Chapter One: Full Circle
Courtesy Warning: This is my FIRST-ever attempt at FanFic, and while I think I have a fairly good grip on the series characters and their unique traits, maybe you the reader, won't feel the same. That's okay. Let me know. Send me a comment, just don't let me continue to fool myself! That qualifies as cruel and HIGHLY unusual :)
Author's note: Due to the nature of the cliffhanger at the end of Deep Dark, and the uncertain future of BT, I have decided to continue this series as I would like to see it play out. It may only exist in my head, but at least it DOES exist.
* I do not own the BT series characters. They belong to a much more talented individual. I am however, more than willing to take credit for characters/scenarios not featured in the books or television series. Not making any money. No copyright infringement intended*
“Man, you’d think the city would cough up some cash to save an historic place like this,” Frank James muttered, kicking aside an old soda can, where it clattered off into the darkness. "I tell ya, I got half a mind to petition those bigwigs up in their ivory-fuckin'-tower to show a little cultural sensitivity around these parts. I mean, who needs another goddamn carwash in this city anyway?”
“Yeah, well if the city was full of big-hearted softies like you who actually dig this cultural shit, we’d be out of a job, and be livin’ on the streets, panhandlin’ for change!” Don Schwartz enjoyed this little banter with his buddy Frank. It was an old joke shared between the two right before they went in, completed their inspection, and declared a place legally condemned and prepped it for demolition.
Frank was a good guy, Don mused with a smirk on his face, but sometimes he could take the joke beyond the limits humor allowed: especially if it involved houses of worship. Don reasoned that Frank’s strict Catholic upbringing was to blame for this sentimentality, but fortunately it did have its limits: Frank was never averse to a little swearing, which Don respected, and, he added, went with the job description. The very thought of Frank substituting “dang” or “darn” for "goddamn," almost made him piss his pants, and he quickly put the thought out of his mind.
The two walked gingerly through the piles of debris scattered across the worn tile floor, careful to avoid broken glass, rats, winos, and the ever-present threat of dirty syringes tossed aside by addicts who came to shoot up here in private. The whole place had a sort of damp, moldy odor to it, the kind of smell a building accumulates from years of neglect, but now, as Don shone his flashlight in the corner and into a side room, a new odor assaulted his senses: the smell of death.
A few years before, both he and Frank had been inspecting an old warehouse and had found a homeless man dead in one of the storage lofts, who had apparently died there a few days before. Don would never forget that stench, and the mere thought of it immediately conjured up images of the flashlight’s beam illuminating the wasted form of the vagrant, dressed in rags, hair matted and filthy, with only a pale hand visible.
But this was different somehow: stronger, more insistent. Don heard Frank swear softly behind him, and turned to see him covering his nose with the back of his hand. The two looked at each other, both wearing identical expressions of apprehension, and Frank silently directed the beam of his flashlight towards the side room, indicating that that was where it was coming from.
“Jesus,” Frank mumbled behind his hand. “Smells like a whole family of them died down there!” He moved towards the entranceway and immediately stepped back, as if struck. “It’s comin’ from down in the basement. There’s some steps, but it’s darker than the pits of Hell down there.” He paused, turning towards Don, who seemed rooted to the spot. “Well, are you comin’ or not?”
As if waking from a nightmare, Don shook himself and returned to awareness. He approached the entranceway, grimaced in disgust, and without saying a word, began to plod down the stairs. Frank followed him silently, the two straining their ears for the slightest sound that would give them any indication as to the cause of the stench emanating from below. There was none: only the sound of their own breathing confirmed that they were alone in the place.
When they had nearly reached the bottom, the stench was so thick the two could scarcely breathe, and when Don descended the last step, his foot connected with something in his path. Something solid. Almost afraid to look, Don directed the beam of his flashlight to the floor in front of him. Frank would later recall that in that brief space of time, he heard Don scream, his flashlight fell from his grasp, bounced on the floor, and began spinning in a slow circle.
The intermittent flashes of light revealed a scene straight from a horror story: bodies, at least a dozen of them, in various stages of death and decay, slumped against the walls, chained through iron rings in the floor, chains dangling from the ceiling, and scattered haphazardly on the floor. In the center of it all, like some macabre centerpiece, lay a large wooden cross in the shape of an X, swathed in chains, with a woman lashed to it.
She was young, Frank later recounted to police, and very dead, her neck brutally savaged by some unknown instrument of torture. Somehow, Frank and Don managed to scramble up the steps and out of the church, where they virtually exploded out on the overgrown, weed-choked lawn, and collapsed in delayed shock.
Frank, gulping great lungfuls of air to clear them from the stench, looked back at Don, who was sobbing hysterically, and gibbering incoherently to himself. Frank managed to get an arm around him, and in a grim parody of a man helping his drinking buddy from a bar after tossing back a few too many, helped him into their truck.
As Frank was calling in their discovery to the authorities, Don began to giggle, then laugh, then howl with hysterical laughter. Frank, suddenly afraid that his friend had suffered a serious mental breakdown, frantically tried to calm him down. When Don’s howls quieted down to a few squeals of laughter, he turned to Frank, and with a maniacal grin plastered across his face, asked: “So, still feel like petitioning the suits to save the place from ultimate destruction?” Frank, without hesitating, muttered: “The hell with it. Let them build their damn carwash.”