Copyright © 2011 Heather M. All Rights Reserved.

The day I died began like any other day: I woke up, kissed my husband, drank a cup of coffee over toast and eggs, showered and got dressed.

My husband showered, dressed, and left for work as his usual time, driving from our home in Eagle River to his office in Downtown Anchorage. He’s an attorney, specializing in native rights issues which have earned him a great deal of respect from the Inupiat, Yupik, and other Alaska natives. Thirty four, tall, well built, and blonde haired, he is the love and light of my life.

“Be careful, Baby.” He told me as he left, as he has done every day since we met.

“I always am.” I said, just as I had also done every day.

I didn’t know that today would be the day that I let my guard down just a little, just enough. A small detail overlooked but in my business you don’t have that luxury and it cost me.

Dearly.

I take a look at myself in the mirror as I brush my hair. I’m five foot, seven inches, toned and slender, black hair and green eyes, the result of a mixed Hispanic/Irish heritage.

“You got it good, girl.” I say to my reflection. Thirty two years old, married to a wonderful man. I’m a successful and respected private investigator, a former Anchorage police officer. I loved the job but there are things a cop can’t deal with so I resigned. I still get called in on “special” cases, having developed a reputation as an authority in ritual or occult crimes: pentagrams on buildings, scenes of animal sacrifice. Usually the result of bored teenagers with too much time and too many black metal albums. The real shit isn’t found by the police, people like me make sure of that. I handle that on my own, no official involvement. People don’t need to know what really lurks out there, it’s easier for everyone if that stuff’s buried and I do my best to bury it deep. So deep that not even my husband knows what I really do.

Especially him.

I dressed in my usual outfit for a late autumn day: black turtleneck, jeans, and boots. I have a nice leather jacket I’ll wear too but first I need to get my gear on. My Glock 21 goes in its usual spot, a holster under my right arm. My private detective badge goes on my belt, and a case of pepper spray sits on my waist in a leather holster.

After everything is in place I go for the rest of my tools, the real ones. The ones normal people don’t get to see. Three sheathed daggers are strapped to my lower back. One is black and covered with red runes, sharp enough to cut through bones. The second is silver and almost as sharp, the third is ugly and crude, cold iron, dull.

Around my neck I place a Seal of Solomon and a Heptagram, both wrought in silver. Two vials of holy water go into a pouch on the inside of my leather jacket. A 12 inch rowan wand slipped into another pocket in the jacket completes my outfitting. I toss my wallet and cellphone into my purse, grab my car keys and walk out of my house and to my car.

For the last time.

20 minutes later found me sitting on the back of my Can-Am Spyder, looking at a not so nice duplex in Mountain View, one of the poorer neighborhoods in Anchorage. I’ve been following a lead on a guy I was pretty sure was one of the Damned, or had been before deciding to go full Void Seeker. Bad news, that. A Void Seeker in town meant someone was playing with the Old Names for real and the last thing I wanted was a Tear. Closing a Tear is a right bitch and not high on my list of things to do today. Quite the opposite, when I made my list of things to do I’m pretty sure I had put closing a Tear on the bottom of the page, right behind root canal or gyno appointment.

I keep track of Damned, like any good sorceress does. I know why they do what they do but I think they’re wrong at best, and damned dangerous, too close to stepping over from Damned to Void which happens far too often for my taste. Using the Old Names and peering into the Dark to see if the Sleepers still sleep isn’t good for sanity. The career of the Damned tends to be quick and brutish, and all too often ends at the hands of someone like me, assuming something from the Void doesn’t eat them first.

