Dark Shadows of the Moon

An elderly couple were walking the streets of downtown Seattle late at night trying to find a taxi.

As this night had been their wedding anniversary they decided to be late night owls in their favourite restaurant.

11:30 PM. Monday December 20th.

They window shopped through some of the store windows as they walked down the street trying to locate a taxi.

"That statue there in the pawn shop window," the wife remarked to her husband, "it's quite ferocious looking. Who is it supposed to be a statue of?".

"The demon Rahu," the man looked at the name tag below the statue.

Just then a figure emerged out of the darkness of night and slit the old man's throat.

The wife screamed.


* * *

In Chicago in a pedriatics unit of a leading hospital, one of the nurses thought she saw a mysterious shadow moving and approaching the room where the new borns were kept.

She immediately ran down the hall.

And opened the door.

Just in time to see the shadow like figure smashing a baby's head against the wall.

She screamed.


* * *

New York City.

The attractive and extremely beautiful blonde was dressed to the nines in a very tight fitting red mini dress, black silk fishnet nylons and black spiked stiletto heels.

She had been partying the night away in a posh nightclub.

She decided to step into a back alley to vomit as she couldn't find her way to the washroom and the door that said EXIT rather than Women's had led her to this place.

She vomited.

All those shooters and cocktails didn't feel quite as good going up as they had going down.

She thought she heard a noise.

She looked up.

All she saw there was shadow.

A shadow that moved.

A shadow that raised the knife.

A shadow that slit her throat.

If she wasn't already dead, she'd have probably screamed at that point.


* * *

Inspector Depp of Scotland Yard was also a member of Interpol and thus received police reports from all over the world.

He was looking at a baffling FBI report he had just received.

A series of 372 brutal and bizarre murders had been committed in the United States of America in just a 3 and a half hour time period.

An elderly gentleman with his throat slashed in downtown Seattle. A new born babe had his head bashed against the wall in a Chicago hospital pedriatics unit.
A young and beautiful twentysomething socialite had her throat slashed in New York City. And the list went on.

Any witnesses to the crimes reported seeing a mysterious and swift moving shadow.

No real human form.

Just a shadow.

Inside the office with Inspector Depp was Inspector Depp's good friend the Canadian vampire hunter Dracul Van Helsing.

He had handed the report to Dracul.

Dracul noted the times.

He checked his own watch which was always set to Alberta time- the time of the province of his birth.

"You know," Dracul said, "all these murders were all committed between 11:33 PM Alberta time and 3:01 AM Alberta time the late evening/early morning of December 20th to 21st."

"Is there some significance to that fact?" Inspector Depp asked.

"That was the exact same time frame of the lunar eclipse which this year fell on the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere," Dracul replied.

"Hm, that is interesting," Inspector Depp pinched his lip with a couple of his fingers, "anything significant about the number of murders committed? 372?".

"Well," said Dracul, "the last time a lunar eclipse fell on a winter solstice in the northern hemisphere was in the year 1638. Which is exactly 372 years ago."

To be continued.