Chapter Four

Levi dreaded the stairs down into the coroner’s office. The majority of the building had been built with old red brick, but they made the coroner’s side with silver marbled stone, with a silver railing along the east of the building. It led down into the earth with a massive steel door. Two large loading docks descended on the other side of the building, where two coroner’s vans lingered. The cold air bit into his leather gloves. Levi took the slippery stairs one step at a time. He descended slower than cautious, more apprehensive. He did not want to follow through with the words that kept him up all night.

Corpses stood up in the back of the van, screaming through the body bags.

It made a veteran homicide detective take melatonin before bed, and sleep with his daughter’s night light. When he came home, Marigold made it her mission to warm him down to his heart. She drew him a lopsided heart with ‘Daddy’ written in the middle. Then she begged to braid his hair like Mommy braided hers. Thankfully, Karla came in to rescue him and tossed a wig on his head for Marigold to knot up to the best of her abilities. Her giggles warmed him down to the bone. Her chubby arms wrapped around his shoulders as she smashed her pudgy cheeks into the back of his head. He could deal with an army of screaming, possessed corpses.

Of course, when Levi made a joke about needing a night light, Marigold rushed to her room and came out with her soft floral nightlight, saying it was good luck. Karla could sleep through a flash bomb if she were allowed to curl up in a cocoon. The three slept back to belly, the room full of soft snores that kept the demons at bay. Then his alarm went off.

Somehow between nursing his coffee to kill time and shuffling his feet enough, he arrived at the coroner’s door. His badge unlocked the steel and left him in the open doorway.

“Well, don’t just doddle, Detective, you’re letting the heat out and the fog in.” The jovial voice of Dr. Erhart Green floated out from the depths of the morgue.

“Apologies, Doctor.” Levi shuffled in, his feet like cement blocks. “I’m here—”

“You’re the one dealing with the cultists, I presume?” Dr. Green cocked a brow. The massive open space contained only a few slabs, walls of steel cabinets and locking drawers with an office to the right, Dr. Green lingered at the back of the room. The ceiling drooped over their heads, steel beams framing long rectangular lights and tiles.

Levi blinked wildly before he scanned the area for any other detective in the workspace. Dr. Green’s black hair cleanly framed his jawline. He was always clean shaven and sharply dressed for a man Levi often found covered in body parts and bloody apron. Underneath his lab coat, he wore a royal purple button-down, a sleek black tie, and a silver clip. When he shook hands with the doctor the first time over a year ago, he introduced himself as Erhart Green, the only sensible person in Harperville. Levi agreed whole heartedly, as he kept to himself, didn’t engage in office gossip, and was mostly regarded with high esteem from the superiors. Dr. Green was one of the few outsiders among Harperville’s precinct. Though, Levi heard Erhart was born in Harperville and moved away, then came back.

However, unlike Levi, it’d been for completely different reasons. His daughter was the only reason Levi hadn’t packed up the house and moved back to Jacksonville. From what Levi could gather, Dr. Green and his husband Richard Green moved to Harperville solely because it was the first position open when Erhart graduated. Not a bad reason, in Levi’s book, but looking at it now, he couldn’t imagine why he would stay.

With a sigh, Levi stepped further into the workspace. “Cultists? Really?”

“They happen more than you’d think.” Dr. Green chuckled to himself. He dried his palms on paper towels that he tossed into the HazWaste can. “Especially up North like we are. It’s like a breeding ground for crazy.”

“Don’t tell me that,” Levi trudged further into the morgue.

The slabs to Dr. Green’s left were clean and glimmering silver. A half wall full of drawers separated the front lab from the back, with a long curtain pulled halfway closed along the ceiling behind it. The back of the morgue was a wall full of metal square doors with numbers and labels hung off handles. Every inch of the morgue was pristine; even the floor reflected his boots as he followed Dr. Green. He stood back as the doctor pulled open and drew the slabs out of six of them.

“What says cultist to you?” Levi grimaced, avoiding the bags like they were snakes ready to strike him.

“Well, for starters, this a red flag.” Dr. Green slipped on a new pair of gloves and stepped up to the closest body to Levi. On the slab lay a man missing his legs and most of his pelvis. Dr. Green’s inspected the body with a stony, unphased expression. “The water did a bit to the skin, but I made a sketch for you, using bits and pieces from everybody.”

