“I don’t know what you want!!” Sheila screamed at the two officers that stood on the other side of the metal table in the interrogation room. She chose that outburst to propel herself from her chair and to scatter the gruesome photos of the six dead women to the floor.

The police officers turned to each other and Sheila watched as a silent communication flickered between the two partners. Without a word to her, they turned and left the room. Sheila slowly closed her mouth and swiped at the tears that had turned her heavy black mascara into long trails that coursed down her cheeks. The action smudged some of the mascara, adding a bruised tone to her left cheek. With a glance toward the two-way mirror, she knew the officers were discussing matters with their chief. She couldn’t see them. She saw her pale face with it’s black-teared eyes and deep blood red lipstick reflected back to her.

“Ohhh, you bastards,” she moaned softly as she saw the remains of a half dozen braids that had been cut off by the police. The braids had been woven with feathers and tipped with sharp arrowheads. They hadn’t waited for her to remove “the dangerous potential weapons” on her own.

Turning away from the mirror, Sheila walked over to the scattered crime scene photos. Crouching down, she began to pick each one up. As she did so, she muttered their names; Lucy, Carrie, Maddie, Lena, Tarrah and Sara. Still crouched, she placed the photos upon the taut, black leather skirt and curled protectively over the images.

They were her sisters. Sheila was the youngest. In the space of six nights she had lost a sister after the sun went down each evening. The murders had begun with the eldest, Lucy at age 23 and last night had ended with Sara who had just turned 18 last week. Each sister had died in their bed, their throats sliced from ear to ear and their hearts removed. The hearts had not been recovered.

Sheila was now considered a suspect despite the fact that police had been watching her house since the night of the third murder, Maddie. Even after they took Tarrah, Sara and Sheila into protective custody, the killings hadn’t stopped.

Rising, Sheila placed the photos back on the table, but upside-down. Looking upward at the ceiling, she could see the narrow window that let in the only fresh air from outside. The sky was turning orange. The night was on its way and with it would come the Grim Reaper to collect Sheila’s heart.

“Arrest me, if that makes life simple for you,” she spoke calmly to her silent witnesses on the other side of the mirror. “You can’t stop what will happen.” Returning to the chair, she turned her back on the last of the bleeding sun, and stared at the mirror, her arms crossed over her chest.

********

“Just lock her in the cell,” Chief Morris ordered. “She’ll be in a room full of cops. Nobody is going to be able to get in and kill her and there’s no way for her to hurt herself.”

“We can’t keep her there forever, Chief. Not unless we charge her for those murders.”

Morris glowered causing his heavy grey eyebrows to nearly obscure his pale blue eyes. “I’d like to arrest her, Grady, but we haven’t found any evidence to link her to her sisters killings. The only thing in common was that she was in the same place they were every single time.”

Grady Owens shifted uncomfortably under the chief’s heavy, accusing gaze. Grady had been part of the detail that should have prevented Tarrah and Sara’s murders. Yet he, like the other two officers that had assisted him, had not heard any intruder. There hadn’t even been a scream from either girl. Not a single sound to alert them that something was wrong.

Grady nudged his partner, Mark Daniels. “We’ll lock her up, Chief.”

**************

Sheila paced in the small cell and watched as the night shift arrived at the station. The sun was practically gone, leaving behind a reddish, purple ribbon upon the horizon. The first, faint traces of a crescent moon were just beginning to show. Someone had brought Sheila some burgers from McDonald’s but she wasn’t hungry. She had used a washcloth and a pan of warm water to wash her face. She looked naked without her usual heavy make-up and deep inside, she felt vulnerable and open, despite the cramped area she shared with two hookers.

The hookers were friendly enough, but nosey. Sheila had fended them off by giving them the burgers and doing her best to keep her back to them. She no longer cared what the police thought of her or what they thought she might have done. Night was seconds away and she could feel the beat of Death’s rumbling footfall upon the Earth. She only hoped it was quick and wouldn’t hurt, much.