It’s nine in the morning on a Tuesday and even at that the neighborhood is loud and dangerous. A pretty chica like me is asking for trouble usually but I’m giving out a mild “don’t fuck with me vibe” so the rats are staying away. I figure the particular rat I’m looking for is probably sleeping, having spent the night doing something blasphemous and evil. Or he was watching Real Housewives. Or he’s out; I didn’t see any sign of him last night before heading home and the street in front of the house is empty, nothing moving in the duplex so I’m beginning to think he’s not here. That suits me just fine, all I want to do is get in and scope the place, look for proof of his being Damned or Void and get the hell out. Day time is safer for this kind of thing because his power will be limited if he is truly Void. If he’s Damned then he won’t be as limited but it’s still not his environment. If he’s Damned then I’ll tell him to get the hell out of town, follow my threat with a Levin bolt or two up his ass and then make sure he leaves. If he’s Void then I’ve got a fight on my hands and I’d rather it be on my terms, with the Eye of the Creator shining in the sky.

I take off my helmet and let my vision slip into other realms, other ways of seeing. What I see over the house is not reassuring. There’s a black aura over the duplex that’s extending from it and to the neighborhood itself. No wonder crime has shot up here to levels almost twice what they normally are, even in a dangerous place like Mountain View. The pulsating storm cloud is pure malice and it’d affecting the people here.

“This is bad. Shit and crap and damn.” I say under my breath. I’m almost positive this guy is a Void Seeker now and he’s pretty damn close to opening a Tear into the Abyss and drawing power from the Sleepers. I need to stop this bastard but good and the only way to do that is to kill him, there’s no other way to deal with a Seeker. They’re just too far gone and evil to do anything but. I’ll have to cleanse the area once I’m done and that means an invocation to the Elohim, something I am not prepared for. I’ll have to kill this fool then come back for the cleansing.

“No time like the present.”

I climb off the bike and make my way to the run down duplex, keeping an eye on the windows as I do. Still nothing. If this guy’s not home then I’ll wait for him, surprise him coming in the door and take him down hard and fast. I slip the Heptagram and Seal out from under my turtleneck as I get to the door, a little extra protection never hurts. Quietly I check the door and find it locked. A low word and a small click later and I’m pushing the door open slowly.

The smell from inside the house is blinding: rotting flesh, blood, viscera. This is bad. This guy has a play room somewhere and has been doing Really Bad Things in it. The Damned are bad for a reason, they think they’re doing good and saving the world at the cost of their own souls, the Void Seekers just want to see the whole world end and do things that make the John Wayne Gacy’s of the world seem amateurs to get to that point. Either way this guy needs to go.

Closing the door softly behind me I slip into the shithole. Trash litters the floor, there’s mold on the walls, half eaten food all over the place. Not only is he evil, he’s a disgusting slob. Burning this place to the ground would be a mercy.

Gun in left hand and wand in right I begin to go deeper into the house. I don’t look on the floor to see what I’m stepping in but I’m pretty sure these boots are going in the trash when I’m done. As I really like them this just pisses me off and hardens my resolve to put a hurting on this prick. The house is still quiet save for the little noise I make as I step on unspeakable crap. The front of the house is an open area: living area on the left, kitchen on the right. There’s a hallway ahead of me with a two doors on the right, and one dead ahead. The place is dark, very little light coming through the dingy windows in the kitchen and living room. I let my vision slip again and immediately pull it back as a wave of nausea nearly overwhelms me. The whole world seemed to turn on its side with the warped reality in here and now I’m sure this guy is a Void Seeker. Reality is too twisted here for him to be anything else. As I walk further down the hall the sick feeling intensifies, even though I’m just looking with normal vision. I come to the first door and open it slowly, gun pointing in front of me. It’s a closet, old clothes and other junk piled high. I move on to the next door which is open. A quick peek shows me a bathroom that’s best left unmentioned. One more room which has to be the bedroom. If he’s home then this is where he is. I raise the gun and walk forward, slowly and steadily. If there’s a lump in the bed it gets bullets. Then it gets Levin bolts, and then it gets fire. I’m not taking chances with this guy. The door is open, the room not as dark as the rest of the house; some of the slats of the blinds are broken and letting in some light.

I brace myself against the wall and take a breath. Not deep, the smell here is too bad for that, but it steadies me anyway. Then I round the corner, gun pointed at the empty bed. “Shit.” Is all I can say before I see it and have to turn away, the pain in my eyes, my head and my stomach too terrible for me to do anything but gag and stagger back. The Seal of the Void, right above the bed, on the wall in all its malignant glory. The Seal occupies my attention and keeps me from thinking of the one thing I overlooked: the shower curtain was closed….

