Michael Ares - Dayfall

Laurel Hill Cemetery was a hell of torture and death for the victims of the serial killer, but it was like heaven for him. He couldn’t have imagined a better place to practice his dark art.

Founded in 1836 on eighty acres of steep hills and plateaus on the western edge of Philadelphia, overlooking the Schuylkill River, the massive old graveyard was filled with a menagerie of some of the world’s most impressive architecture of death. There were hundreds of large elaborate crypts, some standing alone, some built in a line next to others, and several dozen gathered together into a section called Millionaire’s Row that looked like a small town growing in the middle of the grounds. The thousands of other residents of the cemetery didn’t have their own buildings to rest in, but their graves were marked with an awe-inspiring array of symbolic Victorian sculptures: obelisks, columns, towers topped by angels and other mythical creatures, arches, draped urns, and small-scale Gothic cathedrals. The stone sarcophagi were adorned with lions, winged faces, broken urns, cherubim, anchors, ivy, and ornate books too large for any human to hold.

The light from the full moon, in the early hours before dawn, created an odd grayscale twilight in the cemetery when it hit the stone and the snow. Neither was completely white anymore, the stone because of its age and the snow because of the atmospheric anomalies that were affecting the whole East Coast. But there was nothing gray about the van that pulled down the access path in the northwest corner of the grounds, stopping between a long row of crypts overlooking the river and the steep hill descending to it. The van was jet black on the outside and hell black on the inside, accommodating an evil man and his foul work.

He was known to the police and the terrified citizens of Philadelphia as the Full Moon Kidnapper—or Full Moon Killer, for those who were less hopeful—because in each of the last six months women had disappeared from the streets on this night, their bodies never to be found. But the man’s name was Carl Roonan, and he was actually an employee of the cemetery, a member of the maintenance staff. He had applied for the job initially because of an unhealthy preoccupation with death—which he’d hid during the hiring process, of course—and that obsession had only grown during the year he had worked there. So had the plans that began to form in his sick mind when his boss introduced him to the wall of old brass crypt keys in a room behind the cemetery office, and the logbook that recorded the names of the tombs’ owners and the last time they had been used for family burials. He was able to tell which ones would never be used again, especially in the northwest corner, which was over a hill from the office and was the most quiet and private part of the cemetery. With the river below and only a wooded mountain on the other side of it, no one could see what he was doing, especially at the early hour of the morning when he got to work.

On this particular gray morning, even though he was already confident that he was alone, Roonan looked around carefully when he exited the van to make sure there were no witnesses—except for the already dead, and the woman who would be soon. He opened the back door and lifted her out, sensing the body bag move slightly and hearing a drugged moan from inside it.

He became fully aroused, now that he was feeling safe and anticipating what he would do to the woman, and carried her to the crypt he had chosen for her final resting place.

Damn, he’s big , Detective Jon Phillips thought to himself as he watched from his hiding place about fifty yards away, up on the crest of the hill. Jon realized that Roonan might be too big for him to take by himself, but he couldn’t call for backup even if he wanted to. He had left his cell and radio at home, for several reasons: he didn’t want his superiors to have any possible way of tracking him down and putting a stop to this un-condoned investigation, and he worried that the killer might be sophisticated enough to be using some kind of an electronics detector. He also had to admit that he wanted to take this scumbag down all by himself, because of his competitive nature and the fact that no one on the force had taken his theories seriously. Even his partner had been unwilling to join him on this out-of-jurisdiction stakeout, saying “I’m not getting fired or freezing my balls off for one of your fucking hunches.” Which was probably good in the end, because this would have been harder with two people.

Jon had walked into the cemetery a day earlier during a time when there were other visitors, and lay down at this spot to test his hunch by seeing if the Full Moon Goon happened to bring his victims here.

His investigation had started with the disappearance of a woman from his rural hometown who had been partying in the city, and some rather thin clues had led him to this cemetery employee and a macabre notion of what he might be doing with the bodies. Jon wanted to check it out during the full moon night, but knew that the perp might have a way to make sure no one entered the cemetery in the hours prior, so to be safe he had to find a good hiding spot and stay there as long as needed. And this spot was ideal for several reasons: One was that it was a square family plot set apart from the other graves by a wrought iron fence that sat on a low brick wall, so no one would be walking through it and no one on the outside could see Jon when he lay prone next to the interior of the brick wall. But when he poked his head over it, he could see the entire northwest section of the cemetery, because the plot was on the top of the hill above it. He could also see two terraced rows of crypts almost as high as him to the right, in case Roonan might use one of them, and he could see a long row of crypts to the left that were built into the bottom of the hillside, next to where the black van was now parked.

Jon had guessed this particular part of the huge cemetery because the hill and river made it very private, and the guess had paid off. The only problem with his plan was that it was very cold lying in the snow, and Roonan hadn’t come during the middle of the night as he’d suspected but in the early morning, when his shift started. So Jon was already suffering symptoms of hypothermia by the time he pushed himself up and out of his hiding place to head down the hill. His body shivered, his heart and lungs raced, and the hand that gripped his gun was numb enough that he dropped it once during his descent. He also felt light-headed by the time he reached the van and pulled the keys out of the ignition, throwing them into the snow far away from the vehicle. Then he turned to gaze at the long row of crypts nearby, and was no longer entirely sure which one he had seen Roonan enter. But when he trusted his first instinct and pulled on one of the big iron doors, it was indeed unlocked and swung open. It took so much effort for Jon to move it, in his weakened state, that he briefly questioned whether or not he should enter and confront the big psycho. It also didn’t help that opening the door made a lot of noise, so Roonan probably knew he was coming.

Jon started down the steps with his gun and small flashlight extended. But when he reached the burial chamber at the bottom of the stairs, all he could see was the bound victim lying on her back in the middle of the cement floor. Half her clothes had been cut off, several small wounds had been inflicted on her exposed skin, and beside her lay a set of sinister-looking knives. As Jon knelt down beside the woman to check her pulse, he pointed the weak beam from the little flashlight toward the walls on every side of him, wishing he had brought a bigger one because he couldn’t see into some of the crevices and alcoves of the chamber.