The Broken Backed Rat
A short story by Lyndon Barry
Detective Peter James Simpson had served in the New York Police Department for twenty-five years. He had spent all of those arduous years working out of the 12th Precinct in Manhattan.
Tonight he was sitting in his car. It was three am, and he was tired. Not just tired from being awake at this hour, as he had not slept yet, but tired from twenty years of investigations. He had spent years chasing leads and suspects, witnessing the brutality that the human race inflicted on each other. And he was exhausted from solving those cases that others deemed impossible to solve. THose cases always landed in his lap.
Most of the all, he was tired from The Thing.
For as long as he could remember, Simpson could do The Thing. One Part of being able to do The Thing meant that he could remember very far back indeed. He could even remember his mother leaning over his crib in the first few days of his life.
The Thing started in that crib. He would always know where his parents were. At first, it was if they were in the room. This grew rapidly, and within days he could tell how close they were.
It never scared him to know his parents were far away, but he remembered the warmth that spread over him when his mother made the decision, conscious or unconscious, to check up on him.
As the years rolled past, The Thing grew as rapidly as he did.
At 1 year old, he knew to the inch where his favourite stuffed dog was at all times.
At 2 years, he could predict what his mother had planned to cook for his dinner.
Weeks before his fifth birthday, he knew that his parents were planning for him to start kindergarten. He also knew with certainty that the experiment would only last days.
The day he started kindergarten, under the watchful eye of Lucy James, The Thing seemed to take over his very existence. Before too long, he had found toys that had been long ago lost. Whether they were hidden behind radiators, under bookcases or at the back of drawers. He would walk without error to their location and free them from their captivity. Lucy was surprised, not just with that, but also that Simpson was simply too advanced. He could already speak clearly, and with an adult’s precision. He would speak to her as though they were equals.
However, when Simpson started to ask about Samantha Friberg and why her heart stopped working, Lucy called his parents. They left Simpson in the play area while they discussed how he knew about the girl who had died in that same kindergarten. The one who had a hidden congential defect which had switched off her life over 4 years ago.
It was agreed that Simpson should not go back to kindergarten.
And so, he was home-schooled for most of his young life. It wasn’t until 7th Grade that things changed wildly for him, and thrust him from his parents loving tutelage into the harshness of Junior High.
Entering into the school system was a huge shock to him. He went from having his mother, who had spent years learning the best ways to teach her son, to a host of different teachers. Each had their own methods of instruction, and this meant he was relying more and more on The Thing to help him. He also realized that he was completely unique in this. Other students had spent years getting used to the plethora of responsible figures around them, without any form of preternatural sense.
Simpson heeded both his parents’ warnings to hide his ability and The Thing’s ability to warn him of problems. He didn’t mention The Thing to anyone, and withheld a lot of the insight he quickly formed of the teachers and students around him.
He saw through the bravado of the football team, the false tales of sexual conquest of the seniors. He saw through the plastic façade of the “beautiful” people and saw the inner strength of those that the rest considered outcasts. Yet for all the camaraderie he felt for the nerds, geeks and loners, he was outside even this group.
It was true he enjoyed reading, particularly horror and science fiction, and he had watched enough educational TV to warrant the installation of a small set in his bedroom. He had a knack for chess, dominos and draughts that confounded the regular players in the nearby park, but he was handsome, slim and didn’t wear spectacles, so he didn’t fit in with them either.
In truth, he didn’t fit in with any group in that school, but The Thing led him out of trouble. Without it, he knew he would have been bullied and abused on a daily basis, but The Thing let him know which way to go home, where to go during breaks to avoid trouble. He knew when to say something in class, and when to remain silent.
And so Simpson passed, unremarked, through Junior High, and through most of High School itself, before things came crashing down around his head in a way he could never have imagined. This life-changing period started with another change in The Thing. One evening, after he had slept most of the day following a particularly bad headache, he had made his way down to the kitchen to get a glass of iced water; he had seen his mother’s glove on the floor in the passage. He could hear his mother and father in the living room, laughing softly at the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. He had given up watching when he could safely predict each punch line, each gag, and each pre-determined “random” event.
He stooped and picked up her glove. He pressed the cool leather to his face and breathed in the smell for a moment. Then the headache returned, full force. He staggered back against the wall, as darkness dropped over his eyes.
The view in his mind was like a film, with the brightness turned low. He could see the hallway, and the front door, as though the lights were dimmed until they were a dull orange within the glass.
