A Summons from The Precinct

In many ways, it was the perfect night for a mystery, but that didn’t mean Detective Halligan was happy about it. He’d been woken up by an apparently “urgent” call from the station, but they didn’t tell him much other than “get up and get over here ASAP, there’s something you need to see.” There had been a murder the precinct begun work on investigating just earlier that day. Halligan had gone over on-site just a few hours ago, when a neighbor had noticed the motionless body and the pools of blood in the Anderson household. Mrs. Anderson was dead, and her husband and infant son were nowhere to be found. There were no witnesses, and the only real suspect was the missing father, who the department believed to have been having an affair.

The detective inspected himself in his rearview mirror — Halligan was bony and thin, with deep eyes, impressive cheekbones (if he said so himself) and a boyish haircut that belied his age. Satisfied with his appearance, given the circumstances, Halligan got out of his car and approached the station. The rain from earlier hadn’t let up, and the cold water was making quick work of his jacket. He made his way to the door half-blindly. Few of the lights were on, and at this time of year, the sun wouldn’t be coming up any time soon. The detective pulled at the door, and it didn’t budge. “Son of a bitch,” he thought. “Harper better not have forgotten, and this better not be some blasted prank.”

Not one to wait around for help, Halligan traced the side of the building, finding a door into a stairwell that he thought might be open. It wasn’t, and the detective could feel his temper fraying. It was too early in the morning for the world to be screwing with him like this. He started working his way back to the main entrance, muttering to himself. “I swear to God, I’m a detective, there’s been a murder, and I can’t get into this confounded building. Does no one have any sense of urgency? Who in their right mind would-”

Halligan went silent as he saw a shadow, blacker than the night air, slip around the corner of the building. “Is someone watching me? This is interesting now,” the detective thought, as his hand went to rest on his service revolver. “Let’s find out just how interesting.” He peeked around the corner as he approached it — nothing. Not a trace of whoever, or whatever, had crossed his vision. Perplexed, Halligan walked tensely along the front of the building. Compulsively, as he passed the front door, he tried to open it again, and this time it was unlocked. The detective froze in his tracks, glanced to his left and right, and swiftly entered the building.

“Harper? Are you still around? I’m here.”

A short, portly, bald-headed man rounded a corner. His face was drawn tight and serious, and he moved with an air of nervousness. Ryan Harper was an evidence technician that Halligan worked with on occasion, and he had been reviewing the evidence from the Anderson murder the last time Halligan had seen him.

“Oh, Halligan, good, you’re here, come with me, I need you to-”

“Right, sure, let’s get moving. This had better be urgent, Harper. Oh, and you’d better lock the door behind us. More hoodlums out and about that usual, I’m afraid.”

Harper frowned. “What’s that? Did someone give you trouble?”

“No, not exactly, just…no, nothing happened, let’s just get to what you have to show me so I can go back to bed.

Ryan stood and stared at the detective somewhat quizzically for a moment, before shaking his head and walking away, motioning for the detective to follow him. “Trust me, Mike, you’re not gonna believe what you see.”

Halligan rolled his eyes as he followed the tech. “I’m sure I won’t. We don’t have any suspects, witnesses, anything. Couldn’t this wait until the morning?”

Harper led the detective to a back room, where there was a computer set up.

“I was looking over the security camera footage we picked up, and…some things happened.”

Mike Halligan was flustered. He rubbed the bridge of his nose before going on. “The cameras? Really? There’s no way you had to call me at this time for-”

Harper was rubbing his face with his hands. “Mike, please, I need another human being to look at this. Before someone throws them out or calls me crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy, Harper.”

“We all have our conspiracy theories, Halligan, and I know you do too. Just shut up and look at the damn footage.”

“Alright, fine. But I need you to get out of here. You might mislead or taint my senses with your own dubious observations.”

“Sure, whatever.” Harper turned and started to leave. “Oh, real quick,” the technician said, turning around, “that video there is what I’ve spliced together from the…relevant portions of the footage. Feel free to look at the rest of the footage in its entirety, though.”

“Oh, wonderful. Well at least you made something easy for me, Harper.”