Levi hovered over a body, as the doctor peeled back the sheet completely off the corpse. A circular design had been carved into the man’s chest. With flesh the color of gravel with speckles of blood and purple veins, the bodies looked as if it had been fished out of sewage.

“How many bodies, total do you think?” Levi blurted out, his lungs restricted. Everybody was carved. Dead, that would take strength to make the cuts as deep as they were. Alive, it brought many more concerns to mind. There were no ligature marks on either wrist nor on the neck. He couldn’t immediately see if there were needle marks for drugs. There may not be a way to run a toxin report with the body in its condition. Levi inspected around the corpse, inspecting for any signs of struggle.

“Six that I have. I’m not sure, there could be many, many more. With how they were found, it could mean there were more out there. All of them with the same symbol.” The doctor pried the corpse’s eye sockets open. “Also, the missing eyes kind of clued me in too. Yeah, these guys weren’t messing around.”

Levi reeled back in disgust as he was presented with empty sockets. “Why would they do that?” Levi swallowed hard on the bile that rose in his throat. It would help no one to vomit all over the good doctor’s clean floors. Suddenly he missed the festering smells of Jacksonville dumpsters that sat in the boiling summer sun. Far more pleasant than this.

“Like I said, the fog breeds crazies.” Dr. Green clicked his tongue against his teeth with disdain. He and Levi shared a look of disbelief before Dr. Green bent over and ran gloved fingers over the edges of the eye sockets. “But it seems they were ripped out while they were alive. The marks around the eyelids and cheeks suggest they were clawed out.”

Levi hugged the case file against his chest for support and swallowed. The doctor gave Levi a moment to collect himself. He’d seen some messed up bodies, people who were actually fed through shredders. Someone willingly clawing their eyes out was a new one.

“And the eyes were the cause of death? Or was it the carvings on their chest?” Levi did not want the answer.

“Detective, you’d be surprised what the human body can endure. Pain can be completely refreshing to some, or a relief to what they feel on the inside. The cause of death for these guys was disembowelment.” Dr. Green ran a gloved finger along the large gash along the first man’s stomach. “Every man has the same story on these slabs—they were gutted, then left in the water. Probably to ensure the fish ate them.”

It took a minute for his stomach to relax, but then Levi was able to step up to the slabs. Dr. Green stepped away to expose the other bodies. All the corpses existed in different stages of decay. Skin shriveled from the salt water and their stomachs ripped open. Keeping his hands to himself, Levi inspected the gash wound where the victim’s organs were ripped out. Deep, jagged cuts left the flesh puckered. There was no way to tell if he lost more to the killer or to the fish. As Levi stepped toward the head of the slab to investigate the next one, he saw something in the shadows of the hollow eyes. Levi stepped back and bent his knees slightly.

“What is it?” Dr. Green perked up.

“He’s got a tattoo.” Levi breathed, squinting. He slowly crept closer. His boots squeaked against the lab floors as he situated himself better to see up and under the eye socket.

“That’s not surprising.” Dr. Green stepped up to a small table. He pulled the drawer out and exposed a small set of tools.

“On the inside of his eyelids?” Levi peered up from the corpse.

Dr. Green spun with confusion to the closest victim. Levi pointed up into the socket. Dr. Green pulled out a slender rod with a mirror upon the end. Both men hovered over the tool as Dr. Green slid it into the socket. “The great dreamer?”

“I’ll be damned,” Dr. Green whispered, as he pulled his phone out skillfully from his lab coat pocket and snapped a photo of the reflection. “You’ve found something to surprise me.”

“And gives me a lead as to who these people were.” Levi straightened from his crouched position. “Not many people tattoo inside the eyelids. Thanks, Doc, you gave me a good footing here.”

Dr. Green beamed, “I’m glad to be of service. I’ve got a copy of my report on the desk for you; it’s in the manilla folder with ‘detective’ written on the front. I’m gonna lock these boys up and go take a really hot shower.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Levi ripped the gloves off his hands.

He stepped past the slabs, the sounds of sheets ruffling and fridge doors closing behind him. The office portion of the lab was a small alcove on the side. One wall made of windows and the others decorated with the same mute blue tile of the laboratory. A large gray couch sat beside a filing cabinet and a thick oak desk.

Just as he said, the file was on top of a monthly planner. There were sticky notes along the edge of it in letter and number code. Underneath the file sat a leather book tied up with black straps; a burgundy wax seal shimmered on the front. Levi tried not to pick into the doctor’s schedule or coding notes—he could only imagine why he kept them cryptic. The laboratory door slammed shut. The only sounds now were the humming of the neon lights and Levi’s own breathing.

