Sketched Read online

  Where had Kingston Entler gone?

  The last time she remembered seeing him in the paper was at his father’s funeral, his face barely visible behind the flower arrangements and hulking bodies of the city’s elite.

  She’d always had a crush on him. He’d been so mysterious, so rich, like the sickly prince in some Victorian melodrama. Dixon girls used to whisper about him as much as any other flavor of the week pop star. Then one day, he was gone. Could people that rich do that? Just disappear? Was it a secret power of invisibility that only enough money could bring?

  There was uneasiness growing in her that was starting to overpower her general irritability.

  “I’m going around the back,” she announced, taking her own flashlight from her pocket.

  “Right behind you.” Hallman shadowed her, practically leaning over her as they walked down the steps and toward the path that led to the side of the house.

  Strewn with rotting vegetation, the path led them along the side of the mansion. The temperature dropped in the shadow of the house, the smell of wet stone joining the overwhelming scent of feral nature around them.

  Hallman kicked a pile of squishy blooms to the side, the browning pink blossoms sticking to the side of his boots.

  “Wasn’t she head of the Dixon Gardening society or something?”

  “You mean, isn’t she? She’s not dead as far as we know, try to keep it in your pants.”

  Hallman began to splutter out his idea of a witty retort but Wright stopped him. They had reached the backyard, their twin circles of light sweeping across the broad property as they searched for, what exactly?

  Still not looking at him, Wright surveyed the back of the Entler Home. There was a wide stone patio that jutted from the back entrance, extending out into the remains of Brynn’s gardens and greenhouses. The entrance was just as elaborate as the front and from the looks of it, locked up just as tight.

  “Tell you what,” she said, her skin crawling where she could practically feel the hapless man’s interest in her. “You check out the back door and I’ll do a quick once over in the back. If no one answers let’s call it in and call it a night.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I’ll second that motion for sure. Maybe we can hit up the Dixon Legion on the way back?”

  Officer Wright turned, shining her flashlight into his face. He squished up his features, a stupid smile still on his face even though she was practically blinding him.

  “Just go check the door, Officer. Try the windows too and any other entrances that might be around the base. Places this size can be pretty complicated.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Wright stepped off the path and into the grass. The lawn and gardens stretched backwards for what must have been about a half an acre. A wall, built from the same imported stone as the rest of the house, separated the property from the other houses that neighbored it. What remained of them at least. They had long ago been shut up, auctioned off or burned to the ground for insurance money when the neighborhood began to fall. In fact, Wright remembered hearing that the Entler mansion was the only place on the street that was still occupied. She and her son were like castaways on some marble island.

  She carried on deeper into the property, happy to hear the sound of Hallman’s knocking receding behind her. The overgrown grass was soaking up through her pant legs and she was beginning to feel the rain soaking through her hat. She could make this quick. End this little joke and be home in time to pay the babysitter and tuck her kids into bed.

  Still scanning the property with her flashlight, she passed the green houses and was approaching the stone fence. It was taller than her, but most things were. Ivy had taken a hold from the empty lot behind it and was pouring over the top. The leaves shuddered as the wind picked up, their dark green color black in the darkness.

  Officer Wright’s hand suddenly clapped to her mouth. She stopped in her tracks, the circle spotlight still shining where the ivy was crawling into the yard. She fought the urge to gag but lost, her stomach rebelling against the smell that seemed to be pouring over the top of the wall along with the vines.

  “Hallman!” she shouted, removing her hand from her nose and mouth only out of necessity. She knew that smell. Before she had become a police officer, she had always associated it with the smell of her local butcher’s. Not the cleanest of establishments, it had had an almost overwhelming fleshy tang that tackled customers when they first walked in and seemed to cling to their clothing for a while after they left. When she had found her first body, a badly decayed homeless man in one of the many empty factories downtown, she had made the horrible connection. Human meat or animal meat, it all smelled the same when it started to turn. She’d been a vegetarian ever since.

  She called for Hallman again, her pulse speeding up with every whiff. He answered, his flashlight bouncing across the lawn as he loped toward her. As soon as he was next to her, his flashlight dropped into the grass as the smell assaulted him. Embarrassed at his coughing, he scrambled to pick it up again. Officer Wright waited for his gagging to stop before she spoke.

  “I need you to take a look on the other side of the wall,” she said, quietly. There was panic in Hallman’s eyes, the wideness of them betraying his youth.

  “What is that? What is that smell?”

  “I would look myself, Dave. I would. I’m just, I can’t reach.”

  “What’s that smell, Amy?”

  Officer Wright shone her light on the gap where the Ivy looked to have been crumpled recently. It was the only portion not shimmering under the raindrops.

  “I’ll keep my light on it, just go take a look.” Before she could stop herself, she heard a tenderness in her voice she reserved for her children. “And then we’ll get out of here. We’ll call it and take off. Promise.”

