Blackroot

Blackroot

A Fantasy

by Miranda Mayer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Miranda Mayer

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Dedication: To my papa. I know this book would horrify you, but you’d read it anyway. I miss you.

Renath

When the marechals were ordinarily called to the scene of a gruesome murder, they would collect evidence until the investigators arrived and then hand the scene over to the higher ranked colleagues. However, on some occasions, one glance at the crime scene would cause them to step back and call for Renath. There was one particular type of scene that was automatically assigned to Renath’s special team and that was what they called a blackroot murder. For six years, he’d been following the trail of a rather ghastly serial murderer who liked to make planters out of her victims. Renath was the only one of the three investigators who comprised the team who thought the murderer was a she and not a he. He’d found too much of a feminine touch in the rare clues left behind by the meticulous killer.

This was the nineteenth murder event by the Blackroot Killer. He was happily on a much less traumatizing case when he received notice that yet another set of people had been killed and eviscerated to make room for the telltale blackroot plant. He donned his cloak and left the current scene to Carver and Blenn, his two team members, eager to see the newest product of what had become an obsession for Renath. As he mounted his horse and turned it towards Khairine, where the murders had occurred, he methodically listed in his head all of the small clues he’d memorized over the years; bent on understanding what made this murderer do what she did with such consistency.

Renath was slowly nearing middle age, but had a sort of dignified grace in his features. He was in reasonably good shape for a man in his age and position, sporting an excellent set of legs from his daily walks where he found he could best concentrate. He had a kind looking face; angled and handsome. In his youth, he was quite the heart-breaker in his town; women falling all over themselves to make his acquaintance. His eyes were startlingly pale blue, almost like glass... He had a thick pelt of dark curls on his head, with just a peppering of gray on each of his temples. He lived alone. His wife had come to resent his priorities, often finding herself competing with his work for attention. She left him three years back, in a huff, leaving most of everything and returning to her family overseas. He made no effort to replace his wife after that, finding the seclusion quite easy to bear considering he had spent most of his marriage the same way.

He was always a solitary soul; a man who preferred to be at home studying crime history books rather than joining his comrades in a pint at the local tavern. He was obsessed with his work, so much so, at the end of the day, he brought his work home with him and pored over the details until he couldn’t keep his eyes open a moment longer. His wife had done well to leave him, for he was never really quite there. And when he became fixated on the Blackroot murderer in earnest, she simply could no longer maintain the energy to sustain a marriage on her own any more.

He’d been the first one on the blackroot garden murder case when the first pair had been killed six years before and from that moment, after seeing the most unusual crime scene he had ever seen, he became determined to find the killer. He wanted to know. He wanted to understand. He wanted to fill in the blanks and explain what would cause anyone to do what this killer did. In his mind there was no desire to punish, only to comprehend.

Renath dumped Blenn and Carver at every opportunity, looking at his teammates as burdens rather than assets. He often found that in order to do something right, it was easier to just do it himself instead of tripling the effort by including two bumbling fools who would make a mess of something that he would have to fix it in the end anyway. He merely cut out the unnecessary steps to get a job done, by sending his team members on fools’ errands. He wasn’t the most efficient of workers and hardly ever respected the Marechal policies of operation, behavior and code of ethics. But because he was so good at what he did, the council of elders tended to overlook the complaints from his superiors, if there were any at all. Very few killers eluded the dogged investigator. His only true failure so far (at least in the eyes of the two other team members) was the Blackroot Killer.

They mocked him both overtly and privately for thinking that it was a woman—however Renath knew their own failure to find her was mainly attributed to the fact that they stubbornly stuck to the process of profiling men. They insinuated that his insistence on the murderer being female did nothing for his case and credibility. He took their uninvited opinions in stride—the chiding from his colleagues meant nothing to him. They were but chirping grasshoppers in his scheme of things. Renath knew there was one certainty that erased their disdain; when something came up that was particularly challenging, the elders immediately assigned Renath; not anyone else. It was because they, despite his low opinion of them, saw his value to the outfit and knew what he was capable of.

The first murder event of the Blackroot Killer that Renath had investigated did not appear to be the first of its kind. Renath suspected there was another case or two that had occurred and were not reported or categorized by method as they should have been. It appeared as if the killer had already established a sort of routine, but was still working on fine-tuning it. All of the Blackroot Killer’s murders were horrific and terrible, but somehow, in Renath’s twisted, obsessed perspective, somewhat beautiful and painstaking.

