The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1)

by Robert Wilde

  It wasn’t just that she was tied up in someone’s attic room, because there was a skylight in the ceiling covered up with black fabric. It wasn’t just the chair placed against the back wall of said room, or the range of bizarre and medical looking instruments nearby on the right side. It was the shelf opposite on which there were jars, and in these jars were eyeballs. She didn’t need telling they were human eyeballs.

  So fuck, that’s where you are.

  Dee looked around, determined not to just sit and wait, but she didn’t have to, because the room’s only door opened and a woman came in. Tall, bulky, with her blonde hair tied back into a ponytail.

  “Excellent, you’re awake!”

  “Yes I am you Meerkat fucking bitch.”

  “Mee, how would that be possible?” The door was closed.

  “You’d shove a Meerkat up…”

  “Oh, that’s so distasteful.”

  “Says the woman stealing people’s fucking eyeballs.”

  “But eyes are so tasty!” and the woman grinned, revealing perfect teeth.

  “Did you say tasty?”

  “Yes,” and a jar was opened, an eye pulled out, and taken over to Dee who could smell some sort of pickling fluid. “Look at how it’s lies in my hand, all gooey and delicious, like a chocolate mousse or caviar, doesn’t it just wobble wonderfully it I shake my hand a little,” and she did, “couldn’t you just gobble it all up!”

  “Suddenly I regret smirking at vegetarians.”

  “All the more for me then!” And the woman put the eye to her mouth and bit it in half, chewing away and grinning.

  “I preferred it when we thought you were selling them to desperate cornea patients in the Middle East.”

  “How wery rawist” the woman said through her chewing.

  “Nazir said it.” And it would help if Nazir would come running right through that door. What was the point of being a fag hag if the gay best friend didn’t turn up on time?

  If Maquire had applied the brakes any later he wouldn’t have had to use Dee’s door, as he’d have been inside away. Running in, he found Nazir stood in the doorway, looking very worried, and was shown into a lounge were Pohl sat with Joe, who might as well have little stars and birds revolving around his head.

  “Is he any better?” Maquire asked, looking at the stricken scientist.

  “He’s not making much sense but calmed when I said you were en route.”

  “Good. Does he need a doctor?”

  “I don’t know. We might have to keep an eye on him.”

  “Okay, first tell me what happened?”

  Pohl composed herself and began to run through it. “I returned home to find two men running out of the property and down the street, and one had the rucksack and the machine. I came in, found Joe, and he was adamant Dee’s been kidnapped.”

  “Dee!” Joe slurred.

  “Right, two men, do you have descriptions or a car registration, what do you have?”

  “I ran in before I saw their car, but I know what they look like.”

  “Dee kidnapped!”

  “Maybe we should give him something calming, I know Dee has her cupboards full of things.”

  “Let’s not drug him into a stupor yet,” Maquire cautioned, “we need him conscious to help.”

  “He’s not conscious now,” Nazir observed.

  “Yes, aright. Okay, tell me the details, I can get people started on this.”

  “Two men. One tall, thin, with ginger hair. Pale skin wearing a suit. The other was like a human gorilla, a bear of a man, with a beard to match. Also in a suit.”

  Maquire paused, his pen halted on the page. It couldn’t be. “A bear of a man with a ginger rake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Worn suits, as if someone desperately needed style upgrade?”

  “Yes!”

  “Was there the faint smell of strong male deodorant in the house?”

  “Still is.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “What is it?” Nazir asked, seeing the look on Maquire’s face.

  “I think I know who it is.”

  “Who?”

  “I think it’s two people I work with.”

  “Police?”

  “Right,” and Maquire stood. “Before I ring this in I have an address to visit. You all stay…”

  “We’re not staying,” and Nazir seemed stridently resistant. “We have to do all we can to get her back.”

  “Alright, but if you come there must be absolutely, positively no stabbing of anyone.”

  “That wasn’t…”

  “We agree.”

  They did, so they came out of their house. Maquire hopped in his car, and everyone else hopped in Nazir’s and he followed closely behind.

  The woman now finished the eye and kept chewing, so Dee kept up a nervous conversation.

  “This is like that reality show where they put people who are barely celebrities in a jungle and feed them kangaroo anus, only with more nutcases.”

  “But I am so much more classy” the collector said after swallowing the last of the eyeball.

  “They’ve never killed anyone!”

  “I haven’t killed anyone!” and she sounded hurt. “You and your detectives cannot point to one person who I’ve killed. I am neat and precise and no one has any memory of me removing the eyes.”

  “Hang on, you remove them when they’re awake?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “So tell me, tell me Miss Police Associate, who I’ve killed.”

  “I can’t believe I am having this conversation.”

  “I’ll take that as a surrender.”

  “Fair enough. But aren’t you killing me for knowing who you are?”

  “No my dear, I’m not killing you. I’m just after your oh so beautiful eyes, I could just disappear in them.”

  Oh shit, Dee realised, I’m next. I’m actually next. She’s going to cut my eyes out and leave me drugged up in a field somewhere. And I like my eyes, I like them very much, in fact I’m really rather be killed than live knowing I can’t see anymore. But it doesn’t do to start a plea bargain like that.

