The Green Death

The Green Death

June 27th, 1997, 11:30 p.m.

Inspector Thomas McGill of K Division didn't believe in magic. As he stood by the doorway of the small, low rent flat, he could not help but be reminded of this simple fact.

Facts, thats what he believed in. What he could see and touch.

At that particular moment he could see the ambulance boys carrying the victim's corpse out on a long white stretcher, a sheet was all that was hiding the body's hideously contorted features.

That was when she appeared.

She seemed to come from out of nowhere and fixed her beautiful dark eyes on him.

"Inspector McGill?" she inquired.

"Yes, ma'am."

She handed McGill an official looking card.

"I'm from Special Branch. I'm supposed to help with your investigation."

"Welcome aboard, Detective Inspector...," he double checked the name on the card, "...Lestrange. Am I saying that right?"

"Close enough," she replied, "but please, call me Bellatrix."

McGill looked at the card again. It certainly looked real. But still, something felt off. Why would Special Branch be interested in this case?

"So Inspector," Bellatrix interrupted his thoughts, "care to fill me in? Or are you going to keep me standing out here all night?"

McGill chuckled and led her into the main room.

"The victim's name," McGill explained, "is Mitchell York. Male, Caucasian, age 32. Suspected cat-burglar and safe-breaker. We know that he's been tied to some Neo-Nazi groups and we're checking that up as one of our leads. We're also trying to contact his girlfriend."

"Cause of death?"

"Offhand, the coroner says it was a heart attack. We won't know for sure until the autopsy."

Bellatrix raised her eyebrow.

"A heart attack," she said, "at 32. You've got to be kidding."

McGill imagined the victim. In his head, he saw how freakishly warped the dead man's face appeared.

McGill knew that something had done that to him. It wasn't just a heart attack. York had been quite literally frightened to death.

Once again, McGill was reminded that he believed in facts, because this case had an almost total lack of them.

___

June 28th, 1997, 12:45 a.m.

It was Bellatrix's idea to go for a drink afterwards.

McGill wasn't sure what to make of this mystery woman. Her behavior was so odd and child-like. He had watched her in the flat and she almost seemed to revel in the fact that someone had died there.

He also watched her while they ordered their drinks. She seemed lost in the bar's menu and asked McGill what he recommended. It was as if she'd been to a bar before, but had never drank anything.

Finally, there was her attitude towards him. She seemed to regard not only him, but everyone she happened upon, with a downward glance and a sneer, as if she somehow felt that they were inferior to her.

McGill realized that Bellatrix noticed he was wearing long sleeves in the June heat. He turned slightly to avoid her gaze and there was an awkward silence between the two. He eyed her beatiful figure as she took her first sip of her drink. Her dislike for whisky became instantly apparent in her face and McGill wondered if he had made the best choice in requesting it.

Finally, Bellatrix broke the silence.

"So, I guess this is why you never married" she said as she gave a bitter look to her glass.

She swigged the rest of it down quickly and stood from her stool.

"Thanks for the drink," she said, "I'm glad we had this talk."

In the blink of an eye, Bellatrix Lestrange vanished from the bar and Thomas McGill didn't bother to persue her.

Sure, she was attractive and all, but he could tell that that woman had issues. Very serious issues.

___

That night, McGill dreamed of total darkness. No floor, no ceiling, only pitch black. All that was discernable was the scratching.

He tried to cover his ears but he found that his arms were in chains and that damned scratching kept getting louder and louder until...

McGill woke up in a pool of his own sweat. He turned over to try and fall back to sleep, but then he froze.

The dream was over, but the scratching continued.

He looked up to his window and saw a bony hand scratching at the glass with talon-like fingernails.

McGill grabbed his revolver from his nightstand and leaped from his bed. Spinning around to face the window, he saw two hypnotic green eyes staring in at him.

McGill aimed his revolver right between the two and fired, shattering the window.

The eyes vanished.

McGill searched the sill but could find no trace of a body on the outside. He sighed and relaxed his grip on the trigger. It was only a warning, to frighten him away.

