasion he thought he heard scuttling and small feet or claws crawling around but each time he asked Reeves to come listen he could not pick up anything. “It’s deathly silent in there.” Bob decided against questioning Reeves and took his word, but after he kicked this door open and they were both killed by whatever was waiting he would beat Reeves all the way to the afterlife. Of course if they went different ways then he would just have to live with trusting him.

With his pistol up at his side he raised his right leg up and shot the sole of his shoe towards the door. It nearly flew off its hinges for it had not been locked nor had it been properly closed. Bob pointed his gun into the room and stepped in, Reeves following on his heels. Bob stopped just inside the door and Reeves stepped out to his left so he could also look around the room. As soon as he did though, he regretted it and he drew a breath back in horror then doubled-over and vomited his dinner onto the floor beside him.

Not even Bob could have prepared himself for this. When he had watched the people being speared by the fence posts he had been told before arrival what to expect. This he knew only as a routine check up on a potential murder. The neighbor had never said the walls of her room would be painted with her own blood.

Every wall, every piece of furniture, every thing was covered with at least a single drop of the woman’s blood. He was surprised she had enough blood left to let it run down the stairs. But it wasn’t just blood that was smeared across the walls. It was blood that was drawn across the walls, creating intricate symbols and circles, runes of sinister origin and ritual circles the likes of which would kill a preacher were he to look upon it. Though Bob didn’t know what they meant he knew they were evil in its purest form, beyond the comprehension of anything he had ever read about. And most of the blood had run down the walls where it had been placed onto it in generous quantities. Bob looked up and saw even the ceiling was covered with blood, though none of it dripping. It seemed the dark artist who created these pictures had run out of paint and had to just smear the images he wanted to create.

Reeves was still paralyzed in the corner with his bile lying beside him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman lying in the center of the floor. Bob was staring at him and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t looking around the room in terror like Bob. Reeves began to move from his paralysis to kneel down beside the woman’s mutilated corpse. His trembling hands reached out towards her but Bob slapped them away before he had the chance.

“What are you doing?!?! Can’t you see what’s happened here? This is no ordinary murder or serial killer, this is beyond psychotic and I wouldn’t put it past whoever did this to have tainted this corpse with their evil.”

Reeves looked at him quizzically as he processed what had been said. “Just look at the body,” Bob remarked. Reeves turned back to the body and looked it over now that his initial shock was gone. It was terrible, worse then he could have ever imagined or even planned. Who could have done such a thing to a person?

The legs were slashed apart with one long, deep cut running from the top of the right ankle to somewhere underneath her skirt. Her skirt was slashed and torn apart but enough fabric still covered where the cut ran to but it probably stopped somewhere at her hip. On the other leg there were smaller cuts and the left foot had been sliced clean off and taken by the killer as it was nowhere to be found. Reeves had to look away. Just looking over the legs and the damage alone was enough to turn him off.

The rest of her body was in a similarly mutilated state; arms hacked to pieces and the right hand missing, the chest stabbed time and time again but not ripped open grotesquely. The face was practically featureless from its wounds and empty sockets stared up at the ceiling where the eyeballs had been removed from their sockets. The damage to the body was only emphasized by the drawings in blood across the room and under the body was what appeared to be an ancient runic circle with lines that ran from one edge, under the hacked corpse and then reappeared and connected to the other side. Some of them started from a side but never reappeared on the other side, stopping somewhere under the body or maybe even bending or changing directions.

Bob stood up. He hadn’t noticed that he had kneeled down beside the body while he examined it and he nearly threw up at the thought of being so close to it. The evil symbols and air in the room resonated, undulating even, pulsing through his core. Reeves had already left the room, unable to deal with the sights. Bob knew that someone who had undergone such extensive work using the blood would not have left any clues anywhere to help in the case. This one would have to be closed as an unknown murder, with the details withheld by the police. He would write up the report and file it personally to make sure nobody knew of what had happened here. The malice dripping down the walls was too much for anyone to handle and he was surprised he hadn’t lied down next to the body and waited for the evil to consume him as well.

Bob wasn’t a man of much faith. He visited church only on holidays and only if his day was open with no other things for him to do. He believed in a god and that was about it, never taking it further to believe in miracles, or the hand of God, or destiny but as a child he had been raised with the bible as a bedtime storybook and he knew his stories. Truly the evil he felt here was parallel to the demonic forces that lay in other worlds. Though he was not a man of much faith he believed very much in alternate worlds and unnatural beings but he never brought this up with the other officers as he would be booted off the force for irrational thinking. But this, this was something that no rational thinking could explain. Why would a person want to take the blood of someone they killed and paint symbols across the walls and floor and ceiling. Not doodles and splats taking shape but intentional drawings straight from a fantasy novel from a local gothic bookstore.

No this would never be released to any other person in the world and would remain his secret. He could do nothing more for this woman, cut down in her travels through life, never to see her finish line. Or maybe this was her finish line? Bob shook his head to relieve himself of any further thoughts on whichever ism it was that he was thinking of. Existentialism? No. Or wait was it? He couldn’t remember. He shook his head again to remove the ideas and focus his mind.

How would he deal with this crime scene though? Others he could just wipe up some blood and throw the body in the river or in the sewers like some of the men on the force had done but there was no way he would return to this room again. And even if he could bring himself to do it he wouldn’t be able to clean up the blood. Besides this woman had a husband, he could see him in the photos around the room. They looked so happy together in their photogenic moment, that one moment of joy frozen in time to hold in their hands, a little droplet of existence to stare into and cherish. Now there would be no more bliss between the two of them as there was only one of them left.

Bob heard the front door close and then lazily slide open a bit as it was without a handle. He looked out the front window to see Reeves crossing the street. He must have left while Bob was lost in thought, unable to look at the horror scene anymore. His exit brought Bob out of the fog of his thoughts, through the haze and back into the clear reality around him, smeared with the blood of the woman. And suddenly everything was more acute, more detailed and realistic. He saw a tiny spider crawling up the wall from behind the dresser where it had been hiding dormant during the events of the night. He could see it as well as he could see his own hand though the spider was an easy ten feet away and nearly insignificant in this terrible room and yet there it was, making its way up the wall, scuttling as fast as it could, straining itself to travel a mere length of wall.

Bob looked around and saw that the door to the room had been closed by Reeves during his exit. The whole house was now eerily silent with only the spider breathing. Bob realized he was holding his breath and let out a quick release, trying to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t know why, he was the only thing here, he wasn’t hiding. And yet, he was but he didn’t know what he was hiding from. A chill wind blew outside and the house creaked a bit under the wind’s gust. The wind soon stopped but the house retained its sounds, no longer creaking with the wind but just generally creaking. Little anonymous squeaks and creaks scattered in time and location, no two in the same place and yet it seemed like they were advancing, ever so slowly towards Bob.

He felt panic rising, his spine was straight, his back rigid. His hands had gone white as they were clenched in fear and he could feel his hairs rising in anticipation. The creaking only seemed to get closer, everywhere in the house and yet coming up those stairs to the door, to open it up to find Bob standing there like a statue, ready to be consumed by the creaks. His senses seemed heightened, torturing him, making the sounds louder and more prominent so that he couldn’t even hear his own breathing. He needed to leave this house-now. He took swift steps to the door and grasped the handle. He stood there for a moment. The creaking had stopped, the spider had stopped, everything had stopped. The world was now on a standstill, waiting for him to open the door to find some monstrosity waiting for him on the other side or to find the killer still in the house and ready for another victim. He couldn’t move now, the thoughts left him frozen in place.

