Ch. 1 - Bark at the Moon

In the early morning hours, the normally dark intersection is bathed in red and white police lights that surround an auspicious phone booth. The sound of squelching tires in the surrounding street puddles heralds the arrival of another police car arriving at the scene, this one decked out in more civilian décor. A tall woman in a gray pantsuit steps out of the car while placing a worn fedora on her head. Her long chestnut-colored hair is tied in a professional ponytail as she places the hat on her head and leans against the car, surveying the scene. She audibly sighs, lights a hand rolled cigarette spawned from her pocket, and joins the officers nearby.

Detective Sadie Myers is tired. She’s tired of pulling yet another double shift this week with only 2 hours sleep between them. She’s tired of being urgently called to an “odd crime scene” with no other details. She’s tired of feeling like the only officer left in the city who cares about keeping pedestrians out of harm’s way…

“Back up from the scene. This is an active crime folks, not a street performer.” The tall, athletically-built woman stands in front of the small gathering crowd around the phone booth with her arms outstretched. Curious bystanders backed away with her movements, but craned their heads to look over her shoulder as they backed up. Myers picked up bits of conversation as she guided the crowd back to the curb.

“Did you see any blood? It feels like way too many officers for this.”

“The road sister that called it in kept calling the person a demon or some sort. It must be a gruesome sight.”

“How did nobody see what happened? This is a pretty busy street, even at night.”

“It hadta been one of them Yeggs that come out of that speako ‘cross the street. They all a buncha freaks that hang ‘round there.”

After several minutes of pushing the crowd back, a tap on Detective Myers’ shoulder grabbed her attention. A short and freshly green officer stood behind her, nervously holding his police cap in his hands.

“Detective Myers? Y-y-you need to go to the vic, m-ma’am”, he stuttered out nervously.

“I’d gladly do my job if I had some help to keep back these damn peepers”, Myers grumbled, grabbing an overly curious onlooker by their scruff and pushing them back into the mass behind her.

“I-I-I can take over missus. The chief is very adamant y-you head on over.”

Sadie nodded her thanks and swapped places with the skinny rookie and headed to the phone booth. As she drew closer, she noted the lack of blood that she’d expected to see with such a strong showing of coppers. The phone booth itself looked practically normal with a slight orange hue fogging the windows to the booth so that the interior was hard to make out clearly. The door to the rectangular booth were closed and 3 officers blocked the entry with serious expressions written on each of their faces.

The chief was one of the men, a tall man with a bushy gray stache, a lanky physique, and sharp eyes that could see through any perp’s bullshit. Despite his age, most of the officers knew that he could kick their ass to the curb handily and plenty of them had pissed him off enough to be given an example. Myers hadn’t done anything to piss off the chief yet, but he still looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon whole as she joined the pow-wow.

“Dick Myers, ‘bout time you joined the team.” Chief Bartlett snorted and spit to the side in frustration.

“Apologies there Chief. The gawkers were out of control.” Myers masked her annoyance by lighting another cig. “So, what’s the story?”

One of the men, Detective Hamlin, chuckled at her question. Sadie rolled her eyes, already expecting his snarky dumbass remark. “I don’t know if a dame like you could handle what’s in there Myers. It’s.. hmm, how to put this…”

“Fuckin’ otherworldly” piped the other officer. Sadie didn’t recognize him, but unlike the casual nature of the Chief and Hamlin, he looked positively raddled by what he’d seen. “That’s an abomination is what it is.”

“Enough.” Chief Bartlett stroked his moustache, his telltale sign of deep thinking. “See for yourself, Ms. Myers. Hopefully you can make sense of this mess.”

