Saintkiller
The first time it happened, Memphis Stone was standing over the rapidly cooling body of a young girl.
It was just after 9:00 pm, mid-summer, the streets of Boston still reflecting the heat they had soaked up during the day under the combination of the 90 degree temperature and the even higher percentage humidity. It had been a long, grueling month with heat-frayed tempers and the corresponding hike in violent crime that always accompanied such a stretch.
Stone had been fostering a mild headache for most of the afternoon. The pain made him tense, irritable, and the fact that he was still standing there two hours after he was supposed to have gone off shift did nothing to assuage that. Just the opposite, in fact, as it sent his headache rocketing up several levels higher on the pain scale.
He stared down at the body, wondering. Who was she? Why did she have to come along right when she did? Couldn’t she have taken a different way home?
She was the fourth victim this month. All of them young, all of them seemingly innocent, at least to this world-weary detective. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so, for the press had taken to calling it the work of the Saintkiller.
He rubbed at his forehead, his hand over his eyes as he tried to ease the rapidly tightening band of tension churning there. When he took his hand away, the scene before him wavered and then changed…
The alley was all but empty. The detectives, the crime scene technicians, the mob of curious onlookers that had gathered like leeches just beyond the tape-line, were all gone.
Memphis could see that the girl remained, still looking as lost and forlorn as she had when he’d first arrived on the scene.
The girl remained, though now her body was still warm to the touch as the last remnants of her life fled her young frame.
The girl remained, but she was no longer alone.
It stood about five feet tall and was wrapped in a long cowled robe that was several sizes too big, a robe which hung in dirty folds about its frame as it stood hunched over the girl. Its hood hid its face from his view.
Memphis was suddenly struck with the bizarre notion that if he had been able to see it he would have see only a flat, barren surface devoid of feature or function, a face that wasn’t really a face at all.
Kneeling down beside the body, the thing reached out and grasped the girl’s leg. Its hands had only four fingers, overly long appendages with thick misshapen knuckles and nails several inches in length that rasped together as they closed around the girl’s calf. It leaned forward and out of the depths of its hood came a long, molted tongue of sickly hue. It quivered in the air, inches from an exposed section of the girl’s tender flesh, as if anticipating the taste to come.
Suddenly it stopped. Its head came up slightly and Memphis could hear it sniffing, like a dog searching for a scent. Once, twice, and then it stiffened. Its head swiveled in Stone’s direction. Two points of greenish flame flared within the darkness inside that hood where the creature’s eyes should have been.
Memphis gasped…
…and with a start came back to himself. His partner, Jefferson Brooks, was holding his arm tightly, an odd look, part concern, part horror, on his face as he pulled him away from the crime scene.
“I said, get a hold of yourself, Stone.”
Memphis shook the man’s arm away. “I’m fine. What are you doing?”
Nash snorted. “Fine my ass. You were down on your hands and knees sniffing the body, for heaven’s sake. Get a grip, man.”
Memphis stared at him in disbelief. Sniffing the body? Then the memory of what he had seen in his vision came rushing back and he almost fell over in his haste to get away from the corpse before him.
Sudden pain flared in the detective’s hands, enough to tear his gaze away from the tableau before him. Looking down, he found blood pouring out of a hole the size of a quarter in the center of each palm, wide enough that he could see the street beneath through the ragged opening in his flesh. The dark arterial blood seemed to spurt free in time with each beat of his heart.
* * *
It happened again three days later.
Memphis was up most of the night trying to piece together the few leads he had into something he hoped might actually move the investigation forward a step or two, but to no avail. The lingering unease he felt from the odd event in the alley was not helping. Frustrated and angry, he returned to his apartment only to spend several hours in a fit of uneasy sleep, chased by dreams full of dark and terrifying creatures that stalked him through lonely streets and empty buildings. He gave up trying to rest around six, went out for his morning jog, showered, shaved, and then gulped down a sparse breakfast.
Now he stood by the counter pouring himself another cup of coffee. In the adjoining room the television was tuned to a local newscast. He was reaching for the sugar when he heard the anchorman break in with a Special Report.
