by Tom Andry
I entered the sitting room, walking on plush carpet surrounded by large, overstuffed, upholstered furniture. A love seat was positioned along the wall under the window overlooking the front yard with two individual chairs opposite. Behind the chairs was a wall of books, most of which looked to be more for show than actual consumption. Only collectors had that many leather-bound books and Ed and Sue didn't strike me as collectors. Plus, you could always tell a real book collection by the eclectic nature of the arrangement and book sizes. These books were all uniform size and shape. They were practically color coded. Between the chairs was a small table with a lamp and a book full of photographs - obviously meant to impress visitors. All the seating surrounded and framed a fireplace, the one I had seen on my way in. The one without a fire...
I clicked my tongue as the pieces fell in place. Smoke without a fire? I ran to the kitchen and quickly started rifling through the cabinets with one arm, holding my breath when I needed both. There were the usual assortment of pots, pans, trays and casseroles. Plates with floral patterns with matching coffee cups, bowls, and saucers. I found a drawer with tea towels and tied one across my mouth, freeing up both hands. I turned off the stove. I continued my search and found silverware, cleaning supplies, and plastic containers. I grabbed one of the latter though that wasn't really what I was looking for. I spun around in the center of the kitchen, looking for any other cabinets or - the pantry!
The door I initially thought was for the laundry must have been storage. I flung the door open and looked inside. Floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with cans, boxes and cereals. All sorts of non-perishable items. The pantry was small but large enough to step inside. I scanned each shelf individually. I found a container filled with pasta that had a metal clamp and a rubber gasket to keep it airtight. I discarded the plastic container and grabbed it. "Damn it," I cursed. It was plastic as well. I opened it, dumped the pasta onto the floor of the pantry and turned to leave. Just as I did, I saw a cardboard box half opened on the floor. I pulled it out and saw what I had been looking for: Mason jars. I pulled one free. It was slightly larger than the size of my hand and had a raised motif on the side of a fruit, maybe a bunch of grapes? I couldn't tell and didn't really care. I exited the pantry at a near dead run, unscrewing the lid as I sprinted toward the sitting room.
As I suspected, the creatures were almost done. What had been a fairly steady stream had dwindled to a trickle. I scooped up as many as I could in the open bottle and slammed on the lid, tightening so much that I feared I might crack the glass. I held the jar up to my face and watched. The creatures were still floating and moving around, but they didn't seem to be able to get out. They tried to get under the lid, but as far as I could tell, it didn't work. Satisfied that I had a good sample, I went back up the stairs to check on Ed.
Well, there was no Ed. Where Ed's body had once been, there was not so much as an indentation in the carpet. Everything was gone, his clothes, his hair, his body - everything. But I was still occasionally seeing a sparkle floating by. Where were they coming from? I glanced around. I caught sight of one near the bathroom door I had closed earlier. I opened it and turned on the light. Inside, there wasn't much to see but a guest bathroom outfitted for other people's use. Decorative soaps, monogrammed towels, gaudy shower curtain. I was about to leave when I noticed a sparkle near the floor. I looked down and saw a small line of them landing on the floor near the toilet. I couldn't see anything there, but that didn't mean there wasn't anything to see. I glanced around the back, still nothing. I shook my head in frustration.
Finally I saw it. A hair - no, an eyelash. Ten or twenty of them landed at the same time and the tiny hair was gone. "My God!" I exclaimed. I got up from the bathroom floor and ran back to the master bedroom. There, the sparkles were more numerous and, now that I knew what to look for, I could see what they were doing. They hadn't just taken Ed and most likely the baby and Sue. They were taking ALL of them. They were scouring the house for every last molecule. They were in the bed, in the carpet, in the closet, and in the bathroom. They were scooping up hair, skin cells, and anything else they'd left behind. No wonder The Bulwark and the police said there was no evidence of foul play. There would be no evidence that these people were ever in the house other than the physical objects they left behind!
I pulled the Mason jar from my coat pocket, shook it to get the specks moving again and confirmed they were still trapped. "You little bastards," I whispered through my tea towel tied around my mouth.
Next to the bed was a phone. I picked it up and dialed the police, the dial clicking slowly as it spun around.
"You've reached the police switchboard. How may I direct your call?"
I could have called 911, the emergency hotline, but then I'd be talking to a volunteer, little more than a glorified neighborhood watch commander.
"Give me the Hillside office, please."
A few clicks later, "Hillside branch, Officer Richman."
"I'm looking for Officer Kent?"
"Ahh..." the officer moved away from the receiver, "Anyone seen Kent?"
Indistinguishable voices in the background.
"Nah, looks like he went home for the night."
I glanced at my watch, it was nearly midnight. I was surprised there was anyone there at all.
"Can I take a message?"
"Yeah, you tell him Bob Moore called. He's got the number." I started to hang up when I changed my mind and added, "And you tell him... he was wrong."
