I was scared shitless. Being a writer of gore and horror, one would think that I've built up some kind of resistance to creepy instances and situations.
I've depicted the scenes of the paranormals in cemeteries and input it into your reader's imagination the abilities of ghouls, murderers, witches and vampires.
One would think that surely I could handle the sight of one dead body.
I retched again into my toilet bowl, looking at the pool of my vomit of water and past meals cemented the realization that no matter the amount of writing about dead bodies and murder you had done, nothing prepares you for the real deal. The image flashed through my mind and I retched again.
After ten insufferable minutes, I stood up, washed my face with water, flushed the toilet but couldn't flush my shame.
I walked out of the bathroom to the sitting room and walked into a heated conversation between a lady in a police uniform and a man wearing a long flowing coat with a hat and a suit underneath.
"Hello Eliana, I'm detective Herbert." He greeted, first extending his hand for a shake.
I looked at it till it fell back down into his pocket.
"I know you must still be in great shock and pain after such tragic news, but I'll need you to be here with me. In body and in mind."
"She can't do it." The lady cop, Natalie, interfered.
"She just lost her husband to an occultic psychopath, we can't involve her even mor..."
"Occultic?" I asked.
She froze, realizing that she had said something she shouldn't have.
"It's part of an ongoing case file... But yes, it's true. This death does have some circumstances that are hinting at the occultic." The detective answered.
The idea of Jarold being a victim to some kind of ritual brought a new level of chill to my subconscious.
There was the small idea that his death was accidental, it did happen on the roadside, it was an explosion when filling gas.
Yet now that it was occultic, this meant that the murder was a planned event.
The gears in my head started working.
"Eliana!!" I snapped back in attention and found that I was leaning on the walls.
Natalie and Herbert were looking at me worriedly.
"I'm fine." I lied to them, a lie I knew they didn't believe.
"So why did you come to the idea that I could help?"
Herbert looked at Natalie and she averted her eyes.
"What?" I asked.
He looked like he wanted to say something,
"What is it?" I shouted, my emotions getting the best of me as tears started streaming down my cheeks.
He walked forward slowly, leading me away from the wall and settled me into a couch beside him.
Then he talked... "We came to you, because the marks and body parts missing from Jarold’s burnt body were the same as the ones in so many others and it's the same marks and body parts that helped identify a specific cult in one of your books."
Immediately a phone rang. The cop jumped, fumbling through her jacket pockets before finally grabbing the phone.
"Detective. It's another body."
It was meant to be a serene night. After being dropped off by Jarold before he went to refuel the tank, he would come back and we would eat dinner and maybe watch a movie.
Now he's dead and I'm at the back of a police car speeding to the site of another murder while a murderer is potentially taking notes of how to kill from one of my books.
'Which book in particular?'
That's the question I had been asking myself.
As a horror writer, I've written about numerous deaths and occultic practices about death, each leading to horrific outcomes. To find just one knowing little to no amount of detail was...
"We're here."
Natalie pulled the car to a stop before an alley closed off with yellow warning tape.
Some cops were already on the scene but they cleared the way while we entered, leaving us a straight path to the body.
He was covered with a sheet but hasn't been moved. The blood pooled around the body and it had been traced around him in a strange manner.
Coming closer, I realized that the blood marks around the body were runes and symbols.
"Was this the same with Jarold?" I asked Herbert.
"No. The runes are new." He answered and then removed the sheet.
I gasped and shuddered as I noted the mutilations of the body. I shook even more as I recognized it.
The occultic practices are shown to be the same used in a specific cult in your book.
It couldn't have been more true. The eyes had been removed and the ears cut out, in my shock and to the shock of the policemen on the scene, I opened his mouth and saw his tongue had been cut off too.
"See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil."
"What's that?" Herbert asked me.
"We have to go." I commanded and started walking to the car.
"There's a body over there, we can't go." Herbert said after he caught up to me.
With glazed eyes and my adrenaline at the peak, I said the realization I'd become certain of..
"That's not the last death of tonight."
"Where are we going exactly?" Natalie asked as we sped off from the last crime scene.