The creaking began again, coming from everywhere at once but it seemed like the ones from the stairs were louder. They started at the bottom and were slowly working their way up the stairs, the unknown slowly advancing up the stairs to Bob. He would open the door to face his demise or it would open the door for him and either way his demise would be very happy to see him and he would be dead before he knew what to feel. He took a breath and the creaking stopped. He was moving again and the unknown wasn’t.

And now something new. A smell rose up from the crack at the bottom of the door and Bob sniffed the air. No a smell wasn’t the correct word. This was no smell, it was a stench. A stench that he had smelled many times before. Death. Blood. Decay. It was everything about death coming together into the foulest smell imaginable. But it didn’t make Bob sick to his stomach like it should have. Instead his knees gave out for a moment and he nearly dropped to the floor before he caught himself on the round door knob. His fear was as overpowering as the smell was and it only meant one thing. Whatever it was that was out there was at the top now, ready for Bob to come out and into its arms of death.

He whimpered a little as he turned the door handle, feeling it turning with him, almost like his demise on the other side was turning it at the same time, too eager to wait for him to open the door himself. He remembered the pistol he had on him as the handle stopped turning. It could turn no more; all that was required was for him to pull the door open…or for it to push it open from the other side.

He drew his pistol out and pointed at the door. He would open it all at once instead of bit by bit. He didn’t want to see a grotesquely deformed hand reach through the crack as he opened it; he would rather just open it and see the whole being at once before death consumed him. He could hear death laughing now, looking over what he had done in life; how he wasn’t a painter but the chief of police for one of the most corrupt places on earth. Death would grin at him with his evil grin, mocking him for losing his life-the thing that death was so jealous of-so easily. He would cackle as he led Bob to whatever lay after death, be it heaven or hell or purgatory or reincarnation or the afterlife or the underworld or whatever it was that awaited him. And he would cry and plead to no avail and spend eternity wherever.

He grasped the door handle tightly and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt his arm pulling the door open, felt it moving in front of him until it stopped open. He still held his gun before him and nothing had happened so far. Maybe his demise had a fear of guns?

He waited a second, thinking of everything he had thought of already, remembering his life, remembering his world. He could still smell the stench, more powerful than ever before and he could feel the ominous presence of whatever it was right there in front of him, looking down at him, ready to rip him apart. It was waiting for him to take one final look at it before it killed him, one last glance in his life. He would have to take it. Or he could stand here forever until he died of thirst. But his demise would grow bored of waiting and kill him before that happened. He would have to open his eyes.

He felt his muscles keeping his eyelids shut loosen a bit and then…It was there. His eyes open to find there was just a massive shadow in front of him towering over him, filling up the doorway, filling up everything, ready to kill him. It moved and he saw a red eye look at him, just one, the most evil sight he had ever seen in his life. This shadow was the root of all the evil in this house, in this room, in the world and it was the source of the stench that was washing over Bob as he looked upon it. He blinked in disbelief (or was it acceptance?) and it was gone. In a moment it had vanished from the house, from Bob’s life…for now.

But he still could not move. Now he could see down the stairs to the door that lay slightly ajar at the bottom. Reeves would still be waiting outside that door for Bob to come out, shaking and white as a ghost but not ready to answer the question of “What happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Maybe he had, maybe that was it. All that for a ghost. But ghosts weren’t like that. Sure they could haunt you and scare you and make creepy sounds but they were nothing like what he had just seen. That was malice and cruelty and death and evil all in one terrifying form. And it wasn’t that it looked at him with that evil red eye but rather it was terrifying just because it existed. Just because something like that existed in the world, and it was now visiting him, haunting him almost. And he felt like this was just the beginning.

He quickly descended the stairs, hearing creaking noises coming from his footsteps. He hesitated at the door and looked into the room with the fireplace. He walked in and over to the fire that still burned. He picked up the steel tongs that lay to the side to grab logs. He picked one up from the fire and threw it on the floor in front of him. It lay there burning for a moment before some of the flames began to lick at the surrounding floor. He grabbed another from the fire and threw it on the chair, noting how it also began to spread its flames onto the upholstery. He dropped the tongs to the floor and walked back to the door. He shook his head at what had happened, composed himself and opened the door. Reeves was standing on the other side of the street and he waved at Bob.

Bob return the wave and began walking to the gate. Once he reached the street he looked over to house number 38 to see that the man was still there under the lamp. Bob stopped and looked over at the man. He hadn’t moved from before and was angled slightly towards Bob but his face was still in shadow; Bob couldn’t even see the bottom of his chin from this angle.

Bob began walking again, slowly, not taking his eyes off the man. The man moved a little under Bob’s gaze and Bob stopped in his tracks, a few feet onto the road. The man then began to lift his head up and the veil of shadow fell away to reveal a painted mask. Bob felt the evil he had in the house at the sight of this mask. It was a mask of a skeletal face like at Halloween parties but this one was like nothing he had seen before. Though it looked similar to the others this one was truly scary. It was full of fear and malice as Bob looked upon it. He turned and completed the walk over to Reeves who still stood waiting. He thought for a moment he could hear the man laughing at him but maybe it was just the wind playing tricks with him.

Reeves had his jacket wrapped around him tightly, his arms keeping it as close as possible in the chilly night. He didn’t seem to notice that Bob had stopped to look at the man. Instead he approached him and asked “So you couldn’t stand to be in there either? No we didn’t last very long since you just came out a few seconds behind me.”

“No I couldn’t be in there any longer.” Then he paused, going over Reeves’ words again in his head. “Wait did you say I cam out a few seconds after you?”

“Yeah I came out and crossed the street and then I turn around and see you coming out the door. You were practically right behind me.”

Bob tilted his head to the side in question and thought of a rebuttal or another question but he let it slide this time. He had to contemplate this night’s events or at least recover from them. First the horrible slashed woman, then the red-eyed shadow monster and now the skeletal masked man. All three of them were connected in a twisted, sinister way. Maybe the monster and the man were the same. Maybe it was a…what was it called? He had read it in a book a long, long time ago when he had done a bit of reading on fantasy monsters and paranormal.

A doppelganger that’s what it was! They were creatures that could take on the shape and form of other creatures or people or things and would use it to terrify or to manipulate others. Shapeshifters of a sort though doppelgangers often took on the form of one specific person and it was theorized that every person has a doppelganger somewhere. Or maybe Bob was just crazy. A doppelganger couldn’t have controlled the creaking of the house like that monster had or disappeared in the blink of an eye like the shadow monstrosity had.

So the shadow creature was independent of the man in the mask but they were still connected and Bob knew it. He would have to take out books on the paranormal and on the runes and symbols so he could find matches for the ones in the room. Perhaps the runes and the monster were connected. Maybe a summoning circle or a ritual offering.

Yes that must have been it. The man in the mask was of some sort of cult or maybe he was just an individual with dark knowledge who had offered this woman as a sacrifice either to his twisted gods or to summon the monster.

