Chet Williamson - Reign

In a large and chaotic pile of clothes, Marvella Johnson was sitting like a Buddha, rocking back and forth, tears cutting a trail of ice down her black cheeks. Whitney lay in her arms, unmoving, her face turned away from Dennis, buried in Marvella's wide breast. A soft, irregular, grunting noise came from between Marvella's parted lips, and slowly her massive head came up, looked at Dennis.

"Oh, Dennis," she said, in a soft and dreamy voice he had never heard her use before. "Oh, Dennis, she's dead…"

He walked over to the pair as if in a dream. "What happened? Marvella, what happened?"

She shook her head, and it seemed as if she could not stop. "She was playing in the pile of clothes, tunneling through, she's done it lots of times. I went into the bathroom, just went into the bathroom for a minute, and when I came out I looked over and I didn't see her, and called her name. Then I saw the pile moving, but she didn't say a thing, and I thought she was down under, playing a trick on me, and. .. and God help me, I went back to my work. I looked over again, and saw the clothes still moving.

"And I knew that it wasn't her moving them. They were coming up from the sides, like a… like a sponge or something, like something living, and I shouted her name, and went over, and started pulling the clothes off her, but they kept moving back into the pile like crawling things, like arms of an octopus or something, and when I got 'em all off, when I got to her…”

Marvella gave a choking sob and held the girl to her breast. "I did everything I knew. I gave her CPR, mouth to mouth, I had the courses, but she wasn't breathing, and I called 911, and they're coming, but it's too late now, too late. Oh, my little precious…”

"Marvella…”

"Then the lights went off, and I thought – I hoped maybe I was dying too. I hoped so, Dennis. Oh God, oh God save her sweet little soul…”

Dennis trembled from the cold, and from the fear. He heard a sound then, a low chuckle from above, but Marvella did not look up from her granddaughter's still face. Dennis looked, upward to the loft where the old costumes hung like empty shells of men and women, and saw what the Emperor wanted him to see.

Tommy Werton stood there, his severed head suspended in the air, strands of meat and gristle dangling over his neck, open like a bloody chimney, his half-closed eyes staring at Dennis. The features shifted, and Tommy became…

… Harry Ruhl, standing gutted, crimson letters streaked on his flesh, until the letters faded, and Harry melted into…

… Robin, his Robin, like a broken doll, neck twisted, back bent, her ruin of a mouth forming silent words over and over again in a litany Dennis heard in his soul – You Royal Bastard… Royal Bastard… Royal Bastard…

… and now her clothing vanished, and Donna, her face blue, her tongue black, ogled Dennis with eyes like eggs, until her flesh grew red, turned to cloth, ribbons, medals, braid, the dark tongue lost in a red beard, a devil's grin, bright blue eyes…

… to the Eniperor, who beamed down on Dennis Hamilton, as if proud to show his own creations to his creator, giving a crisp and military salute before he faded into the grief filled air.

Dennis's gaze hung in the empty space, still seeing the faces of the dead, and that final, most hideous face of the never alive. He whispered to the night, whispered so that Marvella could not hear, but knew that something else would -

"I created you. And God help me, I will destroy you."

The rest of the night was chaos, a phantasmagoria of whirling faces, medics working in vain, the omnipresent policemen returning like vultures to worry the dead, Marvella's eternal sobbing, the pale, drawn faces and whispered words of Curt and Evan and John, and the stern, dread countenance of Dan Munro, his presence like a bell tolling doom for still another denizen of the Venetian Theatre. Questions were asked, photographs taken, in a dreadful fivefold repetition, and Dennis told only some of what he knew, lying some of the time, keeping the truth to himself, knowing that it would be thought a lie, that he would be thought mad for telling it.

He agreed listlessly when Munro told him that he wanted to meet with him at the station first thing in the morning, and did not see the growing awareness in Munro's eyes, nor feel the solicitude the policeman subtly offered.

Nor did he watch Munro look at him with pity in his eyes as he started to walk toward his lonely suite.

Munro lay awake in his bed for a long time that night. Patty had been asleep when he had come in shortly after one o'clock, and at first he had considered staying up, thinking about it all in his big leather chair, a Coors by his side. But he thought he might think about it better in the dark. Too, he felt as if he needed his wife beside him, needed the knowledge that he had someone he loved and who loved him, and who he need not fear would be taken away from him.

Oh, he had those fears from time to time, but they were only the normal, natural fears of any man for his loved ones – that they would be taken by disease or accident or even a random act of violence. But he did not have the fears that he knew must be possessing Dennis Hamilton. He did not have the precedents that Dennis Hamilton had.

The town of Kirkland averaged. 5 homicides per year, but now in only half a year the Venetian Theatre and environs had experienced five violent deaths – one definite murder, one possible suicide, and three "accidents."

No, Munro thought again, they were no accidents. Accidents didn't happen over and over again in one place, to a small group of people. And tonight? The little girl had suffocated, but that she should have done so on her own had been impossible. Self-preservation would have kept her pushing the clothes away from her face. There was no reason for it, just no reason at all short of murder, but to assume that the grandmother had done it was just plain stupid. Her grief had been real, as had been her attempts to bring the little girl back to life. The probability then?

Simple. When the grandmother wasn't looking, when she was in the john, somebody sneaked in and smothered the girl, then left. That story the woman had told about the clothes moving on their own Munro had dismissed as hallucination brought about by panic. It was the only thing to believe. Clothes didn't move on their own, not even in the goddamned Venetian Theatre.

And Dennis Hamilton once again had an alibi of sorts, though not a perfect one by any means. There had been one set of wet footprints going up to the costume shop from the pool, a bloody spot on the stairs where Hamilton had apparently raked his shin when the lights went out, and John Steinberg saying that he had left Dennis in the pool just minutes before the time of death. One thing bothered Munro, however, and that was why Hamilton had run up to the costume shop the way he did.

Hamilton's explanation had come in bits and pieces. He said that after Steinberg left he thought he had seen someone else pass in the hall, someone he didn't recognize, and ran out to see who it was. He said he called to the person, but that there was no answer, and that he grew afraid, thinking that it might be the same person who had murdered Donna Franklin. He decided to warn the others, and went to the costume shop first, knowing that Marvella Johnson was working late, but the lights failed, which alarmed him further, and he had to get a flashlight in the lobby. When he arrived, the girl was already dead.

Munro believed the story. There was no reason not to. Munro had little doubt that the person Hamilton had seen was the killer, not on his way to murder the little girl, but on his way out after having done so. One more death. One more mindless and motiveless death.