V. Child
“You did it. We know you did it. If you want to make things easier for yourself, you'll tell us everything that happened."
That was how things began for Scott Bremman at the Norwalk Police Department—with accusations. You're guilty and we know it.
Except it wasn't a matter of we. Just one officer came into the small white room where Scott had been told to wait--a tall, lean, fifty-ish man with dark hair and an unkempt mustache. His uniform hung on his bones. Eyes that looked bored and bitter stared through plumes of coffee breath. He looked at Scott, a cold-blooded murderer, without the slightest trace of shock or disgust. Though Norwalk was a small town that rarely dealt with homicides, it was clear this man was a veteran of the force. Surprises, for him, were things of the past.
"I'm officer Battles," he said, with weary contempt. "You're going to talk to me tonight. You're going to tell me everything that happened. Understand?"
Thinking back on this meeting from his holding cell, Scott guessed he looked to officer Battles exactly like what he was: a terrified animal caught in an unforgiving trap. He'd been shaking. His eyes had been wide. He'd blurted out some gibberish in a squeaky voice about doing a favor for a friend while somehow maintaining just enough composure not to mention Ingrid by name.
Officer Battles never believed a word of it. His head shook back and forth while hitching one deep, exasperated sigh after the next.
"Don't make this difficult, Mr. Bremman, there's no need. You're a killer. A murderer."
"No! I went inside to get some things for a friend!"
"You broke inside," Battles corrected. "You attacked a man named Timothy Semeska. You cut off his head and then his arms and legs."
"I didn't!"
"You cut off his arms and legs first?"
"No!”
"How did you go about it then? The parlor window was smashed. You broke that after you found the doors locked. Was Mr. Semeska in the parlor at the time?"
"I don't know."
"So you did get in through the parlor window."
This last was declared the way a bored man might declare the discovery of a missing puzzle piece.
Scott, in a frustrated panic, had tried to backtrack, with disastrous results. "He wasn't in the parlor!"
"Where was he then?"
"He was already dead when we found him!"
Battles' eyes widened a little. He finally looked surprised—a little. "We? Who's we, Mr. Bremman? Who was with you?"
"No one."
"You said we. Was it the friend you were talking about?"
"I was alone," Scott had replied, knowing how ridiculous it sounded.
But Battles had taken the bait--if only to lay a new trap of his own. "So you were alone when you killed Mr. Semeska," he stated, in that same bored tone.
"Yes. I mean I was alone, but--"
And that was when Battles stood up. "Okay then," he said.
"Wait a second!"
But Battles wasn't waiting--he'd gotten what he wanted. "You wait. Right here. You'll be escorted to a holding cell."
That holding cell was where he now sat, with one other inmate, a young African-American male who idled on the opposite bunk. The cell itself looked like all the ones Scott had seen in the movies: a stained concrete floor with a drain in the center, concrete walls scribbled with casual, sometimes strange, graffiti. Scott found himself reading over this graffiti in the hope it would take his mind off his predicament, at least for awhile. Most of it had to do with sex. But amidst the crudely drawn penises and vaginas, betwixt the misspelled pronouncements of love in the name of coitus, there were more interesting dashings. Some seemed to serve as messages to other prisoners. The well in Peru, one line read, 12am. Dino I will be at the playground on Foxx Street, read another. Other lines were more cryptic still. I saw Mary's bones, an inmate had written, a long time ago, as the words were faded to near invisibility. You can't run forever, Mikey, someone else had promised. Here comes the tide. I drank poison under a red moon.
"So what did they throw you in here for?" the African-American suddenly asked.
Scott looked at him. He appeared to be in his middle thirties, a little over six feet tall. A patch of short, black hair covered his scalp. His eyes, despite the hour, did not look tired, nor fearful of the surroundings. They studied Scott with gentle, sober amusement. A tiny smile curled the corners of his lips. He lay on the bunk with the posture of a man having a cigarette on the beach, though nothing of the sort smoldered in his hand. Scott had to wonder if the man was sizing him up and finding the results ridiculous.
"If I told you, you'd think I was crazy," he replied.
The man laughed. "Oh come on. This is Norwalk."
"They think I killed somebody.”
"They think, or they know?"
"They think."
"Well, shit, that'll be good enough for them, I'm afraid. The name's Darren by the way."
"I'm Scott. What are you in for?"
"I'm in for a breezy Saturday night up to Battery Park," Darren confessed, and barked out a laugh. When Scott looked puzzled he went on with the truth. "Naw, man. Actually it was what they call breakin' and enterin'. I had to clean up a mess for a friend and got caught holdin' the mop. So to speak."
Scott's head tilted to the side. The similarity to the circumstances of his own arrest was startling. "That's...sort of how it was for me," he told Darren. "Except in my case the mop was a dead body."
Darren looked commiserative. "Not too cool, Scott. I bet it gave you a hell of a scare."
"Everything that's happened tonight gave me a hell of a scare. I'm still scared."
