Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  ‘Want to pick up the FBI agent while you’re there?’ Boyd says.

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Kidding. He’s only flying in this afternoon.’

  ‘Detective Stricker? May I be excused?’ She can’t keep the gall out of her voice.

  ‘Of course.’ And he can’t keep the awful sympathy out of his.

  Leaving on a Jet Plane

  Layla has packed and repacked twice. She’s hauled out the box of old books and toys her dad left behind to give to her step-brother and step-sister. NyanCat has found the pet-carrier and is nesting in it on an old towel, padding and purring in delight at this new hidey-hole. Wait until the cage door closes.

  Her mom is late, which makes her think maybe she’s got a reprieve. She had a stilted call with her father this morning – she’s dreading the big fat lecture awaiting her the moment she touches down in Atlanta – and then a call to Cas to say goodbye, both under Gabi’s watchful eye. Then her mom unplugged the landline and took the phone away with her, along with the computer power cord. To keep her out of trouble, she said. It could be worse. She could be going to Aunt Cheryl for some Jesus therapy or, worse, to Miami to stay with her grandparents, who would be insufferable told-you-sos about how many times they’d warned Gabi about raising a child in Detroit.

  She’s tried to dry out her mobile by putting it in a bag of uncooked rice, which supposedly sucks out the moisture, but maybe that doesn’t apply to twelve-year-old scotch, because her phone is deader than her reputation.

  She thought about running away. Moving in with Cas. Maybe they could build a secret room for her in the closet, and her parents wouldn’t even have to know.

  That’s the most fucked-up thing about being sent to Atlanta – that the only person who has any idea what she’s going through is here, in Detroit.

  Her mom hoots from outside, two short, sharp notes.

  ‘C’mon, Nyan,’ Layla says, closing the door on the carrier and hoisting it up along with her suitcase. The cat immediately starts howling.

  ‘That’s how I feel too,’ she says, swinging the suitcase into the open trunk. She sets the carrier down on the back seat and moves to climb in beside it.

  ‘No, I need you up front. I have to make calls and I want you to help me.’ Gabi is already tapping at her phone, her hair escaping her hastily pulled-up ponytail. At least they won’t have to continue The Talk, Layla thinks, sliding in next to her. It’s a reprieve; her mom consumed by the job, her focus tugged away from her.

  Butterflies in Your Stomach

  ‘What do you want me to do, Jen?’ Jonno is pacing outside the chain gate.

  ‘Quit shouting at me!’ She looks desperately unhappy, leaning on the chair someone (a security guard?) has placed outside.

  Maybe that’s your special talent. Making women unhappy.

  ‘I’m not shouting,’ he says, lowering his voice.

  ‘We should call the police.’

  ‘I will. As soon as we’ve got the footage we need. Just the outside. We film the call. It’ll be great.’

  ‘This is so stupid. This is the all-time stupidest thing I have ever done. There might be a madman in there.’

  ‘It’s probably a false alarm. He’s not even here. No-one’s here. Not even the guy who called me.’

  ‘How do you know the Detroit Monster isn’t in there right now? With a gun pointed at our heads?’

  ‘This guy doesn’t use a gun. Be logical, baby.’

  ‘Fuck logic. I’m scared.’

  ‘Of course you’re scared! You’ve spent your whole life being scared! That’s why you’re a DJ living with your dad! Cowboy up, Jen.’

  She recoils and he knows he’s pushed it too far, but they’re already too far, and there’s no going back. He softens, in case she decides to climb into her car and drive away. He needs her to film.

  ‘C’mon. It’s history. Imagine someone had been there when the cops came for Jeffrey Dahmer, filming it? Or that horror house in Cleveland? Got it on camera as it happened. Not after-the-fact, follow-up interviews, no cheesy re-enactments. The real deal. This is JFK-bullet-in-the-head stuff. OJ on the highway. This is the Zapruder film of serial killers.’

  ‘That’s great,’ she says, sarcastically.

  ‘It will be iconic. Every news channel in the world will be showing this. Our footage. We’ll be famous forever. Don’t you want that? Think of the doors it will open for us. We can do anything we want after this. Anything.’

  ‘Just outside?’ she wavers.

