Chapter 9
I took in the scene as a big picture first: blood painting the books like a bad horror flick, chunks of pink that meant a body in pieces, and a few tiny handprints. Fuck, was this the kid zombies again?
A quick overview of the body, the size of a visible femur, and a partial jaw with flesh and hair attached likely meant adult male. “Did he bend down to help a kid and it tore out his throat?” I asked absently.
“It seems the victim was alone in the children’s section when it happened.” Angel flipped through something on his phone. “No direct witnesses, though someone said he bent down and there was a cut-off scream, and then blood. A lot of blood. The last part is a quote.”
“Employee?”
“Customer,” Angel corrected. “There were only two female employees scheduled today.”
A soft giggle made me whip around thinking someone was behind me, but I found only a wall of blood-sprayed books and Angel’s questioning gaze.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” Angel asked.
Was someone messing with me on my first day?
I looked around for anyone who might be watching with interest, but Victor was up near the front door with a few other SED uniforms who didn’t have armbands either.
Any non-SED enforcement had been cleared, and Angel and I stood alone in the back with the body and a growing chill that arched up my spine.
“Spidey senses,” I grumbled, studying the shadows. The heavy feeling of being watched lingered.
“Yeah? What are they telling you?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” I sucked in a deep breath. It was probably just the day and the stress of the new job getting to me. “Cause of death, bleeding out?” I asked out loud. There was enough blood for it. I really hoped he was dead before the rest of the trauma was inflicted.
“Won’t know until we get him to autopsy.
” Angel stuffed the phone in his pocket, tiptoed around the body, and carefully lifted the remaining part of the man’s jaw.
There wasn’t enough of the neck attached to determine if it had been the initial attack that killed him.
“Tore his head near clear off. That requires strength greater than most NHVs.”
“Are zombies strong? The tiny handprints make me think of those kid zombies again, like the daycare,” I said, pointing toward a small print near a display of Disney titles. Odd that it wasn’t marked off with evidence stickers.
“What handprints?” Angel asked.
I blinked and looked back at him. “Uh, right there?” I pointed to it and then put my hand beside it. “Half the size of my hand. It looks like a print to me.”
“In blood?”
I glanced at him and then back at the print. “Huh?” It glowed red, and only then did I realize it didn’t look like blood. Blood didn’t glow. I took a step back, but Angel put his clean hand on my back to stop my retreat.
“You’re fine.”
I wasn’t. Was this my power?
“Breathe. I’ve got you. Can you describe the print to me?”
“Uh, a small handprint, visible fingers and parts of the palm, about half the size of my hand. On that book right there.”
“Stay there a second,” Angel said. He pulled off his gloves, then tugged his phone out of his pocket and took a picture of the spot before flipping the screen toward me.
“What the fuck?” There was nothing beside my hand. “There’s a handprint there.” I stared at it, knowing it was as vivid as the rest of the blood. In fact, more so, like it dripped fresh blood while everything else had begun to dry.
Angel met my gaze, his eyes widening slightly, but he nodded. “Are there more?”
I swept my gaze around the room and found half a dozen. “Yeah.” I sucked in air as a bunch of things hit me at once. “Are my eyes red?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“You’re fine.”
“You can’t see the marks? They’re everywhere.” And I was panicking. Holy fuck, I’d never asked for this sort of nightmare.
Angel put his arm around my shoulders, steadying me. “You’ve got this. Breathe.”
I sucked in air as the room spun for a minute, everything swimming.
The stench of death and blood filling my nose was almost clarifying.
I wasn’t Alice in some fairytale. Glowing, bloody handprints weren’t the worst supernatural gift I could fathom.
Not if it led me to the killer before they could hurt someone else.
“I’m okay,” I said, a little too quickly.
“Let me grab markers from the forensics team,” Angel said, his expression guarded. “They might have another scanner with them, heat sensitive or something?”
“You believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Angel asked. “Do you regularly lie about creepy handprints at murder scenes?”
“Never.”
“Okay, then. Be right back.” He picked his way around the blood spatter and toward the gathered group of SED uniforms.
“You can do this, dumbass,” I muttered to myself.
“Creepy superpower activated.” I followed the handprints, trying to decide if there was anything different about them.
Some looked as though they’d been pressed to a surface to create the perfect print, others a ball of wadded up lines, as if it were a small fist.
I whipped around at the sound of a giggle right beside me, thinking someone was laughing in my ear, but I was alone at the back of the store. Angel and the rest of the SED were up near the front. What the fuck?
“Hello?” I whispered, worried everyone would look at me and think I’d lost my mind.
No answer. I headed for the next print, near the hall to the bathrooms and the stockroom door.
As I passed the stockroom, another giggle made me freeze.
The heavy door should have muted any sound from beyond, but that laugh had been clear as day.
My heart raced as I approached the window in the door, expecting some small, terrifying face to peer back at me, but the stockroom looked empty.
I nudged it with my shoe, ready to run if something jumped out at me.
The stockroom was completely empty and still.
I stepped inside, slowly making my way around the long, narrow room.
There was a dock door for a truck—but it was closed—and a door that read ‘exit.’ That door had a handprint near the handle and was unlatched.
Weren’t zombies supposed to be mindless, or had all the movies lied to me? Did zombies leave bloody, spectral handprints? I couldn’t recall seeing any at the daycare. Fuck.