"I don't exactly know."
"You don't know?!" She screamed turning to face me at the back seat then turning immediately to evade an oncoming car.
"I know we were wasting time with that body, it isn't going to get any more dead."
"That's great, so we are wasting time on the road instead, driving to save another person but we don't know where he or she might be attacked."
"It's going to be a quiet place. A place that would be dark, where there have been murders before."
"I think I know of a place." Herbert replied, searching on his phone.
"Dragmans Alley. Twelve unsolved cases of murders."
I leaned forward, "Natalie, if we don't hurry, that number is going to be thirteen."
We reached there in ten minutes, breaking numerous traffic laws and breaking through speed limits that shouldn't be broken on a race track.
I stumbled out of the car, my heart still trying to pound out of my chest.
"You said I should hurry." Natalie said defensively.
"We wanted to get here fast, not dead." Herbert said before throwing up again in the bushes.
A scream pulled us up and running into the alley.
"Help me!" A man said running past us and hiding behind our backs.
Another man showed up in pursuit with a bloodied knife and a maddened look in his eyes.
Immediately the detective and the cop had out their guns.
"Drop the weapon down and put your hands in the air!"
"Don't come any closer!"
The man didn't listen and kept running with the knife. They shouted out the warning again, still the man kept running.
It's not until the shots left Natalie and Herbert's chambers did I realize what had been done.
Another two shots sounded. Herbert and Natalie fell on the floor.
"The death of a lover, of a killer, of an innocent." The man said behind me.
"Why!! Why are you doing this?" I turned looking at the killer who had a gun pointing at me.
"Why did the character from your book do the ritual?" He asked back.
"The power isn't real, the monster isn't real, it's fiction!" I cried looking at this beast of destruction.
Noting his sneer and how his eyes glowed in the dark. He looked like a real villain.
The perfect description of a killer which a writer tries to replicate.
He came close while I walked back, I stumbled and landed on the floor with my back against a building
He came closer and had the gun pointed straight at my head.
"Ohh my dear Eliana. The story is real. You write of a monster from a fairytale, a monster capable of destroying the world, a monster from myths and legends.
What you didn't know was that the recipe you wrote for making that monster was incomplete."
“The Tale Of Terror.” I said, realizing the story.
He smiled proudly as he sat down in front of me with the gun still aimed at my head.
"You had the location down pat, even those who were to be killed, but you didn't know who had to do the killing.
A lover killed by accident, a killer killed by suicide, an innocent killed by justice."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Oh but it does my dear Eliana.."
"Let's think back. Back to dear Jarold killed while refueling his tank. He didn't know that in the next car, a driver made the mistake of answering his phone. Boom."
"Or maybe the body at the alley, a simple slit on the wrists of a depressed man who had killed his wife and children, wanting to end it all."
"He had his eyes, ears and tongue taken!" I said back, not wanting to believe it.
"I just wanted to add a bit of theater."
His childish joy over the deaths sickened me, yet it confirmed which monster I was talking too.
"Then that sorry lad that was shot down by the kind detective and cop. His death is one that actually didn't give me as much joy as the others.."
"The death of the innocent tends to upset all, even if the innocent was insane."
"What do you want!" I asked, my fear giving me adrenaline, thus making me fearless.
"Nothing you can offer me, my love." He replied smugly.
"How do you know that?"
"I don't, but I do know this. Making a deal with the devil is such a cliché plot, and you are still a bestselling author. I may be evil but I wouldn't dare make you cliché."
He shot my leg, the pain came like a blinding light. I felt my eyes dimming.
"You should scream more. It sounds wonderful." He said standing up.
"You asked what I wanted. I want everything and anything. I am terror and as much as you're lovely company, I've got other places to visit, people to kill, lives to destroy. Taaaaaa."
My eyes closed at his back walking away, I felt scared, scared at what had been released into the world, scared for who he would visit next but I felt true terror at the fact that I would live to see his damage later on.
This was written in response to the #septemberinleo monthly prompt for day 8 given by @leogrowth.
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