  Hallman, his hand still over his mouth, took the few steps to the wall. He barely had to bend forward to look on the other side, his flashlight hoisted high for a better look. Officer Wright held her breath.

  When Hallman looked back, his smooth face looked relieved, although still disgusted by the smell.

  “It’s just garbage bags. Maybe the old lady’s getting lazy and just chucking her garbage over the fence. Here, take a look.” Hallman leaned over the wall and Wright watched his one leg leave the ground as he grunted with the effort of picking up a bag. “There’s a few back here. Some animals have been at them, probably one of those wild dog gangs we’re dealing with. Here…”

  He made a grunting noise and with a swoop, pulled the bag up and over the wall. It made it half way before the weight caused the jagged holes in the wet plastic to rip open fully. She watched as what looked like a sea of glistening flesh and organs poured from the bag like a broken piñata. In a pink and beige arc, the gore splattered down onto the grass and onto Hallman’s uniform.

  Her light shining down onto the quivering, reeking mass coating the grass, Wright barely registered his horrified screams. She stepped forward, the rain dripping from the rim of her cap and obscuring her vision.

  Torsos. Human torsos. Hair matted with rot against the scalp of not one, not two, but three human heads.

  Her hand was numb when she fumbled for her radio. Maybe she’d have to take the kid up on his offer of a drink after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  * * *

  Entler’s Department Store - Dixon City

  The pain in Piper’s wrist thudded in time with her heartbeat. The muscles aching under the weight of the flashlight in her hand, she forced herself to ignore it as the two of them acclimatized to the cavernous room.

  It had taken Piper and Harrison a few minutes to pry the already much-abused panels back from the front door in order to gain entrance. It must have been at least ten minutes. Silent and determined, growing colder and wetter by the moment, they had finally managed to wrench the warped wood away, exposing the broken remains of what was once a magnificent glass revolving door.

  They had stepped through the warped brass
and over the beach of shattered glass, their flashlights the only light source of light. They seemed to create more darkness rather than extinguishing it. Piper shivered involuntary, running her beam of light up to the grand staircase that was the focal point of the main hall. It was an art nouveau masterpiece of swirls and bas relief sculptures, sylphs and brass goddesses seeming to peer out of her from every corner her flashlight hit. In its day, it must have been magnificent.

  “I’ve never been in here,” she said, surprised by the volume of her voice in the quiet.

  Harrison, his flashlight illuminating his face subtly from beneath, looked at her with surprise.

  “Not once?”

  Piper shook her head.

  “Wrong side of the tracks, remember?” she said, by way of explanation. “I think my mother thought you'd have to pay admission.”

  Harrison scoffed and moved forward. He shone his light systematically, taking in where vandals and teenagers had covered the statues by the staircases with spray painted obscenities. Like Piper, he ran the light up and down the stairs to make out their next course of action.

  There was a bank of elevators nestled at the base of the stairs, all six of them emblazoned with furious red paint that dripped down the carved doors like blood. There were swastikas, gang signs and anarchy symbols but ‘Fuck Entler’ was the most legible of all, glowing like neon as the flashlight beam hit it.

  Piper stayed close to Harrison, following him across the floor.

  “Not even at Christmas?” Harrison asked. Standing at the foot of the stairs, he shone his light up to where a ragged Happy Holidays banner hung like a criminal in some archaic town square. From the looks of it, Piper estimated it was more than a few decades old. She shivered again. She could feel Harrison watching her, sizing her up.

  “Not even at Christmas. Especially not then. The only Santa we visited worked outside the Liquor Barn.”

  Harrison looked up at the banner, shining his light up to the high ceilings where embossed brass plates reflected it back down.

  “Brynn Entler waited a whole month after Royal died before she shut everything down,” Harrison said quietly, as if to himself. “One week’s severance for those that stuck around but no packages. Nothing.” Harrison shrugged and began to walk past the stairs toward the elevator. Piper followed in his tracks, stepping over holes where some of the wood had rotted and collapsed in on itself. “Well, not for anyone who wasn’t on the board. The CEOs were taken care of. But twenty-six thousand employees, that's almost half the damn town. She let them know a month before Christmas. Anyone who decided to leave early left with nothing.”

  They passed under the banner, halfway to the main landing. He looked back at her and smiled, the shadows under his eyes making him look more tired than she’d ever seen.

  “And Laura always wondered why I didn’t want to take part in any of that Dixon society bullshit she loved so much. I had trouble even being in the room with that woman.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  They had reached the elevators. The marble floors around them were cracked and pockmarked with long extinguished fires built from salvaged furniture and garbage. Harrison made his way to the middle elevator.

  “I doubt it, but you never know,” he said, pressing the button. “I don’t think there’s been electricity in this place in years.” There was a sticky sounding click but nothing. No whirring, no lights, simply silence. Harrison looked at her again, one eyebrow cocked. “What next? Any idea?”

