A horror detective story today!

This story was so much fun to write.

I go for walks as part of my “writing process.” During my last year of my PhD, I went on A LOT of them; I also read a lot of books while I was out. This story came to me almost fully formed on one of these walks, to the point where I paused whatever I was reading in order to focus on the voice of the lead detective. I stayed with him, and the strange title of ‘Swallow Your Third Eye’ until I got back and wrote this story right away.

I’d been reading a ton of true crime that summer, and so, the influences of the genre can be seen at the edges of the story. Same with True Detective, especially the first season with Rust Cohle. There is an abject sense of horror in this piece, along with a Lovecraftian edge (though ideally without the racism and problems that come from Lovecraft). When Strange Stories picked the story up, and also picked up another true crime/ghost writer I would work with in the future Cody Langille, I shound’t have been surprised. We all fit together quite well!

Enjoy!

And be sure to check out the many other writers in the first volume of stories.

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Swallow Your Third Eye

“You see it?”

“No. Nothing. Wait…” Peter Spinelli knocked the base of his hand against the flashlight. The light flickered before turning off for good. He’d felt his way through the abandon building’s narrow hallway and down into the next room using the light of his partner, Aaron Carlisle’s flashlight, until the darkness had become too much. The call for the dead body in the abandoned warehouse hadn’t specified where it was, so Peter didn’t exactly want to walk through a crime scene itself–though by the smell, he knew they were getting close. 

“I see it,” Aaron said. His voice was heavy. He gasped and seemed to cover his mouth. Peter walked towards his partner’s voice, hitting his flashlights a few more times. 

Nothing. But by the time he’d turned the corner, Aaron’s light shone into the room. Gold spilled from one fixed point, creating a halo around the body. And the bones. 

Body and bones? As in, separate people? Peter paused next to Aaron and gagged as he took a deep breath. The light cascaded off a gold filing inside an open mouth of a body that was missing the top half of its head. Blood spilled around him like a crown. Save for the injury on his head, he was intact in a blue janitor uniform. A push broom was in his right hand, a macabre sceptre. He was surrounded by piles and piles of bones. 

“Oh, God. Those bones. They’re too small. They’re…” Aaron turned away and with it, his light was gone. Peter should have jolted into action, turning away from darkness towards the light, or grasping his partner, his radio, something–but he stayed in front of the body. 

“What do you think happened?” Peter asked a moment later. “This guy was sweeping and then found the makeshift graveyard? The killer deposited a new body and then took him out?”

“Why would anyone sweep an abandoned building? And would the supposed killer come by to deposit more bones? Bones of kids. Jesus. I mean, who would even want to call this in?” Aaron trailed off as he grasped his radio. “There is too much here that is unanswered and honestly, this is far, far above my pay grade.”

Aaron walked out of the room and towards the front door, talking into the radio. It dawned on Peter that they hadn’t even cleared the rest of the building. A prickling fear ran through his body which he pushed down and pushed away. There was no way there was life in this building, not anymore. And if there was danger here, then Aaron was right. This was above their pay grade and they simply needed back-up. Peter turned around, ready to leave, when his flashlight came on full power.

The bones seemed to sparkler and glint like diamonds. The blood was black and slippery around the head wound, as if it was fresh. The gold tooth refracted the flashlight beam again and drew Peter’s gaze to the man’s hand not holding the broom. On the centre of his palm was the crude drawing of an eye. 

*

All Peter could see for the next three days was the black outline of the eye on the palm of the dead man’s hand. While everyone focused on the bones from dead children–aged twelve to fourteen, according to the femurs and the reporters who extracted information from the coroner–Peter was fascinated by the man they had been called to find. The dead man had no ID, no fingerprints on file, and no system match on the DNA. The distinct gold tooth that had light up the room was going to be the only way to find him–so that was where the detectives had gone.

