The Gereziac Chronicles

Chantelle banged frantically on the locked police station door that faced the car park, turning around only once to see her would-be rescuer being thrown about the car park like some kind of a rag doll and almost certainly, facing death.

An officer eventually came to the door and spoke to her through the intercom speaker.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her.
“You’d better come quickly!” she screamed at him, “someone’s been following me and there’s one of your men out here being attacked by him! Please, hurry up! He’s killing him!”

As she begged for help, her voice was almost drowned out by the sound of car alarms going off one by one in the car park as the coroner was being bounced off each one after being thrown repeatedly through the air by his much stronger attacker.

This made the doubting officer finally take her pleas for help more seriously and investigated the security monitors behind his desk which showed the coroner lying face down on the ground, completely motionless.

It was at this moment that all hell broke loose inside the station.

All it took was one press of the emergency button and the most loudest and shrilling alarm ever imaginable broke out throughout the station. For many years, the police officers inside had trained for this moment and when one of their own was in trouble, none lay idle.

Every man and woman inside the building was ready within moments and soon they were all at their posts as they had learnt from their numerous training drills previously.

Finally, Chantelle was let inside the building and taken into a room safely out of the way from the melee that ensued and as she was being led through the main corridor, she noticed a number of officers gathering around the security monitors to see what was going on outside, but instead of seeing what they thought was some sort of riot, were only greeted by a single motionless body lying in the car park.

One of the officers surrounding the desk was Detective Constable Short, who took his eyes off the screen for a second to catch a glimpse of Chantelle being led away.

He instantly went looking for Harran to let him know that she was back in the building and trouble yet again was not far behind - even worse was the fact that there may be another death.

Harran was not too far away and when he heard the news Short had for him, he immediately left what he was doing and went in search of Chantelle with Short in close pursuit.

It wasn’t long before they found her and this time Harran burst into the room like a bull at a gate and headed straight for the visibly shocked and upset Chantelle, who was sitting in a chair shaking uncontrollably.

Even with her visibly shocked, Harran didn’t hold back with his questioning.
“What the hell is going on around you?” he asked forcefully.

The only reply that Chantelle could give was an inaudible stammer before bursting into tears, but Harran was unimpressed and continued.
“I want to know and you are not leaving here until you tell me everything! Whatever it is, it’s endangering the lives of this force and I am not going to stand back and do nothing while more lives are being lost!”

Short had to step in and physically hold Harran back as he started to move closer to Chantelle.
“Sir,” he said as he calmed him down a little, “losing your temper isn’t helping matters.”

It was at this moment that the emergency alarm was switched off and the majority of officers were told to stand down, which was greeted with sighs of relief, but very soon bad news would follow.

The coroner was dead, and his attacker had still managed to flee without being captured.

The whole station stood united in shock and grief at the news and immediately the hunt for his killer was underway, but this time luck was on their side because the car park was completely monitored by closed circuit cameras and whatever had happened there would be caught on tape. So, as forensics began gathering evidence in the car park, other officers were checking the tape to identify the killer.

What was on the tape shocked everyone who saw it and those who did, found it incredibly difficult to believe what they were witnessing. As it was played back, you could see the coroner leaving the building and head for his car. He stops just a few yards away from it and looks across towards the main road from which you see a young lady running towards him – who is clearly Chantelle, but instead of seeing her pursuer closely behind her, there is nothing whatsoever.

Not one sign of the man who had followed her since she left the station and who had chased her into the car park.

It just showed the coroner and Chantelle standing for a moment staring into space until she turns and makes a run towards the back entrance of the police station.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, next came the unbelievable part of the tape – before everyone’s eyes, the coroner is lifted off the ground and thrown against a red car to his left, not by anything or anyone, but an invisible force. It continues to throw him around repeatedly from one car to another until you see him suddenly freeze in the middle of the car park bolt upright. It continued to show his head turn to the right and that is how he stayed for a few moments before falling to the ground dead.

Harran and Short left Chantelle for a few moments while they went to see the recording and they too stared in disbelief at what they had witnessed on the tape. If they thought the killing during the night was strange, then this was bordering on unbelievable. It made them actually wonder what they were actually dealing with right now.

Two killings so far in less than 24 hours and they had no leads to go on whatsoever. What the two detectives didn’t know was that the coroner who had just been killed in the car park had withheld vital evidence by omitting his true findings from his report and replacing it with something a lot more believable, therefore misleading his own people.

As stupid as the thought of a vampire existing in their town sounded, after witnessing that video tape, anything was believable right now and at this very moment Harran was in no mood to let their killer claim another victim.

