Chapter Text
“Ritualistic murder-suicide, it looks like.”
Al’s face scrunched up a bit as he looked over the scene. Two bodies lay on the floor, sprawled across a satanic circle draw onto the wooden surface with what appeared to be blood. One body was bound, the gash across their throat still slowly seeping into the ground; the other was still clutching the hilt of the knife it had plunged into its own body. The room was empty save for the grim scene and the old chapel radio in the center of the circle.
A melody briefly danced through his head-
“Kid. Can you handle this?”
He flinched and glanced down at his mentor. Though her stoic expression didn’t show it, he had learned how to tell her emotions pretty well at this point. She didn’t tend to show much emotion, the stark opposite of her energetic daughter. Miss Yumi was a slim woman of average height, with long black hair, deep back eyes, and a perpetual cold demeanor. Well, until you knew her. She was concerned for him, even if her voice and expression said otherwise.
He flashed a smile.
“Of course I can, Miss Yumi, I just haven’t quite developed the…fortitude for it.”
She nodded, then looked back at the scene.
“All right then. What do you do first?”
He began to list off the initial steps to going about the crime scene and his voice faltered, eying the radio in the middle of the circle.
“I-…I’m sorry, I’m too curious why they put some old radio in all this…” he muttered.
“Hm? Oh,” she said, looking down at the offending item. “Cults do stuff like that, using speakers or other audio equipment is an attempt to transmit the voices of the entity they’re trying to ‘summon’. It’s actually not uncommon it those type of cases.”
He winced.
“Do cult sacrifices happen that often?”
“No but I’ve seen a few,” she said flatly. “Now. Go on.”
Al continued with his explanation of the procedure and Miss Yumi began to work with him through investigating the scene. It wasn’t the first case he’d worked with her but he was starting to wonder if becoming a homicide detective was something he really wanted to do. There were other things he could do with criminology. Yet as he worked the scene he kept glancing at the radio and remembering what she had told him. A radio channeling voices from-
Images flashed through his head. An old cabin, a radio on a shelf, a circle of blood, golden arms of light twisting from the speakers and-
“Al,” her voice broke his thoughts.
“Y- Yes ma’am, my apologies.”
“We gotta cut this short,” she said. “My babysitter ran out. Again.”
Her tone was the same as always but he could sense the irritation.
“Did she leave her alone?” he frowned.
“Yup,” Yumi said flatly, heading for the door.
“I don’t think Emily can come over today she has an exam tomorrow…”
“I won’t ask her. I’ll drop you off back at your apartment-“
“No, let’s go check on Niffty first and then I’ll catch a bus or something.”
Yumi eyed him and nodded curtly before heading off with him.
It wasn’t the first time a babysitter had run out on watching Niffty. She was…interesting. First off, her name wasn’t ‘Niffty’. It was Yuki, but she always loudly declared her name to be ‘Niffty’ and that only her mother was ‘allowed’ to call her Yuki. That was the furthest thing from the strangest trait of the girl. Due to her babysitters constantly running away, Al himself had ended up babysitting the girl on occasion. Miss Yumi insisted that he didn’t have to do so, and when his stubbornness and her situations forced her hand she paid him accordingly. The first time he had met the girl she had been five, and the first thing she had said to him when she saw him was:
“BOSS! You’re here! When do we go back to Hell?!”
Absolutely did not help that she had been stabbing a roach with a butterknife when she said that.
Niffty had been expelled from elementary school and daycares alike. Babysitters didn’t typically last more than a day at all, always citing that Niffty was insane, and they feared for their lives. Granted she did have too much fondness for blades and managed to get a butterknife despite Miss Yumi always locking up cutlery, she made flower crowns out of bones of smalls birds and rodents, and constantly talked about Hell, how she was from there, and seemed convinced he was also not only from there, but her ‘boss’.
So yeah, she tended to scare away her babysitters.
When they showed up at the house, Al went ahead inside a moment to say hi to the girl. She would get upset if he didn’t say hi to her if he stopped by even for just a moment. He strolled in behind Miss Yumi and watched from a distance as his mentor scooped up the small girl and checked her welfare. Niffty was rambling on about something incomprehensible aside from something about turnips and quotes from the Bee Movie. And something about blood and Hell. Emily and himself were probably the only people besides Miss Yumi that didn’t immediately want to leave her presence. It wasn’t that he and Emily were necessarily patient people by any means but it helped that Niffty was convinced Emily was an angel. Literally. Miss Yumi had been told many many times that she should have Niffty put into a hospital but the woman would not hear it. He admired that about her even if he knew how much stress it put on her-
A melody danced through his head.
