Free Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) by Mark Edward Hall Page A

forward in his seat as they approached the circus, his muscles tense like over-stressed strings on a musical instrument.
    The crime scene was an average suburban home on an average street in a very average small New England town. The place had a front porch, a two car garage and a lawn with two towering oak trees growing up out of it like titanic guardians. One of the trees even had a rope swing attached to a rugged-looking horizontal branch. Right now, however, the house, as well as most of the street, was taped off, and inside the cordon there was a buzz of activity. There were at least ten parked emergency vehicles with people moving busily to and from them. Outside the barricade, Jennings noted as they passed, were several news vans and a crowd of anxious-looking spectators. As he got out of the car a crowd of reporters moved toward him in a wave.
    “Can you give us any information?” A young man asked breathlessly, a cameraman at his side.
    How they knew he was a cop, Jennings couldn’t say. Maybe he smelled like one. His shirt was stuck to his back and his underarms were wet. Yeah, that must be it. He smelled like a pig. He tried to smile as he pushed his solid frame through the crowd but could only manage a grimace. “As you can see, I just arrived,” he said. “Don’t know any more than you do. Maybe less.” He pushed past the crowd of reporters and spectators and into the cordoned off zone.
    He stepped up onto the porch and peered through the open door. The first body he saw nearly undid him. The kid stood there like a statue, frozen in time , looking like he’d been sculpted from marble. Nothing about him looked real. Not even his clothes. Everything seemed calcified. His hair stood straight up like slivers of glass. The face was stretched unnaturally, elongated somehow in an almost supernatural way, the mouth wide open in a silent scream. The eyes were open and dull-white, no pupils or corneas, more like the eyes of some renaissance sculpture than those of a human being. They seemed to be staring out at some unseen horror. A team of crime scene investigators hovered around the body, photographing, carefully taking samples.
    Spencer stepped out onto the porch from inside the house walking carefully lest he step on some important piece of evidence. He was of medium height but solid, as though there were flexed muscles beneath his dark-colored suit jacket. His sandy hair was short-cropped and his complexion was deeply-tanned, like he’d just stepped out of the Florida sun. “Rick,” Spencer said extending his hand, “glad you could make it.”
    Jennings ignored the outstretched hand. He could not take his eyes off the kid. Cold shivers ran through him as if he was witnessing something extraordinarily evil. “Where are the others?” he asked.
    Self-consciously Spencer dropped his hand, turned and led Jennings into the house. The mother and father sat in their chairs looking pretty much the way the kid looked, frozen in place, calcified, and like the kid on the porch the faces were stretched in an almost supernatural way, eyes dull-white and staring, mouths open in twin silent ovals that made it look like the victims had been screaming in their final moment of life. They’d seen whatever had done this to them. There was no doubt about that. The terror frozen on their faces didn’t lie.
    The room was crawling with forensic people. Just to the left of the door lay a dog on its side. It looked just like the humans, freeze dried, calcified, its mouth open in an eternal howl. Even its fur seemed brittle, standing straight up like glass stalagmites.
    “Jesus,” Jennings said, frowning down at the dog. “What the hell?”
    “What the hell seems to be the operative question of the day,” Spencer said.
    Jennings attention was immediately drawn to something on the wall above the television. Three symbols that looked like words in some exotic language had been drawn meticulously in what looked like heavy black