Speaker 1: I pulled up to the address, engine running long enough
for the radiator to tick and protest. The buildings stood
four stories high. Concrete worn down to a graze so
lifeless it blended with the sky. Cracks ran up the facade,
and narrow diagonal patterns. Someone had patched over the larger
ones with foam ceilant, but the rest looked untouched. A
handful of rusted window units buzzed on the upper floors,
and thin faces hovered behind curtains peering out of the street.
Some disappeared when they saw me in plain clothes, others
didn't bother hiding yellow tapes stretched across the entrance. Two
uniforms stood beside it, looking like they hadn't slept in days.
One of them nodded when he saw me approach and
lifted the tape. Detective Hanley I said, flash my badge
before he could ask. Yeah, upstairs, third floor, Unit three C.
You'll want to see it yourself. I didn't say anything back.
He looked relieved by that. The stairwell reeked of mildew
and detergent cheap industrial cleaner. From the smell of it,
someone had made a half baked effort to mop the
blood trail that leaked from under the victim's door and
ran down to the base of the steps. Rat scurried
and ran deeper into the building. As I made my
way through, Unit three C was open, held that way
by a folding wedge jammed under the hinge. Two more
officers stood inside. They didn't bother with pleasantries. One was
busy writing in a small flip notepad. The other looked pale,
his arms crossed tightly over his chest. I stepped in
and scanned the room without touching anything. The air in
the room was thick and humid. She'd been thrown into
the far corner of the living room. Where used to
be a human body was now a crushed heap, limbs,
neck flattened at an angle that suggested a spine had
snapped half way down, her jaw hung off by the muscle.
This was done by a blunt object. Blood covered the
vinyl floor in white splashes and thick streaks. Some had
dried at the edges, some were still tacky. She was
missing an arm. I kept my breathing slow, and even
the walls were intact, and there was no overturned furniture,
shattered lamps or picture frames. Nothing suggested she'd fought back.
She died exactly where she stood. This didn't seem like
a fight bad, more like a one sided beat down.
Who found her? I asked one of the uniforms. Spoke up.
Neighbors two doors down. She called when she heard screaming.
Time ten twenty six. Front door locked. Yeah, no sign
of fourth entry. The chain was still set when we arrived.
We had to kick it rats. We're in the apartment
when we kicked it down, though. Can't be sure how
much damage they did, but she was definitely dead way
before that. That narrowed things in a way I didn't like.
I moved closer to the body and examined the hands.
The fingers were intact, no defensive wounds. I checked the mouth,
gently lifting a chin with my gloved hands to expose
the teeth. Some blood, but that was from impact, not
from or being gagged. Nothing under the nails, no debris,
no hair or fibers clinging to her clothes, No bruising
on her remaining hand to suggest a self defense attempt.
It was, by all means, just a normal apartment, one bedroom,
open kitchenette, books stacked neatly on the TV, stand a
wineglass drying beside the sink. She had been living here peacefully,
though a fridge looked ransacked. Whoever did this, who was
definitely planned? I stepped back and let forensics take over.
I needed to talk to the neighbors and potential witnesses.
The hallway was quiet when I stepped out, but not empty.
A man in a great tank top leaned against his doorway,
arms crossed. His eyes looked sunken and wet. Sp to
buy him first, You the one who called? He shook
his head. No, that was Flora end of the hall.
But I heard it too, Tell me loud fast. I mean,
there weren't any words shouted, but I think I heard
a silence screaming, but I'm not sure, definitely like thudding
and crashing. Was that normal noise like that? He scoffed. Nah,
she was really quiet. Never even heard her on the phone.
Don't even think she had a partner. Rarely brought people over.
I checked his hands for any signs of bruising, just
in case. I asked him for an alibi. He gave
me a cell phone log with a delivery timestamp. Peta
arrived at ten nineteen. I moved on the next Two
neighbors off similar stories. One woman heard thumping, thought it
might be a domestic fight, but wasn't sure. The guy
across from the victim was out working the night shift.
All of them knew her by first name. None of
them had complaints about her, let alone hated her enough
to kill her. Then there was the older woman on
the floor above. She had a house dress on, bare feet,
and a smell that told me she hadn't done laundry
in a long time. I knew something would happen, she said,
standing halfway behind a door. There's something in the walls,
always scratching, always moving. You mean rats, I asked her.
Eyes didn't change, no worse than that. I nodded, but
I didn't write anything down. I choked it up to
age isolation, a mind that had been left alone too long.
