Gavin Reed Month

the artwork that inspired this story:

aaaah i skipped so many weeks. 😭 sad that i didn't get to be a completionist this round for both events.

but i'm grateful all the same. thank you so so so much to you wonderful people behind 31daysofhorror and gavinreedmonth.

"I'm sorry, Gavin," Mommy said that morning. "Eli is in the hospital. Dad might not be able to come today… but he will try to come after Eli recovers, okay?"

Gavin frowned. "But Dad promised…"

"I know, dear. But it's an emergency. Dad will spend time with you another day, alright? Eli needs him right now."

"No!" Gavin exclaimed, hot tears started to well in his eyes. "Dad said he'll be here. Why can't he come here first and then go to Eli?"

"Eli is sick, Gavin. Please--"

"No!!" he shouted again, and stormed off to his room, ignoring his mother's plea.

Eli, always Eli!

Gavin locked himself in his room and buried his face into his pillow.

I hate Elijah. I hate Dad. I hate the robots. I hate everything!

He sniffled into his pillow and drifted off to sleep.

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--

Gavin woke up and stared at the ceiling. He started to feel a bit bad.

Maybe Eli is really sick, he thought. He took his phone-- the one that Mommy said was too soon for him to have, but Dad insisted it was fine.

He saw a message from Elijah. It was a blurred selfie of him wearing an oxygen mask. Guess his asthma was really bad this time.

Gavin began to type.

ged… wel… soon... eli

And sent.

A respond immediately came.

thx.

Then a picture of a cat with a birthday cake followed.

happy bday.

Now Gavin felt really bad. He shouldn't have yelled at Mommy. And he didn't mean it when he said he hated Elijah, and Dad, and the robots.

He wanted to say sorry to Mommy.

Just when he was thinking that, he heard someone crying.

Oh, Gavin clasped his little fingers together, is Mommy crying again?

He strained his ears, listening to the faint, muffled sounds.

Gavin climbed off his bed and opened the door slowly.

"Mommy?" he called.

The crying came again, a bit louder this time. It sounded like it came from downstairs. Gavin hurried down.

As he approached the kitchen, the sound got louder.

"Mommy?" he asked down. "I'm sorry I yelled…"

The crying stopped.

Gavin hesitated, then peeked into the kitchen. The lights were off. Mommy wasn't there. That was weird. He was sure that the voice came from here.

He turned toward the hallway, when suddenly-- a hand touched his shoulder.

Gavin yelped and turned around-- and he found a familiar face. Dad!

"Hey, buddy. Sorry I'm late. I came as soon as I could."

"Dad…?" Gavin's eyes widened, processing. Then his face lit up. "You're here!"

Dad bent down and scooped him up. "Of course. I promised. But I had to make sure your brother's okay. You've been a good kid, yeah?"

"Yeah," Gavin said, muffled as he buried his face against Dad's shoulder.

Dad was going on to talk about other things, something about Eli's breathing, and coming straight from the hospital. Whatever it was, Gavin was just happy that Dad kept his promise.

He could hear Mommy's voice from behind them, also surprised to see Dad. Gavin could feel Mommy hugging them both, her hand soothing his back.

But when Gavin looked up, he saw it.

In the dark kitchen, a figure.

A woman.

Her hair was long and dark, but it was messy. Not like Mommy's soft waves. Her skin was pale, blight all over it like unhealed scars. She was staring sharply, like she was angry at the little family. But her mouth was forming a snarl, like she was grinning.

And then, she started to move forward.

Gavin didn't understand what that was, but he could feel that something was very wrong. He opened his mouth to warn his parents, but no sound came out. It felt like he was choking on air. He could hear the sounds of crying from that figure, but it seemed that only he could hear it.

As the figure moved closer, Gavin clutched tighter to Dad, hoping that he would notice. Suddenly he felt like he couldn't breathe-- he wondered for a second, amidst his panic, if this was what Eli felt in the hospital.

Gavin wanted to cry, but even his tears were stuck painfully behind his eyes.

As the figure moved closer, the world tilted, darkness bloomed in his vision. Every breath became more painful. He could feel Dad holding him, but it felt like he was falling into an abyss.

Little Gavin prayed like his nana taught him, but the apparition, as if she was reading his mind, smiled even wider, like saying "it wouldn't work".

The last thing Gavin saw was the woman reaching out.

And then everything went black.

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adapted from my personal experience as a child. if you're curious... this is what the woman looked like: [WARNING IT'S SCARY]

"Ooooh fuck," Gavin groaned. "Do we really have to?"

The Sergeant already made a move. "Come on, Gavin. Don't you want to solve this mystery? Like old times, you know. I've got some time before lunch is over."

