Mercenaries’ Tale – 5.01 When Strangers Come to Visit
Tales of Sin, The Mercenaries’ Tale: Act Five
Journey Home
“Bullshit. I’m calling bullshit…although now you mention it, I do remember calling bullshit. Did I call bullshit? When did I call bullshit?”
Sheriff Grady chewed the end of his cigar thoughtfully while he waited for his young deputy to finish vomiting in the next room. He tutted as he realised there was blood on his new crocodile-skin shoes.
There was a lot of blood. The room was drenched in it. He reckoned that, in his own limited knowledge of spreading viscous liquids, he would only be able to replicate the thorough coverage himself with a paintbrush and about five large tins of paint. The murderer probably hadn’t used a paintbrush though, he reasoned. They had creatively dismembered the entire family and hung their entrails around the room like meaty Faustmas decorations. The room stank of the thick, oppressive scent of bodily iron from all the blood overlaid with the sour rank stench of the decay of flesh.
The Sheriff was snapped out of his ruminations and his thousand-yard stare at the living room by his deputy returning from the dining room, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Sorree Sherriff,” gasped Deputy Trundell, “ah ain’t nevah seen so much blood before.”
“I have,” grunted the Sheriff in reply.
“Ya’ll want me to call in for some backup? Ah don’t even know where to start with all this.”
“Well don’t ask me,” said the man carefully tip-toeing down the stairs to avoid contaminating too much of the crime scene and failing because the crime scene was spread all over the staircase, too. He was the district’s only crime scene forensics detective, dressed in a cheap clean suit and dust mask and doing the best job he could armed with a small toolbox of DIY forensic supplies and an old tablet computer. His name badge read ‘Rawley Murtaugh’ and had a little picture of him not wearing a clean suit or mask accompanied with ‘CSDF’ in big capitals, representing ‘Crime Scene Forensic Detective’.
“This, I reckon,” continued Rawley, “will take me a month of Sundays to process. I’ll certainly need to call for help from another district, like fuck am I getting shafted with all this.”
“What’s it look like upstairs?” asked the Sheriff, not giving a damn about the workload of his colleague. The forensic detective shrugged.
“More of the same. There’s nobody up there. While there’s signs of entry there’s no obvious signs of an exit; footprints, scuff marks, anything like that.”
“You’ve got some gore on you, son,” remarked the Sheriff. A fat blob of brown ooze had dripped from the wall on to the vinyl of Rawley’s clean suit, running down his shoulder. As the CSFD poked at it with a gloved finger, the deputy suppressed a guttural burp as his stomach did another turn and churned again.
“You have any idea what could have did this?” asked Rawley.
“What did it?” echoed the Deputy, confused. “Not who?”
“I don’t think even your most crazed psychopaths are capable of mincing an entire family and spreading them over an entire house like meat spread and blood jam.”
The Sheriff snipped off the end of his cigar with his cutter and tucked the nub of un-smoked tobacco behind his ear. He gestured for his young subordinate and the CSFD to come to him, pulling the men back into the dining room and leaning in conspiratorially.
“Boys, what do you know about urban legends?” said the old Sheriff, deadly serious as he levelled his eyes at the Deputy and then the forensics guy.
“Ah reckin’ ah know a few!” beamed Trundell.
“What do you know about Johnny Carnivàle?” asked the Sheriff. The Deputy immediately guffawed and slapped his knee.
“Aw shucks, Sherriff, ahm a simple guy but ah ain’t stoopid! Tha’s just a horror story kids tell each other.”
The Deputy was aware that the CSFD was suddenly looking a little bit twitchy.
“Is it?” the science man asked.
“Well…yeah. Right?” replied the Deputy, suddenly unsure himself.
“Unfortunately boys,” said the Sherriff, “ah reckin’ we’re standin’ in his handiwork right now.”
“I’ve heard stories,” said Rawley. “I thought he’d moved to the City of Light and was taking contracts from mob bosses.”
“He did,” said the Sheriff, “but it looks like he’s back.”
“How do you know all this, Sheriff?” asked the Deputy, his whole understanding of urban legends being shattered like the bones decorating the room.
“And what do you mean, ‘back’?” added the CSDF. “I didn’t know he left! I mean, I didn’t know he was here, of all places.”
The Sheriff sighed and scratched his chin.
“Our lil’ town has a dark secret, boys. Ol’ Johnny is as real as you an’ me, and more to the point he grew up here. This is his hometown.”
The deputy had an overwhelming urge in his gut to investigate moving to another town, maybe even another continent. Rawley was pondering something similar regarding relocating his work to a district on another continent, preferably on another planet.
Johnny Carnivàle was the man who stabs you in that dark alley you stupidly decide to take a short-cut down, but instead of taking your wallet he’d be more likely to take your face. Johnny Carnivàle was the reason people go missing and then a few months later you might find a stray shoe on the side of the road or a human liver at the bottom of a well. Johnny Carnivàle was the psychopath other psychopaths tell each other horror stories about. Johnny Carnivàle was that creaking floorboard in the middle of the night and the tiny but alarming noise coming from under your bed.
He was the very definition of an urban legend. The worst part about all was, as the Deputy had just learned, he was apparently very real.
“Fuck this noise,” cursed the CSDF, “I’m going to call this into someone else, let them deal with it. I don’t want to be anywhere near this crime scene.”
As Rawley reached for his toolbag with intentions of bolting for the door, the Sheriff held out his hand to stop him. He was looking around at the walls and at the ceiling above.
“Hold your horses,” he said, “didn’t you say that there weren’t any signs of an exit?”
