Part 1 - Pain

People once believed that, when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.


Devil's Night. October 30th.

He could smell the fires burning from here, the restless blazes taking down nearby buildings only blocks away, as if the fires had come straight from Hell itself. Yet even those seemed to be nothing compared to the scene Sergeant Daryl Albrecht was standing in right now.
He was quickly approaching middle age, his short hair and trimmed mustache a shade darker than his skin, and his form that of a well-exercised man gone slightly to seed. Beneath the dark blues of his police uniform, which made him looked authoritative and relaxed, he was sweating. That perspiration had nothing to do with the hundred-plus fires that were spreading quickly across the inner city, however. Instead, it all had to do with the horrible scene unfolding all around him.

Nervously taking quick drags of his cigarette, he looked down upon the scene unfolding six stories below where he stood, merely an extension of what was going on behind him – a young man dead on the ground as curious bystanders gathered around the man's body, even while paramedics covered the body up before taking it away. Turning back to the loft apartment, Albrecht couldn't help but take everything in here as well. Cops were dusting for fingerprints on whatever they could find among the mess the once-beautiful and spacious apartment now was, more cops starting to cradle a woman, her form and face bloody and bruised and only barely managing to breathe steadily.
Among the flotsam and jetsam of destroyed furniture, Albrecht came across one of the only things that survived relatively unscathed: a wedding invitation on engraved white paper for the two people that had suffered through this horrific scene.

"Hey, Sarge?"
"Yeah", Albrecht answered, turning to the beat cop that had called for him as said cop pointed to a beautiful, ivory wedding dress that cloaked a dressmaker's mannequin. "Shelly Webster and Eric Draven. Their wedding was tomorrow night."
"Who the fuck gets married on Halloween anyhow?"
"Nobody", Albrecht stated regretfully, focusing his attention to the woman – Shelly – as she was being lifted onto a stretcher, an oxygen mask being fitted onto her as two more cops looked on in fear. One of them, a pale young man, looked up at Albrecht to say, "Sir, we've gotta move her."

With a nod, and knowing he'd have to face hell for it later, Albrecht simply stated, "Do it." At his words, the paramedics lifted the stretcher on which Shelly laid and slowly escorted it downstairs to the ambulance.
"Devil's fuckin' Night", Albrecht heard one of the officers mutter. "What's the count so far?"
"143 fires", he answered begrudgingly.
"They're slackin' off from last year."
"Well, only three hours to go; they're probably just slow starters." Even as he said these words, Albrecht knew that it wouldn't take long for the gang responsible for these blazes to make up for their lost time. It seemed everyone in the inner city knew who they were, what they were notorious for.

Tin Tin, for his affinity with knives.
Funboy, from his addictions to sex and drugs.
T-Bird, the main ringleader who always drove the car his nickname came from.
And Skank, T-Bird's friend who looked as though he'd suffered the worst from all the drugs Albrecht was sure he'd gotten into.

As horrible as they were, Albrecht knew that simply dwelling on what they had done would get no one anywhere fast right now. Following the stretcher downstairs and outside, his want to see Shelly be relatively safe became swept to the side when he heard his supervising detective, a perpetually angered rat-faced man in a trenchcoat and suit just out on the street.
"…weren't supposed to move her yet. There are rules for this sort of thing!" Finally the man, Detective Ark Torres, noticed Albrecht standing by the head of the stretcher. "This the victim?"
"No, Detective, it's Amelia Earhart. We found her and you missed it", Albrecht fired back, very much annoyed. Ever since they had first been put together, Torres and Albrecht had not gotten along in any sense – where Albrecht not only wanted to do his job, but live and work by the moral code that came with it, Torres only wanted to do what would turn out best for him, and either refused to see what was past his short sight or simply didn't want to know. It was because of that moral conscience that he applied to his job that Albrecht had been demoted back to being a beat cop just a few weeks prior.
"I don't give a good goddamn what her name is! You should've waited for my orders, Albrecht. I can see why they took away your gold badge", he finished, referencing the recent demotion.
"Yeah, because I wasn't a big enough asshole", Albrecht sarcastically responded before turning back to Shelly, just as he noticed a blond teenage girl dressed in dark skater's clothing – t-shirt, red jacket, dark jacket, and black boots – glide up to the scene on her skateboard. "Come on, guys, let's go", he told the medics.

