Lanterns in the Dark

By David Willoughby

Lanterns in the Dark is a collection of short stories revolving around the darker side of the human psyche. It brings a certain lightness that only fiction can bring to issues of criminal intent, human breeding, and questions about the destructive capacity of society. So, even as the stories walk you in to the depths of the darkness, I will always makes sure to loft a lantern to light your way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Willoughby
• Release date: May 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476491448

David Willoughby

I am a Criminology student currently attending classes for my first degree, one of what might become many. When I am asked what I want to do with my degree I always get strange looks, I want to be a writer. However it is not that strange if you think about it. More so than any degree Criminology offers a unique benefit to writers. It is the unique and scientific dissection of bad guys and the people in the real world who work to catch them. Can you believe someone is actually going to give me a degree for studying this? How cool is that?

Book preview

Lanterns in the Dark

David Willoughby

Published by David Willoughby at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 David Willoughby

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About the Author

I am a Criminology student currently attending classes for my first degree, one of what might become many. When I am asked what I want to do with my degree I always get strange looks, I want to be a writer. However it is not that strange if you think about it. More so than any degree Criminology offers a unique benefit to writers. It is the unique and scientific dissection of bad guys and the people in the real world who work to catch them. Can you believe someone is actually going to give me a degree for studying this? How cool is that?

What you are about to read is the result of about four to six months-worth of work compiled in to my first anthology of short stories. Writing is my greatest passion and my favorite method of artistic creation, and I look forward to sharing my worlds with you. I rely on readers like yourself to allow me, not only to eat food, but to practice my craft and I love hearing feedback from you. I mean it even when I have to add that feedback to the Folder of Hate, all feedback is some sort of constructive. You can find me on Twitter by searching for TurtlesOfDoom, I’ll be the guy with the screaming turtle icon. You can also find me on Wordpress at my MachineGunWashable blog.

As always,

Stay awesome.

P.S. I apologize in advance for anything resembling poetry you might be exposed to.

Table of Contents

Searchlight: An Unkind Death

Beast of Bridgewater

Searchlight: Lanterns in the Dark

The Bomb

Fate of the Black March

Execution of Sam

Crimson Witch

The Story of Dalv

Searchlight: The Artiste Arsonist

The Plight of Doctor Grayson

The Genesis Pool

Mackett’s Beginnings

Edgar Larson Casey

The Articles of Confederation

Searchlight: Underside

Major Tom

Blues Man

Routine of the Dead

Searchlight: An Unkind Death

The room spun slightly as I set my foot on the floor. The dull pain in my leg shot up in to my head like a bullet and made me see stars. I reached over to the bed stand and found a familiar friend. I took the cap off of the top of the bottle and flung it across my dirty apartment and out of a window that had been carelessly left open. I tilted the bottle of rum back and placed it back on the nightstand, dry. The burning sensation pushed the pain back down.  The alarm clock that sat next to the bed had long since blown its speakers but it still told time. Once again I had woken up at 6:00 with absolutely no reason. I growled menacingly at the clock as if it could sense my displeasure.

I knew my ride wouldn’t be here for another two hours so I went about my usual routine. I limped over to the closet and threw on a wrinkled button down from within. Many years ago, I had made sure all my clothes were a dark blue-grey color scheme. It took the work out of matching. Having slept in a pair of dark wash jeans and a white t-shirt that was rumpled and dull from years of use, I was ready to go when my driver got here. I limped over to the bed and dropped down next to it and cranked out a few dozen pushups. Rolling over, I pulled off a hundred crunches polished off with a few leg raises. I stood up cautiously and eased my way in to a squat. I dropped down to about half way before my right leg gave out and sent me crashing to the floor.

Fuck I growled to no one in particular. I steadied myself and pulled my body up off the floor. Walking towards the door of the apartment I grabbed my wallet and keys off of the bed stand and shoved them in to my wallet. The apartment I lived in was much bigger than I needed but it gave me a bit of breathing room and since the companywas footing the bill I didn’t exactly feel bad about it.