  “If you’re waiting for my head to rotate and for me to start vomiting pea soup, you might have to give me a bit,” Piper said wryly.

  “You’re not picking up anything?”

  Piper shook her head.

  “Not yet. We need to get moving, maybe something will show up the deeper we go.”

  “This building is the biggest in Dixon.” She could tell he was getting impatient. His brows drawn together, he shone his light down the two tunnel sized halls that extended out from under the stairwells. “We don’t have time to wait around for your thumbs to start pricking.”

  Piper felt suddenly very foolish. She could feel the size of the store around her, immeasurable darkness stretching in all directions. What if all this really was in her head? What if the two of them really were no more than a couple of emotionally unbalanced substance abusers on some kind of dangerous vigilante kick?

  Harrison was watching her again and she felt her temper flare. Her wrist ached as she gripped her flashlight tighter.

  “Right then, fine, choose a direction I guess.” She tried to keep the peevishness out of her voice.

  “If I remember correctly, there’s another bank of elevators to the right somewhere. And stairs leading to the other floors.” His flashlight beam cut a bluish path into the dark, illuminating the motes of dust that swarmed upward excitedly.

  Before he could say anything else, Piper started off without him. She knew she was right. She had to be. It had been terrifying how quickly she had fallen into a trance back at Harrison’s house. It had never happened that way to her before. It was obvious that whatever was in here, whoever was in here needed her help.

  *******

  Confidence was a fragile thing and by the time the two of them had looped back onto the main elevator dock a third time, Piper’s was almost completely crushed. In the oppressive darkness, throughout what seemed like a labyrinth of stale, empty rooms she had heard and seen nothing. The only noise was their breathing, the only light their matching flashlight streams like bobbing antenna before them. Time was running out, she knew that. Every time they ended up back either at the base or the top of the grand staircase, Piper’s heart felt like it was going to shatter with frustration. It was as if the building were playing games with them, altering its structure around them like a serpent tangling and squeezing the hope out of them. One more corner and they’d find the stairs, she’d told herself. The elevators must be through here. They weren’t.

  A mixture of humiliation and impatience made it impossible to even look at Harrison. She’d dragged him here. She’d driven all the way from her home, abandoned Adam with no warning and caused her old friend to put his job on the line, for what? A hunch? A nightmare?

  “This isn’t…Piper, this isn’t working.” She could hear Harrison working to hold back the annoyance in his voice. He wasn’t doing a very good job. “This is the third time we’ve gone in circles. Let’s hit the ground floor again and see if we can find the other elevators.”

  Fighting an overpowering urge to apologize, Piper simply nodded. She was starting to consider asking Harrison to shoot her in the head again just to see if it might kick start something.

  Now on the bottom floor, they turned left through a massive arc decorated with two oriental dragons. They looked down at Harrison and Piper as they passed beneath, streams of water from a leak above pouring down their snouts and out of their mouths.

  The second ground floor hall was even more immense than the entranceway. Piper shone her light up on the ceiling, hoping to get her bearings but the light simply disappeared into the dark. She felt herself grow dizzy. She turned her light back to Harrison, trying to steady her confused senses. He plunged forward, his shoulders high with frustration.

  She quickly lost track of the rooms, each seemingly larger than the other. The deeper they went, the more she was beginning to feel the skin on her neck and chest start to prickle with panic. When she tried to look backward to determine where they’d come from, all she saw was more darkness, right at her heels like a hungry dog.

  Even though she could determine nothing but empty space around her, a claustrophobic panic was starting to form in her chest that was making it harder and harder for her to breathe. She needed to keep it together. As it was, Harrison had stopped talking to her five minutes ago. Was it five? It could’ve been longer. Her concept of time was starting to warp and flicker as much as her flashlight.

  When her beam suddenly flicked off and on, Har
rison finally stopped and turned to her. His face was blank, beads of sweat like jewels on his forehead.

  “I checked the batteries before we left, remember?” Piper said nervously. Harrison focused his beam on her flashlight as she patted it against her palm, causing the beam to flicker again.

  “We should turn around. Go back. This isn’t working.” His voice was painfully quiet. Piper was shocked when he raised his hand to wipe the sweat off his face. The slight tremble she had seen before they entered had progressed. His hands fluttered like moths in the light. He ran his hands over his upper lip as well, collecting the heavy layer of sweat that had appeared despite the pervasive cold. He was sick. Sicker than Piper had realized.

  Harrison was right. They needed to turn around and find their way out of here before she ended up having to carry him. Her flashlight beam strong again, Piper turned around to point it in the other direction. Not surprisingly, it shot out in a straight line only to be absorbed by the dark. There was nothing for it to bounce off, nothing for it to drag out of the shadows.