He opened the file, the pictures of closed-eyed patients over medical files. No names, no prior medical files, no fingerprint matches; they were ghosts to the system. There was a note that Dr. Green was waiting back for federal matches, but that would take far longer than Levi wanted to wait. The tattoo clue was a good start—very few tattoo artists in Harperville had the technical skill to tattoo on the underside of the eyelid. It would be kind of hard to forget, he would hope. Then the door opened, and Levi turned around.

“Oh! Doc, I meant to ask about an incident with the bodies at the docks.”

Levi glanced up from the file to find no one in the laboratory. Except as he searched for Dr. Green, the door to the first victim’s slab caught his eye. It swayed, completely open. Levi wheezed, “Damn cheap locks, going to give me a heart attack.”

He stomped toward the slab, intent on following up with the incident when he got back from the tattoo lead. As he reached the door, a hard chill ran down his spine. He could see the corpse like it were tattooed to his eyelids. Who would do that to their own body? Or was it torture? Was this victim forced to endure the carving out of their own eyes? Were they cultists, or were they unfortunate souls? Levi shut the door with a sigh. The more he chased this case the worse it got.

The door to his right flung open. Levi lurched backward; his right eye twitched. Coincidence, Erhart didn’t latch them right. Until he reached out for the second door, and the first door swung open. It bashed into his back, knocking him to the floor. Levi wheezed for air, as all oxygen sharply exited his body with the impact. The floor danced under him while he wobbled back to his feet. In quick succession, the doors flung open before him. His feet failed him as he toppled into a curtain.

Time stopped around him. He grasped the curtain, popping it off its hook. Fingers crawled out of the fridge onto the edge of the metal wall. The impact of the floor took all his air. Slabs inched out of the wall, bodies contorting in ways bones would never allow. All their eyes were open; their empty sockets peered right at him. Levi scrambled backward, the curtain tangling his hands and feet. Panic surged through him. The lights flickered; cold air ran down the back of his shirt as he tried to peel away.

Strength returned to his legs as he flung himself up onto his feet. He barely had a moment of sense to grab up the files from the floor as he booked it toward the door. Just as he reached the door, the lights shut off. He flung himself through it. There was no daylight beyond this door.

A drop of water hit his shoulder, and Levi no longer stood in the morgue. Instead, he gaped into a dark cavern before him, vast in size. He stood deathly still as he surveyed the walls. Little light trickled in from cracks in the stone, making it difficult to see. Water dripped off the stalactites and pooled around his feet. His breath floated around him, a warm cloud of air in a frozen abyss.

“Levi…” a haunting voice like the tinkling of wind chimes danced around him.

He twirled around, fists out first. Leaning against the stalagmite, with a bloody wound and a busted lip, was Queenie Lowe... She whimpered as her face twisted in pain.

“Miss Lowe! Where are we?” Levi swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“Deep within the abyss, beyond where the eye can see, madness sleeps. The first of many will rise to the surface. They want your fear.” She gasped for air. Her lips trembled. Her body slid down the side of the stalagmite, slime pulled from the rock like string cheese.

Levi stepped toward her, with his hand outstretched.

“Hey, come on—” His voice was devoured by the darkness as Queenie glanced up at him from the ground.

Her eyes were gone, replaced with only darkness as her lips curled. She stood and strings of wet slime dripped from her to the rocks around them. Her fingers, gnarled and covered in bruises, reached out for him.

“They will take every happiness! Every memory! Every shred of you! They come for you!” Queenie roared as she flung forward, her hands to his throat.

Levi thrashed backward, and his skull collided with something. With a bright light flooding his sight, he clenched his lids shut and shoved her from his neck. A wet slap echoed off the walls; something hit the floor and his eyes opened again. The bodies lay limp against the ground, the first victim flopped against the tile. Inches from him, hands gnarled and frozen in the shape of his throat, the body sank until only the hand was left stiff. All of them reached out for him, eyes wide open and those who had mouths stretched their jaws open. Levi flipped around and shot himself out of the building; his legs burned as he ran up the stairs as fast as he could. His boots slipped and nearly planted him into the wet steps. He clawed his way from the morgue to his car in the parking lot of the precinct.

