Free The Franklin Incident (Philly-Punk) by Raymond M. Rose Page A

didn't think he would find us.  No, strike that, I hopes he wouldn't.  Why would he return to the scene of an earlier crime?  I need only glance toward the front of the office to see what happened that first time: she lie on the floor, her fingers pointing towards me, palms open.  If it wasn't for the dried blood – dark splotches on her alabaster skin – it might seem as if she were merely extending her hand to me.  Thankfully, I can't see her dead open eyes because my coat respectfully covers her.
    click... click...
    Clearly, I was wrong about the killer's thought-process.  Though, I imagine, a part of me had indeed thought I was incorrect for I took pains to position the constable and I in such a way that, if the killer did enter this office, the desk would hide us.  Yet, the doorknob he was turning was not the one I thought he would use.  Not the one in front of us; but he was coming in behind us, leaving us completely visible when he opens that door.
    I quickly shuffle out of my place of refuge and sneak around the desk, taking care to drag my unconscious friend with me.
    click... click...
    The fingernails – let's call them what they really are, claws!  CLAWS! – scrape against the door as the killer tries the doorknob again.
    click... click...
    creak...
    The door opens behind me.  I press my body as firmly as I can to the side of the desk.  Any further and I would be part of the desk.  I listen.
    thump... thump...
    The sound hammers my already-crumbling resolve.  I am firmly rooted to this hiding place not out of comfort but out of pure, strickening fear.  Every vein feels ablaze and nerves drawn as tight as a garrote.  I wish, though, with all my heart, that my fear was purely of this killer, of this thing stepping into the room.  I wish that I was afraid of the harm he might inflict on my person or my defenseless friend beside me.  I wish it be fear of death.  And not fear of what I'll become if I chose to fight back.
    thump... thump...
    The stench that I smelled upstairs fills my nostrils again.  It smells of death, putrefaction, and burned incense.  Such smells seem intimately familiar but unrelated to my current predicament.  A rite of some—
    thump... thump...
    A shadow grows ahead of me.  At first, it's an expanding dome of darkness; an inverted rising sun.  Then it grows larger, swallowing all light in its path.  I need to get out of this place.  I need to draw the killer away from my friend.  I need to flee before all light is gone and only shadow exists.
    thump... thump...
     
    * * *
     
     
     
    Three hours ago, I stepped out of the 'mechanical' hansom cab and into an intense June afternoon sun that left me squinting and wishing I'd brought my hat.  I paid the driver, a man wise enough to wear a pair of dark glasses against the afternoon's strong sun, and the coins clunked into his fare box.  The driver nodded 'thanks.'  The engine huffed and the carriage shuttered forward, small clouds of steam marking its departure.  Although these 'mechanical' hansoms had become the standard over the past couple of years, they still struck my eyes as queer: I expected to see a horse – or even a team of those fine beasts – in the front, pulling a simple 'box on wheels.'  However, recently, a horse-drawn carriage was the rarer of the two.
    I smoothed the wrinkles out of my charcoal frock coat and fixed my cravat.  Although the coat was a decade out of fashion and slightly-frayed in spots, I found it utterly indispensable: it had two wonderful deep outer pockets that could hold all manner of items.  I like to believe that I am a man who always has a need for voluminous pockets.  The power of utility over the fancy of men's fashion.
    I carried my instrument valise across the city square toward the address written on a message hand-delivered a half-hour ago by a young man from the Pneumatic Tube Co.  The Franklin Building was a squat beast that looked large enough to berth one of