The Curator and the Curse of the Pharaoh (Prologue & Chapter 1)

The Curator

And The

Curse

Of the

 Pharaoh

By: R. R. Sanders

Prologue

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

1982

It called out. Day and night, it whispered to her.

Touch me.

Hold me.

I won’t bite.

That sinister scrap of an ancient scroll curled its metaphorically forked tongue and practically hissed, dripping evil with each breath. Beneath the glass and wood case and guarded by a magical barrier, lay something so vile its very existence was a threat to humanity.

But yet, Eliza was true to her word. She held on to that piece of ancient parchment while everyday it begged her to misuse its immense power. It longed to be abused. The parchment was as masochistic as it was sadistic. It promised power but gave only pain in return.

Please Eliza. I’m your friend.

“No. You mostly certainly are not.” She ran her slender finger over the glass. It must have been a trick on her eyes but it seemed as if the paper beneath shuddered in anticipation of her touch. She was likely going crazy, but she could swear she witnessed a tremor.

How can you say that Eliza? We’ve been through so much.

“No. No, no, no.” She shook her head and spun away from the box. “You won’t tempt me.” The angel had warned her so long ago that this would happen. He had warned her that this was no ordinary scrap of paper. This seemingly insignificant object could destroy humanity and had to be guarded. Why the angel had chosen her specifically she had no idea, but when an angel asks you to guard something, you guard it.

The hieroglyphs adorning the page were beautiful. She had never seen anything like them in all her years as an Egyptologist. In all the world there had never been anything similar to the writing right here at her fingertips. It was ironic in a cosmic sense. She had the find of a century, one that even pertained to her academia, right here in her private study, and she couldn’t touch it for fear of repercussions.

The angel had told her this object was meant to be protected by her and her kin. When Eliza Coolidge died she would pass it down to her daughter Anna, and so on and so forth. But Anna was so young now, she couldn’t explain this to her, not yet, an eight year old could never comprehend the enormity of it all.

Eliza wrung her hands repeatedly, a nervous habit, squishing the fingers together until her knuckles felt like they would break. She did this over and over again, trying to get the voice out of her head.

The angel never said we couldn’t be happy together Eliza. You remember him? How his blue eyes reminded you of the sea.

They had. The angel’s eyes had been a color so blue the sky and the ocean would be jealous. His perfectly cut black hair had been so intensely dark a star might feel completely at home between his locks. She had never seen a man more beautiful or felt something as pure as when he had stood on her front porch. The box that contained the parchment had been neatly wrapped and cinched with a blood red bow. He had told her, “Eliza Coolidge? I have something for you.”

She had seen his wings. At first she had thought them to be just a hallucination, but sure as day they were there, feathered like a dove and white as pure driven snow. She had never been too stunned to speak in her life, but as the package had transferred from his hands to hers, his soft tanned skin brushing lightly against her fingers in the process, she found herself at a loss of words.

“You know what I am my child, and you know I would not ask this of you if it were not of the utmost importance. What is contained inside this box is too dangerous to exist in the world and your family is its natural guardian. You must never remove this parchment from the box, it will tempt you, but your bloodline is the only one strong enough to contain its evil.” He had taken a step back, and then another, and then vanished with a bright flash of light. But she had heard him call one last thing back from the heavens as he went.

“Never falter, child. Never falter.”

And she never had.

But someday you, or someone of your flesh will.

She thought of Anna one last time, shutting her eyes tight.

And she tossed a blanket over the box.

Chapter One

New Orleans, Louisiana

February 2^nd, 1999

Earlier detective Jessica Hart had been trying to tell if two supermodels on reality TV hated each other or were actually best friends as she drank beer and ate chips.

Now she was trying to figure out how many victims were in front of her.

“Um…Xavier? What in the hell are we looking at?”

Xavier Garcia shrugged his broad shoulders, his long, heavy dreadlocks heaving up and down with them. “Beats me, Jess. I don’t wanna get too much closer than this though, not until the MEs done at least.” He said pointing toward the Medical Examiner, Dr. Laselle. The warm afternoon sun glistened against Xavier’s dark chocolate skin. Even at the age of forty he could still pass for a college football player if he wanted to.

They stood in the doorway of a church basement and watched two men in white biohazard suits and purple respirators comb over several corpses lying on the ground. From where she stood the scene would have looked pretty gruesome, except for one small factor…

“I don’t see any blood.” Said Jessica confused. As she turned her head to meet her green eyes with Xavier’s hazel ones her platinum blond ponytail swung back and forth. “At least…not enough to justify…this.” She said motioning toward the macabre imagery in front of her.

