Shards of Stained Glass on Wet Pavement, written by Tim Murr, copyright Tim Murr/St Rooster Books 2018. No parts of this story may be reproduced with the sole permission of the author.
There was no use screaming for help, no one would hear.
Every house was dark and abandoned. The yards were overgrown and weedy for as
far as Ashley could see. For sale and foreclosure signs were nearly hidden from
view. Half the streetlights no longer worked and the lights from down town were
a good ten blocks away. She couldn’t duck between houses, because her pursuers
were traveling through the backyards. She knew they were faster than her and
could have easily gotten in front of her by now-they were playing a game. She
crossed Dover, where the valley flattened out.
This used to an upper middle- class neighborhood. Most of
the houses could be described as McMansions, but now they looked ravaged by
war. Years of disrepair and vandalism marred the whole Feliz Valley
neighborhood. The water supply had been poisoned back in the early 2000s by a
massive chemical spill from Benson Research up in the hills. It made three
square miles of prime real estate uninhabitable. The town of Millerton was
beaten to half it’s size in the space of a year. The down town had two lives;
the day time businesses that all, including the lone grocery store, all closed
by 5 PM, and the night time businesses of bars, adult book stores, greasy diners,
and strip clubs that were the only things that really kept the local economy
going. Millerton had become a haven for a criminal element. It was where you
went when you’d pushed your luck in your own town. The drug and prostitution
trade flourished under the broken back of an understaffed and overworked police
force. It was a good place to find people who wouldn’t be missed, if you were a
serial killer.
There was only a sliver of a moon above her, but the stars
were amazing. She couldn’t help but glance up from time to time as she ran, it
helped her reach her happy place, which was she needed to not lose her head in
the moment. She could hear them, rushing through the weeds in the blackness
behind the houses. Sometimes she’d catch a loud whisper or a chuckle. They were
certainly ahead of her, she’d hear them take off as she passed their vantage
points. She heard footsteps on the pavement behind her, but when she looked
back, there was no one there. She’d been running straight down the middle of
the street since getting separated from her car almost five blocks back at
Edison Park. They were in no hurry. The night was young.
Set far off the road, but running at a sharp angle from the
houses, was the property of a Methodist church. It was a fairly new building,
finished just before the accident. The church had a large main building with
two wings; offices and a rec center. It was a modern design with classic
flourishes, like gray stone accents, a beautiful ornate steeple, and a round
stained-glass window, eight feet in diameter, depicting Christ’s ascent to
Heaven. Through the weeds, she could see orange and black no trespassing signs
on either side of the main drive that opened into the black top parking lot.
Weeds were growing though the cracks in the pavement. As she hit the parking
lot, she figured she had almost the length of a football field to clear with no
cover. They were closing in around her but remaining out of sight. Her lungs
were burning by the time she reached the steps leading into the vestibule.
Never mind the locked doors, all the glass in the front of the building had
long since been smashed out.
She only slowed down to step sideways between two steel
frames on to the moist carpet with pebbles of glass crunching under foot.
Straight ahead were the big double doors leading into the sanctuary, to either
side were wide carpeted staircases leading up to classrooms and the upper deck
seating. There was graffiti everywhere. She paused long enough to look back and try to
gauge her pursuers’ ability to see her. They were still invisible out there and
she hadn’t been able to see inside from the parking lot. She took the stairs to
the right and paused again at the top to watch the doors for a second before
gently pushing open one of the double doors leading into the sanctuary.
The door opened into the highest point of the balcony. There
were four rows of seats that made a U shape over the seating below. The stage
had been stripped bare and was now littered with the evidence of people camping
out in there. The vestibule had smelled moldy from where years of weather had
ruined the plush carpeting, but the sanctuary smelled like death. A chill ran
down her spine. She felt like she’d just stepped into the spider’s web.
Ashley stayed low and tried to calm her breathing as she
worked her way to the right of the stage. There was just enough light from the
narrow windows, that lined the upper walls, to give her some view of the floor
below. Once her eyes had fully adjusted, she could see some bodies scattered about
in the seats. The church had put in theater seating, rather than pews. Someone
was softly snoring down there, which for some reason, made her situation scarier.