The front door opened and his mother stepped in, followed by another figure. This figure was just shadow, no features were able to be determined, but he knew, by instinct alone, that this was himself. His mother shut the door and turned to face the living room door. When she opened it, her face was masked with confusion for a moment, then a mixture of shock and terror.
Simpson, both Simpsons, jumped at the noise. A large, sharp noise that he realised must be a gunshot, only when his mother uttered a soft "oh"
Real Simpson could see the red stain appear on her soft wool jumper. Spreading out from a small dot, to the entire front of her clothing soaked. This took place in the same amount of time it took her to sink to her knees. She cast one look at Shadow-Simpson, and then slowly toppled forward. . . the vision froze as both Simpson's began to scream.
The vision froze, and then rewound until the front door was closed, then it began to play again. This time, the shadow-Simpson was the first to enter. Without pausing, he barged into the living room and the door closed before his mother. The gunshot sounded, and the sound of something hitting the door, then sliding down it was heard. The vision ended again. . .
Yet again, it rewound, this time, it was his mother first again. But Shadow-Simpson tried to push her aside before the shot, this time, two shots were heard and both Shadow-Simpson and his mother slumped to the floor.
Time and time again, the movie in his head played. Each time, subtle differences were seen, but each time, only two endings emerged
Either Simpson's mother would die, or both Simpson and his mother would die together. He never saw his father.
When it lifted, and the pain faded, he was sprawled on the floor. He was sweating profusely and shivering as though he had bathed in ice water, but most of all, worst of all. He knew what was ahead of him. He had seen what was to come, had seen the tragic results and knew, knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he had a choice to make.
Simpson climbed the stairs back to his room. He knew his parents were safe and laughing downstairs, but in his mind his mother was dead, and Simpson was either dead, wounded or unharmed. . . which reality would play out, he did not know, but guessed accurately, that it would depend on his decisions. He held the future in his hands, but every future he saw, his mother was dead. Simpson spent the next few hours on his bed, still holding his mother’s glove. He tried to make The Thing happen again, but either he was too emotional, too tired or it had worn off. He fell into a fitful sleep.
Over the weeks that came, Simpson’s parents noticed his distraction. Each morning, he would emerge from his room, looking pale as though he hadn’t slept well. They thought that school was taking its toll and had asked how his grades were, whether he was being bullied, if someone was trying to pressure him into taking drugs, or if there was a girl he liked. His father even found the courage to ask if it was a boy he liked.
Simpson shook off their questions, telling them he was simply tired and not sleeping, and things would settle down soon.
It was when he awoke in the small hours, screaming and crying for the third night in a row that his parents finally told him that they were taking him to a doctor. All Simpson’s protestations were in vain, and he was picked up straight from school and driven to Dr Osborne, a therapist who his mother’s friends had recommended.
Dr Osborne was a contradiction. He had always imagined psychiatrists to be straight laced, focused on getting their patients to tell them what was wrong, how they were feeling. Dr Osborne was different. She was relaxed and fun, she showed off her collection of books on all kinds of subjects, from science fiction stories to books about dinosaurs. Simpson enjoyed the hour with her and relaxed. He considered telling her about The Thing, and for once, it didn’t complain, but instead he decided to tell her that it was a bad dream that kept coming back. She nodded thoughtfully and suggested a couple of things to help him relax before bed. Don’t watch TV, she said, read a book for a bit instead. Don’t eat or drink too close to bed too. He decided as he left that he’d take her suggestion that night.
Something on the drive home was bothering him, The Thing was whispering to him, but he was too tired to really pay attention. Simpson let his head rest against the window and the passing streets lulled him into a hypnotized state.
He barely acknowledged arriving home, trudging up the stairs to the front door, he let his mother go in first and moved in after her.
It wasn’t until she opened the living room door that The Thing began to buzz annoyingly, and he turned in horror, just in time to see his mother raising her hands and stepping in front of him. The gunshot, heard so many times in his vision was louder now, more harsh. His mother slumped back this time, into Simpson and he tried to catch her. Yet her weight, unsupported, pushed him down to the floor. Pinned beneath her, he saw a man, dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket leap over their sprawled forms and dash out of the door. He heard the screaming, and knew it was him.
By the time the police and ambulance arrived, called by a neighbour, Simpson was cradling his mother’s lifeless body and looking between her, and the body of his father in the living room, the blood streaming from the back of his head was a trickle, compared to the pool that had settled below him.