I tiptoed toward it, fearing the worst, but there was only one print. Maybe this was the way it escaped? Could zombie kids run? I really needed to memorize the damn manual.
The chill in the air intensified as I approached the door.
This one was one of those heavy fire doors without any windows.
I kicked it with my foot, and it swung open into the light of day shining down behind the store.
A giant, closed dumpster loomed near the distant wall a good fifteen feet away, but nothing moved.
Another handprint marked the side of the green box as though teasing.
“This is the worst game of hide-and-seek I’ve ever played,” I grumbled to myself.
I approached the bin and hesitated, straining for any sound that might indicate movement, but heard nothing.
I reached for the lid, heart pounding. “No jack-in-the-box, please. Holy fuck. I’m pretty sure I’d die of fright. ”
I lifted the plastic lid a half inch, expecting something to jump out at me. When nothing did, I threw it open and peered inside. Nothing other than a huge stash of paperbacks with their covers ripped off. Wasteful.
I sighed and took a step back when I heard the giggle again. This time, when I turned, I caught a glimpse of a child, or their ponytail, disappearing around the corner.
“Stop!” I shouted, and chased after them, rounding the corner to see them vanish into the alley between buildings.
“Dammit,” I huffed, and ran toward it. When I slid into the alley, darkness engulfed me with a rise of nausea.
Oh, fuck. I’d crossed the Veil. I spun around, hoping to go back the way I came, but any sign of the alley entrance had vanished, and I was left in a long, narrow street of shadows, smoke, and spooky-looking buildings.
“Want to play with me?” a childlike voice asked from behind me.
My heart hammered in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I turned slowly, fists gripped at my sides, the icy breeze raising goosebumps on my skin. I’d heard legends of black-eyed kids before.
Don’t let them in! I stared at the kid with deathly gray skin and eyes a well of nothing but darkness. Their smile was creepy and fanged, between dimples and blond curls. I shivered as the cold reached down into my core and threatened to freeze my soul.
“You’re not real,” I whispered. I’d looked it up in the manual over the weekend because it wasn’t the first time I thought I’d seen one.
Wikipedia said they were an urban legend, stories from American culture to scare people from letting random kids into their homes. “You’re not supposed to be real.”
“Let’s play, Jude.”
Holy fuck, it knew my name!
I took a step back and the kid stepped forward.
“Stop!” I demanded, holding my hands out in front of me.
For a half second, the kid froze, as if covered in a block of invisible ice.
Then, the kid laughed. The sound started light and airy like the tinkling of bells, then turned into a deeper cackle as it morphed into a massive, looming, dark shadow that reached for me.
“Demon spawn,” it muttered. “Let me taste you.”
I threw myself backward, landing in a half roll, then popped back up onto my feet, gun in my grip, walking backward and aiming.
I never fired first, but as the thing leapt, I squeezed the trigger.
Bullets slammed into it one after another, tearing chunks out of the shadow that oozed back together as if the whole thing were liquid smoke instead of corporeal. Not once did it pause.
“Jude…” The thing cackled. “I’ve been searching for one like you.”
“Creepy bastard. Stay back!” I kept squeezing until the gun clicked empty and my gut rolled over in terror.
The creature swirled, the form of the shadows coiling until they built into a huge silhouette of some sort of giant man.
Nothing definable about it—him—whatever, other than the sheer size, like a giant troll taking shape.
It smacked the gun out of my hand and sent the piece flying. I couldn’t tear my eyes from it as I continued to back away and reached for my taser.
“What the fuck are you?” I gasped. My heart raced, pumping so hard I feared it would burst. It reached for me, talons stretching long and dripping dark ooze.
The taser blasted a jolt of electricity that sizzled in a smothering fire of blue and purple, snapping at the creature, making it hesitate.
Then it grabbed the muzzle of the taser, fist closed around the end, crushing it as if it were no more than Play-Doh.
I let it go and turned to run, stripping out of the gear that weighed me down as I went, throwing everything at it and in its path to slow it down.
Enough time on the track, and self-defense classes, had taught me to use my smaller size to move, and that meant away from danger when I couldn’t defeat it.
Though, here, across the Veil, I didn’t know if anywhere was safe.
The deep laughter resounded behind me as the cackling got closer.
The taser flew past my head, hurled just a hair’s breadth from my ear.
I swallowed the flinch and kept running, aiming for the buildings and possible cover.
I rounded a corner, racing down a long street, and dove through the first open door of a structure, slamming it closed.
I stared at a dark room filled with ghostly, half-translucent faces.
“Oh fuck,” I said, pressing myself to the side of the door as I heard the cackle outside.
I sank to the floor, crawling back into the corner as much as possible while the wavering white shadows saturating the building with their chilled presence closed in around me.
I tucked my knees into my chest, face to my knees as I covered my ears with my hands, trying to shut out the noise.
My heart hammered hard enough that I was certain the beastie outside would hear and follow me inside. The chilling swirl of the ghosts pressed against me, as if crowding close for a chance to touch me. I whimpered and mentally shoved at the weight of that icy grip, screaming, “Leave me alone!”
Something heavy poured from inside me—power, magic, something I couldn’t define—sweeping the chill away. With it, I blinked twice, the white wisps vanishing as my world collapsed into darkness.