Most of the murders consisted of couples. I didn’t matter if they were man-woman couples or same sex, there were always two—there were a few exceptions along the way, but most of them were the same. Both people were carefully laid parallel to one another on their backs, hands pressed against their ears, most of the time, tied there by whatever rope or string or ribbon was available at the crime scene. Both would be carved open from the split in the rib cage to the groin and the soft contents of the torso carefully removed and disposed of, most of the time in the water collection urn outside, under the gutter’s drainpipe if the house happened to have one, otherwise in stone sinks or whatever other urn or container could hold the mass of organs.

The killer cleaned these victims with obsessive care and then the process that gave the killer her name; she would fill the empty body cavities with soil and then place in them mature blackroot plants. The plant was a very soft, velvety leafed ground cover often used to decorate stone planters, for they tended to cascade beautifully over the edge and the leaves, generally a dark purple-black, when ruffled by the wind, would flutter, revealing lovely flashes of the rich blood burgundy of the underside. In its natural habitat, on the floor of the forest, the plant would vine across the ground, or string down the sides of walls in elegant swags. The plant however, had its own vile quality that made most people turn their lip at it. Whenever the crawling plant came into contact with a rotting carcass, it would sprout roots from the vines and take root on it. The only time it actually bloomed and pollinated was when it could dig its roots into the dead remains. Otherwise, it just crept along with its vines in search of something deceased to latch onto, the core of the plant still buried in the remains of something long-dead.

The flower itself was one of the most beautiful blossoms. The plant would shoot up long stems and much like an orchid, a row of pea sized buds would appear, quickly following with a glorious stand of scarlet colored flowers that looked like delicate butterflies, the petals a blood red, the throat a deep, velvety purple. These glorious flowers would bloom one atop the other on an elegant stem. It wasn’t hard to see why people related Blackroot plants to death. But even Renath couldn’t deny the poetic beauty of such a plant that shines most when feeding from death.

Renath had pondered for many an hour on why she used this plant and why she turned her victims into planters. He suspected it had something to do with finding beauty in the death of those who she killed, but that would mean, he supposed, that she was tormented by ‘them’ whomever it was that made her the way she was. Another of her habits was to pluck four of the soft, velvety leaves of deep purple, rimmed in very bright minty green and she would press the leaves onto the eyes of her victims. It looked very disturbing to anyone who beheld these human planters, lying on the ground, flat, save for the steepled elbows being held in place by the hands, which were tied to the head and the faces stared blankly upwards with almond shaped leaves for eyes. Very disturbing indeed.

She stripped them naked too; he noted. Baring them and displaying their vulnerability. Humiliating them. The strange thing was that she would pile a bit of dirt on the man’s genitals if there was a male at that particular event and plant a separate blackroot on that too. Renath believed she had a sad history with men, perhaps was abused and sodomized by one and that resentment was manifested by this ritual of having the plant consume his manhood as well. He often saw other murders where the killers acted out their anger from childhood abuse or rape by mutilating the genitals of their victims in one way or the other. But the fact that she chose to do so to a man was not what made him believe she was female, for many male killers had been known to commit such acts against their victims for suffering the same sort of thing as a child. What convinced Renath that this was a woman he was dealing with was the very nature of her method. The emotionality of it. He’d seen scrupulous and methodical killers before, but these murders had a feminine tone to them; the emotional being of a woman being expressed. Men expressed pure anger, mostly and especially with such crimes, they would be very brutal. The Blackroot Killer killed her victims right off, no torture, no slaughter and no prolonged enjoyment of others’ pain. Their deaths were only a small part of the whole picture. The canvas upon which she would paint her message. Most of the time, the murdered people themselves were the message, although some murderers did attempt to show some intent and expressiveness with their choice of methods. They never did however, in his fifteen years at this job, ever create a more artful way to murder someone.

He found himself, as time passed becoming more and more intrigued with this mysterious creature. He even caught himself looking forward to arriving at crime scenes and chastised himself quietly as he began to study the circumstances of her latest ‘oeuvre’. Now he headed to yet another production courtesy of the Blackroot Killer and he found himself wondering what new little thing he would notice this time, perhaps. Like last time. She had swept and tidied the place. She seemed to enjoy the scene for as long as she could, sometimes doing mundane tasks, like washing the dishes in the home. She did not like the messiness of the blood and it was never there when the bodies were discovered. She always cleaned up the floor around her victims and straightened furniture if it had been upset by a struggle. One time, she drew a little blackroot flower in the dust from the hearth. Only he had noticed it and he’d made a mental note of it before he dutifully knelt before it and sneezed it away, keeping it a little secret for himself.

