The Unkindest Cut, Part II: Splitting Heirs

By C. Mage

David got into the car and waited for Lara to get in as well. As soon as the door was closed, David turned to look at Lara. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you in there. You were as white as a sheet. I've never seen you that scared before. So what's the deal?"

Lara was silent for a long while.

"I'm not starting this car until we get this hashed out."

Lara sighed. "David...have you ever had a phobia?"

"A phobia?"

"I believe Webster calls it, 'an unreasoning, uncontrollable fear without logical cause'. It means that if you are phobic about something, there is no way in Heaven you'll share space with the subject of that fear. Do you understand?"

"You're telling me you have a phobia about blood-covered rooms? You didn't even see it when you stopped in the hallway."

"Not the room...it's...it's a feeling I got about that room. There was something in there, something unspeakable, truly evil happened there and it affected me on a primal level. Don't look at me like that, Dave, I don't know how else to describe it." Lara looked at him stubbornly. "All I know is that just walking close to that place gave me a feling of dread and fear I could no more deny than I could recognize."

"This is getting wierder. What could cause something like that?"

"...some sort of evil spirit. A ghost, a demon..." Lara's eyes widened slightly. "...I've got it. I know what's doing this."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense. What is it?"

"A wraith."

"What's a wraith?"

"It's a type of spirit, like a ghost, only instead of haunting a place, it haunts an object. Something it was close to, perhaps even bound to in life. But to cause this kind of sensation in living people, this wraith must've been evil, monstrous."

"Never heard of something like this before."

"They're extremely rare. Last documented sighting of such an entity was in 1501 AD, in Austria. It caused the deaths of several people before it was exorcised."

"Well, how was it driven away?"

"The article responsible, a crystal goblet, was smashed and the pieces burned."

"Solutions at last. That's why they couldn't find the murder weapon. Whoever picked it up was..." David stopped, then picked up his cellphone, dialing a number.

"Something wrong?"

"A hunch. Hey, Kellaway, Connors here. Look, did anyone report to the evidence locker in the last hour? Okay...yeah. Check the sign-in log and see if they made it. I'll hold."

"You think one of the police officers found something?"

"Maybe...if so, God help 'em." David waited, then frowned. "Contact her, find out where she is. Why? I'll tell you why. She's got the murder weapon!"

Jo Morelli was in hell.

Her body was working on its own, but the part of her mind that was still rational was a prisoner in her own brain. Even though she had no physical form, she was being tortured mercilessly. If she'd been able to scream, she'd have shrieked in mortal pain until her vocal cords gave out. She was only barely coherent as she felt the pain, a thousand swords silicing her apart, piece by piece.

It knew her memories, from the distant touch of her fingers clutching at her mother's hand as a newborn until the moment she'd picked up the scalpel and the force roared into her body like a tidal wave. She'd considered herself a strong-willed woman, but her resolve only took a split-second in the physical world. In her mind, she'd resisted for what seemed like days, but in the end, it uncovered her secrets, took control of her body, used every mistake, every memory of failure against her and defeated her.

And now it was torturing her, slowly shredding her psyche. When it first began, she asked, begged to know what it wanted. After a time, she would've given up anything, her young son, her mother, anything to make the pain stop.

She was rewarded only with, "I HAVE WHAT I NEED ALREADY. NOW, ALL I WANT FROM YOU, WHORE, IS TO HEAR YOU SUFFER A WHORE'S FATE. DAMNATION AND ETERNAL PUNISHMENT FOR YOUR SLUTTISH WAYS."

She was only barely aware of what was going on around her. Jo's face bore flowing tears that dripped down her cheeks and over the insidious grin she also wore. The Thing wiped her face, picking up a box and addressing it to 2388 South Maple Drive in Manhattan. Once the package was mailed, the influence that controlled her was gone, but the commands placed into her brain endured. Her mind was too discorporated to resist the suggestions. All her conscious mind could do was beg for mercy and death, to be released from her pain.

When her squad car drove off the bridge into the water, only then did relief and death come to her.

David sighed. "When?" He rubbed his eyes as Lara looked over at him. They'd both been up for hours, waiting for the word on Officer Morelli's whereabouts. "Alright. Have an autopsy done on her as soon as the M.E. can manage it." He hung up the phone. "They found her. She drove off a drawbridge, jumped the barrier. She must've been going sixty. Five bucks say she's got the same kind of brain damage."