He had just been paid a visit, and he knew by whom.

___

June 28th, 1997, 9:03 a.m.

"O'Reilly," called McGill as he entered the station, "Bring me the file on the Fu Manchu case!"

A stout constable met him at his desk and delivered the requested file. McGill mentallyabsorbed the file like he had hundereds of times before;

Name: Doctor Fu-Manchu

Full Name: Unknown

Nationality: Chinese

Eyes: Bright Green

Hair: Grey(usually shaved)

Birth Date: Unknown

Known Aliases: Mr. King, The Doctor, The Invisible President

Qualifications: Doctorate in Botany, Master of Hypnotism

-

McGill stopped. Hypnotism, he thought, I wonder.

At that moment, he smelled a rather exotic perfume and realized that Bellatrix was looking over his shoulder.

"You know that case?" it was an odd cross between a statement and a question and McGill was not sure how to reply. But then, everything about Bellatrix Lestrange was odd.

"Fu Manchu is a name not easily forgotten around K Division, Detective Inspector" he said with a hint of bitterness. He noticed that she was eyeing his long sleeves again.

Suddenly, the stout constable ran up to the two of them.

"Sir, we have a problem. Yorke's flat was ransacked last night!"

"What!" shouted McGill "What about the two constables we stationed there?"

"They're dead, sir," said the stout constable "they were frightened to death!"

___

June 28th, 1997, 3:23 p.m.

Allyson was not particularly attractive, but the girlfriend of the late Mr. Yorke seemed nice enough.

"Look, ma'am," McGill said to her, "we'll try to not take up too much of your time since I know this must be hard on you. How long had you been seeing Mr. Yorke?"

"Six months. We havn't...hadn't been getting along lately."

"Why not?"

"Lately he'd been getting into a lot of scary shit."

"Hate groups?

"Yes."

"Can you name any?"

She thought for a second.

"I think he said that he was working for, or his group was working for, some people called the Death Eaters."

McGill made a note.

"Did he ever mention an organization called the Si-Fan?"

"Yes, he was supposed to steal something from them. A doctor I think he said."

McGill made another note. This was starting to make sense.

"How much were the Death Eaters paying him?"

"Nothing. They were supposed to do some kind of favour. Something big."

"Any idea what that favour was?"

"No. Sorry."

Damn. No dice.

"Do you have the names of anyone in the Death Eaters."

"Yes..."

Allyson gave him one real name, and one rather chilling pseudonym.

___

June 28th, 1997, 8:01 p.m.

O'Reilly handed McGill the building's blue-prints and locked the door as he left.

Maybe it wasn't the best of ideas to lock himself in a flat where three people had died in the past two days. It was probably an even worse idea to do so while alone with a woman who was obviously not at the peak of mental health. But McGill had a theory, and he had to be sure.

Bellatrix sat on the dead man's couch, not seeming to mind that it was, in fact, a dead man's couch. Actually, she seemed to be a little too comfortable.

McGill unrolled the blue prints on the floor. Say, that was interesting. The blue prints showed that a small room, which connected to the main room, had been built. But someone had written on the blue-prints, telling that it had been walled up years before. Yes, that was interesting.

"Ugh! How can you dress like that in this weather?" Bellatrix broke his train of thought. Once again, she was staring at his long sleeves.

McGill decided to show her. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a distinctly Eastern dragon design.

"Wow," she said, "it's beautiful. Why do you hide it?"

McGill sighed. Did he really feel like telling her his life story? After all, he hardly knew her and she wasn't exactly the most compassionate person that he'd ever met.

Finally, McGill swallowed his pride and started to tell her;

"When I was still in uniform, I was once ordered to watch this one restaurant. The owner was suspected of dealing with the Triads. As I waited, a long black limosine pulled up less than ten yards from where I stood. A smart chauffeur switched on the inside light, jumped out and opened the door for his passengers. I saw a tall and very dignified man alight: Chinese, but different from any Chinese I had ever met. He wore a long black topcoat and a queer astrakhan cap. He strode into the building and was followed by an Arab girl, or she may have been Egyptian. She reminded me of an Edmund Dulac illustration for The Arabian Nights..."