Hobbling towards my pantry I started my breakfast routine. I whipped a bowl down from the cabinet and gently left it on the counter. I grabbed a spoon from the drawer and tossed it in to the bowl from across the kitchen. I lobbed in heavy side down and with a bit of spin. The spoon whirled around the inside of the bowl a few times with dramatic flair. A splash of milk and a pour of a box later and I was good to go. Peanut Butter Crunch was the reigning champion of the morning routine. It was once unseated by Cheerios for about a week when the superstore ran out due to some coupon or what-ever. I never cooked food in the morning; it seemed so hazardous for a person of my morning temperament to be wielding a hot skillet.

I chewed down my food and made a show of running through a morning routine of dishes and laundry before the door bell rang at 8:00. Before I limped up to the door I grabbed the shiny metal cane off of the coffee table. It was a bright Georgia day, as always, and I grabbed a pair of cheap superstore sunglasses off of the counter before opening the door.

The man on the other side of door was a lean mass of muscle. His black hair was cropped in a military cut. His khaki pants and blue button down were clean pressed and straight. He looked like an off-duty soldier. It was a bit of shame that he had to work for a contracting firm instead of working for a real department but he had one little flaw that made him decidedly undesirable. Not that it mattered to me.  I wasn’t going to be passing a physical fitness test any time today. My cane held the door from swinging closed as I stared at him. I wasn’t walking out the front door until he said something; it was a point of pride. He had caught on to my game and stood there silently staring through me and in to my home.  It was a long couple of minutes before he broke the silence.

In all seriousness though, we have to go his voice was unnaturally smooth and had he a touch of an accent that not many would be able to place. The name on the tag stuck absolutely perfectly to his shirt was Andrew. I knew it wasn’t his real name, so I called him Jekyll. He didn’t appreciate the joke.

I walked out of my apartment and followed him down the stairs. The morning obstacle of the stairs lay before me. I had intentionally requested a second floor apartment. The day I couldn’t walk down those stairs was the day I didn’t need to leave the apartment.  I tackled the stairs with little more than a wince, brought on by a slight miscalculation with my cane that placed too much weight on my knee.

Jekyll had parked his car in front of the curb. The black sedan screamed government, which was convenient considering our occupation. The door to my side was already open when I got to it. Jekyll, having beat me to the car, was already inside and waiting for me with all the lethal patience of a glacier. My seat was warm from the sun and it was still in my usual reclining position. I lay back in the seat and closed the door. The A/C kicked in and began blasting cold air. My chair rested just so that I could not easily see out the windows. It was a nice relaxing rest on the way to where ever we had to go.

We drove out of the apartment complex and down the calm street. The drive was only a few short minutes. Jekyll parked the car with his usual grace and practical flair. I knew we couldn’t be at the office by now. This was very unusual. Jekyll was a very by the book kind of person. It occurred to me for a brief second that Jekyll had finally gotten tired of my crap and driven me to some hell-hole to bury me. That would have been very out of character for him. I dismissed it. I popped my head up and looked around.

The parking lot was familiar. It was the local mall, a nice place for casually waddling around and wasting money. I liked it a lot. I doubted very much that Jekyll had driven me here for a shopping trip.

Here to update the threads? Because I think you are right, blue is just not your color. I said hoping for an answer to my questions without having to ask them.

Do you ever stop being a smart ass? He asked with only with only slightest bit of annoyance. He opened the door and waited a few seconds as I limped out of the vehicle. I followed him as he turned to walk away. It was not long before I saw the yellow tape. My cane clicked on the asphalt as I approached and I saw several heads turn at the sound. Some bore mixed looks of recognition and pain. Other had mixtures of grief and sorrow. One was vomiting. Always a good sign.

The body was that of a middle aged man, he had a wedding ring on but that was all that I could gather for his personal status. He was remarkably naked for being in a parking lot. Didn’t give a person a lot to go with.