  ‘One set-up for an intro, then we call the cops, on camera, and wait across the street until they get here, then we can follow them in. Tell you what, we’ll even live-stream it. That way we got half the Internet watching our backs.’ And the hits coming in, so that CNN and Fox and BBC World will be calling him before the hour is up. He updated the contact details on his YouTube channel while Jen was driving over here. He’s already getting text messages from numbers he doesn’t know. ‘Yo is this shit 4real?’ ‘Yay! Creepypasta!’ whatever the fuck that means. No phone call from Rupert Murdoch. Yet. Although he does have eight missed calls from ‘Bitch Detective’.

  Jen looks up at the building apprehensively. ‘I still think this is a bad, bad, terrible idea.’

  ‘I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise. You ready to roll?’

  Jen nods, and raises the camera phone.

  ‘The Fleischer Body Plant,’ Jonno says. ‘Just another blight highlight in a city over-run with abandoned buildings. Except that twisted serial killer, Clayton Broom, nicknamed the Detroit Monster, is rumored to be holed up inside.’

  He starts crossing the parking lot, to the back of the building.

  Jen hisses at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Come on. We need to change up the shot.’

  Jen follows him reluctantly, picking her way over the rubble. There’s discarded furniture everywhere. Not junk, either. Nice stuff. Worn, antique even, as if someone was starting to haul it inside and got tired.

  ‘I don’t feel good, Jonno. I need to check my numbers.’

  ‘Can you hold out one minute for me, please, baby? Are you having a low? Oh shit! Do you think this is his truck? Film the license plate. Zoom right in on it.’

  But Jen isn’t paying attention. She’s standing swaying slightly. ‘I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like a high either. It’s different. Butterflies in your stomach? You know that feeling?’ She wrinkles up her nose. ‘Something fluttering inside me.’

  ‘Are you filming?’ He takes up a position next to the truck and puts on his camera voice. ‘Is this the car Clayton Broom used to transport little Daveyton Lafonte’s body before he mutilated him? Is this where he brought him to do it?’ He points at the factory: ‘Pan up to the windows. Low angle.’

  ‘Are we calling the police now?’

  ‘One more shot and then we’ll do it. And then you can shoot up or have a snack or whatever you need to do. Up against the wall so you get an extreme angle on the building. Hey, neat, there’s one of those chalk doors behind you,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should stand there. That would be a great framing device, right?’ But she’s not paying attention, rubbing at her chest with one hand and he can see that it’s jiggling the camera.

  ‘Baby doll, can you focus?’

  ‘It is in focus!’ she snaps, still rubbing at her chest.

  ‘I mean cut that out, you’re making the camera shake.’

  ‘It hurts,’ she says, looking down her jacket. ‘Ow!’ She jerks violently and drops the phone. She grabs at her zip, yanking it down. ‘Something’s biting me!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jonno picks up the camera phone and examines the fine line zagging across the screen. ‘You’ve cracked it, Jen, goddammit.’

  ‘I’m bleeding,’ Jen says, showing him the red seeping through her cream sweater. There’s something hard and dark nudging up under it. She pulls off her sweater. ‘Don’t film this!’ she cries as he raises the phone automatic
ally.

  She’s standing there in the freezing cold in only her bra. The pale green one with polka dots. He wishes she would wear sexier lingerie. There’s something wrong with her tattoo, the birds spiraling up her collar bone onto her neck. There are sharp objects, arrowheads, pushing through the ink, and he realizes that this is all wrong. Badly wrong. ‘Forget this. You’re right. Come on, we’re going back to the car. We’re calling the police.’

  ‘It’s coming out,’ Jen says, detached, watching the pointy tips poking through, the blood running down her chest, soaking into her bra. ‘I’m falling, Jonno.’

  ‘No. No, you’re not. I’ve got you.’ He grabs at her arm. But she is falling, backwards through the outline of the door that is suddenly a gaping hole behind her, and the things poking out of her chest are not arrowheads, they’re beaks attached to dark feathered heads, slick with blood, with bright black eyes. She’s falling, and he’s falling with her and there are birds squirming out of her chest and he lets go of her hand.

  To save himself.

  He cowers and uses his arms to shelter his face from the torrent of crows with their slashing beaks and battering wings bursting out of his girlfriend.

  Like Meat

  It’s excruciating. This is Layla’s last chance to beg for another chance, but her mother is preoccupied, on the phone.