The last apartment I visited was the one directly above
the victim's apartment. He opened the door, still holding his son,
a boy small enough to barely talk, face streeked with tears.
The father didn't look much better. His hair stuck out
in uneven clumps, and his fingers trembled as he lifted
the toddler from one hip to the other the other detective.
He said, they said someone would come talk to us.
Did you hear anything unusual, I asked. He nodded slowly.
It was bad. We heard her scream, I mean really scream.
It was sharp quick. Then there was this pounding, like
it was vibrating up into our bones. He looked toward
the stairs. My son started crying immediately, then it stopped.
Did you see anyone, No, we didn't leave the apartment.
Do you have cameras? No, but I've got a security
cam in the baby's room with audio. It's on loop.
I can send you the clip. I took his info,
got the file, thanked him, and headed back downstairs. Nothing
was adding up. I asked around to see if we
had any footage. The landlord had installed a half broken
DVR system five years ago after a string of bicycle thefts.
One camera pointed at the building entrance, another covered the
third floor hallway, focused on the victim's door. The third feed,
meant to show the stairwell, blinked between gray screens and
frozen frames. That one was useless. I reviewed the footage
from the past twelve hours in silence, running it at
four time speed. Pausing whenever I saw movement. Ten people
came and went through the front door. Four were delivery drivers,
three you were residents I had already spoken with, and
the rest were building staff or uniformed officers who arrived
after the nine one one call. When I finally closed
the laptop and returned to the apartment, the frametic's crew
had already packed up. The room was stripped of evidence
bags and markers. The blood had dried in most places.
I stood in the center of the living room and
let my eyes sweep over the corners, furniture, and ceiling.
Something sat wrong. I didn't know what, only that it
hadn't left me since I first stepped inside. I shifted
back towards the entryway and looked again. Above the living
room center, near the light fixture, something was pressed into
the white stucco. I stepped closer. Among the specks of
blood that had reached high in the walls and ceiling,
next to the ace vent, there was a single handprint.
It stood out from the splatter. It had a clean form,
but it looked to be smudged. The thumb sat at
a strange angle, like whoever made it rotated their hand outward.
I stood there, trying to make sense of it. I
walked over to the far wall, stood on the couch
beneath it, and reached upward with my full height, but
couldn't get within eight inches of touching the ceiling. The
woman who lived here was five foot four according to
a license, she couldn't have left that print even if
she stood on the furniture. I stepped down and stared
at it again. It felt deliberate. Killers who left signatures
weren't new. It was uncommon, but not unheard of. The
FBI maintained the database of those who used them symbols, poses, words,
even objects placed at the scene. There was a chance
this was meant to be a message. I tried taking
the fingerprints from the hand, just in case, but I
knew it would be fruitless. I took photos from three
angles and left a notation in the case file. I
told the uniforms outside that I wanted a patrol unit
to do regular sweeps of the building, especially at night.
No one had seen anything. That didn't mean it wouldn't
come back. As I headed out the door, I couldn't
help but take one more glance at the ceiling. I
spent most of that night at home, glued to my desk,
the lamp's buzz crawled into my ears, and the glow
of the monitor drained the rest of the room in shadow.
Samantha Ortega, aged thirty two, no criminal history, worked day
to entry for a mid size insurance firm downtown and
lived alone. She paid rent on time and didn't have
a boyfriend listed on a tendency records. Social media pointed
to a quiet life. She posted about a cat, pictures
of coffee and the occasional meme. No hungry exes, no
unhinged common threads, nothing that hinted her trouble. I pulled
her work records next. Her supervisor said she was consistent,
kept to herself, and always polite. Co workers said she
skipped happy hours but always brought cupcakes to office parties.
She'd been caught stealing milk from the staff ridge, but
that was the most scandalous thing anyone could offer. I
went through a message records, which yielded more silence. Her
parents had texted her the night before her death about
a recipe. Her father made a joke about finally learning
how to poach an egg. There wasn't a single name,
and a life that raised a red flag. The only
thing I had to go off now was the hand
print left at the scene. I flagged the precinct's patrol
schedule and ensured the forty third Street walk up was
assigned nightly drive bys. Then I closed everything down and
tried to sleep. Didn't get much. A week passed. The
finger prints I attempted to get I turned nothing. The
blood sampled from the handprint was Samantha's. It was early
afternoon when my phone went off. Detective Hanley, the officer said,
we've got another one, same building, Unit four Sea. I
didn't ask any more questions over the phone. I grabbed
my coat and left. When I pulled up to the building,
the entire front entrance was flooded with activity. Two squad
cars blocked traffic. Their flashing lights lit up the cracked
facade of the structure, painting it in bursts of blue
and red. I spotted off as a Gella near the stoop,
holding a bundled infant close to his chest. The child
was shrieking, eyes swollen and face stained with tears. Gella
wasn't built for this kind of thing. I looked more
panicked than the kid. I stepped out and headed up.