"Well you'd best find a way to make yourself at least a little bit comfortable. We won't see any more pigs until at least tomorrow morning. Is this dead person of yours right here in town or in the outskirts?"
"In town. West Main Street."
"Whoa shit!" Darren grinned. "The newspapers will be all over that! I bet the Reflector and the Register already have reporters crawling around out there. Shit, there might even be some TV people from Cleveland on their way down."
"I guess."
"You guess." Darren barked out another laugh.
Scott decided then to give the man a more detailed account of what happened. He wasn't certain why. Perhaps he was envious of Darren's good humor in the face of his folly and sought to temper it, or maybe in the telling he felt he could abate his fear somewhat. Whichever, Scott told his tale from an abridged standpoint, leaving out the part about the monster in the basement, as well as Ingrid's name. Darren proved to be a thoughtful listener who was not given to interruptions, so by the time the story was finished, it was barely one-o'clock in the morning.
"It's gonna keep 'em busy," Darren said with a nod. "The press and the pigs." He paused, thinking this through with obvious satisfaction. "You got a lawyer, Scott?"
"No," he admitted. "I've never spoken to a lawyer in my whole life."
"You'll get stuck with someone from the court then. If it goes that far."
"I sure hope it does. It's not like they can send me straight to the electric chair."
"Naw, man, not in Ohio."
"There's no death penalty in Ohio?" Scott asked.
"No electric chair. It's lethal injection."
With that, Darren began to laugh loud and hard, until someone down the hall told him to shut up. He then lay back on the bunk and let out a long sigh, folding his arms on his chest. Scott lay back as well, letting his eyes wander. Strange that just a few hours ago he'd been a simple man working a simple job in the back of a grocery store. Now, this: a Huron County jail cell, given to him for the night under the accusation of, unreal as it seemed, murder. Scott told himself that there had to be claw marks on the body made by whatever the creature was that had done the actual slaying. Teeth marks. Hair. The police would find these things. He would be cleared of blame--apologized to, even. Officer Battles would clap him on the back, looking shame-faced and somehow defiant at the same time
It was a bear, he would say. It doesn't happen very often, Mr. Bremman, and thank God for that, but a bear strayed off from its natural habitat. Got itself lost. It probably came all the way over from the Rockies. Anyway, we're very sorry about everything you had to endure.
His thoughts began to spin as he slid closer to unconsciousness, to become more plausible and sane. There had to be a logical explanation for everything that happened; there just had to be. A little detective work would reveal the truth.
He didn't know what time it was when he awoke; there was no window in the cell, and the police had confiscated his wristwatch. But Darren's bunk on the opposite wall was empty. Scott sat up and stretched. His neck was sore. His spine ached. His belly growled for food.
A clock across the hall pronounced the time to be seven-thirty. At eight o'clock he was given a meager breakfast: an egg, a cold slice of ham, dry toast, a fruit drink. Scott wondered as he ate what was going to happen to him next. He supposed that, whatever it was, it would need to happen before nightfall. If the police intended to keep holding him they were going to need to charge him with something.
At eight-thirty an officer came by to retrieve the breakfast tray. He did not so much as glance at Scott. At twelve noon another tray was brought: Lunch. By now Scott had ample time to plan out how he would conduct himself when officer Battles--or whoever--called upon him for further questioning. He would use the simple truth as his primary weapon. Or rather, he would use the animal he and Ingrid had seen. Evidence of its existence at the crime scene must be common knowledge with the department by now. His own testimony would corroborate its findings, point its investigation in a new direction.
At three p.m. a fire alarm in the hall went off.
Scott watched as two officers trotted by the cell. One of them asked if there was something burning. The other growled that if it was popcorn in the microwave again, heads were going to roll. The alarm brayed on. Scott sat down and covered his ears. Another officer trotted past. Voices were beginning to swell at the end of the hall. Scott tried to smell smoke and came up empty.
He walked back to the bars and peered out. There were no visual signs of smoke either--no haze around the light-bulbs, no dark plumes eddying out the vents. In fact the air in the hallway looked and smelled cleaner than it had prior to the alarm. There was a definite breeze about the premises. Papers fluttered. A pencil rolled off a desk.
The alarm stopped.
It should have been a good thing--Scott's eardrums had started to pulse with the sound, and his head had begun to hurt. Only now, he could hear screams coming from the other end of the station. Some of them sounded angry—orders were being shouted. Others sounded outright terrified.
Scott's blood turned cold. He craned his head in effort to see further down the hall. What could be happening down there that caused professional police officers to lose their composure? He could see a T intersection that looked deserted. He could hear what sounded like furniture being thrown around a room--and, faintly amidst the screams and shouts, a soft and steady moan.
Woooooooooooooo...
A loud crash made him jump. Footsteps scrambled. A female voice on the other side of the wall begged for someone to get it away! Get it away!
Scott's blood ran colder. The entire station seemed to be under some kind of attack. Had the beast he and Ingrid saw last night returned? Was it even now roaming the halls, seeking out the prey that had escaped it earlier?