The policewoman that had picked up him pulled him into the kitchen and kept talking to him was kind. She reminded him of Dr Osborne. Young, pretty, and obviously very empathic and protective.
After a little discussion between her and the other men and women in the room, she began to clean him up. Another cop, an older man, found a few clean clothes from his room and Simpson changed on autopilot. He didn’t notice the soiled clothes being pushed into plastic bags for analysis. Eventually, he learned his father had only been knocked unconscious and would recover, but his mother, his beloved mother, had been killed instantly.
Simpson's world had shifted again, and The Thing hadn't been of any use.
Days later, and after his father had left the hospital, they moved into a small apartment in another neighbourhood. They never returned to the house. It was packed up and the contents either moved to the apartment or donated. Simpson supposed that his father was running away from the place where his wife had been shot. Simpson could never forget it.
Over the next few years, Simpson became more obsessed by the future. The scum that had killed his mother and destroyed his life was never caught, but Simpson knew, in his special way, that he would be caught, and by Simpson. He also knew, from the moment he held the policewoman’s hand that he would follow her career path. He knew that the NYPD was in his future. He also knew that The Thing was there, waiting for him to embrace it.
This is what Simpson did.
Day after day he would study relentlessly. He learned all he could about the police, federal agencies and law enforcement. He studied the great detectives, Holmes, Maple, and Poirot and tried to see as they did. He also honed The Thing. He would collect second hand things with all his spare change and spend hours holding them. With practice, he found he was able to see the people that had held them, seen what they had seen. The experience always caused him great pain and left him weak.
Simpson eventually left school and as soon as he turned 17, he applied immediately for the Marine Corps. He knew that enlisting in the corps and serving a few years was the best way for him into the NYPD. His time in the corps passed quickly. His focus and determination carried him through the physical demands, and his quick wits, intelligence and The Thing guided him through the mental rigours. When he left the service, there was a genuine regret that he could not continue in the military. Both he and his superiors knew that he could make a true career of it, but destiny had cast its finger in his direction, and so with a tinge of sadness he left and applied for the police department.
Simpson found the Police Department exactly as he expected. He relished the physical and mental aspects and found himself in a place where he fitted for the first time. The Thing grew less important, but still gave him insights and directions and he rarely found himself in a situation outside of his control.
As he grew more at ease with the duties of a Police Officer, he found himself gravitating towards homicides. Whilst He didn’t let his other tasks slip, he did volunteer to assist with more homicides than most of his peers. It was no surprise that he used The Thing several times to make suggestions to the detectives. At first, they were scornful of a rookie officer giving them ideas, but as each one turned out to be accurate, some of the wiser heads took his suggestions seriously.
After only 2 years as an officer, he was assigned to the detective bureau of the 12th Precinct, and took his first steps towards becoming a detective. He was partnered with an older man, close to retirement. Detective Carl Broughton knew the city as well as any twenty year veteran. At first, he was annoyed to be partnered with such a young and inexperienced man such as Simpson, but as they worked together and Simpson was asking the right questions, Carl accepted him begrudgingly.
Most of their cases were simple. Wife kills husband, drug addict kills during robbery and hit and run car accidents were the norm, and Simpson didn’t even need The Thing to help him solve these. Simpson was privately very glad that he could hold his own, without relying on the abnormality that he was forced to hide.
The first case where he turned to The Thing was the senseless kidnapping of murder of a 7 year old girl.
The case deeply affected everyone in the precinct because most had sisters or kids. She had been found in a playground in the early hours of a Sunday morning. She was dressed for church and at first glance, it looked like she had fallen asleep on the bench and been forgotten. In truth, she had been taken from her home that night, sexually abused and murdered, before being bathed, dressed in new clothes and left here to be found. Forensic evidence was non-existent, and n witnesses came forward. The clothing had the labels cut from it and had no nothing on it that didn’t come from the girl herself. The parents’ home was immaculate, and their grief and shock so genuine, that they were never really considered suspects, even though their names appeared on the boards in the precinct as possible suspects. Two days went by without a single clue or lead, and Simpson felt an incredible pressure from within. Twice he picked up the bags containing the clothing, but put them back down. He asked himself if he could ever be a real detective if he cheated like this. It was only after seeing the parents for the first time in person that he cast aside all doubts. He told Carl that he needed to take a breather, but instead of walking outside into the night air, he slipped one of the evidence bags from the table in the office, and sat in a toilet cubicle. His hands were already sweating, but he felt cold as he opened it slowly. He pulled out a cardigan and grasped it.