“Er, yeah,” replied the CSDF dumbly, caught mid-intention of leaving. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Realisation slowly crept in. If Johnny had entered through the front door and hadn’t obviously left via any of the doors, then that heavily implied that he was still inside the house. The Sheriff had latched on to this notion quicker than the other two, who suddenly felt like they weren’t alone.
Backing away from the picture of carnage in the living room, the Sheriff waved for the other two to follow him as he hurried out the front door and down the steps. They hastily followed.
Outside, the Sheriff eyed the house, pacing back and forth with his hands on his hips. The cigar was back in his mouth and he puffed nervously.
“What’s the plan, Sheriff Grady?” asked the Deputy.
“The plan, boys, is I’m gonna get back in my car and go home,” said the Sheriff, matter-of-factly.
“I’m down with that,” agreed the CSDF, “but shouldn’t we do something about this first?” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the house behind him. “I mean, I should really call someone-”
“If I was a hero, boys,” interrupted the Sheriff, “I’d tell one o’ you to go fetch about six or seven cans of gasoline and we’d set fire to this dump and stay until the last few ashes settled. But I’m not a hero, and I’m not gonna risk doing that because otherwise…”
The Sheriff tailed off, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the house. He didn’t want to tell the other two, but he kept expecting to see a tall silhouette standing in the doorway watching them.
“I can see it now,” he continued, “I’d hear somethin’ in the middle of the night and I’d look up an’ at the end of the bed he’s goin’ ta be standin’ there, slightly blackened from the fire an’ holdin’ a knife an’ lookin’ mighty happy to see me. That look in his eyes…”
He shook his head and toked on his cigar, exhaling a big cloud of smoke.
“Nope, what ahm gonna do is check the back of mah car, an’ underneath it, an’ in the boot to make sure that son of a bitch ain’t hitchin’ a ride and then I’m gonna go home and forget I even saw this place.”
The Sheriff began to walk towards his car, parked by the roadside several feet away. He paused and turned to address the other two.
“If the pair of you’ve got any sense, you’re gonna do the same. Otherwise, in about six weeks they’ll find what’s left of you spread over yer lounge just like in there.”
The Sheriff checked over his car as he said he would and, satisfied that it didn’t contain any murderous passengers, heaved himself into the driver’s seat, driving off without another word.
The remaining two watched him drive off, then at each other, at the house and then each other again. Rawley the CSDF broke the silence.
“Er…I think I’ll pop by the hardware shop on my way home…pick up some new locks,” he said, numbed from the events of the last five minutes.
“I’ll prob’bly see you there, pal,” replied the Deputy.
Both parties headed to their respective vehicles. They weren’t running to their cars but the pace of their walking implied a sense of haste, of the desire to be somewhere else right now. They departed the scene, leaving the wooden house alone on the dirt road with no intention of ever coming back.
From between a crack in the wooden boards that comprised the ceiling of the bloodied living room, a frantic eye twitched back and forth, its pupil a pin-prick of darkness surrounded by red blood vessels. It disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling, having seen enough.
Several minutes later, a lone figure emerged from the house and stood on the porch, staring rigidly into the distance. Most people would look around for signs of life, maybe lean against the porch balcony while considering their next move. This figure just stood rigid, head locked forward.
A dirty blue trenchcoat with stained grey trousers that didn’t quite cover the legs of their tall, skinny owner. A pair of shoes designed to be smart office attire dirtied and scuffed by a wearer using them beyond their intended purpose, topped with a pair of socks that didn’t belong together; a grey sock that might have once been brilliant white and a striped sock in red and black. A white shirt masquerading as a grey one to match the one ‘white’ sock with a blue and white striped silk tie. Matted, medium-length black hair with a semblance of a centre parting. A vinyl face mask not dissimilar from a surgeon’s mask, but this one was smeared with patches of colour.
Johnny Carnivàle knew that all three men who were at the crime scene would die.
It wasn’t a decision or a belief that they had to die, Johnny just took these things as unavoidable facts, as concrete as the laws of physics. All three men would definitely die, it was just a case of when. Luckily his schedule was empty for the foreseeable future. The sheriff was old and fat, he wouldn’t be difficult to track down, neither would his simpleton deputy. The science man in the clean suit could possibly be a little bit trickier-
Johnny paused to pounce on a sheaf of paper rustling across the dusty floor caught on the wind, leaping from the top step of the porch and pinning it under both his feet like an excitable toddler or a playful cat. It was a wanted poster, presumably dropped by the sheriff or the deputy in their hasty getaway. Or maybe it had coincidentally drifted on the wind for miles from places unknown. Either way, this was destiny.
Johnny stared unblinkingly at the poster trapped under his feet. From between his shoes a friendly, familiar face grinned back. The face had a scar across its nose.
The man on the poster would die. It had to happen. The difficult part was deciding whether his death took precedent over the other three.
Johnny grabbed the paper from beneath his shoes and stuffed it into his coat pocket. From the other pocket he extracted a kitchen knife stained orange, brown and red with blood. It was still a little bit sticky in places. He looked it over as a cat would a fish in a tank, nodded to himself, and replaced the blade into his coat. From the pocket containing the poster he pulled out a black marker pen. Popping off the lid, he began to draw on to his vinyl face mask. He drew a big contented smile, no teeth on show. It evoked the trembly, wavy smiles that toddlers draw when they try and draw faces; clumsy but carefree.
The pen disappeared back into his coat. Johnny began the long walk down the dusty, empty road, his walk a slightly lopsided gait and his head bobbing enthusiastically. He soon became just a blip on the horizon, the house stood empty and alone once more.
Post by Sam | March 11, 2023 at 12:01 am | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment
Tags: Centrissal, CSDF, Deputy Trundell, Johnny Carnivale, Police, Rawley Murtaugh, Sherrif Grady