by Sasha Pruett
*****
A ring shot through the silence that had crept its way in, bringing all three from their own personal reveries. Three rings had passed before any of them realized that it was the howl of the telephone that had brought them back to the stuffy, dusty attic. With their minds and bodies once more reunited, the three were off on a race to cease the phone before it woke the children. Unfortunately no one stopped to think that their thundering footfalls descending two flights of wooden stairs caused a greater racket than the phones high pitched jingle.
They hit the ground floor with one final thud, each heading in a different direction, Susanne to the left, Jonathan to the right, and Gary stopping in his tracks, remembering that not only did he have no idea where the phone might be, but it wasn’t even his phone to begin with. It was Susanne who answered the phone, but it was Gary who answered the call.
“Hi Susanne, this is Wendy Kinsington. I’m so sorry to be calling so late. I hope I didn’t wake the kids?”
“Not at all Wendy. We were just up in the attic going through some things and I had left the phone downstairs; way downstairs. What can I do for you?” She expected to hear the first of many phone condolences, but she was mistaken.
“Actually I was looking for Officer Carpell. I called the station and they reported that he had gone out to your place after his shift and as far as they knew he was still there, and his cell keeps saying he’s out of range. Is he there by any chance? I really need to speak to him, it’s very important.”
“Yeah, of course Wendy. Just a minute.” The two men watched anxiously as Susanne stepped towards them each knowing this was no courtesy call as she held out the phone to Gary, silently signaling the call was his. He took the phone and walked away, expecting to hear that another mutilated body had been found, but what he heard was worse; much worse.
“This is Officer Carpell. What can I do for you?”
“Gary? This is Wendy Kinsington. I’m calling to report that Marion Lamb’s son Michael is missing. I told her that I’d call you; she’s a little hysterical at the moment so I have her doing another search of their home to keep her busy.”
“Thank you for calling me, I’ll get a team out to search for him immediately.”
“Um, Gary?” It was now or never, “It may not be that simple, there’s another reason why I called.”
She took a deep breath and prepared to put her future as a sane citizen on the line, “I need to discuss something with you.”
“What is it Wendy?”
“Well it’s about the identity of the murderer.” If Gary could see her chewing her bottom lip and twisting her hair, he’d know just how nervous she was.
“Do you have some information for me?”
“I think so. I mean I believe I might.” She was jumbling her words; her prepared ‘speech’ forgotten.
“Just slow down Wendy and tell me what you know or think you know. Don’t worry, any little thing could be helpful and right now nothing is too small... or too strange.” He wasn’t sure if should have thrown that in, but it was the truth.
“Okay; here it goes. This may sound a little crazy; a lot crazy actually, but were you by any chance leaning towards identifying the... responsible party as an animal of some kind?”
“That is one of the possibilities, as we told the press.”
“More specifically an unknown animal?”
This was beginning to sound too familiar for comfort, “Unknown as in...?”
“Never seen before, previously unknown about, thought to be... make-believe?”
“Wendy, you know that I am not at liberty to reveal...”
“Oh, come on Gary, you know as well as I do that you can’t keep anything in this town a secret for long. Please Gary, I need to know.”
He was withholding information because of his job and his desire to keep it; he knew that nothing stayed a secret in Epson. It was his sanity he was concerned about, no one would want a cop protecting their town who believed the boogie man did it, but there was something in her voice, her questions, and his gut that told him she had another piece of the puzzle.
“Okay, alright, yes; that is one of the possibilities. Now it’s your turn to be straight with me Wendy. Quid pro quo, now what do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“Please promise me that you’ll keep an open mind?”
“Believe me it couldn’t get any more open. Now what is it?”
“I happened to run across a journal from the eighteen- hundreds, well, actually Jeremy and his friends found it while they were searching the caves for lost treasure...”
“Wendy, you’re stalling,” he paused, “whatever it is Wendy, I won’t think you’re nuts and it won’t go any further than us if that’s what you want.”
Reassured she continued, “I began translating the passages and found that the man that wrote it thought that he could curse people and turn them into...” she took a deep breath, but Gary finished for her.
“Werewolves?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m on my way over. We need to talk.”