  “I suppose all your other victims begged?”

  “They tend to do that.”

  “I won’t bother then. I suppose they offered you money and sex and whatever else they could offer?”

  “Yes. Some very tempting offers, but I turned them all down.”

  “Saves me offering anything then. Let’s be honest, is there any way out of this for me?”

  “No, none at all.”

  Dee pondered. Joe would realise she was missing, at some point, so in theory people were looking. So if she could stall long enough maybe they’d show up.

  “Don’t you have a grand scheme to tell me about?”

  “I’m not a Bond Villain! More’s the pity.”

  “So why eyes. Why do you eat eyes?”

  “Because they’re wonderful for the body and soul.”

  “How?”

  “You must be a scientist, a poet would understand.”

  “Not even Lord fucking Byron ate eyeballs. So why not sheep’s eyes or something?”

  “Why would you settle for less when you can have the absolute best!”

  “It did me alright with boyfriends.”

  “I thought you were unmarried, there’s no ring on your finger.”

  “Oh, right, even here as I’m about to be mutilated someone finds time to moan about my nuptial status. I’ll have you know there is nothing wrong with protracted periods alone. Hang on, does this mean you’re married?”

  “I’m a widower.”

  “Let me guess, you ate his eyeballs and he killed himself.”

  “He fell off the roof repairing some shingle.”

  “And then you went mental.”

  “I am not insane!”

  “Let’s just look at the evidence on the wall behind you.”

  “Humph. I shall return and dea
l with you shortly.”

  Soon after the door slammed in anger, leaving Dee alone. The other victims were missing for forty eight hours. Which doesn’t give me long to find a way out of here.

  Stride was sat in Bear’s armchair, with the machine on the desk in front of him. It was a metal oblong the size of a toolbox, with unlabelled buttons on the top. None had been pressed yet, and Bear had gone into the kitchen to make a victory sandwich while Stride took a look and worked out what had to be done.

  So far, all he’d been able to conclude was that the manufacturer should be reprimanded for not putting any guidance on it whatsoever. How were you supposed to tell what it did? Did you have to be psychic to use it? Because if you were psychic you wouldn’t need a machine to talk to the bloody dead would you.

  Oh what the hell, let’s try something. A switch was flicked and Stride sat there waiting.

  And waiting.

  “Is there a ghosty in the house?” he tried. But nothing, which might mean the machine wasn’t on properly, or might mean there were no ghosts, or any number of options. Fucking balls, how frequent were ghosts anyway? Did you find a lot of them? Were they in every house as people had been busy dying for a long time, or did you have to seek them out?

  “Any luck?” Bear called out.

  “No, do you know anywhere definitely haunted where we could test it?”

  “I can find a list of every murder carried out in the last forty years.”

  “Very funny. Hey, have you got the back door open there’s a hell of a draft…” and Stride turned to check the front door was closed. Which it wasn’t, and standing between it and him was a very angry looking Maquire, and three civilians behind.

  Stride stood as Maquire came close up. “So you’ve come to find your secret weapon,” Stride sneered, not afraid of the balled fist Maquire now stood with.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t find out? Mr Successful, Mr. Up The Rankings, and all this time you’ve been cheating.”

  “It’s not cheating!”

  “Well it’s not official,” Bear said as he bought his ever intimidating bulk in, “and at a minimum we can have you done for sharing the case details with those punters, and that’s before we start on the box. So here’s what I figure, I figure you give it to us, and we let you have your normal career back.”

  Bear had, however, badly misjudged the situation, and Maquire walked to within an inch of the man and shouted “Do you think I care about the fucking box when you’ve kidnapped my Dee!”

  Nazir titled his head at the use of words, but left the detective to it.

  “What?” Bear said, lost.

  “You kidnap a young woman and expect me to bargain with you?”

  “Kidnap? What are you talking about?”

  Stride was beginning to get worried. “We took the box, we stole the box, that’s it.”

  “We don’t kidnap people!”

  Maquire looked into Bear’s eyes, livid, and had a germ of a realisation. Now he walked over to where Joe was leaning against a wall, and reached a hand up to delicately touch Joe’s cheek.

  “Joe, Dee’s been kidnapped?”

  “Yes…” he slurred.

  “Where was she kidnapped?”

  “The restaurant…”

  “At a restaurant? So not at home?”

  “A woman took her…”

  “A wo…” He paused, his hand fell. His paid colleagues noticed.

  “Why is a woman a problem?” Bear asked, repressing the urge to ask why they were being blamed at seeing Maquire’s face.

  “The person stealing eyeballs is a woman. How many woman kidnappers can there be?”

  “That is a problem,” Stride confirmed.

  “Joe, Joe,” Maquire said, “tell me you have a registration number. Something, anything.”

  “Yes, the ghosts…” and Joe pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was a number. Just a number.

  “That’s not a car registration. What is it?”

  “Sorry… chatroom….”

  “Car, Joe, car,” and another piece of paper was pulled from the pocket. This did have a car’s details.