Anyone could be down there, but she was sure it would be no one willing to help
her. She sank down to the floor, in the corner where the wall and barrier met
and drew her knees to her chest. She closed her eyes for just a few seconds at
a time, but it was enough.
She listened to someone waking up, stumble among the chairs,
and take a long piss below her. He coughed several times, which echoed through
the chamber. Others stirred below, one a woman who started quietly protesting.
The pisser mumbled something gruffly under his breath and the struggle got
louder. Ashley was about to look over the edge to see what was going on, when
the doors downstairs burst open.
Shadowy figures filed in, back lit from the streetlights
shining through the stained glass. They spread out down the aisles, checking
the sleepers. The pisser had left the woman and had retreated on to the stage.
The upstairs doors opened, and two flash light beams swept the seats. Ashley
held her breath, pushing herself to the side of the row, making herself as
small as possible. She almost peed a little when she heard two of them run down
the steps, but they ran to the opposite side of the room and ripped a blanket
off a woman over there, shining a light in her face. She pleaded with them not
to hurt her. They didn’t speak, just swept the room with their flashlights
again and left the balcony.
Ashley let out a long sigh of relief and relaxed her legs a
bit. She could hear the office and classroom doors being opened and slammed.
After a while, she could hear them making their way beyond the stage and into
the back halls that lead to the administration and recreation wings. Odds were
good that they’d assume she escaped out the back. She wondered if she should
try doubling back to her car or just try to reach down town. Of course, staying
put until the sun came up didn’t seem like such a bad idea either. She decided
to rest a while.
Ashley had grown up in Wheeler, only an hour away. She was
old enough to remember when Millerton was just a blip on the map. Benson had
made it a thriving mini-metropolis in the space of a decade. She was a senior in
high school when the accident occurred. Wheeler being the closest town, saw an
influx of a Millerton’s refugees coming to start fresh after losing everything.
Wheeler didn’t have much in the way of job options, outside of the railyard,
some warehouses, and trucking. The trailer parks and low rent apartments filled
up and Wheeler’s unemployment skyrocketed. Seemed like everyone from Millerton
eventually got sick. You always knew who they were, because they’d be pale in
the summer, with a raspy wet cough and sunken eyes. There were lawsuits brought
against Benson, but the owners had abandoned the lab and ran to Mexico with all
the company’s funds. The employees were left broke and unemployed like everyone
else.
Ashley’s dad was a freelance private investigator that
worked for the railroad and two of the trucking firms. He investigated
insurance fraud and theft, mostly, but occasionally missing persons. Ashley’s
mother had committed suicide when she was five, so Ashley became her father’s
shadow, and after two years of community college, she joined the family
business. It was just the two of them and a revolving door of secretaries.
A week earlier a woman had come to their office with a wad
of cash and laid it on his desk with a picture of her teenage daughter, a high
school junior, half white, half Hispanic, big hazel eyes, a sad smile, and a
veil of black hair. Her name was Christa Jay, or CJ. The mother’s husband had
worked for the railroad and had been murdered a year earlier in a mugging.
Ashley and her father remembered him. They’d helped the police find his killer,
that’s why she came to them. Ashley’s father had taken the case and told her to
hold on to her money. After checking around Wheeler for a few days, he decided
to head over to Millerton. Local girls had wound up there in the past, usually
stripping or hooking. Some in shallow graves along the highway between the
towns. He hadn’t been gone four hours when Ashley got a phone call as she was
about to lock up the office. Her father had been shot dead in the middle of
Main Street in downtown Millerton. No one saw anything.
When she arrived in Millerton to identify his body, she was
shocked to see the crime scene blocking the street in front of the police
station. She parked on the edge of the tape, across from the station, by the
Catholic church, which was also cordoned off as part of the crime scene. The
stained-glass windows had been shot out from the inside, and the shards were
all over the sidewalk and street. It was raining hard and no one was around.
