Face them


        The rain echoes all around her as she walks through the village.  He's 
still there, half a block behind her.  She can see him when she looks back, 
quick flashes off his wet overcoat as he passes through the street lights.  
His face is hidden by the falling water.  She can't hear him in the rain.  
        He slows whenever she looks back, and turns his head to the side, as if
he were interested in the displays in the shop windows.  They exclaim their
anticipation of Christmas with seas of red, green, and white.  Never mind that
it's only October. 
        She increases her pace, doing everything she can to keep from breaking 
into a frenzied dash.  He's been following her since she left the office, and 
she's had enough.  She wants to turn back and confront him, but something tells
 her to keep moving.  He begins to trot, easily keeping pace.  His coat flaps 
open as she looks back, and she can see his nakedness beneath it.  She begins 
to run.
        Her steps bring spray from the puddles.  The rain continues its beat, 
joined by his footsteps.  She can hear him now, matching her step for step.  
She wonders whether it is intentional, calculated to drive her closer to panic.
 
        If so, it is working.  
        The rain stops abruptly, as if they crossed a line on a weather map.  
She wipes her face and looks back along the shiny street.  He is five feet 
behind her, his arms outstretched.  She looks at his face and sees only a blur,
 a hint of features that remain unformed.  She begins to scream.
        The face opens and a sound like laughter comes out.  She stumbles, and 
he is on top of her, making sucking sounds and clawing at her with clumsy, 
frozen hands.  She tears away somehow, leaving her jacket behind, and crosses 
the street to the only haven open this time of night. 
        The bar's patrons look up as she falls through the door, and one or 
two even move toward her.  They stop when they see her face, however.  Her 
features are beginning to run together, as if someone put the paint on too 
thick, and spun the canvas.  

        The detective pulled the sheet back, exposing the body to the harsh 
fluorescent lights.  The coroner had called it suffocation.  Suffocation, shit,
 she didn't have anything to breath through.  There was a bulge where here nose
 should be, and her eyebrows.  That was it.  Big, bushy eyebrows.  Jesus
Christ,  he thought, she looks like some kind of muppet gone wrong.  He
resisted the  desire to put his glasses on her, and draw in a big, bushy
moustache. 
        He shivered.  The whole thing was too strange.  He was losing it.  The 
people at the bar had been no help.  As far as they were concerned, none of 
them saw anything, none of them were even there.  His first thought when he saw
 her face was that she'd been hideously burned, that someone had lit her on
fire  and thrown her out into the street.  But her face was too smooth, too
seamless.   And her hair was perfectly intact, especially her eyebrows.  
        He'd looked at her ID - 29 years old, grey eyes, brown hair.  An 
aristocratic prettiness.  She could have been a model when younger.  And 
eyebrows that looked as if they had been drawn in with a marker.
        Sarah Lewis, her baggage said.  A purse full of the usual things.  
He'd spread them out, filling up a large table, and telling the story of a 
normal woman. One who worked downtown in an office building, who lived by 
herself in a little flat across the river.  She'd apparently been heading there
 from a late night at work.  Friends told him she always walked, no matter the 
weather.  She felt safe, they said, going through the Village, the "good" 
section of town.  All the artist and some of the rich types lived there.
        She'd never so much as been mugged, he'd been told.  Kept to herself.  
No enemies anyone could think of.  No shady deals; no gambling debts; no kids; 
no exes with grudges; money in the bank, but not too much; liked her job, by 
all accounts liked her life; regular group of friends; regular favorite spots, 
all in her part of town.  She'd come from the next town over, went to high 
school there, even class vice-president.  Both parents dead, no aunts or 
uncles.  One sister, whereabouts unknown.  Thought to be working in San 
Francisco, but no one was sure.      
        She seemed perfectly normal.  Nothing stood out about her.  In fact, 
that was the one thing that seemed a little off - nothing at all stood out 
about her.  She had a boring, normal life, a boring, normal job.  Lots of 
friends, but none too close.  She was well-liked at work, but mainly because 
she didn't rock the boat.  No promotions, no problems. She'd worked three jobs 
in the eight years she'd been in town. Three years at each of the first two, in
 her third at the last. All were clerical, all paid the same.  She seemed to 
change jobs when she'd been at one just short of long enough to become an 
integral part of the office, he was told.  She left none of herself behind, 
replaced at each stop.  
        A trip to the shops in her neighborhood turned up nothing but normal 
buying patterns.  No unusual tastes, no unusual habits.  One merchant told him 
she bought a lot of chocolate, another said she favored healthy stuff. She 
hadn't bought any new clothes in a year.  She always paid her bills on time.  
She didn't tip well, a delivery boy told him bitterly.  
        After a couple of days, he was able to get permission to search her 
flat - the department was being a bit skittish with this one.  No one had any 
idea what the hell had happened to her, and certainly couldn't go about calling
 it a murder without any idea how the murder was done.  They'd labelled it 
"death by mysterious circumstances", and pulled him off his normal beat to 
figure it out.  And figure it out pronto. 