Gavin rolled his eyes. He'd known the Sergeant since their time in university, being only a few years older, and he had that classic "boy-detective" persona-- stubborn, curious, and loved any kind of mystery that crossed his path.

"Fine…" he muttered.

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--

"Well, if it isn't Detective Asswipe!"

RK800 - 60, nicknamed Sixty, paused from organizing the shelf to greet the Homicide detective with a devilish grin.

"Came here to beg my Sergeant for a transfer? Finally realized that Narcotics is where all the elites are?"

"Shut the fuck up, zombie tincan," Gavin snarled. He thought Connor was annoying enough, but his twin was somehow worse.

Arief sighed and stepped in before the two bicker further. "Six, we need your help. Gavin found a diary mostly written in old-school Indonesian, and well… we need an advanced android to translate this."

"Got it," the android said, flipping through the book with practiced ease. Within seconds, he had translated all of it and sent the document to the two detectives' e-mails.

"Finally, something useful from you," Gavin huffed.

But Sixty stood there silent, eyebrows frowning, as if he was still deep in thought.

"Oy. Cat got your tongue?" Gavin nudged.

"No," the android jolted, as if awake from a trance-- for a moment looking exactly like his twin when startled. "It's just that… Sarge, nothing about that diary made sense. It was written by an Indonesian young girl named "Senja", while her family was on a business trip to San Francisco in 1906. Seems that she's from an upper-class family, knowing that the country was still a Dutch colony in that era. Only a few people could afford trips abroad."

Sixty paused to think, then continued. "The diary started with how excited she was for this trip. How she loved the evening skies in San Francisco when they had first arrived. And how she loved the meaning of her name even more. But then… the family was trapped in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. The last few entries were… quite gruesome as she wrote how her family died one by one, with no way out from under the rubble. It ended with her seeking shelter following an aftershock."

"How the hell did the book get here, then?" Gavin frowned.

"Exactly."

The three detectives stood silent for a moment, all of them scanning through her diary entries.

They were all shocked by the last entry. Instead of "1906", it showed today's date.

"Don't fucking joke around, tincan," Gavin hissed.

Sixty shook his head fervently. "I didn't add that! I just translated everything automatically!"

Arief flipped the pages to the physical journal. And it was there. The same handwriting, an entry in today's date that wasn't there before.

Some people read my diary… I hope they'll find me soon. It's hot and cramped in here... I'm scared.

The three of them stared at each other in disbelief.

Then, they heard a noise from the stairs that led to the rooftop. It was Officer Person and Officer Tina Chen.

"What the fuck happened, Ti?" Gavin hurriedly asked as the two officers hurriedly passed by.

"The bench--" she choked out, "one moment it was alright, then it suddenly turned charcoal-- like it had been burned!" She showed a picture of the bench as evidence.

All of them were stunned.

The Sergeant was the first to recover. "Sixty. Search the precinct's recent purchase records. I talked to the Facilities Management team recently, and I heard they bought some antique furniture to make the rooftop look more artistic. See where that bench came from."

"On it," Sixty executed the instruction right away, his LED blinking in progress. "Found it. Sent to your e-mails."

Gavin and Arief opened the notifications on their phones. They saw a picture of an antique furniture set.

"It came from a salvage yard in Southern California," Sixty explained. "Apparently the furniture set had been passed around from place to place in San Francisco, but it didn't stay in one place for long. It reached the salvage yard, and then our team purchased it from their online garage sale."

"This cupboard," Gavin pointed frantically. "Where is it now?"

Sixty looked alarmed. "If the database is correct, it should still be in our storeroom."

"What are we waiting for, then!" Arief started, leading the way. The three of them hurriedly went down to the precinct's storage room, filled with all sorts of old equipment waiting to be repurposed or new equipment yet to be installed.

They saw it first thing upon reaching. An antique cupboard, looking like the one in the picture, except its surface all charred, like it had been through fire. Dust and ashes, burned debris gathered on the floor.

"There's no way our procurement team purchased it like this…" Arief muttered.

Gavin's instinct as a Homicide detective made him take his gloves and mask out. Arief stared dejectedly and followed suit. They worked to pry open the badly burnt cupboard. Sixty wanted to help but Arief insisted that he hold on to the journal and record the moment they opened the cupboard. The android obeyed.

They opened it.

And there she was.

Bones and remains of a burnt dress.

An ache formed in Gavin's chest when he saw that the cupboard was plated with metal inside the wooden exterior, as if it had originally been purposed as a safe box.

"It was a slow and painful death…" he gulped, imagining how the cupboard had turned into an oven during the fire.

Sixty frowned. "This doesn't make sense. How are the remains still preserved after all these years? And why didn't the cupboard look burned when it was passed around from one place to the other?"

Arief sighed. "Some things in this world can't be understood with pure logic, Six."