Nothing happened. He closed his eyes and concentrated deeply, but still nothing came to him. He swore softly and started to put stand, shoving the garment back into the bag when it struck him. The raw images of the last moments of the girls live caused him to stiffen. He let out a shuddering gasp as the vision assaulted his senses. He was the girl, sitting in a white bathtub in the middle of a garage. Then he was someone approaching her, holding a scalpel. He felt himself grasp the girl’s hair and screamed as he lowered the blade to the girl’s throat. Then he was out. . . watching from the side as a dark figure carried out the murder. A few spurts of blood hit the floor, but most was caught inside the bath. The cold water turned cloudy red as the girl kicked a few times, and then grew still. The man holding her hair let go and she slid deep into the bath, submerging her head as though to wash her hair. She didn’t rise up though. He watched as the man opposite him looked up. The single bulb above his heads showing the black, greasy hair.
Simpson glared at him, wishing The Thing allowed him to take some form of action, but instead, all he could do was try to memorise the features. The hair, the dark, hollow eyes which were the colour of mud. He saw the clothes, jeans, workman’s boots with steel toes and a leather apron. “You’re mine” Simpson whispered.
Simpson’s vision shifted, and he saw the same man walking into a local clothing store. He recognized it from the year he spent walking the streets. He watched the man buy the clothes that the girl had been found in, claiming it was his nieces birthday.
The vision ended as suddenly as it begun, and Simpson’s legs collapsed under him, His shoulder and jaw hit the porcelain bowl of the toilet and his head scraped down the door. Thankfully, nobody heard.
Simpson realized he had his avenue. When he had returned the clothing, he made an excuse to the others about checking a few clothes shops in the nearby area, to see if someone remembered something. He headed straight for the one in his vision. He still had to be careful, he had to describe the clothing, and provide very vague hints about the man, so not to raises suspicions. Luckily, the store owner had been the one serving this man, and when Simpson helpfully suggested that the man may have been buying clothes for his daughter or perhaps niece, it triggered the memory he was looking for.
Armed with a description and a willing volunteer, Simpson began combing through the books and slides of mug shots. It helped that he knew the man’s face better than the store owners. He narrowed the search down quickly, and found the man. As expected, this piece of human trash had a record. Philip Mark.
Again, with careful prodding, the owner identified him from the mug shot and Simpson presented his finding to his Captain as a potential lead. Thankfully, the Captain followed up and Simpson, Carl and two other detectives found themselves despatched to bring Mark in for questioning. A warrant to search the property was somehow wrangled as well. Mark wasn’t home, but when the garage was opened, Simpson recognized it instantly. The bath was gone, but even in the dim light Simpson knew it was the right place. He began a cursory inspection, casting his flashlight this way and that until he found what he knew would be there. A spot of dried blood. Hours later, the blood tests were confirmed to be a match, and a huge manhunt for Mark was underway. Simpson found himself being congratulated for fine work, even though the effort of the vision, combined with the mental drain of finding a way to link the man in his vision to the murder was exhausting. In a stroke of luck, Simpson’s captain put it down to the stress of his first big case, his first big break and allowed him time off to recuperate from the stress of it.
Simpson Simpson had stepped into the shoes that he would fill for the rest of his years. It was this life that had brought him to his car at three am, clutching a plastic mug of barely warm coffee and staring up the street to the police tape stretched across it, the handful of cruisers, ambulances and unmarked sedans. The red and white lights on the roofs reflected off the walls of the street, broken by the open doors and lit windows of the curious and morbid onlookers.
Something inside him whispered again that this was bad. He had known it before the call came. He had known something would happen before he left the precinct six hours ago at the end of his extended shift. He had known it sat in his sparse apartment, clutching the bottle of bourbon. The bottle was unopened, and had been since he bought it five years ago. He never drank anymore.
Drinking only made The Thing uncontrollable, and the headaches were bad enough without it spearing his brain with image after image and sensation after sensation. The years after his first case, the girl left a park bench, The Thing had been a constant companion in work, and had grown beyond belief. Yet, with the strength of visions and regularity of use, had come pain. Now the pain was out of control. It had been since he had caught his mother’s killer. He had pushed the ability beyond the limits of his endurance. If he had broken something within his mind, he would not have been surprised. These days even a relatively simple feeling about the future was accompanied by a headache. If he actually used the touch, which he had learnt was called psychometry by those that studied these things, and then the pain often left him out of breath and weakened for hours. The last time he used it; he had collapses at his desk in the precinct and had been taken to hospital for fear of a heart attack. The doctor had warned him that his heart was failing, that his blood pressure was high and that he needed to relax, to release the pressure and stress in his life or face an early grave. Simpson had shrugged and been at work the very next morning.