        He turned the key and opened the door to her flat.  It was the only 
one on the top floor of her building, the rest of the floor used as storage, 
the landlady, Mrs. Nelson, told him.  She had the usual tales to tell about 
Sarah Lewis - paid her rent on time, no loud noises, no property damage.  She'd
 been living there two years, having changed flats with the change of jobs.  
Mrs. Nelson hung behind him, looking over his shoulder as he stepped inside.  
He gave her a disapproving glance that sent her muttering her way back down the
 stairs, clearly disappointed not to be able to assess her now-vacant property.

        The place was immaculate.  It was hard to believe anyone had ever 
lived there, that it wasn't just some fabricated showroom.  There were shelves 
lined with generic bric-a-brac, a spotless couch with perfectly fluffed 
pillows, a television with just a hint of a dust coating on the screen - likely
 accumulated since Ms. Nelson's death.  The Detective pored over the magazines 
arrayed on the newly-waxed table, but found nothing of interest, other than an 
article detailing the wants of the average professional man.  He made a note to
 set new goals, and moved to the bedroom.  The bed was neatly made, the sheets 
turned down.  A queen bed, two pillows, again perfectly fluffed.  A bookshelf 
displayed titles of best-sellers, and the type of classics anyone was likely to
 have from high school or college.  He pulled down a book he'd been meaning to 
get a copy of, and slipped it into his pocket.  What the hell, she wasn't going
 to be reading anything without eyes. 
        A trip to the kitchen showed that both storekeepers were right - she 
liked her chocolate and health food.  A partly-eaten bag of chocolate chips was
 rubber-banded shut in the refrigerator, and the trash held two jumbo-sized
bags  that formerly contained M&M's.  Next to the chips was a tub of some sort
of  tofu compound, and she kept a better selection of vegetables than a salad
bar. 
        The detective took a sample of the chocolate chips in a little plastic 
bag, and wished she'd left him a few dirty dishes to get fingerprints from.  He
 sighed and made his way to the last room in the flat, the bathroom.  
        Sarah Lewis had kept her bathroom as clean as the rest of the house. 
No soap scum, no mildew.  A full new roll of tissue, brand new bars of soap.  
Clean towels.  No laundry.  A closet off the bathroom had contained a wardrobe 
of clothes similar to the ones she'd been found in.  Conservative, perennial.  
Sensible shoes.  On a lark, he'd carefully checked her stockings.  Not a run 
among them.
        Her medicine chest held two toothbrushes, deodorant, some makeup. 
bandages, disinfectant, bug spray, decongestant, a prescription bottle with the
 name of the drug illegible, and an unlabeled plastic container of some yellow 
substance.
        The container turned out to be shampoo (it smelled like lilacs and 
lathered nicely).  He put the prescription bottle, in a plastic bag, in his 
pocket, and headed back into the living room to call in.  
        "No leads here, as far as I can tell," he said into the receiver, "she 
was a neat freak.  Just what we didn't need."  His captain grumbled something 
about "making leads" and told him to head back.  As the detective returned the 
receiver to its cradle, he noticed the flashing line of text at its bottom.  
"Messages," the phone said, "3."

