The Week of the Witch

Finn takes on a serial killer... and finds something worse.

Author’s note: This is Episode 3 of a brand-new Thorfinn Grimm ongoing story. Here’s a link to the full index so you can catch up on previous adventures. Enjoy!

(Image via Pexels/Edited on Canva)

I fell off a building. It was after I’d just solved a case and apprehended the culprit at the end of a daring rooftop chase. I was monologuing about how I’d done it and took a step in the wrong direction. All I remember is a scream and then a black void, from which I awakened to the light of a hospital room.

The really surprising thing was that, with the exception of a few cuts and bruises, I was perfectly fine. The doctors were baffled to find that there was no internal damage whatsoever. I attributed it to the fact that I’m cursed, but they weren’t happy with my diagnosis and insisted that I spend a week in a hospital bed. After some negotiation, I got my sentence reduced to house arrest.

The long and short of it is that I was not allowed to leave the flat for one whole week, with my roommate Pippin and my landlady Mrs Kruger as my determined jailers. And during that time, I found myself in the cross-hairs of a malevolent force that held the whole world in terror.

By now, I’m sure many of you would have heard of the notorious Night Witches and their elaborate international scheme. A lot of the details are public knowledge but I’m repeating them here anyway so that you can have a proper perspective on what really happened.

It all started when my old friend, Inspector Faiza Ahmed, decided to drop by. She had been one of the people in the audience when I took my unfortunate dive and was visibly shaken.

“This is a miracle, Finn,” she insisted. “Look at you, just sitting in that chair like nothing happened, and after a fall like that. I can’t believe I was there. It’s completely changed my whole worldview.”

“Never mind that, please tell me you have a case,” I begged her. “I feel so trapped and helpless. I’m alone with my thoughts a lot, Faiz, and they are not friendly.”

Faiza wasn’t sure I could handle a case, especially since I couldn’t actually do any of the legwork. But she did have a case she simply couldn’t refuse help on.

“You know the rapper BigZ?” she asked. “Of course you do, she’s a music icon. Well, she was. Until this happened yesterday.”

She showed me a video on her phone. It was BigZ alright, but this was no music video. The rap superstar was gagged and tied to a chair, her always-perfect makeup running in streaks down her face. There were blocks of C4 strapped to her body.

“We are the Night Witches,” a metallic voice said in the background. “She is the first, but she will not be the last. Six shall fall before the circle closes. You have been warned. All hail Mistoffelees, king of the night.”

And then she exploded. The video cut off and I was left with a sour taste in my mouth and a profound sense of wrongness.

“Before you ask, it all really happened,” Faiza said. “BigZ disappeared a few hours before. She was in an empty office building downtown. Nobody else got hurt but BigZ was completely incinerated. Just… charred bones.”

It was strange. This group, the Night Witches, kidnapped a beloved celebrity and made no demands, issued no ransom. They didn’t even make a political statement. There was no conceivable benefit to them. The only explanation was that this was all part of some occult ritual, but that was absurd. Wasn’t it?

“They’re going to do it again,” said Faiza. “No doubt about that. ‘Six shall fall’, remember. BigZ’s death happened on the new moon so we think the circle they’re talking about must be the lunar cycle. They’re going to kill five more people within the month. Unless we catch them.”

It sounded easy enough.

“I’m sure a case like that justifies me leaving the flat,” I reasoned. “This is the greater good we’re talking about.”

I was sure Pippin would understand, and as I thought about him, the man himself entered the scene. As soon as he walked into the flat, he shut the door and double-checked the locks. He was breathing heavily, leaning against the wall for support.

“I think I was just kidnapped,” he said.

Once he’d regained his bearings, Pippin sat in his usual chair and told us what had happened. It was on his way back from class. He was walking towards the train station when a black limousine stopped right in front of him. The driver ushered him in and took him around the block. Inside the car was a woman who, in Pip’s words, “scared the $£%&” out of him.

My interest was piqued. Ever since Mrs Kruger’s husband was assassinated by a sniper, I had been on the trail of the shadowy organization responsible, a ghost that haunted every recess of the criminal underworld, yet remained undetected by the world at large. This sounded like it could be the break I needed.

“She was dressed all in black,” Pippin said. “Like a character out of Addams Family. I honestly couldn’t tell you how old she was. She had that sort of a face, you know? Anyway, she wouldn’t tell me her name but she said she’s very interested in you, Finn. She offered me an insane amount of money to spy on you.”

“Oh,” said I, rather disappointed. “That’s just my sister, Freya. What did you tell her?”

“I said I would think about it and she said she’d be in touch.”

“Good call,” I told him. “She’s been accused of half a dozen murders. I wouldn’t cross her if I were you. We can spend the money on a new gaming system.”

“Excuse me,” Faiza interrupted. “Are you telling me your sister is a murderer?”

“Alleged murderer,” I stressed. “Nothing was ever proven, or ever will be knowing her. She’s supposed to be in Iceland but this is just the sort of thing she would do.”

“So does this sort of thing happen often?” Pip asked. “Because as your roommate, I’d like to know if I’m at risk of frequent kidnappings by homicidal relatives of yours.”

“No more than with any other roommate,” I shrugged. “Now can I please leave the flat to investigate a potential serial killer who may or may not be a coven of witches?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Mrs Kruger’s making dinner.”

Two days later, the Night Witches claimed their second victim. This time, it was football sensation Leo Reynaldo, similarly murdered in an explosion in downtown Los Angeles. Reynaldo’s death made this an international case, and soon it was all anyone was talking about.

“You’ve got to let me out,” I pleaded with Mrs Kruger during breakfast a few days later. “I should be in LA right now. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“So is your health, young man,” she scolded me. “Now eat your bacon.”