As he turned to listen, blood splashed across the countertop.
Memphis lost his grip on the newly-filled cup, the ceramic shattering as it smashed on the floor tiles, but he barely noticed as he stared in amazement at the holes that had suddenly erupted in the center of each palm again.
Blood flowed like a fountain from the wounds, scarlet against the white of the kitchen counters.
The room around him wavered and then changed…
…A warehouse.
The smell of machine oil, sweat, and pain. Darkness pooling in the corners and overhead. The steady rhythmic sound of a pump working in the background.
A scream erupted from somewhere off to his right; harsh, discordant, full of anguish and fear.
He moved in that direction, his footsteps sounding hollow and unwelcome in the silence that immediately followed that cry, past shroud-covered hulks of machinery, down a short corridor, and into another opened room.
Memphis stood in the doorway, staring in dazed bewilderment.
The room was enormous. Far bigger than should have been possible. All but the closest wall was lost somewhere in the distance. The room itself was filled with row upon row of mobile autopsy tables, like those used in morgues, each one holding the naked form of an unconscious teenager strapped to its surface with thick leather belts. A maze of tubes and wires ran from a monitoring device beside each table to the body atop it, though their individual purposes were not easily discernible. A sense of despair and decay filled the room with a thick and cloying presence, accentuated with the occasional scream from one of the patients/prisoners as they encountered some idle terror in their dreams.
Between the tables, tending their occupants, were dozens of creatures like the one he had encountered in the alley.
As one, they turned to look at him.
Terrified, Memphis took a step backward, away from those burning green eyes, and…
…returned to his kitchen, where his blood continued to paint the floor tiles crimson.
He stared at his hands, astonished and more than a little afraid now. Behind him, in the other room, the announcer’s voice suddenly seemed overly loud.
“Tonight, the Saintkiller has claimed another victim…”
* * *
“I am not going crazy. I’m not.”
But it certainly felt like he was. The visions, dreams, whatever the hell they were, had intensified over the last week, becoming more frequent and more vivid until he could no longer tell reality from imagination.
He tried working himself to exhaustion, but the dreams still came. He tried drinking himself into unconsciousness, hoping that the sweet oblivion of alcohol could hold the visions at bay, but the dreams still came. He even gulped down a handful of tranquilizers the night before last, but even that had failed.
He didn’t go into work for over a week. No doubt the investigation had stalled, but he couldn’t care less. At first the office tried to track him down, calling at all hours, leaving messages, demanding his presence. When he grew tired of listening, he ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it out the window into the backyard. He even stopped answering his door, afraid of whom or what he might find waiting outside each time the buzzer rang.
Memphis was not a religious individual. Truth be told, he hadn’t set foot inside a church in years and so the whole stigmata thing was confusing the hell out of him. He sat there with his hands wrapped in cotton gauze, having discovered that it proved rather effective in soaking up the blood when the stigmata appeared for the third time late last night. He didn’t have a clue what was causing it all. Well, that’s not quite true, he admitted to himself. He hadn’t needed the morning paper to know that the Saintkiller had claimed another victim. Somehow he and the murderer were connected and that knowledge was both simultaneously fascinating and revolting.
What if this guy doesn’t stop? he thought. What then? Will I have to live with this the rest of my life? He snorted derisively at the idea. What life? I can’t even make it a week. No way could I make it a month, never mind longer. I’d be better off putting a bullet in my head now and saving myself a lot of trouble.
Not that he hadn’t considered it. That’s how bad it was getting.
He sat at the kitchen table playing idly with the blood-caked bandage on his left hand, considering some of the things he’d seen over the last few days. Deep caverns where phantoms lie resting quietly…dark rites performed in shadowy tenements over the bodies of sacrificial lambs, both human and otherwise…unearthly battlefields where bodies lay piled in the sun, their pale-feathered wings ruffling in the breeze.
And blood.
Seemingly endless streams of blood.
Memphis cringed at the memories.
