Batman vs. Dracula: Grasp of Darkness
Chapter One: Farewell to the Flesh
"That stench. I'll never forget the deathly stench in the air after the flood waters finally receded. It wasn't the usual stench of hot garbage in the air, nor the stench of Gotham's corruption… no, this was something much more foul than that. Luckily the constant rain was able to slightly suppress the terrible odor. It was the smell of rotting flesh, and nobody could pinpoint where it was coming from… Until I finally did.
I followed a trail of dead, half-eaten vermin down into the dark sewers. But the stench wasn't coming from the rats. In fact, the terrible odor continued getting stronger the further into the sewer tunnel I dared to venture, and it was far worse than any smell a few dead rats could leave behind. However, the trail seemed to have finally stopped and I thought I had come to a dead end. Upon investigating closer, I discovered a make-shift wall, formed with mud compound and a thin layer of mortar. But then, what I found behind that wall was the most disturbing thing I had ever seen in my entire life.
Upon entering the self-made dugout, I knew I had discovered where the disgusting odor was coming from because the rancid fumes were causing my eyes and nose to start heavily watering. In the center of the room was a casket…a sarcophagus to be more precise, made out of a silvery metal material. It also had the shape of a cross on the top, engraved with small, perforated holes, as if someone purposely wanted to allow the deathly smell to leak from out of it… or at least, that's what I thought at first. On the ground, surrounding the casket, was a circle formed by a white powdery substance. The mud-formed walls had incantation symbols carved upon them. Whoever placed the casket there was into quite a lot of voodoo shit. It was a ritual of containment. I could also see the moonlight shining through a few holes from up above in the make-shift ceiling structure. I couldn't understand why they left the holes, especially if they were trying to keep contained whoever was inside the casing… That information wouldn't be presented to me until later on.
The casket was sealed shut. Luckily, I kept certain tools in my belt which allowed me the ability to try and pry it open. It took me a couple tries because the top was so tightly sealed, unfortunately, when I finally did break the lid open, a thick cloud of dust and ashes suddenly flew up into my face. I quickly turned my head and covered my eyes and nose with my arm. It also caused me to have quite the coughing fit, but after the dust settled, I found out that the explosion of dust was mostly made up of dead skin cells… a lot of dead skin cells for that matter; much more than one dead carcass should contain. As I looked over the cadaver, I noticed how most of the body had been nearly burnt to a crisp. I could see the charred skeletal structure below the remaining ashes which laid atop the bones. However, the teeth and sharp fingernails seemed somehow completely unscathed as if they were new. I then noticed something even more odd. It seemed as if a bit of newly developed skin had begun growing back over some parts of the body despite how burnt it was below the epidermis. That seemed impossible to me. New skin doesn't simply start growing back over a dead body, especially a body that had been burnt to a crisp the same way that body had been. That certainly seemed to explain the abundance of dead skin cells, but how?
I wasn't quite sure of how I should approach the anomaly. On one hand, I could call Gordon, and have him bring a full investigative team down here to check it out… or, because of the strange surroundings, I could first bury the body, so that the nasty stench in the air could go away, and then possibly try to figure out who put the body down there and why. I chose the latter. Ninety-five percent of the time I would have called it in, but because of the ritualistic vibe and new skin cells developing on the corpse, not to mention the creepy trail of dead rats that led me there, I felt it would be better if I had time to do my own investigation first. But in order to do so I would need to acquire a shovel and a couple bags of lime.
It took me nearly two hours to dig a hole deep enough down to suppress that deathly odor. As I started to close the lid on the casket and lower it down, I suddenly felt a sharp object stab me in the hand. When I looked to see what it was, I realized it was the cadaver's sharp fingernails embedding themselves into my skin. I instantly pulled my hand away in a knee jerk reaction, accidentally causing the casket to fall into the burial spot while it was still open, also causing another explosion of ashes to cloud up the area once again. When I checked my injuries I noticed some blood leaking through my glove. I quickly applied pressure to slow down the bleeding. Then, I dumped the two bags of lime in and filled the hole back up with dirt.
At first I thought I should stay and wait to see if the person who placed the sarcophagus there in the first place would try and come back, especially since the sarcophagus had a decent weight to it, which also meant whoever placed it there must've possessed quite a bit of strength themselves, but then I realized if I waited there, it could possibly take hours and I didn't want to wait around that long. The night was still young, so instead, I decided to try and pick up another trail. Upon doing so, I discovered something else strange when I spotted several crocodile scales floating in the more shallow sewer water. I figured it was possible due to the flooding, and maybe a couple crocodiles had wandered into the sewers. They probably left once the waters receded or perhaps they left when the foul odor continued to get stronger. Either way, it wasn't the type of trail I was looking for. I was on the lookout for dead mice and dead birds.
"Why the half-eaten mice and birds?" Was a question constantly running through my mind. "Who… or what did I expect to find once the trail ended?"
