Warning: Mild gore and horror themes.
()
Thursday did not have faith in God. Because faith implied there was a chance he could be wrong, and the energy and effort he had placed on this supposed deity was pointless. However if he were asked, he would never say he was an atheist.
Oh, he believed.
The very first person Thursday had killed was a teenager named Lyle Pierce. It was an accident, Thursday didn't meant it at the time, but when it happened, he had no regrets.
Lyle would constantly harass his older sister. He would touch her, follow her, say things to her that would reduce her to tears.
Thursday at the time was only eight and was unable stand up against the six-foot behemoth. When his sister came home for the third time that month in distress, that night Thursday prayed.
He prayed harder than he's ever prayed before. 'Please, please, stop Lyle Pierce. Please, stop him. He needs to be stopped.'
Thursday went to bed, those words repeating endlessly in his head. When he woke up the next morning, he heard the news from his frantic neighbours.
On the road leading outside of town, Lyle Pierce was found eviscerated.
For months afterwards there were constant night patrols, a strict curfew, and everyone who had a connection with Lyle were questioned over a dozen times. In the end Lyle's case remained unsolved and served as a cautionary tale to those who strayed far from home.
Thursday would spend a few nights unable to sleep, wondering if his prayer to God had been answered, if this was his fault. Did Lyle really deserve such a gruesome death? Thursday heard from word of mouth Lyle had been torn apart, as if something inside of him exploded outwards. But even more puzzling, nobody knew what he was doing out in the middle of the night. He didn't have a bike, and he apparently didn't have shoes or a coat. He went to bed that night and in the next morning was found nearly three miles away.
Either way, Thursday didn't pray again for a long, long time.
The second time was an accident too. He was thirty-two, traveling across the great African continent with some of the bravest men he's ever known. During one battle they were pinned down with constant artillery fire, unable to move, barely allowed to get up to eat or piss. Their supplies were slowly depleting, and if they didn't get fresh water soon, bullets would be the least of their problems.
On the fourth night Thursday and a few others held a small prayer circle, asking for forgiveness, asking for rain or mercy or a miracle. Thursday ignorantly asked, "Please help us."
They all went to bed that night, slunk low in the mud, their stomachs growling and their throats dry. Around two in the morning, judging from the position of the moon, Thursday was suddenly awakened by his captain.
"Do you hear that, Fred?" Reaves asked, whispering sharply in the darkness.
"Mmmmhm...? Hear what?"
"Shhhh..."
Off in the distance, there was a scream.
"The fuck...?" Thursday hissed, getting up. All around him his fellow men were roused too, swallowing their questions as the noise of horror drifted towards them in the dead of night.
Ignoring the protests and order of Captain Reaves, Thursday climbed up the hill in full view of the field. For three days they were unable to move past this point, and those who tried were immediately shot down. Now there he stood, the wind howling loudly all around him as he peered into the night, listening as carefully as he could.
They were screams all right. Men yelling, sounds of gunfire echoing across the field. There were other sounds, but they were too quiet to determine exactly what they were.
One by one, the others joined Thursday on that hill, listening too.
"Thursday, you speak German. Do you know what they're saying?" Reaves asked.
"Um..."
Thursday was not fluent, he spoke just enough to be understood. He cocked his head to listen better.
"What is that?" He heard them yell, their voices twisting in the distance. "What is that?"
"Oh my god!"
"No! No! No! No!"
"Help me! Help me!"
These men were terrified beyond reason. Just hearing them sent shivers down Thursday's spine. "Something is happening to them," he said. "Something bad."
One young soldier asked, "Should we help them?"
There was a sudden round of rejection, various sentences of 'are you insane?' were exchanged. The screams continued, piercing through the wind, sounding of absolute terror and pain.
"Something's wrong," said another man. "Something is very, very wrong. I don't like this."
Thursday took a step forward.
"Nobody fucking move," his captain hissed. "We barely have enough bullets to protect ourselves, and we can't see a bloody thing. We will investigate in the morning."
"There might be nothing in the morning."
"That's a bridge we'll cross when we get there."
The screaming went on for another minute, then silence reigned for the rest of the night. Nobody went back to sleep.
As soon as the first dregs of morning sunlight crept along the earth, the whole squardron slowly made their way across the field. They would stop every few feet, waiting, listening for any possible sounds or hints that they were walking into a trap.
It took them fifteen minutes to cross a fifty meter gap. When they came upon the enemy camp, they couldn't believe their eyes.
Laid out upon the ground, lined in a row, were the soldiers' uniforms. Laid out, like a human body.
Their boots were there, their helmets, and upon further inspection, their cigarettes and other personal items were left inside their coat pockets. Even their socks had been left inside the boots. In all there were seventeen uniforms, including the commanding officer's. Not a single uniform had a speck of blood on them.
"What the hell?" Captain Reaves hissed. "This doesn't make any goddamn sense."