Even so, Simpson realised that The Thing was killing him slowly, and yet, he couldn’t stop using it. Whether it was an addiction to the experience, or a simple truth that he couldn’t leave anyone to live in mystery all his life like he had, he didn’t know. He just knew it hurt.
He grimaced, and reached into his pocket. He popped the top off his illegally obtained vicodin and swallowed three. He had outgrown the usual doses two years ago, and despite the warnings, knew that three would only dull the pain, but leave him completely sharp mentally. He swallowed the remains of the foul coffee and climbed out of the car. He felt it settle and swore. He had forgotten to set the parking brake and the car had rolled an inch, but the movement was enough to make his stomach heave.
As he made his way up to the house, he could see it was a two storey brownstone that was in a state of disrepair. The lower half was obviously a store, but the steel gates covered dirty windows, and he could see old furniture inside. The old-fashioned and hand painted sign read Hoffman’s Furniture. He approached the doorway, which was guarded by two uniformed officers. Both shuffled nervously as he approached, and both were most markedly pale. One glance at their agitation told Simpson that this wasn't going to be pretty. They were both long serving men, with perhaps 40 years between them on the force. He nodded and one, Parks was his name, opened the door and let Simpson through into the shop.
As he stepped inside, he glanced around at the people already inside who had looked up at hearing the door open. They were stood in the far corner, the veterans writing in small black notebooks, the new guys, using the latest tablets to type out neat reports. Simpson was of the old school, still using paper and pencil, and he knew just how poorly each side regarded the other’s methods.
Another officer guarded one solid wooden door, behind the counter. A third doorway, in one corner had a glass window as its centre and Simpson saw shapes moving inside. Probably CSI, he thought as he made his way through the room to the small group of veterans. They acknowledged his approach with curt nods, but Simpson was used to the barely disguised contempt they held him in.
He returned their nod, and then turned back as he heard the commotion at the door. Two morgue attendants were manhandling their gurney through it. They wheeled it towards the windowed door, and then paused, looking at the group.
Mal Bennett, who had also served the department for 12 years, shook his head at them.
“Not until he’s done” he growled, pointing the bitten end of his pen at Simpson. Mal had been Simpson’s longest serving partner, but had requested a transfer after eight months. Kyle Lewis, who was also in the group, had been his partner for only five. Neither of them could cope with the hours of work that Simpson logged, and neither could handle the sense of unease they could around him. They definitely couldn’t deal with the uncanny leaps of thought that often defied logic, but had given Simpson the highest clearance record in the precinct’s entire history. It was these results, as well as two high profile incidents that gave Simpson Simpson the lead on almost any case he wanted. In the last few years, he had shied away from the routine stuff, and as he wound down towards retirement, he only really got interested in the more unusual murders. "Evening' Detective, Can I get you some coffee?" It was Frye, moving up unheard behind him. Being a rookie, with only a few weeks on the job, he was, as always, looking to please his superiors. Simpson responded with a nod, and glanced to Kyle.
"You might want to take a deep breath before this one Pete” Lewis muttered. He glanced at his notes “Male, approximately 55-60 in the kitchen, heart by my guess, and then, there’s the girl in there" As he gestured with one thumb to the glassed door, Lewis swallowed hard, apparently fighting off the rising bile in his throat. A veteran unable to disguise his reaction to the scene intrigued Simpson further. He walked towards the door and fished a pair of surgical gloves out of a box that rested on a table. He slid them on and opened the door.
The smell was the first thing that got to him, something most people couldn’t detect until much later, and it was the smell that accompanied death. He was in a hallway with stairs leading up to his left and two doors in the right hand wall. Both were open, and he could see into the first. This was the kitchen, and he could see the body that waited for him. It was lying on the floor, on its back.