Then there is nothing but pain and screaming and blood and I know, I know what he is before all thought fades. He’s a Void Seeker and a Skin Walker. It takes a long time for my screams to stop and pain is all I know before the merciful release of death comes.

I’m going to tell you all about the day I went insane and learned about the real world.

It wasn’t a very special day, just a Tuesday in October, the 24th to be exact. Nothing momentous happened when I woke up, no singing from the choir heavenly, no rays of sunshine through parted clouds; just a frosty morning, still dark at eight AM. A cup of coffee, slice of toast, a quick shower and a suit later and I’m out the door and on my way to work.

Let me introduce myself: I was Anthony Charles Kaleak. I’m mostly Inupiat, Eskimo for those who have never heard of the Inupiat. I was born in Barrow, Alaska thirty three years ago. I’m named Anthony after my father and Charles after one of the Great White Whaling Captains who settled in Barrow or Ukpiagvik (The Place We Hunt Snowy Owls) as we call it in Inupiaq, in the 19th century. My father married a taniq (outsider) so I have a mix of features: darker skin, high cheekbones, grey eyes, and hair that tends towards more brown then black. The expectation was that I would do as my father and his father and so on and so forth, as indeed my people have done for a thousand years, and be a whaler on the Kaleak crew and eventually take my father’s place as captain; but I had other plans. After high school I took two years of college at Illisagvik College and joined the North Slope Borough Police Department at 21. I still joined in spring and fall whaling with my father and our crew but my father knew I had other plans for my life. Things grew strained between us and eventually I left Barrow and moved to Anchorage, taking a job with the police department. I was a quick hire: a native with five years of law enforcement experience. Don’t think I didn’t work my ass off. I was a good cop, honest and hardworking. I made corporal in two years and sergeant three years later. A year later I took the qualification tests for detective and made it into Homicide, where I’ve been since.

Things might have gone differently had I stopped by the squad room first but all I did was call. The duty officer told me there was nothing new pending so I drove to Mountain View to look in on a guy we suspected was behind a string of missing person’s cases. We’d brought him a few times but had nothing to hold him on so we had to cut him loose. Virgil Edwards, two time loser from California, now in Anchorage and causing trouble. Kidnapping wasn’t on his record from California: assault, robbery, intent, those were his normal MO but he seemed to have stepped up his game once in Alaska, probably thinking we were a police force of country bumpkins, too remote for real law enforcement. Well he was going to find out differently once we had something to nail him with. I’m all for locking him up with my boot print on his ass but we do things by the book. This guy was too stupid not to screw up and I was going to be waiting for him when he did. So here I am, in front of his crappy duplex, letting him know the APD is watching him.

I take a drink of my diet Coke and wait. My eyes wander a little and I notice a black Can-Am Spyder parked down the street. It looks familiar so I spend a second or two wracking my brain trying to think of where I’ve seen it before then it hits me: Rachel Torres, former Anchorage cop turned private investigator.

“What the hell are you doing out here, Torres?” I wonder.

I decide to make sure it’s hers so I pull out my binoculars and get the tags then call dispatch to run them and sure enough, they come back to one Rachel Anne Torres.

I get out of the car, my curiosity piqued and walk over to the trike. A helmet sits on the seat and the engine is cold. I note the way it’s parked and realize she was sitting at an angle facing the duplex Edwards is in. I also notice that the front door of the duplex is slightly ajar.

Well now, as a concerned police officer of the fine city of Anchorage I feel it is my duty to make sure Mr. Edwards is safe and none of his property has been stolen.

Looking back I realize my first mistake was not calling for a uniform or two to back me up but I felt confident that Edwards, if he was even in, wouldn’t cause trouble with the detective eying him for a class A felony. With that thought in mind I started walking to the house.

My unease grew with every step closer so I eased my Glock 22 out of its holster. The hair on the back of my neck began to stand on end and chills were going down my spine.

