The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5)
Read The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) Online
Authors: Michael Richan
The
Massacre Mechanism
By Michael Richan
By
the author:
The Downwinders
series
:
The River
series:
A Christmas Haunting at Point No Point
The Dark River series:
All three series are part of
The
River Universe,
and there is crossover of some characters and plots. For a
suggested reading order, see the
Author’s Website
.
Copyright 2016 by Michael Richan
All Rights Reserved.
All
characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ASIN: B01BZIPBWW
Published by Dantull (149716129)
▪
▪ ▪
Winn threw
the covers from his body and sat up in bed, holding his head in his hands. He
made a low growl, a moan of frustration and irritation at not being able to
sleep.
In the
moments just before sleep came, something else arrived instead: symbols. A
series of ciphers passed through his mind, repeating over and over. They were
accompanied by a nagging anxiety, the sense that the symbols were about to
disappear at any second, and that he had to decipher them quickly before they
dissolved.
“Arrrrrgh!”
he belted as he rose from the bed, looking for something to write on. He felt
the cool air from the conditioner hit his naked body, causing him to wake even
more, heightening his anxiety. The symbols were still there in his mind, but
they were fading quickly.
His hand
landed on a pen and he grabbed the nearest piece of paper. Without turning on
the light he scratched the symbols down, hoping to capture them before they disappeared
from his head. When he had completed the last one, he opened his eyes. The room
was dark; he couldn’t see anything except the glowing light from his clock. He
reached for the lamp by his bed and turned it on.
Etched
across a Chinese takeout menu were a dozen symbols he’d never encountered
before. Seeing them in ink instead of the transient images in his mind caused
him to calm a little, relaxing at their permanence. He took a couple of slow,
deep breaths, feeling his heart rate slow down. He looked again at the symbols,
rotating the page to see if it helped to make sense of them. It didn’t.
He closed
his eyes once more and the symbols were gone. He knew they would be. They only
came at that moment when his body was leaving the conscious world and preparing
to sleep, that delicate stage where it was still easy to be woken back up, but
just seconds from dreamland. And since it was the same series of symbols he’d
tried to ignore the previous night, he was beginning to think he was the
recipient of a message that could only be received when he was in that slightly
altered state. He lowered his head back into his hands.
Have I
seen these before somewhere?
he wondered.
A billboard? A TV show? Maybe it’s like when
you wake up with a song running through your head, a song that was planted
there several days ago when you heard it over the speakers in a grocery store.
You’re hardly aware you even heard it, but it was enough to trip some synapse
in your brain that allowed the whole song to come back as you wake and stumble
from the bed to the bathroom.
No,
he thought, trying to make sense of
what he felt.
It’s not that. It’s a message.
A
message?
Why? Who
would be trying to communicate with me this way?
Then he sat
upright, sleep leaving his system rapidly, replaced by the adrenaline of a new
thought.
Deem!
It’s from
Deem!
▪ ▪ ▪
“Have
another croissant,” Carma said, gesturing to the gigantic platter of pastry in
the center of the table. “Be sure to try the chocolate.”
Winn reached
for one, picking it carefully and adding it to the three half-eaten croissants
already on his plate.
“These are tasty,
Carma,” David said, sitting across the table from Winn. He’d downed several
already, and Carma beamed at him appreciatively.
“I spent the
last three days working on them,” she replied, “and I think I’ve finally
perfected the recipe. The trick is the butter, which is fiddly to handle on hot
days.”
“Do you
think it could be from her?” Winn asked Carma, breaking off a tip of the crispy
roll and placing it in his mouth.
Carma
examined the paper in her hands. “First things first,” she said, rising from
the table and disappearing into her small office. She returned with a pad and
pencil.
“What are
you doing?” David asked.
“Transcribing
these,” she replied, not looking up from the pad.
“You know
what it says?” David asked.
“I guess I
should have said
copying
,” she replied. “I’d like to examine them not
surrounded by Kung Pao chicken and Moo Shu pork. It’s distracting.”
Winn watched
as Carma carefully re-created the symbols he’d scribbled onto the menu,
impressed with her skill. When she finished there were a dozen or so, reading
cleanly on her pad. She turned it to Winn.
“Looks
right?” she asked.
Winn studied
the characters. “That’s it. That’s what I saw.”
“As you were
about to fall asleep?” David asked.
“Exactly,”
Winn answered. “Not just last night. The night before, too.”
Carma turned
the pad back. She laid it on the table in front of her and studied the symbols
intently. Winn saw the edge of her mouth curl into a smile and she leaned back
in her chair, lighting a long, thin cigarette, using her lips to exhale the
smoke directly into the air above her head. She looked at him.
“Any ideas?”
Winn asked.
“None,”
Carma replied, inhaling a second drag. “No idea at all.”
“Great,”
Winn replied, taking another bite of croissant. “For a moment there I thought
you might recognize it. I saw you smile.”
“That,”
Carma said, taking a third drag, “was the moment I realized I was going to have
a cigarette.”
“Can I see
them?” David asked, and Carma handed him the pad. He scanned the drawings and set
the pad down. Winn looked at him expectantly.
