39- The Horror.

Mazurka pocketed his phone and scratched at the back of his neck.

"Stretching it a bit, don't you think?" Skye remarked as she watched him from the doorway of her lab.

"Not at all. He's been acting strange since that meeting at the M.E.T. Making bad decisions. I'm hoping this reels him in a bit. Besides, we both saw that thing on the video. We may not know what it is, but it is one hundred percent responsible for killing Makayla Schneider."

"Yeah, that much is certain," she said quietly as she stared down at the floor. "It's horrible on video. No wonder they all died with that look on their face. That something like that could be real, and out there..." she paused and swallowed, her hands quaking as she tightened them against her arms, "it's terrifying."

Setting his hand upon her shoulder, he spoke quietly, "As disturbing as it is, do your best not to think about it."

"If it were that easy, I'd be doing it!" Skye shouted, harshly throwing his hand from her shoulder and storming back into her lab.

"You think I don't know that?" he questioned, following after her. "Look, what I meant was, focus on what you know and not what that thing might be."

Mazurka's voice was shaky, he had been trying to follow his own advice but was failing miserably at it himself. He felt as if he was coming apart at the seams, unable to wrap his mind around what had happened earlier with Quayleigh, and now having watched an unknown creature, a horror from the darkest fabric of reality, take a human life. It was all beginning to feel like too much. The knowledge he had he couldn't even share with those around him for fear that they would think him mad for believing what she had said. He wasn't even entirely sure that he believed it himself.

'She said Death GAVE her HIS eye, as if he was a person. A being. Could that thing be Death? A servant of Death? She said its head was as big as she was when she was a kid, but this thing is much smaller than that. What am I thinking? Death is just something that happens to people. It isn't a living thing! Or is it? She has its eye. She said she had its eye. It could be something else right? A hallucination from lack of blood and the pain could explain what she saw, or thinks she saw, but I SAW her eye. Or did I? It's not like I can remember it. Was I tricked somehow?' He thought as he paced around the room, his hand on his chin.

"Would you stop that?!" Skye shouted out of frustration as she turned and stared at him. "You aren't helping anything by wearing out the floor!"

"Sorry. I just…" He sighed. "How much longer is this going to take?"

"VAS is just about half done with the file. You should probably go and get some air. Better yet," she said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a twenty, "go across the street and get me a bottle of Bourbon. The cheap stuff's fine." Taking the money, she held out towards him, she grabbed his hand tight, "actually, spend it on the good stuff: blue bottle with a silver label. I don't want to be conscious tonight."

"Yeah, me either." He trembled as her hand slipped away. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

As Skye turned back to her computer, he left the lab and closed the door. Taking a moment, he leaned against the wall of the hallway prying his phone out of his pocket to check the time. It was nearing four thirty. Taking a deep breath to settle his nerves, he left the precinct and ran across the road to the liquor store. Picking up the bottle of Bourbon Skye had requested, along with a twelve pack of beer for himself, he slowed his pace, dropping the beer off in his car on the way back inside where he promptly returned to her lab.

"Here," he said as he placed the paper bag clad bottle down on her desk next to her computer along with her change.

"I don't think that's going to be enough," she quaked, glancing at the bottle and then back to her screen. "It finished a few minutes ago."

Mazurka breathed uneasy as he stared at the computer screen. "What did VAS find?" He swallowed harshly; his throat having grown dry.

She took a deep breath to calm herself and grabbed her mouse, sliding the cursor across the screen, clicking on the file titled, 'M. Schneider'.

"The nanny cam that was used was triggered by two separate detection methods, audio and video. The audio is stored in separate files and is going to take a lot longer to process, but the video was already broken down into individual files so there wasn't much scrubbing to do. Instead, I had VAS reorganize and timestamp the footage by date, and then subdivided all the footage that was recorded in the last twenty-four hours. It looks like there are seven files. A little over three hours of recorded footage. The last file is the longest and was triggered by police, continuing until the camera was discovered. The one before that should be when the body was discovered."

"Then what is this one?" He pointed to the fifth file that was nearly twenty minutes long. "This is after…"

"I don't know. The camera stops recording after twenty seconds of no detectable motion. This file starts two minutes and seventeen seconds after the fourth file, being the one we don't need to watch again right now."

"Play it."

Skye hesitated, turning to look up at him, she questioned, "Are you certain? I mean I know we have to, but we could wait for Harlowe to get here."

Mazurka nodded motioning to the fourth file, "You're certain that's the one?"

"Yes. Absolutely. I made note of the time, so it was easier to find. And I didn't want to watch it again, until I had no choice."

"Any chance you can print the frames without playing the video again?"

Skye nodded and released her pent-up anxiety as she turned back to her computer. "I can let the program run in the background. I usually like to watch the videos frame by frame, but I… I don't know if I can watch that again. At least not this soon. I've seen a lot of horrifying things captured on film, and I've heard more than my fair share of nightmare inducing audio files, but this was on a different level. The video was bad enough, but the audio makes it so much worse."