With that, Harper turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Halligan got the sense that he didn’t really want to look at the recordings again.

The detective took a moment to look around the room. Bare, grey-blue walls with a wooden trim, no windows, and painfully-bright fluorescent lighting. “I remember when I used to think being a detective would be cool,” he thought, “and somehow, waking up before sunrise to look at murder footage has become pedestrian.” Mike Halligan shook his head. “Maybe something interesting did happen, though. Harper’s not exactly a liar.”

Haliigan studied the first frame of the recording. It looked like this was the kitchen camera; there were five cameras in total, the other four being in the bedroom, the nursery, the front deck, and the back deck. The Anderson residence, from what Halligan remembered of it, was a respectable two-story affair, painted a dark purple that lent it an air of mystery. The kitchen was lovely, to Halligan’s eyes. A marble countertop, white lacquered cabinets, a clean stove, truly something to behold. Unfortunately, the couple didn’t seem to care, as the footage that Harper found evidently began with them arguing. “I suppose the husband was involved, then, but I doubt I’d get called in for that revelation,” Halligan thought.

Halligan hit the play button., ready for anything. Immediately, a wave of static blared from the computer’s USB speakers.

“Agh! What the hell!” Halligan shouted as he covered his ears in surprise. He hit pause, got up and opened the door. “Harper! The audio’s shot, and far too loud!”

Harper was at a nearby desk, attempting to read a paperback novel. He turned, his face seeming more exhausted than it was a minute ago.

“Oh right, sorry about that, Halligan. Most of the audio is pretty staticky, and I had the volume up too high trying to hear some quiet parts of it. Sorry, I should’ve told you.”

Halligan could see now how the footage had affected him. “No, it’s alright, man. You should splash some water on your face, or something, you don’t look so well.”

Harper nodded solemnly. “I don’t think you’re ready for it, Mike.”

Halligan shut the door and returned to the desk. “Ryan’s a tech, he shouldn’t even have to review footage, short-staffed as we are. Alright, back to business.” Halligan dropped the audio to around a quarter of what it was previously, and restarted the footage. Sure enough, the argument between the couple was, at first, completely drowned out by audio distortion. But it seemed to lighten up as it went on, and Halligan began to make out some words.

“Can’t believe that you’d…office all…how many…”

These were bits of what Halligan was hearing from the husband. His face, clean-shaven and beet-red with anger, was visible on the camera, while only the barest edge of the wife’s face was visible. Contrasting the man’s emotive, furious demeanor, the woman was still, almost certainly shaken, but not in an outwardly wild state. “I must admit, this is exactly what I expected,” Halligan thought. “The man was cheating on his wife, became incensed when she found out, and then killed her.”

As the husband continued his tirade, the wife turned and exited the room, going under the camera as she did so. Halligan caught a glimpse of her face as she went; she had clearly been crying, but there was an undercurrent of resolve that Halligan was picking up on. “Good for her,” the detective thought, “but that couldn’t have made Mr. Anderson any happier.” Right as she left, the man followed her, but before the footage cut to whatever Harper had spliced with it, Halligan heard a loud pounding coming from the front door.

“What was that?” Halligan frowned and paused the video. He hadn’t anticipated the Andersons having any visitors — there simply weren’t any signs of anyone else being in the house. Visitors tend to leave more signs than most would suspect, and none of these signs were present at the crime scene.

The detective exited out of the clip and looked for the complete front stoop camera footage file. It didn’t take too long; Harper had made things pretty organized and easy to navigate. Pulling it up, Halligan skipped forward until the timestamp was about where he had noticed the ringing on the edited clip. A man with a small package could be seen approaching the house, placing his package discreetly behind a bush, before turning and leaving quickly. He wasn’t dressed like a deliveryman, no company logos could be seen on his clothing, and he was wearing a black jacket with jeans and boots. “Curious,” Halligan thought. “We wouldn’t notice something like this on a first inspection.” The man’s presence at the house was certainly important, but Halligan got the feeling that this couldn’t have been what Harper so desperately wanted him to see.

