Dark Purpose - I

I.

"To look into the eyes of nothingness...and see yourself...how can one survive such horror?" - Dr. Lewis Cairn; Gallery of Sleep: Minds, Malice, and Madness

There's a phenomenon I hope to uncover through my research. That is the reasoning behind men who commit serial murder. There is much left to the imagination when it comes to such barbarians but I’m certain, that with my years of expertise in the mind and discerning truth from falsehoods, I alone can know the mind of a killer.

What is your background doctor? What qualifications do you have?

Well as many may already know, I am a professor of Criminality at Boston University. A field that I adopted from differing criminal studies, forming my own school of thought. I’ve written a few books thus far about my theories, on the human mind in distress, which leads to such behaviors of serial murderers, but I plan to take my research further.

What are your next steps?

I plan to help the detectives of your fine city locate the killer amongst you. I plan to study his mind and from it eek out the reality behind the eyes of a murderer. To better understand the problem, we must understand the mind behind it.

All of you just now tuning in, we are talking to Dr. Lewis Cairn, Professor at Boston University in their school of Criminality. His most recent book, The Mind In the Dark, discusses the deep roots of evil in the men who commit heinous crimes. He has most recently embarked on a quest to help the great detectives and police force, hunt down and capture who some have dubbed The Butcher. Dr. Cairn, what are your working theories as of now, based on your past researches?

Well my theories are many but the causes I’ve seen to create such monsters all stem from the same source, in my estimation. A delusion.

A delusion? What’s that?

A feeling or train of thought based solely on fantasy, divorced from reality. These men live in a fantasy world where they can commit such crimes and be immune from the consequences.

What causes such a delusion?

Well, there can be many causes, which I go over in my earlier book, Case For Evil: The Detriment of Decadence. I detail that not enough time in church, a failed family unit, too much consumption of certain foods,  access to differing populaces, not all righteous or holy as one might wish, and consuming too much media of the unwholesome nature, reading books, and these new magazines with their flash fictions, can cause a man to live out a fantasy built up in his mind.

So, you’re saying media is a cause, like the radio?

Oh no, not like your program here Geoffrey. No, programs such as yours offer a wholesome and logical approach to understanding. You don’t fill your audience’s heads with a fantasy. Hence why you have me on your program right now.

We aim to please Dr. Cairn. Thank you for your time here today, and good luck finding the madman.

Thank you for having me Geoffrey, and might I add to your listeners. If you see anything suspicious please phone your local police precinct. It’s important that we find this criminal swiftly and study him thoroughly before more bloodshed is wrought upon these city streets.

Next up: With the Olympics in Australia in a couple years…

Detective Henry Greed switched off the radio tuner in his car, lit a cigarette and let out a long trail of smoke from his lungs. The voice of that doctor was grating to him. He had been listening to him theorize and patronize his methods for the past two weeks. Ever since the murders turned from a passing happenstance to a pattern. He showed up one day with his briefcase, filled with a few copies of his books, which he graciously passed around to the other detectives, all gleeful at the prospect of capturing the killer for his own needs. The captain had said they were calling in an expert, but Henry was expecting someone from the FBI not some book toting professor from New England. They had enough stuffed shirts around the coffeemaker now, ever since the city became bogged down in bureaucratic bullshit. The election and the “need” for criminal deterrence, caused an upswing in boot licking brownnosing university boys to come through the swinging doors. No shortage of degrees, but a discernable shortage of know how and grit.

                Greed spat out the window and flicked his spent cigarette to the pavement. A day old puddle from the rainstorm two nights ago caught the smoldering flame and put it out quickly with a hiss. The rainstorm was needed, the smog in the city was getting worse and he’d rather the pollution be stuck to the soles of his shoes than stuck to his lungs. The only problem though was that rain wasn’t a detectives friend at a crime scene. Which is where he stepped out now. An abandoned building on the southside, swept utterly clean by surging rain water, drained all the useful evidence down the drain. But unlike Dr. Lewis Cairn and his degrees, Greed had a few hunches he wanted to string along. He was still a detective after all, and no amount of tongue waging by the book nosed asshats would take that away from him.

                His job required eyes on the ground, hands in the dirt, and brains on the clues. The hand wringing from the mayor made his stomach crawl, especially when it came to this case. He didn’t unduly rock the boat but he didn’t wait for orders. That’s why he was here now, taking a second look around. The water might have washed away a lot of the blood and the clues but the feeling persisted. The feeling that something more happened there. More than just the murder.