It looked as though there had been multiple amputations, but they were a good fifty feet away. The Medical Examiner was just trying to determine at the moment if they were dealing with an infectious disease or not. “Yeah, looks like a chop-up. Guy who called it in though said it looked like the bodies were rotted. So maybe they were cut up and dumped here?”

“Does the ME think it’s contagious?”

Xavier shrugged again. “Something the guy said on the phone got him all jittery, I dunno. Coroner’s office beat us here though, had us cordon off the scene. Something had Corey spooked good.” Dr. Corey Laselle was the Chief Medical Examiner for their department. He was the best in the city, possibly the state, and if something had him on edge then they were probably better off letting him and his assistant call the shots for now.

The smell from inside finally hit her, causing her nostrils to flare and close. She rubbed her nose vigorously as if trying to scrape the offending odor out with the back of her hand, “what’s that smell?”

“Infection. Yet another reason I think Corey was spooked.”

“Wow. How bad does the infection have to be before it smells like that?”

Xavier’s usual chipper expression was taut and solemn right now, “pretty bad, Jess. Pretty bad.”

They stood there watching, motionless for the next five minutes or so, not saying a word to one another. At one point Jessica pulled the collar of her shirt over her nose to block the odor. The double doors exit in the rear of the building was open so the occasional cross-breeze pushed a noxious cloud of infection odors over them. “Let’s hope it ain’t airborne.” She said, intending it to come off as a joke, but Xavier didn’t laugh. Something had him pretty spooked too.

Finally the medical examiner stood up and pulled the respirator down around his neck. Sweat had pooled underneath his eyes causing them to swell up like he had been crying. A red outline of the respirator spread across his pale white face. Those suits were like wearing a portable kiln, hotter than July on the sun. He pulled the hood of the Tyvek suit down and small beads of sweat flew from his matted, curly red hair. “Good news,” Corey Laselle began, “It’s not infectious, bad news, I think it’s leprosy.” His voice grew quieter on the last part.

Both detectives stared at Corey dumbfounded. “I’m sorry,” said Detective Garcia, “but can you run that by me again?”

Corey shrugged. “That’s just my preliminary diagnosis. I’ll have to take them back to the lab and run some more tests but yeah, that’s what it looks like. And believe me; I’m just as confused as you.”

“How many victims?” Asked Jessica.

“Six in here. There’s a seventh in the back. Looks like she had the disease too but if I had to guess, it looks like that one was shot first. It gets even weirder too--”

“Leprosy?” Interjected Xavier. “…doesn’t that take week’s doc?” He was still finding this all difficult to get his head around. It wasn’t every day that a group of people turned up in a church basement dead from a disease that hadn’t been an issue in a millennia.

Corey was nodding, “yeah, sometimes even years. The bacteria can lay dormant. But it looks like it came over these people here pretty quickly.” His expression grew grim and full of worry as he continued.  “If I had to guess, I’d have to say somebody found a way to weaponize this stuff. Leprosy isn’t fast acting, and it usually doesn’t eat through entire limbs. These people fell apart like they--” he made a mock exploding sound and abruptly pulled his hands away from each other mimicking a detonation before he finished, “--were made of Legos.”

Jessica just stood there for a moment, trying to absorb it all. “So…seven people dead, killed by a disease from the Middle Ages—“

“Six from disease, one from what appears to be a gunshot.” Corey corrected. “And that one’s even weirder…you’ll see.”

Jessica bit her tongue down and continued. She hated being interrupted. “Fine, six people killed by a potentially weaponized version of Leprosy and one from a good ol’ fashioned GSW.” She turned to Xavier. “Why don’t you go interview the guy who called it in. Uniforms got him over by the cruisers at the edge of the cordon. I’ll take a walkthrough of the crime scene.”

Both Xavier and Corey nodded. “The crew’ll be here in a bit to take the body back to my lab. If it is Leprosy or it’s been tampered with I’ll let you know as soon as it’s confirmed.”

“If it’s weaponized be sure the first person you contact is the Captain so he can call the CDC and the State Department.” Added Xavier. “We got two weeks till Mardis Gras, last thing we need right now is a biological attack. Jessica,” he turned back to Detective Hart, “don’t touch anything in there. I don’t need you falling apart too.” He flashed her his big, toothy grin that blanketed his face from ear to ear. Good, at least happy-go-lucky Detective Garcia was back now.

“Har, har Mr. Marley. Just go interview the mystery caller before I pull rank.”

Being senior detective did come with its perks.

As he walked away she turned back to the building and stepped inside. The breeze flowing through the basement was helping but it didn’t mask the stench. It wasn’t death; she’d smelled the pungent aroma of the dead many times. This was just like Xavier had said; an infection. It smelled as if she were standing in a giant puddle of pus.