"Any sign of the murder weapon?"

"None. It's like this thing is laughing at us. It just reaches out and butchers people, using other people as its tools, then just manages to vanish." David walked up to a large map and looked at the local attacks. "Here, here and here. Another in a different city altogether, just days away from the murders here." He looked at the map, then sighed. "Lara, hand me those files over there."

"Not to be a pain, Dave, but haven't we gone over those files ten times already?"

"Then we go over them again. Call down to the M.E. and have them go over the bodies again. There's something we're missing." David looked over at Lara. "Sorry this trip to the States isn't exactly relaxing."

"Don't worry about it, Dave. Besides, compared to my thesis at Oxford, this is a vacation." She smiled, but David knew she was getting tired. "I'll be fine."

"Alright...but if you need a break, there's some vending machines down by the mail room. Hope you like synthetic sweets."

"Mail room...David, that's it!!"

"What?"

"I've just had an epiphany. Show me where the bodies were found once again on the map." She looked over the map, then went over the crime scene photos, then the inventories of the crime scenes. "Dave, this may be a long shot, but I think I know why the murder weapon was never found. Our murderers, the ones found with brain damage...they mailed the weapon to the next target. Here, look. What do all the inventories have in common?"

David spotted it after ten seconds. "One (1) fresh roll of packing tape."

"Here's what I think happened. The weapon is mailed to someone close to the target. They pick it up and as soon as they touch it, the wraith possesses their bodies, subjugating the existing conscousness and replacing it with its own. It gets closer to the target. If someone gets in the way, all the possessed person has to do is touch the obstacle and the wraith subjugates the obstacle, turning it into an ally."

"Wait a second. If it possesses one, how can it do the same to more than one person?"

"Remember the CAT-scans. It must be re-writing the minds of those it possesses to make them them more compliant."

"But mail?"

"Look at the map and the time between murders. They coincide almost perfectly with the amount of time it takes for a small box to be mailed from place to place."

Dave nodded. "Still pretty thin, but I can't think of anything else that would make sense. The question is, what do we do with this information?"

"We follow the route. When does mail pickup happen during the day?"

"Usually about nine."

"We've got time. Tell Kellaway we need to check out every mailbox along her route, call the Post Office and tell them to suspend service for a few hours."

"He's not going to be happy about this." David smiled. "I can't wait to tell him."

"Anything yet?" David asked.

Kellaway shook his head. "Nothing. Are you sure about this?"

David looked up at the sky, Lara sitting next to him on the park bench. "I hope so."

"I've got fifty men checking every mailbox from here to Kookamunga, not to mention waking up a judge to get a search warrant. This had better pan out." He picked up the radio and barked into it, "Talk to me."

The radio chattered at him and he sighed. "The mayor's going to run me through a wood chipper for this, I just know..."

Suddenly, a voice came onto his radio, talking nonsense. He put the radio to his ear. "What is it, Carl?" He waited, then nodded, turning to David and Lara. "I think we've got a winner. Mailbox near the community center came up with a box. They're pulling it right now."

"Lieutenant, I cannot impress upon you enough the importance of not unwrapping that box."

"Don't worry. My boys are professionals. Let's go." He went to the car and got into the driver's seat smoothly. Lara gave David an exasperated look silently professing her distaste for Kellaway's cavalier attitude, then got into the shotgun seat. David sighed and followed suit, getting into the back seat. "They're bringing it to the station."

"Are you sure that's the one?" David asked.

"My boys checked every mailbox on your route. That one's the only package they found and they checked them all. Unless the victims were all killed with paper cuts, that narrows it down a lot, don't it?"

"Look, Lieutenant, don't underestimate the intelligence behind these murders. You don't know what you're dealing with."

"Trust me, Mr. Connors, I know exactly what I'm dealing with." Kellaway smiled triumphantly.

Lara Croft carefully opened the box at the forensic lab. The Bomb Squad had already gone over the box and reported no chemical or mechanical devices that would indicate explosives. Lara, however, treated the box as if it was a bomb that might go off at any moment. She opened it slowly and revealed packing foam peanuts within. Carefully removed the foam, handful by handful, she saw the glint of metal underneath. "I've got something here..." She took a set of forceps and reached down, removing the object and holding it up.

