Nightmares - Short and Sweet before you Sleep Read online

Stephens read it aloud.

  “Dear Boss, you was so clos [sic] to catching me this tyme [sic] if only you had come in yesterday ha.ha Been real fun playing this game with you but you lost. Better luck to the next coppa. Jack”

  The detective hung his head in shame. He had failed to get answers for the murder victims and had failed to find the murderer. As forensics scoured the crime scene they found a number of fingerprints that matched those taken from the murder scene, and in the middle of the lounge-room floor, where unexplainably furniture had been moved around, they found an 1889 minted shilling that by their best appraisal had not been in circulation.

  Knowing that he had been defeated in the game of life by the serial killer who appeared without a trace and disappeared without a trace Detective John Stephens once again retired from the force, this time with immediate effect.

  Although he happily took up the role in the Private Sector, and enjoyed having the additional money such a job brought to him the feeling of dread continued to plague him. The fact that out of all of his cases on the force he had never given up, he had never been defeated and he had caught murderers years, in one occasion a decade after the murder took place however this time it wasn’t to be this time the murderer had escaped him.

  Fifteen years passed, many books were released on the New York Ripper, followed by straight-to-DVD movies, and Detective Stephens was continuously hounded with requests for interviews, or requests to put his name behind a certain project which he continuously declined.

  And when age started to get the better of him, he quit his private job, and began to see out his days at his house. Watching day-time television, listening to talk back radio and spending much cherished time with his wife Maureen – god knows he owed her time and companionship after she supported him for so long in his job.

  That was until one day when he suffered a debilitating stroke, that left him effectively paralysed, he couldn’t walk, or talk, he had small movements in parts of his arms and in his head but it became all too much for Maureen who had tried her best to look after him however age was now setting its eyes on her and she reluctantly decided to place John in a retirement village.

  There he was set to see out his days.

  The health of former Detective John Stephens began to deteriorate and many of his family had started to come and say their final goodbyes which is why it was no surprise for medical staff to see a young man in his mid-to-late twenties enter the facility to visit the former detective.

  He walked into Johns’ room, the former Detective immediately recognized him as the witness from the murders almost fifteen years earlier. However he hadn’t aged a day, whereas Detective Stephens had aged what looked like a life time.

  “You were so close to catching my boss,” the young man said upon entering the room.

  “You almost had me if only there wasn’t so much red tape to go through in getting a warrant, the coppers back when I first started murdering those sluts in Whitechapel had the same issue.”

  “Too many cooks in the kitchen, you my friend though knew who I was, knew where to find me you just couldn’t get there. It’s hard to believe. I mean even I find it hard to believe. Time Travel, who would have thought how easy it was if you read the right books, can you imagine travelling through time boss?” the young man asked staring into the eyes of the former detective.

  “It doesn’t take much to make your own machine, sometimes I travel back to watch how it all started, then travel forward again to start it all again. Every time I drop a clue or two to confuse people as to who I really am. But you knew. Deep down inside you knew it was me you just didn’t want to believe it boss.”

  John attempted to call for help, however with his weakened body state he couldn’t reach the buzzer.

  It was then that Johns’ ever loving wife Maureen walked into the room carrying her trusty coffee cup, she couldn’t go more than half an hour without a coffee. John attempted to signal to her to get out however she was too busy attempting to give the two men space to realize her husband’s desperate pleas for her to leave.

  “Anyway old timer, it’s time I head off. Oh but just one thing before I go. Something for you to remember me by.” Jack said with a mischievous grin appearing on his face. John looked in fear as the young man pulled a long serrated knife out of the pocket of the coat he was wearing.

  He walked straight up behind where Maureen was fluffing with some of the former detectives personal property, John attempted to call out for help but no noise would escape his lips. He watched in horror as Jack lifted the knife towards the neck of Maureen, grabbed her head and with two hard, fast, and deep thrusts had cut her neck wide open.

  Maureen grabbed at her neck and immediately dropped to the ground, her blood spurting everywhere.

  “Don’t ever forget the name – Jack the Ripper.” Jack said with a sadistic smile, before placing his knife back into the coat, drawing the curtains to the room and making his way from the nursing home never to be seen again… Yet!

  Devine Intervention

  It was a gruesome scene confronting them, the blood spatter was everywhere, however, despite what they hoped for every time they received a phone call like this, it wasn’t the first time they had seen the grotesque scene that lay in front of them.

  “Damn it,” Homicide Detective James Kirby said as he shook his head in disbelief. At 26-years of age and just a handful of months on the job he had been promoted to the homicide division due to his work ethic and exam results from the police academy.

  Still wet behind the ears and learning his new role, this was the first major case he was working on, and looking at the scene that lay in front of him he still wasn’t sure whether he would actually survive in the job if this is what he was confronted with each and every day.

  At 6 foot 1 (185 centimetres), and weighing in at slightly over 97 kilograms these type of scenes that he and his partner were called to still made him sick to the stomach, his knees buckle, and brought back memories of coming home from school years earlier and finding out that one of the mongrels in his street had killed his pet cat ‘Socks’ and strung it up in the tree in his front yard.

  Despite getting basic training before joining the homicide department most of the work was ‘on the job’ training, learn-as-you-go, and seeing the body that lay in front of him still made him feel green.

  “Come on, let’s get to work,” James’ partner Lily Hammond said as she nudged her much younger partner. At 45-years of age and on the force for twenty-years she had become accustomed to the sights that lay in front of them, however she had a soft spot for James.

  James had been hand-picked out of the latest recruits to hit the station when her partner for the bulk of her twenty-years on the force retired two months earlier, it was an unexpected assignment however one that was done purely as a cost cutting measure with budget constraints meaning every department had to scrimp and save to satisfy the pencil pushers at head office that had lost touch with the realities of being out in the field.

  The pair reached into their pockets and retrieved the pure white latex gloves that policy dictated that they wear, the had received a phone call just twenty minutes earlier of a lady in distress by the time that the first responders had arrived on scene the entire Cherry Grove Alley Way was covered in blood and immediately led to the call for the homicide department to be dispatched to the location.

  Before them, a scene they had unfortunately seen many times in the last month or so, the body of a young lady lay naked, stab wounds across her chest and abdomen resulting in her bleeding out, the victims head and hands cut off and the teeth completely removed just to make identification of the victim just that much harder.

  Their first scene like this has happened just a small number of kilometres away, and since then there had been six such attacks all resulting in the same way all within a fifteen kilometre radius and police were now certain they were dealing with some sort of sadistic serial killer.

  Now o
nto their seventh victim due to the maniacs’ technique of removing the head, hands and teeth they were still struggling to identify the first victim and were running whatever tests they could order, yet as usual they were getting the questions from the pencil pushers upstairs worried about the departments bottom line on their budget, after all these tests were not cheap by any means and now the bodies were mounting.

  “Female, Caucasian, mid-to-late twenties, as with other recent cases head, hands and teeth removed, immediate thoughts that this case is related to other cases that remain in the recently unsolved pile,” Detective Hammond said into her digital voice recorder that was attached to her power suit that she wore each and every day to attempt to show her sophistication and superior standing amongst her fellow co-workers.

  James went through his routine of co-ordinating with the uniformed contingent of officers that had gathered at the scene and started a walk through the alley way looking for any clues that may have been left from either the victim or the perpetrator, he wasn’t hopeful there had been nothing at the last six scenes, however he knew that the one time he didn’t go through the routine would more than likely be the one time there is something that he would miss and let the sadistic killer continue on his spree.

  As he had expected after almost an