As Renath dismounted from his rather large and ungainly half-draught horse, the young woman named Illia, a Marechal apprenticing to be an investigator scurried up to Renath, eager to speak to him. She was assigned to him, but he rarely spent any time with her like he did with his two partners. He would send her on all sorts of errands and projects that would devour most of her time and keep her out of his hair. She seemed very excited to see him, which only made him more annoyed at the sight of her pretty red-cheeked face, vivacious glistening eyes and her gleeful smile.

Master Renath, she breathed, loping to him with a youthful exuberance that nearly made him retch. I’ve got something very, very interesting for you! she squealed. He tied his horse to a post, glancing at the shuffle of marechals, local government militia and just plain nosy neighbors hovering around the ornate home wherein the crime had been committed. I heard that there was another of the blackroot garden murders and I knew you’d be here, she rambled, annoying him further. I wanted to show you this. She held up a loose roll of various parchments. You told me to investigate the Blackroot’s methods and see if anyone reported similar crime scenes before the first one and I found three! Renath actually turned his attention to the girl as soon as he heard her words and snatched the scrolls from her hand. He turned on his heel and walked away from the crime scene, frantically unrolling the parchments. The girl followed in a run, hair flouncing with each step. He’d sent many a marechal and apprentice after this information and not a single person had been successful in finding anything. He was afraid to hope, but he could not help himself.

Each one of these crimes has been committed outside of the royal marechal corps’ jurisdiction. Two in Indrios of all places, which you know as well as I, hasn’t got half as good a militia and enforcement corps as we do, so it’s pretty obvious they simply didn’t follow through with anything on it. Each killing is from a different province and they never sent out bulletins describing the murders in order to see if they matched anything else, she blabbered, breathless as she ran to keep up with Renath, whose eyes ran back and forth over the various parchments. He would lick his finger and lift one page up, flip it over to the next and then back to the first again, consuming the contents voraciously. Fortunately for the relay, I managed to get that information with surprising ease and simplicity. The third murder, or perhaps more accurately, the first one committed on record (that I could find) wasn’t even investigated. The bodies were found by militia in Ainoth, the crime scene noted and described and it ended there. They did nothing to identify the killer or anything. It seems by the notations on their reports that these people were not well liked by the community and they simply saw no worth in following through on an investigation for two people who were better off dead in their eyes. That is typical of the attitude there, no sense of justice, so crooked and unfair, she sighed, finally coming to a stop next to Renath, who’d already found the report from Ainoth and was reading it carefully.

Excellent work, Illia. Truly excellent! Renath offered her the first praise he had ever presented to the girl. She’d always wished for even the slightest sign of approval and his words made her eyes fill up with prideful tears. She turned her face downward a bit, biting her lip to hide her grin, hoping he wouldn’t notice her blush. Excellent, he reiterated as he read on. He was sincerely pleased by her undaunted focus on the tasks he gave her and he had to admit to himself that despite her youthful spirit and prettiness, she was very good at doing what she was told to do, no matter how bizarre the request and she always came through. She was as dogged as he, it appeared. He put his large hand on her head and ruffled her silky, mahogany hair affectionately.

Arrange transport to Ainoth, Illia. I’d like to see the scene if it’s still there. It’s a full year before the first murder I investigated. But perhaps even just the town or the location could yield some clues.

What of the Indrios killings?

There’s nothing much different from the ones we already know of, save for a few minute differences. What intrigues me is this one, he held up the set of papers relating to the Ainoth murders, his face brighter and cheerier than Illia had ever seen. This one has the smell of a first murder, Illia. He tapped her shoulder with the roll of papers, his features turning very intense and serious. There’s sloppiness and carelessness in it, our killer had yet to refine her method and there are also various signs of brutality in this murder that indicates that perhaps these victims are the source of it all. He sent her off with a gesture and the girl broke into a run, crossing the shuffle of people. Renath tucked the parchments in his tunic and entered the house, following the deep, rich aroma of Blackroot flowers – strong enough to overpower the coppery scent of curdled blood.

* * * *

Look, Renath whispered, pointing to a rather large stone urn by the hearth. Illia noted it on her paper, eyes locked on Renath who pored over every square millimeter of the place. The militia of the Northhill region of Ainoth had been all too glad to show the visitors the house where the first murders had occurred. It was long since abandoned, ramshackle and viewed by the local townspeople as a haunted and scarred place. The path leading to the