Urban Fantasy/Psych Thriller chapter excerpt.

[Callum]

A chapter introducing one of the main characters; Gary Sheppard. If things make you go 'uh, what?' it is either a) meant to do that b) or is explained in either a later/earlier chapter. Any feedback is muchos appreciated.

Thanks,

Callum.

The Crucifix killer (2000)

The blood dripped silently from the victim’s forearms onto the floor, leaving two pools of crimson flowing across the hallway. A familiar stench stung Gary Sheppard’s nostrils – the stench of death. It no longer fazed him at all; he had been around death for over ten years.

“What is the victim’s name?” He asked, closely examining the corpse. He had been in seven other crime scenes almost exactly like this one in the last few months.

“Giovanni De Luca,” the Sergeant informed him. “He died approximately forty eight hours ago according to our forensic experts.”

The recent string of murders had caught the eye of a secret government branch of homeland security. Sheppard walked closer to the corpse, inspecting it further.

“And did he die in this position?” He asked.

“Excuse me, sir?” The officer asked as he wiped sweat off his brow. The room’s heating had been left on and the curtains were still closed from the attack.

“Did Giovanni De Luca die after he was crucified or before hand?” Sheppard reiterated through clenched teeth. Damn slackers, he thought, this is just another case for them, another statistic in their logs.

“The forensic team’s current theory is that the victim was killed over there.” The officer pointed towards a bloody chair with pieces of rope scattered around it. “To the wall where he you see him now.” He inclined his head to the victim’s naked body, nailed to the wall in a shape of the cross.

“Okay.” Sheppard turned to the mass of police officers and forensic scientists. “By order of her Majesty’s Government I will have to ask you all to leave,” he shouted, pulling out his wallet and flashing a badge to all in the blood splattered room.

A disgruntled murmur filled the area as they all exited the apartment. Sheppard waited until the last man walked through the door before closing it.

“This is Agent Sheppard, serial number seven-alpha-nine-whiskey-foxtrot-nine on behalf of her Majesty’s P.C.I.U.” He recited into the Dictaphone he had just attached to his standard issue earpiece.

Sheppard pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his overcoat and pulled them over his hands. The lighting fitted the mood perfectly – dark, with only a handful of the fixtures actually working, flickering every now and then.

“The victim, Giovanni De Luca, is a male of Italian origin,” Sheppard stated the obvious for the tape. “Records show that he is thirty-two years of age, a sculptor and has no ties to the criminal underworld.” He frowned, hoping that there would be some kind of connection from the records he had just read from his touch screen interface.

“No previous criminal records,” Sheppard went on. “Paid all his taxes, aided in the local respite house as a volunteer and was a regular at the Christian Fellowship Church in the town... no connections between any of these factors and the previous twenty three victims of the murderer dubbed the ‘Crucifix Killer’ other than being male and being left in a religious pose post mortem.

“Evidence shows that this is definitely the work of the Crucifix Killer. A burnt out car halfway down the adjacent street is so badly damaged by thermite that it is now untraceable, the victim is crucified to the eastern wall of the living room and there is a single entry wound to the middle of the frontal bone.” Sheppard gazed at the bullet hole in the cranium. “Like the previous murders, the bullet is absent and the entry wound has been altered by what must have been either a pair of tweezers or some other similar instrument.”

This murderer was a very, very clever person. The fact that they had removed the bullet meant that no serial code was left behind and distorting the entry wound made identifying the murder weapon harder.

The small touch screen device Sheppard was holding suddenly flashed and bleeped.

“For the record, a preliminary ballistic report has just been loaded to my T.S.I. at fourteen twenty-three hours,” Sheppard spoke into the Dictaphone like a monotonous robot. He’d been doing this job for far too long and almost everything he did was now automatic.

“According to the report, the victim was shot from a distance of one or two meters away. The killer was positioned straight in front of his or her victim.” He squinted at the chair. “Let it be on the record that my examinations from the seven crime scenes I have been present on have indicated that the killer is most likely male because the victims have all been carried to another point in the premises after death,” Sheppard interjected.

He stood directly in front of the chair, about two meters away and pulled out his own pistol from the holster. The preliminary reports made sense to Sheppard, they always did, but in the end it didn’t matter. Every murder angered Sheppard further as the evidence surmounted to nothing. There were no links between the victims besides gender, no links geographically for the murders spanned a hundred and fifty mile radius, and the fact that no trace of the killer’s DNA and fingerprints was also very peculiar.
That’s why Sheppard was called to investigate the string of murders in the first place.

