The streets were cold and there was a moisture in the air. I yanked up my collar as I walked the frigid night. I could swear someone was following me. I pulled out a cigarette from the pack I kept in my inside coat pocket and lit it while blocking the air with my hands. I was trying to quit but tonight I really needed one. My nerves weren't as steady as they normally were and my chest was aching. I was working the Livingston case when this happened. I was shaking and it wasn't from the cold either but from the fear in my bones. All the cases I've worked have had horrific details and awful people in them but this one had me frightened. I don't know why this was happening but I needed answers. Uncontrollable doubt and dread had grown into my consciousness. I needed to visit her, I needed to find out more things. I headed to the hospital.
I dragged a final puff from my cig and threw it on the ground before stepping on it. I flashed the nurse my badge and walked to Susan's room. She was laying in bed staring at the ceiling when I walked in.
"Hello Detective," she said without turning her head.
"Hi Susan. How are you doing?"
"Probably better than yesterday but I don't feel it. How can I help you?"
"Well Susan, I was hoping you were able to remember anything new from your ordeal, any new details or memories?" I asked as I pulled out my old leather notepad I kept in my back pocket.
"Laying here has left me with nothing to do but think and my memory for some reason or another doesn't feel like cooperating with me. Perhaps its protecting me from the horrific details that will probably haunt me to the day that I die Detective. Maybe I don't want to remember."
"I understand Susan but if you could..." I stopped as she slowly turned her head toward me and leaned over.
"You've seen him haven't you?"
I nervously swallowed and asked, "Who Susan? Do you remember?"
"Detective, I have only bits and pieces," she said as she leaned back into her bed. "Fragments of memories. They come and go as I lay here in obscurity."
"Anything would help."
"Okay Detective. I'll try." She looked down at her hands as her eyes drifted out. "I remember thinking I couldn't believe where I was. I remember asking myself why me, why me over and over. I couldn't understand how something like this could happen to me." I looked up from my notepad to her hands and they were quivering softly as she clutched the bed sheets.
"I remember the room was really cold and dank and there were puddles of water in the corners and mold growing down the concrete walls. It looked like a basement Detective but it didn't feel like a room."
"What do you mean Susan?" I asked as I wrote down notes.
"You know when you're outside, you feel the open space and when you're inside you feel the closed off nature of a room right. Well...this room...it didn't feel quite like a room. It looked like a room but it felt like I was outside. There was a huge ominous feeling of something else in there."
"Was there someone else?"
"I'm not sure Detective."
"Were you tied up?"
"No, but I knew I couldn't escape," she began streaming small tears down her cheeks as she tried to swallow the knot in her throat. "There was no escape, he and I both knew it."
"Can you remember his face?"
"I can't. I couldn't see anything. I mean his face, there wasn't anything there. It was like he was wearing a mask made of shadows because his face was just empty. Just black and void...hidden. I couldn't see anything other than his eyes." A cold shiver of fear rolled up my spine at that thought. I knew what she was talking about. Her face suddenly stared off into the corner of the room.
She clutched the sheets harder in her fists and continued as if talking to the corner, "I...I think. I may have been...I dunno Detective. His eyes couldn't have been real. It all didn't seem real. It still doesn't. He wasn't normal I know it and his eyes were a horrible blood red, the whole eyeball. There was no pupil, no iris, nothing just red and they were glowing too. I remember there was light from a small lamp in the opposite corner of where I was balled up and from the red glow of his eyes. They looked like billiard balls that bulged out of his head and his voice...it didn't sound quite...human." She closed her eyes and began crying.
"Its okay Susan, you're safe now."
She looked at me with red weaving lines in her eyes, bulged and unblinking and said as tears rolled out, "its not okay Detective. It will never be okay. He made sure of that."
I felt the fear of that statement in my bones. I was afraid that she may be right. She had been there and the look of horror in her face told another story of pain and fear beyond the realm of my understanding. I feared that she was right and that I would come to understand. "I'm sorry Susan. You're safe now."
"Am I Detective? Can you protect me from my own mind?"
I was at a loss for words. In my eight years of working cases I had never been at a loss for words but I was afraid of the same thing she was. I tried to hide my fear by asking more questions.
"Do you remember where we found you Susan?"
She blinked her eyes a few times as if coming out of her horror trance and said, "No," as she sniffled her nose. "I know what you guys told me. That I was wandering naked up Alcorn street with symbols cut all over my body."
"Yes, do you remember how you got there?"
"I don't Detective."
"We found you only a mile away from your house."
"I know where I live."
"And as you're aware we searched your home Susan. We looked through your house and in your basement found your blood puddled in the corners. You had quite the mold spores growing on your walls as well."
"I live alone Detective. I don't have a husband and barely have time to clean my home. Things tend to get a little messy."
"I understand Susan. Its just that my point is, perhaps, he had you in your own basement. It does fit your description. Do you think that may be a possibility?"
Her eyes widened and darted left to right as if remembering something.
"Susan? Are you feeling okay?"
"I do remember being in the bathroom before it happened and looking in the mirror and seeing him stand behind me. Even in the light his face was blacked out and void with only his eyes bulging out from his head. I had never felt more terrified in my life."
"So he was in your home."
"Yes, he had been there all along."
"So he took you down to your basement and that's where he tortured you and cut those symbols into your body."
She had begun to quiver erratically with fear. I could tell because I was fighting off the same urge in my own body. I couldn't stop asking question though, I was finally getting somewhere with her. I needed to find out more. I needed to know if he was real.
"No, Detective. He may have tortured me and perhaps still is but he never cut those symbols into my body."
I looked at her strange as fear slowly grew over my face.
"He's visited you hasn't he?" she asked me looking off into the corner. "I know he has, I could tell from the moment you walked in here tonight. He's been watching you. I can't see him but I feel his presence sometimes Detective." She pressed her fingers into her forearm trying to stop it from shaking. "I don't know why this happened to me and perhaps never will but I do know that it was unavoidable."
"Susan, please. Tell me where I can find him. I need to know that he's real. I need to know why..." she interrupted as she looked at me in pity and placed her hand upon my cheek.
"Oh Detective. It doesn't matter does it. He's already chosen you."
"Susan. I need to know why I cut these symbols into myself?" I lifted my shirt revealing bloody bandages taped onto my chest. I lifted one showing her the same symbols she had made on her body.
"Detective, I still can't remember everything of what happened to me or answer many questions but one thing he made sure I remembered and probably will all the way to my grave and right into Hell."
"What Susan, what, tell me."
"That I did all this. I made all these cuts to myself. I sliced my flesh in my basement as he looked on. I'm sorry Detective but he has only begun with you."
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