His fear made him uncomfortable. He got up from the table and moved into the living room, where he noticed that the day had fled and darkness now covered the land. Where had the day gone? Leaving the lights off, he took a seat near the window and stared out into the darkness, wondering where the killer was at that moment, wondering if his own hands would soon be signaling the death of another victim.
As he looked out the window, his view was abruptly cut-off by the sudden flaring of a brilliant light reflecting in the glass from the corner behind him.
Turning to look, he discovered that he was no longer alone.
“Do not be afraid,” his visitor said. “I am Ashariel and I have come bearing a message.”
The stranger’s voice was strong, commanding, even a little overwhelming. It seemed to have hidden depths, echoes upon echoes, and Memphis found himself trying to catch each separate layer, as if there was another message beneath the obvious one that he desperately needed to understand.
Memphis might have spent the last week or two hounded by visions and half-convinced he was going out of his mind, but that didn’t make him any less a cop. He had his service revolver out and pointed at the other before his visitor had even finished speaking.
It was only then that he noticed the other man’s wings.
“What the hell…?”
The newcomer chuckled. “Not quite,” he said, “but close.”
“Who? What…?” The gun was forgotten in his overwhelming amazement. He might not be religious, but he could certainly recognize an angel – particularly when it was standing in his living room.
“You are not going crazy, Memphis Stone. I have a message for you, one of great importance, and the visions were necessary to prepare your mortal mind so that you might receive it properly. You have been chosen and there is much you will need to do.”
“Chosen? For what? And why me? I’m not even a believer.”
“There is no need for you to believe, Memphis. Others believe in you.”
And with that the angel reached out a hand. The room around Memphis tipped, swayed, and then spun downward out of control. The last thing Memphis saw before the darkness closed in was the solid black of his visitor’s eyes.
* * *
The warehouse was just where the vision had shown it would be, nestled in an all-but-forgotten lot just south of Jessup on Decatur. Memphis stood across the street, lost in the concealing shadows of a neighboring doorway, and watched the place closely for over an hour.
The usual street traffic was out in abundance, from hookers to gangbangers and derelicts. The building was not only ignored, but universally shunned. The detective had seen it before – the street folk knew trouble when they saw it and avoided it instinctively.
He waited a several moments longer, until the few stragglers were no longer in sight, then crossed the street and slipped through a hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the property. He crossed the ground quickly, not wanting to be caught in the open. When he reached the building itself he headed around to the back where his vision had shown he would find a broken window. He used that to gain entrance.
Memphis then made his way quietly through the interior of the warehouse, moving from room to room, following the course the archangel had laid out in the vision he experienced back in his living room.
Then, with an eerie sense of déjà vu he found himself standing just outside the entrance of the room he sought.
He knew now that the creatures he had seen in the alley and in his vision were real. Ashariel had explained their true nature to him, had imparted their need to harness the life force of the innocent to maintain their infernal forms, their complete hatred for the joy that freedom can bring and their innate desire to force humans into a life of servitude. He didn’t recall having made the decision to go along with Ashariel’s plan, yet he found himself standing in the darkened hallway just beyond the entrance, a semi-automatic pistol held firmly in a shooter’s grip.
He took several deep breaths, preparing himself for what he knew he was about to see and then stepped into view in the doorway of the room, the pistol raised and ready.
There were six of them scattered throughout the room, tending to their charges. As one they looked up at Memphis’ appearance.
Without hesitation, the detective-turned-avenger opened fire.
The gunfire echoed in the enclosed space, Memphis’ first three shots were perfectly on target, striking the nearest creature in the chest and face. He shifted his aim as it went down, only to find the other five were already rushing across the room toward him, their arms raised high, their claw-like fingernails ready to be used as weapons.
Lord they’re fast! he thought, as he put three more bullets into the next closest one.
Still the others came on. By now they had crossed half the distance toward him.
Two down, four to go. This was going to be close. His gun barked again and again, his aim near perfect.
Four left, the closest twenty feet away.
Three left, fifteen feet.
