Far away from the quiet sunlight of Oakhaven, in the heart of a city that breathed smoke and grit, stood an apartment building on a street that the sun had forgotten. It was 1981, and Detroit felt like it was crumbling into the gray slush of the gutters. The brickwork of the building was black with soot, and the windows were either cracked like spiderwebs or covered in plywood. This was a place where the police only came if they had no other choice, and the air always tasted like exhaust and old rain.
Inside a small room on the fourth floor, there sat a man.
Jack Miller was thirty eight years old. He sat on the edge of a bed that groaned under his weight, the springs screeching like a wounded animal. The air was thick and stagnant, smelling of damp plaster, stale tobacco, and the sharp, clean sting of antiseptic. Greenish mold climbed the corners of the walls, moving toward a ceiling stained with yellow water marks that looked like a map of a country no one wanted to visit.
On a small wooden table next to him sat a bowl of lukewarm water and a pile of white gauze. Jack reached up with steady, heavy fingers and began to pull the bandages away from his head. He did it slowly, his movements practiced and cold.
As the cloth fell away in loops, it revealed the nightmare beneath. His skin had been eaten away not by time, but by a brutality that had left him stripped. What remained was a landscape of raw, red tissue and tight, angry scars that pulled at the corners of his mouth. He was not an old man, but he was a man who had been unmasked by the world. He sat there in the dim light of a single, buzzing bulb, feeling the cool, dirty air of the apartment hit the ruined, sensitive surface of his face. He did not look in the mirror. He had not looked in a mirror for a long time.
On the bed next to him lay a stack of grainy Polaroid photos and newspaper clippings that had been slid under his door an hour ago. One photo showed a boy in a log. Another showed a small brass key resting inside the open chest.
The rotary phone on the floor began to ring. It was a sharp, angry sound. Jack let it ring once. Twice. On the third ring, he picked it up.
"It took you long enough to answer!" the man on the other end snapped. He sounded furious, his voice crackling with a cold energy. "I know you've been sitting there staring at those pictures for twenty minutes, Jack. I know exactly how you're doing. Don't waste my time."
Jack gripped the receiver . "I'm looking at them. What do you want?"
"The local cops in Oakhaven are idiots," the man said. "They're already calling it an accident done by a fk mountain lion. They'll bury the boy, scrub the crime scene, and pretend it never happened because they want their peace back. Why do you think I need you to get there when the cops are already on the scene? Because they are blind, Jack! They want to be blind!"
"If it is a murder, they will find out," Jack rasped.
"No, they will not! They've never seen a monster. You have. You know what to look for because you have lived in the dirt and the crime of this city your whole life. You know what a human being is capable of. Those people in Oakhaven... they do not even know how to scream yet."
The man's tone changed, becoming a bargain. "You find out who did this , who really did this and I give you the names you want. I give you the name of the one that did this to your ... body . The one who stay clean while you rot here. So do we have a deal ?"
Jack looked at the moldy walls and the pile of dirty gauze. He wanted that name more than he wanted his next breath. "We , have a deal " Jack said. Then he hang up the phone
Jack stood up, but he did not grab his coat yet, he didnot rush . Instead, he reached into a small cupboard and pulled out a box of cat food and a carton of milk. He walked toward the dark corner of the room where a small cardboard box sat near the radiator.
Inside the box, three tiny, stray kittens huddled together. They were thin and shivering, found in the alleyway two nights ago. Jack's large, scarred hands hands that had done terrible things carefully poured the milk into the saucer. He set it down gently, watching the small creatures scramble toward the food with desperate, tiny meows. For a moment, his eyes softened, his thumb brushing the ear of the smallest one.
A heavy and impatient honk erupted from the street below.
Jack stood, put on his heavy trench coat, and pulled his wide brimmed hat low to shadow the raw tissue of his face. He walked down the creaking stairs and stepped out into the rain.
A yellow taxi was idling at the allaway . Jack opened the back door and slid inside. A man was already sitting in the corner. He wore a black suit and a thick black cloth tied firmly over his eyes, he was blind . He sat perfectly still, his head tilted slightly as if listening to the rain.
"You are late," the blind man said. His voice was slow, bored, and heavy. "My boss said you'd be down five minutes ago. We're losing time."
Jack sat down, the smell of wet wool and antiseptic filling the cramped car. "I had something to take care of."
"What? Packing your bags?" the blind man sneered, his sightless face remaining fixed toward the front of the car. "We do not need bags where we are going. We need to move."
"I was feeding the kittens," Jack said quietly
The blind man let out a short, mocking laugh. "Kittens? You're going to a murder scene to find a monster, and you're worried about cats? Hurry up and shut the door. The world does not wait for charity, Jack. Especially not yours."
Jack did not say a word. He slammed the door shut, the sound echoing through the empty, dirty street. The taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving the kittens and the moldy apartment behind, heading toward the bright, fake sunshine of Oakhaven.