* * *
Chapter 10
I could have reported the murder, but honestly, there really wasn't anything the police could have done. It wasn't like there was an evidence trail they could follow. If I hadn't been there making a mess of the place, they'd never know anything bad had happened. By the time I got outside, the smoke coming from the chimney was all but gone and impossible to follow from the street. I suppose I could have called The Bulwark, but I wanted to let the police take the collar and hence, get me in their good graces. Plus, I wanted Officer Kent to owe me one specifically. And I really, really didn't want to see Gale again so soon. Plus, what was The Bulwark going to do that I wasn't about to do myself?
As I drove, I kept one eye on the Mason jar. Every time I turned or moved the jar, the sparkly creatures would float up, looking for escape. After a few moments, they'd settle back down on the bottom of the jar just to do it all over again at the next bump in the road. Finally, I threw the tea towel I had used to cover my mouth over the jar to keep them from distracting me.
My mind kept drifting back to Ed and his family. Everything in the home spoke of a desire for the traditional. Traditional house, traditional furnishings, traditional life. If I'd had to make a bet, I'd have guessed that Sue and Ed had one more child planned and I imagined they would have considered a little girl the best outcome. The proverbial matched pair. Sue and Ed were looking for a traditional family in a decidedly non-traditional world.
What had happened to Sue and the baby? I saw no evidence of foul play, but if I hadn't stumbled across half of Ed, I wouldn’t have known about him either. While I wanted to think that they were out somewhere, maybe having escaped into the night when they saw what was happening to Ed, I didn't believe it. If these creatures were there for a reason, it certainly wasn't the tippy, Ed. No, it had to be either the baby or Sue. And since there was no sign of them, I could only assume that I was much too late. Did Ed try to save them? Was he rushing up the stairs to the screams of his wife and child when they descended upon him? I doubted it. If Leederville was anything, it was tight knit. Screaming coming from a home in the community would have been noticed and reported. No, they probably didn't know what had happened to them. Maybe they just fell asleep and the things started consuming them. I shuddered. While it was better than some deaths I could imagine, it sounded fairly horrible.
The houses gradually got larger and more elaborate as I headed uptown. Leederville wasn't far from Avondale, but there wasn't a straight route. I had to sn
ake through neighborhoods sprinkled with manmade ponds, gated communities and shopping centers. Avondale wasn't quite as stuffy as Hillside, but it did have a sort of haughty feel about it. The houses weren't just larger, they seemed to be raised. Of course, part of this was a function of the landscape. The neighborhood dipped and rose, whether it was manmade or natural I didn't know, affording those with money views of the city center and the coast. Those of lesser means had the privilege to live in an affluent neighborhood with all the status that entailed. Even in the lower elevations, however, the homes seemed to be built up so that they loomed over me as I drove by. They practically said, "Don't knock on my door unless you're sure you have business here." It was the kind of neighborhood where people had just enough money to live in it. The kind of neighborhood that pizza delivery drivers loathed because the tips always sucked.
Doc Arts' home was the same as always, repulsive. Not because of the design, but because of the inhabitant. I know I should have been rushing over there with the evidence of Ed's killers, but the thought of seeing the doctor again, after just a few hours, really didn't sit well. The whole way over I kept trying to speed, to maintain a sense of urgency, but it didn't work. Instead, I had to force myself to even go the speed limit. I kept rationalizing that they were all dead, that Sue and the baby certainly weren't hiding out somewhere, but I should have given them the benefit of the doubt. If there was a chance, no matter how small, that they were still alive somewhere, I should have done everything I could to save them. I should have blown every light, insisted Officer Kent get over there, even call Gale and The Bulwark myself. But I didn't believe it. My gut didn't believe it. I guess I was just no hero. I knew they were all dead and that now, all there was left to do was to give the evidence to the one man who could figure out what was going on and how to stop it. The one man I didn't want to see again, ever.
I blew past Butler, ignoring his pleasantries. I knew where I was going and how to get there. I opened the freezer, located the little button on the inside of the frame and switched off the holographic projection of ice encased bags of meat, vegetables, and leftovers. I took the stairs two at a time using my free hand to keep my balance. Butler, since he was a hologram reinforced by a force field that didn't have to physically move between locations, beat me to the bottom of the stairs.
"Sir, I can see you are in a rush, but I must insist," he stood in front of me blocking the exit off the stairs, "that you please state your business."
"I need to see him."
"I gathered that, sir," the hologram continued, "but I must announce you."
"Oh, for the love of..." I pushed my way forward.
As I'd discovered earlier in the day, the force field that gave the Butler substance wasn't very strong. With a minimum of effort I pushed right through the middle of the hologram. I stopped short at the first of the large doors that protected the doctor's lab from the outside world. Of course, it didn't open. "You've got to be kidding me..."
"Sir, please," Butler actually sounded exasperated. The creator of the hologram really should be commended. "You understand that it is quite late."
"Fine, whatever," I spun on the hologram, "tell him that Ed and Sue are dead. The baby too. See if that gets me an audience with his highness."
