Not Another Crime?

The wind blew through the trees surrounding the house and caused the branches to clack against the window which shook free their leaves. Falling through the front door, two shadows collapsed and fell out onto the pavement in a crash of noise and splintered wood.

            “You whippersnappers!” called an elderly woman who stood in the door to the house. Her figure was silhouetted by a growing light coming from within. Soon en

ough, a small woman who was out of breath appeared next to the lady holding a tarnished candle holder.

            “Madame! Madame! Vous ‘ill get a chill!” The little woman spoke between huffed breaths as she threw a threadbare shawl over the shoulders of the elderly woman. Pushing the shawl off her, she marched down the stairs and, with a surprising strength, pulled the tussling men apart and held them by the ear. “This is ridiculous! Honestly what are we to do with young ones like you? My husband is dead for goodness sake!”

Five hours earlier, an elderly man was shuffling down the long corridor of the house. He carried a single red leather bound book in the confines of his own leathery hand which shook slightly with each step. As he passed the length of the hall, he snuffed out each candle one by one which lit the gothic portraits hanging on the walls. The ornately furnished grandfather clock began to strike twelve times as the pendulum within slowly counted the seconds into the new day. After the chiming of the clock had finished the man had reached the end of the hall and stared deeply into the clock face itself, appearing to admire the craftsmanship. All was silent save for the rasp of his lungs as he continued to look at the slowly moving hands. Suddenly the face opened like a flap and a single revolver appeared and blasted through the silence of the house. Chaos ensured.

Marching them back into the living room, the elderly lady stood with her hands across her chest.

“And you too Christina!” she said to the little French woman hovering in the doorway. “I am positively sick to death of my house being used as a murder mystery setting. I’ve lost three husbands so far to this city’s shenanigans!” As she said this, she glared at each person in turn, “and the so-called Police have never been of help!”

At this, a man in a cap sat up and glared at the elderly woman, “But I-“

“I want none of that Sir – I’m too old to be up this late and tomorrow I shall have to find another husband. Look what you all put me through.” The man sitting next to him in a balaclava sheepishly looked at his hands. At this, the doorbell rang to the house and with an exasperated point, Christina was sent to answer it. A glamorous woman soon entered the room with a notepad in hand. Her hair was pulled back through the use of a glimmering hair clasp and the peacock quill was held gracefully in her hand. “Oh and who are you supposed to be, the glamorous millionaire or yet another detective?”

“I’m sorry? I’m just an investigative reporter Miss,” she said as she began to scribble on her pad.

“An investigative reporter? Hmph! Well at least we haven’t had one of them before,” retorted the lady. Her hair curlers had slowly slipped from their places over the night and her hair was now floating in wisps about her head. At this, the glamorous woman moved over and sat next to the nervously fidgeting maid.

“My name is Natalie and I’m here to tell your story. I need to know exactly what happened. When, how and why,” the woman spoke in calming tones to the rest of the group. Suddenly the maid piped up and quickly said;

 “Zese people are crazy Madame!”

The man in the balaclava fell out from the clock the moment the body dropped to the floor. He had barely fit into the thing and now he lay on the ground gasping for air after near suffocation. Suddenly, as he lay on the floor, he inspected the man’s face. It was not who he was after. “Bugger! Got the wrong house!” he whispered hurriedly to himself. Somehow, the crime network kept mixing up the addresses of their targets; he’d heard the same thing had happened to a friend last year. He hurriedly started to pull the man down the hallway by his legs yet soon enough a small woman appeared at the end of the hall in a nightgown.

“ ’Vat is going on? Monsieur? Qui are you?” she mumbled as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Looking down the hall, she saw the body and gasped with shock. “Sacre bleu! It has happened again!” Tears began to roll down her face as her body trembled from top to toe. She turned and disappeared down the hall and out the front door. Dropping the body, the criminal turned to run after her just as a shriek came from the wooden stairs near the clock. Startled by the noise from the elderly woman behind him, he tripped and fell over a rut in the rug. Suddenly the little woman appeared once more at the front door with a burly man wearing a cap.

