1.
~ "Where?" Arthur barked.
Lake ignored him and looked at his smart phone while he tried to maneuver through the traffic.
"Some kind of industrial district. I need to call it in." the agent said.
"No time. What's the street address?"
"Arthur, I have to follow procedure. I have to bring you in for questioning. We broke into a house and found a severed finger, your girlfriend is missing-"
"Lake, they're going to kill her!" Arthur almost shouted at him.
The Point Man snatched the cell phone from Lake, causing the agent to almost hit another car.
"Arthur! Wait!" Lake shouted as the Point Man abandoned the car and ran on foot back the way they had come.
He recognized the map as a disused factory that used to make televisions. Ironically it was close to their home and he remembered Ariadne saying it needed to be torn down.
'That place is a safe house for squatters. There's all kinds of strange things going on over there. Just last month they arrested some teenagers who had robbed a graveyard. Can you imagine?' she had asked.
It had been a day, just like this when she spoke of the old factory. Rain and cold was in the air. Arthur had been too tired to really listen. He nodded absentmindedly as she talked about repurposing factories and something she had read about online.
"Wait up!" came a shout and Arthur turned to see Lake following him.
"I thought you were going to follow procedure." Arthur said as the rain started to pelt down in sharp drops.
"Like you said, she may be dead if we wait much longer. That was a lot of blood. Can I have my phone so I can call for back up?" Lake asked.
The Point Man handed Lake back his weapon and the two men jogged quickly though the rain to the old television factory.
~ The factory looked like the perfect place for a rave or for people to hang out. Arthur saw the graffiti littering the hallways, the broken stair wells and even the guard sitting in the main hallway. He was skinny, filthy and stung out, but his purpose was clearly to sound the alarm.
"Cops! COPS!" the junkie shouted as soon as Arthur and Lake entered the building.
There was a rustle of dirty, ragged bodies moving under equally filthy blankets at the noise. On the whole, not many moved.
"She wouldn't have been taken by junkies." Lake whispered.
Arthur nodded.
The Point Man grabbed hold of the skinny junkie by the door. The man, his teeth yellow and his eyes glazed over.
"We're not here for you. Where are they?" he growled. "Where are the other ones who come here?"
The junkie whimpered and the Point Man squeezed his shoulder so hard, he could feel bone.
The Junkie cried out softly and tried to fold himself into a ball from the pain.
"Where are the ones who come around here? The strangers?" Arthur demanded.
The junkie twitched and pointed up a concrete staircase. It had been smashed apart, but was still usable.
"They come here all the time now. Beat on us real bad!" The junkie cried. "They're upstairs, man."
Lake pulled Arthur away from the junkie. The Point Man feeling like his whole hand was contaminated after touching the waste of a human in the hallway.
"Let's go." Lake whispered.
~ Upstairs, was barren.
Windows were broken and there was decimated machinery all over the floor. Still, it was a nicer place than the main floor. Arthur could see why the junkies were angry about being kicked out of such prime real estate.
"Careful." Lake whispered as both men, weapons drawn, peered over out of date machines across a football field sized second floor.
"There are three more floors." Lake said when it was clear no one was there.
The Point Man noticed a face painted int he wall.
It was creepy, in a bad horror movie kind of way. The face was ghost like with chalky skin color and black, unfeeling eyes.
Scribbled on the wall under the goulash face was:
'The Wicker Man'
"Weird." Lake whispered at the sight of such odd street art.
"It looks new." Arthur whispered back.
"Looks like goth bullshit." Lake told him. "Keep looking and watch for fresh blood. She'd still be bleeding."
~ The third floor was a series of offices, all of them smashed apart and reeking of urine and other foulness.
"Arthur, I found blood." Lake said at last.
The Point Man rushed to the agent's side and saw a freight elevator.
"They must have used it to bring her in from the ground floor. Why we didn't see blood anywhere else in the building. Look it's hand cranked." Lake said pointing to the old roller that would allow the lift to work even during a power outage.
"They must be on the top floor." Arthur panted. He felt tired now.