The lights began to flicker again but with increased frequency. Were the walls getting darker? No, must be the lighting surely. Sheppard pulled out another device from his overcoat and began to slowly wave it across the room. As soon as he stepped close to the corpse, the counter on the device started to fluctuate between a 2.0 and 7.0 reading.
“Electromagnetic Field fluctuation between a two and seven –point-oh range next to the corpse, the chair and door way” Sheppard reported. “There is also a two degree temperature drop in these areas,” he sighed before putting the device back into his pocket. “These readings coincide with the readings at the other crime scenes and have increased slightly, therefore whatever’s behind these series of attacks is getting stronger every time it kills.”

That was not the news Sheppard wanted – an untraceable murderer that he had no knowledge of how to stop. It was then he remembered that he had forgotten one minor detail. He smacked his own forehead at his stupidity; how could he have forgotten to do this over the last seven crime scenes?

A goddamned rookie mistake.

Sheppard sniffed the air once, then again even harder. He repeated the process throughout the apartment, including the hallway outside. “For the record, there is no hint of Sulphur and brimstone.” Sheppard looked down at his touch screen interface. “T.C.I. shows a minimal percentage in the air.” He frowned.What the Hell was behind these murders? He had just ruled out Daemon possession and he was beginning to run out of ideas.“This is Agent Sheppard, serial number seven-alpha-nine-whiskey-foxtrot-nine on behalf of her Majesty’s P.C.I.U. signing off at fourteen thirty-two hours,” he finally conceded.

The Paranormal Counter-Intelligence Unit headquarters lied beneath Westminster Gardens off Marsham Street in London, near to the infamous Military Intelligence Section 5 building. The door leading to the vast underground complex was within a ground floor apartment to conceal it from the public.

Sheppard opened the apartment door and closed it behind him, shielding himself from the heavy rain. The room was in a poor state of repair, with cupboard doors almost falling off their hinges, mould growing up the walls and the paint had been peeling off for years. He walked past the bedroom containing a hideous moth ridden double bed to the ensuite. The sink had become just as grey as the shower curtains and the tiles around the mirror.

“Agent Sheppard, serial number seven-alpha-nine-whiskey-foxtrot-nine,” he said, staring into the mirror and noticing that he looked like crap.

“Voice identification and retinal pattern recognised. Welcome Agent Sheppard,” a smooth electronic female voice crackled from an unknown source.

The mirror sunk backwards into the wall and slid sideways out of view. The walls were second to follow, doing the same manoeuvre of moving backwards and sliding sideways to reveal a shining elevator which would not look out of place in a science fiction TV show.

An electronic menu flashed and buzzed into life as soon as Sheppard stepped over the threshold and into the elevator. The menu had the numbers of different floors under the city ranging from floor one to thirty-three. He pressed for the eighteenth floor and the elevator’s double chrome doors closed shut with a soft ping.

When Sheppard first joined, he was baffled at why the Unit’s headquarters had thirty-three floors. It was not until someone explained to him the reasons behind it that it all made sense. The number thirty-three is seen throughout various religious scriptures. Jesus Christ was crucified and died for the Sins of Man in 33 A.D. and performed 33 known miracles, 33 is a numerical representation of the Star of David and one of the most famous words in religion – Amen. During the formation of the P.C.I.U., the founding members believed it prudent to use this number to aid against paranormal attack, along with numerous other forms of protection.

The doors opened with a familiar ping as the smooth electronic female voice declared that Sheppard had just arrived at the ‘Department of Paranormal Investigation and Interrogation’. No matter how much he prepared himself, Sheppard always found himself to be blinded by the corridor’s white colour scheme. Various quotes and symbols were also engraved into the wall during the founding of the Unit, and were another part of the defence against the paranormal.

Sheppard opened the door to his humble office. His glass desk, covered in reports looked so out of place from the rest of the pristine room. Only a single photo emerged from the mess. Anytime he felt alone, angered or stressed he would gaze at this photo for minutes at a time but it always made him feel much worse. Every time he did, he wished that he could turn the clock backwards and change what happened. But that was impossible, even in his line of work.

A knock at the door startled him. “Come in Thomas,” he acknowledged the young man at the door. “How can I help you?”

“Sir, we’ve got a possession in I.R. three. It’s saying it may know something about the case,” Thomas held the door open with his left foot, eager to get back to work.

“Are you certain it’s a possession?” Sheppard rubbed his eyes; it had been a long day.

