Portland In Black 5

Previous Part | Start of Story | Next Part

Blackthunder drove off, leaving the Noir and Jesha outside the crime scene.  A fast food place, police tape closed it off.  Rain continued to drizzle.  Cars drove by on the nearby highway.  A few persons milled about, one or two heads rising to look at the two of them.

Noir gulped at the sight of the place.  The windows had been covered in blood.  The blood had been smeared into letters, words stained for the whole world to see.  They formed the words, "Wolf Man Cometh."

"Huh."  Jesha commented.  "There's a theme I don't sense here."

"You don't like all the wolf language?"  Noir asked.

Jesha pursed her lips.  "Its mildly offensive."

"I guess anyone who turns into a giant wolf might find it offensive."

"Its offensive that people tie that into wolves at all."  Jesha shook her head.  "There's a old biased symbology at play here.  Its sick and wrong."

Noir paused.  "How so?"

"A misplaced blame."  Jesha waved a hand at all the bloody letters.  "Wolves didn't do this.  People like to think of them as bloodthirsty monsters.  They used to massacre them in droves, out of the fear of them.  It's absurd, but humans still run scared from them, even after doing so much harm to them."

"Fear isn't logical."  Noir replied.

Jesha didn't respond to that.  Noir took that as a cue to walk into the restaurant.  Jesha followed after him.

A trooper stopped him with a hand.  Noir handed over the folder Blackthunder had given him.  The trooper flipped through the paperwork for a minute, then handed the folder back.

The trooper didn't say a word as he held up the police tape, letting Noir and Jesha walk pass.  Noir hesitated as he walked into the crime scene.

Jesha seemed unaffected by it.

Blood was everywhere.  A woman's corpse laid in the middle of the floor.  Blond, her eyes were lifeless, dressed in a fast food uniform.  Noir's nose took in the smell of the rotting flesh.

The sight of this made his stomach lurch.  Nauseated. Noir tried to push down the bile and vomit trying to make their way out of his throat.

"Ugh, poor thing."  Jesha said.  She took note of the look on Noir's face.  "You going to be okay?"

"Just... not used to seeing so much blood...  Give me a second..."  Noir felt embarrassed.  He'd dealt with all sorts of dead bodies, but this one felt different.  Different enough he almost lost his composure.

"Ok."  Noir said.  "Lets see what we can do with this."

He knelt down next to the dead girl.  The necromancer reached out with his necrokinetic senses, trying to look for any sort of spirit.  Noir closed his eyes, concentrating.  No ghost or anything had taken hold.  Not yet anyway.

"Damn." Noir opened his eyes.

"What is it?"  Jesha asked.

"There isn't a ghost here.  Her death didn't leave anything afterward."  Noir sighed.

"Oh.  What do we do now then?"  Jesha asked.

"I can... well, I can make a ghost.  That is, if she is willing to come back."  Noir looked down at the body.  "I'm afraid to do anything more complicated after what happened back in Newport."

Jesha gave him a sympathetic look.  "That wasn't your fault, Noir.  She betrayed your trust."

Noir ignored Jesha and knelt down.  He tried to control himself.  He was trying to focus, to start the process casting the spell that would bring this girl back as a ghost.  Noir stared at the girl's name tag.   It made him frown a bit.

He corrected his thoughts.  Noir started to focus on the spell that would bring Ellie back as a ghost.