Feb
28
28
DISCLAIMER – This story features images of violence, adult language, and some adult situations.
The following story is Copyright © 2015 Padraig O’C. Copying this story without permission from the author is strictly prohibited.
Tap, tap, tap. The sound just kept going on, and on. Stupid damn racket. The security guard thought. A sound that just kept coming over, and over again as he sat there in the station outside the gated community of ‘Shadey Meadows’. One would think that it would be quiet on a nice night in between the wonderfully windy storms that usually rampaged across Puget Sound. Today was proving to be the exact opposite. In fact, the tapping had been occuring for a few minutes now. It was a strange tapping though.
The security guard looked up from his smart phone and checked the time, 12:05am. Just a tad after midnight, and he was somehow hearing tapping coming from the house nearest to the station. The tapping was coming from the wall that surrounded the entrance of the community. Slowly, the man set aside his distraction to make his way out of the small security booth. Dressed in the typical fashion of the long respected of rent-a-cops. At least he had a taser though.
The work for the communityw was decent. Though there was rarely any problem. Maybe a few drunken teenagers, or at worse a local activist trying to break in. Most of those who lived in Shadey Meadows were of the upper crust of society who had once owned small mansions in the Sehome neighborhood of the city. Now with recent developments, the man was watching everyone from real estate moguls, to the local candidates for mayor. It was the name of Richard Daniels that drew his attention to the house where the tapping had occured.
The tappy was now gone. Just the dark night greeted the man as he reached back toward his small metal desk within the station. There he located a large flashlight with a solid dark blue metal body, and then held it aloft. The tapping suddenly resumed as a series of thuds was heard from the opposite side of the wall. The man stopped. He then in that moment moved the light to shine over the source of all the noise. All he found was a series of low hung huckle berry bushes as they shivered in the swift wind that came moving without warning along the wall. His brow lifted as the checked and rubbed his chin.
He was a young lad, tanned skin, a slight goatee. The wall was stark and no one nearby, so he turned to face the house itself. It was large cookie cutter or ticky-tacky looking structure painted in pleasant pastel peach color. I will never get the color choices here. His eyes scanned through the gloom laying over the entire house. The moon was not shining that night as the usually clear skies were blocked by a light cloud cover. When he shined his light on the actual house itself a strange sense of forboding seemed to come rising up deep in his belly.
As the young man shined his light into the windows of the quiet house, he noticed a complete lack of light emanating from the house itself. The house was two stories in height, with a large overhanging garage near the the left of the wall. He glanced out over the road that made itse way up the rows of small cookie-cutter mansions that flanked it. Douglas Manor they called it, for a reason he could not fathom. Some name taken from a family back in Scotland he had heard when he firsted started the job. Then again, he was not paid to really wonder what they did in Shadey Meadows, or why names were chosen.
His eyes continued to scan a bit further, and as the ill-feeling rose further up his chest he stopped. There was definitely something utterly wrong. The night was feeling wrong to him – wrong in a way he had never felt before.He had never considered himself to be gifted with a sixth sense, but the young man possessed a decent sense gut feeling. It was a reason he was hoping to join the local police force, and use the money from his security gig to pay his way through the academy.
Now though, he was just feeling wrong out to his extremities. Mister Daniels was suppose to be in tonight, the guard had seent he mayoral candidate himself just a few hours ago. The man’s wife was out of town on business for her local charity dedicated to issues in Africa. Even at night, the Daniels home was rarily completely dark. In fact there was always a light left on in the master bed chamber for Mister Daniels. The young man had made note of that through his nights, and months of observation in his small little booth.
His breath stilled. He was now heading to the backyard as he started to wonder if perhaps someone had scaled the wall to break into the house. A large porch projected out the back of the house. It was railed by fine pine said to have been taken from the local mountains. The railing surrounding the edge of the proch was high enough to prevent the children of the house from falling off of the deck seven feet from the ground. The guard then rounded the edge of the house as he made his way back, and then his breath caught in his throat. Wires which once connected the security system, and the power to the house were cut. A most sinister sight indeed!
The man’s eyes had located the reason he was feeling uneasy. Someone had cut the power of the house deliberately. That meant the security system would be down, leaving him the first line of defense or at worst case scenario, investigation. As he turned away from the power station he glanced back at the house. The forboding that was slowly bleeding from the house like an open wound, and the worse it seemed to be coming from the door to the porch. Drawing closer he would then see that the door handle was torn straight off as if a someone had snapped it like a twig.
Why did I not hear anything when this happened? It was the very notion that he had somehow missed all of this in his booth. Even when he was bored on his smartphone he still heard the lover quarrels at night; the ringing of midnight bycicle rides; and the whirring of tires from electric cars. Hesitation held him in its grip for just a few hard seconds. Invisible hands seemed to hold him back until the last moment surged him forward.
There was a chilled pause as he took a step toward that door and pushed on it causing it to swing open with a loud creak. The house inside was cold, and smelled of decay. Flashing the light across the room he noticed that it appeared that the backroom had been trashed. It appeared to be a breaking and entering attempt. Or someone had meant it to appear so, badly. The guard located a staircase and slowly climbed up the stairs. The thick soles of his work boots echoing throughout the dead house as he came to the landing what appeared to be the personal study of Mister Daniels just outside the master bedroom.
The man froze. As he reached the top of the landing he found his light streaking across the narrow room to face the opposite wall. Clouds in the sky shifted suddenly and moonlight bled into the room. It was then that he noticed the circle on the ground marked with strange intersecting logograms. Staring at the ground he nearly missed the pool of blood. The red striped legs, and the slunk form of the mayoral candidate.
The young man stood agape as he stared at the dead blood smeared body of a man he had come to know from the last few months. Whoever had invaded the home had taken their time with the mayoral candidate. The man had light dragged cut marks over his arms, and chest marking acts of torture. His lips were split, and his eyes blackened with bruises as if someone had beaten him hard. His arms were tied up and hanging from a piece of rope ran through a light fixture. Blood was everywhere as well as what appeared to be a ritualistic knife.
Below the hanging body was a circle. Perhaps six-feet in circumference with a three concentrice circles within. At the center was a strange tri-part spiral. It almost looked a bit like a swastika the guard had seen in old World War Two movies. He inches towards it and when he did a sudden spark hit his body, and everything went black.
Next Part: Chapter 1
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