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      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY EDMUND GLASBY

      The Ash Murders: Supernatural Mystery Stories

      The Dyrysgol Horror and Other Weird Tales

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2013 by Edmund Glasby

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      To the Memory of My Father, John S. Glasby

      THE ASH MURDERS

      Was it an accident, murder or something else...?

      Detective Inspector John Dryer took a cigarette from the packet he kept inside his raincoat pocket. Cupping the struck match against the wind, he lit it and took a deep drag, eyes narrowing as he stared at Martin Stevens, the forensic scientist, who stood before him. There was an unmistakable look of confusion on the other’s face that he had never seen before throughout their fifteen years or so of working together. He flicked the spent match away.

      “As I said on the phone, John, this one’s got me beaten.” Stevens shook his head, one hand resting atop the chest-high, railed metal gate that gave access to the park. Beyond the gate was a narrow lane that ran for perhaps a hundred yards before disappearing into the shadowy tunnel under the railway bridge. Halfway along the path, close to a park bench, stood a police officer, looking down at something that lay heaped on the ground. The crime scene photographer was now packing up his equipment, getting ready to leave.

      Dryer took the cigarette from his mouth and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Beaten? In what way?”

      Stevens paused for a moment, framing his response. He coughed slightly. “Well, let’s just say you can forget about doing a chalk outline.” He held the gate open. “This is what I refer to as a dustpan and brush job. Come. Take a look for yourself.”

      Dryer suddenly felt a chill sensation run through him. Whether it was due to the late autumnal wind that suddenly grew more intense, gusting through the elms and the oaks that stood nearby, he didn’t know, but it carried with it a strong sense of foreboding. Walking that short stretch of pathway towards where the victim lay filled him with a growing sense of dread, something he had never experienced before. Sure, there had been times when he had seen things that were truly gruesome, things which most people were mercifully unaware of, but for some reason the prospect of what he was going to see had him on edge. There was a sudden thickness in his throat. He now realised that the heap on the ground, which, from a distance, he had taken to be nothing more than a pile of windblown leaves, was smoking. Wisps of grey spiralled and billowed in the wind, carrying with it a most horrendous stench. Face contorting in disgust, he moved closer, wincing further as he made out the charred bones. The worst sight, however, was the relatively unscathed head, which lay close to the park bench. Shaking his head in disbelief, he grimaced upon seeing an overly curious squirrel scamper forward to have a better look.

      The police officer noticed it and shooed it away.

      “Well as you can see, aside from the head, most of the remains are, by and large, incinerated. Virtually carbonised. The undertaker won’t know whether to order a coffin or an urn.” Stevens reached into a pocket and took out a small plastic specimen bag. “A proper examination will have to wait till after we get the remains to the laboratory, but sifting through the topmost layer of ash, I found this.” He handed the bag to Dryer. “I believe it to be a surgical implant of some kind. It’s very badly melted, but it’s my guess that it’s a knee or hip joint replacement. Further examination should verify this one way or another.”

      Dryer briefly studied the blackened item in the bag before handing it back. “What in God’s name happened?”

      “Well, as I told you on the phone, I’ve no definite explanation. However, whatever fire caused this must have been extremely intense, for bone doesn’t burn like that. It just dries out and shatters, unless subjected to temperatures in excess of fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, the kind of temperatures reached in an industrial oven or a crematorium. In addition, and this is perhaps more surprising, the fire appears to have been extremely localised, as evident from the fact that a completely unscathed newspaper was found close by, less than two feet away. I’d say we’re looking at either a freakish lightning strike or...an occurrence of spontaneous human combustion. The sole witness account that we have would seem to suggest something of this order.”

      “Who is the witness, and where?” Dryer’s questions were directed to the police officer.

      “A Mr. Peter Laynham, sir. He’s been admitted to St. Catherine’s Hospital,” answered the man. “Extreme shock, I believe. He was half-mad, ranting almost. Some of the things he was saying were more than a little...outlandish, shall we say.”

      “Outlandish?”

      “Why, yes, sir.” The officer reached into his pocket and removed a notebook. He flipped it open. “Understandably, it was hard getting much from Mr. Laynham, but apparently about seven o’clock this morning he had been out jogging, when he saw a dark-suited gentlemen sat on the bench in front of him. He had come from the direction of the tunnel over there and believed he heard the man talking rather loudly, although there was no one else visible. He said that the words were foreign, certainly not English. Then, while he was still some distance away, the man got suddenly to his feet and started to flail his arms around wildly, as though he was being harangued by a swarm of wasps or something. According to Mr. Laynham...the man’s head then fell off...and, suddenly, he was ablaze, a human torch. And, well—” He finished by just looking down and gesturing, rather hopelessly, to the smouldering heap.

      Dryer took a few steps and bent down in order to examine the blood-spattered head. It was that of a man: dark black hair ruffled and streaked through with shades of light grey. Age-wise, he was probably in his mid-fifties. There was an Middle Eastern look to his olive-tanned features; almond-shaped brown eyes glared wildly with horror from behind the cracked lenses of a delicately framed pair of bent spectacles. For some macabre reason he suddenly remembered something he had once read—an article about those aristocratic French unfortunates who had been guillotined—about how the brain was supposed to still function for several seconds after decapitation, enabling one to witness the aftermath of one’s own beheading. The very thought made him shiver.

      “Although it doesn’t quite fit in with the witness report, which, to be honest, I think we have to treat with some level of scepticism, I think the best possible explanation is, as I said earlier, spontaneous human combustion,” suggested Stevens.

      Dryer stood up and turned to the forensic scientist. “What exactly is that? I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve always thought that it was just one of those weird phenomena. Like that other thing whereby people claim to have bled from their palms and feet as though crucified.”

      “That’s stigmata.” Stevens shook his head. “No, this is something entirely different. Had you asked me before this morning whether I believed the human body could just suddenly burst into flames without a source of ignition, I’d have laughed at the very concept. However, I just can’t see how else this could have happened. There have been numerous reports of this kind of thing occurring, but they always end up in the weird magazines, you know, the sort of fringe, paranormal stuff. That said, I do recollect reading a few years back an article in one of the more credible scientific publications detailing a supposed outbreak of S.H.C. in America in which over thirty individuals were all burnt in a similar manner to what we have here. However, in virtually all of those cases the remains were always found close to an ignition source; an electric fire, a television set, a hairdryer, overhead electricity cables, or some such. Clearly, in this case, there is no such thing, which just makes it all the more baffling.”

      “And the head? How do you explain that? It looks to me as though that’s been sliced off, by a sword or an axe.”

      “I agree.” Stevens rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s even more difficult to explain. Certainly in the cases of spontaneous human combustion I’ve read about, the extremities

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