"What did you do?" Bellatrix asked.

McGill breathed;

"I followed them in. I know I should have reported it first, but I was young. I expected that I could crack the case and become a world famous detective. Young and foolish. They were expecting me inside and I didn't get far before they knocked me out cold.

"I woke to find myself chained up. I saw the strange man's eyes before I could see his face. Green eyes they were, the most brilliant green I'd ever seen."

"Go on" Bellatrix said in a strangely compassionate way. It somehow made McGill uncomfortable to hear empathy in this lovely but wicked creature's voice.

"He didn't say anything," McGill continued, "he took a calligraphy brush. Then he dipped it in acid and painted these damn dragons across my arms and back. Then he stepped back and watched the acid eat away at my skin!"

Bellatrix was strangely silent. Yesterday, McGill would have expected her to giggle at his misery. But she placed her hand on his and said;

"I understand what it's like to be tortured."

McGill took her hand in his.

"I'm not a superstitious man. I don't believe in magic, or the supernatural, or the afterlife. But if there is such a thing as Hell, then I know that it has to be that room..."

He paused.

"...And that man has to be the Devil."

___

June 29th, 1997, 12:56 a.m.

It was a waiting game, but McGill didn't mind. In the past four hours and fifty-five minutes, he felt that he had become more connected to this bizarre beauty than he had become after three years with his last girlfriend. Oh God, I hope my theory's wrong.

McGill checked his watch. The reason that Fu Manchu didn't find what he was looking for on the first night was that the neighbours heard Yorke call out and the theif panicked when he heard sirens. His theory regarding the second night was to be put to the test tonight. He looked over at Bellatrix. She was sleeping soundly on the couch.

McGill realized that he was quite probably falling in love. He knew it would be difficult, that the two of them weren't destined to a "happily-ever-after". But he didn't care. To him it was like one of the noir stories that had led to him becoming a police officer in the first place. She was like the mysterious femme fatale who would come and seduce the hero. He knew that those romances always ended in tragedy, but weren't all the geatest love stories in history tragedies?

But this love story might end sooner than expected, for it was at that exact moment that McGill heard the voice. A deep, sibilant voice. The unmistakable voice of Dr. Fu Manchu.

"Inpector........Inspector......"

McGill tried to block out the sound with his hands, but it kept hammering home.

"INSPECTOR......." it boomed.

McGill could see the Devil Doctor's face forming in the shadows. Those wicked green eyes staring at him and somehow seeing through him.

Bellatrix woke up screaming.

"No," she shouted, "No, keep them away......They can't take me back.......Not to Azkaban.......The Dementors......."

McGill couldn't see her anymore. He was back in Hell, his skin half eaten away by acid. The Devil Doctor watched him impassively, unmoved by the suffering surrounding him.

Then, another voice joined that of the doctor's. A high, snake-like voice which spoke with an evil intonation that challenged even that of Fu Manchu.

"Let them go, Doctor" it said.

Then, the Hell-room disappeared. Bellatrix ceased her screaming. McGill checked himself, his skin was intact.

But standing before McGill was a black-cloaked figure, his face hidden by a hood. Bellatrix seemed to recognize him instantly.

"Master," she called pleadingly, "Master, I did what you said. I brought you the papers and more. I brought you the weapon as well. Please, please don't punish me Master."

The "Master" looked to Bellatrix, then turned his attention on McGill. From the obscured darkness beneath the hood, McGill could feel the figure's cruel eyes examining him. He turned his head and spoke to Bellatrix in bitter, venomous tones;

"We shall have much to discuss. Understand, much to discuss."

That pushed Bellatrix to tears.

"I'm sorry Master," she sobbed, "I'm so sorry Master..."

"As for you, Doctor," the figure called to the walls, "you've lost. I have what is yours, you cannot stop me."

