Nevermore

My brother died three years ago. It was not a natural death, the kind you can process and, with time, heal from. He was killed by a huge bald man with twin hourglasses tattooed on his forehead. I watched as the tattooed man drove a hammer into my brother's skull for reasons I didn't understand, and I did nothing.

I didn't want to just stand there and watch. I wanted to help. But what could I have done? If I tried to interfere, the man who had stood on the side of the road and waited with a hammer in his hands and broke into the car would have simply killed me too. The only thing to do was to run.

And I did. I fled, and when I was safe, I notified the authorities. And when they did nothing, I went on the run for good.

Since then, I've discovered that there are things out there that embody horror and panic and dread. The tattooed man serves one of them.

The Archangel. That's what he calls it. It's the incarnation of death and grief.

And Mason was in its way.

It's been a lonely road. Few others know about these things, save for those who serve them. The police certainly don't seem to, or if they do, they've been no help. When they were trying to solve Mason's death, before I went on the run, I told them everything. They still did nothing. A government organization called the SMSC that secretly deals with things like the Archangel's followers showed up, but if they ever figured out what happened, they didn't tell me. I had to figure it out for myself, and Mason's killer was officially ruled unknown.

They probably would've said he died of natural causes if he didn't have the hammer marks in his skull.

- Henry