Chapter 1:Publicity
It was feeding time for the thing. It had been on a killing spree for the last two weeks, even caught on camera for a few seconds by its latest prey. It was unacceptable that the creature had already been discovered. In the depths of what these humans called the 'internet' there were clips, speculation and information on the thing. But they had at least gone to the effort of naming it. It was a good name. The Faceless Grinner. But soon enough the skeleton and the girl would know and they would come for it. The Faceless Grinner marvelled at how it had this knowledge, even though a few seconds ago it had had no idea of the dangers presented by unwanted publicity. It could gather its information and take vengeance, oh so sweet vengeance on those who had hurt it." Soon," it whispered to itself, " soon I will have by sweet revenge in blood and death!"
Across the Emerald Isle, Skulduggery and Valkyrie were blissfully unaware of the Faceless Grinner, because they were too busy jumping off a cliff.
"Right, so how do we activate the parachutes!?"
"We needed parachutes?" replied Skulduggery.
"Of course we do, I can't fly, remember!"
"Well use your weirdo-power."
"It is not a weirdo-power! Screamed Valkyrie in an unusually shrill voice.
Whether or not it was a weirdo power remained undecided, as the reason they were jumping off a cliff barrelled off it.
Nefarian Serpine's (rather late) revenge squad had arrived. To their eternal shame, all but one of them were too scared to go off the cliff. And the one who had had done so by accident.
Sparion Necessary, head of the group, screamed like a little girl as he pin wheeled down the cliff. By this point Valkyrie had used her new-found power to successfully not die. Sparion somehow put together an air cushion that left him with only one broken leg. He crawled towards Valkyrie.
"I...need..."
"yeah,yeah. Revenge and all that." And so saying, Valkyrie sent a blast of white light that melted the gun out of her hands.
" no...I...need...a...hospital."
Once Sparion was happily locked up and the rest of the gang had fled, Valkyrie found herself once more taking the long drive to Haggard. As she entered the decrepit outskirts, she noticed that practically every TV had a very disturbing news story on it.
"Skulduggery, you might want to see this."
Every news channel was showing the exact same clip. A faceless man leaping down from above the camera's perspective, facing an unfortunate man. For no apparent reason the man screamed and ran away. The thing was after him in seconds, sprinting on all fours like an animal. Shrill screams, the tearing of flesh and snapping of bone were all melodies to accompany this grisly orchestra. Thankfully what happened to the man was outside the view of the camera. Eventually the thing came back, blood spattered, with a corpse in tow. It looked up at the camera and when it did, Valkyrie was utterly across the smooth dome of flesh was an enourmous scar that gave the impression that this abomination was grinning. At the centre of the two scars, a thin mouth of razor sharp teeth that lacked lips was displayed. But the most chilling part was yet to come. It looked directly at the camera and, rather than roar or growl, spoke.
"I'm coming for you." then it ripped open the scar tissue and dislocated and broke its bones, forming an impossibly large mouth. It leapt at the camera and bit down. Then the camera went black.
"It is believed that this is a clip from a CCTV camera in a car park. This clip was taken at one o' clock exactly." Droned the BBC news( A/N I'm British, if someone could tell me about any Irish news channels I'll happily edit) presenter. Valkyrie noticed something was wrong. The presenter was shaking and sweating- two signs of extreme fear. Without warning, the creature known as the Faceless Grinner poked its head into the frame.
"Please let me go. I've done everything I was told. Don't hurt me!"
The Grinner didn't reply. It didn't need to. A shard of broken bone began to grow from its arm, forming a bone-claw-spear-thing. The claw ripped into the presenter's throat and spurted blood everywhere. When it retracted, the man's jugular was on its end. The creature bit down hard on it, causing a squelching, tearing sound. The presenter lay, bathed in blood, dead in his chair.
The Grinner growled,
"It begins."