Seven
Jessie tried the brass knob to the peeling, painted door carefully and jumped slightly as it slipped easily from the door and clattered to the snowy ground. Denver glanced over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow raised.
"You're stronger than you look," he observed.
"The wood's rotting," Jessie replied, flaking away an old chip that dangled where the doorknob once rested. "Who owns this town?"
"Not sure. It might just be free land."
Jessie slipped her thin hand and wrist into the hole and felt around until her fingers brushed the cold brass lock and, with a little difficulty, turned it. She pressed her hip, thigh, and arms against the door and leaned into it, crying in shock as the door collapsed to the ground with her still atop it. A thick, gritty cloud of dust fumed up from the floor.
"You all right?"
"Ouch. Yes."
Denver waved his hand around in the dust, then found Jessie's arm and tugged her to her feet. "Thanks," she said, rather dryly, brushing herself off.
"Wow. Quite the mess."
Jessie looked over her shoulder, following Denver's gaze, and turned. "Wow," she echoed him. "What a...yeah."
Denver entered first, stepping around Jessie and onto the concrete ground. Glass and debris crunched loudly beneath his boots.
"Look."
Jessie seized his arm and led him away from where he headed. "Look," she said again, pointed to a smooth smear of clean cement that led from an open doorway of the room they occupied to the next room and around a corner.
"Someone's been in here," Denver commented in a professional manner. Jessie gazed at him, miffed.
"Thank you, Captain Know-It-All—"
"Do you write your own material?"
"I wasn't finished."
"Continue."
"...Captain Know-It-All, obvious power six-point-five "lets go back to the fucking future, Marty" gigawatts," Jessie said quietly, then coughed. "I wrote that one myself."
"Nice job," Denver murmured, staring at her with a blend of incredulity and admiration. "Why are you being so quiet?"
"Because there might be someone in here." She grinned.
Denver frowned, then turned away from Jessie. "You're a little different outside of the car."
"Yeah."
She followed him along the cleared path through several more rooms, all quite similar. He stopped her as they entered a fourth room and loud, raspy, gurgling breathing filled the room.
'Ugh,' Jessie thought, but said nothing. "They sound hurt. Did you bring a first aid kit?"
"Yes," he replied quietly. "Wait here."
He approached the closed door carefully, drawing a pistol from the holster in his jacket. Jessie, still waiting at the doorway, drew her own.
Denver whipped open the door and, instantly, the putrid smell of burning, rotting flesh swept into the room and seized them both. Jessie retched, but Denver blanched and stumbled out of the doorway, bracing himself against the wall.
"What is it?" Jessie gasped. "What's in there?"
Denver spat and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He simply said, "Don't go in there."
"We have to," Jessie said. "There's someone in there, I can hear it."
"It shouldn't be alive," Denver muttered, shaking his head.
"Then what's breathing?"
Denver shook his head. "It shouldn't be alive..."
Jessie narrowed her eyes. "I'm going in there."
Denver shook his head.
Jessie swept into the room and past him, boldly into the putrid, smelling room; hardly a moment later, quite like Denver, she spun out of the room and braced herself beside him on the wall.
"I told you." Denver laughed softly, mirthlessly.
"What the hell was that?" Jessie breathed, eyes wide.
"A severed body and a hunk of metal on a stick," Denver replied coolly.
Jessie closed her eyes. "Thank you...Captain...yeah."
"Okay. You ready to go in there."
"Yeah. Sure."
Denver entered again first, pinching two fingers over his nostrils. Jessie followed, somewhat warily, behind him, and felt the blood drain from her face as she saw the body before them.
"It's definitely not some random, run-of-the-mill murder," Denver murmured, his voice nasal from his closed nasal passage.
"The smear leading into here is new, but this body is old," Jessie said, tapping carefully at the middle arm piece of the body.
"I'd at least say it's in the third stage of decomposition," Denver replied.
"But it's cut up," Jessie went on, examining the smooth incisions that separated thick, even, perfectly matched chunks of flesh. "And the cuts are old, too. They've deteriorated with the flesh. It looks like it was a pretty clean cut, though."
The gurgling breathing still echoed, louder now in the room.
"Did you study forensics?"
"Yes. I wanted to be a detective, you know. I still do." She rubbed her nose. "You wanna find out where that breathing's coming from? And how many days dead would a third stagie be?"
"Ten...twenty. I think it's inside that hunk of metal."
"He was a healthy guy. Do you have latex gloves in your first aid kit?"
"Several pairs." Denver dug around in his pocket, removed a white box, fished in there for a moment, then tossed her a pair of gloves. "Lets see about this...gurgling. Put your pistol on it, Jessie."
Jessie turned away, tucking the gloves into her jacket and holding her pistol at ready. Denver moved behind the rod and metal statue and, with quite a bit of struggle, topped the chunk over.
The breathing instantly ceased.
Jessie gagged, dropping the pistol and clapping two hands over her mouth. Denver seemed somewhat surprised.
"That's nice," he murmured, slipping his hands into the gloves and carefully tugging at a lock of rumpled, tangled black hair.
"Oh God," Jessie breathed.
"It's just a head," Denver muttered, beginning to circle the stave. "...Oh God."
