Scene One

The house looked like something out of a horror story. It stood in the middle of a neighborhood known for its charm and affluence but shared none. Broken glass and shutters, dirty white paint chipped away by time and weather, and a dozen police officers, called in the dead of night, investigating a bloodstained front porch.

Antoinette arrived just before dawn with a journal under her arm and ten-pound bags underneath her eyes. She eyed the house next door with pulled back curtains and an older couple embracing as they watched her walk up. They snatched the swags to block her sight. As if a brief gaze from her would curse them. It probably would. Antoinette panned the scene, remembering the call from the police chief in the dark of her bedroom.

Multiple homicides. The two words she least liked to hear together.

She spotted him in the light of the street post, surrounded by his lower officers and handing out orders.

Antoinette walked closer but didn’t dare interrupt. She kept her eyes down as the group broke apart. The officers stared at her as they trotted to the house, one bumping her shoulder. She looked at him and he gave her a crooked smile underneath a well-groomed handlebar mustache. Antoinette frowned.

“Bout time, Cartier. It’s a mess in there. Had to hold the paper sharks back a block.” Police Chief Daniels smiled at her. His own mustache was shorter and lightened with strands of grey. He put a large hand on her shoulder, “Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m fathering you but…”

“I can handle it,” Antoinette spoke up.

He looked at the dark circles around her eyes and slight lean on her back.

“Haven’t been getting much sleep?” he frowned.

Antoinette shrugged, “enough. I’ve just got a cold or something. It’ll pass.” The words came out before she could even think them. A well-practiced excuse that worked nearly every time. “You say, it’s upstairs?”

He nodded, “Indeed.”

Antoinette left his hand in the air as she turned to walk to the crowded porch.

“And don’t let those guys bother you, they’re just boys.” Daniels smiled and waved.

Antoinette nodded, heading inside. The smarter officers parted as she walked up not daring to get to close or worse accidentally touch her. She avoided the few long, blackened splatters on the wood, making note of them as she went inside. She could’ve sworn they looked like a pair of clawed feet.

The gas lights in the house had dimmed overnight, washing the walls with eerie orange light. The smell of must and rot hung in the air but was only a soft undertone to the distinct smell of spilled blood. A smell that Antoinette found herself surrounded by too often.

She followed the splatters up the carpeted stairs as they got wider. No one was inside with her. Fourteen grown men stood on the lawn waiting for her to clear the scene. No one was allowed, or wanted, to be with her. No one wanted the job she was born into. No one could do the job she was born into. It was hers and hers alone.

She rounded the corner into the first upstairs bedroom, seeing the lumpy bloodied flower sheets. A doll with bright yellow hair laid on the handmade carpet next to pink sandals and a blue silk dress. An outfit for a tomorrow that would never come. The little girl was sleeping soundly when her soul was liberated from her body. Her blood and brain matter painted the back wall and washed down in a grim dripping mess. Antoinette took a deep breath. The smell of blood and gunpowder gagged her and she stepped back out to catch her breath.

She moved to the next room. A step to the right and across the hall. Heavy boots blocked the door from opening fully but Antoinette could see the body of a young man clearly on the floor, legs and arms flailed at awkward angles, and bloody bullet holes littering his chest. His room was whirlwind of broken glass and ripped sheets. Papers had been torn from the wall and smeared with blood. She knew that this was most likely the fight the neighbors heard. The one that prompted the call.

Pushing a little firmer, she stepped inside, looking back and forth between the corners.

Antoinette stood over his body, journal in hand. She flipped to a page permanently bookmarked with a piece of white chalk, keeping her eyes up and her ears tuned in. On the wall, she sketched a circle quickly, decorating it with runes and symbols. Once finished, the circle illuminated the whole room, washing everything in a purple light.

She placed her hand in the middle of the circle and closed her eyes, concentrating on the burn on the tips of her fingers. A sensation searing hot ice passed along her palm. She winced.

“Violent spirit, show yourself to me.” She demanded.

No response.

“I command you, know your master.”

Still nothing.

The pain grew to the brink of unbearable. She ground her teeth and gripped harder against the splintering wood wall.

“Know me.” Her last words were barely words at all as the wall arched lightning into her palm. She barely managed to keep balance as her hand was thrown away. The book in her other hand slapped down onto the bloody chest of the corpse.

She stared at the wall as the lightning burned the circle away and left the room in the utter darkness she’d found it in.

She sighed, “shit,” her palm stung as she wiped the excess chalk on the bottom of her gunfighter coat.

Carefully, she picked up the journal and slipped the chalk inside.

“Did it on a Sunday morning,” The voice boomed through the house. Antoinette turned when she felt ice cold breath on her neck.

A ghostly blue figure of a man stood in the broken window. His face was smashed in, leaving his jaw hanging by not much more than tendons and skin. She stepped back, gripping her book tight.

The form lurched forward, moving through the broken glass with no footsteps.

“Did just as he told me to,” His voice was outside of him, echoing from somewhere Antoinette couldn’t see.

She frowned, “who told you to?”

“The evil…he’s always watching. I’m with him now.” The form moved until it was standing face to face with Antoinette. She stood unflinchingly as the rot and gunpowder wafted off the apparition.

“You’re with me now.” She sneered.

Laughter moved its caved in chest, “poor little girl. Gone too soon but still so vital. He’s waiting for you too.”

“Who’s waiting for me?”

“Always coming, never arrives.” Its laughter echoed in Antoinette’s ears. She frowned deeper as a ping of recognition hit her. She’d heard this before. She’d been here before.

She looked around at the dark room, down to the blood soaking into her leather boots.

“Who are you?” She whispered.

The laughter turned into heinous wails.

She raised her hand and pressed her fingertips nearly through the corporeal form. The blue wrapped around her digits and flowed into her skin, leaving an unearthly trail underneath her clothes.

“Annie!” Daniels’ voice didn’t even register as she sucked the entirety of the spirit into herself. She basked in energy coursing through her veins like lightning. Her braided curls loosened and cascaded down her back in a waterfall of onyx. The dark circles around her eyes corrected back to her rich sepia-toned skin and her spine straightened as the bricks of exhaustion were lifted.

Even the color of her eyes darkened back to their true obsidian state.

She smiled as the glow faded but left the rejuvenation.

Daniels’ footsteps came thundering up the steps, “Annie!” He stopped in the doorway of the room she was in and gagged loudly. “Jesus Christ!”

She turned, clutching her book to her chest and dropping the smile. Daniels kept his gaze focused in the hallway.

“Sorry, chief.” Antoinette walked out of the room and closed the door.

“Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

She shook her head, “no, lost in my thoughts.”

Sighing, he collected himself, “doesn’t get any easier, does it?” He said, “How can someone do this to their own children?”

“The everyday monsters are worse than any we could dream up, I’m afraid.” She said.

“True enough,” he nodded, finally focused on her, and smiled. “You do something to your hair?”

Antionette shifted uncomfortably, “We should leave so the team can clean up. I’m sure the papers will want testimonials.”

He frowned again, “Rat Bastards. Living off the misery of others. Can you imagine?”

She started towards the steps, shaking her head, “not at all.”