“Al?”
He shook his head and looked at her, flashing his usual smile.
“Ah, sorry about that, guess I’m tired…”
“HI BOSS!”
“Hello, Niffty,” he waved gently in response.
“I’ll get an Uber for you,” Yumi said as she slipped out her phone. “Make sure you text me when you get back to your apartment, all right? Thanks for…understanding.”
“Of course,” he nodded.
Music- no. No, ignore it. His fatigue was catching up to him.
His apartment was…humble, to say the least. It was the cheapest closet of a space he could afford to rent on a work study stipend, with facilities that worked half the time, bars on the windows, and the constant sound of sirens. There was a very good reason Miss Yumi wanted to check in on him frequently and he dared not even consider letting Niffty or Emily know how he lived. Then there was Papa…
Papa would raise all kinds of Hell if he knew how he was living-
Speaking of Hell…
No sooner had he locked the door behind him his attention immediately locked on a foreign object in his room. On the tiny kitchen counter that doubled as his table, sat an old chapel radio. Not just ‘an’ old chapel radio, the radio. He froze in place, staring at the decrepit old thing that began to sputter and static. His pulse began to pound in his ears, his body frozen in place and the tips of his fingers beginning to spasm. A melody began to choke and sputter from the speakers. The one that had been coming in and out of his head all day.
Let’s..be..gin…
A surge of pain split through his head like something he pierced him between his eyes and tore right through his skull. He let out a shout and gripped at his hair, his finger nails digging into his scalp. He felt the tips of his fingers pierce into his head and not a second after suddenly the dull nails stabbed into his skin like knives. He jerked one hand back, gaping in horror as he witnessed his fingernails had been split in half, crimsons claws shoving their way up through them from his bones.
I’m gonna make you wish….
He tried to scream but his throat emitted garbled static and a piercing bugle instead. The sounds felt like they were buzzing and whirring in his throat, scraping against the inside of his body. It was getting dark, shadows swirled up from around him and latched onto his forearm, then the other, smothering them in black vespers that soaked into his body like ink and darkened his form. His head was pounding, the claws were still pushing from his hands, dripping blood onto the cheap linoleum floor. Two surges of pain came from on top of his head, immediately after two more came between them, those pains more sharp and rapid.
That I’d stayed gone…
He choked, his entire body engulfed in shadows. His teeth hurt, his bones hurt, everything hurt hurt hurt-
Tune on in
Then it didn’t.
Oh he still felt it all, still felt the elongated bones, the long teeth, the dripping claws, the heavy rack of antlers that sat on his head, the ears swiveling on top of his head that flooded his senses with sounds across frequencies he didn’t even understand. Everything felt sharp and aching and…and…
Good.
A nervous smile cracked his face, then spread, jagged and crooked as it split up his face into a too-wide hitched grin.
When I’m done….
The shadows had receded from his being, spreading out around him and spawning small, strange shadow creatures from its depth.
Your status quo will know its race is run
His claws twitched, his grin twitched, his eye twitched, his mind twitched. His pulse was pounding in his head and in his chest. Something akin to adrenaline but much more potent sped through his blood. It was an invigorating, overwhelming sensation. A head-rush of something pleasurable and horrifying all at once. Through his being surged power. And oh it was nice.
The radio began its next line and then cut off, Al’s voice continuing the melody with his own new static-filtered voice.
“Oh this will be fun…”
He laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Euphoria, absolute bliss, the feeling of power and the sensation that something that had bound him had been broken away. Freedom, discarded inhibitions, power-
Then he cut off, frozen in place, his body twitching as he looked down at the red suit he wore, at the staff now in his hand, and at the shadows that swirled about him, looking to him as their master.
He stared. They stared. A siren sounded in the distance, a dog barked, a text notification dinged. His head turned a full 180 degrees and he looked at the tiny mirror on the wall of his bathroom.
A tall, skinny, red-haired deer man with radio dials for eyes and a suit and bow-tie. He turned his head back and stared at the little shadows.
He screamed at the top of his lungs.