For about 6 months now, our county had been the host of multiple grisly murders. Each murder followed a specific pattern, it only seemed to happen in areas where farms and wooden areas where abundant and the victims seemed to fit the typical core family group: Mom, dad and a couple of kids. In each case, the family members were brutally torn apart. Forensics came to the conclusion that the mutilated bodies were eaten by some sort of animal, or at least, what they assumed had to be some kind of animal. The only problem with that theory is that animals don’t have a modus operandi, and there’s no animal I can think of off the top of my head that had a particular taste for human flesh.
In addition to that, we’ve had enough murders in the last 6 months to classify the culprit as a serial killer. In order to avoid panic, the official word released to the public is that we have a wild animal attacking individuals in specific regions of the county, obviously suppressing the number of murders we’ve had. We’ve had no luck finding whoever or whatever is responsible for the terrible crimes that had befallen our once peaceful little town. That all changed with a phone call at 3 in the morning. “What’s going on?” I said, trying to sound as awake and present as possible.
“We got another family down…the old freeman farm…you’d better get down here fast, we have a suspect in custody.” The words that came out of his mouth equally sent chills down my spine and splashed sobering awareness over my barely rested body. I got dressed and made the trip to the crime scene, and as expected, the place was adorned by red and blue lights. More police presence than necessary contaminating the crime scene, no doubt due to the fact we had a suspect in custody spread like wildfire. It must have been the worst crime scene yet. Nearly every surface of the house seemed to have blood on it.
Half of the father, the lower half, was in the living room while a trail of blood and chunks of flesh led to what was left of his torso outside of the house. The wife’s face was crushed inside an old large 90s television, half of her body spilling out. Her insides had been hollowed out from her back. The sister seemed to try to hide under the dinner table as her remains were found there. In custody was an 18 year old boy who was found naked and bathed in blood at the scene of the crime.
All attempts to interrogate the suspect were met with silence, evidence was collected from his body and sent to the crime lab for analysis. The boy was part of the family, and as of this moment, the only lead we had to find out what happened in that house. “Were booking him at the station as we speak, I just wanted to let you know, regardless if we can get a confession out of him, he’s probably going to be taking the fall for the killings.” The officer in charge of the scene had told me while I shook his hand. “I appreciate the heads up… this is the first survivor we’ve ever had from these killings… something isn’t adding up here. Could you have your men expand the crime scene area? Maybe there’s something we missed?
The officer sighed and reluctantly agreed to expand the search area for evidence. After getting briefed on the situation and making myself familiar with the evidence collected, I headed down to the police station to interrogate our suspect. They had placed him in one of our interrogations room where he had not spoken or moved an inch since he got there several hours earlier. “This kid is really giving me the creeps”. My partner said while observing the kid through the two-way mirror.
“He’s not spoken a word since he got picked up…usually by now, we get the “I didn’t do it”. I said while taking a zip of my lukewarm coffee. After catching up for a bit, my partner and I went into the room and sat across the table from the boy. “Hello Owen, I’m detective Clancy, and this is my partner, detective Brown”. The kid didn’t look up to meet our gaze or even acknowledge that we were there.
After a few hours of asking Owen questions, we couldn’t even get a peep from him. Frustrated, my partner lashed out. “You know you’re gonna be on the hook for the murder of your family. If you can’t tell us anything, then its gonna look like you killed your own fucking family!” Something from this interaction actually made the kid react. He actually stared at Brown and his lips started to tremble.
“H-…Help… D-…Dad… Help M-…Me…” It was like hearing someone speak for the first time. I suspected he was either heavily traumatized by what he witnessed… or it was like this kid was doing a bad imitation of human speech. Before I could engage him with another round of questions my cellphone had started vibrating, I was receiving a call from the lead crime scene investigator.
“Brown, could you take over? I’ll be right back.” I exited the room and answered the call. ”Clancy here, I was in the middle of interrogating the suspect.” “You need to secure whatever it is that you are interrogating right now! We expanded the radius of our crime scene and we found a body in the woods next to the house… the kid… what was left of the body belonged to the kid you’re interrogating!”
the man on the other side of the line sounded like a mad man, nothing he was saying made a lick of sense to me. “I don’t know what the hell you’re on about, what you’re saying isn’t possible.” I looked over to the interrogation room and something started to happen to the kid. “I heard stories of skin walkers in the area since I was a kid and never believed them myself…but I got a half-eaten corpse here of someone that we just sent off to the police station.”