"I know," he said as he pulled up a chair and sat next to her. "In the audio she is clearly accusing her husband of sending people to kill her. This fifth file, it might be the people that tossed the house. It's possible that they found her and didn't do anything. It also makes the conversation she was having with herself make some sense."

"Except that she wasn't alone."

"Yeah, that's the terrifying part. She knew. She knew that thing was there with her before it became visible to the camera. Didn't she say something about 'they deserve this, not me?'"

"To be honest I wasn't really paying much attention to the audio at the time."

"That makes two of us," he replied as he leaned back in the chair and rubbed his face.

"I'm hoping that there might be some low frequency audio that was recorded, something in the range that we can't hear normally. Not that I want to know what that thing sounds like."

"I'm oddly curious about the other side of that conversation though," he admitted as he leaned forward once more. "Think you could do me a favor in return for that bottle?"

"If I give you another twenty, will you go and fetch me another?"

"No need for the money. I'll bring you a bottle from my personal stash. High quality stuff from Cove-Atal. A gift from my father, or so my mother always says. All I need from you is another copy of the security footage of Piang Lee's crime scene."

"The entire thirteen seconds?"

"Yes, everything with the shadow in it. I want them for comparison and Harlowe and I put markings all over the originals."

"No problem. I'll get them printing as soon as VAS is done with this file."

"Appreciated. I'll bring you that bottle tomorrow," he replied as the door opened and Harlowe marched in, Folsten behind him.

"Show me!" he shouted as Mazurka stood up.

"Wait, Harlowe, you need to prepare yourself for this." Throwing up his hands, Mazurka tried to slow his partner's advance.

"Prepare myself? For what? You think this is the first sicko I've seen on tape? Kid, I was watching killers screw tiny corpses while you were still in diapers! Now get out of my way. Skye, play the footage. I want to see this monsters face!"

"Sir, I really think you should listen to Yechiel on this," she replied as she turned and looked at him. "Whatever this thing is that was caught on this video, it isn't human."

"If it's not human that it's some sort of summons. Why are you two acting like there's a fucking alien on this thing? You called me back here to see this killer, so show me the footage. And Yechiel, get your clerk on the phone. I want her to meet us at the M.E.T. tomorrow morning at nine."

"I can't force her…"

"Convince her! I'm done playing games with this lunatic. We need answers and we need someone who no affiliation to the M.E.T., and in return, they want someone who doesn't work for the police. So, unless you know someone else who knows enough about magic to understand what they're reading, and you can keep a close eye on, we don't have any other option. We have a small window of opportunity right now before this asshole kills again. I'd like to have answers before our time runs out."

"I get it, but before anything else, you need to watch the video," Mazurka said as Skye handed Harlowe a headset.

"Can I get a set too?" Folsten asked from behind.

Mazurka handed her the set he had been using and stepped to the side.

"I'll put it on the large monitor," Skye remarked pointing to the 80inch TV mounted to the far wall. "Brace yourselves. This isn't easy to watch."

Harlowe nodded to her as he and Folsten put on their headsets, and she pressed play.

*************

Harlowe stood silent as he pulled the headset off and Folsten ran from the room with her hand clasped over her mouth.

"I'll go check on her," Skye said as she left the lab.

Placing the headset onto the desk behind him, Harlowe visibly shook, beads of sweat dripping down his brow.

"That's not any summoned creature I've ever heard of," he uttered, his voice holding back a subtle quake. "It was speaking to her. It's sentient."

"Now you know why I wanted you to see it for yourself. Whatever it is, I don't know if we can stop it."

"You're wrong about that kid. That thing is alive, there's no reason to believe it can't be stopped. We need to figure out what it is though," Harlowe remarked as he stood up and turned to face Mazurka. "And if someone is controlling it. It could be a puppet, or maybe it's a practitioner who screwed up on a transmutation ritual. It may not be human now, but there's a possibility that it was at one time. Rituals do go wrong, and weird things can happen. Officially, that is a human. At least that is how we're going to treat it. It's a practitioner who screwed up his magic. Listen to me Kid, we need someone in those archives. My careers over either way, but if we don't close this case in a years' time, your career is going to die with mine."

"What did you do Harlowe?"

"I traded my freedom so we could get someone in those archives. I can't read the mages books, but she can, can't she?"

Mazurka nodded hesitantly. "I think so. She had a decent collection of magic books, and she certainly understands how it all works."

"Convince her to come in and speak with Folsten, at the very least. I'll find a way to get her to the M.E.T. if I have too. And one more thing, Dylan Kirkwood, I want him to come in with her. I've a few questions for him to answer."

As Harlowe left the room, Mazurka pulled out his phone and looked at the time again. "Shit," he whispered as he glanced up at the monitor.

Grabbing the remote he rewound the footage, pausing it at the moment just before the monster killed Makayla Schneider. He wanted to engrain it into his mind, every visible inch, from the shiny black surface of its skin to the three rows of needle shaped teeth, to the way its eyes closed when it stretched back its lips to speak, even though no sound emanated from it that they could hear. It was a creature of death and fear, horrifying to look upon, and worst of all, it was real; Alive and breathing. And it could be anywhere.