Work Text:
The rain drives steadily, dripping off his collar and pooling in the confines of his shoes. Alex Casey hardly notices. His mind is elsewhere, swirling around the mental drain of this investigation, the mounting horror he’s only just cracked the spine of. This is to be the first chapter of a lengthy tome, and he recounts what he knows from the prologue.
The murders. The manuscript.
The writer.
Casey could laugh at himself for falling headlong into literary metaphors already. But this case nags at him in a way that feels personal, and it sucks all the humor out of him. At the mouth of the alley, a figure cuts a shadowed silhouette in the sickly green light. Something hot and ugly bubbles up in Casey’s core, a rage that catches in his teeth as he steps forward.
“Is this the way it was on the page?”
Wake feigns ignorance, stupidity a natural look on his face. Every word from Casey’s mouth is clipped, bitten off by frustration. He hasn’t even seen the manuscript pages, only heard rumors of their sordid existence. He just knows someone out there fancies himself an artist, a god, with the right to toy with people’s lives. And if that someone’s writing has all the hallmarks of Wake’s usual slop, maybe it would be best to end this story right here.
He doesn’t realize his hand has crept towards his holster until a sound crashes farther down the alley and he’s already brandishing his gun. Ignoring Wake’s pleas for a weapon, Casey charges ahead, steps around the corner, and fires at–
Nothing. One minute he’s looking at the darkness and the next it’s surrounding him, ripping into him like claws and teeth and leaving him with no time to scream before his head cracks against a wall and he slides down, dimly aware of the hot wash of his own viscera staining wet clothes and dirty pavement. Then Wake is above him, haloed by halogen. A memory floats to the top of Casey’s mind, flotsam rising from the depths. A dream. Blood on the snow, a gruesome slushie. His face tilted up to the gray sky as he lay dying, unfeeling in the cold.
The writer goes for the gun. Casey lurches, catches his wrist, feels a fresh throb of agony lace through his abdomen. Their eyes meet, Wake’s owl-wide, and the detective snarls weakly. “You’re not gonna get what you want. You think you know. You know shit.” He tries to spit a mouthful of blood, but all he manages is a pathetic crimson drool. “You don’t really wanna know. You’re gonna get… what’s… coming to you.” His grip on the gun slackens, and he slumps against the graffitied wall.
The last thing he sees as the world tunnels to blackness is Wake standing and staggering back, expression unreadable as the detective dies at his feet.
The mire of the tunnels clings to him like a second skin. A dead end, milked-over eyes of a body past rigor mortis staring listlessly at the cavernous ceiling, and for what? Murder usually makes sense. A crime of passion or a violent accident. But a cult? Underground fanatics right here in New York, overgrown subway rats chewing up and regurgitating the written word they cling to like a grisly bible? Straight out of some crummy pulp novel you wouldn’t spare a second glance in an airport bookstore – except it’s real and it’s happening and Casey has the crime scene to prove it.
He has a name now, at least, a potential author for the pages that narrate the crimes. Wake. A difficult thread to follow considering he’s a cold case in his own right. Or maybe it’s all interwoven, somehow – Wake’s disappearance, the cult, the apparently renewed fervor over his novels. Fanatics like that always need some nutjob leading them, calling the shots from on high. That it might be Wake himself feels like a hefty leap in logic to be making, but then, murder cults in secret urban tunnels doesn’t sound any saner.
Regardless, he needs to know more about the writer. And if anyone can tell him anything, it’s the ex-wife.
There’s no one at the apartment building to buzz him in so he’s sequestered at the payphone across the plaza, her contact information crammed in the margins of a battered notepad. The writing is so distorted he doesn’t know if he’s dialing right, and the endless ringing doesn’t bolster his confidence.
She’s been largely absent from the narrative since they split before he vanished, silent in the press save for when confronted directly. Too forgiving for her own good, Casey thinks. A guy like Wake’s gotta have skeletons in his closet, things that make the publicized tales of drunken disorderlies sound tame. And the wife had weathered it all, then quietly slipped away without draining him of money or fame. What a fumble on the writer’s part, losing someone like that. Hell, if Casey had someone like her instead of that bitch of an ex he’d–
Ex? No, no, not ex, not– The screams, the crib, the blood, the bodies. He grips the receiver so hard the plastic creaks and his bones protest.
No, no, please, god, no.
The ringing cuts out and a voice cuts in.
“How did you get this number?”
Maybe she has claws after all.
“Mrs. Wake?” Shit, is it still Mrs? Or is it Ms, a maiden name? “This is–”
A breath, sharp enough to halt his words. Her voice is a whisper, so soft he barely hears it.
“Tom?”
His mouth feels dry, suddenly, the words stuck in his throat. Something crawls up his spine, that looming dread you get when a room is too dark, too quiet.
This isn’t right. He shouldn’t have called her.
