GORE
SUSPENSTORIES
Nine Gruesome Tales
by
Trevor R. Fairbanks
cover art by Paul Chatem
2014
Raw Youth Press #28
La Canada, California
U.S.A.
Burlap Kiss
It was another cold night in New York which came as no big surprise. For a city that was always blistering hot in summer there had to be another end of the spectrum. And harsh winter was the other end of that spectrum.
This was a time of death and there were a million people in this city, all of them waiting to die. Judging from the weather Detective Hale was amazed that so many people had decided to live here.
And he was amazed that he was one of them. This sort of cold brought out all the worst that the human animal had to offer. He was not surprised when the phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. He was still up drinking.
They had found a body in Central Park.
After getting dressed and pouring himself a sobering cup of coffee he went down to the park and moved through the police lines. Luckily it was late at night. If this sort of thing had happened during the day the place would be crawling with reporters and rubberneckers, all trying to get a glimpse of the body.
Everybody loves to see a dead body. But there were only two black and whites, a coroner, and him. Everyone else was at home snuggled up in a nice warm bed.
The body lay on the frigid banks of the lake. Every stitch of clothing had been stripped away. A bag had been thrown over her head. It was classic burlap, the sort of thing potatoes came in.
Like the other victims it was a girl. And a very pretty one this time. Hale knelt and took a closer look. Just as he had suspected, the body was covered with markings. All of them were done in a Native American style, Indian for all the politically incorrect. There were birds and mice and other even stranger creatures that reminded him of an America that he had never known. This was an America that came before the industrial revolutions and the Civil Wars and the wild west movies. Hale slipped a pair of gloves over his hands and carefully removed the bag.
Cold eyes stared up at the unforgiving moon. Her face was bright blue in color which matched the morning light so perfectly it was eerie. The eyes bulged from the sockets and they were clear brown smeared in vibrant red. Lines of blood ran from broken capillaries in her nose all over her lips like a mask. And she had been strangled, which was obvious from the red marks around her throat. Whoever had done this had been strong. The eyes themselves had nearly popped out from the pressure. Another few moments of torture and they surely would have.
“Okay, what do we got?” Scots, a beat cop, asked.
Hale did not answer him. It was a gruesome murder, another in a long line that was getting longer. The media had already dubbed the killer Knapsack. This was number 10 on his resume. He was aiming for the title of greatest mass murderer in New York State history.
At this rate he might even achieve it.
***
With a sigh, Hale slipped into his office and put the freezer bag down on his chair. The bag had been carefully placed in air tight plastic. It would be safe until the trial. All DNA evidence would remain intact. This was assuming they managed to catch this guy and there was a trial. Hale looked around at the other plastic bags in his office. There were ten of them in total, all sealed away waiting for the owner to be caught. He had studied them. He knew what they were and where they came from. They were hand woven from strands of very coarse buffalo hide to form a sort of burlap. Hale did not need to go over them again. Instead he opened a file that listed the markings on the bodies.
The best translators and specialists in New York had gone over the drawings and no one could understand them. According to one expert they were written in another language entirely, one that no one had read or written in over a thousand years. And where would someone get Buffalo Hide in New York?
Hale knew that the markings were pointing at something, maybe even a next victim. It was a clear challenge and an affront to the NYPD. It was undoubtedly a clue but a haphazard one. Or maybe not. Maybe the markings simply made no sense. Maybe this serial killer was working with something that no one living could comprehend. Could the dead?
He collapsed behind his desk and started to study them again, staring at the lines and the details, trying to see into the mind of a madman. All the pictures had been sewn right into the bags using an attention to detail like nothing Hale had ever seen before. There were patterns and markings that only served to remind him of a trip they had made out west, back when his wife was still alive.
Here was one of a woman, judging from her long hair. And she was praying to something that looked like a dark obelisk. She lifted her hands in the air and next to that was another woman. It looked like they were somehow speaking to the sky. The next showed a girl by the river, making something out of clay. A man was sneaking up behind her with a dog’s head. In his hand he held a weapon. Only this victim had been choked. No weapon had been used.
In the drawing the man killed her, cutting her head off with a tomahawk. Here was the man again, pulling off the dog mask to reveal that he is, indeed, human. Then he was taking the head and shoving it into a bag and giving it to another, much younger man. Above there was a depiction of all the Gods, smiling down at the blood-soaked men, and their female victims. There was pride in the eyes of the Gods. Their will had been done.