At least, that was what Peter had gotten out of Marty over drinks at the bar. As some of the few gay men on the force, he and Peter had always already been friendly. Marty was a bit too much on the bear-side for Peter’s tastes, especially as Marty packed on weight in his newly garnered detective role, but he was still cute and easy to talk to. 

And Peter was still haunted by the eye. 

“Why do you want to know so much about the Janitor?” Marty asked over the second round Peter bought for him. “Most everyone wants to know about the kids. All milk carton material. All talk show worthy.”

“I’m not a reporter here to write a true crime tale and weep. I have no profit motivations.”

“What are your motivations?”

Peter didn’t answer. “Was the man actually the janitor of the building? Was he the one that called in the body in the warehouse?”

Marty gave him a look. The you know I can’t divulge too much look. But Peter pressed a hand into Marty’s thigh under the table. Each touch, each caress and drink, would get him the answers he needed. 

The phone call reporting a body had been a dead end; a burner cell and no way to clearly recognize the male voice on the other end without something to compare it to. It was highly unlikely that it was the dead man on the floor, though, calling in his own demise. The timelines didn’t quite match up–but they were still working on it. 

“And the eye?” Peter asked. 

A dozen ideas had already gone through his head. The Illuminanti, Cyclops, the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth, and another obscure occult reference he couldn’t understand at first glimpse. Was it a cult, a conspiracy, or just a coincidence?

“The eye is fucking weird.” Marty shook his head, his words slurring together slightly. “It’s the one thing we can trace. It’s come up in a couple other murders.”

“Child murders?”

Marty shook his head. Peter added a couple more guesses, all with negative responses before he finally asked sceptically, “Janitor murders?”

“Yeah. Except they’re not janitors. Just wearing the clothing. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

Peter mimed closing his mouth and throwing away the key. He wanted to ask more, but the alcohol seemed to hit him in that moment directly. He didn’t want to talk anymore, and neither did Marty. 

As they pressed together in the back of Marty’s dark car, a trill of electricity went through Peter’s body. In his mind, he saw the desire between their body stretched out like a red elastic pulled tighter and tighter. 

As soon as he blinked, though, it was gone.

*

The janitor’s name was Elias Whitney. His gold tooth ushered in his dental chart, and they all matched. He’d been reported missing a week before his body was found. 

“I know him,” Peter said. He and Marty were at the bar again, drinks and electricity between them. “I went to the same church as him.”

“You? A church-going man?” Marty let out a low laugh. 

“When we were kids. Communion. I…” Peter closed his eyes as a wave of pain ripped through him. His memory felt like the beginning of a migraine, the ordered scenes of his life suddenly jagged and painful as they slipped together. Elias was a short, squat thirteen year old while Peter was skinny, blond, and far too arrogant for his thirteen years. But they had been casual friends as they went to St. Anthony church and prepared for communion. After the ceremony, he’d come into the back room of the church for his jacket and saw Father Donovan with his arms around Elias. Struggling. Breathing heavily. All clothing had been on–but it was clear to Peter even then that he was interrupting something shameful, something he shouldn’t see.

Peter conveyed the story in shorter sentences to Marty. He seemed to sober up in the two minutes it took for Peter to tell. He withdrew his notepad from his pocket and started writing, underlining the ages the two boys had been and the priest’s name. 

“What happened after?” Marty asked. “You tell anyone?”

“No. Never did. But Donovan was moved around to a different parish, and a year later, Elias was gone too. He didn’t say anything to me about that night, and well, I didn’t say anything to him. We were kids, still, you know?”

“And the shame,” Marty added. “Probably was upset with himself and just wanted to get away. But fucking preists, man. I swear to God they ruin everything.”

Peter nodded, swallowing hard. He hadn’t thought about that spring in such a long time, but deep down, it was the origin of everything he was now. The moment Father Donovan left, along with Elias, the final thread of his faith had snapped and allowed him to let go of God altogether. When he had been young, the spiritual life had appealed to him and he told his mother he’d wanted to be a priest. Since he was the fourth boy out of five in total, she approved. There would be no need to worry about supporting him for school or work if he devoted his life to a higher purpose—and since she already had Michael, James, Daniel, and Timothy, she would still get her grandchildren.  

