Thousands of footsteps have trampled this grassy verge into a muddy moonscape. They haven't had chance to start moving the bodies when he arrives. There must be dozens. Hard to tell when they're scattered in little bits all over the place. A hand lies in a pool of brown water. The rain pours.
Some officers are struggling to cordon off the area. How wide do they go? This whole park is a crime scene. The perpetrator of this massacre is still out here, somewhere.
Festival security is already being questioned. Witness statements are being taken. But he knows, they all know, more or less what happened here.
He looks down at deep grooves in the mud. Claw marks. It went off into the treeline when it was done.
Tracing back, to the epicenter of the violence, he finds a crater where the earth is scorched black. Fractal runes are scorched at warped angles, emanating from where the possession happened and firing out in all directions like fragmentation. They sizzle and burn with a red, negative energy, inside the earth, the cloth of a fallen pride flag, and the corpses of two festival goers unlucky enough to be stood close by.
He looks up at the towers that ring the stage and the area in front of it, and the large, flat panels that sit snugly between the speakers.
'Why didn't the alarms trigger?'
'Someone sabotaged their control unit,' says the sergeant behind him. 'We have the security team detained.'
Why would anyone do that? Terrorist attack? That's what the police will be thinking. Or some nutjob possessed. Someone like him.
The sergeant does a poor job of concealing his contempt.
'So can you smell it?'
The thing inside his chest stirs. It can sense one of its own nearby. A rival predator, on it's turf.
'Oh yes,' he says, looking at the treeline ahead. 'It's close. Best go get your paladins.'
Paddy Dobson
1st June 2022