The wounds on his body were clearly claw marks. I was going to guess werewolf, I never like to jump to conclusions but they never would have called us in if it were a mere mauling. He was bruised and beaten. Either he was a really tough guy or a lot of these wounds were inflicted post mortem. The amount of claw scrapes and bruising indicate a very hefty beating. One other thing stuck out as peculiar. I lacked the expertise to determine when it happened, but the man in question was at some point in the altercation shot in the head, execution style. The bullet hole was in the center of the forehead. I couldn’t see an exit wound but with him being on his back and the massive puddle of blood underneath him it was hard to tell.

What do you make of it boss man I said as I turned to see Jekyll’s face contorted to reflect his inner conflict with the scene.  Jekyll was always a little nervous around werewolves.

The reason that Jekyll had shown up with me instead of in a squad car was because Jekyll had that one flaw. Our dear Dr. Jekyll had a Mr. Hyde. He defies current classification as a were-creature because he is not strictly limited to lunar activity. We have not yet tied down his trigger, but Jekyll has a very unfortunate tendency to become a bear under the right conditions. Not just any bear mind you, a ridiculously large grizzly, the kind that takes shotgun slugs and then munches on the shotgun owner.

When he was shorter, about 14, he had a sudden uncontrolled outburst in the middle of his school. I don’t know if it was his first incident, and I won’t ask. He killed 12 classmates before he was subdued. He was sent to the Searchlight Facility for protection. He was locked up in the super-max security wing, a gross over precaution, of the aboveground Searchlight Asylum. There they had him locked up until he turned 21. He took a few tests and they set him loose.

His discomfort confirmed my suspicions without his words. Werewolves attacking humans was not particularly uncommon. The Atlanta area had two or three packs operating at any given time, depending on what you wanted to call the Atlanta area. Most people actually discredit the inner city pack as a real pack considering its tendency to rip each other apart to just two members once or twice a year. Older werewolves are stronger and able to control their new forms. Younger werewolves tend to become mindless monsters, thus requiring the control of an Alpha. Each pack is registered, except for the inner city pack, and regulated to ensure safety. This was a two way street. You keep your werewolves locked up or far away during full moons and we will keep our villagers from chasing them in to a windmill with torches and pitch forks. I wasn’t entirely sure it was worded that way, but it’s about right.

The cops and forensic experts on the scene had already compiled all the evidence they needed and the lab coats would send down a verdict on who the victim was and who did the slaying. I could offer voodoo witch doctor advice and then be back home in time for lunch. It wasn’t a bad gig.

I walked around, not really bothering to look at the police officers who kept busy with mindless tasks as I surveyed the scene. Upon further inspection I found a trail of combat. A few blood spatters here, a piece of greenery scrapped clean and some nice claw marks on the side of a trash can. It made for a nice scene. It was clearly a struggle. How the person managed to keep running in the middle of a werewolf attack was beyond me. I doubt the 150 pound man was much of a fighter. He had a beard that screamed art major, or perhaps outdoorsman. Maybe he was a really rugged guy. Weeks of camping in some hell hole might give you an edge when getting batted around by a werewolf. Not much of an edge though. It didn’t explain the bullet hole either.

I puzzled over the bullet hole. I couldn’t so much as breath on the corpse until I got the go ahead or was briefed. Don’t want crazy wizards messing with your bodies. Might make them dance or sing songs, which would certainly upset the villagers.

Our boss didn’t like it when I called people villagers but that is often times how I see them. Scared, superstitious and above all working a daily grind to appease their wallets. Our boss didn’t care much for philosophy though. He much preferred money and results. I was nothing if not results oriented, so I did what I did and he happened to be pleased by it. We both work contracting agency within a new government bureau called Searchlight. It has a very Nancy Drew ring to it. The big thing is that with so many normal people committing crimes the police departments are a little busy to be brushing up on their werewolf folk lore. That means they can’t tell you that a werewolf can’t change in and out of form at-will thus making the use of a gun impossible for many hours. This meant we must have two killers, or a killer and a sadistic corpse mutilator, that or a guy who got mauled by a werewolf after getting a nasty case of shot-in-the-face syndrome. I hear it affects one in ten Americans, I read it on a thing someplace.