It was a male, dressed in creased, tan pants and a dirty blue collared shirt. He had been in his mid-50's by Simpson’s educated guess and slightly overweight. He knelt down beside the body and carefully examined the area. He noted the look of fear on the corpses’ pale face. The eyes and mouth were wide, staring. Simpson made a few notes, then stood and walked back from the kitchen, back into the hallway, and then started to make his way to the other doorway, which led into a living room. The state of the living room surprised him. It was virtually barren. A filthy, thin mattress was on the floor in one corner. That, was the only thing, besides dozens of balled up pieces of paper that Simpson noticed, before his eyes were drawn to the corner. It was there that he saw a little girl, about 7 or 8 years old. She was sat on the floor; her pale, skinny, dirt-streaked, arms were wrapped tightly around her legs, which were drawn up against her chest. Her face was just as dirty. As he walked towards her, his heart ached. The girl had a strange, ephemeral smile on her lips and bright, clear blue eyes that seemed to follow him as he moved closer. As he knelt before her, her head tilted slightly and her smile grew. Then she blinked. Simpson fell back onto his butt, and then he glanced back to the doorway and yelled. ”This girl’s alive, get the bloody paramedics in here”
He glanced back to the girl and reached out to touch her arm, and spoke softly “Don’t worry it’s. . . ” He broke off at the icy shiver that slithered down his back as he saw her face as it truly was. The face was dirty, and the smile was real, but in place of innocent blue eyes, the blackness of empty, bloody, sockets faced him. Simpson turned away quickly, trying to keep his last meal down. He looked up at Bennett & Lewis who had come in at his shout. He shook his head and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
"What in god’s name happened to her?” he spoke quietly, unable to look back, half afraid of seeing those sockets, and half afraid that those clear blue eyes would be watching him again. Bennett looked down at his notepad, obviously avoiding looking at the tragic sight before him. Neighbours complained about the smell, so they called it in. When the uniforms got here, they apparently took a sniff through the mailbox and figured someone had died in here, so they forced open the door. They found him in the kitchen, face down, no marks. Paramedics figure heart attack or something like that. They called it in, but before they took him in, they took a look around and found this door locked, with the key on the hook on the wall. They opened it and found her. Bennett glanced at the girl and turned away, pressing a tissue to his mouth. A violent shudder went through him, and he barely made it to the sink in the kitchen before he was violently sick.
Simpson stood and looked around the room again. His gaze caught on the wall near the bed and he moved closer. It took him a few moments to realise what he was looking at. Carved into the wall were small stick figures. Some were simple figures in simple poses. Standing, sitting, lying down. but some made evenSimpson gag. They consisted of small scenes of content that disturbed him. Figures led atop one another, “arms” & “legs” entwined in a cruel parody of sexual intercourse. The scenes continued in their depravity. Figures attacking each other in acts that became increasingly gruesome. The figures themselves became more detailed, and then suddenly, seemed to become more angular & crude. Simpson realised that he could see a definite progression in the work and he felt ice forming in his spine. He stumbled towards the kitchen and joined the list of officers who had lost control of their stomachs.
As he leaned over the bowl, his stomach churning, Simpson couldn't get the images out of his head. He retched noisily once more, and then ran the taps to clear the sink. He then moved towards the store again and waved the coroner’s attendants in to collect the bodies while he left the shop. A few minutes later, he sat in his car, engine running and the heaters blowing hot air directly at his face. He watched from that position as the attendants wheel two stretchers, laden with black bagged shapes into their van. As they pulled away, Simpson moved in behind them, following them to the morgue.
Over two hours later, Simpson was again sat in his car, looking out at the raindrops that were bouncing high off his car’s hood. This sudden downpour matched his mood, and he shook his head slowly. After a few minutes, he knew it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, so with a heavy sigh, he climbed out and made his way towards the double doors that led into the precinct. Five minutes later, he was in his office. He dropped the manila envelope and evidence bag on his desk and shook off his wet coat, letting it crumple in a heap, and pulled open a drawer. For a few moments, he stared at the bottle inside, then took it out along with a heavy crystal tumbler and poured a drink. He left it on his desk and he sank into his battered office chair.
He sighed softly and began to read the coroner’s report on the girl. It named her as Eleanor Hutchins. He shook his head in disbelief. Apart from malnutrition, there was no physical reason for the girl to have died. The report simply stated natural causes, with remarks that her eyes were removed post-mortem. The notes stated that the eyes had been chewed out, the marks consistent with rodents, probably rats.