It was an awful thing to see. This last bag wasn’t so bad. It was just a white owl devouring a mouse against a velvet sky. The only thing remotely offensive was the look of terror in the mouse’s eyes. The owl did not appear to be hungry. If Hale had a more poetic slant of mind he would say that the owl represented the white man and the mouse represented the plight of the native Americans. But Hale did not have a poetic slant to his mind. He had never understood art. There had never been a reason to. Until now.
There was no knock at the door. If he had not heard the hinges squeal he would not have looked up. He was too busy thinking about poetry and white owls and brown mice.
A tall man entered his office unbidden. He was dressed in black and wore an ebony hat. His skin was tanned by the merciless desert sun and his eyes were a deep, simmering brown. He approached the desk silently.
“Can I help you?” Hale wheezed. He hated having visitors so early in the morning.
“The killer you call Knapsack is my enemy. Leave him to me and no more harm shall come to your people.”
Good grief, Hale thought. How he hated the media. All the newspapers and TV stations brought out the worst in mankind. “And you are?”
“One who walks the ages, fighting injustice wherever it rears its ugly head. And this killer is full of grief. He slays at will in the name of blind vengeance. He believes the Gods are on his side. They are not. So, I am here. All I ask is that you leave him to me.”
Hale was struck speechless. It was like a living comic book. And this guy, was he for real?
“I’m afraid I need to take these,” he said, gesturing at the bags.
“But I need those bags. They are the key to tracking him down.”
“You will never find him. I will have them.”
“Sorry, sir.” Hale shook his head. “They’re evidence. And we will catch this guy. We will put him away.”
“You cannot hope to,” was his sour reply. “This is one who walks through the Gray Lands.”
Their eyes met across the desk. Neither flinched. Both remained unmoving and still as quiet ponds. These were men who were accustomed to living on the edge. They would not back down.
“The Gray Lands,” Hale smirked. “And what, pray tell, are those?”
“The wo
rld promised to all white men.”
He blinked. When he opened his eyes the man in black and all the bags were gone.
“Hale?” Scots walked in. He was holding a book. “I found this book on Indians and I thought it might ...” He stopped in mid-sentence. “Where is all the evidence?”
“Um,” Hale looked up. “There was this guy. Dressed in black. He took it.”
Scots narrowed his eyes in disbelief. “A little bit of advice. Maybe you don’t drink tonight.”
***
Even though the advice had come from a rookie beat cop he still took it. Hale decided not to drink tonight.
The alcoholism had started in response to bad dreams he had been having. Especially after the death of his wife. Now Hale did not really sleep so much as pass out. It was a rare night he did not drink himself into a stupor.
Instead he watched the snow fall across the city and hoped that he would be able to sleep tonight. It had been a long day. He was tired. Even without booze he should be able to sleep.
He should. He crawled into bed.
The moment he hit the sheets the body went into revolt. Despite the long day it wanted to stay awake. It wanted to drink. It needed to drink. It demanded a drink.
Hale ignored it and felt his throat constrict, as if invisible hands were choking him. He felt his organs start to dance in anticipation of a party that only they knew. His stomach gurgled. His mouth went dry. He felt sparks go off in his mind. Most of all his heart. It was the leader of these organs. It was the master. Now it was complaining.
But he was going to fight it. He was not going to drink. The body be damned. He was tired of killing himself.
And eventually he fell asleep.
***
The sun was like nothing he had ever known before. It was radiant and strong and untouched by the fingers of pollution. This was a sun that did not wear a mask.
Hale looked around only to find the man in black sitting alone in a clearing. He was surrounded by the stolen bags. Hale drew his gun and wished that he had time to call for back up. This man was dangerous. This man walked through walls. He did not just wear black, Hale knew. He was a shadow.
“Put both hands on top of your head ...” but there was no time to finish the sentence. In the next moment he saw something he would never forget. And Hale knew that he was dreaming.
The bags floated upwards. Inside of them were people only they were gossamer thin, like ghosts. He could see right through them and though Officer Hale, like most rational people, had no understanding of the immortal soul he knew what he was looking at.
They were spirits. These were creatures that went deeper than the flesh. Their bodies had died but they still lived. And they spoke, even though their lips did not move. They whispered about the crimes and the deaths. They spoke of the betrayals and laughed at the affairs of the skin. And they talked about a tent that had been built deeper into the forest.
The man in black stood as the bags collapsed. The spirits were gone. He looked at Officer Hale and even managed to smile. “I knew you would be here. Are you coming?”
“I ... I guess,” Hale said.
“Then holster your weapon. You won’t be needing it.”
They started to walk. Hale looked around. The trees came from nowhere and soon had them surrounded. They were moving through shadows that felt thick, like raindrops on his skin.