Or maybe, just maybe, Bob was crazy. Maybe there was no monster just his mind creating illusions during his moment of intense fear. Just his artistic mind wandering and giving life to his worries. Of course that was it, it was proven that there were no monsters in this world or cultist with the power to summon dark beings. But he would still have to check just to be sure.

He looked up and found himself walking in front of the brothel with Reeves. They had been walking back the whole time. Had Reeves been talking? Had Bob been answering? He looked over to Reeves and decided he would make himself look crazy and ask if he had spoken with Reeves. “Reeves have we been having a conversation during this walk?”

“Umm, yes sir if that’s what you consider it. Well I suppose you could think it was just some friendly rambling, mostly on your part. You were talking about coffee as it happens or you had just started to then you stopped and asked me that question. And now here we stand.”

Bob noticed he had stopped walking when he asked the question. Reeves had stopped with him and now they were standing in front of the brothel, its door slightly ajar with a warm glow emanating from through the crack. Bob began to wonder again what he was doing, how he was having thoughts and being so focused on his mind and yet still be walking and having a conversation with Reeves. Or how he had stood in the room with the woman, waiting for the creature and had created the fire in the house and yet had been only a few seconds behind Reeves. How could his mind be so…he didn’t even know how he could describe what was happening to him. Ever since he looked at that man in the suit and top hat outside the house he had started this, this…double thinking. That’s what he would call it, having two minds in two different worlds existing at the same time and yet not, creating terrifying visages in one mind and talking about coffee in another. Was he going crazy? Or was it the dark powers around him?

He had been walking again and was outside the station with Reeves. Reeves looked at him and said “Ok then, you go do that paperwork then. I can’t believe you want to go back in to the station and aren’t going straight home. I know I am, I can’t stay out here after what happened tonight.”

Bob shook his head. What? He had said he wanted to do paperwork? Why couldn’t his other mind have said he wanted a week’s reprieve to cope with sights instead? He had done it after the case of the people being impaled on the fence posts and he had been prepared for that and hadn’t found it quite as gruesome as he should have. But this, this he would need months to fully recover from, to fully come to grips with what the hell had gone on this night.

Reeves turned and walked down the street towards his house. It wasn’t very far down the road from the station but why hadn’t he waited for Bob to respond and say goodbye? Or maybe he had and was lost again. Was his mind splitting from his physical body? Was he unable to control his own actions with his conscious mind? And yet he was able right now. He looked down at his right hand, turned it over, flexed it, clenched it into a fist a few times and then pulled the door open. See, he had control over his body when he was thinking about it. He could make his arm move and could open doors. But when he was thinking his body just seemed to run on autopilot and do whatever seemed to make sense. Although staying to do paperwork wasn’t logical. Or maybe it was. He probably would have done that in any case. He wouldn’t want to look like he was shrinking away from the face of crime. Maybe his body was running on his old system of thinking but now, now he had a new system, changed forever by the events of the night. And he could only think them over now as his body automatically did the paperwork while he thought.

§§§§§

Bob climbed into bed the next night, exhausted and unwell. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed from his lack of sleep the day before. He had tried to leave the paperwork and will himself home but by the time he had regained control of himself he had not only finished the paperwork, but he had also filed it, along with several other files that were laying around, and he looked down to find he had started some paperwork for a long overdue case. He hadn’t gotten home until five in the morning and found himself laying in bed staring at the ceiling until six when he would normally get up and prepare to go to work.

Upon arrival he found that Reeves had kept the happenings of the night before a secret and the other officers didn’t even give him a second glance when he entered. He sat down at his desk and found his coffee missing; an unusual and bad start to his day. He had excused himself shortly after that due to an “illness” he thought he might be contracting.

He still had to visit the library or find a bookstore to take out books on the paranormal too look up the runes. But he was caught between following up on the events or just letting the house remain the ashes it now was. He could assume it was too many late nights, too much coffee, maybe something in the coffee. Maybe he was just going crazy. Maybe he would have to go check himself into the asylum up on Hollow Hill. He chuckled to himself. Hollow Hill’s asylum always made him laugh. Of course, asylums were always built slightly out of town up on a creepy hill where some old mansion used to be and you could hear the cackles of the insane through the barred windows. Hollow Hill always reminded him of some of the scary stories he read when he was a child.

He pulled the covers of his comforter closer to his chin and rested his head on the soft feathered pillow. He sank in a bit into its comforting embrace before he slipped into a restless sleep…

At midnight he awoke. Not with a start, not sweating profusely, not having come out of a bad dream. He just woke up. He didn’t feel tired at all and almost didn’t realize it was pitch black outside. Then there was a flash of light from farther in the city as lightning forked down and struck the top of a building. Interestingly enough, that was the second time it had struck that building in the last five minutes of the storm. Bob sat in his bed and watched the storm outside. He almost always felt it a bit calming to watch a storm while he remained safely inside. It was like he was winning over nature’s designs.

Luckily the rain was being blown parallel to his window so it wasn’t hitting it and blurring his view of the rest of the storm. The thunder from the bolt of lightning arrived upon his house’s doorsteps, forgetting to knock and letting itself in. The entire house reverberated with it and Bob could feel his teeth vibrating as he clenched them together.

And then he saw it. Far out in the storming city. He almost couldn’t make it out but he saw it clearer after a few seconds of internal focusing. The city had been dark and empty while the clouds above raged but now it was infested with something. Two somethings to be exact.

Two red ovals were floating out in the city on a roof that was maybe only a block away. They were nothing like the red glowing eye he had seen before. Though these ones were also just as bright and glowing, each one was the size of a fist, maybe more. And they just sat there. They were curious really, and Bob found himself wandering over to his window to get a closer look at them. It was impossible that two red ovals could just float out in the air like that. Maybe they were attached to a rod that had been put on the roof of that house. But he had never seen them before, not today or five minutes ago. He looked over at his clock that ticked in the corner. It read twelve twenty-three. Ok so maybe it had been there for more than five minutes and he had been staring longer than he knew.

He couldn’t see any rods below the ovals; nothing they could be attached to lay in sight. But he thought he could make out the shadow of a figure standing on the roof. He wondered if this figure was the owner of the ovals. As he wondered his body moved on its own accord, moving closer to the window so that he was barely a foot away. His conscious mind continued trying to discern the figure standing in the rain, holding two glowing red ovals. Another flash of lightning burst through the clouds and struck the ground in between Bob’s house and the house with the ovals.

And it wad there in an instant. The figure had moved with the flash of lightning and was now pressed against the glass. Bob cried out in surprise and horror at the sight and fell back onto his bed. The figure, or creature now, was the size of a man but was naked and pale skinned. Its body was lanky and spindly, almost a spider of a thing, with its long boney fingers pressed against the glass. The face was the truly horrifying part. It was a round head with nothing but the red ovals taking up the top half and a lipless mouth on the bottom. Below its eyes were two drops of blood running down the face slowly, almost like a tear. They made such a contrast against the pale skin that they stood out almost as much as its eyes.

Bob stared in wonder and fascination and in sheer terror at the same time. Now there was an oval eyed monster pressed against his window. It stayed for a moment before it opened its mouth and let out a scream. This scream was indescribable. It was every emotion possible in a single moment, every thought and feeling released. But they were only hateful emotions, spite, rage, sorrow, fury, everything. It shattered the window, the only thing holding the creature off.

