(Noire/Supernatural Story) Chapter 2 is up. Case of the Sun Wolf Cult

[Owlant]

The Creevey Agency and the Case of the Sun Wolf Cult

Chapter 1

You won’t hear stories about me or some of the stuff I deal with. You can sit by any campfire in the land and hear endless stories about ghost women trying to hitch lifts, hunters who swear they saw something like foo fire while out in the woods. But no one who seen the real stuff would share it. When you see something you can’t explain, you refuse to, you hoard it, festering away in your mind. Some call it denial, but I think it is just the way we are wired up.

We like naming things; God gave us two legs, two arms and a whole heaping of curiosity and ego. Ego enough to say we can understand everything, we know everything about every single force on this earth. So, when we come across something we can’t name, can’t understand, our mind just skips over it, like a needle on a well-worn record.

I am not fool enough to say I know it all, or that I can name it all. My job isn’t to research or document it my job is to fix the issues people pay me to do. Day to day I am a private investigator. Most of my work is affairs, dead beat partners and divorce papers but once in a blue moon, someone, usually by word of mouth would knock on my door and they all say the same thing. “You gonna think I am crazy or lying but…” And I know to switch out my bullets from copper jacketed to silver.

My first case didn’t start like that, I was still working mostly taking pictures of affairs and branching into the amazing world of serving paternity paperwork on deadbeats. It was awful work, but it kept the lights on, and paid for the two rooms I rented above a shop. One was trussed up nice; no one would hire a man with no desk. The other was where I was living, a bedroll and hot plate were all I had. I had just finished up a case of cheating husband, a few days stalking and a few more taking photos and I had rent paid and even enough to buy food not on clearance.

The wife had just left the office with those glossy photos shoved in her purse. I had put my earnings in the safe and had already loosened my tie when he came in. Payment is subjective in this job. I don’t charge more than people looks like they can afford, usually. But this college aged kid, looked like he couldn’t even afford the bus ticket back to whatever basement he was squatting in.

I was tempted to snark him about how I already bought this year’s guide scout cookies and tell him to go home to mommy and daddy but this was the real world, being stupid like that can cost you jobs and reputation, somethings I had little of. Instead I put on a welcoming smile. “Good evening. How can the Creevey Agency help you today?”

In this line of work, you get your nutters, but they are obvious. They start off nuts and swerve straight into lunacy. The quickest cure is to ask for a deposit and it cures crazy faster than any pill. But this guy laid down five crumpled ten dollar bills he looked like he could ill afford. That bought my interest and out came the notebook. It was another prop, amazing what you can drag out of someone by just scrawling anything on paper. Once you start recording their words in any form, they suddenly become much more verbose. Besides I used it as an excuse to reach into my desk drawer and switch on my tape recorder. Sometimes the way someone say something, revealed more than their words.

I let him ramble on about his missing brother. All I could think was how you going pay me? I voiced it after the fourth time he told me how his brother was never like this. It turns out the whole distressed clothing look was because he had been saving up to pay me because from an equally battered backpack, he shook out money. It was mostly ones and fives still sticky from the bar he worked. I watched him as he scrambled to scoop it from the floor and under my desk in the effortless way fit young men have before you get old and getting up in the morning required stretching and mental preparation if you didn’t want to pull something.

I stared at the pile, my best guess that there was less than five hundred dollars in that pile not enough for a full missing person case unless I get real lucky but watching his wrist watch slide as he tried to stack it up for me, sold me. He had missed meals in hopes to save enough money to find his brother, more than he should and my bills were paid up for the next two weeks. “Okay… You got me, three weeks.” I told him. “Then we can discuss the rest of the payment.”

The word vomit started up again and halted with a hand raised. I had a feeling it was best to stop this before my tape ran out. “Look. It is simple. I am going to ask you a question and you are going to answer succinctly. You are a college boy; you should know what that means.” I set the rules firmly, to his credit he nodded. “Good. Now is there any reason at all you think he would avoid his family? A secret boyfriend? Girlfriend? Drugs? Gambling? Debts?”

Only once he left, I pulled out a fresh sheet and began to write up the file sheet while playing the tape over and over. Despite my misgivings, it wasn’t a liberal arts major heading off to discover themselves or more likely discover how many drugs they can shove in themselves before dying in a tepee in a muddy field.

The brother was going to an alright university on a scholarship. He was a biochemistry major apparently. A down to earth sort of guy working as a tutor even. A real pull yourself up by your bootstraps and hustle guy so when he just vanished, the family panicked. With him being gone with no word, the local cops just rubber stamped it. No body, no suicide note, no ominous message scrawled on the wall in blood. So, it just got shoved in a folder somewhere and ignored. The family was told to just wait, that he would run out of money or drugs and pop back up in hospital or rehab.

The family didn’t. The older brother dropped his life and moved to the city to try to look for his brother. Searching the campus during the day, talking to friends while bar tending the run-down campus bar in the evenings. He had given me a photo of them both from the last time they met up.  A shot of the pair, the older had the younger in a headlock. Them both laughing into the camera. Real cute and wholesome, no doubt a copy was hung up in their family hallway.

That made it difficult, the quiet normal types don’t get noticed. We don’t remember others for who they are, we remember them if they made us feel something. The ones who don’t say boo to a goose, who don’t inspire amusement, fear, lust or anything pass through life forgotten.  We are selfish like that. The young man in the photo, shying away from the camera, with his worn glasses and second-hand clothes looked like he would drift through life unnoticed by his peers except for the occasional bully. It was going to be a challenge to track this guy down.

[Owlant]

The best time to go snooping is early in the morning. Most people you talk to, are either just woken up or wanting to go to bed. A sleepy mind leads to sloppy answers and combine this with my favourite costume; a hi-vis jacket, a clipboard with a few papers on it and a lanyard with blurry ID in it, and people will let you anywhere. No one is going to wake up their manager to check if there is supposed to be an inspection at 4am.