But as Peter aged, the pride in spirituality had been replaced by a heavy guilt from being gay. He listened to the sermons that criticized lying down with men with a burning hot sensation of guilt. At first, he thought that maybe he could stifle his desire down; swallow it back and repress it in order to be closer to God. But to see the red face and feel the heat of anger and fury in that back room between Elias and Father Donovan was enough to crush every last hope within himself–but also build something in its place. If he couldn’t stop what had gone on in the back room at thirteen, then he was going to spend his adult like putting away the bad men that lurked in the holiest of places and made sexuality into something twisted. 

“You okay?” Marty asked. He put a hand on Peter’s shoulder sympathetically. As a professional, not a date, this time. “You want to talk about anything?”

“No.” Peter shook his head, but caught the far-away sadness in Marty’s gaze. “No, Marty. Nothing happened to me.”

“It’s not your fault if it did.”

“I know. But nothing honestly happened to me. No bad touch priests. Not even Donovan.”

“Well, you know, I had a boyfriend back in the day who had to deal with it. The memories came back later. Bad dreams, repressed shit, and headaches.” Marty paused and assessed Peter. “Headaches kinda like your migraines.”

“No. My migraines are different. It’s all…” He closed his eyes, seeing the light behind them and feeling the jagged edges of memories. He opened his eyes again and took a drink. “I’m fine, Marty. Sorry about your ex-boyfriend, but that’s not my story.”

Marty’s gaze was hard and penetrating, but he finally let it go. They talked about the identification of some of the bones in the pit, something that made Peter feel more like they were working instead of wallowing. Marty soon started to openly speculate if these bones had been child victims from another priest cover-up. It was the closest thing they had to a lead, and even if it sounded far too conspiratorial to be true, there was at least evidence of wide spread prest corruption. 

“You know, at one point, the Catholic Church considered buying an island to keep all the priests who couldn’t interact with boys? Rather than kicking them out, they wanted to repopulate another place with filth.” Marty shook his head and took a drink.

“It’s easier to move your location than to fundamentally change your foundation.”

“Oh? You seem like you did quite well.”

Peter gave a hard-edged smile. “And I lost my faith in the process.”

“You’re better for it. We both are. I do sometimes wonder, though, whatever happened to Dale…” 

Marty continued to speculate, if not about his ex then about more child abuse and the potential cover ups. Peter nodded along and listened, but he was only half into the ideas. If he hadn’t seen what he saw in the back room first hand, he would have had a hard time believing even the tidbit about the island. Now the sex abuse scandals were as obvious as light itself. 

But Peter wasn’t sure if the violence depicted in documentaries was the same type of violence and evil he’d witnessed at thirteen. Father Donovan never seemed like the type of priest with the bad touch like all the others. Peter thought of his first Ash Wednesday ceremony, where Donovan’s thumb had given him the mark that they’d keep until noon when his mother would make pancakes in the church directory for everyone. The feeling in the centre of his head had been white-hot, as if the flame had been real when he was touched. But maybe it was Donovan, lingering too long and leering too heavily. Peter wasn’t sure. He tried to remember Elias during that ceremony, if Donovan had touched his head in the same way, and if that meant it lead to something else. 

But he was never sure. His memories began to feel jagged again, and Marty was no longer droning on and on about the case. Instead he was silent, looking at his phone. 

“Oh shit.”

“What?” Peter asked. His voice was thin, reedy.

“We got a couple IDs on those kids. And they all link back to Elias’s school.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was never a janitor, but a principal. We’d been working on the assumption that he’d been abducted and lured to the building, given the janitor uniform, like all the earlier victims. The other murders we’d connected were all school officials too, you know? We thought they were all collateral for whatever pervert is leaving the bones behind and knocking off these kids. Be it a priest or a monster or whatever.”