Its limp body flopped over the window sill. It had been pressed against the glass when it shattered and hadn’t seemed prepared for it to shatter. But it took only a moment before it looked up at Bob. And when their eyes met, Bob knew he was dead. He knew he should grab his pistol from his bedside table and shoot himself. He wouldn’t try to shoot the creature; it had just fallen on top of the shattered glass of the windowsill and seemed unscathed. It slid down the wall to the floor and lay there for a moment before it stood up. And it didn’t pick itself up with it hands. Its feet lay flat on the floor then its leg stood up and the rest of the body followed in a worm-like motion. It stood for a moment, its head cocked to the right, staring at Bob.

Bob could see the pieces of glass jutting out of its stomach area and the blood that was trickling down its body. There was nothing at its crotch, it was just flat, and the blood ran over it with ease before it either dropped to the floor or ran down its leg. The creature didn’t even look down at itself as it began removing each piece from its body. It just continued staring at Bob and he watched in horror as each piece revealed a deep cut that just slowly oozed blood down its crotch and legs. Once the last piece was removed the creature let it slip out of its hand and clatter on the floor. Both its hands were cut and bleeding now as well and they dripped onto the floor using its boney, long fingers as a diving board.

It slowly crept up to Bob, still staring and drew close to him. It bent over the bed and brought its face right up to his. He looked into those eyes for what seemed an eternity before it opened its mouth to reveal rows of small, sharp, pointed teeth. And Bob now knew how he would die. He would be ripped apart by its long pointed fingernails and shredded by its teeth, all while its eyes stared at him. But instead of beginning to rip him apart, it screamed its horrific scream. Bob felt the entire scream go straight into his head and he felt his head explode under the pressure of the noise, losing all his vision and hearing and feeling throughout his body. And then he felt his head come back together and reform his head. His eyes opened to find the creature gone and the morning sun drifting lazily through his window.

Was it a dream then? Nothing but a nightmare? But then he always felt the chill morning breeze coming through his window and knew that it was still shattered. He sat up and saw that his torso and legs were coated in blood from the creature and on either side of him were two pools of blood where it had rested its hands. Nothing else on him was harmed or changed. Had he gotten lucky then? Was it in too much pain to kill him? Or maybe it had been called back by its dark masters before it had a chance to tear him to pieces. He stood up and looked around the room and found that it was a disaster. The creature had ripped everything else it could find, his pillows shredded into feathers, his blankets ruined, the table slashed. And there was blood smeared and trailing everywhere. He saw the door handle on the door ripped off and the blood smeared down the stairs. It almost looked like the house he had been at before with the dead woman in it. The memories of this caused him to shudder and find himself chilled. And then he thought about how the house looked for awhile. There was something familiar about its layout and his house. Now that he saw his own coated with blood in a similar fashion he saw that his house was almost the exact same as the one he had visited. They had the same design, same room layout. I was eerie now. Of course there were many other houses that were of the same design so it was really just a strange coincidence. Strange, but coincidental.

Bob decided to venture downstairs and view the damage down. At the bottom of the stairs he looked left and found his dining table attacked and the room smeared. He looked to the right…and found the creature sitting in an armchair beside the fire. It stared at him as though it had been waiting this whole time, like a mischievous cat that waits to see the reactions after it has wrought chaos on the upholstery. For a moment it look like the creature smiled, an evil, wicked grin that was playful and mischievous at the same time. Then it moved with unnatural speed and jumped out of the window, smashing it to get through. Bob dashed to the window to look out and see where it was running but he arrived to find nothing. A few people were out and they weren’t looking at Bob’s house so they wouldn’t have noticed the window being smashed, especially since it oddly hadn’t made a sound when it broke. 

§§§§§

Bob was shaking again. He had been shaking for two days now and he would continue until the day he died. Of course he could only guess that the day he died would be very very near at hand after the encounters he had been having recently. From the household murder to the strange creature in his own house, he had barely had enough sleep to get by during the day. Not even his coffees could affect him during the day anymore. In fact he often felt worse after drinking them and felt he gained a sort of paranoia whenever he was sitting alone, be it at home or at his desk.

But today was to be the worst day since the incidents. Today he hadn’t been to able to write straight lines on a piece of paper or even draw any sort of shape when he tried doodling. Reeves had recently come in and told him there was a recorded disturbance in the sewers that he needed to attend to with Reeves.

The sewers were one of Bob least favourite places in the whole city to visit. Not because they were dank, dark, and slimy, grotesque and filthy, but because they were infested with both animalistic rats and people known to the rest of the city as “rats.” They were the beggars and thieves, the homeless and the diseased, and they forged a home for themselves in the sewers below. Originally the police were supposed to drive them out of the sewers and keep it safe down there but the flow of people coming in all the time forced them to eventually give in and allow them to have the sewers as their refuge. The government had finally recognized them as a community, though not publicly. Since nobody used the sewers anyways nobody really cared or minded that they lived down there except for the police. Since they had become a community it meant that any crime that happened down there had to be monitored and responded to.

Bob wasn’t the top dog in the police world so he hadn’t made the secret police order to leave the crime in the sewers alone and while he usually enforced that order, he had to follow the orders of the government and when somebody reported something to them they could do nothing but assist. And today somebody had decided to report the affairs to the men upstairs. And so in turn Bob and Reeves would have to make a trip down into the sewers to investigate what had been described to them as something called strange happenings in the underground sewers, mostly regarding stray dogs attacking people or noise disturbances.

The only reason the police were being called in on this case was because it was believed that somebody owned the dogs and was setting them loose because things were being stolen during the attacks. Bob was just glad that the sewers they would have to visit were at a different end of town compared to where his house and the burned down house.

That burned down house hadn’t become much news lately. It was known that it was now ashes but the owner was a rich entrepreneur and he could afford to simply find himself another house. He had been away on business the week it went up in flames and while he was moderately disappointed upon the news when he had come home he simply went out and found another one at a different end of town. The only odd news, though only to Reeves and Bob, was that the man was also renowned as a single man, whose wife had left him years ago and he had never really recovered.

It left Bob and Reeves giving each other curious looks of surprise whenever they passed each other. Where had that woman come from then, who was murdered in the man’s home? Had she been dragged in there and killed? Or was she a new flame in the entrepreneur’s life that he simply had been made public yet? Reeves believed strongly in the second theory but Bob knew otherwise. He had seen the man in the skeletal mask and knew that there was more to him than a Halloween costume. He could have easily taken that woman off the street, probably straight out of the brothel, knocked her out or drugged her, and brought her up to that room to die.

Bob and Reeves stepped off the steam train nearby the entrance to district six of the sewers. Apparently Bob had been debating with Reeves over where the woman had come from, though he hadn’t told Reeves about the man in the mask. At this point he had apparently taken the side that it was a random serial killing and that they would just have to wait for the killer to strike again before they would start searching for him. Reeves firmly believed it was the entrepreneur as he received insurance money for burning down the house and he got away with murdering his undisclosed lover.

At this point it wasn’t really important anymore. Reeves and Bob had to do their job, like it or not, and they had ventured down in the sewers in the general area of the dog attacks. As if on cue, they could hear the low growls of dogs coming from somewhere in the sewers, but the echoes and rebounds off of the tunnels made them impossible to pinpoint. This was also an incredibly dark section of the sewers, one that hadn’t been colonized by the “rats” but was certainly used for travelling. There were a couple of torches hanging along walls but they were few and far between so the light that they shed didn’t help anyone in their overall journey, merely mocking them at random points with light that they could have if they stepped outside.

