Syphon: Guardians of the Fractured Realms

by Kunego, Chad

  “This is where they found Samuel unconscious, surrounded by dozens of bodies and ash.”

  She glanced around again.

  “Why right here? From the footage we’ve seen of our boy in action, he has no problems moving in a fight, but in the photos, he looks like he refused to move more than a few feet from this spot. Why?”

  “Maybe he was having fun? Or he was too lazy to move. Who cares?” he said, kicking another box across the room.

  “Frank, be serious. Why would our guy make what appears to be his last stand right here?”

  She squatted down, trying to figure out what was so special about that particular spot. Frank sighed, brushed his hands off on his pants, and walked over to where she was squatting. Standing next to her, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Still thinking he might have been bored…”

  “Damn it Frank. Use your recon training and tell me why you’d want to make a last stand here.”

  “Fine, fine,” he said as he nudged her out of the way. He expression turned serious as he slowly turned in place, pausing to glance at different spots as he slowly spun. After a few minutes, he shook his head.

  “This spot makes no sense whatsoever. He’s wide open, has no cover, and no way to funnel attackers. This spot would be a losing position against just about any type of organized attack.”

  “Yet that’s exactly what he did. Based off what you saw in that video, does that sound like something our guy would do?”

  Frank’s face scrunched up as he focused on the question, glancing around the area again.

  “Well, based off how agile our guy is, unless he was injured or fighting against some seriously well trained fighters, there’s no way he’d allow himself to get pinned down here,” he said, studying the spot again. “Damn it, I beginning to think you’re right. This is a rank amateur mistake, getting stuck right here. Our boy is anything but that. He was standing his ground here for some reason, but for what?”

  Cora nodded, studying the area again.

  “There’s nothing here though. What the hell was he defending?”

  She pulled out the crime scene photos again, letting Frank look over her shoulder. From the pictures, it appeared that he’d been able to maintain about a ten foot diameter circle around himself before he fell. Those ten feet were what Samuel was willing to fight to the death for, from all appearances. Cora pulled out a few blank sheets of paper and tore them up into small pieces. She then proceeded to compare the photos to the floor, laying out the pieces to make a rough outline of the circle that the bodies seemed to have dropped around.

  Moving back to the center of the rough circle, she looked around again. Frank followed her gaze.

  “I’m telling you Cora, there’s nothing here. I’m agreeing with you that there’s a reason he drew his line in the sand here, but whatever it was, it’s gone.”

  Cora sighed in frustration. Her partner was right. There wasn’t anything here. She squatted back down to see if there might have been something, some scratch or trace of something, that might have indicated what he was fighting for. After another minute of examination, she gave up and started to stand. Her foot slipped on something greasy, causing her to fall backward.

  Frank scrambled over to her, holding out his hand.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, dusting off her hands before reaching up to grab Frank’s hand.

  “I think you’re right about…” she said as she glanced up at Frank, her hand slowly drifting back down. Frank gave her a funny look as she started glancing around again.

  “Do you want help up or not?”

  “Frank,” she said slowly pointing toward the ceiling, “what the hell are those?”

  §§§§§§§§§§§§

  “How the hell did our guys miss something like that,” he said, staring toward the ceiling.

  “Oh, I don’t know… Maybe the several dozen bodies horribly mutilated and scattered across the floor might have distracted them a bit…” she said sarcastically, pulling out a copy of the crime scene sketch.

  “Har Har…”

  Cora lightly sketched in the burn pattern over rest of the diagram. Glancing back up, she noticed the burn wasn’t completely circular. It appeared to have slight edges, but they weren’t well defined. Ignoring it for the time being, she started to glance around the rest of the upper areas of the building. The first thing she noticed was what appeared to be a new chunk of metal, shaped into a sturdy hook, sticking out of one of the main concrete support beams. Marking it on the diagram, she glanced around at the other support beams. After a careful search, she noticed four other hooks as well spaced around the warehouse. Marking their positions as well on the photos, she studied the updated sketch.

  “Holy… Are you friggin’ serious?”

  Frank glanced over her shoulder, staring at the drawing.

  “Now what?”

  She glanced back at Frank, pointing at the diagram.

  “That…”

  “That what? I don’t know what you’re looking at…”

  “Maybe it’s all the spookiness that caused it to stand out,” she said, drawing more lines on the diagram, “but for whatever reason, it fits.”

  When she finished, she handed the diagram to her partner. He whistled through his teeth before looking back at her.

  “You’re right, it’s absolutely bat-shit crazy, but it really does fit, no matter how weird it looks…” he said as he trailed off, handing the sketch back to Cora.

  Glancing back down at it, Cora tried to make sense of what she’d drawn. The area that Samuel appeared to be defending, fit perfectly within the burn pattern on the ceiling, which fit perfectly within the center of the pentagram the hooks would have formed if they had been connected by ropes.

  Chapter 21

  As they left the scene, Cora tried to make sense of the new information. What they’d found could completely change what they suspected happened, but left lots of new blanks that needed to be filled in.