 

4 responses total.

(Argh! I can't tell when the stupid lines are a smidgen too long!)

        The detective pressed the small button marked 'play'.  There was a 
whirring noise - he found the tiny cassette on the underside of the machine, 
later - and a scratchy, distorted voice issued from a small speaker.  "Hello, 
my name is Bill, and I'd like to tell you about our never-say-die fifteen 
thousand hour light bulb!"  Bill was apparently pre-recorded, and talked for 
the full two minute allotment of the tape before ending abruptly in loud 
beep. 
        There was a moment of silence, then a woman's voice, frantic.  
"Sarah, it's me.  I know you told me not to try anything without you, but I 
did, and it worked, and now they're out, and I don't know what to do.  I...I 
guess I just couldn't control them without you there.  They broke out, and I 
think they're mad.  I came to the cabin, I don't think they'll find me here.  
God, I hope they don't.  Sarah, you've got to come!  I don't know what to do, 
and I'm scared.  Please come!"
        Another beep.  The detective shook his head.  What the hell was that 
all about?  Maybe the third message would explain.
        No such luck.  The third message was completely silent.  Two minutes 
of nothing.  Not even heavy breathing, he thought ruefully.  
        The notebook attatched the phone held a listing helpfully entitled 
"cabin", area code upstate.  He dialed the number.  No answer.  
        Great. 
        He scowled at the landlady on his way out.

        The lab told him not to expect anything for a while on the pills, 
but the phone company was much more helpful.  They gave him an address 
(upstate) in 15 minutes.  Must be my lucky day, he thought.  Ville, the place 
was called, a dot on a map, named by someone with a better sense of humor 
than he had at the moment.  Up in the mountains somewhere.
        He went home and changed into something warmer.
        
        Over dinner that night, at a truck stop halfway to Ville, he read 
through the files on Sarah Lewis' sister.  Nothing had turned up at first, 
but once they figured out that Rachel Lewis had changed her name to Rachel 
Smith and moved not to San Fransisco but to Tucson, Arizona, bits and pieces 
started to turn up.  Little things, here and there.  Assault charges in 
Phoenix.  Possession of narcotics in Albuquerque.  A page of citations for 
general rabble-rousing.  Peace protests, anti-nuke rallies, animal rights 
garbage...Rachel'd been arrested at all of them.
        Never served any time, however.  That didn't make much sense, with 
her track record.  Apparently some evidence had disappeared in one case, a 
witness in another.  A judge got sick during one trial.  She always had good 
lawyers, and got off on technicalities the rest of the time.
        He looked at her picture.  She looked like a younger, wilder version 
of her sister.  Same hair, same eyes.  Big, bushy eyebrows.
        He did a double-take.  Big, bushy eyebrows?  He pulled out a picture 
of Sarah Lewis and set it next to that of Rachel Smith.  Son of a bitch.  
They weren't twins, by any means, but the eyebrows were easily the most 
marked difference.  He looked closely.  Sarah's weren't plucked and drawn in, 
they were actually much lighter.  He sifted through his stack of papers until 
he got to the picture of the corpse.  Smooth as a cueball, same hair... 
Rachel's eyebrows.  Son of a bitch.  Looking, now, he could see subtleties in 
the mass of skin that echoed tiny features of Rachel's not shared by Sarah.  
It was Rachel on that slab, all right.  
        He finished his cheeseburger, gathered his papers, and hit the road.  
He wouldn't find rachel at the cabin, but it was a safe bet he'd find 
something interesting.  Possibly a dead woman, alive after all. 
        