Bob had prepared for this though and had on him a torch light of his own, a glass-boxed flame that he hung below his hand by holding onto a cast iron ring on top. It was able to give them just a little bit more direction but the sewer tunnels always managed to be wider and longer than what you thought and the torch-light could only make it to whichever wall you happened to be closer too, but never both at the same time.

The two of them reached the end of that particular tunnel and stood facing a wall. They backed away from it a little and recalculated. They had a small map with them but maps and the sewers didn’t go well together and you usually had a higher chance of getting lost in the sewers if you followed a map than if you didn’t. Since no official documents were ever made for the sewers, no maps were officially generated so it was up to the “rats” to make them, and the problem there was that no single person knew every inch of the sewers. It was said that the sewers were always in flux, secret tunnels opening here and there, passages appearing only every fourth time you entered, and so on and so forth. And most of it was right since the sewers were built in unstable ground so cracks opened into fissures and walls collapsed to barricade doors. Also the sewers were built on some remarkable engineering invention which allowed flow through tunnels to change and switch like railroad tracks. The invention had never caught on or become very public so not many people knew about it in the sewers and in turn it created a mass of myths and legends about the magic of the sewers.

So now they were stuck. Reeves was certain that they had crossed some pathway on a side of the walls as they went and he had begun slowly pacing along the wall with his hand against it. Bob was simply staring around the sewers absently and marvelling at their construction. The potential down here was phenomenal for a new sort of mini community to exist. If the “rats” continued growing they might be able to form an even better government than the system they had now, be able to light this place up and map it out and clean it up. They could form their own society if they worked at it. And it would mean London would be the only town with an underground in it. That would attract more tourists to come see the new underground city and in turn would benefit both the upper and lower regions. It was win-win. It was just too bad that the upper world had too many misconceptions and views about the “rats” for it to ever happen, not to mention the upper government would tax the hell out of this place to shut it down. Or they would simply lay claim to it as their own land and take it over, forcing the “rats” out and making them move to a new home.

Reeves was still only a few more metres down the wall than when Bob had last looked, his efforts to find this passage growing more aimless by the minute. So Bob turned back to face the wall once more and return to his thoughts. Except this time he wasn’t greeted with the wall he had seen before. This time there was something more between him and the wall. There were shadows, but that was to be expected as Bob was a little further back from the wall and his torch didn’t quite reach all the way. But there seemed to be a large shape of something within the shadows, almost as though it was both there and not at the same time. It seemed to be made of the shadows but of its own material as well.

And it smelled in there. It was a strange smell, a concoction formed from something that took from a little bit of everything. There was certainly the dirty sewer smell to it, but there was more. Something animalistic and carnal, mixed in with a scent of decay and death and a slight twinge of...blood? It was tough to indentify but it seemed to be in there too somewhere. And above all of it was something along the lines of dog breath, a strange mix amidst all the other smells. There was even an overall smell like wet dog, something Bob was relatively unfamiliar with considering he owned no pets of his own.

The shadows coalesced into a shape that stretched out of the shadow into the light, and yet was still made of darkness. It was a massive dog’s head, twice as large as Bob’s own head, and it stuck its giant muzzle outwards to sniff the air around it. There was not much else to the face since it had no eyes whatsoever and its ears were simply dark black flops on the sides of its head. It brought its nose up to Bob’s body, sniffing him up and down as he stood there in fear before it pulled back from him into the shadows.

At once the shadows disappeared, forming the rest of the dog’s body, easily eight feet long and muscular, and if it had eyes Bob knew it would be staring down at him right now. Were these the mugger’s dogs? What sort of breed of dog was this? As though in response to Bob’s thoughts, the dog pulled its lips back into some form of a smile, revealing and endless amount of teeth piled into its mouth in perfect rows, and sending shivers down Bob’s spine. Not because he was face to face with a massive deadly dog or because those teeth could were probably about to rip him to pieces. No, it was because each one of those teeth was as blood red as the eyes of the humanoid and as blood red as the eye from the one-eyed monster. They cast an eerie sort of light onto Bob’s face as he stood facing them. For a moment there was nothing but silence between them, the dog not wanting to make its move, and Bob, too far beyond fear and comprehension at this point to do much else.

There was a low growl from the shadow dog that snapped Bob out of his reverie and he bolted. With a speed he had never known before and with a strength in his legs he hadn’t felt since he was in school, he flew to Reeves, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him along with him. Reeves seemed to accept the premise of running from this thing finally and he sprinted alongside Bob as they sloshed through the sewers, twisting and turning with the walls and yet barely knowing where they were going.

The dog was still there, always, right on their heels, its breath spurring Bob onwards and the reminder of those glowing teeth keeping his fatigue away. As they continued forward Bob began to think a little about the situation and to realize: it wouldn’t stop until one of them was dead. Predators went for their prey and once they had some they were content to disappear. So in order to lose this creature, he would have to give it some prey. He looked across at Reeves trying to keep up with him. He was such a spindly man, there was no way he would be able to maintain this speed. He could see how he was slowing already, and it wouldn’t be long before the creature would pounce on him, probably eating all his body so that none of him remained. There wasn’t that much for the thing to eat anyways but maybe it would be enough to satisfy it.

And so he decided that he would assist the creature a little bit in catching its quarry. While it would do all the real killing and devouring, he would have only played a minor part, one that only caused something unavoidable anyways. That thing would’ve caught Reeves sooner or later, might as well be sooner. Besides this wasn’t the first time he’d been a bit of a catalyst. Bob quickly stuck out the tip of his foot behind Reeves’ leg and threw his right elbow into his chest. The blow forced Reeves to stumble back enough to catch on the foot and trip up, flipping up onto his back while in the air and disappearing into the darkness behind as Bob continued forward.

There was an ear piercing scream from Reeves which was suddenly caught short by something tearing through or at his throat and causing the scream to fade into a gurgle and then vanish. But the dog still seemed to want to follow Bob. It had slowed down a moment to finish off Reeves but it must’ve known it could simply come back to him later and have him for dessert. Now it only seemed to want to chase after Bob. So his plan had failed and he had killed Reeves for nothing.

...He had killed Reeves then. It had really happened. Reeves was now behind him somewhere dead and he was responsible for it. Reeves, his assistant and helper, always getting him his coffee, reminding him of overdue papers, and tagging along to search for clues in their latest investigation. And in one instant he had thrown out his elbow and ended his life. Now Reeves lay somewhere in the sewers, his life meaningless, waiting to be devoured.

The realization of what had happened sunk on with Bob and in turn he stopped. In the middle of his running he simply stopped completely. The shadowy dog seemed to crash right into him, turning back into darkness and flowing through him, passing through his body and sending waves of emotions through him. It felt as through death was closing its grip on his throat but then realising enough for him to live a little longer and let him suffer.