He backed away from the bars. His hair began to lift in the strange breeze that was blowing. It was getting stronger. Smells of spring rain and budding trees permeated the cell. Also getting stronger was the moan. It was bass, but Scott thought it sounded almost female--the moan of a mother singing a dirge for her dead child.
...WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...
A shelf tipped over in the adjacent room--books spilled over the floor, glass shattered. A door flew open and crashed against the wall.
An instant later, the power went out. Everything went black.
The screams kept coming. Scott cowered as far back as the cell would allow, pressing his palms against the cold masonry. From somewhere an emergency generator kicked on. A pallid glow illuminated the hallway--
This was only just sufficient enough. The area now rife with shadows, Scott thought he could see things passing by his cell. Some of them were real--forms and documents swirled everywhere like giant moths. Others were impossible to believe, such as the woman in black who glided past, fully two heads taller than Scott, her mouth pursed with the bulbous, bloody lips of a witch. Or the blue dog that trotted up to the cell and stuck its snout between the bars, its red-stained eyes shimmering in the gloom. Something that looked like a human head floated by, though its face was hidden by a heavy, blowing curtain of black hair.
At some point during this lunatic parade the screams came to a stop. In itself this was bad enough; it gave Scott the idea that someone or something had silenced them. Worse, the moaning kept on. Its music no longer challenged from an opposing orchestra, it began to echo throughout the entire station, until it seemed like its shrouded, soughing song of death was coming out the very walls themselves.
Scott looked at the other bunk and saw Darren sitting on it, smiling through the shadows. He opened his mouth to call out his name, and Darren disappeared.
Something at the bars spoke his name. Its voice was the same as that of the moaner--female and dark, but with a tinge of demand to it now.
"Scott! Scott! Scoooooooooooot!"
The woman in black was standing before him. Her hands, boney and greenish, were clutching the bars, as if preparing to pull them apart. A hood covered her face, but Scott could still see her lips, gleaming arterial red in the sallow light.
Floating next to this improbable creature were two of the disembodied heads. Each carried a mane of long black hair that danced over dark, cavernous eye-sockets. Beneath these sockets were mouths, hanging agape, that whispered so quickly it was near impossible to comprehend their words.
The cell door rattled five times: BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!
And then slid open.
Scott gasped as the black specteress glid into the cage. Both the speaking heads followed, yet maintained what looked like a respectful degree of counsel for their mistress. They came to a complete stop as said mistress raised her arms towards Scott, as if to seize him by the neck. Sensing this was indeed to be some sort of attack, Scott slid into a crouching position against the wall.
The specteress did not reach for him. It was not malice her boney hands intended, but exposition. She grasped hold of her hood and pulled it back.
The scene inside was not at all comforting. Quite the reverse. Scott shrank down even lower, looking up in near supplication at the specteress’ baleful red eyes--red eyes that were looming closer and closer. Strands of her dry black hair slithered over his face like snakes.
"Scott!" the bulbous lips moaned again. "Stand up! Right now!"
Her hands seized him beneath the arms; they were the hands of a skeleton. They lifted. Scott had no choice but to rise.
"Come with me!" the specteress demanded, hissing the words into his ear.
On wobbling legs, Scott walked with her out of the cell. He was led left down the hall, away from the T intersection. The breeze grew stronger. In the visitor's foyer Scott began to shiver with cold as well as fear. Notes tacked onto a bulletin board flapped on their pins. A coffee mug of used pencils was tipped over on the traffic violations counter. Another head of long hair passed by, this one rolling on the floor as if chopped with an ax. It disappeared around the corner of a door marked with red letters.
The source of the wind itself was no longer difficult to ascertain: The doors to the station were wide open, and it was storming a gale force beyond. Scott could see trees bending and stoplights swaying. Nevertheless, his ghostly companion seemed intent on crossing this maelstrom. She led him to it without speaking, the cold, claw-like fingers entwined through his own bearing down for a moment, warning him not to resist.
A tree had fallen across the parking lot. Two patrol cars were smashed underneath it. Leaves danced in the sky. Horns blared on Whittlesey Avenue.
"Oh I hope we didn't cause an accident," the specteress worried.
Bemused, Scott looked at her.
He didn't need to look far as he had in the station. They were crossing the lot, working their way around the fallen tree, and with each step he noticed that the specteress appeared to be shrinking. A gray mist had begun to churn around her robes. Also, the wind was weakening. Foliage came down in a green rain.
A third thing Scott noticed, as they came to the other side of the tree, was that the disembodied heads had gone. The woman walking next to him was now shorter than he, and her robes had been replaced with common clothing. Her hair was still long and black, but no longer blowing in a dreadful, dead curtain. Indeed, it rested quite naturally on her shoulders. Part of this was due to the wind dying off; another part was due to the beads that decorated its locks.
"See my car?" Lisa Felton said to him, pointing across the street.