        The sky was beginning to lighten as he shut of his engine.  He was a 
hundred yards from the cabin.  He got his gun from the glove compartment, 
opened his door, and stepped onto the blanket of pine needles.  There was no 
car parked in front of the cabin, and it was dark, but he wasn't taking any 
chances.  He made his way, as quietly as possible, to the front window of the 
cabin and peered inside.  He could see nothing.  He tried the door.  It was 
unlocked.  
        He turned the knob and pushed inward.  There was a sound he couldn't 
identify, and resistance as the door swung in.  As soon as it was open a 
crack, something began to pour over the threshhold, soaking his shoes.  He 
was assaulted by a thick, sweet smell.
        The door opened fully on a room aswim with the liquid.  It looked 
like a waterbed had ruptured, he thought.  A queen-sized.  There was a half-
inch of the stuff across the whole floor, now trickling out the front of the 
cabin.  He dipped his finger, and it came up dark and sticky.  Red.  Of 
course, he thought.  What else but blood?  
        Jesus Christ.
        
        He waited until it was fully light to check the cabin out fully - he 
had no desire to flip a light switch in there, only to electrocute himself, 
or something.  
        Most of the blood had washed out onto the ground outside the door, 
and what was left inside had crusted over somewhat.  It was sticky to walk 
on, but he could see the floor, at least.  And the designs on it.
        A thorough search turned up the usual camping stuff, plenty of 
canned food, eight boxes of candles, two strange knives, an ornate pentagram 
carved into the wood floor, and an overcoat.  The windows were sealed with 
some kind of caulking.  There was no chimney.  The place was air-tight, as 
far as he could tell. 
        He knelt to look at the pentagram.  There were small carved designs 
alla round it, naked people and strange creatures, dancing, making love, and 
making war.  He got his camera from the car and took some pictures.  There 
were candles at the points, and scorch marks all around.  One side was 
obscured by a large burned patch of the floor.  Probably where something got 
out, he thought.  Jesus Christ.
        He'd never believed in any of that occult crap.  Bunch of people 
doing crazy stuff, making themselves crazy.  Probably came up here with some 
friends, drank a little too much, started acting out some bullshit.  got some 
blood from a slaughterhouse, or a farm...
        Maybe they brought Rachel Smith here, acted out some ritual, and 
burned her face up in the process.  It didn't look like it could be burns, 
but who knows.  Some sort of cult killing.  The media'd love that.
        But why would they have tried to make it look like it was Sarah that 
had died?  And what was it rachel (or whoever) had said on the phone - "I 
came to the cabin, I don't think they'll find me here."  Something had 
happened somewhere else, first, that had sent her running here, looking for 
Sarah's help.
        He took some more pictures, looked around outside the place, and 
stretched some "Police line - do not cross" tape between some trees.  He 
climbed into his car and headed back to town with more questions than he'd 
brought with him.
     

(and I seem to have called Sarah Lewis "Ms. Nelson" in the first chapter.
 I know a Sarah Nelson. I suppose that explains it. My apologies)

        Several were answered when he checked in at the lab the next 
morning.  The body was indeed that of Rachel Lewis/Smith, not her sister.  
And the pills were an incredibly powerful halucinogen. 
        "I don't know who's been using these," the lab tech told him, "but 
I'd be surprised if they had much of a brain left.  This stuff doesn't wear 
off, really.  Makes some permanent changes while you're tripping.  I've never 
seen it in pills.  The feds'll probably call you on this one.  This stuff's 
pretty new, and I don't think it's supposed to be in-country yet."
        Great, the detective thought.  The plot thickens.  Just what he 
needed, the FBI and DEA calling him up.  Back at his desk, he sighed.  
        The chair creaked as he sat put his feet up on his desk, leaned 
back, and stared at the ceiling.  A dead woman.  New, improved poisons.  Some 
sort of occult crap.  A mysterious sister.  No leads.  He sighed again.
        "Heads up!" the captain called, only his head poking out of his 
office. "We got a report from the Lewis place.  The old lady says she heard 
somebody moving around up there, she goes to look, nothing but a broken 
window, but the place is trashed.  Get out there.  Maybe you'll find 
something, this time."
        The detective sighed a third time.  Better than nothing, he thought.