He turned and stumbled backwards, swinging his light widely in every direction to search for Reeves. He finally found his corpse, close to one of the walls, lying atop a pile of broken metal rods and pieces. Now to say lying atop was not entirely correct. It was more correct to specify and say his body was lying skewered atop the many broken poles and pieces of metal. Somebody had thrown their scrap metal on the side of the sewer and Reeves had been unlucky enough to fall back onto it. Metal rods protruded from some many different angles through so many different parts of his body that he was almost impossible to recognize. There was even a long piece of broken metal, probably off of some steel frame, that had forced its way through Reeves’ throat, explaining his gurgling scream, though the metal hadn’t really gone any higher than that, except for two poles that had each gone through an eye socket, so most of his head was still preserved enough for him to be identified if anyone else found the body.

Bob rested his hand on what remained of Reeves’ chest, not caring that they were being coated in his blood, and he wept. His whole body shook with his grief before his running caught up with him and he collapsed to the side of the metal mess that was now Reeves.

§§§§§

Bob’s eyes reset themselves to become accustomed to the surrounding light. He was aware that he had been awake this whole time but he hadn’t felt awake until now, hadn’t regained control over his physical mind. Was he doing his double thinking again? Living in his thoughts while his body progressed for him? Or had he been so tired from running that he simply lost consciousness up until now? Something was different now though than the last time he had been awake. The lighting was much different. While it was still fairly dark it wasn’t quite as bad as before. The smell was gone now as well, instead being replaced with a mild sort of neutral smell mixed with some cleaning products. The last missing thing would’ve been Reeves’ body, which was gone, along with the scrap metal and the general sewer surroundings. Instead it was a simple cinderblock wall room with one metal door on one wall and a window on the opposite one. The window was crisscrossed with small metal bars though, meaning he could look but not leave. He clambered up to it and peered through at his surroundings. He was looking out of a very large building, probably a manor of some sort, and it was far up on a hill. From the looks of things the hill was just outside the reaches of the city, barely touching the fringe of London. There was a long driveway away from the manor and down the hill and at its bottom was an old cast iron gate. Just inside along the driveway was a large sign, though Bob couldn’t read anything on it since it was facing the wrong way.

Before he could analyze anymore there was the sound of movement outside his door before a bolt was moved and the door opened. A large man dressed in white lead the way for a smaller, slimmer man in a brown suit to pass through.

“Hello there Bob.” The man in the suit spoke with a smile at the same time, something Bob had thought only politicians and school teachers had been able to do. The man dressed in white went out and got a chair for the suited man, leaving it in the room before exiting and bolting the door behind him. The man took the chair and sat in front of Bob, looking at him with an expectant sort of stare.

“Who are you?”

“Why I am Mr. Burke, the proprietor of this facility, and your new, umm, confider, so to speak.”

“Confider?”

“Why yes. You can tell me anything you wish to, or nothing you want to if you so desire. I’m just here to listen and to help you. If you wish of course.”

“Why would I need help?”

“Well you were sent here so obviously you are in need of something more than what you were getting in the outside world.”

“And where is here?”

“Oh I didn’t know you weren’t aware. Well this is Hollow Hill of course. We picked you up in the sewers sometime last night after they found you. You were just pacing around the place looking for something or someone, we weren’t really sure. And then they found the body and you started talking about shadows and monsters and one thing led to another and now you are here with us for the time being.”

Bob pressed himself against the back wall and slid down to the floor, wrapping his hands around his knees and pulling in tight. “I-I’m in Hollow Hill?”

“Indeed you are. And I am here to welcome you to the family. Don’t worry about your shadows and monsters. In here you are perfectly safe from them. This place is guarder and locked up so nobody can come and find you. Also we keep the lights on twenty-four hours a day to keep the darkness away so no worries there.”

“How do you know about the darkness?”

“Like I said you told us all about it when we found you. Something about death coming from the shadows and forming itself into monsters. You mentioned something about doppelgangers and dogs and one-eyed monsters and you mentioned the colour red quite a few times when you were describing them. The biggest thing you mentioned was your fear of the man in the mask. You described him quite vividly to us. And of course you also mentioned how he committed some sort of murder on a woman. The details were a little difficult to determine but it was enough to force you to lose your job I believe. Which is excellent news for you at this point because it means you aren’t missing out on anything while you take your time recovering here.”

“And what if I want to leave here?”

The man rocked back on the chair a little in pensive thought. “Well I don’t believe you can leave at any time. But if you want to leave it’s quite easy. All you have to do is work with me and us here and recover faster. If we deem you ok to leave then you can leave, just like that. But until then you’re stuck with us I’m afraid.” He frowned for a moment and leaned close to Bob. “And that is the only way out of here. Nobody else has ever gotten out any other way.” He leaned back and returned to his smiling. “And i suppose that’s all there is to know. Do you have any more questions?”

Bob looked up at this smiling man, so overconfident and cocky, so degrading towards Bob. He wanted him dead. Just like he had killed Reeves, just like he had burned that woman’s body. Just like everything horrible he had ever done whelming up inside him and preparing to pour out over this man. All of it came together in this place. He had nothing to fear here, nowhere left to go. The darkness would be kept away and allow a new type of darkness to fill him. And he hated that darkness. It was a part of him he had tried to forget forever. It was the darkness of his sins. And as long as he remained here it would be all that surrounded him.

Bob needed to get out of here. He had to get back to the outside world. He would rather live in fear of the surrounding darkness then live filled with the darkness within. “I have one more question to ask you.”

“Oh you do. Well very nice. What is it you’d like to know?”

“Are you armed?”

For a moment the man’s brow knitted but in an effort to maintain his composure of perfect control he returned to his smile. “Well yes I am armed because some of the people here do require the odd umm, pacification because they are aggressive without realizing what they are doing. So yes I carry one me an old revolver and a metal baton. The revolver is filled with rubber bullets though and the tips of them are laced with a sedative. On contact the sedative is released as both a vapour into the air for the subject to breath in as well as being released as a liquid onto whatever surface it hits. But if I hit clothes it isn’t very effective, is it?”

“No it would be fairly useless.”

“Now I suppose you want to see these weapons and then you try to take them and you attempt to escape. I assure you Bob, it’s been done before. It’s never worked before either.”

“No I don’t need to see them Mr. Burke. I just wanted to know if you’re armed.  But I do have some more questions.”

Mr. Burke brought his pocket watch out to check the time and considered how much he had. “Well I suppose if you only have a couple more I can answer them but then I must be on my way. So about fifteen minutes.”

“Very well. I’ll try not to waste your time then. Mr. Burke, have you ever killed someone? Or been a catalyst in someone’s death?”

Mr. Burke cocked his head to the side at this curious question, unsure of where it could lead. “No, not to the extent of my knowledge.”

“Then how do you plan on helping me if you don’t know what it’s like?”

Mr. Burke seemed to figure things out in his mind and laughed at it. “Oh you are one of the sceptics. I see. Don’t worry; I’ve been doing this for years. At this point I am well aware of how it feels through the eyes of all the people I have spoken to here. I’m perfectly capable of understanding your feelings.”

“I don’t think you are, Mr. Burke. I think you should know what it’s like to be one of us, here, in this place.”

“Bob I’m not going to kill you. Like I said, there is only one way out of here, and death is not one of the ways.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about at all. I think you should go and kill someone, and feel what it’s like. Who is the man outside the door?”

“Jerry?”

“Ok and how valuable is he here?”

“Well in a business sense, not very. People who want to work here aren’t hard to find and they aren’t expensive in any way. And he has only been here a few months. We hardly need them really.”