The android fell silent. Then he passed the journal to Gavin.

"My scan couldn't find a match in the DNA database. That's expected. I will upload this finding and start a correspondence with SFPD and the Indonesian embassy."

He nodded at Gavin, who was taking his mask off. "You look terrible. Need to puke?"

Gavin scoffed. "Who the fuck do you think I am? I handle dead bodies for a living."

Sixty smirked and went out.

Gavin sighed and absent-mindedly flipped through the journal. On the last page, he froze.

"Arief, look at this."

The Sergeant looked at what Gavin was pointing at and paled.

On the last page, written clearly as if with fresh ink:

Thank you.

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another original! 𖹭 this one's more sad than spooky i think. :'(

Gavin shut the folder with a snap. "Fine. I'll try my fucking best. And you owe me a drink if I get a confession using your toaster pictures."

Chris shrugged. The detective walked a few steps before Chris called out. "Gav! You going to that precinct Christmas thing tomorrow?"

"Maybe. You?"

"Probably. I've got wedding preparation to do, so we'll see," Chris said, beaming. "What are you wearing? Cap's gonna be pissed if you walk into a party in a goddamn bomber jacket."

Gavin sighed. "Either the red shirt I wear every fucking event, or that green shirt I just got to switch things up."

"Red and green for Christmas. Groundbreaking."

"Shut the fuck up, Miranda Priestly."

Chris chuckled. "Your suspect's waiting. Good luck."

With a scoff, Gavin headed toward the interrogation room.

When Gavin entered, Clifford Walker was already seated. His posture was calm and too elegant for someone who'd been accused of murder.

Gavin's done interrogations one too many times. He was one of the best in the precinct, whether he played the good cop or bad cop. But he couldn't deny the creeping sense that something was wrong with this man. His eyes and his smile felt too fabricated.

"I'm Detective Gavin Reed," he said, sitting down casually. "I'd rather we don't spend the whole day here, Mr. Walker. Let's make this easy for the both of us, yeah? What were you doing in front of her apartment on the night of December 1st?"

"You have a lovely surname, Detective," the suspect remarked, ignoring the detective's question. "Reed. Derived from the color 'red'. Pointing to someone with ruddy skin or hair. What a desirable complexion, hmm? I love red, you know, it's the color of bravery, color of passion."

The writer smiled vaguely. "The color of our blood."

Gavin tapped his fingers impatiently.

"You know, this kind of shit talk is why you're detained here, Mr. Walker."

The man looked down his hawk-like nose. "I'm just a writer, Detective. I made it a point to differentiate fiction from reality. I have told your colleagues before. I didn't kill anyone."

"But you did camp outside of her apartment the night she was killed," Gavin insisted, sliding pictures of CCTV screenshots where a man resembling the suspect was caught.

Walker saw through Gavin's show of confidence. "You detectives can't even be sure that it's me. Perhaps you should try professional writing. Your team sure has a lot of imagination."

Gavin felt like he really wanted to punch this snobby asshole, but he held back and smiled instead.

"Not everyone's living in a fantasy world like you, Mr. Walker. So much so that you lived it out. You spilled that girl's blood because you wanted to paint her room red with it-- like what happens in your new manuscript."

Gavin flipped to another page in the case file and showed the writer his own draft, side by side with the state of the victim. It could almost pass for a word-for-word description of the crime scene.

The suspect barely glanced at the pictures, and gave Gavin another infuriating smirk.

"Again, mere conjecture. That manuscript was leaked a few weeks ago. Who knows? Maybe the murderer was inspired by my craft. Feeding their obsession with the color red, they started to collect red-colored things-- until they realized that the most beautiful shade of red is the human blood. So they stalked a red-haired girl and murdered her. What a fascinating premise, isn't it?"

"A human died, Mr. Walker. This is not one of your trash novels," Gavin asserted, losing his patience.

"Well, I do feel sorry for the victim, of course. Though it's not like she had any family to mourn her, the poor orphan."

Gavin saw an opening. "How did you know she was an orphan?"

The man leaned back with a smile.

"I want a lawyer."

Gavin stood, not wanting to look like he was angry to not satisfy this fucking sicko. But inside he was fuming and cursing the right to remain silent at that moment.

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Hours later, even after a good round of kickboxing to vent his anger, Gavin was still stewing.

"Fucking psycho," he muttered under his breath. They had to release Clifford Walker for lack of evidence, but Gavin was almost 100% sure that he must have done it. His instincts as a detective told him so.

He took off his jacket and hung it, tiredly walking to his bedroom, the green and red shirts that he had laid out that morning waiting for him so that he could iron the one he wanted to wear tomorrow.

What welcomed him chilled him to the bone.

On top of the red shirt was a note, saying,

Red is your color, Detective.

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this one's also an original. 𖹭