The white glow of the fluorescent bars hanging from the ceiling cast an eerie aura around the bodies. All of them had collapsed inside a circle of chairs facing each other. She counted the chairs. There were nine in total.

Alcoholics Anonymous. Looks like there might’ve been two others possibly exposed. She thought making a quick mental note for later.

Turning her focus away from the seating arrangements she now set to work examining the bodies. They were covered in lesions, some small; around the diameter of a pencil eraser. Some of the others were as big around as a baby’s fist. Each one surrounded by a ring of red with black inner edges of rot that were gradually fading to pink.

They looked just like Dr. Laselle had said, Lego people that had just fallen apart. Where the shoulder had connected to the torso it had simply fallen away, the skin completely black and putrefied where the joint had been. The victims’ eyes had all sunken into their skulls leaving gaping black sockets. Jessica knelt down next to the head of one of them, a young woman, possibly mid-twenties with strawberry red hair.

With a gloved hand she delicately opened the woman’s mouth. The tongue was gone. She shone her flashlight down the woman’s throat. The entire esophagus was completely swollen. Even if this disease hadn’t killed her she would certainly have suffocated.

While all of this was strange, nothing unnerved her as much as the complete lack of blood. These people had fallen apart right here, and from what the doctor said with incredible expediency. Blood doesn’t just evaporate and these people looked as if they had been completely exsanguinated. None of this was making any sense.

She stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from the legs of her navy-blue suit pants and returned the flashlight to her jacket pocket. Pulling out her handheld notebook she jotted down:

“Victims tongues removed. Eyes sunken. No blood present. Possible biological agent involved. Lesions appear uniform in pattern. Seven total victims, two others possible—(follow-up)”

Corey had said that this wasn’t even the weirdest part, that the gunshot victim had been the strangest. With her notebook in hand she crossed the basement to what looked like a storeroom. The door was open and a splash of yellow light spilled into the basement contrasting starkly with the fluorescent bulbs above her. Suddenly Jessica felt uneasy. She put the palm of her hand on the butt of her pistol and silently slipped the notebook back into her inner jacket pocket with her flashlight.

Sweeping wide she sidestepped until she could see through the crack. That’s when Jessica saw the outline of a man in a black suit. She pulled her gun but he must have heard the clasp because he shouted, “you don’t need to shoot me love. We’re on the same side.” He had a thick English accent and a voice scratched heavily by whiskey and tobacco. But while it was gruff, it was also calm; almost soothing. He was however still standing at an active crime scene calling pet names to a Detective.

Love?

“Don’t move! Hands where I can see ‘em!” She barked with authority. The door was two pieces of thin plywood with a hollow center. Jessica was confident it would be no contest for a 9mm to pierce through them and catch this guy if he tried anything unsavory.

He laughed. “Oh please. We both know you aren’t going to shoot an unarmed man, so put the damn gun down would you. It’s unbecoming a lady to wave one of those things at a gentleman.”

While he yammered on she had closed the distance between them and now pulled the door open the rest of the way. No one else must have heard her shouting because it was still just her and the English crime scene squatter. “Hands! Up! Now!”

He complied, but he was still laughing. It wasn’t a hearty boom so much as a cocky, I know something you don’t, kind of laugh. She didn’t care. She’d sort it out later down at the station. She reached out for his hand…

…and her fingers passed right through.

“What?” She tried again. Each time, as if he was made of thin air. The sensation reminded her of dragging her fingers across the surface of a lake without the tactile sensations. Her actions broke the plane of his image and forced it to waver where she touched him, but other than that, it was as if he wasn’t even there at all. “What the…what?!”

“Calm down kid, calm down. Let’s get the FAQ out of the way right now shall we? I’m not a ghost and I’m not an angel. I’m also not a hallucination. I am neither here nor not here. But my services are at your disposal. Name’s Ezekial Cross. Demonology expert, Theological historian, and petty dabbler in the dark arts. And you are?”

What the hell? What the hell? What the HELL?? Her mind was racing. This couldn’t be real. Xavier told her all the time she was going to drive herself crazy if she never took that vacation and here she was, completely off the deep-end of sanity. She was shaking, her eyes wouldn’t focus. She could see his sandy brown hair and his yellow-green eyes but all his other features just blurred together. In and out. There were two of them and then they melded back together to pull apart and repeat the process over. He was a human kaleidoscope before her.

She didn’t feel well.

“Hello?” He asked somewhat impatiently. “Look, I get this is your first time and all but let’s try to be at least a little professional.” He stepped to the side and pointed to the dead body on the floor. “Notice anything different from this one to the ones outside in a pretty little pile?”