“The man we hunt was once He-no-ha,” the man in black began, his words becoming one with the darkness. “He comes from an ancient race unknown by your kind. The bags tell his story. Almost three hundred years ago, by your counting, his love was killed by a white man. That man put her head in a bag before he raped her so that her eyes would not see his crime. For centuries he has moved from body to body, slaying those with white skin. His evil infects this land. It will never be killed.”
“Then what are we doing?” Hale asked.
“We are going to stop him. For a time.”
The tent rose in the middle of the forest. It was made of pitch dark skin that kept out all light. From it the shadows came, and Hale felt an immediate revulsion. Every instinct he had was telling him to run. He did not want to be another victim. He did not want to die with a bag over his head. The man in black stopped.
“Stay,” he said, and Hale knew better than to disobey.
The man in black took a single step into the clearing only to be suddenly attacked. The killer moved with a speed and strength unknown to civilized men. Their bodies merged and together they struck the ground.
Hale had never seen anything like him, not even in his nightmares. The killer was big, with deep red flesh corded with lithe muscle. A long mane of silken black hair flowed around his face and he wore the skins of animals.
In one hand he had a knife made of stone. In the other a bag made of buffalo hide.
Together the two rolled against a tree and Hale drew his gun. When he saw the knife bury itself in the man in black’s chest he fired.
Time stopped.
Hale stood in the silent clearing. The shadows drew back, like curtains opening before a play. Two dead men lay before him.
***
The morning sun awoke him from the depths of sleep. Hale groaned and rolled over in bed. The dream had been too intense. It was too strange. Yet it seemed to make so much sense.
Two men were dead, this much he knew. But the man in black said that the hunter would never die. He looked over and saw black clothing resting on his favorite chair.
1990
La Canada, California
Turpentine Wine
What time was it? I mean, what time was it exactly? The clock on the dashboard said, but it was too faded to read. Or I was too drunk to read it. I don’t know. Everything was faded at that point.
It was late. I knew that much. Morning was coming. I could tell from the purple in the sky. This was the time when bored police officers loved to pull over stupid kids like me. All they needed was something to do, something to make their lives worthwhile. Ruining lives was something they did for kicks.
But I was breaking the law. I knew that. I was drunk and behind the wheel of a swiftly moving vehicle. I deserved to get pulled over. Maybe I even deserved to die.
The front end of my car began to swerve, crossing over the little white and yellow dots that ran down the center of the freeway. There was a crumpling sound, and everything shook like a private earthquake. I corrected, but too much and too quickly, and nearly jerked all the way across the four lanes.
I took a deep breath and tried to find my center. This was not good. If any black and whites saw me I would be stopped. I would be arrested and placed behind bars with fines and penalties and angry judges. Drivers licenses would be suspended. There would be hassles. I did not like hassles.
I told myself to pull over. Damn it, it isn’t worth it. But I am also on the freeway in Los Angeles. If I pull over here I will end up in a bad neighborhood. I might get shot, or worse.
This neighborhood is way worse than any jail could ever be.
I couldn’t risk it, so I kept driving. I was tired, but the fear was keeping me awake. It is another half hour until I get home or anywhere near my house. That is when I see her.
She is painted on the side of a building and dressed in a long purple gown that hides everything from prying eyes. Her dark curly hair dwindles about her shoulders like a shawl, mixing with the dress until she is a vision in purple and ebony. In her hands she is holding a violin and I know that she must be in an orchestra, maybe first chair. And through my drunken eyes I can see clearly. She is beautiful.
But she is also a painting on the wall. She is an advertisement for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is not real. And I wished that I wasn’t real. Then we could be together. I would fall asleep listening to the sweet sounds of her violin at night. At first, she would hate my drinking. She would hate me, the way all women do. But in time she would learn to accept me and all my dirty sinful ways. Maybe she would even get drunk wi
th me.
I always wondered what a drunk playing a violin would sound like. It had to be heavenly. It had to be.
I drive faster. I imagine what it would be like to lay down with her in warm grass. The summer is here, and I can feel her crimped hair under my sweating fingers. I am kissing her pale lips and touching her nose with my tongue while the world burns away. Armageddon finds us wrapped in one another’s arms and we ...
The car smashes into bright light, so bright it feels like the apocalypse. I feel my body lurch forward as broken glass showers my skin. Bones are broken. Blood is flowing. There is a sound louder than any gun shot and then the night is silent.
Somewhere I hear a faint moaning. Carefully it reaches my ears. Someone is breathing. Is it me? I look up.
The light was not the rapture. It was another car. When I see what kind of car it was my heart sinks in my chest.
Gore Suspenstories Page 1