"No Voldemort," the voice of Fu Manchu came from the walls, like spectre taunting a victim, "I have not lost. In fact I believe it was a Westerner who first coined the phrase 'I have not yet begun to fight'. No Voldemort, I have not lost. Not while I still have time to stop you."

"Then use your time wisely, Doctor" Voldemort laughed, "because you won't have a second chance. I fully intend to keep my end of the bargain."

At that, the cloaked figure of Voldemort vanished, and with tears in her eyes, Bellatrix Lestrange disappeared from Thomas McGill's life.

___

June 29th, 1997, 9:25 p.m.

McGill wasted the whole day. He didn't care. It was his way of coping. Thinking about Bellatrix only hurt. He decided instead to concentrate on his work.

His theory had been right, of coarse. He knew it from the moment that Allyson gave him Bellatrix's name and the pseudonym of the Dark Lord Voldemort. In the closed-off room, his men had found a very elaborate audio system that ran to speakers hidden throughout the walls of the flat. So talented was Fu Manchu at the art of hypnotism, that the mere sound of his sibilant voice was enough to influence the weaker minded. He apparently used this influence to make his victims visualize their deepest fears.

McGill didn't like to think of himself as weak-minded. But he believed in facts, and he had to face them. He had visualized that Hellish room. That he could not deny.

Obviously, Voldemort was not so easily influenced. That man had to be uncanny to resist Fu Manchu's hypnotism. What about how he vanished, was that his own brand of hypnotism? Or was it something else?

The reason that Fu Manchu could not find what he was looking for on the second night was that Bellatrix had taken it when she visited the flat on the first night. McGill wasn't sure why she stayed on afterwards. Could she have possibly felt something for him, or was she simply ensuring that he didn't uncover too much?

There he was thinking about Bellatrix again. He had to stop that or he would go crazy.

What about the "bargain" which Voldemort had mentioned? What could that mean? It was obviously the "something big" which Allyson had mentioned, and it would have to be something that Fu Manchu would be opposed to. Come on, he thought, think. Apparently he needed the "weapon" to carry it out. But what was the weapon? No, he was asking the wrong questions. What kind of favour could a man of Voldemort's obvious ability do for a hate group.

Then it hit him. The date. At midnight tonight, Hong Kong would be passed over from British rule to China.

My God, he thought, They're going to sabotage the change-over, and I have less than three hours to stop them!

___

June 29th, 1997, 10:44 p.m.

McGill had put out an A.P.B. on Bellatrix and Voldemort, but wasn't sure how much good it would do. He had seen Voldemort resist a master hypnotist and then vanish into thin air. What could London's finest do against someone like that?

The only thing that McGill could think to do was to comb the most likely place for a battle between those two evil forces to occur in; Limehouse district.

London's Chinatown was busy after dark. The whole place seemed to be riddled with people anxiously anticipating tonight's historic moment. McGill wondered how many of them, if any, knew how thin a thread that moment truly hung from. He was not really sure what would happen. Would the news come that Hong Kong would remain part of Britain? Would the officials in charge of the event be murdered? Would all memory of the event simply be erased from everyone's minds?

Someone tapped McGill on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, mister," said a rather attractive young woman, "do you have a light?"

McGill lit her cigarette. Odd, she was holding it in one of those old fashioned cigarette holders. It looked like it was made from pure jade.

Then McGill noticed her eyes.

Before he could do anything, the woman blew a cloud of green smoke in McGill's face. Everything started to spin. Getting dark.

The last thing that McGill did before every thing went black was look into the woman's face. Those eyes....Those beautiful green eyes. He had heard of this woman before and realized for too late that he had just met the daughter of Fu Manchu.

___

McGill awoke to find himself in Hell and standing before him was the Devil.

Fu Manchu grinned when he realized that McGill recognized him. As if I could ever forget, he thought painfully.

"Constable McGill I believe. Oh, I'm sorry, Inspector," the Devil Doctor said, "I'm pleased that you shall be joining me in celebration. Tonight marks the night that your British kingdom shall return to China what is rightfully China's."