Everyone was waiting impatiently for forensics to tell them the extent of the injuries that the coroner had sustained, but all knew that after seeing the tape, he had obviously died from the force he was thrown against the cars. As they set upon gathering the information, other officers surveyed the damage on the parked cars.

Dents in wings, dents on bonnets, roofs and wing mirrors bent and twisted – the force sustained on the coroner’s body must have been incredible and any normal human being would have broken a few bones or suffered serious internal injuries if they had to endure what he had gone through.

Blood was all over the car park too – most of it splattered randomly on the damaged cars as the coroner was thrown from one to the other by an incredible force that not even the cameras could pick up any trace of.

Harran knew that this killing was going to cause serious waves, not only in the police force, but out amongst the public too. People would want answers immediately and before long they would be forced into making a press conference and had to get their stories straight without causing blind panic and making themselves look like fools.

Whatever the outcome, he would be under extreme pressure to close this case as soon as possible or face the wrath of being taken into a room to stand in front of the old boys network and be forced into an amicable agreement of handing in his resignation from the force completely, therefore submitting to being made the proverbial scapegoat.

With the last killing being one of their own, Harran knew the pressure of this case would be incredibly intense and that he wouldn’t be able to get any rest until it was closed and the killer put away behind bars for the rest of his life.

The only thing that he had going in his favour right now was the fact that the key witness in both killings was sitting inside the station right now and he wasn’t going to let her leave without either getting the information he wanted off her or if that wasn’t to be, release her and keep a round the clock watch on her just in case the killer tries to contact her again.

But he was willing to ask her question after question until she finally broke under the pressure and if she was hiding some vital information, she would have no other option but to tell him everything. He knew he had to move fast and get the results quickly before he received that dreaded telephone call from the Chief Inspector, expecting to hear all the right answers from Harran.

As everyone was beginning to return to their daily duties around them, Harran and Short prepared themselves before going back into the room and begin drilling Chantelle with questions once again.

As they opened the door, Chantelle looked directly at them with glassy eyes and a red face from all the crying she had done. All the events around her over the last 24 hours were beginning to take its toll on her dramatically.

Other normal people would have felt some sort of pity for the young lady, but Harran saw this as his best opportunity to move in and get the truth.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself!” he said to her as he pulled up a chair and sat facing her, “There’s another dead man to add to the list of killings wherever you just happen to be.”
Short was taken aback and stood in disbelief at what his superior had just said to Chantelle, who looked up at them both with shock before starting to cry again.
“Don’t turn on the waterworks!” Harran said unmoved, “Two men are dead and you are the only person who saw their killer, but yet you can’t even describe him to us! Do you walk around all day and night in such a daze that you don’t notice anyone around you?”

Chantelle stopped her sobbing for a couple of seconds before looking up at her questioner and spoke softly.
“The man who attacked me just now was not the same one as last night.”

Her last statement could have knocked Harran down with a feather.
“You mean to tell me that there are two killers at large out there? How are you so certain that this man was different because you told us earlier that you did not get a good look at the one in the alley last night?”
“Their bodies were different!” Chantelle answered, “The man who followed me through the streets just now was not as tall as the one I saw last night. Besides, I managed to get a number of glances at him as he followed me and his features were definitely not the same. And another thing, the man last night made no attempt to hurt me in any way whatsoever, but this man wanted to. Why would he have followed me all over town and when I made a run for this place, why would he want to try and catch me?”
“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt you in any way?” Short asked, mainly in an attempt to try and diffuse the uneasy atmosphere in the room between the other two, “Someone you may have fallen out with perhaps?”
“That man was most certainly not someone I knew!” came the reply, “Don’t you think that if I knew who he was, I would have reacted differently and not run here screaming for help? Surely you must have some sort of cameras outside this building that caught it all on tape so you can get a full description of him!”

And that is when the two policemen stopped and looked at each other sheepishly before Harran turned to Chantelle.
“I’m sorry, but the answer to your last statement is no.” he said disappointedly.

Chantelle stared at him in disbelief as he continued to explain that none of the cameras trained on the car park picked up one single trace of a man chasing after her.

The butterflies in her stomach began to flutter strongly and she could feel her body temperature begin to rise quickly and her forehead began to get hotter by the second.

Everything in the room began to blur slightly and she felt as if the walls around her were moving in and just as quickly, moving back away again. Her head began to pound constantly and her eyelids began to grow heavier by the second until the last thing she remembered was seeing the floor coming up to meet her.