“It won’t,” a silky voice whispered reassuringly into her ear.

There was no chance for Sheila to speak or to scream. The knife cut deeply and swiftly. No human could have wielded a knife so easily. As the last beats of her heart thundered in her ears, she was completely unaware of the hookers screaming hysterically on either side of her and the pandemonium of the police squad.

************

Thirty years had passed since the murders of the seven sisters. Grady Owens had been retired for five years. His partner had been killed only a year after the sisters in the crossfire of a gang shooting. He lived in the same house of his parents, only a few miles from the home of the sisters. He enjoyed gardening and his yard showed the extent of his talent. He shunned reporters and gawkers; all of them wanted answers. There were none. Sheila’s death had been the most tragic and horrifying. Grady had seen everything, and nothing. Her throat had been neatly sliced and her heart had been ripped from her chest. It was a nightmare that had not faded in the intervening years.

Grady stretched from his cramped position over his roses. Closing his eyes against the sun he was dismayed to find his pleasant day revisited by that nightmarish scene. Once more he saw Sheila’s body slowly collapse to the floor. One of the hookers had become so panicked she was trying to push her skinny frame between the bars. Sheila’s heart…

“I want it,” a deep voice coated in velvet spoke softly off to his right. Grady’s eyes flew opened and he spun around quicker than his arthritic joints allowed. He didn’t see anything.

“Over here, Mr. Owens.” The voice, male in timbre, was further away this time. Looking toward his wide front porch he saw a tall, slim man in a dark suit seated in his rocker sampling the lemonade from his glass.

Grady walked toward the man and saw that his features were all sharp angles emphasized by dark brown hair slicked back and down against his skull. It gave the man the eerie appearance of a recently animated corpse. This allusion gave Grady the shivers and he pushed it from his thoughts.

“Who are you?” He demanded as he carefully ascended the three steps to his porch.

“I’m the man that’s come to relieve you of a burden, Mr. Owens. That, and you’ve been holding something of mine that I wish returned to me.”

Although it was warm out, the temperature suddenly dropped and Grady felt the color drain from his face. Taking a deep breath, he stepped closer to the stranger and took the lemonade glass from his hand. “I do have what you want, but you’re not getting it without some answers.”

The stranger stiffened and sat up straighter. He gave Grady an appraising glance before nodding once. “They are my daughters and they disobeyed me. It took me a long time to find them and by then, they had forgotten who I was. They’d forgotten who they were. I took them home.”

“You murdered them!” Grady growled angrily.

“Oh please, Mr. Owens. It’s impossible to kill something that was never alive.”

An uneasy shadow crossed Grady’s face. What he was being told only gave filled his mind with more questions. As much as he desired this story to be untrue, deep down he knew it was the truth.

The man rose to his feet in a smooth, graceful move that didn’t cause the rocker to stir a single inch. He had seen the look in Grady’s eyes. “I can understand, Mr. Owens, how terrible that year was for you and for everyone else that came in contact with my children.”

“It is a nightmare I’ve never been able to erase,” Grady spoke in a gruff whisper that showed his age.

The stranger touched Grady’s shoulder gently. “I can erase that for you, Mr. Owens. I can also give you an assurance as well, but before I can do that, I need what you have been keeping for thirty years.”

Grady sighed and walked over to the door of his home and pulled it open. He gestured for the stranger to follow him.

The interior of Grady’s home was shadowed, but neat. Over the years he had slowly changed the decor to match his tastes. There was one room, though, that he’d left just as his father had left it. Thirty years ago he had locked the room and had never opened it again. In his pocket were his keys and the key to the room that once served as his father’s office was the oldest key upon the chain. He put the key into the lock, turned it, and had to put some weight into pushing the door open. The hinges had rusted and protested having to serve once more.