“Shit, something is very wrong here.” I thought to myself as I made my second mistake: I kept going. I was about five feet from the house when the smell hit me. It was the smell of death, blood, and rotten meat. It was enough to make my eyes water and my gorge rise.

My third and final mistake was opening the door wider. The smell intensified and I saw the trash and rotten food strewn about the floor.

“Virgil Edwards, this is Detective Kaleak, Anchorage Police. Come out where I can see you.” Silence greeted my announcement.

I step into the house, my shoes crunching something under an old pizza box. The living area and kitchen are empty of everything but trash and tattered furniture. The smell gets worse the deeper I go in. Ahead of me is a short hallway with two open doors on the right and a closed door ahead. The first door is a junk closet, piled high with trash and boxes. The second one is a bathroom, dark stains on the floor and shower that I don’t want to think about. The shower curtain is old and torn, open halfway.

One door left: the bedroom. The smell is stronger now. Whatever is causing it is behind the closed door.

“Fast and hard or slow and easy, Tony?” I think to myself as I approach the door. “Screw it, shock and awe.”

Gun up, finger on the trigger, I kick the door open, a shout of police dying before I let it out.

Too much bad shit to take in all at once assails my senses. The blood smell is overwhelming here; it takes all my willpower not to lose my meager breakfast. The first thing I see is plastic. The room is covered in it. Floor, walls, furniture. At first I think it’s red but I realize its clear plastic and the red is blood. It drips from the ceiling, oozes down the walls, collects in puddles on the floor. The next thing I notice is a body on the bed, or what’s left of a body. I can see that it’s female. She’s been skinned and by the look of horror in her eyes and the silent scream forever locked on her face, she was alive when it happened.

This time I do lose my breakfast.

My trained mind continues to take in details as I wipe my mouth: she is completely fleshless from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. I turn around to take my eyes off the horrific sight only to see something that threatens my already tenuous grasp on both sanity and stomach.

Her skin is hanging on the wall in front of me, intact. Intact enough to see the black hair cascading down the shoulders. Intact enough to recognize the face of former Anchorage police officer, turned private investigator, Rachel Torres.

Something inside me snaps and I fall to my knees, making animal noises as tears pour down my face. I don’t know how long I would have stayed like that but a voice snapped me out of my fugue state. An impossible voice.

“Detective Kaleak, you will be dead in less than ten minutes unless you do exactly as I say.”

I turn my head slowly and look into the green eyes and somewhat insubstantial face of Rachel Torres. The very same Rachel Torres whose skin hangs from the wall.

I say the first thing that comes to mind: “What…the…fuck.”

She looks at me, unblinking, and says, “You have 30 less seconds to live, Detective. No more questions. Do as I say or your’s will be the next skin suit hanging on the wall.”

That shakes some sense into my fogged mind. “What do I need to do?”

“Take off your clothes and put on my skin.”

Warning: This is gets pretty dark.

She looks at me, unblinking, and says, “You have 30 less seconds to live, Detective. No more questions. Do as I say or your’s will be the next skin suit hanging on the wall.”

That shakes some sense into my fogged mind. “What do I need to do?”

“Take off your clothes and put on my skin.”

And now:

I stare at the translucent form of former Detective Rachel Torres and say the first thing that comes to mind: "What...the...fuck...?"

I think it was pretty well thought out, all things considered. She, however, seemed less than impressed. "You're now down to nine minutes to live, Detective. When that Void Seeker comes back here he's going to do to you what he did to me. That is not a death you want, believe me. Putting on my skin is the only hope you have of surviving. It will take you about three minutes to take off your clothes, two put on my skin, and three and a half or so to process my memories enough to enable you to survive. Lucky for you you're a latent Skinwalker else you would be dead, here or at home. He'll track your essence back to your home and kill you and anyone else he find there. "

"Eight and a half minutes."