"Shelly?" The girl's voice was only mildly shaky with fear and sadness at the scene. Even as he told her to keep back, Albrecht made no effort to stop her past that.
"Where's Eric?" A hoarse, once-musical voice emanated from just behind the hanging oxygen mask covering the beaten woman's face.
"Just don't worry about him."

But Albrecht's attempt at calm gave no pause for Shelly, her hoarse voice rasping out as Albrecht removed the mask for a brief moment to hear her more clearly. "Tell him to take care of Sarah", she requested of Albrecht.
He looked back to the blond teenager standing next to him, even as the medics placed the oxygen mask back on Shelly's face. "I will, don't worry." Then, as they loaded Shelly into the back of the ambulance and strapped the oxygen mask back onto her face., Albrecht turned to the young blond. "You Sarah?"
"Yeah", she responded, silent tears beginning to flow down her young face and onto her dark hoodie.

Doing his best to keep himself under control, Albrecht reassured her, "Listen, your sister…she's going to be fine.
"She's not my sister", Sarah corrected. "Shelly just takes care of me…her and Eric." Her gaze flickered down from the cracked pavement and up into Albrecht's dark face.

"You lied to her about Eric." There was no questioning in her voice.
"I had to", Albrecht finally stated.
"And you're lying to me about Shelly", Sarah stated, the sadness creating a slight crack in her voice. "She's going to die, isn't she?"
As much as he wanted to reassure Sarah that everything was going to be fine with Shelly and Eric, Albrecht knew he couldn't lie to her any more than he had already tried. Eric Draven being dead was a no-brainer – he'd taken a knife to the chest, three each of .45 and 9mm rounds around his heart, and a toss out of the sixth story window of his loft. And Shelly….
"Hey…it's ok", Albrecht finally managed to get out, patting Sarah's shoulders in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "Everything's going to be fine."


But Albrecht found out the hard way that even that was a lie.

The staff working at Inner City Hospital already had their hands full with other victims of the Devil's Night devastation, but somehow they were able to find room for Shelly. As Albrecht waited testily for news on her condition, he still managed to pay attention to the many doctors, nurses, and orderlies rushing about to their respective areas of call.
For what seemed like the thousandth time, he looked through the double bulletproof glass that separated the intensive care unit from the main part of the building. Albrecht couldn't see much of Shelly over the shroud that covered her body and the doctors and nurses that rushed about her in their attempts to keep her alive, but he knew that whatever happened, they were trying their best. All he could do was follow their lead and wait.
The sounds of the hospital – intercom signals, calls from nurses and doctors across halls, gurney wheels clattering – blurred in and out of his slowly diminishing attention span, but Albrecht kept forcing himself to stay conscious of his environment – part out of his police training, but mostly out of wanting to hear any news of Shelly.

He got it, all right.

"Officer?" A skinny, blond haired man approached Albrecht, his mild face betraying the regret he must've been feeling inside. Even as he asked, Albrecht was sure he already knew the answer.
"How's she doing?"
"They've been trying to revive her for the last thirty hours. She's suffered some pretty severe injuries – concussion, lacerations all across her body, heavy bruising and bleeding. We tried everything we could – blood transfusions, IV, AED—"
"Just get to the point, kid. Is she going to be ok?"
At this, the kid looked down at the floor as if a weight had slowly been attached to his head. "I'm afraid not. No matter what we did, she never fully came around. And just now…she finally just gave it up. There was nothing else we could've done. She's dead."

She's dead.

Dead.

At first, the words had no meaning for Albrecht. Shelly Webster, a beautiful young woman with a heart as big as all outdoors, a photographer with a great eye for the world's natural beauty; and her rock star boyfriend with an easy smile and warmer temper to match, were actually gone from this earth only because she had wanted to stand up for the rest of the people living in the building they did…
It was unthinkable, if only to him. Even now, Albrecht was half-expecting Shelly to limp out of the room, trying to manage her bright white smile. It was hard to accept that he'd never see that smile again. He'd never hear the booming drums or wailing guitars of Eric's band again. Nor would he ever hear his warm gravelly voice that, although well fitting of his band's music, sounded like it should've belonged in a chorus hall.
At that point, Albrecht's mind focused on only one thing – a line from one of Eric's songs. It seemed so ironic and untrue now.

It can't rain all the time.

Yet Albrecht had no idea just how right that quote would prove to be in just one short, succeeding year.