by David Clark
Lynch glanced down at them to see both hands actively stroking his arm. Confused, he looked back at her face. Her mouth made a half wicked smile while her eyes pleaded. “Harder,” she whimpered with a lustful drawl.
The revulsion of the image that put in his head forced his hand to let go. She giggled while her eyes looked up at him, almost disappointed.
“I know what you are. Where are the other girls?”
She extended her delicate pointer finger from her right hand and pressed it into his chest. “I know what you are, too, and I am not telling. The terms of the business deal are not complete.”
“Well, I am making that deal null and void.”
“Oh, boy,” Mistress Alana threw her head back and laughed as she turned away from him. “That is so corny.” She looked back over her shoulder, one eye almost winking at Lynch, “You couldn’t come up with something better? You need to realize I make the rules. You aren’t a part of this.”
She moved toward the tunnel and Lynch rushed her, but this time she caught his throat in her grasp. Those delicate fingers felt like a vice grip clamping down on his windpipe. There was no pain, Lynch didn’t feel pain, but the feeling of his airway being slowly closed off was uncomfortable and unnatural. His own body betrayed his attempt to stay stone calm and unleashed several automatic survival instincts and flailed his arms around to free himself. In truth, he didn’t need to breath here, but try telling that to the learned impulse that goes back to when evolution created man.
His fist caught her across the chin, and her head flopped to the side from the impact, but her grip held. She looked back at him with a smirk. “You will have to hit me harder than that, sweetie. It seems you are new here, barely just scratching the surface of what you can do.”
Why do people keep telling me that? he wondered.
The answer arrived in a quick shove backward by the hand that held his throat. The hand still held the throat firm, but something was odd. He could see it. He could see it all. His body hung there like an empty suit in her grasp. Her gaze was no longer looking at the empty flesh sack, but it was following him. The look was not evil or mean, more one of curiosity. Like a cat watching a mouse, she was waiting on his next move. That was when Paul’s words flashed through his mind. The soul can exist separate from the body. This proved it to him. On a hunch, he slipped right back into his body.
“I’m impressed. Either you are a fast learner, or someone told you,” the ruby red lips of Miss Alana said. The pleasant smile in her eyes appeared as if this almost pleased her.
Two loud bangs interrupted her moment of pleasure and forced her hand to release Lynch’s throat. Both of her hands reached for the two holes Lynch’s shoulder harnessed forty-five put in her. His hand holding the gun. Wafts of smoke floating away from its barrel. The rosy color left her cheeks and Lynch watched what appeared to be the life leaving her eyes. They didn’t close. They remained open and stared off into space over his left shoulder and stayed there for a mere moment before her body slumped. It was a slow and dramatic slump, and Lynch felt a hint of suspicion until he reminded himself he didn’t know what it was like to watch whatever she was die. The cackle that started from the slumped beauty told him he should have listened to that nagging voice; it had never led him wrong in the past.
The cackle continued as she stood up. Her arms up over her head while her body danced to a seductive song that only she heard. Hips swaying back and forth. Her bosom leading the way to the next move. Her gaze, an almost humorous one, looked deep into his eyes. She threw her arms around him. “That hurts. I thought we were starting to get along.” Then she kissed him. It wasn’t a long and lingering kiss, or a quick peck. Just enough for him to feel the softness of her lips, and the warmth of her breath.
Mistress Alana backed away, laughing again. “Yes, you have a lot to learn. Your little gun doesn’t work here. I could show you so much.”
“There is only one thing you can show me. Where those girls are. Then you can die.”
“Now, now, mon ami. I wouldn’t reject my offer so hastily. You might not like the alternative,” she said, each word coming on a single, slow and pronounced step around Lynch.
“What, you dead?” Lynch scoffed.
“Oh, no. Silly boy,” there was no cackle this time. Instead, a mixture of a humorous and mischievous laugh, accentuated by a higher pitch than her normal talking tone. “That would be you. I would just have to decide how I would kill you. There are so many ways. What a pity you had to mess in my business.”
She sprang back in front of Lynch. Both of her hands restrained him at the shoulders. He couldn’t pull away. His two hundred and forty pound frame of muscle, that had a good eight inches or more on her, couldn’t pull away from her hundred and twenty, almost dainty, grasp. The more Lynch struggled, the more he felt paralyzed. The muscles in his body no longer responding to his commands. They still moved. His arm bent at the elbow and raised up to grip her waist. The other lifted at the shoulder and stopped when she reached and grasped his hand.
“One last dance, if you don’t mind.” He didn’t even realize it, but they were dancing. His arms held her, and his feet floated across the floor. There was no doubt in Lynch’s mind that she was leading.
They were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers out there. That would be if Fred Astaire resembled the size of Frankenstein, and if Ginger Rogers were built like Marilyn Monroe with red hair. They stopped when Lynch believed the music in her head stopped. He only heard a moment or two of it when she hummed it out loud. She released him and left him hanging there in midair, above the floor and below the translucent membrane above him of the real world. He couldn’t move his eyes, but he could clearly see both places where she left him.
