The night was going to be long on the road to Jacksonville, Illinois.

After driving for two long hours I began to question myself about the utility of this pathetic attempt. Eddie was old when I was young, and I had no idea if he was alive, or still living his old house on the West Beecher Avenue. I remembered his perfectly trimmed grass and his luxuriant flower beds, and these thoughts distracted me from the lack of purpose of my excursion. I had joyful thoughts about my childhood in Illinois. My mother was very sweet and my father was virtuous, strict, but played baseball with me every Sunday. Everything went more complicated when I entered the police in Indiana. The dreams I had about dark places far beyond our time and space made me very stressful and seeing all the crimes the streets can bear made me loose interest in God and his senseless gospel. The dreams intensified and I finally left the police and became detective for a private office. This kind of work suited more my headaches and lack of sleep. There is a lot of other reasons concerning my disinterest in the police forces but they are... complicated and bitter. I knew all the policemen that died that painful night...

I finally arrived at my destination around 6A.M. and was fairly sad to see how the house was neglected. It was a small stone house, the only one made from such expansive material on that street. There was a little tower with cone-like roof tainted in blue shades. The vines had infested all the walls letting them show only a hint of stone. The once magnificent flower beds were icons of wilted and time lost vegetation and the grass was worthy of the most savage jungle. I decided to sleep an hour in the car before going out, by sheer politeness to the homeowners. I think I was more scared of what I would or would not find in the house, and wanted to wait a little more before affronting reality, as always.

I lit up a cigarette, took a sip of Jack and left my car. I walked to the door and knocked. I waited for a minute or so, and knocked again but there was no answer. After an other minute, Miss Brown finally opened the door. She was Eddie's wife, the most kind person I knew in all my life. Anyways, she stared at me silently and hugged me strongly in a most familial fashion like only a grandmother can. She looked bad. Her eyes were vitreous and she was extremely pale. She told me to enter, so I did. I walked in the dusty kitchen where she offered me a cup of tea and had me sit down. I ate a cookie and then, after a few words, she explained to me that Eddie was no longer living here, but he was still alive. I was surprised at first, because she told me that he was at Jacksonville's mental hospital. I asked why but she didn't answer, she asked me politely to leave a few minutes later. I got back in the car, thinking that this situation could never get weirder and decided to visit Eddie at the mental hospital.

I arrived at my destination after eating in a pub, I was a little drunk, but it was making everything easier. I was accepted by the hospital as a visitor and was lead to my old friend's room by a nurse. The place was very weird. A strange feeling you can only get in a mental institution overwhelmed me, the kind of feeling only a place tainted by the insane and the wicked can inflict. I finally entered Eddie's room where he was peacefully writing a letter at a small desk by the window. He asked me to sit down, so I sat on his bed. He turned his chair around and smiled. He told me he was very glad to meet me again. He looked very healthy and sane to me. He explained me that things we simpler here, that he was here by himself. I finally gave him the rusty band I found and he manipulated it while I was explaining the unbelievable incident that occurred. Eddie was apparently newly blind but he seemed to recognize the ring. His face expressed contrition and discomfort. He told me to stop asking questions about that and to throw the piece of metal away, but I refused and confronted him. All the time and sanity I had invested in this could not be wasted by an old man's delusions. He agreed to speak to me about it if I promised to stop this investigation, so I lied...

He told me that the hand I found with the ring was the brand of a very old and evil creature that he had encountered once. He explained to me that the elder and dark being fed on the very body and soul of mortals. The creature always left the decayed hand of the dead body it had possessed and a link of the chains that kept him in this world. He told me that the only way to find this thing was to summon it through a painful ritual lead by some kind of medium.  I lost all hope in solving this case when he told me that, how could I believe such thing!? If only I knew...