  “So this wasn’t just a mass slaughter or body drop for an illegal fight club. This appears to be some type of ritual or cult scenario. The question now becomes, were they willing, or unwilling participants. And how did our boy Samuel fit in with the new info. Was he the leader of the cult? If not, then why did it look like he’d killed all those people around that pentagram?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “This looks worse than that situation with Heaven’s Gate back in the late nineties. At least they just poisoned themselves. This was an absolute slaughter.”

  Cora nodded. She kept turning the new information over in her head. If this was a ritual of some sort, did the group responsible succeed, or were they going to find more bodies somewhere? And why now? She wasn’t much up on different cult beliefs, but what little she knew seemed to indicate rituals usually seemed to happen around certain times of the year. With a start, the hairs on the back of her neck started to lift.

  “Frank…” she started, waiting to make sure he was paying attention before she continued, “I think we might have a much bigger problem…”

  “Great, now what?”

  “Halloween is two days from now. I get the suspicion we haven’t seen the worst of it yet…”

  “Boy, you’re just a ray o’ friggin’ sunshine, aren’t you…?”

  “Yep, and if you keep it up, I’m going to give you a care bear stare…”

  §§§§§§§§§§§§

  “You sure this guy’s gonna be able to help?”

  Cora glanced down at her notebook before pulling the door open.

  “According to what the info desk guy said over the phone, if anyone could give us an answer, it’d be this guy.”

  After conferring with a couple students, Cora and Frank walked down the hall, heading deeper into the university.

  “Apparently this guy is some well-known expert on the occult. The guy kept going on and on about how lucky they were to snag him to head their p
hilosophy and religious studies department. I nearly had to hang up on him to get him to shut up.”

  Finding the correct hallway, they headed toward the only office that was still lit.

  Cora ran her fingers through her hair as she glanced at Frank.

  “So, how much do we tell this guy, anyway?”

  “At this point, we’re so far outside the box, I don’t think we could do much worse if we started carting him around in the car with us.”

  Cora chuckled slightly. Since agreeing to continue investigating the case with her, he’d seemed to have started loosening up. Stopping in front of the office door, she stood to the side as Frank knocked.

  “Enter,” came the muffled reply.

  Opening the door, they walked in, not sure what to expect. Looking around, Cora was surprised by how large the office was, indicating how high the university’s regard for this particular professor was. Going deeper, she spotted collections of assorted weird items, dessicated animals of indeterminate origin, and musty books piled up haphazardly around the room.

  “Hello…? Professor Waide?”

  “Yes…?”

  Cora glanced over to where she thought she’d heard the voice emanated from. She could faintly make out a coil of smoke curling up from behind another stack of books. She glanced back at Frank, nodding at the column of smoke, before heading forward again, carefully walking around teetering stacks of objects that were probably worth more than they made in a month.

  Circling around another stack of books, they saw the professor hunched over several books and scrolls, scribbling rapidly into a notebook with precise strokes before continuing his studies. She noticed the trail of smoke was coming out of a fancy looking meerschaum pipe he had clenched lightly in the corner of his mouth. She noticed that the bowl was a deep golden brown color, almost a dark mahogany in shade.

  “Professor Waide,” she asked again, “isn’t there a no smoking rule in here?”

  The elderly gentleman turned slowly, scrutinizing his visitors before he replied.

  “The university grants me special uh,” he paused, waving around the room, “liberties in order to entice me to stay.”

  He pulled his glasses off, wiping the lenses before perching them back on his nose. He glanced at Cora and Frank before turning back toward his notes.

  “From the looks of you two, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you’re not here to discuss why I should give you an extension on a paper you haven’t turned in yet, yes…?”

  Glancing at Frank, she shrugged her shoulders before turning back toward the man standing in front of them.

  “I’m detective Blanchett and this is my partner, detective Giani. We were wondering if you could look at something we’ve come across during one of our investigations.”

  Without turning to look at them, Professor Waide took a deep pull off his pipe while relighting it. After a few puffs, he responded without looking at them.

  “Detective, unlike you apparently, I’m very busy here. I’m not one of your public servants you can just drop in on whenever you feel like it. If you want to set up a meeting with me to discuss a case, your department is well aware of my policy. So until then, I bid you adieu.”

  “Old codger probably wouldn’t have a clue about what this meant anyway,” Frank mumbled under his breath as he turned to walk away.

  The professor whirled around fluidly, a flash of anger coloring his cheeks.

  “Excuse me young man?”

  “I said you’d probably be useless with this case. I doubt you’ve been outside this room to do more than eat and sleep in the past decade…”

  “Is that so,” the professor replied indignantly, “I’ll have you know that I’ve been helping your department solve ‘weird cases’ since before your stones dropped, I’ll wager.”

  The professor stalked up to Frank, leaning on a simple black cane.

  “I’ve done more for your department than you ever will,” he said, jabbing the stem of his pipe into Frank’s chest several times.