"Not if the Master beats you!" McGill's heart leaped. It was Bellatrix's voice.

Dr. Fu Manchu stepped aside, revealing for McGill the woman he loved.

Bellatrix lay naked, trapped inside and covered by what appeared to be an intricate series of cages. McGill realized that a manacle trapped his own neck.

"Your Master shall not defeat me," said Dr. Fu Manchu, "I have already won. Don't think that he will come to your rescue. This house is under.....protection."

McGill could only guess what that last sentence meant.

"He will find a way," Bellatrix protested, "he won't just leave me here..."

"He will," replied the Devil Doctor, "your Master has already refused to negotiate for your freedom. He has abandoned you."

"He wouldn't....He wouldn't just..."

"Your Master has abandoned you," he repeated, "now I shall use you as an example to other would-be Dark Lords who decide to challenge the name of Fu Manchu."

Fu Manchu walked over to a darkened corner of the room and retrieved a long, beautifully made sword.

"The device, Miss Lestrange, in which you are now trapped is called 'The Six Gates of Joyous Wisdom'."

He lodged the sword into the floor near McGill.

"The first of the six gates is called 'The Gate of Joyous Hope'. The second is 'The Gate of Mirthful Doubt'. The third is 'The Gate of True Rapture' and the fourth is 'The Gate of Gentle Sorrow'.

"You are a strong woman, Miss Lestrange. You endured the horrors of Azkaban prison. I fully expect you, therefore, to make it through to the fifth, 'The Gate of Sweet Desires'. But I think you should know that nobody has ever made it all the way to 'The Gate Celestial'."

"What is the sword for?" McGill asked, eyeing the blade.

"Don't even think of using it on me," said Fu Manchu, "You would not get farther than two paces. The purpose of the sword is simple; if, at any point in her journey through the six gates, Bellatrix decides that she cannot finish, you are to take that sword, stick it through the bars of the device, and end her journey."

Bellatrix inhaled sharply.

"What kind of journey is this?" she asked.

A sly grin formed in the corner of the Devil Doctor's mouth. He retreated into the shadows and for the longest time, all that McGill could see of him were his deadly green eyes.

When Fu Manchu returned to the light, he had in his hands a cage filled with rats.

"They have not been fed in days," he said, "when the device is activated, the rats shall pass through 'The Gate of Joyous Hope' and your journey shall begin with the devouring of your feet. As time passes, each gate shall consecutively open until the rats have finally reached your head through 'The Gate Celestial'. But as I said, no one has ever made it that far."

"YOU MONSTER" shouted McGill. He grabbed the sword and lunged at Fu Manchu.

"Put that down" said the Doctor without even flinching.

Although his mind resisted, McGill could not stop his hands from obeying the command. Damn that hypnotism.

Bellatrix's eyes widened in horror. Not only because of the agonizing death which she anticipated, but also because she realized that she had seen a gree glow exactly like his eyes before. The eyes of Dr. Fu Manchu were exactly the same shade of green as the 'Avada Kedavra'-the curse to kill!

"No," she yelled, "no, stay away from me! Keep those eyes away from me!"

Dr. Fu Manchu was unmoved as he attached the rats' cage to the "Six Gates". He pressed a switch on the side and McGill could tell from the mechanical sound that the process had begun.

"Now, if you will excuse me," said Fu Manchu, "I have some rather pressing buisness to attend to. It is almost midnight."

He shut off the lights before leaving his victims in the dark.

McGill fumbled along the ground for the sword. He touched something for a moment and grabbed it. It was the sword!

Suddenly, Bellatrix let out an agonized scream and in his surprise, McGill dropped the sword. Damn. Also, he knew that his loved one's torture had begun.

He brushed his hand across the floor again. He felt something. Yes, he had found it again.

McGill proceeded to chop at his chain. He chopped and he chopped and he chopped for what seemed like a decade. A small clicking noise told him that another of the gates had automatically opened and another round of screaming came from Bellatrix.

