Clicks

Harvey Raven, private investigator with Pemberton and Shearsmith Detective Agency was working a big case. Matt Dotty, a New York newspaper magnate, had gone missing in Maspeth Queens five days ago. Why had a Manhattan millionaire executive gone to some rundown neighbourhood in Maspeth? Raven was a Woodside boy and ex-NYPD and had gotten information from an old police buddy that Dotty’s car had been found with no sign of foul play, which was surprising because the car had been found smack bang in the middle of war zone. Three gangs: the Guerrero Azteca Motorcycle Club, the McKernan Family and the Maspeth Rollin’ 90’s had been fighting for control of the area for the last ten years. Maybe Dotty was looking for a scoop. Maybe he was looking to score, those big execs love a bit of the old cocaine. Maybe he was looking for a bit of loving. Raven knew that the Azteca’s were running girls out of an apartment on 74th. Did Dotty?

Raven knew the area well and knew where he could and could not go snooping. He spent the day knocking on doors, showing Dotty’s picture. Most told him to get lost. Some commented on the hundred grand rose-gold Patek Phillipe Nautilus watch that Dotty was wearing in the picture saying he was a fool for wearing it in the area. Raven agreed. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Dotty had been murdered for the watch. He was just about ready to call it a day when he noticed a kid of around thirteen watching him from across the street. The kid looked like a gangbanger, but don’t all kids look like that these days? Sensing an opportunity, he approached the kid. The kid started walking away. Raven wasn’t as fit as he was in his police days, so he had to jog to keep up. He caught up with the kid as he turned the corner. They stopped under a bridge which Raven was glad of because it gave them some cover. The kid was probably Rollin’ 90’s. Even though the kid was young he knew he had to be cautious.

“Hey, can we talk?” Raven asked.

“You police? We don’t talk to the pigs around here. Best you leave, homie. Folks ‘round here love barbequing bacon.”

“No, I’m not the police. I’m a private detective. I’m looking for this man. You seen him?” Raven asked showing the picture.

“Nice watch,” the kid said.

“Have you seen him?”

“You got money, cuz?”

“How much?”

“Fifty bucks.”

Raven nodded in agreement. He opened his jacket so that the kid could see his piece and took his wallet from his inside pocket. He counted out the notes and held them up. “Information first.”

“Yeah, I seen him.”

“When and where?”

“About five days ago. I saw his ride. It was sweet man, all shiny and new, not like the cars around here, apart from the OG’s. I saw him park up in a lot over by Woodside Station.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“No, good job too cos I saw his watch. I was going to jump him, but I didn’t have my homies with me, so I called them and followed until they arrived. Never did get to jump him cos he went into the McKernan’s house before my boys got here.”

“The McKernan Family?”

“Yeah.”

“Just to clarify he went into Mack McKernan’s house?”

“The very same, PI man.”

“You see him come out?”

“Na. You gonna gimmie my cash now?”

Raven handed the notes over, and the kid walked off. So Dotty was last seen going into a crime bosses house. The plot thickens like a meaty stew he thought. Raven headed off towards the McKernan house. Prying eyes watched from behind curtains, kids followed slowly behind making comments about him, saying rude things. Cussing. Tiny toughs. Raven had seen it all.

About ten minutes later he arrived at the McKernan house. It was more fortress than home with massive walls and CCTV cameras everywhere. Raven peered through the big iron gates at the front of the house. There were many expensive cars on the drive. “Crime does pay,” Raven said to himself. The tiny toughs had abandoned him a few blocks back. How am I going to play this he wondered. He couldn’t use the buzzer. A man like Mack McKernan doesn’t talk through buzzers. When Mack McKernan talks to you, he does it face to face with hammers, chisels, pliers and electrodes strapped to your Johnson. Raven liked his teeth and Johnson so decided to not press the buzzer.

Raven skirted the streets around the house. The place was dead. No movement. No lights. No people. Raven knew that McKernan had a pack of vicious dogs who roamed the property freely, so he threw a bottle over the wall and into the compound and waited. No barking. Where are the dogs? Raven, wanted to check the property out so decided to go against every fibre in his body, against all his former police training. He took out his penknife and prised open one of the garden fence slots. He peered inside. Again, there was nobody there. He needed to get in, so he prised a few of the slots open and squeezed through the gap. He landed beside five dog bowls and read the names: KAISER, BRUTUS, KILLER, THOR and SATAN. “They sound nice,” he said.

He picked himself up looked closer at the bowls. Something had caught his eye. The bowls and the ground around them had been stained with an inky black liquid. Raven bent down and looked closer. The liquid stank. It smelt like a mixture of rotten fish and salt. He picked up a twig and prodded the liquid. It was sticky, no more than that it was viscous. “That is disgusting,” he said. What was it? Had one, or more of the dogs been sick? Poisoned? Was Mack in there now, poisoned? Or sitting tied to a chair with his teeth pulled out and pecker burned off? Was Dotty in there having suffered the same fate? I’ve got to get in there, Raven decided.

