by Somer Canon
“And how long after Mr. Hamrick’s hour was up did your maid go in to clean the room?” I asked.
“She went in a little over an hour after his hour was up,” Katherine answered, lighting another Misty.
Is there anything else you’d like to add, Ms. Hardesty?” I asked. Sometimes I use the personal thoughts and conjectures of the locals to add a bit of color to our files.
Katherine stared at me thoughtfully. I noticed that there was brown grime in the folds of her neck.
“My old granny used to make soap. It took weeks and she didn’t need to get her fat off a person like this loon did. I ain’t got no idea how his bones was stripped clean and turned into soap in a little over two hours, but I tell you what. I make sure to get a look at every person who wants a room now.”
I heard Terry shuffle behind me. I turned slightly to chance a glance at him and his studious cleanliness made my stress levels go down about twelve notches. I gave him a half-smile because he was obviously very uncomfortable. Maybe it was the dead baby bit, I don’t know. All I know is that I was in a full hangover sweat from looking at that filthy woman and I wanted nothing more than to leave, but I needed to try to get her to let me photograph the room.
“Ms. Hardesty,” I began. “Thank you so much for talking to me. Now, while my voice recorder is still going, will you tell me if you prefer to speak under anonymity or have your name published along with your statement?”
“Ya can use my name, I guess. Can’t hurt nothin’,” Katherine answered.
“Again, thank you. Would you like for me to take your photograph and have it along with your statement as well?” I asked.
“Nah,” she answered simply.
“Alright, then,” I said nonchalantly. I was happy not to have a photographic reminder of her grossness. “Ms. Hardesty, before I came into this office, I took some photographs of the front of your establishment. Would it be alright with you if I used them on my site?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Katherine said, scratching under her chin and making a face similar to one a dog makes when you scratch its sweet spot.
“Might I ask again if I can photograph room eight? I don’t need to touch anything or take more than two or three photos. It will all take less than five minutes,” I said. I really wanted photos of the inside of the room. Even after the horrible things had been cleaned up, showing our readers photos of the crime scenes was something that got us those sweet, sweet page hits.
“Aw, hell,” Katherine said, angling herself sideways and launching herself from the chair. She pulled a key out of a drawer and walked around the side of the desk and indicated the main door behind me. I stepped out of the door, closely followed by Terry, and Katherine came out last, shuffling and huffing her way past us. I got another, stronger whiff of her and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from making a face. Katherine led the way as we walked under an awning that covered chewing gum and cigarette butt littered concrete. She stopped in front of one of the dirty, green doors with a tarnished, bronze number eight on the front. She used a metal key to unlock the knob and swung it inward, staying outside and gesturing for me to go in.
The floor was a brown-stained, tight-pile berber carpet. The walls were painted a dingy, sky blue. The bed had two flat pillows at the head and the bedspread was an old thing with bright greens and yellow flowers that I’m pretty sure my grandma had in the seventies. It smelled stale, the way a room that sees a lot of smoking and screwing can smell. There was the odor of Lysol trying very hard to cover up that bodily fluid/post-coital cigarettes smell, but it wasn’t trying hard enough. I made quick work of getting photos of the bed and television table. I walked out of there, past Katherine, as fast as I could. I stood on my own off to the side and Terry began walking towards me when Katherine put a hand out that landed on his chest.
“If ya’ll need anything else, I guess ya can come back and ask,” Katherine said seriously.
“Thank you,” I said. “I really appreciate your help, Ms. Hardesty.”
Terry nodded at Katherine and smiled down at her politely. He stepped to the side to get her hand off of him and she smiled at him. That was all I could take of the woman. It was the first good look that I got of her teeth and it was more than enough. I turned immediately and walked out to Terry’s truck and waited for him by the passenger door.