He swilled the bourbon in his glass a few times. He thought about the last drink he had taken, the night after he caught the man he had pursued for his entire adult life. He studiously ignored the fact his hand shook. He put it down, and reached out for the plastic evidence bag and opened it. A small, blue, glass doughnut, hanging from a shoelace fell into his palm, and he leaned back, putting wet skippered feet up on his desk and closed his eyes, running his thumb around the object, he took a few deep, slow breaths and he relaxed, letting The Thing loose. Moments later, his eyes were wide open, staring around. Not at the familiar walls of his apartment, but at the less familiar kitchen he had been in a few hours earlier. He was standing near the door, and could see Ellie Hutchins stood at the refrigerator, its door wide open as she stood on tiptoes. She wore the same dress as she had been found in. A woman with auburn hair, shot through with grey, stood near the sink. She moved about, preparing ingredients of some sort with a slack mechanical nature. She glanced out of the window. "Ellie, please hurry up with the egg" The little girl glanced back, an oddly knowing smile on her lips "Sure Mom, I just need to find the right one”
"Any will do, they're all the same"
"No they're not, one’s special"
With a sigh, the woman turned and walked to the refrigerator, she tried to reach past the girl, but was stopped mid-reach. Ellie was holding up a single white egg, a smile of triumph on her face.
“Thank you Ellie” she walked back towards the sink, picking up a small china mug. She shook the egg slightly, confused for a minute. Why did this one matter so much to her daughter that it had to be used. She shook her head and cracked it against the mug's side. It split open, and drops of red liquid fell onto the work surface. Another crack and it split across the centre, disgorging its bloody content.
Ellie’s mother screamed in surprised, and Simpson saw a shadow in the corner of his eye move, but when he looked, everything was stationary. He looked back at Ellie’s mother and moved towards the sink, as he glanced at Ellie, her head turned to him and he was certain she was watching him move towards the sink, but she said nothing.
Amidst the red liquid was a piece of paper, folded several times. With shaking, nervous fingers, the woman opened it. Then, clasped it in a tight grip, and then turned to look at the man who was suddenly sitting at the table. He hadn’t been there when Simpson arrived. The dead man’s face grew concerned, then it alarmed as Ellie’s mother collapsed forward and fell the floor.
Simpson eyes flew open and he let out a long breath. He was back in the office, and his head screamed in agony. The first few glimpses of daylight strained through the windows and sweat had cooled on his skin. He stood and made his way from the office into the washroom. He soaked his face in cold water, staring into the mirror at bloodshot eyes. He noted the grey rings and bags. He ran wet fingers through the greying hair and shook himself from head to foot. He ran the tap and threw three vicodin into his mouth. He swallowed them dry, before bending to the tap and taking a few gulps of ice-cold water. When he walked back into the main room, he could see that a whiteboard had been filled in. It stood in one corner, with the facts of the case on it. He looked at the notes, not surprised to see that Ellie’s mother had died a week before the father & daughter had been found was an unwelcome revelation, but to find out the grandfather had died a week before that had turned the case into a serious investigation. 4 natural deaths in the space of a few weeks didn’t add up. He walked back into his office and sank into his chair again, the clock on the wall told him it was a little after Five in the morning. He picked up the little necklace again, and he closed his eyes, letting the pressure and pain overwhelm him.
Upon opening them, he saw Ellie sat at the kitchen table, with a strange man at the sink. He was washing a few pieces of crockery while Ellie spoke to him.
”But Uncle Max, Granpa said that he wanted me to come be with him and Mommy. He said that he’d come get me soon, and daddy too. ”
Max was in his mid-thirties at Simpson’s best guess, and he had blue eyes too, but they were not as intense as hers. Max looked at his niece, then turned back to the sink. Simpson watched as his face contorted with anger. He could feel the tension within the man, and the anger boiling beneath the skin. He had lost his father and sister within a week, and his brother-in-law had lost his mind. Simpson could hear faint scratching sounds, and the soft wails of distress from the wall separating kitchen and living room. He felt Max’s sudden urge to take up the blue towel overwhelm him, and as his niece carried on talking about his father, about how he was scaring her, his anger grew. With a sudden wrench of his hands, Max twisted the towel tightly. At the same moment, the man, the girl and Simpson all heard a loud and distinct crack from somewhere near the cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. They all looked around the room.
A sick feeling welled up inside Simpson’s stomach as he watched something move slowly from under the cupboard. A large rat, its patchy fur the colour of rancid meat, but that wasn't what drove an icy spear into his0 spines. Its back was contorted in a horrific way. It was twisted completely. Almost as though someone or something had twisted the rat like the towel in Max’s hands. Yet it walked on all four paws. With an intake of air, Max dropped the towel, Ellie screamed and Simpson felt his sight darken and he started to fall away again, but then, it snapped back into focus and when he looked back down. The rat had gone, if it had ever been there. Max was back, washing things in the sink, and Ellie was sat at the table.
Watching Simpson.