  “Come on Frank, we’re obviously wasting our time here. We’ll just have to find someone else to make sense of this mess before Halloween…”

  As she turned away, the professor tilted his head.

  “What does Samhain have to do with your case?”

  Turning back to the professor, she noticed a strange intensity in his eyes.

  “Samhain?”

  “Yes, the Celtic festival of the end of Summer. Co-opted by other religions and turned into a festival of the dead called Halloween.”

  Pulling out a folder, she waved it at him.

  “Right now, we’re not sure if it is, in fact, related. All we know is that we had a massacre in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. When we went back there today, we noticed something that oddly looks like a pentagram at the center of where the bodies fell. We’re guessing the upcoming holiday has something to do with this, but we can’t be sure. So far, everything about this case has been bizarre and this is just one more piece we can’t make sense of.”

  “All right,” he said testily, “since I’m going to have to eventually look it over anyway, let me see it.”

  He worked his way over to another table, slightly limping as he balanced on his cane. Clearing off a large spot, he motioned for them to lay out the case file.

  “So far, all we know for sure is, three days ago, a man was found in the center of a huge pile of dead bodies in an abandoned warehouse. When that person woke up in the hospital, he claimed to have no memories of who he was, but we have reason to believe his name is Samuel. He also claimed to have no memory about what happened in that warehouse. Now he’s missing and we have very little to go on.”

  The professor shuffled through the crime scene photos, giving each one a quick look before moving on to the next one. When he came to the picture they’d taken of the ceiling of the warehouse, one of his eyebrows went up.

  “Detective Giani,” he said absently, waiving in the general direction of his desk, “could you hand me my notebook and something to write with.

  Frank walked over to the desk. After a moment of moving and shuffling stuff, he returned, handing the professor a notebook while pulling a pen out of his pocket.

  “Here.”

  The professor gave a vague nod, grabbing the notebook and pen. Laying the photos out, he started rapidly taking notes. Without looking up, he started talking.

  “You said his name was Samuel. If he didn’t have any memory, how do you know his name?”

  “That’s another mystery. A woman by the name of Sybil showed up at his room shortly after he escaped. She’s the one who identified his name as being Samuel.”

  “Interesting. What did she look like?”

  “Well, she was dressed head to toe in black and wore a black trench coat…”

  She paused when the professor snapped his head toward her, locking his eyes on her.

  “A woman dressed in black wearing a black trench coat? I don’t suppose it was a leather one, was it? About midway down her shin in length?”

  Cora nodded at him before glancing at Frank.

  The professor turned back to the photos as he waved at her to continue.

  “Anyway, she mentioned his name while looking around the room. I got distracted for a moment. When I looked back, she was gone.”

  The professor nodded to himself, mumbling.

  Cora wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard him say, “not surprised.”

  Picking up the crime scene sketch that Cora had drawn on, he held it up toward them.

  “Nice piece of detective work there. I’m surprised any of you caught that. Might I ask if there were any mysterious piles of ash there, or maybe slashes or other marks that didn’t make sense? Maybe gouged right out of the concrete floor?”

  “How’d you know?” she asked as she exchanged glances with Frank.

  “Just a hunch. I don’t suppose you have a picture of this ‘Samuel’ person you’re looki
ng for do you?” he asked as he puffed on his pipe.

  Cora pulled out her phone, turning it so he could see the screen. As she flipped through them, she said, “These are really the only pictures we have of him. I took these just before he woke up in the hospital. We really didn’t have a chan—”

  She was interrupted by the professor slumping back against the table, sucking air in through his teeth.

  Looking back up at her, he asked, “You said this guy was unconscious, with no memory of who, or what, he was?”

  Cora was shocked by the sudden change in the professor’s appearance. Up to this point, he had seemed to be confident and robust for his age, almost to the point of being rude and condescending. Now he was leaning against the table, shaking slightly. His face had gone ashen in color, and it took him a minute to compose himself. He finally straightened himself up and walked briskly over to his desk, almost ignoring his cane in the process. Dropping down in his seat, he opened a drawer and pulled out a glass and a bottle.

  Frank sucked in a loud gasp.

  “Is that what I think it is…?” he asked, his hand shaking slightly as he pointed at the bottle.

  “By that, do you mean a rare bottle of Glenfiddich Janet Sheed Robers Reserve 1955?” the professor asked, a slight smile playing across his face as he pulled the stopper out of the bottle.

  “I picked up three bottles of the stuff when it went up for auction back in ‘05. It’s quite nice, actually. Would you care for a dram?”

  Cora looked over at Frank to see his eyes bulge out before hesitantly nodding yes. The professor reached into his desk, pulling a couple more glasses out before nodding toward Cora.

  “Would you like a dram yourself, detective?”

  She shrugged her shoulders before nodding as well. She watched as he poured two fingers worth into each glass. As he handed the first glass to Frank, she continued to be confused by Frank’s actions. He carefully took the glass from the elderly man’s hand before slowly bringing it up to his nose, inhaling the fumes deeply. A look of bliss crossed her partner’s face as the professor handed her a glass as well.