“They seem
like a made-up language,” David said, “like something you might find in a video
game, or on the internet. Did you look there?”
“How am I
supposed to do that?” Winn replied. “They’re not text. I can’t type them into a
search box.”
David
whipped out his phone. “Maybe just visually compare them,” he said, searching.
“I’ll see if anything is close.”
“I think
it’s from Deem,” Winn said. “I think she’s trying to communicate with me.”
He heard
Carma sigh and watched as she took another long drag on her cigarette.
“It’s
possible, isn’t it?” Winn asked. “This place Lyman’s got her locked in — it’s
possible she might be able to get a message out, somehow, right? It’s not
airtight.”
“It’s pretty
airtight,” Carma replied.
“If there’s
a way in, there’s a way out,” Winn said.
“There’s a
way out,” Carma answered, “but it’s impossible to find. That’s the whole point
of a soul cage.”
“Well then,
how?” Winn asked. “How are we going to get Deem out of there?”
“I’ve told
you before,” Carma said. “They’ll all be released when Lyman releases them.
That’s the only way.”
“What’s he
waiting for?” Winn asked, growing frustrated. “I’m going down there and ask
him.”
“You’ll get
the same answer you got last time,” Carma replied, stamping out her cigarette
in an ashtray. “He’s been assembling the spirits inside the cage for years,
planning for an attack on local church authorities. He’s not going to waste all
that work and let them go just to free Deem, as much as we’d like him to, and
as much as I’m sure he’d like to. Deem is fine for now. When the time comes to
release the others, she’ll be free as well.”
“It’s been a
while,” David said. “People are going to become suspicious at her absence.”
“Who?” Carma
asked. “You’re her closest friends. She didn’t have a job, there weren’t people
who saw her every day.”
“Her
mother,” David offered.
“Down in
Arizona,” Carma replied. “Hasn’t called. I check her phone every night.”
“Warren,”
Winn said.
“The fight
they had seems to have developed into a complete split,” Carma answered. “And
speaking of Warren, I need you both to track him again today when he gets off
his shift. We suspect something is going down.”
“Going
down?” David asked.
“There’s
chatter,” Carma replied. “People on the move. We think Warren is relaying
messages. I need you to try and intercept them today. Lyman’s worried that
something big is about to happen.”
“Something
to do with Dayton?” Winn asked. “Or the other church elders?”
“Most likely
connected with him, yes,” Carma replied, reaching for a croissant. She deftly
peeled back the top crust of the pastry, revealing a soft, flaky interior.
“Ohhh!” she softly swooned, looking at the delicate layers.
“I don’t
like all this pussyfooting around Warren,” David said. “I wish we could just
confront him.”
“And let him
know we’re on to him?” Carma replied. “What a silly idea. We’re getting good
intel from him. We don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“You’d think
he’d care what’s happened to Deem,” David replied.
“Don’t you
go and spoil this now,” Carma said, waving a long, bony finger in the air at
David. “Whatever you think of him, he’s useful right now. Don’t muck that up!”
“I was never
buying the whole cowboy thing, anyway,” Winn said. “Seemed inauthentic.”
“Yeah,”
David echoed. “A poser.”
“We picked up
information that he’ll be at a feed store to drop something after his shift,”
Carma said. “I’d guess around 1. I suggest you locate his truck while he’s
working and tail him, since ‘feed store’ could mean a dozen different places
around here.”
“Alright,”
Winn replied. “But what about these symbols, Carma? Unless you can tell me for
certain that Deem can’t get a message out of the soul cage, that’s what I think
they are — a message from her. I need to find out what it means.”
“I wouldn’t
claim a communication couldn’t get out,” Carma replied. “Anything’s possible in
this world. It would be nice to hear from her.”
David was
still flipping through his phone. “They don’t look like anything I’m seeing
online,” he said. “There are a lot of fake languages people have invented, so
there might be more to go through. But so far, your symbols are unique.”
Carma peeled
another layer from her croissant and held it in front of her face, admiring it.
“Awan,” she said.
“Awan?” Winn
asked.
“Awan knows
someone who’s into symbols and languages,” Carma said. “I remember him
mentioning it to me once; a friend of his, I believe.”
“Can I have
this?” Winn asked, reaching for Carma’s pad.
“Of course,”
she replied, watching as he ripped the page from it and folded it away into his
pocket.
Winn stood
from the table and placed his napkin next to his plate. He reached for his cup
of coffee and downed what remained in two quick gulps.
“After we
deal with Warren,” he said, “I’m off to Indian Springs to see Awan.” He turned
to David. “You coming?”
David stood.
“I can do the Warren thing, but I can’t go to Indian Springs with you. I have a
final tomorrow; gotta study the rest of the day. May we be excused from the
table, Carma?”
Carma smiled
pleasantly and nodded. They turned to leave, but Winn returned and quickly
grabbed another pastry for the road. “Amazing croissants, Carma!” he said,
giving her one of his disarmingly charming smiles.
She leaned
back in her chair. “Such well-mannered and correctly opinioned young men!” she
commented to herself as they left the house.