I was already getting sick. Inside the building, I was
immediately met by rats again. The rodents seemed to be
multiplying greatly each time I came here, perhaps because of
the bodies a new food source. Regardless, the scene was
already controlled by the time I got there. The door
to for Sea stood wide open, A uniform stationed at
either side, neither looking up. As I passed inside. The
walls held the same stale yellow as the floor below.
The carpet was old, stretched out in places. The body
lay against the bedroom wall. I recognized the man immediately.
He was the one who had entered the door while
holding his son. His neck had been snapped and driven
downward with so much force that it had cracked the
floorboard beneath him. One arm had been dislocated and bent
behind his back, the other stretched outward, twisted at the wrist.
His ribs had been crossed inward. One shoe had come
off and lay across the room. But the worst part
was that his entire head was missing. A second officer
walked over, adjusting his gloves. There were rats everywhere when
we came in. We counted dozens Before they scattered. They
came pouring out of somewhere. We couldn't keep track. Did
you make sure they didn't contaminate the crime scene? I asked.
For the most part, we arrived here quickly, so it's
safe to say the killer is the one who took
this poor guy's head off. The apartment itself was undisturbed,
no forced entry, no sign of struggle, exactly the same
as the other scene. I subconsciously glanced towards the ceiling,
expecting to see a handprint. For this time, I didn't
find one. I made my way deeper inside the apartment,
looking for any clue that might have been left by
the killer. Inside the living room, above the couch, right
next to another ac vent, sat another handprint. This one, however,
wasn't smudged. It was as clean as a bloody handprint gets,
unlike the previous one. I stood beneath it and stared,
my jaw clenched. I hated it. There was something that
felt smug about all of this. It was set there
like punctuation. The sentence had ended, and this was how
they signed it. I wanted to drag a chair over
and scrub it off with my bare hands. I wanted
it gone it felt like a taunt. It was impersonal,
and this confirmed it. These weren't crimes of passion. I'd
stood across from this man days ago. He'd held his
son and tried to stay calm well. I asked if
he heard anything strange. Now his body was broken and
cooling on the floor. If this was the game he
wanted to play, I'd play it. I dragged a chair
over and reached up to the handprint to collect the
blood samples and fingerprints. I stared at it briefly, then
shifted my attention to the vent beside it. The grill
was crooked. One of the screws nearly halfway had the wall,
but it looked more like it was ripped out of
the wall rather than unscrewed. The rest wobbled when I
tapped it. It had been opened. There was no dust
anywhere to be found. Some one had definitely tampered with
it recently. The opening wasn't large. No person was squeezing
through that unless they could fold their ribs, but something
had definitely pushed its way through. I reached up, pinching
the side of the cover with two fingers and pulled
The vent gave with a low pop. A draft of
cold air moved against my face. Inside, I saw darkness.
Thin ridges of metal tubing ran along the bottom, but
nothing else stood out at first glance. I leaned in.
The smell hit me hard, dry urine fur something deeper
behind it fungal where something had been nesting inside the shaft.
My flashlight couldn't reach the bend in the ductwork, but
I could hear movement further in a soft, shifting sound.
I narrowed my eyes, took a breath, and slid my
hand inside. Almost immediately, something bit down. I yanked my
arm back hard. Pain flared from my wrist. My glove
was torn near the edge, and blood welled up in
a thin line across my forearm. Goddamn rats, I mumbled
to myself, feeling stupid for even bothering. I reviewed the
security camera footage, knowing I'd find nothing. I leaned back
in the chair and watched the grainy loop for another
few seconds before killing the monitor. The neighbors had come
and given their testimonies willingly. Now none seems suspicious. Back
at the precinct, I printed both photos of the handprint,
lined them up side by side. I heard some one
knock gently at the open door behind me. One of
the officers leaned inside. That hand print again. He said,
we saw it in the first one too. That one
looks cleaner though. You got the finger prints, the officer asked, yeah.
Waiting for the results, I responded, you think it's a signature.
I didn't answer at first. I pointed to the photos. Look,
I'm not sure what it is, but the first victim
was in three C, the next one in four C.