Ashley ducked under the police tape and went inside the
church. That church was probably as old as the town. It was ornate and
beautiful, but very small. From the front door you stepped right into the
sanctuary. There was a small area off to the right with a bowl of holy water on
a white pillar and a single door on the left side of the alter. The only person
in the place was a woman wearing ridiculously high heels, way too much make up
and a dress so short it kept riding up her ass. She was tearfully sweeping up
glass and splinters in the middle aisle. She didn’t notice Ashley until she
stopped to pull her dress back down, after bending over to sweep debris into a
dustpan.
“I’ve never seen a nun dressed like you.”
The woman stared blankly at Ashley.
Ashley shrugged her shoulders and looked around. There were
bullet holes in the walls and pews.
“What happened here?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, ok. I guess I’ll be going then.”
She turned to leave and spun back around.
“Wait, fuck that. My dad got killed in this fucking dump
this afternoon and I was told there were no witnesses, but then I walk in here
and it looks like the aftermath of a John fucking Woo movie and there’s a
fucking stripper sweeping up the place, so when you say nothing happened,
uhhhh, I’m not going to be fucking satisfied with that.”
“Sorry about your dad, but he should have known better than
to come throwing his weight around here. Take this as a hint and fuck off.”
“He came here looking for a teenage girl we believe was
abducted and brought here…”
“Oh, that narrows it down. What makes her special?”
The door opened behind her and a scrawny deputy with a scar
under his left eye stepped inside.
“Mam, this is a crime scene, you can’t be in here.”
“Mam, this is a crime scene, you can’t be in here.”
“I’m afraid she’s potentially sweeping up evidence…”
“I was talking to you. You here for your daddy?”
“Wh-wait, yea, but…”
“Follow me. I’m Deputy North.”
The woman went back to sweeping as Ashley followed North
across the street. Inside the station, the desk sergeant was staring at his
phone, while a detective snored loudly at his desk. No one else was around.
“My heart is full seeing how important finding my dad’s
killer is.”
North didn’t look back.
“Shit happens. Especially here. Detective Thorn is looking
into a couple of leads. He’ll call you when he has something.”
“That’s not him taking a nap is it?”
“That’s detective James. He’s a little hungover.”
“Hungover? It’s dinner time.”
“Breakfast time for him.”
They walked down a long hallway and down two flights of
stairs to the morgue. Her father was still lying in a body bag. The coroner was
sitting on his desk, laughing at something on the phone. He held one finger up
when North and Ashley walked in and made some joke about sweet and sour cat and
hung up. He slid his bony frame off the desk and approached Ashley with a broad
smile and outstretched hand. She stared at his hand until he dropped it, then
at his face until the smile faded.
“You must be the daughter. We have your father right over
here.”
Without sympathy or a prompt to prepare herself, he unzipped
the bag and held it open. The bullet wounds were still wet. He had a chunk of
his neck blown off and three slugs in his chest.
“Jee-sus!” She spun away and choked down vomit as tears
sprang to her eyes.
“Yea,” the coroner said, “it ain’t pretty.”
Ashley got a hold of herself but didn’t turn back to the
body.
“Any leads at all?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the matter one way or
another.”
“You can’t even tell me if you suspect a specific person?”
“Not my case, sweetheart. I just-“
She was already heading out the door, no time for bull shit.
At the next floor up, with the holding cells, Ashley spotted a young girl
unconscious on a cot, her head badly bruised. Down the corridor, a cop and a
bald man in a powder blue polo shirt were leaning against the cells chatting
casually.
“…and I came up there and she was talking with the PI,”
powder blue polo man said.
The cop shook his head. “Dumb bitch. What’d she tell him?”
“I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter now.”
“Uh, yea, it does. If she’s talking to him, who else she
gonna talk to?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Take’em both up to Edison Park and feed’em to the freaks.”
“Shit, it’s already getting late, man.”
“I don’t give a fuck. No one gives a fuck. Clean up your
fucking mess.”
“Ok, ok. Help me get this one back in my car.”
