Son of A Preacher Man: Hunter

          Previously

Sitting in my armchair, I errantly flip through the pages as I notice with a sense of grim satisfaction that, according to the headline, a horribly mutilated girl was found and able to be saved sometime a few evenings ago.

“Good for you Angelina…” I mutter to myself as I skim over the article. It would seem that she hadn’t been able to properly identify me during my night time assault. All the better, I suppose. I merely shake my head as I finish the article, the typical plea from local authorities asking anyone for information on the attacker.

A small editorial piece next to the main article debates over whether this attack is in any way related to the Organ Snatcher, the killer that has been plaguing the Big Apple for nearly a year now. I smile to myself as I flip the page over to the business section, my eagle eyes seeking the stock reports for my numerous holdings and bonds. They seem to be stable, which is really all one can ask for in this economy. I lean over to the side table next to my high backed chair and make a note to sell some of my stock in the newer computer gaming country that I’d invested in a few years ago. I’d been slowly watching it decline in value over the course of three years, small spurts of activity aside, and was having serious doubts over the continued value I could derive from the dividends the company paid me on a regular basis.

The Many Misadventures of Master Mystery: Murderous Mohrgs from the Moors, Part Five

Previously

Reginald sighed as he cut along the sternum of the first victim, the delightfully charming Mary Ann Nichols. Well, she had been delightfully charming.

Now she was just a ragged corpse with holes sliced into it.

“What are you doing?” She asked from Reginald’s shoulder, hovering over him by a few inches to watch as he cut into her physical form.

Reginald sighed again, choosing to focus on his task at hand rather than look up into the silvery face of the dead woman who had yet to pry herself away from him! “I’m going to search your body for physical evidence before I search it for nonphysical evidence.”

“Nonphysical evidence?” Another ghost piped up, this one a portly male with a savaged stomach and three neat symmetrical incisions along his throat. His voice was as raspy as someone with a lungful of opium smoke, and his pallor was dreadful, as if he’d been drug from the bottom of a lake.

“Ghosts are a rarity good sir, a rarity that only occurs when there is a sudden and very violent death. The fact that I am speaking to three such beings at one time suggests something supernatural is killing people here in jolly good England, and I for one would like to discover what it is.”

“Well what could do something like this?” The spirit asks after a moment, glassy eyes reflecting nothing but sadness and confusion.

Smiling grimly as he folded back the outer layer of skin on the young corpse, exposing muscle and bone for all the world to see. Along with the maggots crawling about inside the dead flesh, wriggling between the sinewy cords and along the pink bones.

“That’s odd.” Reginald muses before looking up to Mary Ann for a moment. “And you said that you never saw what killed you, right?”

“That’s right,” Mary Ann said evenly, folding her arms over her translucent form. “It all happened so fast, all I remember is a flash of pain then darkness. And now just this endless cold.”

“Yeah well, the endless cold will have to do for the time being. You’re going to be like this until I get to the root of the problem, the problem being what exactly killed you.” Reginald replied with a somewhat genial tone before splitting the sternum with a pair of calipers. “Sorry you have to see this.”

“Not at all, it’s actually quite interesting.” Mary Ann said almost cheerfully, peering into her own ribcage. “I’ve always wondered what exactly makes us all tick.”

“Well this isn’t a very good representation of what keeps a normal person alive, just so you know.” Reginald moved a leather-clad hand into the slimy recesses of the chest cavity. “Besides the maggots, which shouldn’t even be here this quickly, you’re missing a few vital organs.”

“Like what?” Mary Ann asked, clearly interested.

“Like a heart. And judging from the arteries leading to it, the whole thing was torn out through those nasty little incisions along your stomach.” Reginald pointed out, pulling his hand free from the slimy interior of the body, flicking off a few maggots for good measure.

Bloody Mary

The frigid chill of the darkness is all that I seem to be. I cannot tell where I begin and the unknown begin, instead viewing myself as a horrid amalgamation of the darkness given the ability to think. The few times I can think, outside of my own endless existence… I don’t like it.

I open my eyes, the siren call ringing true through the darkness. Someone is calling me.

Tears welling in my eyes, I shake my head back and forth, my stringy black hair floating around me weightlessly. No! I think bitterly as I feel the darkness swirl around me. Not again, please not again!

The call grows stronger as a sliver of light pierces through the darkness, slowly chipping away to reveal an open doorway, full of light and warmth. Sadly, the doorway is too small for me.

They always are.

Ravens: Chapter One, Part One

     Prologue

It all started some time ago, in a land not far from here. A land known as the Kingdom of Aura. A prosperous land that grew on the labors of hard working men and women in fields of barley and rye, of brewers most bold and of frivolous merchants and moneylenders that made the whole kingdom run so well. Knights and soldiers patrolled the borders, ridding the kingdom of the occasional bandit menace that was so prevalent during those budding years of our happy little city-state.

I was one of those knights… well, truthfully I was one of those knight’s footmen, a spearmen that moved with the young lad to act as one of his personal guard. Yeah, I know, guards for the guardians of the realm. Seems silly doesn’t it? I always thought so. But I was paid a sack of grain a month, and it was more than enough for me to barter with for food and… luxuries. We’d gotten word from a ragged looking man that his town, some nameless little burg on the Eastern most edges of our borders, had succumbed to the Plague.

That meant Zombies.