                Stepping through the hole in the east wall, Greed was greeted by the musky stench of decay. The floor was covered in muck and mud and squished as he walked. He spat the taste out of his mouth and pulled a handkerchief to his nose to stifle the stench. With a flick, his lighter illuminated the room a little better showing where things had shifted from the heavy rain. The blueprint of the crime scene was still vaguely present, enough for Greed to picture how things were set up. Where the man had stood and where the woman had been secured. She was chained against the far wall, opposite the hole in which he entered. Light from the moon and the sun through the alleyway would illuminate this room enough to negate needing any lights inside. The burned out remains of perhaps an old apartment were all that was left of the inside. No furniture, no discerning qualities except the exposed beams and wall studs. Greed sloshed over to the wall where she was chained and turned around.

                “What did you see?” He whispered crouching down to get a better vantage point. The body when it was found was contorted in a way that suggested she wasn’t killed immediately but wounded and left to die. She seemed to be pointing or gesturing towards something in the dark. The examiners of the scene chalked it up to death throes and dismissed it. Seeing as how the room was blank save for the mold and crumbling plaster they felt there was nothing to go on. But Greed thought differently. The wounds were shallow on her body and the amputated bits were closed up as to stop the bleeding from accelerating her death. That’s what Greed saw. And when he noticed that first night when her body was found that she seemed to be pointing towards something, he needed to know what.

                He had been denied to return to the crime scene initially since no leads were found that first day of exploration and with the rain storm it seemed any new leads might also be dead but Greed wasn’t willing to give up. His gut urged him to return and there he was crouched down in muck pantomiming the dead woman whose body had occupied that spot for four days before being discovered. Her death didn’t bother him as such, it was just another cruel occurrence but the lack of understand is what drove him sideways. Each victim, four in total now, were splayed out, pieces missing, yet saved from bleeding to death from the wounds. The blood then drained from them elsewhere and taken god knows where. Split and drained. Like a butcher sizing up meat for market. Or at least that’s what the papers would tell you. News was quick to leak about the second murder, the first one being hidden away very quickly. Headlines spoke of a butcher slicing and dicing victims in the slums. Though the first victim was found on the northside, and thus was easier to cover up, but sent a deeper chill down the spines of the affluent of the city. It wasn’t the poor killing the poor, it was someone killing anyone he wanted.

                Greed felt he was on him. Just a step behind now. And he knew that this room held a key. A material clue that he could use but now crouching as he was he couldn’t find it or see it. The feeling however persisted. The wind howled through the empty building around him as he trained his eye on the wall where the woman seemed to point. A moldy patch grew from the floor towards the ceiling in what vaguely could be described as man shaped. It was bulky and bulged in weird directions. Greed stood and shambled towards the moldy patch. The idea of being nose to toes with a patch of mold on the wall made his skin crawl but he held the kerchief tighter as he examined the wall. Accelerated growth pattern, compared to the mold elsewhere in the room. It seemed unnatural.

                He felt along the wall and felt a ridge under the mold. A crease in the wall. A protrusion for a doorway.

 He pushed and felt the wall give slightly under his weight. He put more force behind another push and felt the wall move away. Two more thrusts and he was beyond the mucked up room into another room closed off from all sides. The only entrance and exit the moldy doorway he just revealed. In here there was next to no latent light like the room where the crime was committed forcing Greed to squint from the meager light from his lighter. The darkness was all encompassing. What Greed wouldn’t give for a lantern or even the brief flash of some lightening.

                From his previous chagrin from the destruction the rain caused to his now lauded praise the rain returned and with it a flash of lightening followed by a crack of thunder. The light cast harsh shadows around him but let him catch enough of the room to spy out a row of candles. With the help of a few more flashes he set out to light them and brighten up the room. With the deed done the room was showing a warmth that candles were good at providing but the chill he felt in his bones at the sights he saw destroyed any semblance of comfort.

                The walls were coated in red.

                From floor to ceiling, inch by inch, it was covered in blood. A pipe fed through the wall and destroyed on the opposite side was still wet from the transfer. The blood had been drained from the woman and used to paint the room beyond. Greed held back a wretch as he escaped the close air of that hell. From the muck and the mud he stood eyes trained on the flames beyond flickering and dancing over the red walls. Faintly he could see what appeared to be words swept away from a finger.

                It’s not my fault…it’s not my fault.

                Scrawled over and over again in the blood-stained walls. A plea, a confession, a cry from a madman. Greed stuffed the kerchief back into his pocket and stepped out back into the rain. His car felt like it was miles away. He had to get to a phone and let the examiners know what he found. But the act wasn’t sitting well. What kind of manic could do such a thing?

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