Free Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) by James Costall Page A

an unmistakable shape. It was more compensation than Ernst felt he deserved for having to endure a few short moments of live human contact.
    “She’s prepped and ready. Just tag her and book her.”
    “Thank you.” She , he thought. Most satisfactory.
    Victor parked the trolley in the middle of the room and looked at Ernst. He seemed harmless enough, sat gracelessly at a desk on which sat a computer monitor displaying a half completed game of solitaire. But Victor knew the rumours and knew better than to try and talk to this strange little hermit. He decided to withdraw quickly from the room and get back up to where the people were generally a little less weird.
    Ernst counted to seventeen in his head the second Victor shut the door. That was the time it would take him to enter the lift. Then, with a childish squeal, he leapt from his chair and was instantly close to the new arrival. It only took him a few seconds to realise that there was something not quite right. The bag was so short. But Ernst’s puzzlement soon disappeared and was replaced with a broad grin as the realisation of just how fortunate he was today dawned on him.
    It was a child.
    But then there was something else different. At first, the oddity repulsed him and he was forced to take a small step back from the body. It was the smell. It was the smell of a corpse, of course, but that was not something that Ernst was used to at all. By the time bodies reached him, they were sanitized, shaved, disinfected, washed and, most importantly, the internal organs were drained of all bio-hazardous fluids using a trocar, a cylinder inserted into the abdomen. The inside of the cavity walls were then lined with an embalming gel before the anus and vagina were stuffed with cotton.
    In short, by the time the bodies reached Ernst, they smelt better than they had done whilst they were still alive.
    This one didn’t. This one stank of festering rot.
    Fuck, it stank of festering rot.
    And it was intoxicating.
    Something awoke within Ernst. He felt alive: a rare, exquisite moment of adrenaline flushed through his body and he found himself clumsily feeling for the zip of the bag. With trembling fingers he carefully split open the bag down the side closest to him and savoured the moment a short while before lifting the top of the bag. His mouth salivated, pupils expanded, his muscles flexed. Every inch of him burned with a mixture of trepidation, guilt, disgust and pleasure.
    But it was smothered in a heartbeat.
    He pulled his hands away sha rply, as if they had been burnt. He staggered back, covering his mouth. A feeling that he might be sick clenched at his stomach. And he looked away; he looked away with bile sticking at the back of his throat. And from that moment, Ernst Stranger knew that his life was a pathetic nothingness; an empty, unfulfilled existence of shame and deprivation. He felt a surge of terror at the thought that this moment, for reasons which he could not yet work out, could be his undoing.
    What lay in this bag should have been someone’s child, someone’s beloved child.
    But it was not.
    And it chilled Ernst to the bone.
     
    Chapter 17
    It was a long drive to the small village of White Helmsley but the marked Ford Kuga stuck to the road pretty well despite the ice.
    Police Constable William Fenn was three months away from retirement. It was times like these, driving down the abandoned back lanes through the snow covered valleys, when a small part of him thought he would miss the force.
    But then he thought about the pension and the feelings of nostalgia ebbed away.
    The radio crackled and Sergeant Lister’s droning voice filled the car interior.
    “Fenn, where are you?”
    “Just coming up to Helmsley, Serg.”
    “Where?”
    “Helmsley.”
    “Why?”
    “You sent me. To, er -” he scrabbled around for his pad where he’d written the address – “to check on Blacksmith Cottage, Low Street. Mrs Something-Or-Other.”
    “You took a