Pausing the footage where it was, Halligan returned to the compilation footage, which followed the couple into the nursery. The audio here was much better, and Halligan could very clearly make out the woman’s voice. She picked up her baby, who, oddly, was not crying despite its father’s outburst, and shakily said “Alright, alright, I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m overreacting. Can we talk about this later? You should go to work.”

Mr. Anderson was still angry, but he seemed to be leaving now at least. “Yeah, sure, I should go to work, so I can see the intern that I’m definitely fucking. Sure, goodbye, I’ll get back to you on that.” He walked quickly out of the room, grabbing his keys off a coffee table, and exited the house, slamming the door behind him. Halligan paused the footage there, switching back to the front stoop camera. Mr. Anderson walked to his car, which was parked in the driveway, and got in it, muttering angrily to himself — he was too far from the camera to understand. Halligan frowned, noting that the man had not noticed the package tucked away in front of his house, and that Mr. Anderson’s car was much better than his own. “That’s the price you pay for working in homicide investigation, though.”

Halligan switched back to the compilation footage, noting that as soon as Mrs. Anderson, a thin woman with big eyes and long brown hair, saw her husband leave, immediately left the house and went to retrieve the package. She brought it in to the kitchen table, withdrawing a book and a twisted lump that Halligan could not identify. The woman seemed to uncurl it, and it was then that Halligan saw that it was a withered human hand. He paused the video, aghast. “What the hell? What is this witchy nonsense going on here? And why didn’t I notice a fucking severed hand when I searched the house earlier?” The detective leaned forward, trying to see if he could make out anything about the book the woman also had. It was fairly plain, leatherbound, but with no title or cover he could see. “Well, the book could easily have slipped notice, nothing too audacious about it.” There was no way that was all, though. There had to be more, Halligan felt.

The audio began to get worse again, and the woman’s low voice and the occasional baby crying didn’t help. Halligan watched for a time as the woman slowly read the book, drawing shapes on its pages with her finger, and tenderly curling and uncurling the fingers on the hand she held. Halligan stared at the woman, enthralled, until he noticed something in the corner of the screen. The detective quickly paused, noticing a distortion in the footage by the front door. The doorframe seemed to be wobbling, like gelatin in an earthquake. “The hell is wrong with this footage? First the audio, now the fucking camera itself is bugging out.”

Right as Halligan unpaused, he no longer felt that the distortion was a mere glitch. The wobbling quickly beyond the door, and the walls and floors of the house were rippling like a lake in the rain. The ripples bounced chaotically across the architecture visible on the camera, then coalesced into a spider-web of veins, stretching and throbbing across only the walls. Mrs. Anderson seemed to be oblivious to this, continuing to read with what Halligan swore was a budding smile on her face. Just as swiftly as they had appeared, the veins faded away, and the room was at peace again.

Mrs. Anderson continued to read the book, right up until the moment her husband came home. Mr. Anderson appeared to have calmed down — at the very least, he wasn’t yelling at his wife as soon as he opened the door. He stepped inside, taking off his overcoat and hanging it on a nearby coat-tree. “The coat was still wet when I got there,” Halligan thought, entranced. “This is it, we’re almost there.” Mrs. Anderson spoke, and the sound was crystal-clear. “Hi, honey,” she said innocently. “How was work?” Mr. Anderson hadn’t yet noticed the hand the woman was cradling to her chest — she was facing away from him, still at the counter. “Oh, uh, it was fine,” the man said. “So, have you had some time to think about this morning?”

“Oh yes, I have. I’ve decided that I forgive you, Louis.”

“Oh, you what now? That’s great, except I haven’t-”

“I mean,” Mrs. Anderson said, interrupting him, “it only makes sense, you doing what you’ve done. After all, it’s not like the baby’s yours or anything, right?”

The room froze. Mr. Anderson seemed a potent, incipient mix of astonished and furious. As she finished saying these words, Mrs. Anderson got up, turned around, and slapped her husband across the face with the withered hand she was holding. From what Halligan could see, it crumbled away immediately, leaving a faint outline on the man’s face. Knowing the condition that Mrs. Anderson’s body was in, the detective struggled to watch what came next. Suffice it to say, Anderson murdered his wife, making sure she was dead and taking out his anger over the next several minutes. At a certain point, Halligan was left watching him stumble around the kitchen, unsure what to do next, his clothes covered in blood and his mind and body surely awash with adrenaline.