"The stairs to the top floor are destroyed, this is the only way up." Lake said.
"They will hear us coming." Arthur said soberly.
"We'll have to be quick." Lake told him.
The Point Man looked over the decimated stairwell. There was no other means of ingress onto the top floor.
"Means this is the only way out." Lake offered. "They're trapped."
"They could kill her in the time it takes us to get there."
"Back up will be here any second, Arthur. What do you think will happen then? Let's do this now." Lake said.
~ The lift was rusty and groaned with disuse and age. Even with both men pulling their roller up and around, it seemed to take forever to get the lift even level with the top floor.
Arthur crouched down and saw the well lit attic room of the factory.
There was no electricity in the old factory, but there were candles lighting the large room. Candles were burning over make shift tables and inside old TV's. The attic seemed even more ominous with the oncoming storm outside.
Arthur and Lake made their way through the attic, hiding behind steel beams. The Point Man saw instantly why the noise of their arrival had gone unnoticed.
The teenagers in the middle of the room were fighting.
"You said we would kill her! You said we would kill her hours ago!" one girl was shouting at a teenage boy. "You fucking coward!"
Arthur watched the teens grow more agitated and push each other.
"Yeah, none of this cutting off a finger shit!" a boy shouted. "Why did you even call the guy? He's got the FBI involved, man!"
"Shut up!" another boy was shouting.
"It wasn't apart of the plan! You should have killed her this morning instead of calling that guy." the girl said. Her voice was harsh and angry. "We should kill her now!"
Arthur removed his weapon form his holster, and decided it was time for the game to end.
"Don't move!" he shouted from his position behind a steel pillar.
The teens all turned in shock to see Arthur and Lake emerge from hiding.
They were an ugly, unlovable bunch. Their clothing was black and baggy. Their hair was likewise black. All three of them looked pale and bloated in the candle lights.
"Don't move! FBI!" Lake shouted. His own weapon was trained on the threesome now.
The teen boys complied with bewildered looks on their faces. Their hands rising up on to their heads. But the girl, a look of malicious evil in her eyes, scowled at Arthur, turned and ran.
"Don't move or I'll shoot!" Lake shouted.
But the girl was running away from them now and the Point Man saw a flash of a metal blade in her hand.
Before Arthur even knew what was happening, reacting on instinct alone, he shot her.
The girl, another unlovable goth creature, crumpled on the wooden floor of the attic. The gun shot hitting her leg and causing her to trip and fall with a heavy thud.
She was crying when Arthur reached her. Her thick, black mascara running wild down her cheek.
"Where is she?" Arthur said.
His voice was as savage as a wolf. He grabbed her by her dirty, greasy hair and pulled her head back.
The girl screamed and the Point Man could hear sirens in the distance.
"Ariadne Richards. You took her this morning. Where is she?" the Point Man spat.
The girl, like a wild animal being cornered, tried to swat her knife at the Point Man. Arthur was quick to stomp on her hand. Her screams were echoing through the attic as Lake was arresting the boys and reading them their rights.
"Tell me where she is and I won't cut off your own finger!" Arthur snarled.
He grabbed the girls free hand, twisted her entire arm back, and heard the pop of her shoulder being dislocated.
She screamed again at the sudden pain and finally started to sob.
"In the other room. By the alter!" she cried.
"I got this one." Lake was saying from behind Arthur. "Go find the victim."
The FBI man was calmer than his friend right now.
The storm outside was raging and the wind was whipping the candles out.
The goth girl was crying and the boys were trying to explain themselves.
Lake was on the phone with another agent giving them his location and Arthur walked numbly to the far end of the attic.
'Go find the victim. Go find the victim.' was playing over and over in his head.
There, on the very back wall was a violently painted picture of the ghost face he had seen downstairs. The eyes looked evil and there were candles and incense all around the demonic face.
On a makeshift alter was laid a figure covered in a white sheet he recognized as being from the very bed he shared with Ariadne.
Her body was wrapped, cocoon like inside the bed sheet. Her face deathly pale and covered in blood.