Ashley heard footsteps behind her and she rushed up another
flight of stairs to the main floor and headed out the front door. She put her
car in reverse, made a hard U-turn and then a right turn and another right,
which put her on a bridge overlooking the back of the police station. She saw
the two men drag the girl out and toss her into the back of a sedan. The cop
went back in and the car sped up the alley, whipping around the corner on to
the bridge past Ashley. She waited a beat and followed.
The car took a hard left up a driveway to a split ranch that
looked abandoned. Ashley parked the car four houses down, behind a pick-up
truck. A few minutes later, two men were dragging CJ out. Her hands and feet
were bound twine and she was wearing a ball gag. Ashley got her .38 out of the
glove box and took the safety off. As soon as the back door closed on CJ, the
sedan screamed backwards into the street and then fish tailed as it peeled out.
Ashley felt more confident that blue polo was on his own.
She followed him through the abandoned neighborhood, keeping
a two-block buffer, but all he’d have to do is look in the rearview mirror to
see her, as there were no other cars around. As soon as she saw the top of the
playground, she took a right and a left and stopped in a cul de sac. She ran
through the overgrown yard and jumped the small picket fence in the back and
found herself in the far end of the park from the entrance, under a weeping
willow. She could see blue polo walking the girls in, holding a pistol on them.
‘Feed them to the freaks,’ the cop had said. It gave Ashley butterflies. She
looked around, seeing nothing and heard only the whimpers from the girls and
the buzz of the orange streetlights.
She wondered if blue polo had been the one to kill her
father or if it had been the cop. How many could she be up against?
She waited, as she didn’t have a clear shot at blue polo and
had too much distance to clear. She heard rustling nearby and whispers that she
couldn’t make out. Blue polo marched the girls to a pavilion and ordered them
to sit at one of the picnic tables. He looked nervous, waving the gun back and
forth at their faces, and peering into the darkness.
Ashley crouched down and slowly started to move out from
under the tree. She wanted to get at least halfway to the pavilion before she
tried to shoot blue polo. Where she was she might miss, and he might panic and
shoot one of the girls. As she neared the edge of the streetlight’s glow, three
people walked past her, not ten feet away. She froze and then slowly lowered
herself to the ground and laid on her belly. As the men stepped onto the
pavilion, the girls began to openly sob.
The lead man wore a dark colored long coat and a cardboard
crown from a fast food restaurant. The other two were in jeans and long sleeve
button up shirts. They looked grimy, like they’d been sleeping rough. The lead
man bent down and sniffed the girls’ necks and hair, then turned to blue polo,
who had backed away several feet.
“Ok, your highness. Brought you two. I’m gonna go now, ok?”
The king grinned, took off his crown, and bent deeply at the
waist with a flourishing hand gesture. The other two men separated the girls
and laid them on different tables. It was a numbers game then. Ashley felt sure
she could find blue polo again, so she’d let him go, before moving in on these
assholes. Blue polo’s car was speeding away when the king turned to the girls
and plopped that stupid crown back on his head. The girls were too afraid to
move-they just lay on the table without struggle staring into the king’s face.
“I’m so happy to have you both for dinner,” he grinned. “I
promise, this won’t hurt for long and that your flesh will serve a higher
purpose now than it did out there.”
CJ closed her eyes as all the life seemed to drain out of
her.
“What did I ever do to you people...?”
“What did the deer or the fish ever do to the hunter? The
cow to the farmer? It’s not about what you did, baby doll, it’s about what you
are; meat.”
The tears streamed down her face and she sobbed openly.
Ashley slowly stood up, leveled the gun and stepped forward.
“On the fucking ground, pricks.”
All eyes turned to the figure emerging from the darkness.
“Get up, girls, and come to me.”
The king looked around like he just realized he was on some
TV prank show. He made a gun with his finger and pretended to shoot her. Ashley
already had the hammer back on the .38. He dropped into a crouch, taking a deep
breath and then let out an ungodly howl. It sent a chill through Ashley and
made her weak at the knees. Then it got worse.
