Never Wake the Dead

by Bajaña, Edgar

  “Detective Night!”

  James heard Snyder calling. So, James got back up on his feet and stepped back inside apartment 106. He walked pass the living room, toward the back of the apartment where there was another dark hallway. At the end, there was red neon cross.

  Passing by two bedroom, James noticed that only the living room was decorated or lived in. The bedrooms door were open and they were unfurnished and empty.

  “Detective!”

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  Snyder stood at the threshold of the bathroom. “You gotta see this, James.”

  “What is it?”

  When James walked into the bathroom, the foul smell turned his stomach. James gasped.

  “You were right, Detective Night. You found him.”

  James looked inside the bathtub and he looked at the kid inside.

  It was Jesse Torres. The boy’s body was kept inside a cast iron bath tub filled with ice cubes. His leg and arms were severed into pieces. The sight was grotesque, to say the least. For a moment, he examined the cuts of the severed body parts and they reminded him of the severed arm that the cops found in the black bag on Queens Boulevard. The cuts were similar.

  “James have you ever scene anything like this?”

  James bent over the severed hand of Jesse Torres. He wanted to take a closer look, before the FBI took everything away.

  Snyder left the bathroom and James was alone with Jesse’s dead body broken into eight pieces. It looked like Jesse was killed about a day ago. Which meant that his ghost was still out there, walking around. The last thing he wanted to do was chase a missing ghost. But he may have to, if he can’t get anywhere with the physical evidence.

  Before more cops came into the bathroom, Jesse took out a tiny tracker from his vest and slipped into Jesse’s severed hand. He burrowed deep a thin metal into Jesse’s skin between his two fingers.

  “James!” Snyder’s voice echoed throughout the apartment. “There’s more!”

  Detective James Night stepped out the bathroom, as couple of cops came in to take pictures of the crime scene. James walked toward the back of the apartment.

  Along the way, James passed by Violet who was leaning against the wall.

  “Anything?” Violet asked.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  James walked to the back of the apartment, passing two more bedrooms. In every room, Violet materialized to kept her eye on James. She knew that he was no closer to finding her killer. All she knew about herself was that she was a hooker. The tattoo on the inside of her arm proved that. However, she didn’t know her real name.

  “The nights are only getting worse,” she said.

  “What do have Snyder?” asked James.

  Snyder pointed at three refrigerators in the middle of the kitchen, in addition to the old broken one against the wall. The three German refrigerators were stainless steel, thin and tall. James and Snyder opened each one, revealing ten glass mason jars filled with blood.

  “Jesus, what were these people doing?” said Snyder.

  “Only God knows.”

  “Or the devil?”

  James glanced over at Snyder. What if it was the devil or something worse?

  “I don’t think the two in the living room did any of this or had anything to do with Jesse Torres final predicament.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re old.”

  “What about that old man who threw you against the wall with one arm?”

  “I can’t explain that. And you probably shouldn’t either. Unless you want people talking shit around the department. Believe me. I should know.”

  James placed a jar back in the refrigerator and closed the door. Then James noticed a window in the back of the kitchen. There was an open widow that led outside. The glass was broken from inside. For a moment, James stuck his head outside. Under the night, James listened to trees rattling around and the sound of crickets.

  This window would be useful for anyone who wanted to bring bodies in and out of this apartment and no one in the building would know. About ten feet away, there was a police officer standing guard.

  “Hey, did you see anything out here?” James called to the cop. “Hey!”

  After a minute the cop finally spoke.

  “No Detective. I didn’t see a thing. The window broke when we heard the gunfire inside. I thought it could of been a stray bullet. But, nothing came out of the window. I had my sights on it the whole time.”

  James looked at the old trees swaying with the night wind. Then, he went back inside. He was sure that he just missed the Beast, again.

  “Detective Night!”

  James heard his voice and recognized it right away. It was Agent Carter from the FBI. Right of the bat, he entered the apartment and commanded the scene. James was no longer the head of the operation. Carter told everyone to stop what they were doing and stand still. FBI agents would replace everyone at the scene, one by one.

  In the kitchen, Agent Carter eyeballed James and Snyder. Then, more FBI men flooded the kitchen, wearing protective plastic gear that resembled a thin body hazard suit.

  “Okay, Detective Night and Detective Snyder.” Agent Carter announced, “This scene is now under the FBI control. Local police is relieved of the scene, as of now. I am replacing the both of you. Please leave before you contaminate the rest of the crime scene. Thank you.”

  James and Snyder looked at each other with disbelief, watching their men being relived and walking out the apartment.

  Agent Carter stepped closer to James and Snyder, “James, the FBI will be taking care of this scene, now. Do you understand? Chief Harris knows the drill.”

  James didn’t move. Instead, he looked at Agent Carter in the face and asked him one question, “How did you know where we were? Did you bug my phone?”

  “Thank you Detective Night for your assistance,” Agent Carter responded with a slight smile.

  Detective James Night followed Snyder and gave Carter a dirty look, before leaving the kitchen.