I was leaning against the side of his truck holding my middle and wiping sweat from all over my face and neck. It wasn’t a full-blown anxiety attack, but it was close enough that I needed to decompress. I held a hand up to Terry as he approached me, concern all over his face and walked towards the tailgate of his truck and called Anais.
“Hey,” Ana said after the second ring. She knew it was me.
“Ana,” I said.
“Chris,” Anais said, sounding concerned. “What happened?”
“I did an interview with the woman who owns the motel where the second person’s remains were found and…I sort of lost it. She was dirty, Ana. She was so dirty. She smoked and she had dirty nails and her teeth… I swear there was actual gunk on her teeth, Ana.”
“Okay, okay,” Anais soothed. She got calls like this from me often enough to know how to talk me down. “Talk to me about what you’re finding out,” she said, changing the subject.
I filled her in on the new developments and what I had gotten down so far. I had enough material to write and post the first installment of the file. Anais was very pleased, and that made me feel better. She asked me where I was heading next and I told her that I wanted to meet with the cleaning crew that had Matthew Hart’s truck and with Martin Hamrick’s girlfriend. “Okay, now, are you feeling better?” she asked me.
I took a deep breath in and my heart didn’t try to burst out of my chest.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Talk to me, mami,” Anais said. “You doing your footsteps? Eating alright?”
My “footsteps” is something that I do to keep myself sort of even. I have one of those fancy pedometers that you wear on your wrist. It’s digital and syncs up with my phone to let me know how many footsteps I get in a day and how many active minutes I’ve had and all of that fun stuff. It’s a distraction that also helps me to keep a handle on my weight considering I have a predilection towards a diet that would make a cardiologist shoot me.
“I didn’t make my footsteps the day I drove in, but I paced around my room enough yesterday that I got to ten thousand. I’m pretty sure I’ll get them in today, too,” I answered.
“And how are you eating?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that I was worse than usual when I traveled.
“I’m being pretty bad, actually,” I admitted. “Lots of steaks and pastries.”
“Gotta cut that shit out,” Anais said sternly. “You’re going to keep getting worked up if you’re not taking care of yourself and if you come home and see that you’ve put on weight you’re going to really get upset.”
“I know,” I said, sounding pouty.
“I know you know,” Anais said tartly. “I need you to take care of you. Okay? If you need me, I’ll drive down. I’ll leave right now if you need me.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got it. I’m going to straighten up and get back on the wagon.”
I was engaged a few years prior to this point to my long-time boyfriend Isaac. He was my prom date and my first love. We lived together for a few years and had almost settled on a date for the wedding.
I think that little problems exist in every relationship, but it’s the little problems that we are hell bent on ignoring that turn into the fatal sword strikes that eventually kill anything that was ever good in that relationship. Our fatal problem was our sex life.
When I lost my virginity, it felt like a levee broke and flooded everything around me. I’d never known a high like the high I got from sex. When I first got with Isaac, he considered himself a lucky guy to be with someone who couldn’t seem to get enough of him. As the relationship aged and mellowed, his feelings switched.
He couldn’t keep up with me or keep me as satisfied as he thought he should have been able to do. I really tried not to put pressure on him about it, but every time I tried to initiate sex with him and he wasn’t up for it, he became resentful. That little problem sat in the middle of our idyllic life and festered until he couldn’t take it anymore and he started a relationship with some girl from his job. He couldn’t keep up with me sexually, so he decided to have sex with someone else. That turned my life on its ear. I couldn’t understand how my wanting him had driven him away and I became fixated on injecting my life with routines that would have predictable outcomes. I needed A plus B to always equal C. My weight was the biggest and easiest target for my fixation. Counting calories and meeting a certain footstep requirement made me able to control and maintain that number on the scale. Once I relaxed enough to allow for that extra pound or two around my period, it became my sense of safety and security. Predictability is an anxious person’s favorite teddy bear.
When Anais and I had ended our call, I got into the truck with Terry. I looked over at him and smiled politely.
“Thank you so much for bringing me out here. This was a very fruitful day.” I said.