The chief made a swiping motion to have Hamlin and the other guy step aside before opening the door for Sadie. Not much phased Detective Myers, but she gasped when the door opened and she got a proper view of the body within. The figure inside the booth must’ve been a human at one point as they were dressed in the attire of a diner waitress with a short dress that was covered in the stains of a full day’s shift. Their body, however, was coated in a thick matte of blonde fur reminded Sadie of the fluffy exterior of a golden retriever. Their back legs bent at an odd angle, stuck somewhere between the thickness of a human’s legs but with the reverse legs of a dog. The feet and hands were still human in shape, but gnarly pads had torn through the flesh and the nails of each appendage extended farther than they should. The nub of a tail limply poked into the back of the short waitress dress as the woman… creature… thing laid in a pitiful fetal position. The most jarring aspect of the figure was the face which was coated in fur and extended into a snout, but still had the clouded blue eyes of a woman in fear and pain. If Sadie had to sum up what she was seeing, it was like someone had mixed a dog with a human and stopped the process halfway through. Or… died halfway through.

“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes…” Hamlin shook his head, the tough-guy bravado gone. “What the hell is that thing?

“That is a poor woman who had a brush with evil,” the chief said, stepping back from the booth and lighting a cigar.

Detective Myers gulped, the only outwards sign that the disturbing scene rattled her. “Do… do we know the identity of the vic yet?” She was met with silence as the men shared glances with each other and then back to her. Sadie sighed and stood back up. “I could see why.. who was the first one to find the body?”

After deliberating with the officers on scene, Detective Myers was given more details into the oddity of this . An older man living in an apartment complex at the intersection heard screaming and looked out his window to see the phone booth filled with some sort of orange smoke. Afraid of a fire, he rushed out to put it out but was surprised to find it all cleared inside minus the dead body. He used the phone to call the police and they arrived within the hour. They were afraid of some sort of chemical gas at first, which is why it took so long before they called her in, but they tested the air and found no harmful toxins or pathogens.

“It had to be a gas of some kind though. I’m sure of it” said the unknown officer whose badge read Jefferson. “Maybe this is some kind of terrorist.”

“Hmpf, in this backwater city? No, this is the work of some mad scientist more likely.” Chief Bartlett puffed a long thoughtful tug of his cigar before continuing. “Myers, this case is all yours.”

Hamlin breathed a sigh of relief and smirked over at Sadie. Clearly, he wanted nothing to do with this case. Frankly, neither did she. “Chief, you just put me on another case yesterday that I’ve run myself ragged on. You can’t expect me to juggle around another one.”

Chief Bartlett’s eyes narrowed, either in thought or anger at her pushback. “Which… case did I put you on again?” Ahh so he couldn’t even remember what measly case he gave her the day prior. Excellent.

“The missing woman at the laundromat. Mrs. Barrows sir.”

“I’ll take that over if you wish, Chief. I haven’t got anything on my plate” Hamlin stepped in with a wolfish grin.

Chief Bartlett nodded absentmindedly and headed back to his car. “I want a report on your initial findings by tomorrow afternoon Dick Myers. Let’s figure out what the hell is going on in this city of ours.”

Hamlin, still grinning like a fool, followed suit and soon it was just Detective Myers alone at the scene with petty officers nearby. After all the leg work she put in yesterday… she couldn’t say she was shocked though. Any ‘unsolvable’ cases generally landed on her lap these days. She was lucky sometimes, but more often than not, she just ended up with a long list of cold cases. This was looking like another one.

Sadie knelt down to the body once more to give it a proper examination. The fur on the dog/human hybrid was fine and very short, almost like a freshly trimmed head. The muzzle was pronounced, but the human nose could clearly still be made out in the snout and the haunting eyes were anything but doglike. As far as she could see, there were no puncture marks to suggest an injection of some sort. So, as Jefferson suggested, the gas definitely seemed like the most plausible answer… but how did the gas get into the chamber in the first place?

A loud clink drew Sadie’s attention away from the booth and to the curb a little further down the street. A small cylinder of some sort perched precariously over the open street gutter. Sadie quickly got up and grabbed it before it could fall in. The palm-sized gray cylinder was shaped almost like a lantern with an open lip at the bottom. A orangeish liquid pooled around the open lip and Sadie noticed that some of the liquid had gotten on her hand. She wiped her hand on her pants legs to remove the mysterious liquid and placed the object in a small evidence bag for later.

Nearby, in the dark shadows of an alley overlooking the intersection, a small figure watched the detective inspect the scene. The trenchcoat of the figure flapped in the wind as they walked away from the spectacle with a sinister smile on their face. Soon….