Raven walked around the house and garden looking for signs of life and a way in. Off, in one corner, was a separate building. The front door was open. “And that’s my starter for ten,” Raven said. He crossed over the well-kept grass and headed towards the building. It looked like a big garage or a pool house. There were small windows dotted along the only wall he could see. He slowly approached the windows, his heart pounding, his hand resting on his gun. The gun didn’t make him feel better or safer. When he got to the window, he could see that the glass looked green, like it had been stained with grass. He realised very quickly that it wasn’t grass staining the window it was algae. The inside of the window, and frame were covered in the stuff. How does that happen he thought? Mack McKernan can afford a cleaner. Raven peered through the green tinted glass at the swimming pool inside. The water looked green, although that was probably due to the window he thought. Movement caught Raven’s eye. There was a figure pouring something into the pool over at the deep end. Raven’s heart quickened. The figure hadn’t seen him and not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Raven dropped down low and headed towards the front door of the pool house.

Raven drew his gun and walked inside the building. There was a long corridor leading to a set of glass doors. The corridor was covered in thick, green algae and Raven slipped a few times. He walked slowly towards the doors, the temperature in the corridor increasing with each step. It was so humid and cloying that Raven had to take his jacket off. A few more steps and he’d be taking his shirt off too.

Raven opened the glass doors and entered the hot, moist pool room. The figure still hadn’t seen him. He slowly made his way forward. As Raven moved forward, he noticed several large empty plastic bags of aquarium salt scattered around the floor. He stood on one and slipped, his fall giving away his presence. The figure dropped the bag he was holding and ran. “Hey, you. Wait.” Raven shouted as the figure ducked behind a curved drinks bar set up in the corner. Raven, gun pointed straight out, walked slowly towards the bar. “Listen, buddy, I just want to talk.” There was no answer, just a series of clicks like the sound a bird makes when it’s upper and lower beak clicks together.  

Raven reached the bar and peered over. A fleshy lump smacked his face and he fell back. What the hell was that he thought? From behind the bar, the figure emerged. Initially Raven thought it was a man, but on closer inspection he noticed that this was no normal looking person. The figure had pale, almost translucent, orange-tinted skin. There were weird welts on the inside of the arms which ran from the tips of it’s jelly like fingers, over his palms, up his arms where they disappeared under his blue boiler suit. The skin looked like it didn’t fit the body, like a jumper that’s lost all it’s elastic. The face was pale and almost transparent, and beneath the skin Raven cloud see dark colours moving, forming freckle-like spots then changing again. Even the teeth were strange: they were a disgusting shade of dark mustardy yellow and were fused together with the top and bottom incisors formed into a beak which made a horrible clicking sound as it walked towards Raven. And it stank. The figure smelled like it had been living in a puddle of rotten sea water. What was this monstrosity? Raven tried to slither back away from the monster but the thick algae on the floor prevented him from moving and he flopped about like a fish that had fallen onto the ground.

The figure got closer and Raven, to his absolute horror, realised that the figure was naked, and the clothes Raven thought it had been wearing were not clothes, but pigmented skin formed into the shape of clothes. Raven watched as the blue skin which formed the boiler suit changed to the same orangey translucence as the rest of the body. The two legs changing to multiple rubbery appendages. Two, long, tentacles shot forward from the figure, wrapped around Raven and lifted him off the ground. As Raven was brough towards the figure it clicked excitedly. Raven had dropped his gun, so he struggled in a vain attempt to retrieve it, but there was no point: the tentacles were too strong. The creature brough Raven closer to its mouth. Raven could smell the sea and rotting meat on its breath. The creature vomited a fishy, foul-smelling sludge which was filled with hard lumps all over him and dropped him to the floor. Raven cried out in pain as the substance burned his skin. There was a loud splash as the creature jumped into the pool. Raven, his skin burning, searched frantically through the vomit for his gun. He could feel his eyes dissolving, his vision already fading. He needed that gun, needed to kill the monster. With each swish through the sludge burning more flesh he fought on against the pain. The creature had vomited bones and bits of metal and just as he found his gun, he noticed that one of the bones was wearing a rose-gold Patek Philippe Nautilus wristwatch. The dog tags were there too, all five of them. Where was Mack? Was he in amongst all the bones?

Raven picked his gun up and swung around and pointed it at the pool. A mesh of tentacles came shooting out the pool and dragged him into the hot, salty water. His hands were so badly injured that he couldn’t get off a shot. The creature pulled him under the water. On the floor of the pool were dozens of massive, pulsating gelatinous eggs. Raven could hear the clicking sound and just before his eyes gave up, he saw the creature squirt out a huge cloud of jet-black ink. The water warmed for a few seconds and then, just before he lost consciousness Raven felt dozens of little beaks tearing at his flesh.