“So since he’s not worth very much it wouldn’t matter if you killed him or not.”

“Well...”

“Mr. Burke I worked in the policing business for most of my life and I know its limitations. It is true that the government and the police have no jurisdiction over this place correct? Everything that happens here is independent of both the city of London and the state of England. So if you kill him nobody will conduct any sort of investigation. This is true is it not?”

“Well yes but that doesn’t make it right.”

“Yes it does. You are killing him to benefit the rest of us here and assist in a greater recovery that is both deeper than before and is faster. Just walk out this door, drug him with your gun and beat him until he dies. Very easy, very little mess if you do it right. I’m sure you can just lock his body away in a room and nobody would know the difference.”

“You bring up an interesting point Bob. I had never thought of it that way before but since I am here to help you and that would be rather helpful then I shall follow your advice, just to show how much I’m here for you.”

“Thank you very much Mr. Burke. This should help me a lot in my recovery.”

Mr. Burke stood up from his chair and removed the revolver from his waistband. He tapped on the door twice on the door and it was opened by the man named Jerry. Mr. Burke motioned for Jerry to step into the room and take the chair. As he grabbed it Mr. Burke raised his gun and shot him in the back of the neck. The force of the rubber bullet on the neck triggered a nerve and Jerry slumped to the ground before the sedative could even take effect. Mr. Burke drew a small pocket knife from his pocket, more of a trinket than a weapon and brought it down to the back of Jerry’s neck. He held it for a moment, unsure of what to do now and whether or not to carry through with his actions. His contemplation didn’t take very long and he raised the knife before stabbing it straight down into the neck. The blade pierced through skin and wedged in between spinal bones, finding its way to a nerve that it quickly severed with ease.

He pulled the knife back out and let the blood run off the tip of it. His revolver clattered to the floor beside him as his body ran through a massive release of the tension it had built upon itself. He let out a long sigh and took in more air than his lungs required. “S-so that’s what it’s really like...”

“That’s what it’s like Mr. Burke. How do you feel right now?”

“Alive, would be one way to put it. Another way would be remorseful, perhaps a little perplexed as to why I did it. But I like it too. It’s very tough to explain. It is simply a mixture of everything both being released and coming together, all in one.”

“That is a fairly good description of it Mr. Burke. So now you understand me and all the others here?”

“Yes I think I certainly have a better understanding of your emotions.”

“Very good Mr. Burke. I think I’ve fully recovered since this session and I’m ready to leave.”

“Oh no, Bob don’t worry. I will determine when you are ready to leave us.”

Bob cocked the revolver he had snatched off the floor and brought the barrel down straight at Mr. Burke’s temple. “I’m afraid that wasn’t a suggestion Mr. Burke.” The second shot of the night echoed down the corridors of Hollow Hill as Bob moved between the different wings of the building. He had acquired Mr. Burke’s suit and it fit him somewhat comfortably, though it was a little tight in the middle. While it wouldn’t work as a disguise if anybody saw his face, it could cover up his identity from behind or if he brushed by some people quickly so it would have to work for now.

He came across virtually nobody, noticing the odd man in white patrolling some of the halls, halls he specifically avoided, but otherwise the place was basically dead. Which was the way it should be and the way Bob wanted it to be. Towards the end though he realized that in order to leave the doors he would have to pass through a front desk area and then head out the doors. He didn’t know if he would have to sign out as Mr. Burke of if he would have to stop and talk but he could see some more men in white heading towards the desk from another hallway so his options and time were running out. He ducked his head down and pushed forward past the front desk.

“Good morning Mr. Burke. Out for a morning walk?”

Bob coughed a little and nodded his head in response as he hurried to the door. He could hear her say something as he exited but wasn’t concerned enough to discern her words from the sounds. The air outside hung heavy and moist, probably a fog if you looked at it from the outside of it, but once within it just felt like breathing in water. The driveway was rather long and winding down the hill and at the bottom was a small gatehouse, yet another obstacle for him to cross.

By the time he reached the bottom of the driveway he was starting to wear down and get tired and the suit was starting to soak from the combination of foggy air and his own sweat. It was a lot hotter and stuffier than he remembered when he first put it on and was really starting to weigh him down.

The gatehouse was empty as he crossed, the worker inside having gone on some sort of break, be it lunch or breakfast or otherwise, so leaving the gate was pretty easy. Once outside he gave himself a decent distance between the building and himself before removing his disguise, just in case someone was watching him from a window.

With the suit removed he shed the last pieces of the Hollow Hill asylum and breathed in the morning air around him. It was not the darkness he was accustomed to finding out here in the streets but it was better than the darkness he had found within Hollow Hill. But now that he was out he wasn’t sure where he would be going. He had lost his job at the police headquarters, which wasn’t much of a surprise. While many of the police officers had criminal histories, one that was a public as his could have been would have caused him to lose his job out of publicity for the headquarters.

He could go home if he wanted to but he tried to avoid going there as much as often since his late night meeting with the humanoid. He had gotten his windows replaced, though the window repairmen couldn’t understand why, and the blood had been cleaned out but he still couldn’t replace the memories and so he didn’t know where else he could go.

He had been wandering again while thinking, realizing now that he was in a fairly misused portion of the town that he hadn’t visited in many, many years and one that he had never wanted to return to. But sitting before him was his old house, where he had been raised by his parents before moving out. His parents had since passed away and left the house to degrade but it still stood enough to remind him of how much he hated it.

In his moment of waiting and standing, his memories of Hollow Hill flooded back, about how he had convinced Mr. Burke to kill and then in turn he had killed him. About how he had felt in there and about how Mr. Burke had told him he had felt when he killed. But more importantly was how Bob had spoken. He had been cold and heartless, letting all his sins drive him and control him, making him speak differently and think differently, switching over to a mode of kill or be killed. He shuddered at the thought of what lie beneath his surface, of how a dark killer waited to emerge at any opportunity.

Again his thinking mind had let his body wander and he had opened the door to his old home and stepped inside. As he took control again he noticed he was just outside his old door to his bedroom. Knowing that if he stopped to think his body would take him in there anyways he opened the door of his own free will and stepped into his chamber of personal memories. There wasn’t much left in his room, other than the wooden frame of his bed in the corner. Everything else had been removed and left nothing but dust to collect in their old spaces. He rested himself on the wood frame and stared around the room, taking it all in and wondering where all the years had gone. The more he stayed here the more he wondered why he had hated it so much. His painful memories were fading away to only be replaced by the good ones and so he was left to reconsider his outlook on his childhood. The house started creaking and swaying a little as its old bones were rattled by a morning wind of some type. This house had always been awful for shaking and rattling, especially in the middle of the night and he smiled lightly at the memories of himself cowering under his bed sheets.

The bedroom door smashed open, almost flying off the hinges and spinning through the air and in its frame stood a man in a suit, holding a cane, and wearing a skull mask upon his face. Bob recoiled in fear and nearly fell backwards into the frame. “You!? Wha-what are you doing he-“

“-you’ve done well, Bob. Very well indeed.” The man stepped forward and grabbed Bob by the collar, pulling him upwards from the bed frame and throwing a black wool bag over his head. With a crack, the cane, or something else hard smashed against Bob’s head and he blacked out for the moment.