“Well, I thought you killed him,” Mistress Alana said, almost disappointed, as she walked around the shadow image of William Bell. Lynch saw his shadow, a dark grey haze, and his real presence in the world above. His shoulders rose up and down slightly with each breath. Lynch hadn’t intended to kill him. If he did, there would be nothing for Lucas to do. The strike was only meant to subdue him until Lynch was done. “I can finish him later. You first. The question is how. You know, the problem with being us, there are things that are much worse than death. I could just strand you someplace horrible where you can’t leave. You won’t ever die on your own, and guess what… this is the cruelest of all tricks.” She leaned in and whispered into his ear, ”You can’t kill yourself.”
“But I don’t want to take that chance. So, I will just finish you right here.” Her right hand grabbed his throat. It didn’t squeeze. It was the lightest of touches, but the most forceful Lynch had ever felt. His throat felt like it wanted to explode. It was hot and a great light radiated outward from the spot she held. Lynch had control of his muscles again, but no matter what he tried, he couldn’t break her grip. Two-handled axe chops crashed down into her steel girder of an arm and just stopped on impact. Each grasp to pull it away failed and made him weaker by the second. He lacked the energy to kick with his legs, and then he knew. She was doing to him what he had done to others. His very life was being pulled from him. So, this is how it felt. Not that pleasant. No wonder all of his prior victims shared the same pained and terrified looks. Does he look at them with the same satisfied look she now looked at him with?
Then the glimmer of the light on the membrane above him reminded him of something, causing a ‘what if’ question to explode into his mind. His left hand reached up and, instead of crashing back down on her arm in a fruitless effort to escape her hold, it continued and grabbed a glob of the membrane, the glob that contained her image, and then she was gone. Lynch crashed to the floor in a quivering heap.
He steadied himself on his knees before attempting to stand. In his right hand was the glob of translucent material. Inside it was that spot in the room and Mistress Alana, furious and screaming, but he couldn’t hear her. Her hand gestures, obscene for someone who gave off the image of such a proper lady,
let him know she saw him. Lynch was somewhat amazed; he didn’t expect that to work. Above him, the room still existed, but now was slightly different. The pattern of the hardwood floor planks wasn’t the expertly installed straight lines now. A spot, a circular spot, had been removed and filled in by stretching the sides until they met. Time, if that is what it was, had repaired itself.
With a tad of amusement, Lynch wondered what he should do now. There were no guarantees she would stay enclosed if he attempted to return back to the normal world. Maybe she would, but could he take that chance? That would be a decision for another time. Having taken care of two out of the three options he had earlier, he had one left and went on a hunch, those had never led him wrong before. He entered her tunnel and followed it. It was a rather lengthy walk, which was difficult since he still felt weak after his altercation with the one he had now started to call the Blood Dahlia. The name sounded dramatic, and fit with what he thought was what she was all about. At the fourth branch off of what appeared to be the main tunnel, he found what he wanted. In an abandoned house, way out on the outskirts of town, with the first light of day breaching through the window, there they were. Three girls, dressed in what they were last seen in, hanging there motionless in midair, with their arms outstretched.
Trusting another hunch, he went up and touched each of them, transferring a little of himself into them. Each woke and floated to the ground where they sat, confused. Which is how they would stay for a few hours more until Lynch could summon help. He just needed to do something else first.
A little weaker than before, he rushed into town, not following the tunnels, until he saw someone. A man in shorts, running shoes, and a grey t-shirt that had varying degrees of sweat induced darkening. It was obvious he was out for a morning run. Something Lynch had never seen the enjoyment in. He had an idea, but more questions than thoughts as his glance went back and forth between the globe and the image of the person. He placed the globe down on the ground and said, “Stay right there,” and ascended back into the world. Lynch took care to ensure he emerged behind the jogger. No need to give the man a heart attack. At his age, which Lynch guessed would be late fifties, it wouldn’t be that hard to by appearing right in front of him. Even if he was in good shape.
Lynch held out his detective badge as he ran behind the man, catching up with him. Confused and startled the runner stopped and Lynch asked for his Scroll while pushing the badge in his face. The man easily offered it up and Lynch made the call for help. He sent the man on his way and waited for him to clear around the next corner before he descended back, just a few feet away from where he’d left. His trophy, the globe with the beautiful woman inside, sat right where he’d left it. Now he needed to find a place to put it.
32
“So, how did you figure it out?” Lucas asked. He sat back in the old wooden guest chair in Lynch’s office. It creaked under his weight and lack of use. Not many clients actually came to the office to meet.
“It made sense. The scenes were always the same. The pool of blood below the victim. I saw her bathing in it at the Cheryl Hines crime scene. After that, she was a little more of a woman each time. It didn’t take long before I realized what her motivation was,” Lynch explained. He was leaned back, relaxed, in his office chair. His feet crossed one over the other, propped up on his desk. “The recent successes of the families were oddly timed. Put two and two together and you have a bunch of greedy assholes selling out their daughters’ lives to a supernatural creature, in return, she destroyed their competition to help them achieve more riches. The creature, Miss Alana, or the Blood Dahlia… whichever name you want to go with, took their daughters as payment because she needed to bathe in their blood to restore her youthful beauty.”