"What was all that screaming we heard last night?" The others kept saying. "Where did they go? Are they nude?"
After a quick general search they were unable to locate the bodies or any evidence of what happened the previous night. No blood, no signs of a struggle, not even a single shell casing. Everyone was too spooked to try harder.
They didn't stay long. They gathered as much supplies as they could carry, climbed into a jeep and drove off. Thursday will always remember the way the uniforms flapped quietly in the wind, and how the sound carried with them, even as they drove away.
()
Though it only happened twice, Thursday already saw the pattern. If he asked for help, he was going to recieve it. He didn't believe it was God who was answering his prayers, but something clearly was.
Was it watching him? Has it been watching him this whole time, even after all these years?
This wasn't something Thursday could experiment on. Not without someone dying or disappearing into the abyss. The only solution he had was to never pray again. He stopped going to church. When he had to bow his head during respectful events, he thought about lunch. If someone asked him to lead a prayer, he made a conscious effort to only thank and never ask.
Then Mickey Carter died.
Thursday knew who killed him. He fucking knew and thanks to inefficient evidence, that rat bastard was going to get away with murder. That piece of shit had kicked in Mickey's sternum so hard, he crushed it underneath his foot.
He had left this poor twenty-two year old alone in the streets, gasping for air, unable to cry for help until he suffocated under his own weight. His body wasn't found till the next morning by the newspaper delivery boy.
The moment Thursday left the morgue, he got into his car and drove. He drove till he out in the middle of nowhere, he drove until the road was nothing more than treaded dirt under his tyres. He parked, got out of his car and stared bankly at the isolation all around him. His only companions were a few trees slumped over from lack of water. The grass was as high as his knees and he stepped forward, the request ready on his lips.
Kill them. Kill them all. Do it slowly. Do it as painfully as you can. Make them regret every single thing they've done that led them up to this moment. Make them feel the same torment, the same helplessness Mickey felt before he died and times that by a hundred. Kill them. Kill them all.
He wanted to say it. He wanted to say it so badly.
But when he thought about Lyle Pierce, thought about those soldiers, he wasn't sure he could handle having another body on his soul. He just wanted them to stop, not be stopped.
"Who are you?" Thursday asked into the silence.
He waited.
When nothing happened for five minutes, he wondered if his requests could only be fulfilled through violence. Maybe he was wrong about the whole thing. Just as he turned to go back to his car, that's when he saw him.
He was standing by one of the leaning, dying trees. He was far away enough for his facial features to be disorienting, and as Thursday drew closer, a few things became more clear.
This man was tall. Thursday has always been a large man, even as a child, and very rarely found himself having to stare up at someone. But with this man, he would have to crane his neck up just to look at him.
The man was also wearing a black suit with tie, which was unusual attire to see in the country side. Hell, it was unusual attire to see anywhere at four in the afternoon.
Thursday stopped walking. He knew he should go forward, get the answers that have been plaguing him since he was a child but his feet refused to move.
He didn't notice before- why didn't he notice before - but the man's arms were long. With every breath Thursday took, more and more of this man's appearance became clear. The arms were so long, they fell past the man's knees and disappeared from sight into the long grass.
Thursday looked up from the arms to the man's face. Except there was no face to look at. No nose, no mouth, no eyes. There was nothing there, and though Thursday had no idea who this man was, he knew in that moment nothing was ever there to being with.
He didn't feel frightened. In fact, he felt more compelled to keep going forward, to walk into those long arms. But he also knew if he went, he would never come back.
"Thank you," he said so quietly he barely heard himself. That was fine though. The tall man heard anyways.
Thursday went back to his car, then back to his home, where he packed everything and moved his family away from tempting promises. The tall man will follow, that he had no doubt.
()
Morse has seen Thursday's fury enough to recognize the signs. Unlike himself, Thursday's anger was always soft, quiet, and never showed outward aggression like kicking over a chair or throwing something against the wall. His fury was always a sight to behold and god have mercy upon the man who faced it.
"Who did this to you?"
Thursday reached out and gently grasped Morse's chin, turning his head from side to side to see the injuries. There was a large gash across his forehead, spilling blood over the left side of his face. Bruises dotted his cheek and chin, and he was sporting a fat, split lip. He pulled back from Thursday's hand, embarrassed.
"The Mackenzie brothers," Morse said, then flinched as blood oozed lazily out of of his lip. He spoke again, this time more gently to avoid aggravating the cut. "I know where they're keeping the girls."
Thursday didn't answer right away. He was watching the droplet of blood travel down Morse's chin, and when Morse realized what he was doing, he grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it away. "I see," Thursday said, unnaturally calm. His eyes spoke a different tale. "Can you walk?"
The brothers focused most of their attacks on Morse's chest and face. His legs were fine. "Yes."