“No, Mrs. Wake, this is Detective Casey.” He’s surprised at how smoothly the words flow, how easily he follows the familiar script as though he’s being fed lines. “I wanted to ask you some questions about your ex-husband.”
When the silence has lasted long enough that he thinks the payphone spontaneously lost service, she speaks.
“I can’t help you, Detective.” There’s shuffling in the background, and she sighs. “Not directly, not… I’m sorry, I know you don’t understand. But I can’t.”
“Understand what? Mrs. Wake, I only need–”
“Alex.” Gentle but firm, the same way she probably spoke to Wake when he stumbled home. “You can try the hotel. The Oceanview. You might find something there. But I can’t help you.”
A click and a dial tone before he can protest. He curses, slams the receiver back into its cradle. The hotel is familiar from the case files, at least, and it shouldn’t be far from the plaza.
The air feels thick, heralding rain.
It escapes him that he’d never given her his first name.
Another body. Another layer to the cult. A cursed play, a staged murder inspiring a real one, fiction and reality overlapping. It’s painfully metatextual, so on the nose it’d be laughable if someone wasn’t dead. And this Mr. Scratch at the rotten heart of it. Wake, returned? Or some other devil?
Jesus, Casey needs a goddamn drink.
Thankfully there’s a bar off the lobby. He’s not expecting it to be staffed, but luck is on his side for once – there’s a bottle of whiskey and a clean glass atop the bar, waiting for him. Someone must’ve been in a hurry to get the hell out of here, and he can’t say that he blames them. He pours himself a measure of amber, knocks his prize back in one burning go, and portions out a second round before he becomes aware of a presence down the bar.
Had they been there when he walked in? He glances over and is met with a wave, and the hope that he’ll be left alone dies when the stranger slides onto the stool beside Casey.
“Aleksi! No, no, wait – Alex Casey. The detective, right?”
Casey’s features collapse into a frown.
“How the hell do you know who I am?”
“Oh, don’t be so humble, Detective.” The man’s smile is a touch too wide, he’s bare-chested under his blazer, and his blown pupils make it fairly obvious that he’s high. Great. Just what Casey needs. He polishes off his second drink with practiced ease, readies another. “Those murders, well. It’s all anyone is talking about.”
He’s already decided he’s going to ignore the man until he either gets the hint or Casey himself is too drunk to care. Even with his attention fixed forward, he can still feel eyes burning a hole into the side of his head.
“You look like you need a break, my friend. Something to take your mind off everything. You know, there’s this new film playing across town, at Poet’s Cinema. The screenplay is a little…” he makes a vague hand motion, rings glinting in the light, “unpolished. But the cinematography? I’ve heard it’s worth the price of admission alone.” His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper as though they aren’t the only two at the bar. “It’s a collaboration piece, between Wake and Thomas Zane. I thought that might interest you.”
Well then. A tip is a tip, and it’s not like he has anything better to go on. Still, the cryptic clues are wearing thin.
“Why does this all feel like one long goose chase?” Casey grouses. He could spend his life going in circles here and never find the answer, the center.
The man barks a laugh, pats Casey on the shoulder. “We all have our parts to play, Detective. And between you and me, the director is a real piece of work.”
Whatever that means. Like the first owner of the bottle, Casey is ready to leave. The final drink goes down wrong and he coughs, lurches off his seat and heads for the exit with as much dignity as he can manage, eyes watering.
“And Casey?” Against his better judgement he pauses. “No spoilers! I don’t want to know how it ends.”
A rundown appliance store stands between him and the theater, a pyramid of black televisions stacked behind grimy glass. He wouldn’t have paid it any mind, except the sets simultaneously leap to life as he passes. He stops, beckoned by idle curiosity, and has to double take what he sees.
There’s no sound from behind the window. The pictures, though, are grainy but distinguishable. Every set is tuned to the same channel, broadcasting the same silent pantomime to an audience of one.
It’s Casey on the screen. Dancing. It’s Casey miming and mugging, or it’s someone who could pass for his twin save for the easy joy the detective hasn’t seen in the mirror in god knows how long. It’s Casey and then it’s Wake, and then it’s men he doesn’t recognize, and then it’s Casey again for a flash. Wearing clothes he doesn’t remember owning, in a place he’s pretty sure he’s never been, doing things he’s damn sure he’d never do on television.
But the face is his.
Even if the smile is not.
It’s starting to drizzle, now, a damp film misting the window by the time he backs away from it. His heel slips off the slick curb and he stumbles backwards into the street. A static sound, a faint hum, and the televisions snap off. Casey takes a breath and waits, but the window remains dark, the screens still dead. He has the distinct sensation that he’s been set up, pranked, that someone was watching him watch those televisions – except the grand reveal, the punchline, doesn’t come.
It couldn’t have been him. A lookalike. A coincidence. Bad booze. He turns away from the storefront, pushes the scene from his mind and forges onward.
But the song he couldn’t hear is stuck in his head all the same.