“Sure am, there is a major case of gnosis, glossolalia and the vessel has some facial distortion.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well unless a low life street prostitute can normally speak so many languages and have knowledge that even some here don’t possess,” he sniggered at his own joke. “Then I think she’ll be the next Prime Minister. Oh and her face...” Thomas shuddered at the memory of the transformation.

“Fine, fine,” Sheppard said irritably. “Has it divulged the information yet?”

“I’m afraid not, Sir.” Thomas looked somewhat downcast, as if he’d let Sheppard down.

“Even after dousing it with Holy Water?” Sheppard asked. “Shit,” he muttered after Thomas nodded. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he dismissed the young mouse-haired man.
Sheppard was tired, but not too tired for this. He found it disgustingly pleasurable to interrogate possessors after what happened to Sandra. He hung his overcoat on a nearby peg and smoothed out his lilac shirt and dark suit trousers. He grabbed his brown leather suit case and headed toward Interrogation Room 7.

The door to the room was completely different to the rest of the structures around it. First off, the obsidian black colour gave off an eerie feeling to all who looked upon it, even before they had noticed that pentagrams were carved across its surface.

Sheppard opened the door to reveal a dark room with two lights; one shining on Thomas, the other on a young woman in a wet low cut top, short skirt and black knee high leather boots.

“For the tape, Agent Sheppard has entered the room,” Thomas spoke softly into his earpiece.

Sheppard nodded to Thomas as he sat down on a chair directly in front the woman. “So,” his tone was sharp, precise and deadly. “What is your name?”

“Glenda,” the woman giggled.

“Not the vessel’s name. I want yours.”

“Not until you tell me yours,” the woman giggled yet again and twisted her head.

Sheppard felt Thomas flinch when the light caught her face as it periodically morphed into a distorted mess. In those brief seconds, it looked like the woman’s had been hit by a freight train and lived to tell the tale. Sheppard said nothing and began to rummage through the contents of his bag until finally he grasped a hipflask. The light above the woman flickered as Sheppard took a swig.

“Thirsty?” He asked after a second swig. “It’s good stuff.” He threw the contents of the hipflask over the woman who began to shriek, twist and turn. “Now tell me, what is your name?”

Panting, the woman struggled against her chains but that only resulted in them digging further into her skin. She shrieked one last time before she sobbed. “Jezebeth,” she cried.

“See, now that’s better isn’t it? Now, what do you know?”

“He’s... coming,” Jezebeth panted after a short pause. “Too late for all, he’s coming,” she spoke with such marvel and wonder as if the news both enthralled and terrified her.
Sheppard squinted at the Daemon and put the hipflask on the desk. He pulled the chair up closer to his prisoner. “Who’s coming?” Sheppard barked. “The Crucifix Killer? Who is he?” He asked each question with increased force in his already stone cold voice.

“Connected,” she mumbled, nodding at Sheppard. “Not the killer, but is a killer. A loyalist and a betrayer,” she giggled nervously, bumbling and waving her finger at him.

“What?” Thomas asked after sniggering.

Sheppard raised his hand to silence the young man. “What is his name?”

Jezebeth shook her head with such ferocity and speed that Sheppard was surprised that it didn’t snap in two. He threw more of the water from the hipflask onto her face and watched her squirm.

“What is his name?” He repeated himself, teeth closed with his lip curling into a snarl.

No answer.

“We’re wasting our time here. Thomas, send this bitch back to the Pit.”

“Sir?” Thomas looked doubtful at his superior’s request.

“She’s talking shit, Thomas,” Sheppard spat. “Her name’s Jezebeth. According to Arnold’s scriptures, she’s a Daemon of falsehoods and deceit.”

“You’re too late, Gary.” Jezebeth smiled as her face momentarily distorted once more, her voice now as if a male and female were talking in unison. “He’s already been here for over a year.

Sheppard slammed the colossal cast iron obsidian door behind him.

[Emily J]

A chapter introducing one of the main characters; Gary Sheppard. If things make you go 'uh, what?' it is either a) meant to do that b) or is explained in either a later/earlier chapter. Any feedback is muchos appreciated.

Thanks,

Callum.

The Crucifix killer (2000)

The blood dripped silently from the victim’s forearms onto the floor, leaving two pools of crimson flowing across the hallway. <-- alright, gonna stop you here, I have read ahead, the vic has been dead for 48 hours, the blood would have coagulated by then no? A familiar stench stung Gary Sheppard’s nostrils – the stench of death. eeee, beware of "stench of death" it reeks of a cliche (haha pun!) what exactly does death smell like? decaying flesh? the lingering brimstone etc etc It no longer fazed him at all; he had been around death for over ten years.

