Status: Complete
Pairing(s): N/A
Additional Categories: One Shot
Genre: Drama, Horror
Season/Episode/Book: Episode 01x07 "Thrack, Splat, Sizzle"
Rating: R
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Homicide
Spoilers: All of the Series
Summary: Around 800 degrees Celsius, bone will turn a white or grey color, possibly even with blue marking. If the bone is still wet, transverse cracks will appear. Henry always wanted to see if his studies were correct.
Series/Sequels: N/A
Author's Note: This popped up when I was listening to my professor lecture during my Forensic Anthropology class. Note, I'm not an expert and thus just going off the basics I have learned. This is also archived on my Livejournal (link on my profile)
Bones of the Bridges I have Burned
It was too bad that they had to use the head spade to kill Thomas Wellington.
He had hated the man and had decided for his murder to be especially bloody as well as public.
The tool was heavy, sharp, and just right for decapitation. After all, that was its intended purpose since whalers' would use it to decapitate the whales they caught, severing the vertebrae after removing the blubber. Just grip the shaft tight as you sunk it deep into the body of the prey, slicing through skin, muscle, and bone.
The excitement of seeing it in action had thrilled him to the core. Feeling the power as he swing it around, watching in fascination as the wrought iron instrument arced through the air to slice into Reverend Fain's neck, eyes drawn to the first and only arterial spray of blood before the old man's body ceased to function. Gravity had done the rest, pulling the pints of blood down through the arteries and veins, the dark liquid dripping to the ground.
He had breathed heavily through his mouth as he watched the disarticulated head tumble away, coming to a rest just a couple of feet from where the body was. In the silence of the forest, Henry Dunn stood still, ears straining to catch any sound of being discovered at the grisly crime scene. He only heard the air rushing from his lungs as he continued to breathe, eyes slowly drifting over the trunks of the trees and still bushes. Every now and then, the heavy blanket of silence was broken by the forlorn calls of owls and other native birds. After a while, Henry turned his attention back to the corpse still swinging from the rope, knowing that his murder had gone unnoticed for now.
His trusty pocket knife had made quick work of the rope, dropping the rest of the body down to the floor. It was at this moment, he had been glad he had the foresight to sneak into the anatomy classes at Harvard to learn about the human body. The professor had lectured that it was common for murderers to cut through bone as they usually underestimated the difficulty of cutting bone, evident by the slices on the bone shafts. He knew better. The head spade had other uses as well, besides decapitating. If it could cut through a whale's body, it made quick work of a human one.
He had made sure that the head spade had sliced just inside of the shoulder, cutting through the capsular and the other ligaments. He had not wanted to hit the proximal end of the humeri. Cutting the leg off was a bitch for sure. It required more digging into the pelvis to make sure he didn't hit the proximal end of the femurs as it was the strongest bone in the body. Since the man was dead already, there was little blood on his clothes so he had quickly hooked the body parts onto the line his father had prepared and thrown the reverend into the bog and tied the end to the post near the water line.
Then, Wellington's death came.
Just like everyone else in the church, his eyes had been drawn to the noises coming from the chandelier but he was the only one who knew what was coming.
He was the only one that could see the head spade cleverly hidden in the chandelier, the others not noticing that it was not part of the lighting fixture. None of the others could see the parts that began to move once Abby had turned off the light switch.
When he had planned it, Henry had not taken into account that Abby would have been the one to turn on the switch. He hadn't wanted to burden her with the belief that she was the one responsible for it. But how was he supposed to have known that the bitch woman would have wanted the lights off during the practice of lighting the unity candle? Yet it had been done and he had seen the damage turning off the lights had done to his Abby. When all of this was over, he would help Abby get over the feelings caused by that slipup.
Despite the drawback, Henry could not deny the sight of the head spade driving into the face of the man he loathed but not as much as he did the sow that had birthed and thrown him away like yesterday's trash had excited him. The spade had destroyed the lower face utterly, shattering the maxillae, and the mandible. It came to rest in his manubrium and body of his sternum, just an inch or two from the man's heart. Yet, the damage was enough to kill the man.