  As James walked through the dark hallway, he looked inside the bathroom and took a final glance at Jesse Torres’s severed hand. At the time, there was an FBI forensic technician placing the hand in a plastic bag.

  James smiled as he left the apartment, knowing that the tracker was in Jesse’s severed hand.

  18

  Constellation of the Beast

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get you inside, Violet.”

  “Are you sure you, James?”

  “Jesus, yes. Why do I keep talking to you?”

  It was in the middle of the night when Violet and I walked toward Moody’s Car Repair Shop in Long Island City. Along the way, I thought about how I left Charlene back in her apartment, alone and unprotected. Something felt wrong about that, as if the Beast were now watching her. Then, I remember what the Chief said.

  He told me to make sure that nothing happens to her.

  However, tonight was my only chance to examine the evidence that the FBI found at the dumping ground in Woodside and the sites along Queens Boulevard.

  What were they hiding?

  Charlene was safe, I told myself. She was a well-trained police woman. She could handle herself. But, this thing moved too quickly, to be human. Was it a ghost? Then, where was the body?

  I looked at my watch, the face contained a map of Long Island City with a single glowing red dot. Thanks to the tracking device I buried in Jesse's hand, I knew exactly where the FBI took the victims found at the abandoned house in Woodside and inside the black bags along Queens Boulevard. The FBI was transporting and storing the body parts to this car repair shop in eastern Queens, called Moody’s Car Repair.

  On both sides of the street, there were warehouses up and down the orange street lamp lit street. The light from street lamps was orange. Violet heels shimmered with blue ghostly light.

  “So it worked?” asked Violet.

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  I couldn't stop thin
king about Jesse, thinking about being back in that bathroom and standing over his dismembered body. When the cops weren’t looking, I planted a tiny GPS tracker inside Jesse Torres’ severed hand. I embedded it in his dead flesh, as best I could.

  Violet stood in the driveway, as I peered through the fence and saw the guard emerge from the office of the first floor.

  His name was Harold, a cop from the precinct who was on night duty. I paid him off by slipping a hundred dollar bill with a handshake. I didn’t say much. I hated dirty cops. But, they did have their uses too, like now.

  The guard rolled back the gate and allowed me inside. But, Violet was already on the opposite side of the lot by the first-floor offices. I walked through the parking lot, watching Violet moving inside.

  Back in the day, this place used to be a chop shop where stolen cars were taken to be dissembled and transported in freight containers to all kinds of places around the world.

  The security guard pointed to the second floor. I thanked him and went in through the garage. I opened the door and walked up the stairs, where there were four offices.

  I choose the door way covered with strips of plastic hanging from the top of the door frame. Before stepping into the room, I thought I might see a group of ghost waiting for me on the other side.

  The dark room was large with several steel refrigerators against two of the walls. The refrigerator doors were made of glass with shelves glowing with weak blue light.

  “James, is this where I am?”

  "Maybe."

  In the street, I heard the hydraulic pump of a garbage truck, downing a metal trash bin.

  I found it. It actually worked the way it was suppose to. I stood in the storage room where the FBI held the body parts from the dumping ground in woodside and the sites along Queens Boulevard. In total, I saw four stored in these refrigerator. The shelves looked sparse. All of the parts were unidentified, nameless.

  Violet placed her hand on the glass to get a closer look. The feds kept the body part in a clear plastic bag. I watched as she inspected the remains from the dead.

  Violet’s eyes glowed with blue light as she stared at the first body part.

  “No. This one isn’t me,” she said.

  I was about to do the same when I noticed that wall on the opposite side was made of glass.

  “What is it?’ asked Violet.

  “It looks like a built-in freezer in the joining room separated by a plate of glass.

  In the glass plate wall, there was a glass door lined with rubber insulation. When I opened the latch, a rush of fridges air past by me and the light turned on, revealing a larger room where all three walls were were lined, from floor to ceiling, with glass shelves. Both of the side walls held rows of severed body parts, like a gym store. There were a variety of body parts a chewed up leg to to a chewed up skull. There several arms.

  This might take longer than I have. I looked in pocket for more cash. Then, I notice the furthest wall and saw several glass coffins. It looked like the FBI was putting all the parts back together again. In one of the glass boxes, there were the remains of…

  “Is that me?” asked Violet.

  “Let’s see.”

  James approached the glass coffin and examined the arm the victim. Her body was shredded to pieces. I was surprised that they found so many bits of her.

  “If, it’s me? I want to bury her.” said Violet.

  I looked underneath the arm and saw the tattoo. I pulled out a magnifying glass from the inside of my coat to take a closer look at the tattoo. It was once a flower, a rose. Then, I saw something that looked like 20 row of stripes on the petal of the flower. It was a bar code. What were these girls getting into.

  Finding these girls with these kinds of markings, I wondered who would brand them like cattle.

  I took a final look and deduced that the damage on the inside of her arm was more symbolic than functional. If the killer wanted to bury her identity, he would have cut out all trace of the tattoo, especially the barcode. Instead, the killer used a sharp object to scratch out the tattoo of the rose, suggesting...