  ‘Well, can you trace a trackerphone? Do we need a warrant to triangulate it?’ A truck blasts past, the Crown Vic rocking in its wake.

  ‘Hang on, I’ve got another call. It’s him, the blogger. I’ll phone you back. Hello?’ Gabi jerks her head back from the phone in reaction to the static-squeal coming through the speaker. It sounds like a buzzsaw in a wind tunnel. There’s someone screaming.

  ‘Hello? Mr. Haim?’

  ‘Help! Fuck. Help. Oh God, Jen. The birds. This place, it’s— Jesus. Fuck! What was that? What was that? Jen. She’s really hurt. And shit, oh shit. I don’t know what’s going on.’

  ‘Jonno, where are you?’

  Gabi yanks the car over to the side of the road and stops abruptly, flicking on the blue and red police lights.

  ‘An old factory,’ the man on the other end of the phone is hysterical, shouting loud enough that Layla can hear him. ‘An auto plant. Fleischer something.’

  ‘Not Fischer? You’re sure? I’m calling it in. Stay on the line with me.’

  ‘Fleischer like meat. Fuck. She’s hurt. She’s bleeding. I think I can see her heart. Oh God, I’m going to puke.’ His voice crackles and disappears into the screeching wind.

  Gabi flicks on the radio, ‘Dispatch. 10-35. Possible 0900 at the Fleischer Body Plant. Priority Code Faline. I repeat: Faline. All cars.’ She starts typing the address into the computer, the phone wedged under her chin. ‘Jonno. Keep talking to me.’

  ‘Mom?’ Layla says. Gabi looks at her like she’s forgotten she’s there. In full cop mode.

  ‘Here, take the phone. Keep talking to him. Even if he doesn’t answer.’ She shoves the phone at Layla and gestures impatiently. ‘Hello. Jonno? Um. This is Layla. Layla Stirling-Versado. I’m going to keep talking to you.’

  ‘Dispatch, can you confirm the address for the Fleischer Body Plant? Yeah, I’m putting it into the GPS.’ She nods at Layla, ‘Ask him what he can see.’

  ‘What can you see?’ Layla repeats. ‘Um. Are there any windows? Doors? Is there someone threatening you right now? Can you get to a safe place?’

  She looks askance at her mother, but Gabi is preoccupied with the GPS. The robot voice says, ‘Your destination is twenty-four minutes away. Drive straight for six miles, then turn right.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Gabi says. She twists round in her seat, putting her arm over the backrest. ‘Keep talking, Layla. Are you buckled up?’

  Gabi flips on the siren and Layla flinches at the aural assault. She concentrates on trying to find useful things to say. ‘Can you see any landmarks? Is there anyone near you? Uh. Do you know CPR? You should probably do that, if she’s bleeding. Try and stop the bleeding. Pressure is important.’

  Gabi throws the Crown Vic into reverse, heedless of the oncoming cars swerving around them, hooting their outrage. It all merges with the howling from the phone and the blaring siren and the yowling cat, so that Layla wants to cover her ears, but she tries to stay calm, keep talking, even though there’s nothing but noise on the other side. She sticks her fingers through the holes in the pet carrier to touch Nyan’s fur, as much to reassure herself as the cat.

  ‘Are you still there? We spoke on the phone. Before. Remember? I’m Detective Versado’s daughter. Oh shit, Mom, watch out!’

  A silver Taurus misses them by a whisker. The driver is screaming and waving his hands as he zooms past, underneath the sign for the off ramp. And suddenly it all makes sense, this crazy reversing down the highway. The GPS has changed its tune.

  ‘Take the off-ramp,’ the calm robot voice declares. ‘Your destination is two minutes away.’

  Gabi hits the brakes, hard, shifts the car into drive, and roars up the exit.

  Brain Stew

  Jonno is standing in a huge warehouse space, with pillars and windows that have been painted over. The light leaking through is greenish. Poisonous, he thinks. The room is trashed. Broken bricks and black plastic garbage bags and piles of newspapers with a narrow passageway between them. The cicada sound is still ongoing, a deep buzzing that sets his teeth on edge.

  Dark feathers drift down like snowflakes, carpeting the floor. Jen is lying on the ground in front of him, her chest and neck ripped apart, exposing the bloody tendons. Like an anatomical drawing. He knew someone who had a tattoo like that, the musculature finely detailed on the outside of his calf. It was vile.