"Alright. I'm going to take you to the station. Get on the radio and call for backup."
"What are you going to do?" Morse already knew. Thursday was going to go the the forest.
Not any specific one, Morse had noticed. On cases as violent and cruel as this one, Thursday liked to take 'walks'. He would go into the nearest wooded area, and then ten minutes later, come back out. It really didn't take long for Morse to notice each time Thursday did this, the suspects would suddenly disappear without trace. The last time he did this was nearly a year ago. A man was accused of assaulting several children in the neighbourhood, but due to circumstantial evidence, he avoided jail. After a boy was killed and still no arrest could be made, Thursday excused himself that night.
Morse followed him.
The closest wooded area was a dense park. Nobody was around, not even the local homeless. Morse kept his distance and watched his friend enter the woods. He wanted to keep going, see exactly where Thursday went, but doing so would have exposed him immediately. So he waited, watching, and ten minutes later, Thursday came back out, looking satisfied.
The next day, their suspect was never seen again.
"I'm going to call in a favour," Thursday said. "I'll see you in an hour."
()
Like Morse predicted, Thursday went straight into the nearest wooded area. It was a well-known bycicle route, often crowded during the days by enthusiasts. This time Morse didn't have to worry about announcing his position by stepping onto dry, crunching leaves. The treaded path allowed him to keep close.
He followed Thursday for ten minutes. The man didn't seem to care where he was going or how fast. He stopped at a random point. This was odd; the closest rest area wasn't for another fifteen minutes of riding.
Morse looked around, expecting another person and saw no one.
"The Mackenzie brothers," Thursday said out loud, startling Morse. "They need to be stopped, please."
Who was he talking to? Thursday had his torch pointing downwards, and when he spoke, his head was lifted up, speaking directly to the trees.
"They're hurting children," Thursday continued. "Girls, and young boys. Selling them. I would have wanted them to simply disappear, but tonight, they went after someone. A friend."
Morse sucked in a lungful of air-
"Make them suffer," Thursday finished.
Oh dear god, did Thursday just ordered a hit on the Mackenzie brothers because they attacked Morse? He didn't order their death, he ordered for their torture. No matter how much Morse despised the brothers, he could not have this on conscience. He stepped out of the shadows, turning on his own torch.
"Sir!" He said. Thursday stopped and shined the torch right on Morse, blinding him. "Who are you talking to?"
"Morse! You need to get out of here, now! Before you see him!"
"See who-?" With one arm to raised to block the light from Thursday, Morse raised his own light, shining it past Thursday, and saw exactly who was standing right behind him.
At first Morse thought it was an optical illusion brought on by the sudden, temporary blindness. He saw a torso dressed in black, standing well above Thursday's head. Then Morse moved his light upwards, and upwards, until it finally stopped.
He didn't know what he was looking at. He didn't want to know.
It was like seeing something at the corner of his eye, and no matter how many times Morse blinked, trying to correct his vision, he couldn't comprehend what he was seeing. This man, this tall, faceless man. Staring at It made him disoriented, sick, and suddenly he felt his stomach twisting violently.
He dropped his torch, finally ending his stare at the tall man, and cupped his mouth to keep from vomiting.
"You're okay, lad," Thursday crooned softly, rubbing Morse's back as the boy choked back the contents of his stomach. "Keep your eyes down, and you'll be fine."
"What..." he gasped. "Was that...?"
"A friend."
"A friend?!"
"Calm down, you're becoming hysterical-"
Morse threw himself away from Thursday's touch. He grabbed his torch and lifted it, scanning the area wildly. The thin, faceless man was nowhere to be seen. "Where did he go? Did... did you issue a hit on the Mackenzie brothers?"
"Not exactly," Thursday said. "They won't be missed."
"Is this what you did last year with David Krushnic? And-and-and with Melissa Ryder? You sent... THAT after them?"
Nothing on Thursday's face or in his body language showed remorse or guilt. "In the past I used to... restrict myself from ever asking for help. Unfortunately there's only so much I can stay quiet about."
"Then why didn't you order it to go after Hitler?"
"I do not order him," Thursday snapped. "I ask him, politely. And he can only go after those who've hurt me and what's mine."
"Fuck!" Morse hissed. "So I'm not wrong, you sent it after the Mackenzie brothers because of me. Because they hurt me."
Thursday said nothing.
"Call him off. Thursday, sir-! I don't want this on my conscience!"
"It's already done," Thursday said. "They'll never hurt another human being ever again."
Morse wanted to ask about Krushnic, about Ryder, what did they do to Thursday to deserve such a fate? Without explanation he knew they died screaming, just like the Mackenzies were going to die screaming. And when their yells of terror were finally ceased, all evidence of their existence will disappear from this earth.
"I'm going to be sick," Morse whispered.
"Go ahead," Thursday said. He turned around, and a moment later, the sound of splatter struck the ground. "I won't look."