She looked down. She was staring right at the body but her mind couldn’t process his question, couldn’t process what it was seeing. Her hand had passed through him! How was that even possible? He must have sensed what she was thinking because he said, “its astral projection, dearie. And this would be much easier if you’d think less about the incorporeal bloke helping you and pay more attention to what he’s helping you with. Now. Focus. What’s different here, from out there?”

She stared at the body, forcing her eyes to re-align. The double vision faded and she blinked away the confusion as best she could for now. If he wasn’t actually here he couldn’t hurt her, right? And he did seem like he was genuinely trying to help, albeit in an irrationally rude manner. “Um, they…uh… she didn’t fall apart like the others?” She meant it to come out as a statement but instead it stumbled out as more of a question.

“Wow. You must be top of your class…” He made no attempt to hide his sarcasm. “Anything else?”

She did actually notice something else.

“She’s missing her hands.”

Both of the girl’s hands had been amputated at the wrists, cut cleanly off. She couldn’t have shot herself. There had been someone else down here. Someone who had either witnessed everything and ran away scared or someone who was guilty of multiple and brutal homicides. She thought back to the two extra chairs gathered in a circle out in the main room.

“What else?”

She looked at the apparition that called itself Ezekial Cross befuddled. “What do you mean what else? It’s a murder, she couldn’t have shot herself.” She said matter-of-factly as she pointed to the gaping hole in the side of the woman’s head. But then she followed her finger and noticed something just as bizarre as the scene outside. “Wait a minute…if she was shot, then there’d have to be blood.” For now she could give the weaponized Leprosy a pass on the lack of gore, but headshots were never without a record of carnage.

“There’s bits of brain and skull everywhere, no blood, no hands on this girl, or tongues or eyes in the lot of ‘em, and your brilliant deduction is murder?” He shook his head seemingly disappointed. “I’m afraid it’s much more sinister than a simple homicide love.” She could make out his face much more clearly now. It was obvious he wasn’t a fan of the clean shave as he wore a weeks’ worth of overgrowth on his face with pride. He had a strong chin which was currently locked in a display of irritation, as if he were inconvenienced by her inability to grasp what was happening.

“And what’s your brilliant deduction?” He made no attempt to hide his snide attitude. So she made no attempt to mask her contempt for Ezekial.

His smile grew wide again. “Magic.” He stated plainly.

“Magic?” Detective Hart replied skeptically.

But he merely repeated, still smiling, “magic.”

She stood there staring at him awestruck at his audacity to criticize her yet call this the work of magic for a moment before shaking herself out of the stupor. “Okay. That’s enough of this crap. I don’t know if I haven’t been sleeping well, but you’re not real, and neither is magic. Now I’m gonna go upstairs and talk to my partner and when I get back you, whatever you are, had better be gone.”

“I’ll be gone, Detective. At least…from here. Just remember, we’re on the same side.”

With that he vanished. She rubbed her eyes in disbelief as if he would pop back in as soon as she opened them but when she stopped rubbing he was still gone. Maybe she was right; he wasn’t even there at all.

Either way, she just wanted to get back to supermodel catfights on reality TV.

Instead of consorting with ghosts over dead bodies.

Detective Hart sighed.

Yep…I’m a loon.

*    *    *    *    *    *

It didn’t sound any less crazy upstairs. She’d gone over it a dozen times since her encounter with Ezekial in the basement just moments ago. Once she stepped back outside into the sunlight of the pleasant Southern afternoon she decided it had just been a hallucination. She was simply dehydrated.

She made her way across the parking lot past a row of neatly pruned shrubs and a proud display of red, white, and blue flowers of some sort. The short walk hadn’t managed to clear her thoughts but she now stood next to her partner as he questioned a man in a long black robe with a white collar. She assumed he was likely the Father of this particular Parish.

“…and did you notice anything sus--?” He turned as Jessica sidled in next to him. “Oh! Hey Jess, this is the guy who called it in. Reverend Harold Fletcher. He’s run this church for the last forty years.”

“And in all my time I’ve never…” He trailed off. Reverend Fletcher’s eyes stared emptily at the ground, hungry for any image that could overwrite the horror he had obviously walked into inside his basement. “It’s just so terrible. Those poor, poor souls.” Xavier extended a comforting hand and placed it lightly on Harold’s elbow.

Jessica didn’t say anything. She just stared straight ahead, still trying to process everything that had happened below with Ezekial and the weirdness of the murder in the storeroom. Xavier’s large bushy eyebrows narrowed in concern. “Jess? You alright? You look rattled.”