So various precincts call us in to tell them things they already know so that they feel better arresting the biology teacher who swears he didn’t use magic on that cop to get out of a speeding ticket, happens more often than you would think. There are actually quite a few people who practice magic and are employed in law enforcement. Unfortunately given the mental strength involved in most forms of magic they are often quickly promoted simply through merits of their intelligence and taken out of the pool of useful people. The eternal curse of the brilliant is to be promoted to where they can do no good, and to keep them away from harm.

So our agency works closely with the police and people of interested parties. We deal with the bumps in the dark so you don’t have to. As a side effect of the job we often employ things that make those bumps. Heck, I was already making an inventory of the contents of the black car’s trunk for some spell components. That would make me the bad guy in a lot of cheap fiction.

All I could do at the moment was wait for forensics to get stumped and finally decide to let me do that voodoo that I do so very well. It was the same old waiting game. I walked back over to the trunk of the car and popped the latch. The large trunk was filled with boxes and bags all labeled. I felt around and grabbed a bag of salt, a few pieces of herbs and a small wooden plank. I walked back to the crime scene with Jekyll in tow holding my materials. A cop shouted over at me.

Hey, the boss says he is all yours. Bullet was made of silver. Two short sentences filled with all the necessary pieces of information. Got to love the local PD.  If the bullet was silver that means it was meant to kill a were-thing. This meant that we had another player on the field and he was the kind of guy who had access to silver bullets. Not a whole lot of information, but more than we had a few short seconds ago. It also meant our John Doe might be a were-wolf. It was going to be a bitch if we had to explain to one of the pack Alphas why some nut job offed one of his ilk.

I walked up and stabbed my plank in to the ground, being very careful to place it close to the body, but not close enough to interfere with any tricks. I placed a few herbs on top of it for organizational purposes, but it also added an air of dramatization. I have to make sure to put on some flair. Otherwise the villagers stop fearing the scary wizard. I reached in to the Ziploc bag and pulled out a few pinches of salt and scattered it in to the air. With a few mutters of Germanic prose the salt drifted lazily towards the cuts and bullet wounds. They settled in to the abrasions and tears and holes in the man’s skin. With a swift movement I tossed one of the dried herbs in to the air swiftly dropping a few lines of hasty French as the herb fell through the air resting about a foot above the man’s chest. Hanging balanced above the man the little leaf spun with the slightest movement of air. The plank would serve as a decent barrier, and I went to stand behind it.

I spent a few minutes remembering and organizing all the languages and words I needed to throw together to get the right results. With a few grand gestures with my left hand I reached in to my Ziploc of salt and cast a hand full of salt in to the air with a quick chant. The salt hung in the air and spun and flew about organizing a white outline of a person. The person looked very similar to the man the only difference being he was kneeling and heaving for air instead of prone and dead. With a careful grace the salt parted and formed the silhouette of a new person who walked up and placed something against the head of the dead man before the man keeled over and the salted washed over his now prone form. That told me what I had already gathered from the ballistics team and my own observations. The gun was fired at nearly point blank range.

It also told me that the man was shot before he died which means he lived through all the other wounds before being shot. So where was his other attacker when he was executed? Why was this man shot? Why was he mauled? What happened to his clothes? All valid questions. My little leaf was still spinning dutifully in the air above the corpse, which was now covered in a fine salty powder.

The game was, officially, afoot. I walked over to the curb and sat down with Jekyll at my back. His ever looming presence cast a shadow over my own. I fiddled with my cane as I contemplated the course of events. A simple murder with a simple motive, it had to be. Where was the twist? Was it in the mauling, or the gun shot? Was the twist the man himself? There were a ton of questions and I am sure just as many answers, it was just a matter of finding them. I hobbled to my feet and paced around the corpse. I had a few final bits of show magic available.

I pulled a single paper clip from my pocket and with a mumbled bit of Russian the paper clip unfolded and began to extend in place. Little hairs sprouted from the end of the paper clip as it grew. Finally in my hand was a paint brush. This next bit rarely worked, but when it did it was always impressive.

