บท 448: Chapter 299: Three Detectives (Part Three)_1
Batman entered the room first, with Gordon following behind. The situation inside was indeed eerie. Apart from Shiller, who stood in the middle holding an umbrella, there was a man with blond hair who looked as if he had indulged himself far too much, and he was holding a black book that floated in the air. Jason, Dick, and Little Sly, the three children, were sitting on the floor at the back of the room. On the right side of the room was a peculiar altar.
Just as they walked in, Shiller approached the demon he had pinned against the wall, looked it over, and commented, "This is Lady Sanchez, isn't it?"
Gordon, his face full of confusion, remarked, "Lady Sanchez? Wasn't she already dead?"
Constantine approached the monster. Chains flew from the book in his hand, binding the creature. Gordon then turned to look at the children lying on the ground and exclaimed, "Can someone explain what on Earth is going on?"
"Alright." Shiller raised his voice, tapped the ground with his umbrella, and said, "Come on, one by one, let's start with you two."
He pointed at Jason and Dick. Seeing the umbrella that had pinned the monster so forcefully to the wall that it couldn't be removed, Dick swallowed hard. Even so, he began to recount dutifully.
"…two days ago, I came to this school. On the first day, everything was normal. After settling in, l went to bed, but, due to a change of beds, I could't sleep. I got up in the middle of the night, and that's when I saw that my roommate had injuries on his back..."
"When I asked him about it in the morning, he looked scared and said nothing. I was suspicious, so I kept an eye out and noticed that many students seemed to have similar injuries..."
"I suspected that someone was abusing them. During class, one of my classmates was not concentrating on his prayers, so the teacher said he needed to go to the confessional. The scared expression he gave made me think that they abused him there."
"So, I deliberately made a little mistake and got myself sent into the confessional..."
"And then what?" asked Batman.
"...A woman came in. She said she was Lady Sanchez, the principal of the school. She uttered the usual threats: as the adopted child of the Wayne Family, I must obey here, or else I'd be in trouble, and so forth..."
"I asked if she had been abusing the kids, which seemed to anger her. She said that disobedient children should be hanged..."
"Next, she used a whip on me. The injuries she gave me were the same as my classmates'. That damned woman is an abuser, she..."
Before Dick could continue, Batman walked over to him, lifted his shirt to reveal a trail of fresh, deep wounds on his back and waist. Some even seemed to be turning black. Batman's face betrayed his anger, but Dick was indifferent, continuing his story,
"The woman was about to continue hitting me, but someone called out for her from outside. It was a Mr. Cooper who had come to see her, so, she left..."
"I thought I needed to reveal her true nature and save my classmates. So, when she went out, I picked the lock to the confessional and followed her..."
"She met with the man called Mr. Cooper on the fourth floor. My skills as a sneak are pretty decent, so I climbed up the drainpipe to the balcony and listened in from outside their window..."
Dick pursed his lips and said with disbelief, "I overheard that Lady Sanchez and Cooper made a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"It seemed like, Mr. Cooper's son died, and he's been trying to resurrect him ever since. Mrs. Sanchez is a witch. They talked about trading with the devil... Anyway, Cooper gave Mrs. Sanchez a lot of money, and in return, Mrs. Sanchez would help Cooper resurrect his son..."
"They said they planned to sacrifice children to the devil. According to them, if they sacrificed enough, they can bring Cooper's son's soul back from Hell. They mentioned a bunch of terms I didn't understand, but that was the gist of it..."
"I thought they were insane because it all sounded like gibberish. But then they started arguing, and Lady Sanchez was able to make objects in the room float. I was scared and accidentally made a noise."
"Lady Sanchez immediately noticed me. Luckily, I managed to escape before she caught me. I knew that if they were speaking the truth, then all the students at this school were in danger. Lady Sanchez was planning to sacrifice them all to the devil. I had to stop it..."
"And what about you two? How did you end up here?" Shiller asked Jason and Little Sly. Jason and Little Sly looked at each other before saying, "Originally, we were hiding out at Batman's place. It was pretty good there, but we got bored after a while..."
