Free The Cactus Killer (The Inglewood Chronicles) by Jeremy Croston Page B

to fresh air. This place is giving
me a headache.”
    We were walking back to the
security door when I heard it.
    “ Help…”
    “ Did you hear that?” It was
the faintest whisper, but I knew I heard something.
    “ Hear what?” She turned and
looked all over the room. “I think your mind is playing tricks on
you.”
    “ Help me…”
    “ No, there is definitely
someone here with us.” It was a male’s voice; weak but just loud
enough that I could pick up on it. I followed it to the northeast
corner of the room. There wasn’t anything back here, but I knew the
sound had come from the area.
    “ What are you looking for
Vic? I truly am at a loss here.”
    “ I hear someone, they need
help and it is coming from back here. Maybe there is a secret door
or something.”
    We kept looking but even
after a good ten minutes of searching, nothing came up. I was
getting irritated and I punched the wall in frustration. My hand
went through the plaster and smacked right into a piece of
metal.
    “ Blasted that
hurt!”
    Elizabeth wasn’t concerned
with my hurt hand. She immediately went over to the wall and gave
it a few more good punches. By the time she was finished her
knuckles were bleeding, but our hidden door was
revealed.
    “ I am truly sorry I doubted
you. Shall we open this up and see what is inside?”
    “ We should. If someone
needs our help, we have to give it to them.”
    I pulled on the handle and
this door opened pretty easily. I wish I could say the scene that
met us was as easy to handle, but it was far from it. The smell of
decaying bodies poured out like a flood and within a second I was
on my knees trying not to vomit. Elizabeth pushed me back into the
main room and streaked in and came back out quicker than a flash of
light. Slamming the door shut, the smell started to go away and I
was able to become useful again. The poor man she dragged out of
that room I doubt would be so lucky.
    “ Can you speak? Can you
tell me what happened here?” Elizabeth was trying to get him to
stay coherent, but he was in bad shape.
    His skin was green and
there were wounds all over his body. Whoever tried to patch him up
did a terrible job as his wounds were all infected. He looked
almost like the monster that attacked us last night. He was close
to a state of shock by now, death would be preferable.
    “ He…left us to…to do his
work. Please…please kill…me. Make the sin…stop.”
    I wondered what this man
had been through to end up in such a state. He started to convulse
and I knew nothing more was to be gained here. I pulled Roscoe out
and gave the man his final wish. I felt sick to my stomach, but no
one deserved to suffer in such a way.
    “ We can’t leave him here;
the locals might want to take over the investigation. We need to
bring him back to Full Moon so Dr. Tello can examine the body. I
don’t even want to know what they did to these people.”
    “ What about the basement,
what should we do here?”
    “ Tonight, I think it would
be wise if Reno and Phil came back and destroyed everything. No one
needs to know and it would save the community a lot of heartache.
We have everything we need and, more importantly, all those dead
souls in that room need some closure.”
    She nodded and we gathered
up all the evidence. I carried the body back up to the top and
gently set him down against the wall. We devised a plan where I
would take the body to the car while Elizabeth went in and kept
Pastor Browne busy. I did not want this on his
conscious.
    Within the half hour, we
were back on the road, heading home. I made the calls with our
discoveries to the Alphas and Dr. Tello. I was going to drop the
body off with her and she was going to start tonight on the
autopsy. Hopefully we would get some leads to point us in the right
direction in our investigation.
    I think Argent knew just
how much the whole scene and my actions, the mercy killing of the
man in the church, disturbed me and told me to take the rest of