“Stop there!” the policeman commanded in deep tones that vibrated through the floorboards. In a panic, the criminal got up from the floor and ran like a bull towards the policeman. In a mad tussle both struggled with the other as the French woman locked the door behind her and ran past the men to help the elderly woman. The men’s fighting pressed them against the door so hard that the lock broke and they tumbled out into the street and landed on their backs.

“So this all happened very quickly,” Natalie said to the crowd in the lounge room in surprise.

“Well we’re so used to it Dear so naturally it does now. Humph!” retorted the elderly woman with a glare towards the rest of them.

“I don’t even know these people!” cried the criminal who sat squished next to the burly officer. Yet the large man turned and silenced him with a glare.

“But what I don’t understand is –where’s the body?” the reporter asked, “I didn’t see it coming in.”

At this all four of the others in the room went silent with looks of shock on their faces. Suddenly, a tentative knock on the doorframe made them all turn their faces towards it. There stood a man in a dressing robe carrying a red leather book with a single hole in it.

“Heh – always carry this with me everywhere ever since Effy told me about her previous husbands! Gives you a bit of a shock but does the trick,” the man softly said as he rubbed a bump on his head.

“Oh Winston!” cried the elderly lady, “What a relief!” Just as the maid fainted into the chair and the policeman and criminal began to scratch their heads.

“Well… case solved I guess,” said the reporter as she snapped her book shut.

An Impossible Corpse

 

The snow silently drifted down from the sky in whispers of cold flurries. Softly kissing the wind with an icy touch, the flakes flew around the field before they settled on the ground. A nearby forest watched on as the blood of a girl lying at the centre of the whitened landscape slowly seeped away from her and tainted the snow with the colour of rust. Birds cawed and cried at the sight of her bruised lips and at the paling colour of her skin while a single ace of spades, which lay pinned to her thin blouse, fluttered in the breeze.

Regina Royton stepped out of the car and slammed the door closed before she pulled up her jacket’s collar against the wind. The chill had crept down her back and sent spiders of ice scrambling up and down her spine; nevertheless the adrenalin that came with a new case warmed her up as she crunched through the snow towards the fence.

‘Well, this is an unusual one,’ mumbled assistant officer Fellows through a woollen scarf as he took out a notepad and pen and began furiously scribbling away. His black cap hid the untidy shock of hair of a person who still needed a morning shot of coffee.

‘You could say that again,’ she replied as she pulled at her brown leather gloves, ‘the weirdest thing about it is that there are no footprints leading to the corpse.’

 ‘What?’ The officer looked up from his pad and stared across the field in front of him. He noticed that Royton was right as he saw that the innocent picture ahead of him was marred only by the shocking presence of the corpse. ‘Well how did she bloody well get there then?’ he said as he stared at the lifeless figure with a creased forehead.

‘We’ll just have to find out.’ With a determination Fellows was shocked to see from a new female boss, she vaulted over the fence and landed in the frosted meadow.

The snow chilled the feet bones of the inspector and officer as they trudged across the land towards the corpse. Arriving at the girl, they noticed that barely any ice had settled on her and that the snow beneath her was the same depth as the snow surrounding her lifeless body.

‘Well there’s no way the culprit’s tracks could be covered by the storm,’ observed Inspector Royton, ‘and what do we have here?’ Leaning down she plucked the card from the girl and turned it over before handing it to her junior. A single sentence was written in a slanted script above the spade picture;

Your time is up. Was this your card?

Frowning at the wording with shock, Fellows looked up to see the disinterested eyes of Royton looking at him.

‘Y-y-yes…’ he stammered as he bluntly looked at the card in front of his eyes.

‘What are you talking about?’ she angrily muttered as she began to get out her forensic equipment and set about fingerprinting the card and corpse.

‘This… this is my card.’