She snapped out of it, shaking her head and waving a hand in front of her. “No, no, I’m fine.” She looked at the Reverend who now raised his head to look at her. His eyes squinted in worry as well. His well cropped white beard was a blatant contrast to his dark features. There were still little flecks of black hair amongst the grey on his head. Harold’s red, puffy eyes locked onto hers.

“My child, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

You have no idea.

“I’m fine…it’s just…” She shook her head again, turning back to the open door where Dr. Laselle’s people were now filing inside to remove the bodies and take them back to the crime lab for analysis.

“Nasty in there?” Asked Xavier. Jessica nodded.

“Like Reverend Fletcher said. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

That statement filled Xavier with apprehension. “You’ve worked homicide for twenty years Lieutenant. You got a theory at least, right?”

Once again she shook her head. She couldn’t tell her partner about seeing an apparition down in that basement that claimed to be a man who astrally projected himself into the crime scene. No matter how much Detective Garcia respected her, he’d have no choice but to report her for a psyche evaluation. And once you told the Department shrink you were talking to ghosts at crime scenes about magical murders your career was pretty much toast.

“Did you get what you needed from the Reverend?”

His eyes still narrowed, Xavier nodded. He turned back to Reverend Fletcher and held out one of his business cards. “Get some rest father. If you think of anything else give us a call, alright?”

The Reverend nodded and started to walk away but Jessica thought of one last question. “Oh wait. Mr. Fletcher. There were nine chairs down there and only seven victims. Any idea of who might have been missing from the AA meeting this morning?”

“How did you know it was an AA…” Harold trailed off again but Detective Hart held his gaze. “No. I don’t. I do know Donovan wasn’t there today, uh Donovan Willis, he runs the meetings but he was sick. I believe one of the girls was running the meeting today.” He started to turn but Jessica called back one last time.

“Any idea which one?”

The Reverend, somewhat annoyed, turned back with a calm but biting tone, “I haven’t the slightest clue. But even if I did, there’s reasons anonymity is in the title Detective. I do hope you find who or what did this, it truly is such a terrible tragedy. I will be praying for you all Detectives. Godspeed.” And with that he began walking up the ramp toward the front entrance of the church.

Jessica switched her attention now back to her partner. “Old man give you anything useful?”

“Reverend,” Xavier didn’t like when she referred to the elderly as ‘old men’ or ‘the ancient bird’ or a variety of other geriatric slurs. “And yes, Reverend Fletcher was very helpful. And you should be nicer to him.”

“Why’s that?”

“That’s my momma’s Pastor.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

Xavier smirked, “Nothing if you don’t like her pot pies.”

Her jaw dropped and she replied indignantly, “oh that’s cold Garcia. Puttin’ an innocent pot pie on the line like that.”

“Just sayin’,” he said still grinning, “if you like my momma’s cookin’ you should probably be nicer to her direct line to Jesus.”

“Oh please, like he knows me.”

“He knows you. He knows everyone. He remembers your daddy too.” But as soon as Xavier said that he immediately regretted it. Her expression went from playful to serious in zero point two seconds. “Oh…sorry, Jess. Sometimes I forget…ya know.”

Her father had died in the line of duty just the year before. He wasn’t even supposed to be on the bust he’d died on. His reputation had been smeared and Captain Joshua Hart had been labeled a dirty cop. She’d tried to prove his innocence but there wasn’t a single ear willing to listen to her pleas. The only one who had was Detective Garcia.

“It’s fine.” She lied. “Anything else important here?”

“None of the victims had IDs on them from what Corey said and the bodies were pretty corpulent so facial ID is impossible. We can check the cars in the lot but without a warrant we’ll have to make sure no one living owns any of them first. Could take a few hours.”

“We’ll put uniforms on that. There were nine chairs down there but only seven victims. We’re missing someone.”

“Father said that Donovan guy didn’t show up today to run the meetings. Think someone else called in sick too?” Asked Xavier.

“Possible. We need to see if we can get fingerprints off any of the victims and run ‘em against the database. If we’re lucky we’ll get a hit. If we’re even luckier maybe one of the victims was friends with the others in the support group and their family can fill in the missing blanks.” She said folding her arms in front of her chest and squinting against the sun.

“You’re banking on alotta luck, boss.”

She was. “For now let’s just take a walk around the church. Look for glass jars, vials, needles, any kind of transmission source. I’ll check inside, you look around the perimeter. Take one of the guys around the blockade and do a full canvas sweep. If this was, and that’s a pretty big if, a biological attack they had to get the pathogen here somehow.”

“On it, Jess.” He paused for a second and added. “You sure you’re okay? You look like something shook you up pretty bad down there.”

