Chapter One
The night was cool and breezy. The rain was drizzling lightly and lazily. The moon was full and beautiful, with a handful of stars scattered all over the sky – all of which innocently shielded the evil lurking around the corner, and which was soon to devastate the peaceful city.
Nancy and her boyfriend, Pete, were at the local pub enjoying drinks with friends after a hard day’s work. Pete was talking excitedly with a few friends clustered around their table. Nancy was sitting absent-mindedly with a glass of whiskey in her hand.
“Hey Pete, I’ve been trying to get your attention fully here for the past ten minutes”, Nancy suddenly said to Pete after tugging at his shirt several times.
“Sorry, babe”, Pete grunted and continued in animated discussion with the guy on his right.
“I’m trying to talk to you, Pete! It’s urgent, please. Can we go home now?" Nancy continued.
“Babe, we just arrived; OK, give me another five minutes; I promise we’ll be gone."
The next thirty minutes still saw Pete engrossed in a deep discussion with his friends, occasionally sipping his drink and completely ignoring Nancy.
It was as if Nancy was never present at the small gathering, as she was reticent and entangled in her thoughts.
She appeared to have been violently jolted out of her reverie by loud, raucous, squawky laughter from Pete.
Suddenly, Nancy flared up in anger and began to yell at Pete. Embarrassed, Pete tried to calm her down, but Nancy refused to be quiet, saying that Pete had taken her for granted for far too long and didn’t care about her feelings and problems.
Nancy accused Pete of not giving her enough attention but seemed happy and excited, being markedly distracted by the presence of other ladies and friends in the pub.
She felt particularly hurt because she had a pressing issue for which she urgently needed Pete’s advice, but Pete was not forthcoming.
Friends sitting around the big round table tried to talk to her, but she refused to be calm.
Pete apologised and said, “I’m sorry, babe. Can we go now?” Refusing to accept Pete’s condescending and belated apology, Nancy triggered Pete’s anger. Both began to shout and scream violently at each other, to the dismay of friends and other pub users.
"Hey, hey! Pete, stop it, calm down, mate, get a grip of yourself; this isn't a shouting competition," Johnny, Pete’s friend, quickly scolded him.
"Please, take Nancy home now, my friend; we'll talk tomorrow, alright?" he continued, tapping Pete on the shoulder.
As the argument raged, Nancy stormed out of the pub, heading home, about a fifteen-minute drive from the pub.
As Pete was trying to drain his glass and bid his friends goodbye and not quite five minutes after Nancy left, a loud, high-pitched scream pierced through the night, drawing everyone’s attention towards the direction of the source of the sound.
Some of the night revellers cowered in fear, wondering what could have made such a blood-curdling scream while expecting the worst.
The courageous amongst them began to tip-toe cautiously towards the direction of the scream.
The image that assaulted their sight at the scene on the street was gory – there laid Nancy's mangled and difficult-to-recognize body on the wet road.
A light rain drizzled on the body, washing away the blood a few centimetres down the road. The lifeless body in the pool of blood was sordidly mashed up, with the bones destroyed and jutting out in some parts of the body.
A very disgusting sight, indeed! The only giveaway proof of the identity of the owner of the body was Nancy’s dress, including her shoes.
Grief-stricken Pete was inconsolable at the scene. He blamed and held himself unforgivably responsible for the death of Nancy.
His friend, Johnny, invited the police and briefly explained the situation on the phone.
In a few minutes, a couple of police vehicles with an ambulance arrived, with the tyres screeching to an abrupt stop. The usual red and blue lights at the top of the cars rotate and glow in the dark, wet night. The sirens only stopped blaring after a while.
The police immediately swung into action, first, by cordoning off and designating that portion of the street a crime scene.
The paramedics carted away the decapitated body of Nancy after they, the police, had taken photographs of the surrounding area, in search of evidence, dusted every available material for fingerprints, and completed other initial crime scene operations.
Carrying out these police operations was particularly difficult, and little was expected from them given that the rain may have washed away or somehow distorted some of the evidence at the scene.
Pete and a few others of his friends, including Johnny, who made the emergency call, accompanied the City Police officers to their office for further interrogation.
*****
Nancy Cassidy and Pete Arlington met in college many years ago. Their paths crossed during Nancy’s first year in college, and Pete was one year ahead.
Their story was that of love at first sight, which I never thought was possible before then. Pete was a plain, muscular and athletic young man who played rugby for the school.
He was stocky and handsome, with an unblemished complexion; he was also brilliant and never missed classes and assignments except when he was on rugby assignment with the school team.
Pete was one-point-six-three metres tall and dressed elegantly most of the time. He possessed a likeable personality and was loved by all because of his carefree and easy-going attitude.
He was a highly disciplined and well-focused fellow who never trifled with his studies, always submitting his assignments on time and schedule.
Nancy was a smashing beauty in her own right, at almost the same height as Pete. She's equally good with her books and studies, making it easy to strike it off with Pete.
They could maintain and nourish the relationship by constantly being together, mostly in the library, reading room, refectory, etc.
Many male students had made a go at Nancy several times but were rejected by her because she wasn’t yet ready for any relationship, according to her.
She wanted to get a grip on things and her studies at college before engaging in any emotional adventure in which such a relationship would result.
She rebuffed, albeit very politely and courteously, as many as had the heart and courage to approach her. She became many things to many people: proud and pompous, arrogant and enigmatic, unaffectionate and rude.
Nancy didn’t seem to mind as her eyes focused on the ball. Like Pete, she was a serious student who never took her studies lightly; she excelled in class.
Though hot but certainly not the hottest, Pete was the lucky guy, and other students, mainly those who had tried and failed to win her love, never stopped to wonder and ask why Pete, of all the good-looking kids on the block, got accepted by Nancy.
In turn, Pete did everything to ensure Nancy was happy and never regretted her choice; and she was easy to please by Pete because she was also madly in love with him.
Years after college, they were still together and planning their wedding before tragedy struck, which saw the most gruesome murder to date in Dosar.
A couple of hours before Nancy’s death, she received a job offer which she desperately needed to discuss with Pete and seek his advice, since the job may involve her leaving town for a couple of weeks while on training.
She had hoped to celebrate and discuss the offer with Pete at the pub but regretted that decision when they arrived.
She regretted coming to the club to have the conversation with Pete because of the large crowd of their friends and acquaintances who had gathered only a short time after taking their seats at a corner table.
And she knew it was impossible to celebrate the new job and listen to Pete’s advice given her many friends in the pub. The absence of privacy with Pete increased her worries, as she needed to decide quickly.
Those friends were not only boisterous and unreasonably garrulous, given Nancy’s urgent need for a degree of privacy, but were also exuberant and careless.
The sad thing was that Pete played into their hands by completely failing and neglecting to give Nancy the attention she hungrily craved that night.
The events of this night, no one knew or foretold, would eventually set the pace for the onslaught of catastrophic dimensions which were to envelope the city of Dosar going forward. They were as eerie and blood-chilling as they were gruesome and cruel.