With a gasp, Simpson opened his eyes once more, sweat was pouring from his brow. He stared at his clenched fist and slowly opened it. The necklace was cold in his hand, but the force he had gripped it with had caused an impression on it on his skin. The clock on the wall read a little after 10am, the room outside was a bustle of activity. He could see through the slatted windows that a few people were glancing towards the closed door, but they knew that Simpson had always told them to never bother him in the door was closed.
Simpson gripped the necklace tight, and once again, felt the overwhelming pressure. Darkness closed in around him, and let the visions take him once more. He was in the hallway now, as he had seen it earlier that night. Ellie was standing next to her father, who held her arm tightly. She was wearing that same dress again.
“But Daddy, it wasn’t my fault Mommy went to sleep”
With a snarl of anger, he pushed his daughter into the room, and the door was locked behind her. Simpson watched as he turned away, Simpson could hear Ellie’s soft cries from inside the room. He followed her father into the kitchen. As he did so, a noise from the door to the store caught his attention. He heard footsteps moving down the hallway, and a faint shadowy form approach the door to the living room. He heard it unlock and open, but the door remained firmly closed. He started towards the doorway himself, but stopped when she spoke. Two words that reduced his heart to ice.
“Hello Grandpa”
Moments later, Simpson heard a crash in the kitchen and in an instant was there, he could see the man’s face screwed up in pain and his body had dropped to the floor to where he had been found. He heard Ellie giggle as blackness swarmed around. He found himself in a familiar location. An alleyway, just a few blocks from his own apartment. In his hand was a gun. His gun. Not the revolver he had been issued with, and which remained his department weapon when the police department had adopted the 9mm semi-automatics as the standard issue. This gun was one he had stolen from an evidence locker two days before. The same day that The Thing had finally given him the last vision he needed to be absolutely sure that William Adkins had murdered his mother. Adkins had been arrested shortly after breaking into an apartment and was brought into the 12th Precinct. A . 38 revolver had been found in his nearby car, which had been Adkin’s home for over a year. Ballistic tests matched it to a handful of shootings over the last fifteen years, and to Simpson’s shock, he had been told by Mal Bennett, the investigating detective, that one of those was his Mother’s murder.
Simpson had bullied Bennett into giving him access to the case files, and to one of Adkin’s possessions, a cheap signet ring, as well as a bullet from that gun. He had kept them even after Adkin’s had been released on bail. They had nothing that could tie Adkin’s to any of the shootings. He claimed to have bought the gun only recently from a friend, and given up the name of a particularly loathsome addict.
Simpson had taken his first vacation time in three years, and spent the next few days in his apartment, the bullet in one hand, the ring in another. He saw image after image of Adkin’s violence. He had seen the man shoot five different people. Simpson learned that two had survived and recovered, two had died and one was in a vegetative state in hospital. Finally, Simpson had the vision that he wanted. He had swallowed a month’s worth of vicodin, chased down with a full bottle of bourbon in the last twenty four hours, but he saw it. He saw the same vision as years ago, but this time from Adkin’s viewpoint. He saw the man breaking in, and being confronted by Simpson’s father. He saw Adkin’s hitting him ten times with the butt of the gun. Then he saw the door opening and had fired blindly at it, not even seeing who had opened it. He saw his mother falling, but couldn’t see himself at all. The vision ended as Adkin’s had fled. Now, Simpson could see the man he had chased for five long blocks. He held the gun up at him and fired twice. Without mercy, without compassion, he ended William Adkin’s life with the same gun that had taken the life of his mother.
Simpson felt himself detach from the Simpson that had killed a man in cold revenge. He could see himself standing over the body, but he saw someone else watching as well. Next to him, he could see Ellie Hutchins staring up at him. She reached out a hand, the smile on her lips.
“Grandpa said it’s your turn now”
Detective Peter Simpson was found three hours later, still sat rigidly in his chair, staring at a full glass of bourbon. Detective Mal Bennett had finally been convinced to open the door and had found Simpson. He had soiled himself. Simpson was hospitalised, and finally committed to an asylum where three weeks later he stabbed his thumbs into his eyes and opened his wrists with his teeth. His body was discovered an hour later. When those curious about his last case had compared the notes, his time of death matched Eleanor Hutchins to the minute.
He was 45 and three days.
During the months following the discovery of Ellie Hutchins, everyone that had been in that store resigned, admitting that they had been suffering terrible dreams about rats. Some also admitted they had seen Peter Simpson sitting in the empty office.