“What is the victim’s name?” He asked, closely examining cut closely, the adverb does not serve here since examining to me implies a certain thoroughness the corpse. He had been in seven other crime scenes almost exactly like this one in the last few months.

“Giovanni De Luca,” the Sergeant informed him. “He died approximately forty eight forty-eight? if you are a hyphen abolitionist that is one thing, but you use a hyphen for thirty-two farther down, always be consistent in usage hours ago according to our forensic experts.”

The recent string of murders had caught the eye of a secret government branch of homeland security. Sheppard walked closer to the corpse, inspecting it further. hmm why are these sentences together in this paragraph? seem like 2 separate ideas

“And did he die in this position?” He asked.

“Excuse me, sir?” The officer asked as he wiped sweat off his brow. The room’s heating had been left on and the curtains were still closed from the attack.

“Did Giovanni De Luca die after he was crucified or before hand?” <-- beforehand Sheppard reiterated through clenched teeth. Damn slackers, he thought, this is just another case for them, another statistic in their logs.

“The forensic team’s current theory is that the victim was killed over there.” The officer pointed towards a bloody chair with pieces of rope scattered around it. not sure what this means, feels like something is missing, then nailed? then crucified to the wall... “To the wall where he you see him now.” He inclined his head to the victim’s naked body, nailed to the wall in a shape of the cross.

“Okay.” Sheppard turned to the mass of police officers and forensic scientists. “By order of her Majesty’s Government I will have to ask you all to leave,” he shouted, pulling out his wallet and flashing a badge to all in the blood splattered blood-splattered room. this feels a bit sudden

A disgruntled murmur filled the area as they all exited the apartment. Sheppard waited until the last man walked through the door before closing it.

“This is Agent Sheppard, serial number seven-alpha-nine-whiskey-foxtrot-nine on behalf of her Majesty’s P.C.I.U.” <-- curious as to why he is using the phonetic alphabet over dictaphone? also, dictaphone? is this steampunk? He recited into the Dictaphone he had just attached to his standard issue earpiece.

Sheppard pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his overcoat and pulled them over his hands. The lighting fitted the mood perfectly – dark, with only a handful of the fixtures actually working, flickering every now and then.

“The victim, Giovanni De Luca, is a male of Italian origin,” Sheppard stated the obvious for the tape. “Records show that he is thirty-two years of age, a sculptor and has no ties to the criminal underworld.” He frowned, hoping that there would be some kind of connection from the records he had just read from his touch screen interface.

“No previous criminal records,” Sheppard went on. “Paid all his taxes, aided in the local respite house as a volunteer and was a regular at the Christian Fellowship Church in the town... no connections between any of these factors and the previous twenty three twenty-three? victims of the murderer dubbed the ‘Crucifix Killer’ other than being male and being left in a religious pose post mortem. post-mortem?

“Evidence shows that this is definitely the work of the Crucifix Killer. A burnt out car halfway down the adjacent street is so badly damaged by thermite that it indefinite pronoun, the car? is now untraceable, the victim is crucified to the eastern eastern not western, that is interesting! wall of the living room and there is a single entry wound to the middle of the frontal bone.” Sheppard gazed at the bullet hole in the cranium. “Like the previous murders, the bullet is absent and the entry wound has been altered by what must have been either a pair of tweezers or some other similar instrument.”

This murderer was a very, very clever person. beware of "very" i think this would be better at "The murderer was clever." The fact that they had removed the bullet meant that no serial code was left behind and distorting the entry wound made identifying the murder weapon harder. "the fact" is generally fluff words, cut it, also, you are using a plural pronoun with "they" with is grammatically incorrect assuming there is one killer, unless this is dialogue but it doesn't appear to be, rephrase "He had removed the bullet and distorted the entry wound making identification of the murder weapon harder."

The small touch screen device Sheppard was holding suddenly flashed and bleeped.

“For the record, a preliminary ballistic report has just been loaded to my T.S.I. at fourteen twenty-three hours,” Sheppard spoke into the Dictaphone like a monotonous robot. He’d been doing this job for far too long and almost everything he did was now automatic.