Now we're looking at two murders, same layout, right on
top of each other, and this sicko keeps leaving a
handprint on the ceiling. Is it supposed to be pointing
toward the next time murder? The officer leaned closer to
get a better look. You think there's a pattern, I
think so, He looked at me, puzzled. I folded the photos,
took them into the case file, and stood, give me
the contact for the tenant in five C. I want
them out by tomorrow. The results from the fingerprints came
back before I could arrive at five C. It was
human female. The software matched it against the national database
and the ID pinged immediately. It was her Somemantha or taker.
The first victim. I sat with a phone in my lap,
eyes forward, staring at the dashboard, but not really seeing it.
My first thought was a mistake, some lab teck mislabeled
a sample, or the swap had been contaminated by the
crime scene itself, But that wouldn't explain the location. She
couldn't have reached that high up on her own ceiling,
let alone another apartments. She'd been dead a week it
started to settle in. Someone had taken her arm and
used it, pressed it into the wall, forced her dead
fingers flat, made the hand print themselves. It had to
have been done shortly before we arrived, too. The detail
in the print the residue. It wasn't from a week ago.
This psychopath was mocking the investigation. I knocked on the
door of five Sea that evening. A tired man answered,
eyes sunken, shirt stained with something brown near the collar
at me and didn't ask why I was there. He
held the door open and said his sister had room
for him and his wife. They were packed in ten minutes.
I didn't have to push base on what had been
happening here. I'm sure he was happy to get out
of the building once the unit was empty. I called
it in, got clearance from the department, told them I
had reason to believe the following incident would happen there.
They gave me approval, said I had a week on sight.
The only things I brought were a note book and
a loaded side arm. I kept the door locked behind me,
left the lights on. I stayed in the living room
with the radio on the counter and my badge within reach.
I didn't know if this psycho would come. I only
knew he or she had come twice before, and that
both times no one was ready. If I were wrong,
i'd waste a week. But if I were right, maybe
I could save a life. All I knew was that
there was some kind of pattern here, a very clear
move vertically, and I hoped I was right. I stayed
up in the chair most of the night, legs stiff
and resting near the grip of my side arm. The
patrol outside checked every two hours, radio brief, no sign
of anything moving in or out of the building. I responded,
each time, short and clear. I watched the door, then
the ceiling, then the door again, every hour stretched. At
around three in the morning, I stood once to stretch
my back and walked to the window, not to look out,
but to move. I circled the kitchen poor a cup
of cold coffee and drank it without tasting anything. It
was right after I sat down again that I heard
the noise. It came all at once, a crash, loud
and sudden, something breaking against the wall, then screaming, short,
clipped human, a voice trying to call out beginning pulled under.
I froze for a second, listened. The ceiling didn't shake.
The hallway was quiet. I leaned closer to the wall
and heard it again, another crash. The screaming had stopped.
Then I understood it was next door. I stood fast,
nearly knocking the chair over my hand, went to the radio.
I pressed the button as I moved to the door,
Unit five D. Movement next door and breaching. I didn't wait.
I unlatched the door and stepped into the hallway. The
air was colder outside the apartment. The hallway lights flickered faintly.
Rats poured from everywhere, but I had too much adrenaline
coursing through me to care about rats. They rushed along
the walls in waves, scurrying across my boots. I stepped
into them and made my way to the unit. Police
open the door, no response. I raised my leg and
kicked at the lock. It gave. On the second try,
the door slammed inward and bounced off the wall. I
stepped through, gun, raised badge, lifted half a warning on
my lips. Then I saw it. It wasn't a person.
The thing in front of me was a shifting mass cans, hundreds,
maybe thousands of them, packed into rough shape, a mound
of matted fir and bone that stood taller than a man.
Their bodies moved and sink, their limbs prushing and pulling
together to mimic the form of a torso arms and legs.
It was a body made from bodies. The head wore skin,
A human face stretched across the front, torn at the edges.
I recognized it the single father, His jaw hung open,
lips sagging from the sockets of his eyes. Dozens of
smaller eyes blinked, each one black and glassy. The right
arm was human, too, pale and thin, bruised at the
shoulder where it had been ripped from another corpse, Samanthas,
who was kneeling on top of the man who lived there.
It struck the man with ridiculous force. The body bounced
beneath each strike. The sound was sickening, bones breaking wetlea.
The floor beneath them shook with each impact. I stared
dumbfounded as it ripped an arm off the man's corpse,
and the rats started to bury themselves inside the arm,
adding it to their sick form. I emptied the clip
into it each round hit, but there was no visible
break in the skin. Instead, a thick black vapor hissed
out from the impact site and drifted upward in thin,
rising trails. It moved slower than smoke should of hanging
in the air, before thinning and disappearing into the ceiling.