“Are you okay?” Terry asked me, putting a cool hand on my shoulder.
I looked over at him and had a conversation in my head at light speed about how personal I wanted to get with this guy.
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling tightly.
“Are you sure?” he asked. He frowned at me and he got a wrinkle in between his eyebrows that I caught myself staring at.
“Yeah,” I said, shaking myself out of it. “I just have anxiety issues sometimes and that dirty woman started getting to me.”
Terry chuckled and started the engine. We had light chitchat while he drove me back to my hotel. When he was parked, I reached for the door handle when he put that cool hand back on my shoulder.
“You’ll get in touch with me if you need anything else, won’t you?” he asked.
“Terry, I’m not even close to being done with you. I’m going to need to talk to a few more people, but then I’m going to want to see the police reports, or at least interview you and get a quick synopsis on them,” I said.
“So, we’re going to still be seeing a lot of each other?” he asked.
“We’ll be in touch by phone at the very least,” I said, digging through my bag for my room key.
“How long, exactly, do you think you’ll be in town?” he asked.
I looked up and into his face. I’d paid for my room for six days, but I knew that I’d most likely stay a bit longer. I didn’t really want to tell him that.
“Until I’ve got everything that there is to get,” I answered coolly.
“Oh,” he answered quietly.
I looked at him again and frowned.
“What?” I asked.
He sat for a moment, adjusting his body and fidgeting before saying anything.
“Well I feel like a scum for saying this,” he began. I made a “get on with it” motion with my hands and he cleared his throat dramatically.
“I like the look of you,” he finally said. “I think you’re pretty and I think you’re nice and I like watching you work. I know you live like four hundred miles away, and I’m not proposing marriage or anything, but I was just wondering if you’d like my company while you’re in town.”
I sat blinking at Terry for entirely too long before it was my turn to start fidgeting and coughing dramatically.
“Terry,” I began. “I’m not even going to be here that long and I’m here for work, not pleasure.”
“I get that,” he said. “But you’ve got down time too, don’t you?”
“Well yeah,” I said.
“Well, maybe you’ll think about spending some of it with me.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he held his hand up and stopped me. He leaned over and opened his glove compartment and pulled out a small notepad and a pen. He wrote something down and tore the sheet off, handing it to me.
“Look,” he said. “I’m going to get a table for two at this place at seven o’clock. That’s enough time for you to think about it. I’ll wait until eight o’clock. If you don’t show up, no problem, I’ll still work with you and I won’t be a jerk to you. But if you do show up, I think we could have a good time together.”
I sat for a moment, thinking about what he’d said and wishing that I’d had the guts to say it first.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
He smiled brightly at me and I climbed out of his truck and walked into my hotel. I was waiting for the elevator when I noticed a little girl standing by a big, plastic plant close to the lobby. She was dressed in a blue and white plaid dress with puffy sleeves and a big, poofy skirt. She was also wearing a blue bonnet that covered her ears and her blond pigtails trailed down her arms. I thought she must have been dressed for a recital or something because a person wouldn’t dress like that for casual life. The girl turned her head slightly and looked at me and I gasped.
Nummy Nellie was in my hotel lobby and she had just winked at me.
CHAPTER SIX
I got composed enough to think myself stupid for actually thinking that Nummy Nellie was stalking me (I’ve said before, my love borders on psychosis for those snacks). The girl’s resemblance was very uncanny, however, and I decided to go to her and tell her so.
“Hi,” I said to the girl brightly. “You know, your little dress and bonnet makes you look just like Nummy Nellie. Is that on purpose?”
The girl, who looked to be eight or nine years old, pursed her lips and looked into my face.
“I thought for sure that this is how you’d want me to look,” the girl said in a surprisingly husky voice.
“Uh, do I know you?” I asked, completely confused.
“Christina,” the girl said in her very adult voice. “Why does nobody here seem to know what they’re doing when they come to my pond?”