Faiza came by later that day, and this time she brought someone with her. She looked like a supermodel, with a perfectly symmetrical face, ice-blue eyes, long dark hair, and a delicate hourglass figure. Faiza introduced her as Mira Munoz.

“Mr Grimm, I hope you can help me,” she said. “My husband’s life is in danger.”

“You probably haven’t heard but Mira is married to Jai Singh, the Indian-American tech CEO,” Faiza explained. “They got married over a month ago and they’ve stopped here on their honeymoon.”

Here’s what happened: Mira woke up early one morning and found a strange package at the door of their hotel suite. It was addressed to her husband but the staff didn’t know who had delivered it. Not wanting to wake him, she opened it herself and found a strange card inside that made her scream. It was a tarot card… the card of Death.

“We found the same card in BigZ and Reynaldo’s personal effects,” Faiza confirmed.

“Your scream must have woken your husband,” I said.

Mira nodded and said, “He was so mad. But not about the card, he was mad at me! Because I’d opened his mail. I couldn’t understand it. Then I thought about these witch killings and I thought, maybe it’s a warning, you know? Maybe Jai’s next.”

“Was there anything else in the package?” I asked her. “A note, or something?”

She couldn’t recall. Her husband had snatched the whole thing away and refused to talk about it any further. Faiza assured Mira that the police would keep an eye on her husband. I, for my part, promised that I would give the case my immediate attention, and I was more determined than ever to solve the case.

Though I was physically restricted, my mind was still free. For the next few hours, I meditated on the problem, approaching it from every conceivable angle. Eventually, the facts began to coalesce into an idea, one that seemed improbable but not impossible. I needed help to prove it. And I knew just who to call.

“Hello, Grandma Frigg, how are you?” I said. “I know it’s been a long time but I was just thinking about you. It must be lonely now that Freya’s not there.”

“What the hell are you talking about, kid?” my grandmother retorted. “Your nuisance of a sister hasn’t left my house in months. And stop pretending you care about your poor old Grandma Frigg, the woman who raised you, whom you carelessly put out of your mind the moment you got the chance. What do you want?”

She went on like that for a while. I’ll admit, my Grandma Frigg is a rather ill-tempered, emotionally manipulative old woman. She just also happens to be a brilliant computer scientist who was one of the people who helped develop the internet. The years had done nothing to dull her keen mind.

“There’s a video,” I explained. “I need you to verify its authenticity.”

“You could have done this in an email,” she growled. “Send me the footage. I’ll let you know in a few minutes.”

An hour later, my phone pinged with two new notifications. The first was a message from Faiza: Turn on the news. With an uneasy sense of foreboding, I switched on the TV and was immediately hit with images of a building on fire. Jai Singh was dead.

There was another video, which the news channels played on repeat. It was more or less the same as before. “Six shall fall before the circle closes.” “All hail Mistoffelees, king of the night.” I felt horrible thinking about poor Mira and what she must have been feeling. Then I looked at the second notification.

It was an email from my grandmother: The video is a fake.

It took a lot of work, but by the next day, I had all but the final pieces. People always assume that investigative work needs to be done in the field, but more often than not, the real evidence is found in the minutiae.

The poet John Donne once wrote, “No Man Is an Island”. Nowadays, it’s easy to live as an island. But even then, you can’t help the unconscious impressions you make on the world, the currents that bind all pieces great and small of the human archipelago. It’s called paperwork.

A previous case involving a chicken farm and some toxic dyes had led me to the name of a company, which I suspected was a front for the unseen enemy I’d been tracking. That company was called RTT Chemicals, a subsidiary of Macavity Holdings. The name Mistoffelees, which the Night Witches called upon in their phoney rituals, provided the connection between the two cases. All the names were references to the works of T. S. Eliot.

I looked over all the files Faiza had given me on BigZ, Leo Reynaldo, and Jai Singh. There was no obvious connection between them, that was true. However, I found the link hidden behind the various charities and foundations that these celebrities gave their money to. Each of them had indirectly contributed large sums to charities managed by a trust called the Deuteronomy Foundation. A little digging into their personals revealed shocking stories of hidden debt, hushed-up scandals, and PR bombs waiting to drop.

The videos were fake but the explosions were real. The victims were insured, and better off dead than alive. The answer was obvious.

When Pippin returned home, I was on the floor of the drawing-room, gleefully connecting papers with red string.

“They’re not killing them,” I announced without turning around. “They’re saving them from their mistakes by faking their deaths. They’re all probably on some private island starting new lives already. I solved it, Pip! Even better, I think I know why Mrs Kruger’s husband was killed too.”

“Finn,” Pippin said in a measured voice. “She’s here.”

I looked behind me. The front door was open. There was a woman standing behind Pippin, a tall woman wearing a black dress, with long dark hair and a pale face I couldn’t forget if I wanted to. I felt the blood drain from my body, my heart collapse in on itself like a dying star. It wasn’t my sister after all, but she was family.

“Well, Thorfinn?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to hug your mother?”

I fell off a building. If any other person had been in the same situation, they would have suffered broken bones, organ damage, and, in all probability, death. Against all odds, I survived. And four days later, my estranged mother whom I hadn’t seen since I was nine appeared on my doorstep. I told you I was cursed. 

To Be Continued.

And now for an important update: Thorfinn Grimm is going to the printers! I’m currently planning on releasing an anthology book containing revised and edited versions of The Accursed Adventures of Thorfinn Grimm. It’s still early stages but I’m hoping to get the book out by this October. But before I get to work on that, I’d like to hear what you think. All my subscribers will be receiving a reader survey in the coming days, which will help me better plan my upcoming book release. You don’t have to participate, but I would appreciate it if you did. Stay tuned for more!