Two left, less than ten.
The final creature made it within striking distance. Memphis was forced to duck as the thing swung those vicious claws in his direction. This close, he could smell the fetid stink of the creature and could see the ragged, raw flesh that served as its face.
He came back up shooting, putting two bullets dead center into the thing’s hood.
It was tossed over backward with the force of the shots to lie unmoving on the floor in front of the doorway in which Memphis still stood.
The detective bent down, placed the muzzle of his weapon against the back of the thing’s head and used his final bullet, just for good measure.
With that, the battle was over.
Memphis stepped over the corpse and approached the nearest table.
Once beautiful, the girl before him was now frightfully thin. Her skin, thin and yellowed like old parchment, was stretched tightly across bones that jutted forth far more than they should. She was all harsh angles and shadowed hollows. Strange tubes of some kind of flexible crystal-like substance pierced her body in a vertical line running down the center of her form, the first attached to the center of her forehead, the last just above her groin, seven in all. Other smaller tubes were twined about her limbs and attached at the elbows, knees, and wrists. Blood and other unidentifiable fluids were being pumped in and out of her form through these connections.
As the detective leaned closer to get a better look, the girl’s eyes snapped open.
Memphis recoiled in horror.
She turned her head to follow him, a desperate, pleading look in her eyes. Her lips parted and she appeared to say something, but Memphis was unable to understand what she said over the thump and hiss of the machinery around her.
Overcoming his revulsion, he returned to her side. He bent down, placing his ear near to her lips.
“Please…” she said.
Memphis understood. He’d known it would come to this; he’d seen it in the vision the angel had put before him. He’d just hadn’t realized that the girl, and all of her companions, might actually be conscious and aware.
Gritting his teeth, he reached for the tube that went into her throat.
It moved beneath his touch as it if were itself aware, squirming away from his grasp in an attempt to prevent him from carrying out his designs. Using both hands, he grasped it firmly, preventing it from getting away.
The girl watched him with eyes opened wide.
When he was ready, his hand gripping the tube tightly, he met her gaze.
She smiled.
He did the same.
Then he pulled.
The tube came out of her throat with a small sucking sound and without another sound the girl was dead.
Blood gushed from Memphis’ hands and splashed across the girl’s corpse beneath him, the stigmata appearing again at the sudden death of another innocent, this time at his own hands.
Tears in his eyes, the detective turned to the next table and the form strapped helplessly to it.
It took him three hours.
By the time he was finished, he was sick at heart and weak from loss of blood.
But the children had been set free.
He carefully made his way back across the room, his eyes on the ground, avoiding the stares of those he had sent on to a better life. After what seemed like forever, he left the self-created graveyard behind and traversed the maze of corridors that had led him there, until he could once more see the moonlight coming in through the window he had used to gain entrance.
He stumbled once, as he prepared to leave the building, and barely caught himself with a quick grab for the nearest wall. Once the wave of dizziness had passed, he slipped back out through the opening and disappeared into the night.
* * *
“They were awake. Aware. They knew what I was there for.”
Ashariel nodded, but did not comment further.
“They’re free now. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Of course. You did well. The Lord is pleased.”
Memphis stared down at the slowly closing wounds in his hands. “But if I was doing the Lord’s work, why did His wounds appear?” That part of it just wasn’t making any sense to him. The stigmata appeared when the Saintkiller murdered an innocent victim. Why then did it appear when he released the prisoners from their pain?
Ashariel’s answer proved to be no help at all.
“We all have our crosses to bear.”
When Memphis turned to respond, he found his visitor had vanished as abruptly as he had appeared on that first night.
* * *
Across town, in an abandoned warehouse located south of Jessup on Decatur, a set of tracks were visible on the floor of an empty, oversized room. The tracks moved in a haphazard pattern through years of accumulated dust, from a broken window in the rear corner, around the center of the room, and back to the window again.
Aside from the tracks, the only evidence that anyone had been in the room in years was a handprint on the wall near the window.
A handprint made in blood, with a curious hole in the middle of the palm.