She smiled. While she was appreciative of his concern she couldn’t explain it so she just said, “I’m fine. Just like I said, it isn’t every day you come across something like that.” Which was true in more ways than one. Regardless, Xavier seemed somewhat satisfied and finally walked away to grab one of the officers at the front of the parking lot.

While it wasn’t the largest crowd she’d ever seen before, a gathering was forming as neighbors from the community poured from their homes to see what all the fuss was about. That was when she saw him again, just a glimpse, of the man named Ezekial she’d seen in the basement. He was wearing sunglasses now, still wearing his devious grin like a permanent accessory.

She started toward him and then he vanished as some of the crime scene techs carried stretchers away hauling black plastic body bags. She stopped, shook her head, told herself she was once again just imagining things, and headed inside the church.

The front entranceway was enormous, the bell shaped cathedral ceiling towering a good sixty feet above her head. From the apex hung a brass and crystal chandelier. Kind of upscale for a church in the middle of downtown New Orleans but she’d seen more peculiar things in the past hour. She made her way past two wooden pillars, each painted a faded gold, and into the sanctuary. She moved slowly past each pew checking down each row, looking for any sign of a discarded bio-weapons container.

Nothing. No glass, no needles. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.

Just as she came to the front of the rows she looked up and was staring directly into the sunglasses of Ezekial Cross. She gasped and stifled a scream while suppressing the urge to draw her gun and shoot him in his smug face. Reaching out her hands passed through his torso, disrupting the image momentarily just like last time. He was neither here nor was he not here.

Still grinning he now removed the sunglasses and stared straight forward at Jessica. “And just what pray tell are you searching for, love?”

“You’re not real.” She said boldly.

“No. I’m not really here. We’ve been over this. What are you looking for?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t believe she was about to talk to a phantom apparition about this. “Not that it’s any of my delusions business but the killer had to have transported the contaminant here somehow. I’m looking for a container of some sort it was carried in.”

“None of your victims even came up here; they all used the rear entrance downstairs. Secondly you’re not going to find a container of any kind.” He said all of this with a straight face and honesty. Even if what he was saying was a lie, Jessica was convinced he really believed what he was saying.

Which made him a certifiable nutjob in her book.

“And how pray tell are you certain of all that? Are you a witness?”

Or the killer? She almost added.

“They died of Leprosy, your medical examiner got that correct at least, but it wasn’t manufactured by some homegrown terrorist in a laboratory somewhere. The reason I know they didn’t come up here is because they simply didn’t have the time. As soon as that artifact was activated those people died within thirty seconds. How do I know there’s no container? Because it was malevolent magic that killed your friendly congregation of addicts in the cellar. It doesn’t leave behind a trace, at least not one you can interpret. It doesn’t come pre-packaged in a sealed container, phial, or hypodermic needle, it simply kills and moves on.”

He moved slowly and deliberately, encircling her. She followed his movements and turned with him as he continued to speak. “This is exactly what has happened here. It’s moved on. And if we don’t get a move on love, I’m afraid more folks in the good city of New Orleans are going to end up in a jolly rotten pile like the ones being wheeled out now.”

“Stop,” she demanded holding her hands up in front of her. She couldn’t listen to this anymore. “Just stop. I don’t know how you’re doing this thing where you’re projecting yourself or whatever but it’s either a hallucination or an illusion. And if it’s an illusion, when I get my hands on the real you, I’m arresting you for obstruction.”

“You need my help, Detective.”

“The only thing I need is for you to leave me alone.”

He just stood there for a second seemingly trying to think of something else to say but nothing came to him. He flashed another one of his smarmy grins and slid the sunglasses back onto his nose. “We’ll see Detective. I’ll be in touch.”

And just like that he was gone.

Again.

She was getting real sick of his presence but she was also growing even more uneasy because of what he had said. She’d combed up and down the pews, she could probably get down on her hands and knees but the figment of her imagination was right, it was unlikely either the victims or the killer had come upstairs. She took one last look around the room not even knowing what she was looking for. Perhaps another glimpse of the Englishman’s vanishing act. Her eyes settled on a stained glass window above the door she’d come in. Jesus looking up toward the sky with his hands held in prayer.

If you got extra prayers Jesus I could use a few…

She walked back out of the church to rejoin her partner. She spotted him near the back of the property at the edge of the ministry graveyard. He was standing with another officer talking but she wasn’t close enough to make out what he was saying. As she moved closer she could finally hear the words.

“—and you didn’t find anything either huh?” Xavier pulled the sleeve of his shirt back and glanced down at his watch. When he looked back up he saw Jessica coming toward him. "Find anything?”

“Not a damn thing.” She said under her breath. “This whole thing seem really weird to you too?”