Throughout the park, the neighborhood, came answering howls.
They sounded inhuman. Ashley’s hands shook uncontrollably, and she gripped the
pistol with both hands. From all around her, she heard a stampede of footsteps
rushing at her. Figures began to appear in the dark. She popped off a shot at
the king, but it went too far left and clipped one of his men, then she turned
and fired into the darkness. The noose was tightening, the only way out was the
park entrance. She took another shot at the king as she ran for the street,
firing wildly behind her until the gun went ‘click click click,’ and realized
to her horror that she’d left the speed loader in the glove box.
The king was shouting behind, “tonight we feast like gods!”
…
Ashley woke with a start, still covered in shadow, herself,
but sunlight streaming in around her. The derelicts sleeping below had cleared
out, but there was a bloody figure laying on the stage. By the angle of her
neck, whoever she was, she was dead. Ashley covered her mouth to stifle a sob
and quickly headed for the entrance. The upstairs and the lobby were abandoned,
as was the parking lot. It was deathly quiet at first, before she heard a train
far off in the distance. She took a second to stretch and then jogged/ran/walked/jogged
back towards the park, turning off where she had last night to collect her car.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she exclaimed breathlessly, when she
found her car untouched. She got in, turned the key and locked the doors. She
reloaded the .38 and drove around to the park entrance. There was no one in
sight and not a sound to be heard, not even from insects or birds.
She got out with gun in hand and moved swiftly to the
pavilion, where she found two bloody skeletons lying puddles of gore. Her
shoulders drooped, and she turned around and around, scanning the trees and the
hills for any sign of the psychos, but she was alone.
She drove slowly through Feliz Valley, searching for signs
of life, but didn’t spot a soul until a garbage truck passed her from a cross
street once she reached down town. She pulled up to a diner and picked up her
phone, that she’d left under a stack of files. It was dead, and she had to plug
it in. She had four new messages from Detective Thorn and one from the coroner,
who wanted to know what she wanted him to do with her father’s body. Thorn’s
messages simply said, ‘call me back.’
She hit the call back button on Thorn’s number and waited
four rings before a soft voice said ‘hello?’
“Detective Thorn?”
“Yes, Ashley. How are you?”
“Pretty fucking bad. Do you have something for me?”
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you have, detective?”
“Uh, well, not much, I’m afraid. We had a witness, but she’s
skipped town.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“How’s that?”
“I know what happened to her. And the girl my father came
here looking for.”
“Where are you?”
“None of your fucking business. Tell me what’s going on
here!”
“Calm down, Ashley. We can’t talk about this over the
phone.”
“Too bad, because that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“You don’t know what’s going on around here…”
“No, but I saw a big chunk of it.”
“You’re in danger.”
“Who are those guys in the park?”
Silence.
“If you don’t talk to me, I can only assume you’re in on
it.”
“Let’s meet and talk about this. We can help each other.”
“I can’t and won’t trust you.”
“Then you’ll never understand what’s happening around here.
Good luck. The county coroner is driving your father’s body to Wheeler today.
Call me when you grow a pair.”
He hung up.
She put the car in drive and took off out of town. She
called 911 and requested the highway patrol. Captain Holden got on the line and
she ran down everything that happened up to that point and then blue lights
flashed in her rearview mirror.
“Captain Holden, one of the local cops is trying to pull me
over…”
“Ok, pull over and put the officer on the phone.”
“What if they kill me?”
“Young lady, you’re sounding a little paranoid here.”
“You would be too.”
“Pull over, I’ve got one of my men heading over to meet you
right now.”
“Fuck…”
She pulled to the side of the road just outside of the city
limits. The patrol car pulled up close and North got out, looking around.
“Here he comes,” she said, rolling down her window.
“Morning. Heading home?”
“Yea, listen Captain Holden from the highway patrol is on
the phone and wants to talk to you.”
North took the phone from her with a smile.
“Hey, queer bait, what’s going on?...Uh huh…When?...Oh yea,
yea…”
North peered in at her, looking her up and down. Ashley’s
heart sank.