The kids face and body began horribly distorting. My partner stood back and the kid had flipped the table over with inhuman ease and began ripping off loose fitting skin across his body. Brown drew his side arm and started shooting at the fucker, it unleashed an inhuman wail and lunged at my partner. It slashed at Brown’s face with its sharp claws and tore his face off in a few swipes. Before I could react, it had burst through the two way glass while still attacking my partner, now pulling his intestines out and feasting upon him while Brown weakly wailed.
I drew my fire arm and shot a few rounds into its slender frame, managing to anger it more than anything. As fast as it had attacked my partner it was tackling me now, we would break through the entrance door and spill out into the hallway where it would quickly slip away on all fours, running on the walls to avoid my gunfire and disappearing once it reached the staircase. The commotion and gunfire drew the attention of a group of officers “We have an officer down and one escaped suspect!” I had to show my badge as I was getting up from the floor as some of the officers did not immediately recognize me and were ready to confront an active shooter. A female officer, Rodriguez, helped me up as the rest of the group were in awe of the carnage left in the interrogation room.
“What in the fuck happened here?” a sergeant I didn’t quite recognize asked as he checked on Brown’s pulse. The building power was cut off and the emergency lights came on. “It must have cut the power. My partner and I where interrogating a suspect… it turned into some sort of monster and killed Brown. We tried shooting it down but it was like bullets had no effect on it.”
some officers turned their flash lights on to investigate the area. “You are not making sense officer, but something is definitely not right here. What direction did the perp head to?” I loaded a new magazine into my weapon and pointed in the direction of the staircase. “I lost it going up the stair case.”
As if it was waiting for my cue, we started hearing screams coming from the stair case. It only took a few moments until gunfire was added to the chorus of noise. The group of officers moved into position and were ready to go up the stairs. The sergeant took his radio out of his belt and contacted another officer. “Rodriguez come in, we have a situation on the west wing.”
It took a few moments but another voice came through the static on the other end. “There’s something in the here sarge… it’s not fucking human!” we could hear gunfire go off in the background of the radio and then immediately hear it somewhere up the staircase. “Report officer, what are we dealing with?” there was another pause and the voice returned.
“I don’t fucking know man. It just came out of nowhere and ripped some guy’s throat out. We’re sitting ducks out here, it’s too dark and it’s crawling up the walls!” there was another round of gunshots and a high pitched scream. The sergeant tried the radio again but there was no reply this time.
“We need better equipment to take this thing down… otherwise we aren’t gonna last long in a firefight.” I pleaded my case with the group of officers but my mind was made up. “I’m going to head to the armory, it would be a lot easier if I had someone who knew the code to the door to accompany me.” It was more or less a unanimous decision to gear up at the armory, it took us longer than expected to get to the basement of the building as we had to clear every hallway in this now dark maze of a police station. Every few minutes we could hear some bloodcurdling scream in the distance, this thing was picking off every survivor in the building and it wouldn’t be long until it went after us.
Just as we had reached the armory, we started to hear scratching sounds from deep in the darkness, coming from the hallway we had just come through. “Rodriguez, get this door open right fucking now!” the sergeant ordered a female police officer who immediately got to work in inputting the right combination in the locked door. “OH…OH G-GOD…HELP ME…” We heard as clear as day a voice somewhere in the dark that didn’t sound quiet right.
Some officers got into position and pointed their guns and flashlights down the hall we came from and in the middle was a disfigured silhouette of a man…half of its body was normal while the other half was of that demented creature. One of its arms had large claws and it was running them on the wall as it slowly walked toward us. “How is that thing talking?” a nervous voice said in the dark, before I could tell them it could probably imitate the voice of its victims…maybe the last words of its victims, a loud deafening sound echoed through the hall. Everyone started to open fire on the creature which looked extremely pissed.
With inhuman speed, it used the walls and ceiling as a running surface to avoid our gunfire. It started ripping through bodies, blood was everywhere in just a few short seconds, body parts where flying and hitting surfaces, the blood had gotten of flashlights and red light was now barely illuminating the carnage in front of me. I could barely make it out due to the gunfire but Rodriguez had managed to open the door to the armory and was screaming at the top of her lungs for us, however many remained of our group, to get in. I sprinted faster than I’ve ever done so before and just barely made it inside before the door was closed and locked behind me. After taking a few moments to catch my breath and let the adrenaline go down in my body, I realized only sergeant, Rodriguez, and I were left.