I walked into the dorm’s reception a couple of hours before the night shift RA was heading off. Like a lot of southern men, he was a big one. He was wearing the desk instead of sitting behind it. Max proclaimed the badge on his shirt along with a host of rainbows and different coloured flag stickers stuck all over.

I gave him the room number I had got from the older brother and told him I wanted to inspect it and he looked at me. Not as dumb as I hoped. Enough time in the business and you learn all the speculative looks they give you. I start sizing up how little I could pay to get what I want. He looked like a ten could do it. Ten could get him a whole lotta McDonald’s. I paused waiting for him to say something.

To my surprise he fished out his own keys and pulled off one. “I am off for a coffee break; it will take about half an hour maybe an hour okay?” He placed the key down on the counter. “Dan is a good guy.” He tapped the key like he was choosing his words carefully. “Quiet. Yeah. Smart as all hell. His brother said you might be around.”

So much for sneaking in. I took the key as soon as his back was turned and headed up the stairs. I don’t think my costume would not have worked anyway judging by the cracked steps and the black wet mould spots in the corners of the eaves, I don’t think any inspector had ever came by.

I unlocked the door and repocketed the key. Dan was missing, not dead so his room had been left as is. His parents were footing the bill in hopes he came back. Walking into a dim stale room, I notice that the curtains had been shut and dust motes swirled in the muted light. The door fell shut behind me, trapping me in. It wasn’t a bedroom; it was a mausoleum. His bed, his casket lay empty but, in that moment, I knew he was dead.

I caught a dust laden breath before I flung open the curtains and window to spite the gloom and it seemed to work. The dread or whatever slunk back to the shadows of the partially open closet as dawn light filled the room, the noise of the city, of the living followed. As the traffic burbled below, it took a second or two to shake off whatever came over me.

I sat down on the double bed to figure out what gave me that notion. Intuition was a powerful thing but mine never made such sharp leaps. I looked about the room trying to figure out what made me so sure he was dead. There wasn’t much to the room, no hidden noose in the closet, no posters on the wall saying I heart death and no pentagram in human blood under the bed with a message of ‘I will kill again’.

I look about again, the desk opposite looks like it was fished out a skip and probably deserved to be thrown back in. Same with the chair. The few posters that dotted the walls was pinned up; Dan probably knew the scummy landlord wouldn’t ever hand back over a cent of the safety deposit even if he left it cleaner than he moved in. They were mostly from video games or superheroes by the looks, not that I was an expert.

I take another look under the bed to see a pair of scuffed up tennis shoes and a lost sock, uses best not thought about and a magazine. I snag it only to throw it back. I was violating his grave by sitting here, much less knowing about his love of Miss July. The running away with a secret boyfriend idea was becoming last in possibilities.

The hamper in the corner was half full of jeans and shirts and as I dug through, I searched pockets. Gum wrappers and other debris was dumped in the trash, but the bus tickets were placed carefully to the side.  I would go through them later track his final movements, but I hit true gold in a formal pair of black trousers. Unusual as the rest of the clothing wasn’t near as smart looking. They must have been worn for something or someone important. In one pocket was a crumpled leaflet, I fished it out and tried to straighten it out without tearing it. It had been handled a lot by the looks; the folds were white and creased up.

Even crumpled and creased, it didn’t take away from the image on the front. An embossed silver wolf head was depicted with its mouth open and from its jaws hung a chain with a sun pendant mid swing. The only words were an address, date and service time. I brushed my fingers over the image, getting the strong feeling that this big bad wolf had found Dan and just like the fairy tales, ate him up with nothing left behind.

I returned to the bed and laid back on it. I kept the leaflet in my hand as I tried to adjust what I knew. The brother had insisted repeatedly that Dan had a good head on his shoulders. He told me that Dan wasn’t even religious, in fact proudly atheist after a shouting match when they were kids with a Sunday School teacher when he had asked too many questions about miracles.

So why the leaflet? Why would a loved, smart young man go to such a thing? So willingly? He dressed up smart for them. He wanted to be wanted, accepted. Usually these places prey on the down and out. Those with no one else to turn to, to accept them and their crazy. It was usually preachers who claimed money was the root of evil so let them die with your sins, your money in their pocket. Hucksters the lot of them.

I must have drifted off. Maybe due to the early hour or the lack of breakfast. It started with the silence, the world falling quiet as if it realised a predator walked amongst it. Then the gloom came back. Not from the window, it seemed to grow from the closet. The door was open wide now and the darkness within grew teeth.

I lay frozen on the bed as a voice floated out on clouds of smoke smelling of scorched fur and flesh. “You are searching for a corpse.” Amusement streaked its words black with cruelty and malice. “A delicious one. How he screamed.”  The words were almost stuttered, the vowels too soft and the normal cadence and lilts of speech was distorted. It was as if it was trying to speak through a mouth that wasn’t made to. A mouth full of fangs or maybe, just maybe with a chain in its mouth. 

I woke with a start; Max was banging on the door. “Come on man. My shift ends soon, and the morning guy is a dick.” He whined, sounded out of breath as he opened the door. I got up and ignored the man in the doorway as I stared into the depths of the closet.

Nothing. A nightmare from too many late nights and then an early morning. I got up from the bed and stumbled past Max shrugging off his concern and complaints. “Thanks.” I mumbled as I went to bathe in the noisy dawn light. The traffic was almost like a blessing. A hymn of life after the tomb of that room. I was thankful for my noisy office as I went to nap. Falling asleep on the job like that could get me killed.

[Owlant]

Reserved

[Owlant]

Reserved

[Owlant]

reserved

[Owlant]

Reserved.