“Honestly Jess, this whole thing gives me the heebie jeebies like you wouldn’t believe.” He dismissed the officer who now made his way back toward his cruiser. “CSU is done processing the scene. Now we just wait on the results from Dr. Laselle.”

“Well. This is enough church for my Sunday, Garcia. Let’s grab a burger and head back to the precinct. I’m starving.”

“Oh please Jessica. If anyone needed more church on their Sunday it would be you.” He said with his big, toothy grin. “But yeah, burger sounds great. Your ride or mine?”

“Yours. I still haven’t gotten the smell out of that guy who ralphed all over the backseat last weekend.”

“Yeah…stale whiskey puke does tend to ruin the mood.”

She laughed and gave him a playful shove, “just drive before I eat my own hand. I’m starving. And I think I’m a little dehydrated.” She said thinking back to Ezekial again and how her hand had just passed through him. They both climbed into Xavier’s dark blue unmarked sedan.

“How hungry are ya? Like, pleasant drive through downtown hungry? Or lights and sirens get me there now hungry?”

“Like let’s go before I shoot you hungry.”

Xavier laughed, “yes ma’am. Like my momma always said. Never argue with a pretty lady with a gun.”

“Sage words, Xavier. Sage words.”

*    *    *    *    *    *

After sitting in line at the McDonald’s drive-thru for what felt like an hour, in a car without air conditioning and listening to Xavier attempt to sing “Sweet Home Alabama” off key, Jessica was convinced she knew what Hell felt like. Finally the teenager working the drive-thru handed them two crumpled white and red bags and managed to dump all but the paper money handed back to Xavier on the ground. Jessica didn’t care about forty cents. She wanted her burger.

And then as soon as she unwrapped it she immediately regretted her decision. The bun was a soggy mess, they’d added pickles (which she had specifically requested not be there), and gave it what appeared to be a grease bath before unceremoniously dropping it into a wrapper, crumpling it up, and hurling it in a bag.

“I now remember why I hate fast food.” She said taking a bite of the burger. On top of everything else it was cold. “Nope.” She said with her mouth full, “thith ith why.”

Xavier laughed. She loved his laugh. It was emphatic and he laughed with his whole body, even his eyes smiled. “That. Is. Disgusting. Why do you talk with your mouth full?” Jessica turned toward the side-view mirror and acted like she was adjusting her hair with her freehand so Xavier couldn’t see her blush.

Swallowing her food she said, “sorry. I said, ‘this is why’. Thing’s cold.”

“Well no kidding. It took ‘em half an hour to bring it to us.”

Nothing was audible but the munching of what Jessica loosely defined as “food” and the sound of Lynard Skynard blaring on the radio. They made the fifteen minute drive back to the precinct and parked in the front of the monastic looking brick building. They bypassed the main floors and headed straight down to the crime lab looking for Dr. Laselle. They found him hunched over one of the corpses that had been pieced back together on a stainless steel slab.

As they moved up behind him he spoke, “you guys find the strangest stuff sometimes Detectives, I swear.” He spun around to face them clipboard in hand. “There’s absolutely no blood whatsoever, victims were completely exsanguinated. I’ve sent tissue down to forensics for analysis. There’s no standard panel for Leprosy so we’re running some older tests to isolate it.

“Their tongues, as I’m sure you’ve already seen Detective Hart, have been removed. However, and this is where it gets really funky, there are no tool marks on the tongues. They’ve been cut cleanly off at the base of the palette and the esophagus is completely swollen shut, kind of like a severe allergic reaction. As far as the eyes go your guess is as good as mine. Once again, there are no tool marks, no ligature marks anywhere on the bodies so the victims weren’t restrained. Just…weird.” He finished shaking his head from side to side.

“What about the girl in the storeroom? The one with the GSW?” Asked Xavier.

Dr. Laselle raised a gloved finger in an “ah-ha!” gesture and said, “about that. I don’t think she was shot. There’s no powder burns around the wound and the hole isn’t an entry wound. It’s an exit wound.”

“Then where’s the entry point?” Probed Jessica, furrowing her brow.

Corey shrugged. “That’s just it. There isn’t one. Her face is just as deteriorated as the rest and the lack of hands make fingerprints impossible for that particular Jane Doe. We’re waiting on dental records for most of the victims, but I was able to pull a couple partials off of this one,” he said motioning toward a pieced back together victim on the far left of the lab. “His names Harper Quinn and he has a record as long as my forearm.”

Dr. Laselle picked up a manila folder off his desk and handed it to Detective Hart. “Thank you Dr. Laselle.” She said sincerely.

“No problem. I’m going to head back down to forensics and find out what the progress is on the victims’ tissue panels. I’ll page you both as soon as I know more.” He nodded and walked briskly out of the room, his small red afro of curls bouncing with his gait. Detective Garcia reached out and took the folder from Jessica. His eyes narrowed as he read its contents.