After leaving the sewer, I found clues which led me into Gotham Park. The park would be a perfect place for someone… or something to hide out at night since it was so dark and vacated. Plus, it was probably much easier to trap the wild life if they were to get hungry. The problem was… I still didn't know exactly what I was looking for.
Finally, the trail had ended just outside the park area, near an apartment complex run by drug dealers and low-life scum. Lately, I had been keeping my eye on them due to a new drug they were peddling. Normally, I would have crashed that party as soon as I discovered it, but I wanted to see who they were dealing the drugs to… and more importantly, find out who their supplier was. "Why did the trail end here? Did this new drug cause people to want to eat mice and birds?" I asked myself. "That seemed unlikely. Even if it did, what explains the burnt corpse and all the ritual mumbo-jumbo?" I just couldn't wrap my mind around it.
Just then, I saw a younger boy, about twelve years old, approaching the drug-house. I had seen that boy around before. He wasn't an abuser of the drugs. He was a distributor. He was very street smart and he knew exactly where all the tourists hung out. They were surely the ones he would be selling it to… and at double the cost.
I now had a dilemma. I could have either stayed at the apartment complex to figure out why the trail of dead vermin ended there, or I could have followed the young man in order to make sure nothing terrible happened to him. I once again chose the latter. It was a good thing I did because as soon as the boy brought the drugs to the three tourists who were supposed to be buying them from him, one of the tourists pulled a gun on him and the three of them tried robbing him in a dark alleyway. That was a big mistake. The darkness has arms.
The twelve year old boy had his hands up, and the drugs were still in his hand. He was staring down the barrel of a nine-millimeter pistol. I was positioned above them, perched in the shadows. I quickly launched a Batarang, knocking the gun out of the hand of the man who was holding it. While the three robbers were stunned by that, I shot out a grappling hook, wrapping it around the waist of the twelve year old boy, and then zip-lined him backwards, allowing him to quickly ascend into the darkness beside me. One of the robbers bent down to pick up the gun, and then he decided to point it in the direction he assumed I was still in… but he assumed wrong. I had already secured the twelve year old boy on one of the lower rooftops and whispered to him to stay quiet.
"Come down here!" The robber yelled out into the lightless chasm.
I picked up a small pebble and tossed it hard at the side of the dumpster. TING!
As soon as the rock hit the metal-
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG! Bullets sparked as they ricocheted off the dumpster walls.
Before he could fire another dangerous bullet, I sprayed him in the eyes with a stream-line aerosol can of mace which had a thirty-foot range, blinding him instantly. I then quickly knocked the gun out of his hand again. When the other two robbers saw what had just transpired, they quickly high-tailed it out of there, leaving the shooter all alone and disoriented.
The shooter started rubbing their eyes, some of their vision was slowly beginning to come back. Every time his vision got clearer, the more of my silhouette he could see… Until I was right up in his face, lifting him up into the air by his collar, and smashing him up against the wall. You could hear pieces of mortar crumbling in between the bricks from the thud.
He started to open his eyes and try to get a good look at me. When he did-
SPRAY! I shot him with a face full of mace again, causing him to have a major coughing fit, worse than the one I had when all the ashes flew up into my face from earlier. I then dragged him further into the shadows, covering his mouth as he tried to scream.
I took out his wallet and looked at the name and address. It was a Metropolis address. Then, just as I was about to question him as to what he thinks he was doing in my city-
HOWL! HOWL! Wolves could be heard crying out at the moon.
That was strange. I hadn't heard of wolves in that area before. I thought to myself, "maybe out near the old Wayne Manor, but never in the city."
Then, immediately after the wolves howled-
BANG-BANG-RATTATTATTAT! Guns could be heard about four blocks away, in the same direction as the drug-house the boy and I had just came from.
BANG-BANG-RATTATTATTAT! It sounded like a war zone.
I knew I had to check it out. But first I wanted to check on the boy. When I made it to the lower rooftop, he was no longer there. However, I did notice the bag of drugs he had in his hand earlier were now laying on the ground. I'm sure he could have taken them with him, but I was hoping maybe he left them there and decided to get out of the drug dealing game for good.
After traveling the four blocks by rooftop, I shortly settled on a taller building adjacent to the drug-house. That gave me the best overhead view of the situation that I might be getting myself into. I always looked for the darkest places I could maneuver into as I planned my next attempt at getting even closer.
There were no more gunshots going off. Those had stopped about a block before I had gotten there. Plus, there wasn't anyone yelling or screaming. It was completely silent. I didn't take that as a good sign.
I continued moving laterally and diagonally through the shadows, jumping down from one rooftop to the next, until I finally made it to a window on the top floor of the apartment complex. I then opened the window and made my way inside.
It was dark, I had to shine a small flashlight to get an idea of what I was looking at, and where to go next.
The first couple floors I traveled down didn't have much going on. However, once I got closer to the lower floors, I came across a few scared drug users who were huddled in a corner. I didn't even try to question them. I figured they were just trying to hide from the gun blasts, so I continued making my way down towards the bottom floor. That's when it started to get ugly...