Eventually, he seemed to remember what his late wife had said about the baby. He walked now, having overcome the wrath his body was drunk with, into the nursery, where the child was still sleeping. He stood at the edge of the crib, staring down at the baby, as though he was not yet resolved about his course of action. The baby appeared to wake up, and swiftly began to cry. This was all Anderson needed — the veins on the walls resurfaced, beating a furious rhythm as Anderson reached for the child. Right as he laid his hands on the babe, though, he doubled back, staggering as though he had been struck. The man caught, about to return to the crib, when he began to vomit profusely onto the floor. This went on for about thirty seconds — at first, he was just losing the contents of his lunch, but this was then replaced with a black, tar-like substance Halligan could not identify, and which he had not remembered being at the crime scene.

Anderson, now heaving, began to yell in pain. He stood up straight and threw his head back, his yells becoming muffled as a set of pale white fingers emerged from his mouth. He staggered back, out of the room, seemingly unable to tilt his head back down. The fingers pushed out further and further, until a slick, spindly arm was sticking out of Anderson’s mouth, like a sapling growing from a tree stump. He was howling, stumbling back further until he struck the kitchen countertop, which he was now bracing himself against. Remembering where his knives were, he scrambled for one, successfully grabbing his chef’s knife. Frantically, he began trying to saw off the foreign appendage, which was waving about madly, and in time with the rhythmic pulsing of the veins of the house. The blade slashed across the arm to no avail, like Anderson was trying to cut steak with a fork. Eventually, the arm’s long fingers caught the knife, and easily flicked it aside. Anderson, still hoarsely trying to shout, began to jerkily arch his chest up towards the ceiling. Slowly, and deliberately, the arm retreated partway down Anderson’s throat, and its hand grasped the top of the man’s head. Halligan could see tears running down his cheeks as the hand began to pull his head downward, at first, to no avail, until, with a noise like a firecracker being flushed down a toilet, Anderson and the arm rapidly curled in on themselves, and were gone — like the man had been dragged down his own throat.

Halligan paused the video. “What on Earth did I just see? A prank? A trick? Is Harper fucking with me? We’re gonna have to have a talk.” The detective burst out of the room, seeing Harper drinking from a water bottle. Halligan, who was certain it wasn’t water the tech had in there, grabbed the bottle and looked the other man in the eyes. “What the hell is going on here, Harper? What kind of demonic, Salem Witch Trials bullshit are you trying to pull on me?”

Harper rubbed his face with his left hand, still clutching the water bottle with his right. “I don’t know, Halligan, I really don’t. I needed you to see this, worst case is we lose our jobs if this gets out.”

“Us? Lose our jobs?” Halligan was confused and agitated. “I don’t see what I have to do with this, I’m just as fucking perplexed as anyone-”

“Do you not understand how bad this looks for you?” Harper was mad now. “What about this hasn’t gotten through your Flat Earther skull? They have you on video walking into a crime scene and beating a woman to death! I don’t know what kind of sick fucks made-”

“Wait wait wait wait wait, what the fuck are you talking about?” Halligan backed up from the technician. “I saw some horror movie bullshit, but I didn’t see myself anywhere on those fucking clips.”

“What? Did you even watch it? 4 P.M., you somehow fucking arrive at the Anderson house, beat Alice Anderson to death, and leave. I don’t see how you could be there, I don’t know if it’s your long-lost twin or whatever, but either way it doesn’t look good.”

Halligan sat down across from Harper. “This is worse than I thought. And for the record, I’m not a Flat Earther. Get your facts right.”

“How are you so fucking calm about this? You didn’t really beat that woman to death, did you? Because I swear to God, I’ll kill you right here if-”

“It’s my job to be calm, Harper, what do they pay you for? Randomly accusing people of crimes against women? Because I was never anywhere near that goddamn house. Here, let’s come review the footage and-”

“I’m not looking at that shit again, Halligan. You don’t understand.”

