Maybe I should change this into a one day challenge rather than weekly, I’m certainly treating it that way. Well, restrictions are here, here’s today’s work. The apostrophes certainly made an interesting challenge. Can’t wait to see what I get next.
Blackwater Park
Blackwater Park. An old, rundown amusement park, creepy as all hell. The perfect place to hide a body. That used to be a running joke down at the station. That is, until we started to find the bodies.
They call him the Blackwater Butcher, and he is meticulous. Thirteen bodies so far, not a single trace of evidence indicating who he is. But each of the bodies found had been hacked to pieces (hence “Butcher”) and strewn throughout the Park. One woman, her head was on the Ferris wheel while her legs had been placed in separate bumper cars. The pieces of her torso had been hung from the ceiling in the Tunnel of Love. We never found her arms.
He treats it like a game. Hiding the pieces for us to find. If we fail to find some, I suppose that means he wins. So far out of the thirteen victims, we have only found the full set of pieces for nine of them. I guess that means he is winning a bloody lot.
For a long time the theory was that the Butcher had a secret base somewhere in the Park, a room he brought his victims to where he could work without being interrupted or discovered. It can get a little difficult to dismember bodies in your downtown apartment. But a search of the park came up with nothing. No secret rooms or hidey-holes.
The Park has a caretaker as well, an old man that has been there ever since the Park was shut down, forty years ago. You have to wonder how he can handle living in such a horrible place, but he really is the nicest guy. Whenever I go there, which seems to be more and more often these days, I always make sure to have a chat with him. He was the prime suspect for the Butcher for a long time until evidence was found that put him beyond suspicion.
This morning the caretaker called me and told me that he found something, something important that I would want to see. I could hear the excitement in his voice, so I made my way over there. He met me at the gate.
“Hello, detective,” he said to me as I got out of my car.
“Hello, caretaker,” I replied, an old ritual of ours. “What have you found?”
“I, well, I am not sure I can… you need to see it. I cannot explain it. You need to see it.”
“Okay,” I said, “lead the way.”
I followed the caretaker through the park as he led me to the Haunted House. There was a tremble in his step that I had never seen before. Wherever he was taking me, whatever he had seen there, it had really affected him.
We entered the House and turned down a side tunnel, one of the maintenance tunnels that were used by staff back when the park was still open. It led to an observation room, which backed onto the control room for the Haunted House. I knew the place like the back of my hand, I had been there countless times before, and I have never been one for surprises.
“You are trying my patience, caretaker,” I said. “What are we doing here?”
“Watch this,” he replied, making his way to the main control panel and flicking a switch. On the wall behind us, a shelving unit began to shake and slide sideways, revealing a doorway behind it. As it did, a putrid waft of stench billowed from the opening.
“What is this?” I said.
“I trust you, detective,” said the caretaker, “and I hope you trust me too. Before we continue you should know that I did not make that mess in the next room. I can only trust that you believe me.”
“Of course,” I replied, suddenly feeling very apprehensive.
“Then please,” he said, gesturing towards the door.
I stepped through it. It lead into a long, thin tunnel, a bright rectangle of light at the other end, maybe forty feet away. There was no light in the tunnel itself, so I was very careful as I walked along it, heading for the far end.
At the other end, I stepped through what turned out to be another doorway. The light was so bright it took my eyes a few moments to adjust. When they did, I was quite taken aback.
The room was stark, white-washed and cold, with the only features being a number of stainless steel pieces of furniture – a cabinet, a chair, a table. It was like a morgue or an operating room. But, horrifyingly, every surface was covered in dried blood. The stench of decay was overwhelming.
“This is it,” I said. “This is where the Butcher does his work.”
“That is what I feared,” said the caretaker, stepping past me into the room.
“Who else have you told about this?”
“No one. I contacted you first, like you asked.”
“Good.”
“Like I said, I did not do this. But I am worried about your colleagues believing me.”
“I believe you. I know you did not do this.”
“You do?” he asked, turning to me.
“Yes,” I said. “Because I did.”
Before he could react, my knife was in his throat. I watched dispassionately as he died, choking on his own blood.
Once he was dead, I got to work, cleaning the body and hacking it to pieces. I put the pieces around the park, his head going in the Haunted House not twenty feet from where he died. I thought that was fittingly poetic.
On my way out, I ran into another detective. He asked me why I was there, so I told him the caretaker had called me but when I arrived he was not there. I told him I feared the worst and was heading to my car to radio for backup, and asked him for his help in searching for the missing old man.
After two hours we managed to find his severed head, stuck on a skeletal body in the Haunted House in a sickening exhibition probably meant as a joke. Apparently the Butcher got him. We figure the caretaker must have stumbled onto him, but I guess we will never know.
All we can do is keep hunting.