Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

The first thing I smell is murder.

A writer asked me once what murder smells like. He was looking for material for a book he was writing, some authenticity.

"It's the blood," I'd said. "Death stinks, but when you smell blood more than anything else, you're usually smelling murder."

He'd asked me then to describe the smell of blood.

"It's like having a mouthful of pennies that you can't get rid of."

I smell it now, that cloying copper tang. It excites me at some level. A killer was here. I hunt killers.

I keep walking. The entryway floor is red hardwood over concrete, quiet, polished, squeak-free. To my right is a spacious living room with medium-thick beige carpet, a fireplace, and vaulted ceilings. A two-section matching beige couch is arranged in an L-shape facing the fireplace. Large double-paned windows look out onto the lawn. Everything I can see is clean and nice but unimaginative. The owners were trying to impress by blending in, not by standing out. The living room continues on the right toward the back of the house, meeting the dining room seamlessly. The beige carpet follows. A honey-colored wooden dining table sits under a light hanging from a long black chain attached to the high ceiling. A single white French door beyond the table leads into the kitchen. Again, all very unsurprising. Pleasing, not passionate. Ahead of me is a stairway, zigging right to a landing, then zagging left to take you to its destination, the second floor. It's covered with the same beige carpet. The walls on the way up the stairs are filled with framed photographs. I see a man and a woman standing together, smiling and young. The same man and woman, a little older now, holding a baby. The baby, I assume, grown into a teenage boy, handsome. Dark hair on all of them. I scan the photos and note no pictures of a girl.

To the left of the stairs is what I assume to be a family room. I can see thick sliding glass doors leading from that room into the nowshadowy backyard. I smell blood, blood, and more blood. Even with every light in the house blazing the atmosphere is heavy and jagged. Harm happened here. Terror filled the air here. People died violently here, and the feel of it all is stifling. My heart rate continues to rat-a-tat-tat. The fear is still there, sharp and strong. The euphoria too.

"Sarah?" I call out.

No answer.

I move forward, toward the stairs. The smell of blood gets stronger. Now that I can see into the family room, I understand why. This room also has a couch, which faces a large-screen television. The carpet is soaked in crimson. Blood came out here by the pints, more than the pile or fabric could absorb. I can see puddles of it, dark, thick, and congealing. Whoever bled that much there, died there. No bodies, though.

Means they were moved, I think.

I look, but I don't see any blood trails, any evidence of bodies being dragged. All the blood is pooled, self-contained, except for the large, jagged patch nearest to me.

Maybe they were picked up.

That would mean someone strong. A human adult body, at deadweight, is a formidable thing to lift, much less carry. Any fireman or paramedic will tell you this. Without the leverage a helpful and conscious person provides, carrying a grown man's body can be like carrying a six-foot bag of bowling balls. Unless the blood came from a child, in which case the lift and carry would not have been as difficult. Wonderful thought.

"Sarah?" I call out. "I'm coming up the stairs." My voice sounds overloud to me, cautious.

I'm still sweating. Air-conditioning is off, I realize. Why? I'm noting a thousand things at once. Fear and euphoria, euphoria and fear. I grip my gun with both hands and start to move up the stairs. I reach the first landing, and turn left. The smell of blood is even stronger now. I smell new scents. Familiar odors. Urine and feces. Other, wetter things. Guts, they have an aroma all their own. I can hear something now. A faint sound. I cock my head and strain my ears.

Sarah is singing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My stomach does a single loop-de-loop as the adrenaline overwhelms the endorphins and fills me with the clangy-jitters.

Because this is not a happy sound. It's a horror sound. It's the kind of song you'd expect to hear coming out of the earth in a graveyard, at night, or maybe from the shadowy corner of a cell in a mental institution. It's a single word and a single note, sung in a monotone.

"Laaaa. Laaaa. Laaaa. Laaaa."

Over and over, that single word, that single note, in a voice just above a whisper.

I start to worry in a way I hadn't before, because this is the sound of insanity.

I move up the last flight of stairs in quick strides, passing all those smiling faces in the photographs. Their teeth seem to glitter in the light.

Look at that, I think when I reach the top, more beige carpet. I'm standing in a short hallway. A bathroom is at the end of the hall. Its lights are on, its door flung wide. I can see (surprise!) a beige tile floor, more evidence of the uninspired tastefulness I've come to expect from this home.

The hallway turns to the right at the bathroom, and I surmise that a bedroom door is just beyond that turn.

More beige, I'll bet.

My heartbeat hammers, and God am I sweating. To my immediate right is a set of white double doors. The entrance, I'm sure, to someplace terrible. The smells have all become stronger. Sarah's horrible singing tickles my skin. I reach out a hand to open the right door. It pauses just above the brass handle and trembles.

Girl with a gun on the other side of that. Girl with a gun, covered in blood, in a house that smells like death, singing like a crazy person. Go on, I think. The worst thing she can do is shoot me. No, moron. The worst thing she can do is look right at me and then blow her brains out or smile and blow her brains out or--

Enough, I command.

Silence inside. My soul goes quiet.

My hand stops trembling.

A new voice comes, one familiar to soldiers and cops and victims. It doesn't offer comfort. It offers certainty. It speaks the hardest words and it never, ever lies. The patron saint of impossible choices. Save her if you can. But kill her if you must.

My hand drops and I open the door.

9

THE ROOM IS DECORATED IN DEATH.

It's an extra-large master bedroom. The king-sized bed has a large wooden hutch and a mirror behind it, and still takes up less than a third of the floor space. There is a plasma TV mounted on the wall. A ceiling fan hangs, turned off, its silence anointing all the other stillness in this room. The beige carpet is present, almost comforting under the circumstances. Because blood is everywhere . Splashed on the ceiling, smeared on the off-yellow walls, beaded on the ceiling fan. The smell is overpowering; my mouth fills with still more pennies and I swallow my own saliva.

I count three bodies. A man, a woman, and what looks like a teenage boy. I recognize them all from the photographs on the stairway walls. They are all naked, all lying on their backs in the bed. The bed itself has been stripped bare. The blankets and sheets lie on the floor, wadded and blood-soaked.

The man and woman are on either side, with the boy in the middle. The two adults have been disemboweled, in the worst sense of the word. Someone cut them from throat to crotch and then reached into them and pulled. They have been turned inside out. The throats of all three have been slit like hogs, sopping grins from ear to ear.

"Laaaa. Laaaa. Laaaa. Laaaa."

My eyes go to the girl. She's sitting on the windowsill, looking out into the night and what I can only guess is the backyard. I can see the dim silhouettes of other rooftops in the distance. It's a twilight world, caught between the dying sun and the awakening streetlamps. Apropos.