<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape Merrin Police Department</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The files Alice found in the CMPD were left unsecured on the first floor for a reason: they were maintenance logs for the building. The only thing she noticed as being odd was the large number of incidents, as she flipped through the contents in drawer after drawer, that had to do with the elevator in the building. The CMPD was an old building with grand staircases, but the elevator had been put in at some point early in the twentieth century by some Cape Merrin citizen with more money than he knew what to do with. The Augustus Chambers elevator was elaborate, apparently prone to breaking down, and exceedingly beautiful.</span><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span>(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ILopEoxL1uY/TWD__ek5N_I/AAAAAAAABQ0/lzuJXwQJL28/s1600/SDC14539.JPG)</div><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Alice</span><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> had passed it on the way into the room she was searching. The halls were still quiet, the soft echo of the voice of the officer at the duty desk still sounded off the spacious walls as he spoke into a telephone. The elevator stood there at the end of the corridor, whispering to Alice, promising that she might find more information on the fourth floor, where the homicide detectives nested with all the details and data of the various crimes that occurred on Cape Merrin’s streets. And there were lots of crimes for them to investigate—strange crimes of men coming home from work and bludgeoning their wives to death and then sitting down at the dinner table, still speckled in their wives’ blood and eating the meal that had been prepared for the husband’s homecoming. <em>The Gazette </em>didn’t like to report too many of these things; Cape Merrin was a city, sure, but it was a sleepy city, one that didn’t need the reputation of New York City or Chicago.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cobb Theater Roof</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/250/draft_lens5447092module41572982photo_1245611438Punk_Girl.jpg)</div><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Allison Treble, or “Trebs” as most of the crew at the Cobb referred to her, couldn’t find </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Reginald anywhere. She had been called out of the office when she noticed customers filing around the food counter without being attended to at the intermission in that historical romance bullshit four hour film that every Cape Merrin teenage girl was swooning to see. It was enough to make Trebs gag—romance, falling in love, a noble and endearing prince that was just <em>so</em> handsome. Bull shit. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cursing she went out to look after Reggy’s customers. This wasn’t like him, disappearing. The kid was generally pretty mousey but he was damned more responsible than a lot of the other employees that worked during the day shifts. She relied on the size of the crowds to keep those employees in line. Reggy was generally always dutiful about his work, even on dead nights. If she looked in on him either directly or via the surveillance equipment, if he wasn’t waiting on someone he was wiping down counters and restocking. Like she had initially thought, she came back to the same conclusion, disappearing during his shift was not Reggy’s style—something had to be up. After she put the romance viewers back to bed with their insipid film, she ran back to her office, locked up and started combing the back of the theater, eventually thinking she ought to check the staircase to the roof when she couldn’t turn Reggy up. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">She found the door to the roof ajar, rain blowing into the theater’s interior through it, and she called out for Reggy a couple of times before seeing him huddled up against the low wall of the roof, hugging the book against him. “It’s pouring out here Reg! Come on, let’s go back inside,” Trebs shouted, looking down at Reggy and offering him a hand up. Her short black hair was getting soaked as she stood there, trying to get Reggy back to his feet. She looked sad and concerned for him, but also a bit urgent. She couldn’t stay up here forever waiting on him to take her hand and come back inside.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Exterior of Simon’s Bull</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape</span></strong><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> Merrrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 10, 2010</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Behind the cop looking over Abigail and Delilah an odd mist seemed to gather. And then it wasn’t a mist anymore. It was a muscular man with long black hair—someone who seemed to be doing their best worst impression of Glenn Danzig, and then the cop’s head was gone and a fountain of blood washed up into the man’s face. He lapped and licked and sucked and swallowed the blood spray, his features looking distinctly wolfish as he did so. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The other cop who had radioed in for Animal Control earlier spun around at the noise of tearing ligaments and he fumbled for his gun. He dropped it and slid down against the cruiser door that he was standing in. When the officer was down completely, the man stood there glowering; bullet holes were clearly present in his clothing and flesh, though no blood poured from him. The two women before him he sniffed briefly but turned away from, and using the long talons extending from his fingertips, he hauled himself up over the cop car and down to the pavement in front of the other officer. “Fear makes you taste <em>sooo</em> much better,” he said around a mouthful of bloody teeth. He disappeared down on top of the cop and the sounds of tearing could just barely be heard over the officer’s yells and kicking feet. </span>