“But…?”

“But Elias was linked to several of the victims he was surrounded by. Reports of abuse. The other kids he knew before they disappeared. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Elias is just as much a murderer as he is a murder victim.” Marty’s face twisted. He listed off a few more details, before he sighed. “You don’t know this.”

“Of course. So is he the only one?”

“I don’t know. But there’s a lot of speculation now that Elias was taken out and the first target. Maybe by a former student who survived his abuse. Damnit.” Marty huffed. “Now I’ve wasted a week on a perv.”

Peter touched Marty’s shoulder in support. “You haven’t wasted a week. The dead still deserve answers.”

“Yeah, yeah. I just… wanted a better story. Good guys, you know?”

Peter thought of Father Donovan in the back room. Flushed and red. And then Elias, pale and writhing. Elias, who would grow up to a child abuser. Was it the cycle of abuse in action? Was it fate? 

“What about the other victims?” Peter asked. “The ones dressed and janitors with eyes on their hands?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Marty said. “I just don’t know.”

*

When Marty was asleep, Peter grabbed the ID from his jacket and snuck out of his apartment. Back at the station, he fed in Marty’s clearance code in order to access the case files, along with the ones from other jurisdictions about the eyes on the hands. Each one was crudely rendered in black ink or Sharpie markers. The first case had been done with henna and was written off as nothing out of the ordinary. It was only when eyes piled upon eyes and the glare magnified that the police thought there may be a connection. 

So far, though, it had been an odd quirk. The victims did not know one another in their personal or professional lives. Nothing was shared between any of them aside from the fact that each one who bore the mark of the eye had been dressed as a janitor and had a sketchy relationship to children. Either there had been accusations that had been hushed up like Elias, or they were legitimate sex offenders with statutory or other forcible rapes on their records. None had been found with a pile of bones and Peter could recognize none of the other names on file. When he started to type them into computers to see their other records, he came back with a startling revelation.

Each one had been in his hometown at some point in their life. And each one’s parents were still part of the Catholic Church in some form. Not always the same church, but Catholic parents were consistent. The connection was so common—or tenuous—that no one had seen it yet. Peter swallowed hard. He knew that if he were to search Father Donovan, he would find a record of Donovan in each place as well. Instead, he typed out Father Donovan’s full name and wrote down the address of his current residence. It was only two hours away by car.

Peter returned to his apartment to give back Marty’s credentials. He kissed a sleeping Marty on the forehead, his lips white-hot as he did. 

*

By the time he arrived at the farmhouse, it was dawn. The golden light spread out like another halo around the barn. Screams, muffled yet distinct, were present in the distance along with chamber music. Peter had a gun under his jacket, but he didn’t draw it out. If he knew Donovan like he was sure he did–if his jagged memory were to actually slip and slide into place the way he wanted it to–he knew he’d find an unarmed man on the other side of the barn door. 

He stepped inside without a knock.

On a table were bones. Some were criss-crossed like a half-cocked pirate flag, while others were scattered like they had been in the abandoned building. A man was on the centre of the table, the top of his head bearing a bloody wound. The man’s eyes darted back and forth under the closed lids, as if he was in some advanced stage of REM sleep. He was bleeding out. He was still alive, but Peter knew there was nothing he could do to help him, especially since the man on the table was the one who had probably put the bones there in the first place.

When Father Donovan stepped out from another door at the back of the barn, he seemed so much older than Peter remembered. It had been over twenty years since their last meeting in the back of the church–but as Peter had gotten stronger, he supposed Donovan would have as well. Instead a frail man in a blue-black jumper, like that of a janitor, stood hunched over as he held a long hunting knife, fresh with blood. His hair was white, his cheeks and eyes sunken. When he saw Peter, he didn’t startle. He stood up taller. 

“Father Donovan,” Peter said. “It’s Peter Spinelli.”

He smiled. His teeth were as white as his hair. He looked Peter up and down, from his shoes to his shirt. “I remember you. You’re a police officer now.”