  “Right, everyone get in a car, and that includes you two traitors. Let’s get her back and get this nailed, then we’ll have our reckoning.”

  Having looked up where the kidnapper’s car was located, the group in their three vehicles drove round and parked at the end of the street. Then everyone gathered for a council of war.

  “How do you want to do this?” Bear asked.

  “I’m not really in a knock on the door then get a warrant mood,” Maquire confessed.

  “I didn’t think you were, so I’ve got a suggestion. Why don’t you have your civilians go to the front door as a distraction, and we’ll go in the back. Real subtle like.”

  “You just want to charge down another door,” Stride noted.

  “It’s that kind of day, a day to do impossible things.”

  Maquire sighed. This was going against everything they were trained in, but he also knew he had to get Dee out of that building before she lost her eyes. “Fuck it, let’s do that.”

  Nazir and Pohl went to the front, leaving Joe sat in the car, where they rang the doorbell and waited. And waited. Meanwhile the detectives crept round the back, examined the wooden doorway, and barged it open. They found themselves in a small, immaculately kept kitchen, with a cup of something brown undrunk on a table.

  “They’re in,” Stride mouthed, as he walked over to open the closed kitchen door.

  As he turned the handle, the door was wrenched open and something hard struck the constable in the head, causing him to go staggering back.

  “Ow fuck!” he cried.

  “You fucking c…” said a female voice, but not the one they were expecting. Bear just raised an eyebrow as Dee, stood in the doorway with a raised chair leg, and Maquire, overcome with relief but wholly surprised, looked at each other.

  “You’re alright,” he forced out.

  “Just. I managed to get free.”

  “We’re in time. Where is she?”

  “The cunt? No idea, I can’t find her anywhere so I can rip her ovaries out through her withered snatch.”

  “Charming friends you keep,” Bear observed.

  “Will one of you fucks help me up?” Stride complained, and they sat him on a chair. “That really fucking hurts.”

  “What now?” Bear asked.

  “You lot have got to come upstairs and see this attic, it’s like something from a nightmare.”

  “Right, let’s go check this out, and we’ll let your friends in on the way.”

  “I am staying here until I can see straight,” Stride confirmed.

  The enlarged group walked up the stairs, ready to strike if the target presented itself, and Dee gave them a whirlwind tour of the attic, including the eyeballs, the drugs, the ties, the instruments and everything else, until everyone had seen more than they needed.

  “And you said she ate them?” Bear asked, looking queasy.

  “Yes, in front of me. I’ll never eat a pickled egg again.”

  “Did she say why?” Pohl asked.

  “She tried, but it was all faff and bullshit.”

  “Sounds like a department meeting,” Bear grinned at Maquire.

  “I don’t see why you’re happy.”

  “We just solved the most pressing case in the unit. I assume you won’t be cutting us out of anything.” He got a glare back for his troubles.

  Downstairs, Stride put a hand on the table to steady himself, and weighed up whether this headache was worse than the one his ex-wife had caused when she’d hit him with an actual plate. Who knew the bitch could throw.

  What he didn’t notice was one of the lower cupboard doors opening, a door that had been especially designed and handcrafted by the tenant to fold out in such a way that a stocky woman could fold herself out, from being perfectly hidden, and find herself sto
od behind Stride. In one hand she now held a syringe, and on the other her fingers twitched.

  Back upstairs Maquire had taken his phone out and was mentally composing in his head what he was going to say when he radioed it in. However, he had to pause at the sound of a car squealing away outside. Unable to see down, Bear dashed into a bedroom and looked out.

  “Anything?” Maquire called down.

  “Didn’t see the car, but it gets my hackles up, something speeding away from here. Let’s go down and see if her car’s still there.”

  But it wasn’t, there was just a gap. “Fuck,” Bear said as he realised, “she was still in the house.”

  “Have you seen Stride?” Pohl asked, looking back down the corridor to the kitchen.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your colleague. He was down here, now he’s…not…”

  Maquire suddenly felt a pain in his skull. “Someone tell me that’s not happening.”

  Nazir went into the kitchen, found the cup of brown stuff empty, and mused that at least this group of police were making as many mistakes as his group did while rushing around. Then Maquire’s phone rang.

  “Hello Detective Constable. This isn’t your colleague, but I’m on his phone.”

  “I’d grasped that. I insist you release him immediately.”

  “Not a good idea at the speed I’m doing. But here’s what we can arrange. We meet, and you give me all my eyeballs back, and I give you your detective back. How does that sound?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly. I’ll kill him, don’t think I won’t.”

  “You’ve never killed before.”

  “You forced me into a corner. A tight corner.”

  Maquire saw Bear looking at him, and mouthed ‘call everyone.’

  “Do you think he’s alive?” Bear asked.

  “I’m certain he’s alive,” Maquire replied with a notable lack of conviction.

  The pair were sat in Maquire’s car on a motorway layby. The little stretch of tarmac was completely shielded from the main road, and they were the only people there, having politely but firmly asked a sleeping rep to move on. They were in the front, Maquire in the driving seat and Bear filling the passenger side, and strapped into the back seat was a large plastic box filled with jars, which were in turn filled with eyeballs.