The object was an old-fashioned metal doctor's scalpel. It gleamed in the light, looking brand new, but the style of it suggested something made in the 1800's. "Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I have your murder weapon here. Now listen to me very carefully. It is my assessment that this object has been treated with a compound that causes psychosis upon contact with flesh and absorbed into thr bloodstream. This compound has shown traits that suggest that rubber gloves might be insufficient protection against the compound, so do not handle it with anything less than forceps or any sort of mechanical gripping device. Have I made myself crystal clear?" She looked at the lab technicians and they nodded, looking at the scalpel with new respect. "Good. Run a full battery of tests, metallurgical, chemical, everything you can, in addition to the usual tests."

Lara stood up and walked out of the lab, taking off her gloves and mask. As she walked over to Kellaway, he shook his head. "If you weren't footing the bill for this, Ms. Croft, I'd have laughed you out of town. What do you think you're going to find?"

"Proof that this is what I think it is."

"And what do you think it is?"

Lara looked into Kellaway's eyes. "Are you ready to accept the impossible?"

"I'd love to hear anything that would make any sense out of this crime spree."

"Let's go to your office. This is something I would rather not have leaked to the press. Where's David?"

"He's out getting some Chinese food. I recommended this place down on 103rd." They walked down to his office and he opened the door for her. "Want some tea?"

"You drink tea? I'm impressed. I figured you all for barbarians." Lara chuckled.

"Made it especially for you. David told me you liked Earl Grey. Have a seat."

As Lara did so, she looked around the room. The office was decently-furnished, most of the furnture made of equal parts metal and formica. One of the items that caught her eye was a three-drawer file cabinet, apparently brand new. "More space?" she inquired as Kellaway poured her a cup.

"One thing you can say about this city. We never run out of idiots. Alright, Ms. Croft. I'm all ears."

"Lieutenant Kellaway, I'm convinced that the object in that lab is none other than the same weapon used by the notorious 'Jack the Rippper'."

"You're kidding me. Some guys is using that antique to kill people?"

"No. I think the scalpel is using them."

Kellaway leaned back in his chair. "What are you talking about?"

"I think that instrument is cursed, cursed by the evil of the man who killed who-knows-how many women just before the turn of the century. The facts indicated many of the same patterns, the same motivations. I believe that the scalpel is possessed by the evil that caused those murders. Every time someone picks it up, the entity within possesses that person to commit unspeakable deeds."

"For what purpose? Random violence?"

"No...there's some...purpose to it all." Lara rubbed her head as her vision swam for a moment. "Some plan...I beg your pardon, I may have been up for too long." She started to get up, then sat back down again, her limbs refusing to obey her. "What...?"

"You're so right, Lady Croft...there is, indeed, a grand purpose. And thanks to you, I can complete it." Kellaway's voice took on a deeper tone as he walked over to her, picking up the dropped cup of tea and put it aside. "Now then, Lady Croft...listen to me very carefully. Listen to the sound of my voice. There's something you have to do for me..."

"...do...for you...."

"Yes...you will follow my instructions to the letter. If you do so, you will see David again very soon. You want that very much, don't you?"

Lara smiled in her stupor. "...see David...soon..."

"Now listen...and listen carefully..."

Lara blinked and looked up. "Pardon me, Lieutenant...I must've dozed off. I..." She thought for a few moments, then it came to her. "Oh, yes, I was just finishing my tale, wasn't I?"

"Yeah, and I still don't buy it. You said you had some proof, didn't you?"

"Yes...of course. I'll go get it."

"I have to head out to take care of some business. Meet me later."

"Of course." Lara smiled and stood up. "David can sleep at the hotel for a while, he sleeps like a brick, you know. I'm sure he won't mind if I see him later when he gets up."

"Perfect. Then I'll see you in an hour or so?"

"Yes." Lara smiled. "If you'll excuse me?" She turned and politely left the office, not feeling as tired as she had before. He must've let me doze for a while...nearly an hour's gone by. Lara didn't see anything odd about that.

Nothing odd about that at all.

Kellaway smiled as he opened a drawer and took out a cigar box. He opened it, then dumped out the cigars and pulled up the false bottom. There, lying on a bed of velvet, sat a scalpel.

He picked it up and felt its power, then smiled. Tonight was the night...and it was the perfect night for a rebirth...and a very special evening meal.

After all….an old family friend was coming for dinner.

TO BE CONTINUED...