§§§§§

Bob’s vision was blurry as he awoke and so he had to feel out his situation. He seemed to be sitting in a chair with his hands tied behind his back and his feet strapped to the chair legs. The man in the mask must have been around somewhere but he couldn’t see him while his vision still blurred. The man in the mask must’ve have read his thoughts and a large dark blob stepped in front of Bob.

“I’m sorry you still can’t fully see me Bob. You shouldn’t have woken up so soon but this is the price you get for having a persistent body. So I suppose while we wait for you to fully recover, we should have a little chat.”

Bob lolled his head to one side, the strain of holding his head up too great for his neck to handle. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“No, not right now. I’m sure you would love it if I did wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, yes I would. I don’t want to deal with this anymore. You did this to me, you can end this.”

“This? What is this?”

“The darkness. The monsters. The fear. You created it and generated it all with that ritualistic murder.”

“You mean the woman? Well I killed her fairly brutally, but not quite to the extent that I think you saw it at. I think it is time for a little explanation of the “monsters” you claim to be seeing.”

“What do you mean?”

The blob in front of Bob moved a little bit. It was becoming a little more defined as time progressed and Bob could make out a hand in front of him. In my hand right now is fine powder which contains no smell and has no colour to it. It was discovered by grinding a specific combination of herbs into a powder. Discovered by accident of course because it is a type of poison once ingested, one that they call “The Madness.” You see it plagues the mind, not the body, causing it to generate incredibly realistic and disturbing hallucinations and it places the person in delirious states. In short, it makes somebody crazy. In short, the night that you went to investigate the woman, did your coffee taste a little bit different?”

If Bob’s eyelids had the strength to shoot wide open they probably would’ve at that moment, but at that point he had given up trying to react. He managed to bring his head back upright,, as much as it gave him a headache, in order to look straight at the dark form in front of him. “How much of it was real?”

“I don’t know Bob. I just set the ball in motion. You did all the rest.” The blob got bigger, which must’ve meant the man was leaning in closer. “I cannot imagine the horrors you have been through Bob. But on the other hand, you cannot imagine the horrors I have gone through. Be grateful yours weren’t real.”

“So the monster, the creature, the dog? They never happened? Did I even go to Hollow Hill?”

“Oh yes you most certainly did. In fact that was your shining moment of insanity. You convinced a man to kill someone and then you yourself killed him. That’s quite impressive.”

“How did you know what I did?”

‘Well other than watching you the past few days, you were mumbling all about the entire time you were walking down to your old house so it wasn’t hard to figure it out.”

Bob’s vision had almost completely returned at this point and the mask on the man’s face was becoming more defined. “Why did you do this? Why to me? Did you do the same thing to the lady?”

“No Bob, I did not. In order to explain this whole situation to you, I think I should tell you a story. This one doesn’t have much of a beginning to it, nor does it have that great an ending but it does explain what you wanted. Very well, let’s begin...”

“...So to begin with, you had yourself a son. He was born between you and a prostitute from a brothel, back in the days when you still went there. In fact his birth is the reason you stopped going there. You never wanted a family so you never really wanted him and so you left him with his mother and tried to forget all about the place. That was fine; the mother raised the son for about six years until a rich entrepreneur happened to swing by the brothel one night. He fell in love with her and whisked her away to a land of riches. But she never told him about her son and took it as an opportunity to leave him behind and start a rich new life. Years later she would divorce him and continue to live her life in riches. I find it rather unfortunate that she wound up dead in his very house one night, a house which later burned down that very evening. But I digress. So this son, now left alone and abandoned by both his parents, was forced to begin a life as a street boy, begging wherever and becoming a basic “rat.” One day he found himself a couple of stray dogs and trained them to distract people or attack them so that he could steal from them.”

“By the time he was twelve he had a decent operation going, one that earned him enough money to buy food and a couple of bonuses, such as books. He decided to teach himself to read so that he could read his books. The books he chose to buy were most encyclopaedias and general knowledge books, as well as some criminology books. He hadn’t really known what they were at the time, just that the owner recommended them because they were more expensive. Now, at the age of thirteen, people had caught on to the boy, enough so that the police had to finally go down and take him away. And who was it who ended up arresting him? Why it was Mister Bob himself. When he saw the boy, there was a faint glimmer of recognition in both their eyes, and Bob knew he had found his son. When he saw him though he immediately wanted to cover the boy up and bury his past troubles. So because of the troubled nature of the child, as well as a lack of space in the jail, and a lot of pushing from Bob, the boy was sent to Hollow Hill. They at least let him keep his books, which he read for years and years until he was finally allowed out of Hollow Hill. And that is relatively where the story ends. But it leaves you wondering where that boy went, and what had happened to him. Well, when I learned of that story, I wanted revenge for that boy so badly that I took it upon myself to hunt you down and the mother down. I killed her and set up this whole nightmare for you, so that you could experience the horrors of the lifestyle you gave to that boy. Perpetual fear, danger, loneliness, paranoia, everything. How does it feel Bob? Do you enjoy living that lifestyle?”

Bob felt hot tears pouring down his face, messing his vision again and splashing against his clothes below. He remembered that boy, the one he had abandoned and left at home with his mother. He had remembered the day he saw him in the sewers and how he had wished him away to Hollow Hill. And he had forgotten about that boy. But he wasn’t crying over how he had hurt him. He was crying for himself. Bob had grown selfish over the years, from constantly hiding his issues and he knew now that his death was drawing closer. He knew now that this would not be over until this man in front of him chopped him to pieces, just like the woman. So he was crying because he was no longer in fear of some paranormal darkness enveloping him. Now he was in fear of a real man, with a real knife.

“So Bob. You have not told me what happened to that boy. You can’t figure out where he went? You never looked into it? Never tried to figure it out and repent?”

“No, I don’t know. I just wanted him to go away. So I made him go away. Why can’t you just kill me for it now?!?!” Bob was practically screaming his last words out as he tried to say them, his patience bent and broken, his mind warped and twisted from the powder. He knew his death could be any minute now and yet it couldn’t come fast enough. This vigilante killer couldn’t bring himself to simply murder Bob in revenge, he had to squeeze every last drop of sanity from Bob’s mind.

Bob’s vision had returned as his tears dried up and he could make out the man in the mask and the small room they were in. It looked like a tiny cellar in any one of the houses in London and the same bloody runes from the woman’s room were drawn here too. Whether or not they were real now was unknown but around the man in the mask as Bob looked up was a surrounding darkness of shadows and from behind him the one-eyed monster, the humanoid, and the dog all stepped out. Rising up from behind the man was Reeves, a floating ghost without any eyes since they had been ripped out in his death. While Reeves could not speak without his throat, he pointed an accusatory finger at Bob and shook his head in rage. Even the woman, whose name he couldn’t remember, rose up beside Reeves, her body wreathed in eternal flames from when he had burned her in the home. The man in the mask leaned in a little bit again to speak to Bob.

“Bob, you still don’t know where that boy is do you?”

Bob was screaming at the top of his lungs now, cursing this man in front of him for all he had done to him. “NO! I don’t know where he is!”

The man in the mask thrust a large knife out and into bob’s chest, piercing through his skin and navigating between the ribcage, reaching his heart and tearing it apart through the middle. With bob’s last efforts he looked up at the man as he took off his mask, and Bob could see his face for the first and last time. “I’m right here dad.”