I thanked him and left for Indiana. I was discouraged and profoundly sad. I found myself very stupid to go ask an insane about all this. I drove all the way back, entered my apartment without care. Too tired to think clearly, I slept soundly until the night. I awaken in my apartment, surrounded by the darkness of the night. I took a shower, dressed up, picked my gun and left for the Willow Cemetery. Arrived there I lit up a cigarette, took a sip of Jack and entered the precincts. It was a moonless night and the wind was cold and strong. I walked up to miss Erskine's tomb and I saw the thing. A dark silhouette in the night with apparently one hand missing walked slowly to me. I was paralyzed by fear as it approached, almost gliding on the ground. The bell of the church aside knelled for an unknown reason and I pulled out my gun slowly. I saw the face of the thing. It was a woman visage, rotten and decayed by time, her skin was blueish and damp. Her eyes were liquefied. Her smell was horrible and warm like she was rotting under the sun. She talked but there was no voice... I was still alive but I had no breath. I felt the blackness of the soul inside this corpse and almost fainted. How could this be true? Why did it came to me? I felt my blood bursting out of my skin by every pores and felt my body dragged. I was not dead, but yet bloodless... and then there was darkness and pain. When she was finally done with eating my body, breaking my bones and devouring my soul... there was darkness again...

Some things are to be unknown.

I never knew what happened that night in the Willow Cemetery for the proofs I identified cannot be accepted, not in this world. I had to classify the case and move on without any reasonable explanation. These moments are carved in my mind like the epitaph of a fresh tomb, I remember everything and still wake up at night, wondering what happened...

It was a cold night of November '84 and I had been asked to perform an investigation at the graveyard, there was nothing more mentioned by the office. They asked me to go there and I was supposed to receive the information I needed from the associates on the crime scene. I got out of my car in front of the cemetery but noticed that there was no light coming through the fences, nor anyone waiting for me at the entrance. I lit up a cigarette and proceeded into the cemetery, looking for the crime scene.

I wandered around a while and finally noticed the police tapes. I walked closer to my objective, blinded by the obscurity of the night and stepped on something, not bothering to look, I got deeper in the graveyard, closing in. I arrived at an empty tomb, and no one was around. The open tomb was Margaret Erskine's, which was not very relevant at the time. I remember the weird smell, I had never experienced something like that before. I looked on the ground and saw a flashlight, I picked it up, it was sticky. I turned it on and... I saw the horror. The light was unveiling the secret held by the darkness : blood. There was blood everywhere. The grass was covered in blood, and there was sign of struggle. I could see that someone tried to hold on to the tomb by the nails stuck in the old masonry. I walked around, trying not to vomit, and looked for someone to explain what happened.

After I cleared my mind, lit a cigarette, took a sip of ol'Jack and called backups (not in that order) I decided to go back to the crime scene to try to find an explanation to all this. I went close to Miss Erskine's tomb with a few officers and looked around for clues. I only found one thing on that crime scene. The thing I had tripped my foot on. It was the  left hand of a women, decayed for many years, and it was holding a jewel, some kind of old and rusty metal ring. Later analysis showed that it was the hand of Miss Erskine and the blood found around the grave was the blood of everyone sent for the original call. The jewel was nothing according to our researchers, but I pushed the investigation further, since it was our only "evidence".

I had to read the official files to know what was the real crime scene that night, for all of my eight colleagues had been... dead and missing. I was shocked when I realized that the prime objective of this investigation was a murder scene for we found no trace of any evidence regarding a body that was not one of the policemen crew... The files stated nothing else, there had been a mysterious phone call about a fresh body found in the graveyard, and nothing else. Since there was a crime scene tape there must have been a body to isolate, but why was there no trace of all that? Where was the remaining of Miss Erskine's body?

I searched in libraries and on the internet about some historical reference to this kind of problem but found nothing scientific, nor logical. By the mean time there was the funerals of my colleagues who depressed me to a point that my almost nonexistent social life had gone missing as well. I wandered in my apartment, living again and again that horrible night, trying to find a meaning to all this. My life was falling apart. Since I didn't show up for a while the office set me on "forced rest". I was alone and had nothing else to do than thinking about that crime, and it was corroding my very soul.

On a night of lucidity I stared at myself in the mirror. My brown eyes were looking tired and my face was covered in wrinkles. I scratched my beard and thought of an old man who used to know everything. His name was Eddie, he was an antiquarian. I knew him because I helped him maintain his house when I was younger. He was living in Illinois so I had to get on the road right away if I wanted to be there by the morning. I took a few wake up pills, a sip of Jack and lit a cigarette, then jumped into my car.

To be continued...