  “…rage,” said Violet.

  When I looked at Violet, I saw a map at the end of the room. It was a map of the whole of Long Island. There were hundred of scattered red pins sticking on the map. Pinching my fingers, I zoomed in and out of all parts of the map. There must have been a thousand red pins. Were these all missing people or dampening sites. There was too many in so many parts of Long Island. But, there was a pattern here. The group of pins on each part of the map carried the same pattern. They sites all ran along a major thoroughfare. But, there was something else that was telling. Every group of site was by a cemetery. Violet was right. The cemetery was the source of the affliction.

  When I touched the map on the screen, Information displayed about each red pin.

  “Shit, the cemetery.”

  “I told you,” said Violet. “But why, is the FBI covering up these murders?”

  “James, look.”

  “Look at all these places, where a body part has been recovered. Jesus. There were more cases than I thought.”

  “James, look over here.”

  For the moment, I couldn’t believe it. I kept staring at the map. It was peculiar. The distribution of red pins weren’t random. The pattern repeated. The same pattern that appeared in Queens, also appeared in different parts of Long Island. There’s another instance in Boston and another in California and Chicago.

  “James. Look!”

  I turned around and looked over at the glass across the mirror. I looked at myself in the reflection.

  Then, Violet turned on the light and there was a ghost inside. He was looking at his own body that was shredded to pieces, as if an alligator held him under water and feed on him over the course of a few days. It was terrifying.

  “Who is that?” asked the boy, pointing at the door of the glass wall.

  “Who's he?” asked the boy again.

  At first he wasn’t there. Then, I turned around and saw the Beast, standing by the doorway.

  The beast.

  He wore the same paper machete mask that I saw in that old woman's house in Woodside. The Beast pointed at Violet with black talons puncturing out from the tips of his black glove.

  I pulled out my fire engine red pistol and pulled the trigger three times, aiming for his head. All three bullets struck the glass wall and shattered it. I heard him running away over the broken glass. His steps were so heavy that the floor shook. Again, the Beast was gone. I couldn’t let him get away again.

  “No James! Wait!”

  However, Violet couldn’t stop me from running recklessly over the broken glass and pass the refrigerators. I headed for the door way with strips of hanging plastic. At the last second, I take cover by the side of the door, when three shots ring out. The Beast was waiting for me.

  The Beast shot at me with a large handgun but missed. A second later, the Beast disappeared down another dark hallway.

  To give me a heads up, Violet materialized ahead of the Beast to see where he was going. At that moment, I decided to use one of my powers over the dead. My eyes glowed for a second and I was able to see what Violet saw.

  Through her eyes, I saw her in the stairwell when the Beast opened the door. His black mask of death looked like a demon with horns. When the Beast grabbed Violet by the neck, I was surprised that he could harm her.

  “Who are you?” I ask the Beast, as he held Violet’s back against the wall. Then, he leaned close to her and spoke to her through his mask. Violet turned away, feeling exactly how she did the night she was taken.

  “My Farrow. My Love. Return to me now,” said the Beast. His voice sounded like rushing water. When she looked back up, the Beast was gone.

  A second later, I came through the stairwell door. Violet pointed up and I continued on. The Beast slipped over the stairs like a flowing black sheet, climbing up the stairs, two at a time.

  I busted through the s
tairwell door leading onto the roof and spotted the Beast heading for the parapet of the building.

  That bastard was going to jump off the ledge and get away, once again.

  But this time, the Beast stopped and turned around to face me. His solid black silhouette stood firm, in front of the night sky filled with a constellation of stars across the night sky.

  I couldn’t let him get away again. So, I ran straight for him, stretching my hand to grab him by the collar. But, my hand passed through the Beast as if he were a ghost.

  Now, I knew for sure. The beast was a manifestation. He was like Violet. He too was the kind of spirit that did not pass over on the third day.

  The world was no longer as I found it. By now, the soul of the Beast and Violet should have ascended into the light of love or devoured by the darkness of hate.

  As I passed through him, I noticed his eyes behind the mask. They were similar to my own, a milky white. The beast was a ghost, a manifestation, a demon. As I passed through him, I felt great emotions stirred up inside me. Anger filed with hate and rage.

  I couldn't get over it. The eyes of the Beast were white and dead, like my own. And at that moment, a vision came to me, like cold ice flowing over the back of my neck.

  For a spilt-second, I saw another time.

  In this vision, my arms were tired, when I walked down a desolate highway, disappearing into a gray horizon. Because the sun dying, I felt scared about the coming night. But, I had to continue down this long road because something was missing in me. I felt like a part of me was out there, somewhere. I lost my son and had to find him before the night came.

  As I passed through the Beast, the vision faded away and the night returned. At the moment, I was falling face down, over the parapet. Then, I grabbed hold of a rusted iron cage covering a small air conditioner. i held on tight to it. My feet dangled in the dark until I was able to find footing on a thin ledge.