Almost immediately, the door behind me hissed as the lock released. Machinery clicked and clanked in a way that I suspect was more for effect than from actual function. Supers were nothing if not dramatic. I'd known supers who would burn holes in brand new costumes and repair them thinking it increased their street cred. If I remembered correctly, there was an incident where a super died from self inflicted wounds right before a big date. He had planned, it was thought, to impress the girl by saying he had been in a large fight on the way to the restaurant. Instead, he had died in a pool of blood on the floor of his bathroom with his cape over the shower curtain and his tights around his ankles.
The doctor must have been coming for me because the door in front of me stayed closed while I could still hear the machinery. Finally, the door opened and Doc Arts, Ignaro Medico, stepped forth. His mechanical eyes did not detract from the obvious look of concern on his face.
"Dead? Are you certain?"
"Pretty sure, yeah," I replied, forcefully. "Ed's definitely dead and I don't see how Sue and the baby would have made it out alive."
"That's just terrible, terrible," the doctor said, turning back toward his lab.
I followed.
"I just can't believe it..." he sighed. "I mean, I suspected, of course. But I had hoped there was some other explanation."
"Other explanation?"
"Oh, you know. Mass abductions by some villain, keeping them all cryogenically frozen, maybe brainwashing... you know, something reversible."
I grimaced, "You consider brainwashing, probably through torture and who knows what other psychological torments, to be reversible?"
He turned back to me, "Why, yes. Don't you?"
"I don't know, Medico. Some things are worse than death."
"So, did you call The Bulwark?"
"Not yet. No."
"What?" the doctor looked confused, "Why not?"
"No point really, there's nothing for them to find."
"I don't understand."
"Okay, Medico, let's just get this over with. You were right, okay? You were right; your patients were going missing. I was wrong, the police were wrong, and The Bulwark was wrong. Regardless of anything else, I figured I owed you that."
"Eh…thank you?"
"Yeah, don't mention it." I reached inside my jacket pocket and placed the Mason jar covered by the tea towel on the lab table. "This is your culprit. This is what killed them."
He looked down at it, "I surmise that it is safe to handle?"
"It was for me. They only seemed interested in Ed." I swallowed, "I found him, upstairs. They were... eating him."
"Eating, you say?" the look of sadness was replaced immediately with fascination. The doctor quickly walked around the table and reached out for the jar.
I put my hand on top of the jar before he could pick it up, "Listen Medico, these things ate not only Ed, but every piece of evidence of him and his family. I saw them consuming pieces of skin and hair off the floor. I'm betting if you go back to that house with one of those gizmos you supers always seem to have lying about, you'll find that not only are there no bodies, but no pieces of them anywhere in that house. They took them. Took all of them. Whatever these things are, they're evil. They're the sort of evil that could destroy the world. If they could do that to Ed and Sue, what would happen if they were let loose on the rest of us? What would happen if they could eat anyone? There would be no one left. I've never seen anything like them."
The doctor nodded seriously. He slowly picked up the jar and removed the tea towel. Inside, there seemed to be nothing. He looked at me confusedly until I flicked the bottle with my finger. The sparkly specks jumped to life and the doctor nearly dropped the jar. He stared at it intently, turning it over in his hands. The specks didn't seem to care about the orientation of the jar. They moved around with obvious purpose.
"Well... eh..." he murmured, "I just don't know what to say."
"I know, they're weird, right?" I forgot my aversion to the doctor and leaned in for a better look. I hadn't been this close to him in years. He smelled of disinfectant and pine-scented aftershave. It wasn't a pleasant smell. I moved away.
"No, actually, not at all," he spun and placed the jar inside one of his larger machines. He closed a door and pressed a few buttons. The machine began to spit paper out of a slot, which the doctor looked at intently. "I've seen these before."
"Wait, what?" I stammered, "How?"
"Well," he rubbed his bald head, "I invented them, actually."
"What!"
"It's a side project. Something I'm experimenting with. Basically, they are very, very small, very, very basic robots."
"Those things," I pointed at the jar, "are robots?"
"So, wait, what are you saying?"
"To put it plainly for you," the doctor was exuberant, "if these are mine, and I'm sure they are, I can stop them. Someone must have acquired the technology. They obviously improved it as I've never gotten them to work so well together, but fundamentally, they are the same robots. And all robots have an off switch. You just need to know how to access it."
"Which you do."
"Of course," he started whistling as he moved quickly around the lab. He pressed buttons, looked at readouts and screens, pulled levers, and, at one point, poured a greenish liquid into one of the machines. "With my robots, I generally use some sort of auditory, olfactory, or physical off switch. Many times I use more than one. Obviously, with creatures of this size, a physical switch is practically useless. I'm sure I used some sort of chemical trigger, which could be incorporated into an aerosol."
"Bug spray," I interrupted. "You're talking about bug spray."
He stopped what he was doing and stared at me with those mechanical eyes, "In a way, yes. Yes, a high-tech bug spray." He pressed a button on one of the machines.
Butler appeared.
"Now, all I need is the exact chemical combination." He turned to Butler, "Butler, get me the shutdown manual."
Butler disappeared.
"Wait, slow down Medico," I said, "how did someone get hold of your technology? Plus, you said they improved upon it. Who could do that?"