Five months ago, Jonathon Fellows was walking through the streets of New York, trailing behind his group of friends when suddenly he heard the screams of a girl. Startled by the sound, he stepped through the steam billowing from the vent in the road and came face to face with a man in coattails. Jonathon noticed that he was firmly gripping the hand of a struggling girl while he held a pair of leather gloves in his free hand. Looking into the face of the man beneath a silken top hat he saw blue eyes staring back at him above the thin line of a hard mouth.

‘What do you want boy?’ the man spat at him.

‘Let go of her!’ Jonathon demanded before grabbing his cell phone and punching in the number of the police, ‘I’ve got a man here on 34^th Avenue who’s abusing a woman. I need back up stat.’

‘You’ll regret this one day mate,’ the man said as he realised he was officially now on government records. Twisting the arm of the woman he held captive, he said, ‘but it’s lucky I am what I am. Pick a card, any card.’ As he did this, the girl’s screams turned into a flurry of cards which appeared to come out of her mouth. One of them, the ace of spades, flew at Jonathon’s chest and stuck there mysteriously before the man cackled and cried; ‘it seems like you’ve picked your card,’ before he vanished before Fellows eyes.

 Looking down, foul smells curled up from the underworld of the city as an open man-hole lay in

front of him. After checking the alley one last time for the girl, he walked back out into the open streets and ended the call before flicking the playing card into the nearest bin.

Now, he stood with his eyes widened at the copse below his feet. Her grey eyes were an exact match for the girl who struggled to get away from the man months ago. Kneeling down, he touched her cold skin and saw the scaring on her left hand.

‘You’re pathetic,’ the woman above him sneered down to his level. Suddenly a leather glove slapped him in the head and caused him to look up into her face. As he did so, Regina’s face moved as the mask was peeled free from its place and instead a hardened glare stared down at him from above, with the same blue eyes as the man in the alley. ‘Remember me boy? You should never trust a soul as soon as you cause an illusionist trouble.’ As he said these words, the man pulled a gun from his belt and aimed it towards Fellow’s forehead.

The world hung suspended in time as a slight pulse began to beat against Fellow’s fingertips that still rested on the girl. Just before the bullet was sent rocketing into his brain, he noticed the man’s assistant on the ground weakly turn her face towards his. The last thing he heard was the small whimper of ‘Sorry’ and the silent pitter-patter of snow.

A Murderous Talent

The water sounded almost as if it was whispering to itself. The way it gushed around the bloated body and encouraged crimson swirls of blood to spiral out from the figure was almost calming. Tendrils of the mixture snaked around nearby rocks and stained the overhanging grass from a pure green to a sickly red. Bruising on the temples with a leaching wound reaching from a stubbled left cheek down the neck and under the collar. It was evident that the shoes were missing as a single blue and white striped sock bobbed its way downstream at a pace a snail could beat. No murder weapon was to be seen nearby...yet. This just made things more like a game of Cluedo. Was it Professor Green in the garden with a candlestick? Or perhaps Madam Peacock in the neighbor's hedge with a revolver? It was my job to sort things out - it was always my job to sort things out.

 Detectives, policeman, dogs; they were always useless, always bumbling around and tripping over the evidence from one another and constantly jibing with the Judge over the most fickle details while skipping the most important part of an investigation. Finding the culprit and the history of the victim. That's what I did, no matter how many times I've been told to "keep my bloody nose out of it". I've always hunted, sniffed, tracked and traced the culprit down to the very last nose hair found at the scene of the crime AND I've always come out with results. Let's just say some love me and some hate me - it all depends upon your perspective.

However no matter how many past investigations I've solved or uncovered, as I look down upon the body floating in front of me, having little to no long-term memory - I know that this time things will be different. To say this case is a near impossibility is an understatement. For you see, this time - I am the victim; the body is mine.

Here to There and In Between - PART 3

A month rolled on in our little boat until one day Anya informed us that we were now in a place known as Burma as well as Myanmar. Also, that if she remembered correctly we were on the main river of Ayeyarwady. Tall orange coloured candles dotted the landscape but we were soon to find out that these were in fact magnificent temples known as Golden Stupas. The local people of Myanmar fed us Peh-hin-ye lentil soup as they listened to our story.

