The shopfront still had a ‘For Lease’ in the window but activity inside negated this sign. A group of kids, noisy and nosey, were pressed up against the window, watching the goings on. The air around them fairly pinged with eager anticipation.

The group broke apart suddenly, all members scooting across the footpath to stand by the gutter. As they did, the shop door swung open and a disembodied voice cajoled them. “Come in, kids, come on, come in.”

None of the children moved. The voice gathered in the doorway and coalesced into a thick-set man not much taller than the tallest amongst them. He didn’t seem that old and had the sort of face that is was both non-threatening and instantly forgettable. His longish hair was pulled back into a pony tail. He was dressed simply in jeans, sneakers and an X-Men t-shirt.

The lure of all the wonderful goods in the shop urged the kids into action and, one by one, they slipped through the door and into the shop.

Inside, the old fittings had been stripped away and shelves lined the walls. These were stuffed with comics, graphic novels, books and paperbacks. In the middle of the shop stood an array of easy chairs and at the far end stood a big glass counter with a cash register parked on one side. Behind the counter, large posters of Batman, Superman, various X-Men and numerous other comic characters decorated the wall.

The glass counter housed action figures and statues of various comic characters, seemingly frozen while in action. All of the kids were standing in front of the counter, silent and spell-bound by the suspended-in-action figures. Eventually they broke away, each drawn to a different attraction around the shop. Their silence was unusual and almost reverent.

The shopkeeper moved among them, humming and nodding as the children looked at him for permission to touch. Soon, all except one boy had their noses buried in a fantasy of their choice. The boy wandered between the shelves, unsure of which superhero exploits he wanted to read.

The shopkeeper noticed this and guided the boy to a lone rack in the back corner of the shop.

 “I think you would really like this one,” he said, pointing to a comic in the rack. It has all the things a little boy could ever want from a comic.”

The boy couldn’t quite see the cover. The light in the corner seemed to be dimmer than everywhere else and as the boy got closer, the corner got darker. He reached out to touch the comic in question. For a second, he smelt something really bad, like a rotten nappy smell. It faded as soon as his hand touched the comic.

The cover featured a street scene with its focus on a shop front, not unlike the shop he was in now. The window of this shop was dark but in the corner, the artist had cunningly hidden something shadowy and evil-looking. The door to the shop stood slightly ajar. The boy felt like someone had poured ice water down the back of his shirt. He shivered and looked over his shoulder. His mates were lounging in the chairs, enthralled by their selections.

He looked down and was a little surprised to see he was now holding the comic. He didn’t remember picking it up. He felt thick and slow, like he was being suffocated and little stars pinged around the corners of his eyes. The dark corners of the shop expanded outwards, like sentient shadows. The boy squeezed his eyes shut, praying this was his imagination.

When he opened them again, the shop was back to normal. His friends, stimulated and chatty, were comparing notes on their various finds. He moved to one of the chairs and sat down. He felt relieved but was unsure what happened. Maybe it was one of those figments his mother went on about. He opened the comic and began reading. He was soon swept away with the story.

Behind the counter, the shopkeeper grinned, clapped his hands together in seeming delight and nodded to no one.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Rogues stood at the door of the morgue. He reached out to push the door open but hesitated. He hated this part of the job. He could never be one of those cops he saw on television, someone who had seen so much in their time nothing got to them. ]

He recalled every single dead body he’d seen in his career, from the road accidents to the murdered. He had reconciled himself with fact he would always see them and found small relief in the idea he had helped ease the pain of loss felt by a lot of the family and friends of those whose deaths he’d investigated.

But seeing the body of a child was the hardest. All he could ever see was their promise cut short. It saddened him in ways he could hardly express. But it was his stoicism and determination to do a good job that pushed him forward. He reached out and opened the door.

The coroner, a short balding man who reminded Rogues of a grey-haired Dom DeLuise, was standing at the examination table, speaking quietly into a handheld recorder. Coincidentally, his first name was Dom too. He looked at Rogues and gave him a quick wave, then continued making notes. Rogues waited for him to finish before saying anything.

“Hey Rogues, how are you mate?”

“Not bad, Dom, about as well as can be expected. How did you go? Did you find anything?”

The coroner looked down at the body then back at the policeman. “Well, as far as evidence, I can’t find anything on the little fella. No prints, no bruising, no fragments or threads or hairs, in fact, absolutely nothing. Given where he was found, I would have expected some contamination but it was as though he was killed in a completely sterile environment.” Dom shook his head and shrugged his sentence closed.

Rogues moved around the table, examining the body. “Is there any clear indication of how he died?”

“That puzzled me at first. I thought, given the state of his eyes and all the blood that there would be a wound of some sort. But there wasn’t. The blood really puzzled me until I did the autopsy. The blood was expelled from his mouth when his heart and lungs were crushed.”

“What? What do you mean by ‘crushed’?”

“Exactly what I said. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s as though he’d been crushed under a tremendous pressure but there are no crush marks or bruising of any kind, as I already said. I am going to run a few more tests and have Joe Makin from Newcastle have a look at the body as well. Apart from this, I don’t have much else to tell you, mate.”

Rogues circled the table again, taking the time to look at the boy’s feet and hands particularly. These were clean and dry-looking. Dom had yet to take prints. Apart from the autopsy scars, the boy looked as though he could be sleeping.