We could still hear how it was slashing through bodies in the hallway and when it was done we could hear it slashing and scratching away at the door, thankfully it wasn’t able to get through the sturdy metal door separating us from it. it took a few minutes for us to compose ourselves and realize we were stuck in a candy store for gun freaks. The amount of bullets, weapons, and equipment available was impressive. We put on bulletproof vests and anything available that could protect our bodies from that thing and armed ourselves with Benelli m4’s AND AR-15’S.
“We need a plan if we are going to survive this” the sergeant said while securing smoke grenades to his vest. “You’ve had more experience with that monster out there. Is there anything you know that we don’t? Maybe a way to kill it?” I contemplated the question while I loaded my shotgun.
“when that thing got here, it looked like an 18 year old male, suspect of killing his entire family. It can shapeshift into its victims… I know this now because the body of that kid was found in the woods next to his house. It can also imitate human speech poorly. Every time I’ve heard it speak it’s been asking for help…my theory is that it can only imitate its victims’ last words.” Even with the newfound protective gear and weapons, everyone in the room was extremely disturbed by that information.
“I don’t really have anything for you. Hopefully, these weapons can do more than just piss it off, and we can blow it to bits like its name is Murphy.” With a good a plan as any we spilled back out into the hall to witness the horrors left behind by that thing. The floor was littered with bodies, not one complete, and slippery with the amount of blood on nearly every surface. We managed to follow the trail of blood on the creature’s body through the labyrinth of darkness…our hunt stopped back at the staircase where the interrogation first took place.
The blood stopped right at the staircase, and everything in my body was screaming this was some sort of trap. We slowly made our way up the stairs and reached the cubicle section of the department…nerd city we used to call it…now it was just another scene of carnage. There were bodies still at their cubicles that didn’t even get a chance to fight the creature before getting brutally butchered. Brass and blood was all over the floor, there was a peculiar body at the corner of the room that had a radio stuck in its skull, the sergeant recognized him as the officer he had been communicating with earlier. Before any of us could react, something had grabbed sergeant by the neck and pulled him up to the ceiling.
When Rodriguez and I focused our guns at tipped with flashlights, the thing had pinned the sergeant to the ceiling and was ripping through his bullet proof vest with its claws until we got sprayed with red…I could feel something warm and heavy on my shoulders which took me a few seconds to realize were sergeants intestines dangling on me. Rodriguez was the first to shoot, hitting one of his smoke bombs and dispersing a thick cloud of smoke across the room. I shot my shotgun at the ceiling and heard the creature yell out in pain. I moved out of the way as sergeants torso had fallen down, shortly followed by his legs. Visibility was near zero and breathing was becoming more difficult under the heavy smoke.
I managed to crawl back to the staircase where the smoke had not gotten to yet and was able to compose myself. I tried calling out to Rodriguez but she didn’t reply back. A few minutes go by and from the smoke comes out Rodriguez, her vest had been ripped off and she was limping. “Wait, stop fucking there!” I aimed my gun at her face ready to unload. “Say something.”
I said, knowing she was aware the thing could imitate her appearance and her voice. She looked confused for a few seconds until from her lips came out: “I-ts… Its… Not…Me…” I felt a wave of horror take over my body as I knew it had gotten to her and it had worn her bloody rags to get close enough to me. It knew the farce was over and shot me a sickening smile. I pulled the trigger as hard and as fast as I could, unloading into its body.
Seven clean shots I got in and down the creature went. I quickly started reloading my weapon to double tap the fucker. Before I could aim my weapon at its head this time it slapped it from my hands with incredible strength. It slowly got back to its feet and grabbed me by the neck. I could feel the life being choked out of me as it lifted me off my feet, I was about to pass out as I felt it stab my belly with its claws… the vest stopped them from going all the way through but It had time to tear me limb from limb now.
As I was ready to accept my fate, red and blue lights were flashing through the windows. The rest of the department had showed up from the crime scene. It somehow knew that as well and smile at me again. It tossed me across the room back into the cubicles and ran past me. I heard a loud crashing sound and realized it had jumped out of a two story window.
In only a few hours, It had taken out most of the police officers in our town, maybe that was its goal, why it let us arrest it in the first place. Now, even if we wanted to, we don’t have enough man power to hunt it down. There’s not enough people to stop it from having its way with our once peaceful town.