One day while on the river, Ema and Alina became restless and tired in the boat and after much whinging became increasingly annoying. Therefore we decided that we would have an excursion up to the top of a nearby Golden Stupa which was next to the river. So off we went and jumped out of the boat one by one and began our steep ascent up the hill.

When we got to the bottom of the steps, we were already huffing and puffing so much that we needed to sit down. After a few minutes of resting, we decided to climb.

Oh it was a majestic climb up the old sandstone bricks most of which were covered in ivy. Looking out at the views around us we saw that a thick Asian jungle stretched away in all directions; and towards the west, a great shimmering plane of water winked at us like an old friend. Of course we could see the winding river that snaked its way through Myanmar; we had now named it our vein of hope.

So as we continued to climb, the sun began its slow meandering descent towards the horizon. But by about the time we were three quarters of the way up, Ashmi, Anya and I began taking turns to carry Alina and Ema on our backs. It was at this moment in time that we began to hear soft chanting and murmuring coming from the great golden dome above us which could only mean one thing; Monks.

We slowed down and began murmuring between each other as to whether we should continue but at the same time a third party joined in on our Stupa. Sneaking up the other side to the one we were making our way on, we stopped and watched as a small group of what looked like military soldiers crept up towards the top. Speaking in a language that none of us understood, we watched as they took out ugly looking objects from their belts and they then turned their backs to us. Written in neat print on their backs was a single word; Junta. It was then that we realised that they were going to attack the monks at the top.

Everything that happened after went so quickly it seemed a blur.

The soldiers on the other side began to run hastily up to the top as Ashmi made a split second decision and put down Ema before charging up to the top as well. I then screamed at Anya to take the other two back down to the boat and get ready to depart as soon as possible. Then I sprinted off after Ashmi.

It was a race against time; Ashmi wanted to get there before the soldiers so as to warn the monks, the soldiers did not know about us but wanted to get their horrible deed over with as soon as possible and I wanted to get to Ashmi before either parties reached the top so that we could escape as soon as possible. Huffing and puffing, I struggled to keep up, jumping up stairs two at a time to keep up with Ashmi and the soldiers. We were gaining on them until I slipped on an ivy leaf and fell to my knees. With the world spinning around me I jumped back up and continued to run.

Ashmi and I reached the top first. The soldiers soon came after.

“Get out! Get out now!” screamed Ashmi at monks who just looked at us blatantly. Ashmi grabbed the nearest monk and pushed him towards one of the sides.

“We have to go NOW!”I shrieked at Ashmi in response.

Chaos ensured with everyone running around like headless chickens. It was then that the soldiers arrived. Barking quick commands between each other, they spread around the internal temple and pointed their ugly weapons at everyone in the middle. Ashmi turned around and pushed me behind a large vase behind into a small alcove hidden in the wall. He ran back off into the centre of the room and demanded to know answers as to why they were here. One brave monk attempted to push a Junta off the edge of the stupa but was shot to the ground with two quick Bang!s.

I sat there watching in horror as the men progressively went around to each monk to inspect their physique. Any deemed unfit or unworthy were shot. As this massacre played out in front of me, Ashmi remained defiant in the centre of the room. When the soldiers found that he spoke a foreign tongue a sadistic gleam came into their eyes. They drugged him then and there in front of me before placing him in a sack marked with that terrible word.

I was helpless; sitting there doing nothing as one of the most important people in my life was carried away by foreign military. The nearest monk to me noticed I was in the alcove and shuffled backwards.

“You need to get out of here, before they see you. Escape; now!” he whispered urgently to me; surprisingly in my own language.

“What are they doing to him? Why are they here?”

“They control this country. They recruit foreigners into their army faster than you can say stolen and they hate religious practices. That is why they recruit those fit into the army as well and kill the rest. You need to leave; there is no place for women in their eyes. I will look after your friend when I’m recruited. Go now.”