McGill felt the chain. Damn, he thought, I haven't done a blasted thing to it!

Instead, he followed the chain to the wall and began to pick at where they attached.

McGill heard another of those blasted gates open. He continued to pick at the wall. Come on, he thought, break Damn you.

Finally, he broke through, just in time to hear the fourth gate open. He groped about in the darkness, trying to find the cage.

A sharp pain bit through McGill's hand and he knew that he found the six gates.

He began to attack the cage. With every ounce of strength he brought the sword down on the metal death-trap.

Then he heard the fifth gate open.

Bellatrix's cries were almost unbearable.

"Kill me," she shouted, "if you really love me, then kill me now! By the Master, Hell cannot be worse than this!"

McGill continued his assault. Finally, he heard the lock break. He was victorious.

He opened the cage and reached in. He could feel tiny, fur-covered bodies and something soft and wet. The rats bit into his arms and he jerked back in pain. He swiped at the animals, brushing them away and then lifted Bellatrix from her automated coffin. She was limp, unconcious......or worse.

McGill followed the wall until he found the door. He opened it and stepped out into a long hallway with stairs leading up to a door. The corridor appeared to be deserted.

Fu Manchu's victory must not have been as sure as he had bragged, otherwise he would have spared some men to post as guards. Unless, of course, he had planned it this way.

McGill opened the door and walked out into a lamp-lit street. A hooded figure was waiting for them beneath one of the street lamps.

Voldemort approached McGill hurriedly.

"Take your filthy hands off of her, Muggle" he commanded in a bizarre, snake-like voice.

McGill placed Bellatrix down upon the London street. She was covered in her own blood and her skin was hideously torn. McGill swore that he could see bone.

Voldemort hovered over her for a moment, then reached down and picked her up. He turned to leave when McGill called after him.

"Wait," he said, "I have to know, will she make it?"

"She will live," said the Dark Lord without breaking a stride, " she shall be fully healed. Now, get out of my sight, Muggle. You smell like vermin."

Then, for the second time, Bellatrix Lestrange disappeared from the life of Thomas McGill.

___

July 1st, 1997, 9:23 a.m.

"...I fully expect, therefore, that the things I saw were the lingering effects of the hypnotism."

"Are you sure?" said the rather seedy looking interrogator from Internal Affairs.

"Quite sure," replied McGill, "although, if it's alright with the department, I would like to undertake a psyciatric evaluation. Just to make sure there are no more ill after effects."

"Yes, that's a good idea, Inspector. You may go."

McGill left the office in a hurry.

The papers reported that Hong Kong had been passed over to China without incident.

Meanwhile, back home, the "Lestrange Fiasco", as it would later be called, had received a lot of attention from some rather high up government officials. One Minister in particular, Fudge was the name, was paying close attention to the case.

As McGill passed the Commissioner's office, he couldn't help but hear raised voices. Instinctively, he stopped to listen to the conversation.

"How the Hell did she do it! How could she just walk in here..."

"(Would you please keep your voice down Mister Fudge) Apparently, she used some kind of Enchanted I.D. card. Whoever looked at it thought it was genuine."

"And the Inspector?"

"He doesn't seem to realize a thing. We won't need to use a memory charm."

"What about the weapon?"

"We don't know, sir. We can't tell if You-Know-Who still has it or not. The Green-eyed man..."

"Don't tell me your afraid of the Green-eyed man! He's just something our parents told us about to make us behave. He's not real!"

"Someone built that weapon, sir."

"But not by who you think, he doesn't exist!"

McGill shook his head as he walked on. Oh, the things he could tell them about their "Green-eyed man". He still didn't know what that weapon was. Had Fu Manchu retrieved it? Did it still lay in Voldemort's clutches?

Then there was still the subject of Bellatrix. Lovely lovely Bellatrix.

She was gone from his life, probably forever. But he knew that he could find her. That was his job, after all, to find people.

Don't worry, Bellatrix my love, he thought, one day, I will find you.

THE END