"Before that, our friend Tire had told us that boarding schools were like prisons for children. Even though he said that the one up north was different, we wanted to check on Dick..."
Dick rubbed his forehead in frustration and said, "I originally planned to find a way to contact Batman, but they sneaked into the school and were caught by the key master."
"It seemed Lady Sanchez was in need of sacrifices, so she locked them up in the basement. I had to find a way to rescue them..."
"Speaking of that key manager," Gordon said, scratching his head in confusion, "Where is he? How come I didn't see him downstairs? He couldn't have left that quickly, could he?"
"Obviously, he's in cahoots with this demon, haven't you noticed? He's been trying to lead us up to the seventh floor all this time."
"Eh ..." Gordon paused for a moment, then said, "So the seventh floor is a trap? But how did they know we were coming? Oh, they called the police, so they deliberately alarmed us to lure us here and then lead us to the seventh floor to kill us. What's the point of all this? Does Lady Sanchez have a grudge against the police?"
"She's trying to sacrifice you guys to replenish her own energy, because she knew she couldn't beat me."
Constantine lit up a cigarette, but in a flash, it was knocked out of his hand and pinned against the wall by a bat-tag. Batman looked at him and said, "Didn't you notice there are kids around?"
Constantine made a helpless expression and said, "All right, now it's time for my story."
"I won't bother introducing who I am, but long story short, I used to reside in a mental institution. I was wrongly accused, I am not mentally ill but due to various reasons, I was held in there."
"A few days ago, a mob boss named Harry Cooper got me out from there to use mystic methods to resurrect his son."
"Wait, didn't Dick just say that Cooper sought out Lady Sanchez to resurrect his son?"
"Obviously, the person he found wasn't capable enough." Constantine glanced at the monster chained to the wall.
"Cooper told me, the person he found before was insatiably greedy, and he couldn't afford the price that person was demanding, so he planned to switch to someone else."
"Cooper told me, the method the wizard he found before had offered was to sacrifice the souls of thirteen children to the demons in hell on a full moon night, in order to get his son's soul back."
"When I heard of this method, I already knew who he was looking for."
Constantine glanced at the monster again and said, "In witchcraft, there's a branch that specifically uses children's souls to practice. I usually refer to this branch as 'Ghost Mom', and to my knowledge, in the current circle of the mystics, there's only one 'Ghost Mom', and that's Lorena Sanchez."
"When I heard that Cooper had actually sought her out, I almost laughed my teeth off. Lorena is a total con artist! Of course, she would know that no matter how many children you sacrifice, it's impossible to pull Cooper's son's soul back from hell. No one can snatch food from the hands of a devil."
"But Cooper, a novice from the outside world, believed Lorena's words. Not only did he give her a lot of money, he even arranged for her to become the principal of a boarding school, allowing her an opportunity to act on those kids."
"After I knew about all of this, of course I wouldn't let her succeed. So I confronted Lorena, told her to stop her scam, and to leave this place."
"She said she'd think about it, but behind the scenes, she set up traps and altars in this school, just to get the jump on me when I came looking for trouble."
"Sure enough, after I came, she used the altar to summon the shadow of the demon and attached it to herself, transforming into the monster we see now."
"So how did Cooper die?"
"He was cursed and killed by Lauren, because he wouldn't provide her with more funds and he stopped trusting her. The kid said it before, Cooper and Lorena had a heated argument. After their split, Lorena probably killed him with some kind of curse."
"Does the recent series of killings in Gotham have anything to do with you?" Batman asked, staring at Constantine.
"Serial killings?" Constantine paused for a moment and said, "Whatever that is, I have no idea, I've only been in Gotham for a few days."
"Constantine, do you know..."
Shiller turned around and walked to the front of Constantine, who also looked at Shiller and said, "What?"
Shiller looked down, his hand slipping leisurely from the handle of his umbrella to grasp the middle of it.
With a "bang," Constantine was knocked down by the upturned umbrella handle. As he lay on the ground and before he lost consciousness, he saw Shiller standing against the light, thrusting his umbrella into the ground and saying:
"I don't believe a word you said."
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