“Look, I know this hits close to home for you, but just tell me when I somehow show up, and then you can go.”

Harper took a deep breath. “Alright, fine.”

The two men walked back into the side-room. “Poor guy,” Halligan thought. “I don’t know what he saw, but with god-knows-what going on in this footage, it might just look different to different people.” Ryan Harper had grown up in an abusive household. His father had beat him and his mother regularly, and that was part of why the man had gotten involved in criminal work. Halligan found it hard to go easy on people, but he couldn’t help but feel for Harper sometimes.

Looking back over the footage, Halligan was surprised to see that it was like a completely different recording. Worse still, it seemed to be exactly what Harper described — the husband goes to work, wife sits down and reads her book, then Mike Halligan enters and bashes her head against the countertop. The withered hand, the veins, the arm in Mr. Anderson’s throat, all of it was gone, but the detective still had an equally impossible video to deal with. The two of them were silent for half a minute after the end of the recording. Harper spoke up first.

“Look, Halligan, I don’t really think you killed that woman-”

“And you shouldn’t, Harper.”

“Let me finish.” Harper took a deep breath. “But someone else higher up is going to have to look at this eventually, and that’s not gonna be pretty. The chief might hear you out, but in all likelihood it’d be easier to just kick you out and hope the press doesn’t hear about it.”

Halligan slowly nodded his head. “Right, naturally. I don’t particularly enjoy how this looks either, Harper. I’ll have another look at the crime scene in the morning, but for now, don’t let anyone but you or me have access to this footage. Something deeper is going on here; at the least, it’s tampering with evidence, but at the worst…well, I won’t sit here and bore you with my theories.”

The detective stood up, and motioned for the tech to do the same. “You should get some rest. Let me handle this; I’ll take the laptop with me and see if I can find anything else that we may have missed. This isn’t a nut that I can’t crack.”

Harper sighed and stood up. “He probably just wants to be done with this, and with me,” Halligan thought. “Hopefully he’ll go and trust that I really can resolve this mess.”

“Alright Halligan, I’ll scrub the tape from everywhere but that computer. I sincerely hope you find a way to make heads-or-tails of that recording, for both our sakes.”

“Of course I will, Ryan. Oh, and one more thing.”

Harper turned, about to walk out of the room. “Yeah?”

“You still trust me, right?”

“Yes, Halligan, I don’t think you actually…murdered a woman. Let’s not talk about this anymore. I’ll see you at work.”

Harper left without another word. “There’s no way he trusts me,” the detective thought. “Whatever he may think of me, and whatever alibi I might have, this evidence is simply too compelling. Hell, I don’t dare bring up that business with the veins and Anderson’s mouth-arm, he’d have throttled me on the spot. Can’t expect much better from any of my other coworkers, either. I’d better see what else I can find right now — I suspect the true footage will present itself to me.” He sat back down, and began looking at the early part of the compilation now, trying to see if there was anything he missed. “Now that I think about it, I might’ve heard something when…there!” The knocking on the door, before Mr. Anderson left — there was something off about it. On this second viewing, it seemed to go on for much longer, and it was beating in some kind of pattern. Halligan froze, confident now in what it must be.

Morse code.

The detective rewound the footage, paying close attention to knocks and the pauses. Alice Anderson retreated into the nursery.

H.

Her husband, Howard, followed her.

A.

The door frame began to pulse.

L.

A massive handprint appeared in the center of the door.

Halligan slammed the laptop shut. “That’s enough detective work for tonight, I think. But I’m not letting this go, for my sake, and for Harper’s, I suppose.”

The detective shut off the lights in the room, leaving the laptop where it was, and exited the building, locking the door as he left. He walked back to his car, glancing nervously about as he did so — he hadn’t forgotten the mysterious presence from before. Seeing no shadows, he walked swiftly to his car, felt the cold rain and heavy night air whirling about him, before getting in and revving the engine. “This could be the case of a lifetime,” Halligan thought, “or it could be the thing that destroys me. Not sure if I want to find out which, yet.” He pulled out of the parking lot and sped down the empty road back to his house, feeling something coming after him as he did.