This old bit again? Jekyll liked to heckle me almost as I liked to annoy him. I crouched down by the body. Dipping the brush in the man’s blood I raised it and let any excess fluid drip off. This trick always let me paint a better picture of a person, pun completely intended. I took the brush and skimmed it across the man’s forearm. It left a grotesque and splotchy trail. The blood circled and pooled with only a little guidance from myself. Soon words began to form. If a person has a strong enough sense of identity it carries through even in death.

Alpha. That was the only word that shone through. I stood up and leaned on my cane. The wheels went to work spinning as I processed the single cryptic clue. Jekyll take a picture of this and send it to Searchlight. This guy might be a werewolf. We could be looking at an Alpha slaying, at which time we might need to call in the big guns. He snapped up a phone and clicked a picture sending it off to one of the lab geeks.

Back to the waiting game. The cops lined up around the corpse were stuck here with us until we could get a proper I.D. on the guy. This would be really easy if T.V. shows were real. We would just plug his picture in to a big data base and have an I.D. and family down here in negative seconds. Too bad I am stuck in the real world. I went back to the car and pulled a pair of folding lawn chairs out of the back seat. I plucked a flask out of the center console. Jekyll gave me a disapproving look as I walked past struggling with the things. He didn’t bother to help, and I didn’t ask for him to.

I plopped the chairs down and unfolded them. With a long sigh I flopped back in to the lawn chair about five feet from the body. I unscrewed the lid of my drink and took a sniff. I love the smell of good rum. A few sips and recapped the flask and drifted in to my thoughts. I mentally tallied the damages and the trajectory of the shot. Clearly they were not done by the same person. The wounds were too fresh, and the bullet was what killed him. We definitely had two attackers. This might mean we had two werewolves and a vigilante; in that case we might need to be working on finding another body. Unless the other lycanthrope ran off at the sight off the gun. That raises the question as to why the guy was shot as a guy and not a wolf. This was a rather curious case.

Jekyll strolled past me and checked my plank. He found nothing of interest. He came back and sat down in his chair and stared dissatisfied out at the parking lot. He was a very by-the-book kind of guy and I had never even read the thing. Made for an interesting matchup, but it wasn’t like some kind of buddy cop movie where they matched us up trying to teach us lessons. We were both broken toys. Plus he kept me sober enough to do my job.

I was in the middle of reflection on how amazing a pool of vodka would be when I heard a tell-tale thunk. Something had hit my plank. Jekyll popped out of his chair like a spring and several officers turned quickly towards the sudden motion. He practically ran over to the plank and kneeled down; he did all that while I was still reaching for my cane.

We have got another bullet. His voice was projected so that the cops could hear it. He was good at being a dick when he wanted to. Technically the cops had handed over the investigation to Searchlight which meant they were hands off. So they couldn’t do anything unless we told them to, which they no doubt resented considering their slightly negative view of Searchlight operatives such as myself. It was, on occasion, hilariously fun to let them know that we succeeded where they failed.

The reason this second bullet was so important is because depending on the location and time it could very well complete the picture. I walked over and crouched next to the plank. Calling it a magic plank was pretty inane. It is more like a giant electro-magnet that doesn’t attract metal things. It works by removing things from the nearby area in the order they were placed there. That was why I had to pay attention to where I placed it. Anything over fifteen pounds was usually safe but if left unattended it would occasionally snatch the jewelry off of people, and in one case it took the glass eye out an unfortunate passersby’s socket. Rather nasty.

Jekyll pulled a pair of rubber gloves out of his back pocket. Lifting the bullet up to the sunlight I could clearly see the globe of misshapen metal was partially silver. Now that we had two bullets we could start constructing a better picture. I walked over to the body to see if I could judge where the bullet had been pulled from. I scanned the body with a practiced eye looking for any puckered wounds that might indicate something coming out of them. It took me a few minutes of dedicated surveying before I found