I look back at the bed and the remains and my attention is drawn to something hanging on the wall, something that makes my brain hurt and my stomach rise into my throat. It blurs and I can't get a real look at it. For the first time the...apparition? seems disturbed. "Don't look at that! Looking at that too long will strip away your sanity now take...off...your...fucking...clothes!"

"Fuck!" I begin taking my clothes off, starting with my jacket and loosening my tie. "This isn't home, Detective, you're not hanging shit up in the closet, rip them off and put on my skin then put on my clothes. You'll need what's in them and for fuck sake, hurry!"

I begin tearing my clothes off, tossing them in heaps around the room until I'm standing there naked. "Fuck...." I'm trembling so hard I can barely move. "Now what?"

"Take my skin, look along my back and you'll see a seam, open it, put one leg in, then the other, put it on like a wet suit and hurry. You're under the wire."

Swallowing hard I pull her skin off the wall, my gorge rising again, and look at the back. Sure enough, I see the seam. I manage not to vomit as I slide a leg in to the surprisingly warm suit of flesh. I put in another leg then pull the whole thing up and over my body, feeling a strange compression. Lastly I pull...her face over mine and feel something along the back as the seam closes and suddenlyOHMYFUCKINGGOD!

I'm hit with memories of a life that isn't mine. The entire life of Rachel Anne Torres hits my brain like a freight train, images imprinting into my brain so fast I can't keep up. I fall to my knees and clutch at my head, assailed my alien thoughts, images, and feelings. I think I screamed but I can't be sure.

A voice cuts through the images and sensations, urgent now. "Get my clothing and get dressed, Detective, now! The Seeker took me unawares but you know he's coming so you can fight him! He hasn't opened the tear yet, he doesn't know a name so he can't draw power from the Sleepers. You need to stop him so he doesn't or all hell will break loose!"

I stumble forward, still fighting the images coming lightning fast and stagger over to her pile of clothes. Memories come and I know exactly how to put them on and where to place the tools of the Trade. I'm slipping the necklaces on when she yells, "He's here and he's coming fast!"

Suddenly I'm calm, cool, collected, and thinking straight. I know how to handle this puta. I pull out the Seal of Solomon and invoke the Name of Uriel, Archangel and Scourge of Heaven. The Name resonates in the air and the man coming through the door stumbles at the threshold.

Virgil Edwards, piece of trash, in the flesh. He smiles wickedly and pulls out a blade that makes my stomach turn. Like the thing over the bed I can't quite look at it. "Well, well, this is like my birthday. I get to kill you twice bitch and once I get your skin off this prick, I'll hang him next to you." He comes in at me fast but I'm ready this time. I raise a hand and a greenish bolt of power screams out and takes him in the chest, knocking him ass over tea kettle and into the next room. He gets up fast and I invoke the name of Gabriel. A golden shield surrounds me and I throw another Levin bolt at him, catching him in the chest again. He screams and flies across the room, slamming into the wall of his shitty flat.

"Not this time, Seeker. You will not open a Tear and once I'm done with you, I'll repair the damage you've done (Where the fuck did that come from?)."

Edwards gets up and spits blood at me before laughing. "I'm closer than you think, whore." He intones a word and the world...shifts. The shadows become more pronounced and I see the light from my shield dim."

"Did you think you were the only one who could invoke, whore? The Abyss may yet be closed but I know syllables of a name, enough to rip open a tear right here and now. Deal with what comes through, bitch!" He laughs and turns to the wall as I throw another bolt at him but he moves aside and the wall explodes outwards, showing a sky much darker than it should be. He dives outside laughing and I get ready to give chase when I hear a scream behind me. "NO! We need to shut that tear, now!"

I turn back and there, hanging in the air in front of me, is a black hole, small, but blacker than anything I've ever seen and I know what he's done. He's opened a tear to the Outer Void, not the Abyss where the Sleepers dwell but close and, judging by the tentacles coming through and seeking to widen the tear, he got the attention of something nasty.

This is not the day I expected when I woke up, two voices say in my mind.

I pull out the silver dagger and invoke the name of the Archangel Michael and it bursts into flame.

"OK fucker, let's dance."