“Armed robbery, assault and battery, aggravated sexual assault, coercion, this guy is a grade-A sicko. His rap sheet reads like John Dillinger’s autobiography.”

“Yeah,” said Jessica reading over his shoulder, “I doubt the world’s going to miss him much.”

“What’s a guy like this doing at an AA meeting?”

“Even sociopaths set New Year’s resolutions I suppose. Why don’t you head upstairs and trace his last known address and next of kin.” Her eyes fell on Corey’s desk, specifically his yellow steno-pad full of notes on the current bodies occupying the morgue. “I’m going to go through Corey’s notes on the victims. I’ll meet you up top.”

“Think doc might’ve missed somethin’?”

She shook her head, “no. Just two sets of eyes are better than one right?”

Xavier lingered there next to her for a few moments more before saying, “you ever miss it?”

She turned to him with a confused look in her eyes, “miss what?”

“Ya know. Being a doctor. Not many people complete their medical schooling just to quit and become a cop.”

She smiled, “I’m not just any cop. I’m a Detective. But yeah, sometimes I guess. I know my mom would be more proud if I’d followed in her footsteps then my dad’s.” She leaned forward on the MEs desk and took a deep breath. “But that’s the past, this is now. Head upstairs Garcia, I’ll meet up with you in a few minutes.”

He nodded and left the lab, the heavy metal door clacking shut with a deafening thud behind him. She picked up the reports and began going over them. They were all essentially the same, noting the lesions and amputations. He put their time of death somewhere around early morning today but made a note in the margin, ‘lividity not consistent with acceleration of decay timetable. Exact ToD impossible to identify.’

That’s ominous…

Dr. Laselle was never stumped and anything that tripped him up medically put a lump in her throat. Perhaps it wasn’t Leprosy, maybe it was some new unknown pathogen. What if everyone who was exposed to the crime scene was infected and didn’t even know it? Was this going to happen to them too? To her? She pushed these questions out the back of her mind and focused on the charts. Finally she put them down on the table and turned back to one of the bodies on the slab. The girl with no hands.

“Who are you?” She wondered aloud.

“Unimportant.”

She nearly jumped out of her skin, knocking a cup full of pens onto the floor. She spun around to see Ezekial standing in the morgue behind her, wearing the same taut expression he’d had the last time she’d seen him standing at the front of the church. “Oh hell no. You can’t be here this area’s off limits to civilians.”

“Civilians? I’m a figment of your imagination, remember? You were dead set on that.” He moved over to the body of the girl on the table. “You cops. You spend so much time worrying about people’s identities and not paying attention to the actual problem in front of you.”

“Uh…hello? Ascertaining a victim’s identity is kind of the key to finding their killer. It’s usually someone they know.”

“In this particular instance it wasn’t. I believe we’re dealing with the Eye.”

“The Eye?” Jessica had had enough of this bizarre man popping up out of nowhere and delivering cryptic messages of impossibility. “What Eye? What are you talking about?”

“You ask a lot of questions, love.”

She closed the gap between them. Ghost, phantom, apparition, hallucination, or illusion it didn’t matter. She was fed up with one thing, “you call me love again, I will find you, and I will beat you senseless.”

He was smiling, enjoying this. She couldn’t believe she was threatening something that wasn’t even there. “I’d call you by name, but you have yet to introduce yourself. A bit rude if I do say so myself.”

“Detective Jessica Hart.” She put a heavy accentuation on her title. “Lieutenant Detective. and you are interfering with a police investigation.” But he wasn’t listening. His facial expression had switched from spirited to somber as the grave with the mention of her name. She cocked her head to one side, picking up on his silence, “have we met before or something?”

“Tell me, Detective Hart, are you related to a Joshua Hart?”

She was taken aback, “y-yes.” She stammered. “He…he was my father.”

Now her phantom stalker appeared to be the one shocked by something. It wasn’t everyday she was able to put an illusion back on its heels so she was rather enjoying this. “I’ll…be…” He just stared at her.

“You knew him?”

He didn’t answer the question directly. All he said was, “I can assure you detective, we’ll be in touch. Do try to stay alive until I get there.” And as suddenly as he had appeared he vanished once again. There was no cloud of smoke, no lightening, he was just there and then he wasn’t. It was disorienting and irritating all at the same time.

What does he mean “stay alive”? She thought perplexed. Was something else coming for her? And how did this man know her father?

“Calm down Jess, it’s just figment of your imagination…like he said. Of course he knows your dad. You made him up.”

She needed water. She needed sleep.

But most importantly, she needed answers.