The Skull Hunter, 5 A Haunted Past by S. Michael Leier	Table of Contents “The Kaining of Rick Vargo” appeared in issue 191.
Part 1 of 2

Fredrick Dellette was sitting on the edge of his bed watching his wife Janice sitting at her makeup table slowly combing her fine red hair. Even after seven years of marriage, he couldn’t help but admire the beautiful face that reflected back through the oval mirror. She wore a long lace sleeping gown that fell just off the shoulder enough to excite his libido. A sly grin crossed his face as thoughts of romance twinkled in his eye.

Janice glanced at her husband and paused her brushing. She knew that look and what it meant. “What do you have on your mind?” she said coyly smiling.

“What, me?” Fredrick answered with a look of boyish innocence. “I don’t have a thought in the world.”

Janice grinned broadly, as she finished brushing her hair. The door to their bedroom swung open and their five-year-old son, Alex, carrying a small stuffed bear, entered the room. “Father, it’s time,” Alex said in a small voice.

“Do we have to?” asked Fredrick.

Janice turned to her husband with a look that said she would be there when he got back.

“Oh all right,” he conceded getting up from the bed, “let’s go.”

The two walked across the hallway to Alex’s bedroom. The small boy leaped into his bed and quickly shuffled himself under the covers. Fredrick sat on the edge of the bed and lifted the covers to Alex’s chin. “Now you know some day you’re going to have to go to bed without me checking your room.”

“But you scare away all the monsters, when you check,” said Alex with a pleading expression.

“Are you trying to say I have a funny face that scares monsters?” Fredrick smiled and tickled Alex making him squirm with delight. “Okay let’s scare away the monsters.”

Fredrick got up, knelt down by the bed, and slowly lifted the blanket. Making a funny face, he whipped his head down, yelled under the bed, “Okay, monsters, get out of there.” He sat up, looked at a smiling Alex. “Nothing under here,” he said.

“Don’t forget the closet,” said Alex.

“Yes we mustn’t forget the closet,” said Fredrick as he walked to the closet door. He slowly turned the knob, forcefully swinging the door open. Alex pulled the covers tight to his face as he watched his father look up and down inside the small space. Finally, he stepped out with a smile. “See, nothing in the closet,” he said reassuringly. “Now it’s time to go to sleep.” Fredrick gave his son a kiss on the forehead and started to leave.

“Father, you don’t think I’m silly, do you?” Alex asked.

Fredrick gave his son a comforting smile, “No, in fact I’ll miss it when you grow up and don’t need me to check any more.”

“Father, don’t you check under your bed at night?”

“Not since I was your age. Now good-night,” said Fredrick as he flipped the light switch and gently closed the door. He hurried across the hallway to his room where his wife was snuggled into the bed.

She looked up at him with a mischievous grin. “Is Alex asleep?”’

“Snug as a bug in a rug,” Fredrick giggled as he slipped into bed next to his wife. Her sweet perfume stirred his every sense. “Now it’s time to tuck you into bed.”

Janice cooed as he wrapped his arm around her body, placing her lips against his when suddenly Fredrick felt his wife’s whole body constrict. He pulled his face from hers as she cried out.

“Something has my feet!” exclaimed Janice as her eyes bulged wide with shock.

Fredrick looked at her, but before he could move, she was dragged under the covers to the foot of the bed. He tore the sheets, flinging them to the floor. Janice screamed as her fingernails dug at the bed, trying to find a hold.

Fredrick lunged at his wife. Grabbing her arms, he pulled with all his strength, but the lotion on her arms made her slippery. He released his grip slightly to get a better hold, and she disappeared under the bed screaming in utter terror.

Fredrick leaped from the bed, hurled the mattress from its frame, then gasped: all he saw was a faint wisp of smoke trailing up from the blood-soaked floor — and small feather. The sight of it was too much for him to take. Dropping to his knees, Fredrick began wailing uncontrollably just as his son opened the door.

* * *

Still sore, I slowly unpacked my meager belongings onto the old gray cot that Sam had set up for me in a back room. My office was still a shambles after a fire destroyed it last month. The owner of the building wasn’t in any rush to get me back in the office. He screamed and called me names saying that I was an unacceptable risk. Unfortunately for him, I had a lease, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Sam, the night watchman for the building was kind enough to bring an old army cot from home and set me up in a small utility room. He had offered several times for me to come to his house, but I politely declined. It wasn’t because I had anything against Sam; I just couldn’t put him in that situation.

I have always had a curse hanging over my head but now with someone like Joshua Kain out there looking for me, I needed to stay away from good people. It was Joshua’s fault my body was covered with scars and bruises. My hand brushed against my right sleeve where a deep scar will always remind me of our first meeting. I said first, because I knew it wouldn’t be our last. Such is the life of the Skull Hunter.