        But only slightly better.  There wasn't mush to see in Sarah Lewis' 
apartment.  The place had been turned upside-down, and sideways to boot.  As 
far as he could tell, not a single thing was where he last saw it.  Few 
things were even intact.  The dishes were broken, the upholstery was torn, 
the medicine cabinet was removed from the wall. Even the toilet was taken 
apart (although he was able to reassure the landlady that there was no major 
leakage).  There was a new carpet in the bedroom, a carpet of paper.  Every 
book had been taken off the bookshelf, and systematically torn page from 
page.  
        Lotta work went into that, he thought.  Didn't make much sense.  You 
didn't find drugs hidden in paperbacks too often.  Maybe the looter knew 
something he didn't.  
        Like maybe the meaning of the word, written on the bedroom wall.  Or 
more accurately, burned there.  "Home," it read.  Nothing else.  Why couldn't 
these things at least be informative?
        He'd brought his original inventory sheet with him, and did his best 
to figure out if anything was missing.  He didn't bother trying to count the 
books or dishes.  As far as he could tell, the only things taken were a few 
record albums (which could easily have been smashed amid the wreckage), and 
some clothes.  Complete outfits, in fact.  Shoes, belts, the works.  Guy 
musta been her size, he thought.
        Or maybe...her?  The detective did a double take.  She *was* still 
alive, after all.  Maybe she just ran out of clothes, and decided to do a 
little redecorating while she was there.  He went to the window, and tore off 
the paper that the landlady had covered it with.  A bitter wind blasted his 
face as he peered out onto the roof.  He lifted the window and stuck his head 
out.  The sun flashed on tiny glass shards below him.  Most of the glass had 
slid down the slope and disappeared over the edge, but enough was present to 
tell him that the window had been broken from the inside.  Which meant that 
whoever trashed the place hadn't broken in that way.  Had probably even had a 
key.  There'd been some keys in the purse that was found with the body, but 
that didn't mean anything.  It looked like Sarah Lewis was still in town.
        The phone rang.

        The detective looked over at the phone as it ran again.  The he 
pounced on it.  He tried to sound calm.  
        "Hello?"
        "Yes, this is doctor Narden's office.  May I speak to Sarah Smith, 
please?"  A woman's voice, nasal, came through the phone.
        Sarah Smith?  
        "No, I'm sorry...She's out. May I take a message?"
        "Yes, this is just a call to confirm Ms. Smith's appointment 
tomorrow.  Please remind her that doctor Narden is very busy, and she will be 
charged for a missed appointment."
        "Okay, I'll do that.  Um, what time was the appointment again?"
        "The same as her others.  8am in the main wing of the hospital.  And 
please do be sure she makes this one."
        The woman hung up, and the detective let out his breath.
        He looked for the address book, but it was gone, too.  A few calls 
found him the hospital, and the doctor.  Larry Narden, M.D...cosmetic 
surgeon.
        Ah, hell, he thought.  Bout time I got that chin job.

        He was at Narden's office at 7:30.  He'd talked to the doctor, and 
found out what Sarah Smith was scheduled for.  It wasn't breast implant.  She 
was there for the works.  She'd spun a story of an aging beauty, who wanted 
not only the age-reducing nips and tucks, but "a whole new direction in her 
look". 
        Narden apparently looked at it as a challenge, and the two of them 
had been planning for a while.  She'd had four consultation visits, but 
missed the last one.  Which made sense, her being dead at the time.  Or 
supposed dead.  Whichever.
        He didn't figure she'd show up for the appointment, but it was worth 
a shot.  She'd used the assumed name and everything, so maybe she'd feel 
safe.  A lead's a lead.
        She showed up a few minutes before eight, wearing one of the outfits 
she'd liberated, and looking quite sharp.  All in black, of course.  The 
detective wondered if she was mourning her sister or something else.  He got 
up to meet her.
        "Sarah Smith?" he said. "We need to have a little talk."
        She bolted.

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- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss