(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

“What happened?” John asked, “Why aren’t you burned?”

The man flashed a smile that John felt he should recognize. “Come in, come in,” he said as he escorted John into a dimly lit space that was about as clean as a cramped dorm room shared by a pack of messy freshman. Empty pizza boxes and soda cans littered the room while stacks of white cardboard file boxes were stacked ceiling high like Doric columns supporting the motel’s ceiling.

John made his way past the first wall of mess and noticed a door to his left, slightly ajar, revealing an adjoining room bathed in the blue light from a bank of computer and TV monitors. Only then did John notice the man was holding a black gun in his left hand.

“Just in case you were someone else,” he said, noticing John surprise. The man gently set the gun on a stack of boxes and led John towards the other room. “Actually, it’s for the rats, you should see the size of the fuckers here.”

As the man walked two paces ahead, John considered grabbing the gun, given that his power had no effect on the stranger. He resisted the urge, though his instincts were screaming for him to do otherwise. Besides, the man wasn’t exactly screaming danger,what with his messy long hair, flabby gut and cheeky grin.

“Hey, lemme put some pants on,” the man said, “I don’t wanna’ get you all hot and bothered with these sexy legs.”

The man paused, as if he were waiting for John to laugh. When no laugh came, the man disappeared back into the first room. John stood in the adjoining room, confused and trying to make sense of his surroundings.

The second room was equally messy, though more organized, and seemed as if some sort of work was being done inside. The door out was blocked off by one line of a C-shaped desk which lined three walls. Rows of computer hard drives with different colored lights, blinking and steady, lined the floor. Atop the desk sat at least 14 different television and computer monitors. Despite the plethora of equipment, there stood only two office-type wheeled chairs.

On the computer monitors, John spotted several screens of presumably live closed circuit camera footage around the motel’s perimeter, various web sites and live news feeds from several news stations. The TV’s were also tuned into new channels, except one which showed the episode of Seinfeld which John had heard. All the monitors were silent.

The man returned, now dressed in black jeans and black biker boots, holding two Coke cans. He held one up, offering it to John, who declined with an absentminded shake of his head.

“What is this place?” John began, then asked, “who are you?”

“Larry Keriowski at your service,” he said, extending his hand and smiling a huge grin. “It’s okay, I’m vampire proof.”

John shook his hand. Larry’s soft hands matched the mush of his midsection. Only after they shook hands, did Larry notice that the tips of his fingers were coated in some orange powdered residue. “Sorry, I was eatin’ Cheetos; want some?”

John shook his head and repeated his first question.

“This,” Larry said, waving a hand around, “is the war room. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

John circled the war room, more confused than ever.

Larry explained that he was using the equipment to track any sort of news which would let him know when John had returned. He hadn’t expected John to appear so close to home, whatever that meant, nor had he expected to see him so soon. The comment Larry had made when he met John at the door about taking so long had apparently been ironic.

“I figured I might get some unexplained deaths from some small town news a month or two from now. Little did I know you’d be all over CN-fucking N.”

John looked up just as a handful of screens began a video of John from earlier. He stepped closer to the screen.

“Oh my God,” he said.

Though he had vague memories of the man he drained on the street hours earlier, they were fuzzy, without detail. Seeing himself, through footage someone had shot at the scene, sent a chill down his spine and cemented the reality of his murderous actions. While the video was of him, it did not seem possible he could do such a thing.

“I am a monster.”

Larry laughed. “Well not quite, but I can see how you’d get that.”

John sat down in one of two chairs and looked Larry dead in the eyes.

“How do I know you? And why aren’t you surprised that I don’t remember you?”

Larry’s eyes flitted nervously for a moment but then returned with their jovial light.

“I’m your apprentice,” Larry said, “you’ve been teaching me magick for the past few years.”

“Magick?” John asked, “what are you talking about?”

“You really don’t remember… anything?” Larry asked.

John shook his head.

“Wow, it worked better than I hoped.”

John felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as something in his stomach twisted. What the hell did that mean? He started glancing around for another weapon and wondered if Larry had grabbed the pistol while he was changing his clothes.

“Relax, John,” Larry said, as he nonchalantly popped the cap from his Coke can and took a deep swig. “You asked me to wipe your memories and bury you.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Related posts:

1. Available Darkness: Chapter 22 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...
2. Available Darkness: Chapter 26 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...
3. Available Darkness: Chapter 21 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

(Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written by David Wright and Sean Platt. A new chapter appears here each Friday. If you missed previous chapters, you can read them here.)

“A drink, Jack?” Director Bob Cromwell asked as Baldwin sat down at the bar in his boss’s den.

“”No thanks,” Baldwin said as Bob headed to the garage to grab a fresh bag of ice.

Baldwin’s eyes scanned the home, a monstrous estate on the Occoquan River with custom maple kitchen furnishings, dark granite countertops and appliances that shined with the latest in technological advances. The house looked like something from an architectural magazine, with an asking price somewhere north of $2 million – a bit more than he figured his boss could afford, but you never know what kind of money people have.

While the home was well furnished, it had all the warmth of a museum, the only hints of household personality in eyesight were the few tastefully framed photos on the fireplace mantle of Bob’s wife and college-aged daughter, who were both on a ski trip. Bob, with his wide, owlish face and sharp nose was absent from all but one of the photos, a Christmas portrait from at least six years ago, where Bob wore a rather unflattering green sweater with a reindeer on it. Baldwin held back the urge to laugh.

Bob returned with a bag of ice, poured himself a glass of vodka and sat across from Baldwin at the bar.

“How much do you know about Omega?” Bob got right to the point.

Omega was the group that sat just above Baldwin’s on the agency chart, the squad assigned to cases that Baldwin’s own team was unable to solve. They made sense of the senseless and found natural explanations for supernatural events. Their success rate was said to be 100 percent, though Baldwin had little interaction with them. Hell, he didn’t even know any of the members outside of Commander Mike Matthews, who headed up Baldwin’s unit for nine years prior to his promotion. They rarely saw one another anymore, though, given that both men’s’ jobs kept them on the road for the majority of the year.

“Well, I know they get our leftovers,” Baldwin joked, “but beyond that, not a whole hell of a lot.”

Bob took another long sip, finished off his drink and then poured another before reaching beneath the bar and retrieving a black folder with red text reading “CLASSIFIED” diagonally across the cover. Bob slid the folder across the short distance of the granite counter.

Inside were a stack of maybe a dozen neatly organized black and white photos and a stack of nearly 40 pages of reports. Attached to the inside cover was a single sheet of paper which read, “PROJECT PHOENIX.”

Baldwin picked up the first photo, and took noted of the handwritten date along the bottom right hand border which read, July 14, 1947.

In the photo, a black hooded, but otherwise nude man sat strapped to a large chair similar to the type sometimes used to restrain prisoners. His arms and legs were bound by leather straps and large metal buckles, his flesh was pallid and pocked with gray bruises. Baldwin had trouble making out the man’s age, as he appeared hairless and his genitals were concealed by his closed legs. Behind the man, a gray wall with a black sliding panel which seemed to conceal a long rectangular window.

Baldwin turned to the next photo. A young man with a buzz cut in some sort of unrecognizable military-looking uniform stood behind the man in the chair. The military officer carried no weapons or badges that might indicate his rank or branch of service.

In the next photo, the serviceman had removed the man’s hood. The captive was young, in his mid-twenties, hair wet with sweat (or water) and eyes wide in terror.

Baldwin felt beads of his own sweat begin to slowly blanket his forehead. He flipped to the next photo and saw the officer sliding open the black panel revealing a window behind them. A thick beam of brilliant light poured through the open window, spilling into the room and washing over the back of the strapped man. Though obviously not possible, it appeared that the shaft of light had sent the prisoner into a writhing fit of evident pain, his body arced taut, in attempt to break free of the restraints.

Baldwin gasped, his finger still shaking from the turned picture.

The man was still in the chair, but now consumed in flames. The officer had disappeared from the shot. The following photo was another view of the man on fire. The sequence continued, showing several military and scientist types examining the charred body. The photos closed out with extreme close-ups of the damage of the withered corpse.

“Look familiar?” Bob asked.

The burns looked similar to the victims in the serial murder case he was working, no doubt, but it was hard to tell from appearance alone if the fire shared the same intensity. Then Baldwin saw what he had missed before. Neither the chair or restraints displayed much fire damage at all.

“Christ,” Baldwin said, “what is this?”

“We call them feeders, though some of the agents call them vampires.”

Baldwin tried to digest the cold-cock of new information and figure how the pieces fit into the enigma of his case. He asked if his victims in the case were feeders.

“No,” Bob said, “but they were killed by one. These feeders seem to have the same effect on their hosts as the sun has on them.”

Baldwin cycled through the photos again, then started to rifle through the attached paperwork, none of it written in a language he recognized.

“What is this shit?” he asked.

Bob laughed, “It’s encrypted.”

Baldwin was fairly certain his boss was lying. Suddenly, he remembered something that happened in his department eight years ago to a rookie named Eddie Rienhart. The team decided to haze him by planting a folder with “alien autopsy” photos. They had Eddie pretty convinced, too, for a while. For a moment, he wondered if Bob was having one on him, but that was before he remembered that Bob was a humorless prick.

“They’re quite real, Jack. But I’m afraid you don’t have clearance to know any more.”

Baldwin would have wondered what the hell out loud, but Bob just kept on going.

“Unless we move you to the Omega unit.”

Baldwin didn’t even need to say yes. “I’ll take that drink, now, Bob.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

We’ll be fielding any comments or questions you have in the comments section, so stop by. We’d love to hear what you think. Also, please tweet this post and help spread the word about Available Darkness and nurture online fiction.

Related posts:

1. Available Darkness: Chapter 19 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized thriller co-written...
2. Available Darkness: Chapter 34 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...
3. Available Darkness: Chapter 23 (Serial and Milk: Available Darkness is a serialized horror thriller...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.