Rounds tore through the air and buried themselves in the
thing's mass. Rats split apart and fell some screen. Others
swarmed in to fill the gaps, dragging there, fallen inward
and disappearing into the body again. Its shape shifted and
the face twisted. The mask tilted to look at me,
and the eyes inside the sockets blinked in unison. I
fumbled for another clip. My hands didn't want to cooperate.
My left wrist was still bandaged from the vent bite,
and the blood pulsing through it made my fingers weak.
The magazine slipped clattered to the floor. It moved fast.
One of its limbs swept sideways and caught me across
the upper chest. The force was enough to throw me
sideways into the door frame. The corner caught me behind
the shoulder. My arm went numb, and I hit the floor,
with half my vision fading out. I tried to raise
my head and couldn't tell if the wetness on my
temple was blood or sweat. I stayed like that for
a few seconds. The sound of its breathing had stopped.
I heard its scrape across the floor once, then everything
went quiet. When I lifted my head again, I saw
it at the far end of the room. It slid
and scraped across the floor, more like a tide than
a body. They gathered at the fresh arm, bulging with blood,
twitching in their hold, and now fully made it part
of the mass. It lifted itself with reverence, gripping the
ceiling with Samantha's hand, leaving behind a hand print. It
flowed into the docked work, vanishing section by section. The
last thing I saw before it disappeared was the father's
head pulled upward by the neck as rats vanished behind it.
The patrol burst in seconds later, guns raised, shouting, They
called in others, cleared the room, searched the building. There
was no clue as to where the killer had gone.
The apartment above was undisturbed. They kept me in the
hospital for observation. I was stitched up across the shoulder,
bruised along the ribs, and concussed nothing that needed surgery,
but enough to take me out of the field. The
department put me on leave without asking. Most of my
time there passed in a haze of blood pressure checks,
threescent lights, and voices. I didn't speak when they asked
what I saw? What would all these seasoned officers and
the rest of my colleagues say? Of course, they wouldn't
believe me, regardless, I had guessed wrong about everything in
this situation. The man had died a few feet away,
one wall between us. If I'd been paying attention, I
might have taken more time to figure out the details,
and perhaps I could have acted sooner. I didn't. I
assumed I understood what I was doing. I thought I'd
figured it out. But was there even a way for
me to have figured it out. At the very least,
I had to put an end to it. Now, the
building hadn't been sealed. The neighbors were still inside upstairs, downstairs,
across the hall, families, oldert tenants, students, night shift workers.
I knew he would strike again. I didn't know if
he was following a pattern or choosing randomly, but I
didn't care. I made a few calls until I got
the owner's name. He ran a property with a voicemail
that never got checked. I drove across the city to
a cafe he was known to visit. I waited until
he walked in and blocked his path. Before he could
sit down. I showed my badge, lowered my voice, and
told him the building was a liability waiting to burn down.
I told him pest control records and a few more
outright lies were falsified. Lastly, I told him that if
even one more incident happened at his entire management team
in front of a grand jury. I had no authority
to say any of that, but I said it anyway.
He asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted
the building emptied. He said that would take weeks. I
told him he had Until the morning, tenants were told
there had been a confirmed gas leak. People evacuated, which
on Trey Shore is due to the murder cases and
not the reasons they were actually given. Patrol officers sealed
off the building. A few argued and demanded compensation, but
no one stayed behind. By the afternoon, the pest control
team had arrived. I paid one of the crew leaders
a few hundred dollars out of pocket to keep me updated.
They pumped every floor with fumigant, every room, every vent,
every closet, They opened every crawl space, broke through every
wall that felt hollow. For two days, the building was sealed.
No one went inside except for exterminators in hazmat suits.
On the third day, I got the call. They said
I needed to see it for myself. I met them
at the loading dock behind the building. Two contractors stood
near an open dumpster, their face pale masks hanging from
their belts. Inside weren't dozens of plastic biohazard bags. Instead,
it was one huge bag. Inside was a mass, swollen
disease looking. The stench clung to my nose and throat
even through the mask. They claimed it had a name,
rat king. It was explained to me that a rat
king is a collection of rats or mice who were
intertwined and bound together in some way. They also found
the limbs of the victims of the serial killer in
the rat's nest. Later that week, the local news ran
a segment on the building. They called it the worst
rat infestation the city had seen in years, cited health
code violations. The building was finally clean, However, the murder
case itself sat unresolved. The killer had never been caught,
but I knew better.