He’s shivering as he ascends to the projection booth, sweat-damp and strung out on an adrenaline high.
That chase in the storage room. That fucking movie. It reverbs and redoubles in his mind. His voice, his face, stolen, separated, stitched together. How many times? How many versions of him are running around this godforsaken city? An ugly voice in the back of his mind, one he isn’t certain he recognizes anymore, asks which version is the real one.
He wants answers.
He wants it to stop.
His knuckles are white around the grip of his gun, cold metal in his clammy hand. The door to the booth is already open and he crosses the threshold, jaw clenched, gun raised. There’s a shadow moving in the wan light and it doesn’t even do him the courtesy of turning around to speak to him.
“Detective Casey.” He can’t place the voice. It sounds like Wake, like that man in the hotel, like the thing scratching the back of his skull. “I’m afraid your part is over. You played it well, but there’s nothing left for you here.”
“What the fuck is going on here?” Tone low, at first, building in pitch as his panic unravels. “Who the fuck are you?” Through the window of the booth he sees the film spooling, beginning again. His face on the screen. Casey’s breathing so hard his chest hurts. The last question comes like a plea. “Who the fuck am I?”
“A supporting role. A resolved plotline. Nothing more. You’re finished.”
Something is building in his head, growing from a dull roar until he thinks his blood is boiling in his ears. He clutches at his temples as though he can dig his nails in and relieve the mounting pressure. And under it all the projector whirs impassively, spits out a recurring nightmare in 35mm, and under that, still, is something else. Rhythmic tapping he feels in his bones, against the backs of his eyes.
Fingers on typewriter keys, hammering out his every word.
Casey bares his teeth and fires his gun.
The masked figure goes down in a heap, a marionette with cut strings. Casey stalks across the booth, doesn’t flinch as he rips the remaining fragment of the mask off the remaining fragment of the head, bits of pulpy red-and-gray matter staining his skin and sliding under his nails. His grin is harsh, wide, triumphant as he peels away the plastic to reveal–
His expressions crumples just as the body of the Grandmaster had, and it’s all Casey can do to keep the whiskey from earlier in his stomach as he staggers out of the room, back down the stairs, and into the waiting embrace of the night.
He needs to find Wake, and because this city operates like it does, he’s once again funneled exactly where he needs to go. He has the writer pinned against slimy brick, one arm barred across his chest and the barrel of a gun digging into his ribs, and the accusations tumble out of Casey’s mouth in spite of Wake’s continued protestations.
“It’s in your eyes,” the detective hisses, and Wake’s are blown so wide that even in the rancid lighting he can see the suggestion of his own reflection. It’s a wild, distorted image, and suddenly he’s back in the projection booth, looking down into the surviving half of the Grandmaster’s face that hadn’t been mangled by a bullet. Casey recognized the watery blue iris and the features it was set in, but for one, horrible moment, he couldn’t tell if it belonged to the writer or the filmmaker, or to himself.
That bone-rattling roar of sound and shadow is back again, an unforgiving wind whistling through his ears and down the length of his spine. It’s a swelling, snarling, starving storm of which he is simultaneously an epicenter and an observer.
He’s going to kill the fucking writer.
The clouds part with a bang.
Horror dawns across Wake’s face. If he says anything it’s lost to the ringing Casey feels in his sinuses. Maybe the writer reaches out as the world tilts on its axis and Casey falls to the ground, or maybe he only watches.
The pavement provides a sudden stop either way.
He’s died in this alley before, or one so alike it might as well have been the same. It always ends here, doesn’t it? Sometimes there’s snow. Sometimes there’s rain. Sometimes, like now, the asphalt is only lingeringly damp from an earlier downpour before it soaks through with his blood. The only constant is the sky. As he lays there, sucking in shallow air he won’t need much longer, he remembers that.
There have never been any stars.
When he looks up, when his hand slides slickly off his hemorrhaging guts, there’s nothing but darkness above him. The sky is as empty and lifeless as the detective bleeding out beneath it. He’s no different than the rest of this place. Just as hollow, and just as dark.
Something echoes across a thousand deaths, words from another Casey in another alley through the haze of another fatal wound. That one thought he was the final draft, but he wasn’t. Failed conclusions, the both of them. At least that Casey got to believe it was the end – this Casey isn’t so sure.
Honey, I’m–
His final inhalation falls short, and the darkness welcomes him home.
Lithe fingers hover over the typewriter keys. It started well enough, the ending was right, but the middle was wrong. The plot was distracted, muddied. Too many irrelevant side characters. It wouldn’t work. A snarl and the paper is torn from the carriage. A pen scratches, ink smears. The page is set on a stack of equally tarred drafts. A fresh sheet is loaded with mechanical familiarity.
Lamplight flickers but holds steady. The writer measures a slow breath out through his nose, returns to home row, and begins again.
The rain drives steadily, dripping off his collar and pooling in the confines of his shoes. Alex Casey hardly notices.