  He fumbles for his phone and his thumb flicks automatically to the camera icon.

  Phone. It’s a phone, you dumb fuck. Phone someone for help.

  He taps the green phone icon and hits return call on the most recent missed call, the name he saved as ‘Bitch Detective’. Then he deliberately selects speaker phone and swipes back to the camera while he listens to it ring. It’s not just a phone. There’s no reason he can’t call and keep filming. He’s calm. This is a hallucination. What did Jen say about the chemicals and asbestos in old buildings like this?

  The phone on the other side rings and rings. Pick up, come on. He’s looking at the screen, still on camera mode, and the muscle around Jen’s chest peels back, revealing a black cavity inside her, total darkness beneath the slim white arches of her ribs. Something moves underneath them.

  She’s dead. You know that, right? She’s dead. And you’re not hallucinating. And you’re pretty much fucked now, boychick.

  The thrumming is louder. The trash bags are scuffling. Rats. Pigeons.

  It’s not rats.

  The phone rings. Pick up!

  The lady detective answers and the sound of her voice cracks through his calm like a hoof through a windshield.

  ‘Help!’ He says it weakly, because the words have fled. Fluttered away. ‘Fuck. Help. Oh God, Jen. The birds. This place. It’s …’

  A rush of white brushes past his face, brittle and papery against his skin. He whirls. ‘Jesus. Fuck! What was that? What was that?’

  ‘Jen. She’s really hurt. She’s diabetic. I think she might be— And shit, oh shit. I don’t know what’s going on.’

  He hears the detective’s voice from far away. An old gramophone transmitted through a seashell. He manages to decipher the question. ‘Fleischer. The Fleischer Plant,’ he says and turns the camera back on Jen. Her eyes are wide open with a look of wonder. That sweet curiosity. All her delight in the world, ripped right out of her.

  ‘She’s hurt. She’s bleeding. I think I can see her heart. Oh God. I’m going to puke.’

  He gags, his hands flying to his face and for a moment everything is normal again. Or as normal as it can be. The room is just a room. Jen is just dead, and there is nothing stirring in the black hole of her chest.

  There is a girl�
��s voice coming from the phone speaker, familiar, conspiratorial. It’s the detective’s daughter. Talking about CPR as if he could breathe life back into Jen’s ruined chest. The deep buzzing sound is getting louder. Not cicadas any more, but a jet engine gearing up.

  Abandonment Issues

  The red dot on the GPS is three blocks away. Close enough, Gabi thinks. Layla is still talking into her cell phone, meaningless gabble, because Jonno still isn’t responding and she’s run out of medical advice. She’s proud of her for holding it together. She’s even secretly proud of her insane adventure. Impressed, too, that she got away with impersonating a police officer. Not that she would ever tell her. They were up until dawn, trying to find the damn slug, buried in the splintered wood of the merry-go-round.

  When all this is done, when Layla is on a plane and safely away from here, she intends to look up this pedophile and shoot him in the head. She knows which abandoned building she’ll dump his body in, how to set a fire to make it look like dumb kid arsonists. Then maybe she’ll quit this whole gig. Go private like William. Special prosecutions investigator, maybe. Somewhere nice where they only have rich-people problems. Ann Arbor, you say?

  ‘Just stay calm,’ Layla says into the phone. ‘We’re on our way. The police are nearby. How is your friend? Hey, did you know I’m in a play? It’s pretty cool. You should come. I’ll get you a ticket. Unless you don’t like musicals.’ Increasingly desperate. ‘Are you still there? I’m here. I’ll stay on the line talking to you until the police arrive.’

  Gabi pulls over and leaves the engine running. She gets out.

  ‘Mom! Where are you going?’

  ‘I am the police, sugarbean.’ You do what you have to.

  ‘No, wait,’ Layla clambers out after her, still holding the phone. ‘You can’t go in alone. I can’t drive a police car!’

  Gabi ignores her. They are way past worrying about regulations now. She pops the trunk and yanks her bulletproof vest out from under Layla’s suitcase and starts pulling it on. Because you never know. You could be getting takeout and someone hits the ATM next door. You could find yourself at the serial killer’s hideout in some godforsaken part of abandoned industria near the airport, with back-up still ten, maybe twenty minutes away. And maybe Sparkles is still alive in there.