Lucas shook in his seat. His face was all squished up as if he had bitten into something rotten. “Just sick.”
“I have a feeling she has done it before. Probably behind some of the really old cold cases. She yanked me way back in time once, and I saw her in her more feminine form.”
“Really? How far did she take you back?” Lucas pulled out his Scroll and unrolled it to make a note.
“I don’t know the year for sure, but they were just starting to clear that cemetery where Cheryl was buried.”
“Should be easy enough to find.” Lucas typed in a quick note, but didn’t put his Scroll back in his brown tweed jacket. He kept it in his hands and fiddled with it. Each hand holding a side. His fingers rolled it slowly forward and then backward, forward, and then backward.
“So, what will happen to the fathers?”
“Probably nothing other than you putting the fear of God in them. Which is something for those egotistical bastards. They thought they were the alpha predators. They didn’t know what else was out there. Legally, I can’t touch them.”
Lynch leaned his head on his left arm. The elbow resting on the arm of the chair. His eyes were squinted at his old partner, with a rather sarcastic smile across his lips. “Why is that?”
“You try to explain this supernatural mumbo jumbo to the District Attorney. I would be run out, and then locked up. In that order.”
“Could you make something up? I could plant a few things here and there.”
“Well, it might surprise you, but I thought about that, Now, imagine the blow back if Devon found any evidence we did that. We wouldn’t be the only damage. The entire police department would be targeted. Too risky. For now, the kidnappings of all the girls, and the murder of three of them, will remain an unsolved crime.”
“Huh,” Lynch said. He leaned back a little further in his chair, causing the springs to creak. “Adding to the total of the departments cold cases.”
“Speaking of.” Lucas unrolled his Scroll that had remained a fiddle toy in his hand after he took a note. “Here, I have something to look into.”
Lynch picked up his Scroll and nonchalantly jerked it with one hand to extend the screen. The contents of the file he received appeared in the air above the device. A picture of a man who was mostly nondescript. The type you could walk by in a crowded room and never think twice about. Normal length hair, that was a little of a mess, which was the style. Of course, one detail did stick out. The large tattoo of an arrow, that traveled from his left ear, across his eyes, and with the point at his right ear, was an interesting detail. “Who’s this guy?”
“Mark Jacobs. Disappeared four years ago. No suspects. No witnesses. No nothing.”
“So why do you want me to look into it? She didn’t have any interest in dudes.” Lynch stopped to wonder if Mistress Alana had bathed in the blood of a man, if she would have turned into one.
“Not her. Maybe something else. Any time I see a case where someone just… well, vanished, I have to consider ALL the options now.”
Lynch gestured the display closed and put his Scroll back in his pocket. He pulled both feet off his desk and sat up straight with a squeak. “Let’s talk about it over lunch,” he said as he stood up.
“All right.”
The two men walked out of the office and into the outer office that served as a waiting room. Lynch carried his own dark navy suit coat in one arm. He would put it on outside, not because it was cold. It was a tad chilly, but still pleasant. The coat was there to hide the two holsters he wore under each arm. The other arm reached over for the lightweight leather jacket that hung on the coat rack. “Come on. Lucas is taking us to lunch.”
He held Gina’s jacket for her. She stood up from behind her receptionist desk and slipped both arms in the jacket, sliding it the rest of the way on, over her hot pink top, which was a stark contrast to the almost-too short black skirt. “What’s the occasion?” Her hand gripped Lynch’s as they walked out of the office. His hand didn’t pull away. It accepted her fingers and meshed with them.
“The department has a case for us to look at.”
“By the way, you never did tell me what happened to her, the Blood Dahlia,” Lucas asked.
With a smirk,
Lynch said, “She is someplace where she can’t bother anyone ever again.” In his mind he pictured exactly where she was. In the version of his office that existed in the world beyond this world. Like an object bought to remember a vacation, the globe sat on a shelf like a snow globe. Inside, she sat on a chair that was captured when Lynch ripped that portion of the office from reality. She was not smirking. She was not pleased. Each time Lynch visited her, she tried everything from screaming at him, demanding her release, to flirting and promising him a life he could never imagine. Laughter was his only reaction.
33
The night fell and the screams returned to Lynch’s dreams. Tonight’s film wasn’t one of the frequent shows. It had appeared before, but not as much as others, and no less terrifying. The screams played as the soundtrack for the scenes as Lynch chased a knife-wielding bald man with a bullseye tattooed on the center of his head. Lynch was the caboose of this train that snaked through traffic on a business night on an inner city street. At the front of the train was a screaming blonde woman that the man had met online. She refused to meet him, so he used public information to hunt her down.
The first call came into dispatch when the man showed up at her door and wouldn’t leave. Lynch was in hour two of a twelve hour shift that night, and took the call with lights and sirens. He turned off the sirens a few blocks away, to avoid alerting the man, but then realized that wasn’t necessary as a blonde woman streaked in front of his patrol car forcing him to slam on the brakes. The car slid to a stop just as a bald man with a bullseye tattoo, just as the call described, rolled across his hood, landing on his feet, and continuing the chase.