“Everything okay, Mister Vargo?” asked Sam as he peeked into the backroom. Sam always had a smile on his face that nothing could take away. He just had a personality like there was no problem he couldn’t overcome. I envied him that; it also irritated the hell out of me sometimes.

“Yeah, great; couldn’t be better,” I answered as I hung my hat on a rusted nail by the door.

“You got a phone call at the front desk. It’s that policeman Detective Sergeant Brogan.”

Great, that was all I needed. Brogan was a big lug of a cop who lived to harass me. However, if it wasn’t for that oversized bulldog I probably wouldn’t be alive. He was the one who found me after Joshua Kain had left me for dead in the back of an alley. Brogan drove me to the hospital and even sat with me for two days until I regained consciousness. He then proceeded to question the hell out me for the next week. I couldn’t give him a straight answer. He wouldn’t have believed it if I had.

“All right, let’s go,” I said, grabbing my hat and coat and heading to the phone with Sam. When I picked up the receiver, I could hear Brogan’s heavy breathing on the other end. “What do you want? I told you everything in the hospital.”

“Stow it, Vargo,” Brogan said in his deep, gravelly tone. “This ain’t business I need... Well... I need you come down to precinct.”

“What’s the charge this time?” I sneered.

“Dammit, Vargo, I said this ain’t business; it’s personal. Just come down here right now or I’ll send half the cops in the city to pick you up.”

“All right, all right, I’ll be there,” I said as I heard the Brogan slam the phone down in my ear.

Sam must have seen the puzzled look on my face. “Anything the matter?”

“I don’t know.” I slowly hung up the phone. “But you can be sure if Brogan’s involved, it can’t be good.”

Brogan worked out of the 21st precinct in the center of Chicago. It was the busiest, dirtiest, and most dangerous precinct of all. Every scumbag in the city ended up walking through the door at one time or another. The mortality rate for the cops was very high. The only way to survive was for the officers to become as hard and ugly as the crooks they dealt with every day.

Brogan was one of the toughest. He was scared of nothing, and most people avoided him whenever possible. I couldn’t get the sound of his voice out of my head. He sounded different, for some reason. Something had ruffled his feathers, and that alone made me nervous.

I pulled up across the street from the precinct, which was busy as ever. Time had no meaning for the 21st. It was a full service, twenty-four hour a day parade of lowlifes, scum, and lost souls. The noise was deafening as I entered the building with people screaming at the cops and the cops screaming back. Everybody was innocent and everybody was guilty. It depended on the uniform you were wearing which argument you were trying to make.

I walked up to main desk where a fat, gray-haired cop was busy shuffling papers. A thin pair of glasses were perched on the end of his nose, sergeant’s stripes showed in bold red on his sleeve. I was about to speak when I was abruptly shoved aside. A police officer was manhandling some guy to the desk, slamming the man’s face onto the hard surface. “Hey Sarge, this guy would like to turn in a purse he found on the street, wouldn’t ya,” he said twisting he guy’s head towards the desk sergeant.

“Yeah, yeah I found it,” the man said as a trickle of blood ran from his nose.

“McPherson, how many times do I have ta tell ya not to git blood on my desk? Now take this civic-minded individual to the lost and found department in basement.”

“Okay, Sarge,” the officer said, lifting the man. “Ya want I should take a picture of him? Ya know, for the papers.”

“Of course,” The Desk Sergeant sneered. “The owner may wanna give ’im a reward. Now get ’im outta here.” The officer pulled the man away and disappeared through the wall of people.

Looking over his glasses, the Desk Sergeant looked at me. “And what can we do for you?”

“Name’s Vargo, Brogan asked me to...”

“Get your ass in here, Vargo!” Brogan’s voice boomed across the room. The sergeant pointed down the hallway. I tipped my hat and waded through the crowd to the doorway where Brogan stood. He wasn’t wearing his hat, and for the first time I noticed the tuft of gray hair piled haphazardly on his head. He still had that unmistakable mean look on his face.

“What’s this all about?” I asked, stepping into the small, windowless room. Sitting at a table, I saw a man with dark hair. His face was red as though he had been crying. He wore a policeman’s holster over his shoulder so I figured he wasn’t a criminal.

“Sit down Vargo,” Brogan grabbed a chair and nearly flung it at me. “This is my partner Dellette, Fred Dellette. He’s the reason I called you.”

Brogan said you could help me.” Dellette was staring down at the table. His shoulders were drooping as though he was a man who had lost his very meaning to live.