He only hoped that it wasn't instantaneous.
Once the sheriff came, his trusty head spade had been taken to their office as evidence. It was too risky to recover his weapon without being caught by the lumbering law enforcement officers.
This was the reason why he was resorting to a wood axe he had found in the basement, used for cutting wood for the fireplaces in the inn.
He wondered if it would be as good as cutting human flesh and bone as the head spade was.
The weight of the axe in his hand was heavier than that of the head spade or the whalers' boarding knife his father was so fond of. The lighter color of the blade's edge gleamed in the daylight.
He followed his next victim as he walked into the basement, the backpack with the cash in his hand. The man's anguish over the situation was evident in the way he walked, shoulders slumped, gait slow. To him, it was ironic that one of the planned victims had actually made it easier for them by offing himself off with a fatal gunshot wound to the leg. Sometimes, fate just had a funny sense of humor.
Joel Booth's death had only proved what his father had been saying all along. There were hunters and prey.
Henry Dunn was a hunter.
As silently as he could, he moved around to the far end of the basement, keeping to the shadows, mindful of the clear windows near the top of the wall that was just above the ground outside. If anyone looked down at just the right angle, they would be able to see inside the basement.
His supposed friend tentatively reached out before grabbing it with a determined fist and opened the furnace door. The bright, red glow accented the chubby cheeks of the man, the gases billowing out.
He had read that furnaces could reach temperatures of 900 degrees Celsius if the furnace was efficient enough. At temperatures below 800 degrees Celsius, the bone would darken from its normal yellowish-brown color to a darker yellow-brown and then to black as the proteins and oils inside burned. At around 800 degrees Celsius, it was said the bone would turn light and dark gray and white with probable blue areas. At temperatures higher than 800 degrees Celsius, the bone would then turn white as the oils and proteins burned completely away, calcinating the bone to the core. If the bone was wet from having the proteins inside, the bone would crack from the heat, running along the width of the bone. If the proteins had dried out from the bone before placed into the fire such as when skeletons were bleached by the sun, the cracks would run along the length.
He had always wanted to test if his studies were true.
He allowed Malcolm Ross throw the last of the money into the fire, letting him watch the pile of paper and ink burn into black char before attacking.
Henry Dunn roughly grasped Ross' left arm, jerking him off balance. Ross looked up as he landed on the floor, his eyes widening as he caught of the man who was about to kill him as well as the axe in his hand. Never letting the man recover, Henry raised the axe and brought it swiftly down even as the man began to scream in horror. He watched as the blade bit into the man's side, bleeding seeping out to stain the t-shirt. Since he wasn't using both hands and the movement of his right arm was awkward, it did not sink far enough into the thick flesh.
Letting the man go, he withdrew the axe with a sharp tug, the slurp of the metal pulling free of the flesh causing his heart to pump harder. Ross grabbed at the wound, blood flowing between his thick fingers, screams still spilling from his gaping mouth. Henry watched as he tried to get up, his right hand grabbing the opening to the furnace. The smell of burning flesh reached his nose, the sizzle music to his ears as smoke rose from the burning blood and skin on the hand.
Grinning savagely now, he gripped the axe with both hands and brought it down with precision and skill on the shaking arm. The blade once more sliced through muscle and bone, forcing Ross to let go of the furnace door and to his knees as the nerves in his hand failed him. After all, it would be hard for the brain to send orders through a severed nerve. The man's agonized screams continued to ring as he pulled the blade free from the wrist. Unlike the head spade, the axe did not fully sever the hand from the arm, the appendage still attached by a muscle. With a kick from his booted foot, he forced the man on his back. His nose shriveled in disgust at the smell of urine and feces.
So another aspect of his study was true.
At the point of death, the bowels of some victims would loosen, expelling waste in their final moments of life.
Disgusted, Henry brought down the axe again, sinking it into the man's leg out of spite, causing the man to scream once more. It seemed that the man was incapable of screaming his name or even to plead for mercy. Maybe he knew that he wouldn't receive any and didn't think to waste his breathe. The blade again didn't penetrate all the way, only about two inches or so. Tugging on it, he aimed at the pelvic girdle, slicing into the pubic symphasis.