“What! The! Fuck!” Levi dove into his car, his heart up into his throat. He started up the vehicle, the skies dark overhead. Drizzle dripped down over the hood of his car as he cranked the heat and floored his vehicle in reverse. Panic fueled his body with acid. It burned through his veins and sank him into the driver seat. His hands trembled, barely able to take hold of the steering wheel. The files fell to the floorboard with abandon as Levi cranked the car into drive and peeled out of the parking lot.

The rain changed from a trickle to a flood overhead. He screeched to a stop three streets down from the station. His heart hammered in his chest.

Breathe. The memory of his wife’s voice soothed him, like she had a thousand times before. He inhaled slowly and tried to remember what she had done the last time he suffered a panic attack. It had been after his first massive case.

A child was killed, ripped apart like they fed him to dogs and put in a trash bag. Officers stopped a car with a bad license plate and could smell him from the trunk. Levi could see the poor kid’s eyes, staring up at him through the ripped open bag. In his sleep, the child haunted him. And then Karla was there, when he watched in a sleep paralysis as the child crawled up the side of the bed and hovered over him. Her soft, sleepy voice drifted in his ears. Find one solid item nearby.

Rational thoughts returned and he collected up his papers and files and put them into the seat next to him. Find two things he could smell. His jacket smelled of deodorant and rain, his cold coffee smelt of caramel and sugar. Air found its way back into his lungs as he settled back into his seat.

That’s all that was—a panic attack.

He was just low on sleep; the horrible deaths got to him. There were no ghosts, no demon teenage girls, and this was all the case. Levi repeated thoughts to himself. Yet his hands trembled as he pulled out his phone and glanced to his lock screen. Karla and Marigold smiled back at him, reminding him of real life. He let off the breaks inch by inch. He crept out into the main streets of Harperville. Beat by beat, his heart returned to normal. Levi turned down another street, set on talking to some tattoo artists, to put himself back on the track of the case.

After parking, he got out of the car and collected himself. It was all a hallucination. Yet, the wet touch of her hands around his throat remained on his neck. He swallowed hard. “Focus on the case, solve it, it will go away.”

It was a lie, but at least it was a nice lie. Levi set off on finding all the tattoo parlors in town. Thankfully, the list was slim. Not that tattoos weren’t popular in the sleepy east coast town, but Harperville only had one or two of everything. One chain grocery store, one local, one elementary, middle, and high school plus a tutoring center, one police precinct, and maybe three or four tattoo parlors. There was one on Main Street, close to the precinct, so he would start there.

Levi lingered inches from the front door of a tattoo parlor when he caught movement down the sidewalk. Harperville was empty as the rain drizzled down. Yet, there at the other end was Queenie Lowe. She exited the ice cream shop, all smiles and with both her eyes, and strutted down the sidewalk. Not a drop of rain on her. No care in the world. No twist of evil in her gaze—she was just a normal teenager. Just a kid with a milkshake and a phone. The anxiety of the case melted away and he pivoted from her to enter the shop.

He visited three parlors. At the first place off the main avenue of Harperville, one artist said he’d done a few, but nothing in words. Just a few skulls and crossbones. Levi kept the eyeless corpses in the folder, as if not to tempt the hallucinations. The second place off Parrot Avenue said they didn’t do them. The third shop off Wanderer Street only did eyelid piercing. All dead ends.

After lunch, he visited the last shop in town. The shop was a large black box on the pier. Everything inside the shop was clean, with white tile floors and the walls covered in framed artwork. The entryway was full of pictures of clients and their artists.

“Hello! Can I help you?” A woman in black skinny jeans and a button down greeted him.

Levi pulled out his badge and showed it to the receptionist. “Yeah, I’m investigating the deaths at the docks. I was—”

The receptionist broke down into tears. Levi hesitated. The whole shop fell quiet. Artists appeared out of cubicles with concern on their faces.

He leaned in close to the counter, enough to give her space but not to be overheard. “Ma’am?”

“You found Tom, didn’t you?” She gasped for air, tears running her mascara and thick liner down her cheeks.

Levi blinked as she pointed to the countertop. Levi’s attention fell to a missing poster of a man. Tom Harold, thirty-seven, missing since last Tuesday. Only, his face nearly gave Levi a heart attack. The first victim, but he still had eyes. In the photo he stood just outside the shop, cropped to focus on him. None of the faces were in focus but Tom was clear as day. He’d found more than just a lead.