Dust coated everything, and there were a few strands of spidery silk here and there. Grady ignored the large desk and the bookcases that held his father’s law books. He went to the opposite wall where there hung a portrait of his mother in her youth. Grasping the lower right corner, the portrait swung to the left revealing a wall safe. Grady glanced once over his shoulder to see the stranger standing patiently behind him. Without a word he spun the lock, left, right, left and right again. A soft snick signaled that the combination was the correct one. A twist of the handle and a gentle tug opened the safe door.

Inside the safe was a simple wooden box of mahoghany. Grady was hesitant to touch it, but then he squared his shoulders and brought the box out. He went over to the desk and placed it on the surface. The stranger started to go toward it, but Grady held up his hand to stop him.

“Please, Mr. Owens,” the stranger said softly.

Grady bowed his head and lifted the lid…

The police were too busy trying to open the door to the cell. One hooker was trying to press her way through the bars, the other was blocking the door itself. Neither would stop their screaming. Daniels had finally gotten the door opened and he was knocked over by the prostitute that had been blocking the way. His head hit the floor and he was knocked out.

The chaos was unbelievable, but Grady pushed his way into the cell and knelt down by Sheila. Blood was everywhere and she was gone. Cursing to himself, he laid her upon the floor and then he saw it.

This is where his memory became blurry. He did not know what had possessed him to pick it up and neither was he able to explain to himself why no one had seen him take it. He never understood why he’d been compelled to take it home while Sheila’s blood still stained his uniform. The box was one of his mother’s old jewelry boxes and that’s where he placed it. He had to hunt for the combination to his father’s safe, but soon he had it and then he shoved the jewelry box with its grim prize into the safe and he locked the office door.

Sheila’s heart sat upon the center of the padded velvet lining. It still beat, slowly. The rhythm tapped into Grady’s skull and he suddenly felt dizzy. The stranger caught him and helped him into a nearby chair. Grady then watched as Sheila’s father picked up the heart, cradling it carefully in his hands. There was a content smile upon the man’s lips.

“I thank you, Mr. Owens, for taking such great care of my daughter. As my youngest, I have missed her the most all this time. Her sisters will be very happy to see her.”

“I don’t understand,” rasped Grady. “How can it still be beating?”

“It? No, she. This is my daughter, Mr. Owens.” With a sudden, alarming force, the man crushed the heart between his hands. Grady cringed at the expected gore, but there was none. Standing before the man was the ghostly outline of a very slim, pale child. Her features were just as sharp and chiseled as her father’s, but Grady could clearly see the face that had once been Sheila. She smiled at him. “Children, make your farewells. We cannot stay much longer.”

Grady counted and whispered the names as each daughter stepped out from behind the man; Lucy, Carrie, Maddie, Lena, Tarrah and Sara. Each of them smiled, walked toward him and planted a chaste kiss upon his cheek. Each in her turn thanked him for the return of Sheila.

“Go my daughters, I shall be with you, soon.” Six of the daughters vanished, but Sheila stayed. Standing on tiptoe, she whispered into her father’s ear. He nodded and she walked over to Grady. Sheila slipped a hand into his and he was astonished to feel that it was solid, and warm.

“Dream no more of us, Grady,” her voice whispered as she lifted his hand into hers. Grady felt her hand, solid and warm, squeeze his. “I shall miss your beautiful garden.” Leaning toward him, she kissed his cheek, and like a fading breeze, she too, had vanished.

“Will I remember?” asked Grady.

The man nodded. “You shall, but your heart will rest easy now. Thank you, Mr. Owens.” The stranger turned and walked toward the far window where the particles of dust in the room glimmered in a shaft of sunlight. The man became like the dust and was gone.

Normally I don’t explain where my stories came from and often I leave the reader hanging and wondering where they’re going. It is not always a popularly received way of writing. I really did not think anyone would see this one’s origins, but Bev has shown before how she’s able to see things most of us don’t.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman has been a favorite story for a few years and the movie only renewed my desire to read the book again. Unfortunately, I no longer have the book. The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, is a fascinating group of stars and as I read this article at Wiki about them, it was the photograph below that sparked the story.

Tags: flash fiction

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