“Eh, she looks all right. Little thick in the hips, you
know, kinda wide ass…I would, yea…”
She saw the highway patrolman pulling up in the oncoming
lane. The officer had a big smile on his face. Then an unmarked patrol car
pulled up behind North’s car and a detective in a short sleeve white button up
shirt, with his badge on a chain around his neck got out. The three officer’s
met in the middle of the street, handshakes all around. Ashley had the .38
between her knees. The detective, presumably Thorn, took the phone and spoke to
Holden briefly before hanging up and walking the phone over to Ashley, holding
it out with a big grin.
“Detective Thorn, Ashley. Let’s have that talk.”
“Step out of the vehicle please,” the highway patrolman
said.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Step out Ashley.”
North slowly pulled his gun from its holster and then the
patrolman did the same.
“Easy or hard, Ashley?”
Her answer was a slug between Thorn’s eyes. His brains
exploded out the back of his head before he crumpled to the ground. North and
the patrolman brought their weapons up, but Ashley was already punching holes
in them, back in forth, until both hit the ground. She got out and grabbed her
phone from the ground before speeding away. She used GPS to find a back way to
Wheeler and avoided all major roads until she got to her own down town. She
pulled up behind the county coroner van in front of the police station and
peeled herself off the seat.
As she passed around the front of her car, the back of the
van opened, and the king hopped out with a few subjects, all armed. She fell
against the hood and tried to roll away, but he had a grip on her shirt and
threw himself on top of her. He was all over her, working to pin her hands down
as she fought and kicked to get away. His face was so close and stained with
blood all around the mouth. His breath was a terror. One of his followers tried
to help him get Ashley under control, but he nodded towards the door.
“Go cover our escape. Make sure you take care of any
security footage.”
Then he headbutted her and the back of her head smacked into
the hood of her car hard enough to leave a dent. She saw stars and he took the
opportunity to jam his elbow into her stomach. Then the shooting started. The
king flung her onto the sidewalk as glass shattered.
For a moment, Ashley considered just giving up. There were so
many, how could she fight them all? Then blue polo walked around from the front
of the van, looking nervous. Then the anger took over.
“This is fucked, man. Let’s load her up and get outta here!”
“The time to do that was back home, but our piggy pals fucked
that up.”
“This is a lot of dead uniforms, man…”
“We commit these murders to the glory of our goddess Death.”
“Whatever, weirdo, help me get her up.”
As blue polo stepped into range, Ashley kicked him in the
right knee with everything she had, knocking the kneecap out of place, and
making the joint bend backwards, ripping the cartilage and ligaments. Blue polo
hit the ground shrieking as she whipped her .38 from her waistband and pumped a
slug into the king’s hip. He spun wildly against the van door. She took her
time and blew his jaw off. He landed on her hood, then slid off, spraying
across it, before crumpling under the bumper.
Inside, the gunfire was becoming sporadic, they’d probably
be heading out any second. She got to her feet and yanked the back door of the
van open and found an AR-15 lying on her father’s body bag.
It became quiet inside and seconds later the king’s
followers filed out, stopping when they saw blue polo trying to crawl away and
then the king, bled out and dead on the street. Before they could react, Ashley
stepped out from the van and shot them down. Mostly good shots that wouldn’t
kill them right away but would hurt like a bitch until they finally gave up the
ghost. Two though, got their heads blown apart. Then it was blue polo’s turn.
Ashley walked around and got in front of him. He put his forehead
against the pavement and tried to raise his hands.
“Lady, I-“
She stomped the back of his head. Then again. And again. A
blood puddle started to form under his head as his body twitched. She stepped
back and then stomped harder until she heard the bones cracking and popping.
She stood back, and thought about those poor girls in the park, and stomped him
one more time and his brains sprayed out under her foot.
The front door swung open and Deputy Thorpe staggered out
bleeding from the shoulder.
“Holy fuck…Ashley…you got’em all..?”
“We’re not done, Cam. We’ve got a shit load of people left
to kill over in Millerton.”
End.