He laughed. It was an extreme form of castration, he had to admit.
The man continued to writhe in pain, blood spilling out on the floor.
But time was slipping away, increasing the chance of someone coming down here and discovering his deed. Especially with the amount bloody coming from the large man.
Feeling sorry at being rushed, Henry brought the axe down again and again. The man's screams ended when the axe bit into his sternum, no doubt severing the arteries feeding the heart with deoxygenated blood.
After it was all over and the body was in manageable pieces, Henry leaned the axe against the furnace. The first piece to go in was the burnt right hand, followed by the mangled left arm, torso, and remaining outer limbs. The last piece was the skull. He had to make sure to come back here when the body would be discovered so he could see the grinning skull of one of his 'best' buds. He always had wondered about the eternal grinning state of the human skeleton. The ways the mandible flared out to articulate to the skull, the teeth set in such a way as to look as if the skull was showing off its teeth.
With a flick of his wrist, Henry sent the skull into the roaring blaze, watching it as it landed right where the quarter of a million dollars had burned into ash. He squatted there, watching as the tongues of flame quickly turning the pale face of Malcolm Ross into a blackened mask, the hair disappearing within a minute. The charring crept up from where the face was resting on the floor of the furnace, moving upward to where the side of the head wasn't directly in the fire itself.
Watching as the torn clothes caught the flame and burned, Henry knew that he had taken a step closer to becoming free, to being alone with her. He could have engineered the plans in such a way to minimize the number of murders needed to pull this off. Trish and the others could have left on the ship while leaving behind people that he had no ties to.
Trish. The girl he could have loved as much as Abby but after Jennings, he could not bring himself to trust her. His dad had pointed out that once a woman betrays you once, what will stop her from betraying you again? But if he needed to become who he was meant to be and to let himself truly be with Abby in every way, Trish Wellington needed to die. The only consolation was that his dad would be the one to kill her so she wouldn't die with the knowledge that her fiancée was also her killer.
Even for him, that was an unnecessary pain.
Plus, if he was able to do to do with that with a woman he could have loved as much as Abby, could he also do it unintentionally to Abby?
Gripping the furnace door, Henry closed the opening, making sure to leave a bloody print on it so when time came, the others would find the cremains.
The plans were in motion and could not be stopped without risking everything he had worked for. It would be painful to see both JD and Trish die but it was necessary. The others were just collateral damage and meant nothing to him.
Plus, he did a favor for Malcolm. The man was nothing, living on a fantasy that would never come to pass.
Henry went to the hose coiled behind the furnace, pulling it out. Holding it steady, he opened it, washing the blood down the drain built into the floor. The original owners of the inn hadn't wanted to get caught with liquor so they had built a drainage system here in the basement of the inn in case they needed to hide their illegal moonshine and liquor. Now, the drain was being used to hide the evidence of another crime, this time one of murder.
Within minutes, the floor was drenched but there were no visible signs of blood anywhere except for the single clue on the furnace itself. Henry closed the hose off and placed it back. Now, it was up to nature to dry the floor before anyone came down here to discover the grisly remains.
Climbing the stairs, Henry paused at the door before stepping out into the hallway. It would not do for someone to catch him in blood-splattered clothes. Though he had been lying through his teeth for years now, even he couldn't lie his way out if someone saw him. Hearing nothing, Henry slipped into the empty room next to the basement door where he had hidden an extra set of clothes he was wearing. After taking a quick shower and a check to make sure he had washed off all the blood, he pulled the extra clothes on, stuffing the bloody clothes into a trash black.
He stepped out and as he walked through the hallways of the Candlewick Inn, he stuffed the bag into one of the cleaning carts left in the open. Henry knew they were usually taken to the public incinerator on the continent, giving him no worry about the discovery of the clothes.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets as he walked outside, he smiled.
Soon, Abby, it will all be over soon.