The Watcher
^{A Story}
Chapter 1 - First Clue
by Saless
 

Special Agent Marvin Garner was frustrated. After the fruitless search of that strange site just out of town he'd been stuck with the job of figuring out what happened there. Nobody really expected anything to come of it, but it was too strange to ignore. Especially after the press managed to get there before they could lock down the site. So far he had no clue what had happened. He was trying to figure out how to tie up this investigation and move on to something worthwhile when his old friend called him out of the blue with something he wanted to show him.

Now he was following that friend through the bowels of the local hospital where he worked. "Mark, would you tell me what we're doing here?" Marvin growled.

"You've got to see this! It's got to have something to do with what you're working on. It just has to!" Mark replied excitedly. That was as much of an answer as Marvin had been able to get over the phone, too. He still wasn't sure if he wanted Mark to have actually found something or not.

"Alright, alright, show me already!" he groaned. Mark had always been a real geek. Give him something new and interesting and he'd be dissecting it in a heartbeat and blabbing a mile a minute at the same time.

"It's right in here!" Mark said, throwing a door open and leading Marvin over to a bed with a sheet thrown over it. "Let me just get this sheet off." He carefully gathered up the sheet and removed it, revealing a roughly human shaped pile of coal black ash.

Marvin looked at the odd pile of ash and back at his old friend. "This is it? What's this supposed to be?!" he asked.

"This," Mark said with an extravagant gesture towards the bed, "is the late John Green!"

Marvin slapped his hand over his face and groaned, "And why did you pour his ashes out on this bed?"

Mark shook his head in exasperation. "I didn't! That's the bed he was in when he died. After his death I noticed his skin was turning black, radiating out from the wound that killed him. Within hours his entire body had turned that same black color, even his hair, eyes, teeth, and nails. Then he just…disintegrated! Nobody has ever seen anything like this before!" Mark explained.

Marvin frowned at his friend and growled, "Do you really expect me to buy this?! If you're going to play a joke on me, the least you could do is make it halfway believable!"

"Ah!" Mark countered, "but I have proof!" He stepped over to a table next to the bed and picked up a camcorder. "When I saw what was happening I thought it would be a good idea to have a recording. I have the entire process on here!" he said triumphantly.

Marvin took the camcorder doubtfully and played back the recording. It was a few hours of recording, so he skipped a lot, but it showed exactly what his friend said it would. "How did you do this?" he asked, assuming it was a fake.

Mark shook his head impatiently, "I didn't! That's a real recording! I didn't alter it in any way. You know me, I'm lousy with computers!"

Marvin mulled that over and had to admit that kind of tampering was well beyond his friend's ability. "I'm going to have to have this looked at." he said thoughtfully.

Mark nodded excitedly, "So you believe me now?"

Marvin held his hand up, "Maybe, okay? If our techs tell me this hasn't been tampered with, then I'll believe you. But let's assume I do believe you for the moment. What could cause this to happen?"

"Not a single clue! That's why I called you. From what I've heard, that deal outside of town has everyone stumped. Nobody knows how all that damage was done without making more noise, right? I figured two unexplainable events so close together in time and space had to be related in some way." Mark explained.

Marvin nodded absently as he looked at the human shaped pile of ash. "You might be right. If they are related, my job just got a lot more interesting."

---

« Venus Cursed! - Chapter 65 »