Foster's

Jack Campbell .3

Everyone was on edge.

Everyone except for Ed Havisham that was.

Ed came in to work and hadn't even batted his eyes twice. He didn't care when the night operator tried to tell him that two of the day shift staff had had melt downs. Nor did he care when she swore he saw a man at the window by her station. She was so upset that she actually moved to a different desk.

He didn't care when the night officers dared the newbie to go into the evidence locker to check on the clock. He didn't care when the poor rookie came out screaming about a woman in there.

He didn't care when two of the other cops went in to prove him wrong, only to swear they both saw the same thing.

He didn't care that the clock was ringing and no one could turn it off. He didn't even care when he found the trail of blood.

Blood happened in a police precinct so Ed Havisham didn't even bat an eye. He just mopped it up.

But then, when he came back from dumping the suddenly-not red water out of the bucket, and wringing the no-longer-red mop, he found that the blood trail was back. The blood he had just mopped up.

For a moment he swore he was going crazy. He had to have just mopped it. His shoulder hurt from doing it, he was certain. Unless it was just his old age catching up to him.

No, it must have been his old mind playing trick on him. His wife like to say he was forgetful, he had always thought that was her nagging but maybe she was right.

So he mopped it up again, wrung out his mop, returned to the back to dump the water and the mop noting that his shoulder had stopped hurting. When he went back the blood trail was truly gone and he chalked it up to a very weird sense of Deja-Vu.

But not even Deja-Vu could throw Ed Havisham off of his routine. No. Ed Havisham didn't bat an eye until the screaming really started because with the screaming came the gunshots.

Again, gunshots in the precinct also wasn't that rare. Ed had been around for a long time. So he remembered the time the Sherriff shot a round off at a raccoon that had not only wandered into the precinct, but had dared to try and steal his dinner. He also remembered the times neighbourhood boys had thrown smoke bombs into the bullpen and a rookie cop had shot off in his panic.

He also remembered the few times a criminal being held overnight had tried to escape. Usually these were drunks with dumb plans and drunken confidence high. They were always the ones to take forever to go down because it didn't occur to them that they should.

But this wasn't one gun shot. This wasn't the sound of people scrambling to corner or contain someone. There was more than one shot echoing off in the small space accompanied by flurries of panicked cries.

Ed came into the bullpen expecting a criminal on the loose. But there wasn't... anything. There was just two men.

One of them the night clerk who answered the phones and then forwarded to whoever was on patrol, and the other one of the patrol cops. Ed didn't know either of their names, he rarely talked to them, he just did his job and then went home.

They were, however, acting rather erratically.

They were spinning around, eyes wide, darting to and fro, shouting: "Where is she, where is she?"

"Where is who?" he asked and then came to a pause.

Something heavy fell on his shoulder. As in something dropped from the ceiling and landed on him. His first thought was possum because they did that sometimes. But when he tried to see what it was, tried to swat it off, nothing was there. Except now his shoulder hurt.

In the time it took him to realize that his shoulder hurt, Ed's senses went haywire. He had this sudden pressing feeling in his chest, like he couldn't suck in enough air to keep him conscious. His heart began to pound, his chest began to heave like he had just run the whole of the county and the hairs on the back of his neck raised up.

Then the whispers started and with the whispers, the shadows elongated along the wall. He could see movement, could see something just out of the corner of his eye, but every time he turned nothing was there.

Until there was.

It was a woman. She was standing just behind the cop. Looking at Ed from over his shoulder. He hadn't seen her come in, hadn't heard her address any of them. She didn't seem panicked by the shots, she seemed eerily calm about the whole situation.

She was dressed the way his wife used to back in the fifties. Little polka dot dress, short curly hair. She looked like a pin up girl.

"Ma'am are you okay?" he asked.

She answered by opening her mouth and this black blood fell from her lips, bubbling through her teeth.

Her smile widened, the skin by her corner of her mouth ripping in this jagged way.

Blood leaked out of her mouth and down her chin but it was the screech that hit him. This inhumane scream that sounded more birdlike then anything else. Her face darkened, her eyes hollowed, all before his horrified eyes.

Ed screamed back, he pointed in her direction and the officer in front of her whirled around gun cocked and ready to go.

Ed ducked the gunshot. It didn't matter if the officer wasn't pointed in his direction, ricochet was a real thing. He hit the ground and the pain in his shoulder shifted.

For a moment he swore he felt hands on his shoulder and he froze. In his ear her heard the breathy whisper of" "Tell him," in his ear.

He scrambled up onto his feet and found that that the other two men in the bullpen with him were both staring at the wall, watching as blood cascaded from the ceiling and down.

Somewhere in the middle though that blood turned into loopy scratchy cursive.

The words "I want to go home" appearing, clear as day for all of them to read.

Ed read each word carefully and, with a calmness no one expected, walked right out of that precinct. He said nothing, didn't go back for his the late night snack he had left in the fridge, he simply walked out the doors and into the night.

And everyone else walked out with him.