Salvation through Murder
Chapter 1
The police were milling about the crime scene, each taking care of their respective jobs. Everyone was filled with a sense of unease while inside the victim's apartment. None of them could shake the feeling that something was still inside the room with them.
The body lay in the middle of the floor, spread eagle, with the effects of rigor mortis setting in. The girl's were bruised, as if they had been in a crushing grip. Her face was twisted in a show of excruciating pain and was covered in grisly gashes. The most morbid injury, however, was that the girl's throat had been torn open. Blood had pooled around her neck and head and soaked into the floorboards.
A rookie detective, Randy Colt, was working on opening a locked door in the victim's apartment. He couldn't stop looking back at the gore-crusted body behind him and at his superior on a knee, inspecting her. Suddenly, the lock picking tools clicked into place and the door slowly creaked open. A foul stench from the shadows swept into the apartment, causing every officer to cover their nose.
The curiosity of youth getting the better of him, Colt stepped into the shadows, flashlight illuminating the shadows. After a moment, Detective Frank Ryder, Colt's superior, heard the rookie's voice call from the shadows.
"Detective, you should really come see this," the young man's voice wavered in fear.
Ryder stood up and walked into the shadow-filled room. The only sources of light in the room were coming from the open door, casting a rectangle of orange-yellow light, and from Colt's flashlight, a spear of white in the dark. Colt stood frozen in the middle of the room, eyes wide in fear and glued to the wall. Ryder's eyes fell on the wall illuminated by the flashlight and felt his heart skip a beat.
"Jesus Christ…" he whispered.
"No, sir. I really don't think so," Colt murmured, falling back on sarcasm to try and steady his thundering heart.
The white plaster walls were bleeding. Dripping red symbols were scrawled from wall to wall, arranged in bizarre patterns. Symbols came together to form massive images of carnage and chaos; heads being severed, hearts cut from their chests, limbs ripped from their sockets and throats being torn open. The metallic stench of blood filled the air and spilled into the main room.
Detective Ryder closed his eyes, bent his head and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes again, they fell upon marks in the dust. Tapping Colt on the shoulder, he motioned for Colt to shine his flashlight on the floor.
The cone of light found the markings on the floor, revealing them to be two sets of footprints leading away from the door and towards the wall on the right. Halfway between the door and the wall, the markings changed. One set of footprints continued but the other became a disfigured shape, as if someone had fallen. Ryder's keen eyes and mind followed along the path and looked for more clues as to what had happened.
Past the formless shape, handprints were pressed into the dust on both sides of a long streak. It appeared as if someone had been on their rear facing the door, and was pushing back away from it using their hands. The first set of footprints then doubled back and appeared to have helped the fallen person to their feet as the two sets of prints led came to the wall and stopped.
Colt's flashlight beam had been tracing along the footprints and came to rest at the foot of the wall. Slowly, he raised the light up the wall, once again lighting up all manner of evil symbols. However, an explanation for the sudden disappearance of the tracks was also revealed.
The opening to a rather large dumbwaiter stood ajar, appearing as an open gash in the bloody wall. Ryder's training kicks in, overriding his growing fear, as his radio squawks to life.
"All personnel, be advised. Keep an eye on the basement; we might have suspects still in the building," Ryder spoke into the small black mouthpiece.
A strange sound filled the room, making both Colt and Ryder's hair stand on end. It sounded like metal carving through drywall, chips of broken wall cracking as they hit the floor.
The young Detective Colt frantically swept his light around the room, trying to find the source of the horrific noise. He passed over the wall across from the entryway and froze, his heartbeat drowning out all other sounds in his ears.
The word Revenge had been carved in the wall, red liquid flowing freely from the fresh breaks in the drywall.
Despite his many years of experience on the force, Ryder found that he had broken into a cold sweat. Looking to Colt for assurance he wasn't going mad, he saw pure, paralyzing fear in the rookie's eyes. Not really comforted by what he found, Ryder turned his attention back to the wall, his eyes drawn to the hideous message scrawled by an unseen hand.
The Detective's radio came to life in a blast of noise, causing both men to jump.
"Detective Ryder, we arrested a man trying to escape from the basement. He's got some blood on him, sir," an officer's voice crackled through.
"Copy that, I'm on my way," Ryder responded. "Come on, Colt. Let's get out of here."
Detective Colt nodded silently and quickly walked out. Even more uncomfortable in the room when it was dark, Ryder quickly followed him out.
Upon arriving downstairs, the pair of detectives saw the officer that had called them standing next to a rather tall man with long, brown hair, somewhere in his early twenties. Red stains that looked like blood dot the man's shirt and jeans. He had an unmistakable air of calm about him, something very rare for someone in cuffs and blood on his clothes.
"Are you the one from the basement, boy?" Ryder asked the man.
"Yes sir," the man replied with casual politeness.
"What's your name, son?" Detective Ryder asked, his eyes narrowing as he became evermore curious about how this man was so calm under arrest.
"Sam, sir. Sam Winchester," he replied.