The white, waxy face stretched long and thin, the chin hanging long inches below where a normal human chin should stretch, cocked to the right. The black eyes still seemed to glitter, unclouded, alive. The matted hair fell over his face, unkempt for years.
"That's disgusting," Jessie whispered.
"It's impaled on this thing," Denver noted, recovering from the shock of the face and tracing a finger along the shaft of the stick. "It looks like the blade of a sword."
"I guess that goes with the body," Jessie murmured, slowly lowering her hands, though still trembling.
"Kinda feels like he's watching you." Denver grinned over his shoulder wickedly at Jessie, who shot back a glare.
"I was gonna take the body, but not now. You can have it. I'll check out the rest of the place. Better yet, I'm just gonna walk back now. This is horrible."
"Wanna be a detective? Get used to it. That thing's dead, it won't hurt you. You take care of the body, it'll look nice on your resume."
"Fine." Jessie snapped the gloves over her hands and removed her jacket. "Hold on to this for me?"
Denver doubled back, but Jessie snatched it away before he could take it.
"Take off those gloves first," she commanded.
Denver grinned, complied, and took the jacket.
"Thanks."
"He's watching you."
"Shut up. Seriously."
..................................
Black putrefaction.
Body lays neatly on a clean, unbroken glass display case; spine, legs, arms straight; feet pointed up and hands palms-down at the body's side. Most likely male, caucasian, early 30s to late 40s, healthy, castrated, decapitated approx. 2" above shoulders. No skin in fingers, scratches on palms/rest of body to suggest maiming after death—dicing most likely performed postmortem with a heated blade (skin is quite seared on most cuts), quickly after death (cuts have deteriorated with the rest of body). Hands and feet separate from body, not individually severed, move freely, past rigor mortis. Body temp. cold. Sample of several tissues contained within.
Left of body, severed head is stuffed onto blade of a large sword, cut from the body w/o the searing and accuracy of the rest of cuts, probably cause of death, cannot tell if postmortem or not. Face is stretched out to ridiculous length, eyes still glassy though skin is decomposed. Large, deep gash beneath chin may also be cause of death. Head was beneath pyramid- shaped hunk of metal, when we first entered, heard gurgled breathing beneath helmet, ended as soon as we removed it.
Insects have consumed a great deal of flesh, but all insects are dead. Collected parasitoid wasp/larvae and bowfly pupae with egg; limited beetles were present, collected carrion and burrowing; numerous flies existed both on body, floor, and display case, collected some of as many species as I could find, name bow, house, flesh, coffin, and maggots from separate parts of body, labeled for adult fly nearest them and part of body occupied.
Jessie bit back the urge to chew on the tip of her pencil—who knew what floated around in the air and latched on to it—then tore the paper off the pad, folded it neatly, and dropped it into the main evidence bag.
"All right," she called to Denver.
"All done?"
"Yeah. Can we get out of here now? It's freezing."
"That might be related to the fact that you're wearing short sleeves." He lay the jacket over her shoulders and Jessie deposited the gloves before shrugging into it quickly and thankfully. "But let me grab some pictures and then we'll be off into town."
"Town?" Jessie muttered.
"We're here to find leads on the girls."
"Well, we just found a body," Jessie muttered under her breath. "Sounds a little bit like a lead to me."
"Besides, how do you plan on getting out? The car's a few miles down the road, lodged in snow."
"Might there be a motel or something somewhere around here?"
"Possibly. Not until we find a lead."
"Ugh."
"Persistence is a virtue of detectives. No good detective ever just gave up."
"Spare me the detective talk."
"You want to be one, right?"
"I'm working on it," Jessie murmured, shivering. She turned her eyes from the floor to Denver, who stepped delicately around the body, taking pictures from several angles. He turned his attention to the head, and finally, the hunk of metal on the ground.
"Okay. I'm ready."
"Awesome." Jessie thrust her hands into her pockets. "Get enough pictures?"
"And a few extra. It'll be helpful, I promise.
"You ought to give me some pointers on taking those kinds of pictures sometime."
"Gladly. How about now?"
Jessie shrugged a little. "Sure." She waved for him to exit the room before her and turned to leave, but a glint of metal caught her eye.
At first, it seemed it was only a caption on the wall, but she examined the painting, running her fingers delicately over the surface (though her mother had told her this was a "no-no" many times), and her fingers connected with a metal chip that fell easily from the painting's surface when her finger brushed over it. She caught it in her free hand and examined the triangle-shaped slice of metal.
"Jessie!" Denver called from the front room. "You coming?"
"Hold on," she called back after a moment, then tucked the metal into her pocket and looked up at the painting.
'... Red G.. .. J......'
It was too smudged to read, but something on the picture clicked in Jessie's mind. A man stood in the picture, a tall, strongly-muscled man in a white robe, clutching a huge blade in his left hand.
In place of a head, however, a huge, pyramid-shaped chunk of metal lay over his shoulders.
In the room with the body, a huge, pyramid-shaped chunk of metal lay on the ground.
Jessie shivered. "Denver...you might want to see this."
.............................................................................................................
(Just something I want to clarify here...I am not bringing Pyramid Head or the other one into the story. No no. Just their bodies. I understand how much some of you despise bringing Pyramid Head into stories that have nothing to do with James, and this story has nothing to do with James (or does it, mwahaha?), so, thus, no Pyramid Head. Except his body. )