“Your pond?” I asked. “What are you talking about? Are you here alone? Where are your parents?”
The girl held up a finger and I watched as it turned from a small pink digit into a grotesque, elongated, craggy gray finger with a curved claw at the nail. She pointed the talon at me menacingly.
“I doubt you want to talk to me in front of so many innocent eyes,” she said.
“I doubt I want to talk to you at all,” I said backing away towards the stairs. To hell with waiting for the elevator.
“But we’re going to talk, Christina,” the girl/thing said. “You sang your soul to me. You even left me a gift.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, but as soon as the words flew out of my mouth, some of it became clear. That pond. The Nummy Nellie jingle I sang. The missing cake.
“What the…?” was all I could manage to get out.
“Your room, Christina,” the girl/thing said to me.
I nodded dumbly and turned to lead the way to the stairs. I was on the fourth floor and I took the stairs by twos to get out of the stairwell. The girl/thing stayed right behind me the whole time. It took me two tries to get my stupid key card to unlock the door but when I did, I stepped into the room and held the heavy door open so that the girl/thing could come in as well. She glided in past me and I caught a whiff of wood smoke and chlorophyll from her. She smelled like sweet green things and a warm hearth. It was nice.
I didn’t know what to do, and the girl/thing seemed preoccupied with examining my hotel room, so I sat at the desk and watched her, wondering what was coming next. She went into the dark bathroom and came back out looking less like Nummy Nellie and more like the owner of the freaky finger she’d pointed at me. She stayed short, but her skin took on a wrinkled, saggy quality. Her nose was a bit longer and pointier and the radiant, blond pigtails took on a quality of black, wet mop strings.
“The others had a lot of questions, but they were scum. You?” The girl/thing came and stood by me and stroked my hair. I tried t
o sit still and not lean away from its touch.
“I’ll answer your questions,” the thing finished.
I didn’t know where to begin. Who? What? Why? Nummy Nellie?
The thing laughed like it was reading my thoughts and sat on my bed, facing me.
“Ask,” it demanded, gesturing with its long finger.
“Uh,” I said. “What is your name?”
The thing frowned. It wasn’t in an angry way, but in a way that made it look confused. It sat for a moment, tapping its chin with its talon before looking me in the eyes. The eyes had gone green. Not green like eyes are usually colored, I’m talking you get a box of crayons and find the one labeled simply “GREEN” and that was its eye color.
“I don’t remember my name,” it said finally. “I was alone for so long that I’d forgotten it, and I can’t remember anymore. I’ve been telling your type that my name is Grenadine.”
“Grenadine?” I blurted.
“I saw red lips and innocence lost in that name. But the word is pretty, isn’t it?” Grenadine asked.
“I guess,” I said.
“Ask.” Grenadine said again.
“Are you human?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair.
“Gods, no,” Grenadine answered in disgust.
“Then what are you?” I asked.
“Now that I remember,” Grenadine said. “I used to keep my pond in another part of this world, but I moved when people stopped believing. If I was going to be ignored, I was going to have peace. I always liked keeping a doorway to this world. It’s so ugly here and without ugliness, I couldn’t truly appreciate the beauty of my home. You humans are pathetic, weak, owned by fragile egos, and very much willing to bend to superior beings. Some people thought of me and my kind as mischievous. I guess when you steal a few babies and trick a few stupid young boys into taking on giants you get a bad reputation. The thing was, it also got us reverence, something we didn’t get much of in our home plane.” It stopped talking and got a wistful look on its face. “That was all so long ago. Back when I still knew my name. Back when there were more of us and the giants still lived. I don’t think those of us that remain were meant to endure for as long as we have. Immortality and solitude are hard to live with when you’ve been worshipped and revered in centuries past. And here you are, a complicated thing and you knew to sing sweetness and to leave a gift to the fairy of the water. I haven’t had that since I came here.”