“Did you know that when you made the call about the body?”

Father Donovan didn’t answer. Peter had all the information he needed. Donovan, the father who had become an abusive devil who ruined Peter’s faith in God, had actually restored it. Father Donovan, who was going to harm one of Peter’s friends, was actually trying to protect a whole generation of children. Father Donovan who, when he touched Peter’s third eye, came away with visions of someone’s character and their life choices—or blinding headaches if he did not heed the visions. 

At least, this was what Peter believed. That was what he hoped. Every last piece of memory, of blood lust, of his own desire for God and for his sense of self, faded away and then came into stark focus. He and Father Donovan were the same type of being, but it was never a bad man. It was a destroyer of bad men.

“What did he do?” Peter asked, gesturing to the body on the table. The man gasped, blood oozing from his head. Though he was not restrained in any way, he didn’t seem to be able to move. 

“He made children into bones.” Father Donovan spoke to the body on the table. “So he is now held down by the weight of his sins. He will be crushed by the weight of his sins.”

“And you’re the one who gets to decide?”

“Don’t look at me like that, Peter,” Father Donovan said. “You came across this once before.”

“In the back room.”

“No. In your own life.” A pause stretched between them, heavy and menacing. “You don’t kiss people on their foreheads, right? Not unless you really love them.”

Peter didn’t say anything. His lips burned.

“You can sense what I can sense. I felt it in your eye the moment we met.”

“And Elias? You knew that he would…”

“Elias, like you and me, senses as well. But he uses a different, baser purpose.” A pause. The man on the table wailed and quieted. Donovan seemed pleased. “Him as well. We all see and feel and think things we shouldn’t.”

“But we don’t always act.”

“You’re right. We don’t always act. But we should.” Donovan walked towards the man, his knife poised. He placed the blade along the already-made wound across the man’s third eye. “It takes one to know one. You and I and this man and Elias all saw things that make us farther and farther away from God. But we both went in different directions. Bobby, here, went towards depravity. The worst type of torment and torture, like Elias.”

“And me?” 

“And me,” Father Donovan. “We are very similar. Detective work is looking for symbols, in hopes of finding the truth. I look for signs in hopes of finding God.”

“And God?” Peter bent to his knees. The pain in the centre of his eyes was overwhelming. Was blinding. Gold light, followed by blue and red surrounded him. He flashed back to the moment when he was fifteen and an eight year old crossed his path, looking for a way home. Peter had just gotten his first pen-knife. He’d felt a gross, base instinct inside of him. His head had ached. But he took the boy’s hand and led him home instead of leading him into a ravine where no one would hear them. 

How many more times had the incident repeated itself? During his first beat cop walk, the hustler who was strung out and wouldn’t remember. The prostitute with one eye who didn’t know how to get home. Over and over again, he put himself into danger. And over and over, he had come out by swallowing down the strange desires that came over him. In spite of feeling and seeing and thinking things he couldn’t understand but still felt so alluring. 

He’d always wanted to swallow his third eye, but he never, ever could. Neither could Elias. Neither could Bobby, who had also done horrible things though Peter was no witness to them. But where they’d followed their eyes towards depravity, Peter saw now that he could turn towards the light. He had always thought he was fighting off the impulse to kill—and he was—but it was to kill for the sake of the future. If he embraced this now, he could become something else.  

Just like Donovan. With whoever else was here. A cult. A conspiracy. An entire island full of people who had populated a new terrain with morals inside of immorality. 

When Peter regained his composure, Father Donovan was in front of him. He looked down at Peter and extended the knife. 

“You know the right answer.”

Peter rose. He stabbed Father Donovan in the side, twisted the knife, and watched as he bled onto the dirt floor of the barn. He then traced the blade across his head in an attempt to quiet the jagged pieces of his memory.

He finished by drawing two eyes on both Bobby and Father Donovan’s hand.

Then he drove home, slid next to Marty, and tried to forget again.

END