“I don’t know, what’s the problem?” I said, taken a bit off balance. Brogan lit a cigarette and stood behind me in the corner.

“Something, something I can’t explain took my wife tonight,” he said looking up at me. I could see his red face swollen with grief.

“What do you mean something?”

Dellette shot from his chair and pounded his fist onto the table. “Just what I said, dammit, something.” He turned from me, staring at the blank wall. “I don’t know... I don’t know what it was. We were in our bedroom when she screamed that something had her legs. It dragged her under the bed. I threw the mattress off, but when I looked, she was gone. I tried to help her, but I couldn’t do anything... I couldn’t...” He dropped his head into his hands sobbing.

I sat confused as this tall, tough-looking man broke down in front of me. It was so out of character for him that no words would come out. Brogan stepped over to the table and sat down. His face had softened in a way I had never seen. He almost looked human, in pit-bull sort of way.

“Look, Vargo you don’t like me and I don’t like you, but this is out of my league. You know I don’t buy into all this mumbo-jumbo you’ve been preachin’; hell, I think you’re nothin’ but a scam artist.”

“Thanks, are you going somewhere with all this flattery?”

Brogan got up and reached for something on a nearby table. He set a feather down in front of me. “We found this in a puddle of blood under the bed. Ever seen anything like it?”

I picked up the feather and twirled it between my fingers. It was about eight inches long with dark, mixed colors. The end was rough like it had been trimmed with a knife. Suddenly a vision flashed through my mind. I was riding a horse through a wooded field. I felt at peace as the wind caressed my skin and the scent of nature filled my lungs.

The scene changed and I saw the pretty face of a young woman sitting by a fire, handing me some food. She smiled and spoke to me in a language I couldn’t understand. As her hand touched mine, I felt a spark that sent a warmth flowing through me. She wore a necklace of colorful beads that highlighted her beautiful blue eyes. A handmade dress that looked like animal skins sewn together wrapped her petite frame.

I shook my head but the vision continued. I was now looking down at the some dry leaves as the same pretty woman stared blankly up at me. Her hair was covered in blood and a long bruise around her neck. She wasn’t breathing, and I reached for her lifeless head, cradling it in my hands. As I held her lifeless form, I heard a thunderous scream. I looked up just as the face of a wild-looking man with his face painted ran towards at me with crazy eyes, swinging an ax.

I snapped back in the chair, almost falling over when Brogan caught me. “Vargo! He called out.

I looked up at him. The memory of the vision made me shudder. “That’s an Indian feather,” I said as I dropped it to the table. I didn’t want another vision.

“A what?” asked Brogan. “How the hell did an Indian feather show up under his bed?”

“I don’t know, but trust me: that’s what it is, and the owner is really pissed off.”

Dellette turned to me. “What the hell are you saying? That some Indian stole my wife?”

“I’m saying that I don’t know what happened to your wife. I need to go to the place where she was taken to get more.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” stated Brogan as he got up and headed for the door.

“I can’t,” Dellette said as his whole body began to shake. “I can’t go back there, not ever.”

“You have to,” I said looking at the pitiful man in front of me. I felt sorry for him, but something inside told me that he had to be there. “I can’t explain it but you have to come.”

Brogan walked to his partner and placed his big hand on the Dellette’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Fred.” The frightened man gathered his strength from somewhere deep in his soul as he nodded his head. Brogan got his coat, hat, and we left for Dellette’s house.

We drove across town, stopping when we got to a housing development where all the houses looked exactly alike. The houses were small, basically two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen all placed on a postage-stamp sized lot. It was part of an expansion through the city’s planning office to promote growth out of the crowded downtown area. The city planners came up with the idea to help stop crime, thinking that the problem was to many people shoved together in one place. However, it was having the opposite effect. The honest, hard-working people moved out and left downtown to the poor and desperate. Crime was actually rising in those areas. So much for city planning.

We walked up to Dellette’s darkened house. The door was standing wide open, so I walked inside. Immediately the vision returned, streaking through my brain in random images so fast that my head pounded in pain. I stumbled forward, trying desperately to stop the cascading pictures when just as suddenly they stopped.

“You okay, Vargo?” asked Brogan.

“Yeah, but there’s definitely something here, and it’s mad as hell.”

Dellette slowly entered through the front door as if he was coming into a foreign world he had never seen before. His gun was drawn in his shaking hand.

“That isn’t going help,” I said calmly. “Whatever is here can’t be shot.”

“Just the same, I’ll feel better,” Dellette replied. I nodded, proceeding through the house until I came to the hallway. “Which door is your bedroom?”

“The one on the left,” he answered, still standing near the front door.

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2006 by S. Michael Leier