With tears streaming down my face I snuck out of the Eastern entrance and began to run down the steps. My heart near collapsing in my chest; I bolted down to the river. Once again all of the horrible things that had happened since that fateful night in Nepal replayed through my mind. Running helplessly at full pelt down the golden stupa I realised that what seemed like golden beacons of hope to begin with were nothing more than chambers of misery now. Falling into the boat, I told Anya that we needed to leave immediately. When she asked where Ashmi was my heart ached so hard that I passed out.

(To Be Continued...)

Deserved Fate

Rosanne Lemick unfortunately passed away on the night of a full moon. Copper poisoning was to blame as the large mansion she lived in was old enough to be filled with enough legal breaches to startle the most esteemed high court official. She was an old woman who kept to herself and barely left the house. Many people just assumed she spent her whole day dusting the skeletons of the visitors she never seemed to have. So when she passed on, her Last Will and Testament stated that the morbid mansion was to be passed on to a distant family member of a sister’s daughter’s cousin, Thomas Hamlington. 

Thomas was a man of 25 who was obsessed with riches. He wanted to be big famous and rolling in the green, purple and yellows of money. He and his girlfriend, Penelope Tate, were the picture of health. Young, free, careless and striving for their lives, they received the summons with shock to learn that they had inherited a massive mansion from a distant deceased relative. So setting out some days later, they made the long winded journey to the house.

The door creaked open with a moan that sent shudders through the rotting floorboards. Shuffling through the layer of dust as thick as thirteen sheets of thawing ice the house pressed against them on all sides. A musty smell of mildew made its meandering march through the noses of both Thomas and Penelope as they stepped further into the house. The large room to their right contained cobwebs and creepy carcasses of spiders long dead while the room to their left provided more interesting objects.

Penelope was the first to set foot into the room, a room which moaned and creaked along with the rest of the old timbers of the house. As Thomas moved in beside her, the entire world froze. A chill that seeped to their bones began to bore into them. A soft silky whispering began to slide through the silvery webs between the furniture to meet the ears of both Thomas and Penelope. As a slight breeze wafted the musty smell of the house into the room, Penelope suddenly screamed and became paralysed with one finger pointing towards the wall on the opposite of side of the room. Her eyes crazed like a mad-man, she began to tremble with fear.

Dumbstruck with the reaction of Penelope, Thomas turned his terrified gaze with trepidations towards the object she was pointing at. A shiny silver frame around a softly glowing slate of glass illuminated what looked like a gilded mirror. Within the mirror was the horror. A woman of about 84 years was glaring out from behind the looking glass at the two intruders into the house. The whites of her eyes were glazed with absolute hatred as wrinkles around her mouth were pulled into a snarl that accompanied her vicious dentures.

“AAAARGH, HOW DARE YOU COME HERE? AFTER WHAT YOU DID, HOW DARE YOU,” the apparition cried, “SO THEY THOUGHT IT WAS COPPER POISONING? WELL NO BODY BELIEVED ME. THEY SAID I WAS CRAZY. THEY SAID I WAS MAD. THEN THEY LOCKED ME IN THIS HOUSE BECAUSE OF YOU! YOU! YOU!”

Thomas trembled as a violent wind began to roar through the room to whip the cobwebs in the house into a frenzy. 

“YOU THOUGHT YOU’D GET AWAY WITH IT!” she screeched at the top of her lungs as the dirty, dusty dungeon they were now in erupted into a pandemonium. The mirror on the wall shook violently as it crashed to floor sending shard of glass around the room. Two sharp shards pierced the hearts of both Penelope and Thomas before they could run for their lives. As their lifeless bodies began to descend to the floor to join the surrounding morbidity of the house, several sharp knives fell out of their pockets coated in the old woman’s blood. Forged signatures and Will paper came out alongside the knives as they spiralled together through the air. When they landed, the knives pierced both the names of Penelope Tate and Thomas Hamlington.  As they did, two drops of blood leaked from the pages.