“According to the report, the victim was shot from a distance of one or two meters away. The killer was positioned straight in front of his or her victim.” He squinted at the chair. “Let it be on the record that my examinations from the seven crime scenes I have been present on have indicated that the killer is most likely male because the victims have all been carried to another point in the premises after death,” Sheppard interjected. okay, gonna be a know it all again, but considering the fact that the vic was shot from one or two meters away and there is no exit wound narrows down the type of gun used to a relatively low caliber, if the person was shot with a .22 tho, the bullet would probably have rebounded off the back of the skull (dont ask how i know this) and there would not have been a straight wound for the murderer to remove the bullet, now I'm not an expert, but I do think that a ballistics report would probably be more useful than this assuming present day etc., of course this is just a preliminary report

He stood directly in front of the chair, about two meters away and pulled out his own pistol from the holster. The preliminary reports made sense to Sheppard, they always did, but in the end it didn’t matter. Every murder angered Sheppard further as the evidence surmounted surmounted? do you amounted? to nothing. There were no links between the victims besides gender, no links geographically for the murders spanned a hundred and fifty mile radius, and the fact that no trace of the killer’s DNA and fingerprints was also very <-- very = the devil peculiar.
That’s why Sheppard was called to investigate the string of murders in the first place.

The lights began to flicker again but with increased frequency. Were the walls getting darker? No, must be the lighting surely. Sheppard pulled out another device from his overcoat and began to slowly wave it across the room. As soon as he stepped close to the corpse, the counter on the device started to fluctuate between a 2.0 and 7.0 reading.
“Electromagnetic Field fluctuation between a two and seven –point-oh range next to the corpse, the chair and door way” Sheppard reported. “There is also a two degree temperature drop in these areas,” he sighed before putting the device back into his pocket. “These readings coincide with the readings at the other crime scenes and have increased slightly, therefore whatever’s behind these series of attacks is getting stronger every time it kills.”

That was not the news Sheppard wanted – an untraceable murderer that he had no knowledge of how to stop. It was then he remembered that he had forgotten one minor detail. He smacked his own forehead at his stupidity; how could he have forgotten to do this over the last seven crime scenes?

A goddamned rookie mistake.

Sheppard sniffed the air once, then again even harder. He repeated the process throughout the apartment, including the hallway outside. “For the record, there is no hint of Sulphur and brimstone.” Sheppard looked down at his touch screen interface. “T.C.I. shows a minimal percentage in the air.” He frowned.What the Hell was behind these murders? He had just ruled out Daemon possession and he was beginning to run out of ideas.“This is Agent Sheppard, serial number seven-alpha-nine-whiskey-foxtrot-nine on behalf of her Majesty’s P.C.I.U. signing off at fourteen thirty-two hours,” he finally conceded.

The Paranormal Counter-Intelligence Unit headquarters lied lay not lied, lay is the past tense of lie, lied means you told a fib beneath Westminster Gardens off Marsham Street in London, near to the infamous Military Intelligence Section 5 building. The door leading to the vast underground complex was within a ground floor apartment to conceal it from the public.

I think this passage is a bit long (I only edited about half of it) and perhaps breaking it into smaller chunks might encourage more feedback. Just a suggestion though!

[belindasmith]

Hi Callum
Good work. I'm not a reader of detective novels, or paranormal novels for that matter, but I did enjoy reading what you have posted and I would like to read more. I will leave the grammar to Emily, who is a god with grammar.

Like Emily, I found myself wondering about the removal of the bullet, and that distracted me from your story. Maybe Sheppard shouldn’t be so confident that it was a bullet. In the world of your story it could be something else, why say it is even a bullet? I’m not up on paranormal weapons to make a suggestion, but I’m sure those devils have more than fire and brimstone. Remember the air gun in No Country for Old Men? Leaving the weapon open adds to the intrigue and mystery.

Most people know that removing a bullet is to hinder the identification of a gun, so I wouldn’t explain that.

The only other comment I would make is, should Sheppard feel a little bit of sympathy/ concern/ a pang, for the vessel (who maybe an innocent person?), given he was just looking at a photo of Sandra? This might make him more complex and less two dimensional.

These comments are just my impressions, as I mentioned I enjoyed reading your writing and you obviously have a strong sense of your story. Good luck with it and I will be waiting for your next posting.

[Callum]

Thank you both very much for your feedback; I'm currently re-drafting :)

Again, thanks!

-Callum.

[Emily J]

Thank you both very much for your feedback; I'm currently re-drafting :)

Again, thanks!

-Callum.

No problem! But do consider breaking it down into slightly smaller passages. I really think it is easier to get feedback when your excerpts are a bit more bite-sized.

Oh and belindasmith I assure you I am a lowly mortal when it comes to grammar. I make more than my fair share of mistakes and still have things to learn. However, the flattery is appreciated. :)