O is for OMINOUS TOTEM
The Seer was inwardly amused at the
sergeant’s irritation at having to lower himself to consorting with a
“press-hungry public shamster” as he’d put it, but kept the amusement to
himself. No need to test the limits of sergeant Zucco’s irascibility.
Zucco cleared as throat with gusto.
“You’ve doubtless heard about the string of murders in the Bryn Mawr area of
town?”
“Indeed I have. I get the paper,
sergeant, just like everybody else.”
Zucco replied, “Looking for your own picture, no
doubt.”
“No,” the Seer said, sitting down
at the table and raising his coffee cup, “I only subscribe for the comics.”
To his surprise, this elicited a
curt snicker from the callous cop.
“We’ve hit a wall,” Zucco
continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ve been ordered to see if there’s anything
you can add to flesh out the details on this nonsense.”
“What could I do to help?” The Seer
asked. “I’m simply a, what was it? A public shamster?”
“Probably, but you seem to have a
lot of useless trivia in that turbaned skull of yours about stuff like this, so
here you go.” With that the sergeant put a small paper bag on the table in
front of The Seer. The kind you
might bring home donuts in, or a small liquor bottle.
Cautiously, The Seer separated the
edges of the mouth of the bag, and found a smooth, oddly shaped object with his
fingers.
“What the devil?” What he produced
from the bag was ghastly, and like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was a
small figure, kneeling on all fours and grasping a skull in the primitively
carved fingers of its right hand. It had a square-ish head with a series of
rings carved around its neck, and a ghoulish open maw filled with tiny
needle-prick teeth. Titling it towards the light hanging over the table caused
the two eye cavities to glare a blood-colored reflection. Deeply set within the
sockets were two red gemstones of some type.
“What is this?” The Seer begged
urgently.
“What I came to you for, smart
guy.”
“Where was this?”
“On the back of the body of the
latest victim. And there’s been one exactly like it on the bodies of each of
the last six.”
It was odd to say the least. It had
the patina of aged wood or bronze, it’s ochre-hued form marred with splotches
of green and brown. It resembled highly polished sandstone, but it didn’t feel
like rock at all. Or wood or metal for that matter.
The Seer clasped the object between
both of his hands, bowed his head until his chin was balanced in the center of his
clavicle, and touched the seeing stone on his turban to the totem.
His mind exploded with a firework
show of images; of natives slogging through fields of tall grass and palm trees
under the crack of a whip, of a chair like no other he’d ever seen, hewn from a
rock that matched the tiny chips of red that made up the statue’s eyes. There
was a collage of pain, of sacrifices and blood, and at the perimeter of it all,
a figure. The Seer couldn’t quite make out the form’s features, but there was a
malevolent aura as hot as red steel radiating off it.
His head jerked up, his eyes
flashing to the sergeant. He set the totem down on the table.
“Sergeant, I have to ask what will
sound like a very silly question, but I want you to answer it honestly.”
“Whatizit?”
“Are you sure that there were
individual totems on each body? Is it possible that it was simply the same
totem—this totem—every time?”
“’s impossible,” Zucco spat. “Other
ones were all tucked away behind lock and key in the evidence room.”
“Call and make sure, there’s a
phone behind you.”
Zucco sighed, rolled his eyes
beneath a heavily furrowed brow, and turned to the phone.
“Yeah, Zucco. Hey, go open the
evidence lock-up and check on those figurines we found with the bodies in Bryn
Mawr.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah? Y—wait a minute, how the
hell could…” The surly sergeant turned to The Seer, the color flushed from his
face. “What’s the deal here you Ouija board bandit?”
The Seer motioned towards the
statue, not wishing to touch it again, ever. “This thing is alive, sergeant. It
isn’t the killer, but it’s what the killer is killing for. Not to steal, but
because this thing needs the blood of the victims.”
“You’re nutty. Why?”
“I don’t know. But I can assure you
unless we find this psychopath, and soon, there’ll be something far worse than
a madman with a knife running loose in the city.”
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