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“Where is he?”
“He’ll be here soon, and you don’t want to be here when he gets here.”
***
“He was born in Nuremberg in 1632.” The boy stopped putting clothes in his bag and looked at Matthew. “Can you even imagine what that must have been like, Deputy? Like a fairytale land. Like something out of a Terry Brooks story.”
“Keep packing. That was the deal,” Matthew said, pointing back at the large plastic bag. The boy sighed and turned, but kept his eyes on Matthew for a moment longer.
“His parents weren’t royal, but they weren’t poor either,” the boy continued, ignoring Matthew’s persistence. “They were educated for their time, with enough money to travel. You know, just to travel. But on a trip, when he was twelve, his parents got themselves caught up in the English Civil War.”
The boy was picking up each article of threadbare clothing from piles in the corner, to hold them out in front of him, and then gently refold them before placing them in the bag just so. He was stalling, and Matthew knew it. He was probably just biding his time, waiting for just the right moment to make a run for it. Matthew wasn’t going to let that happen. Not on his watch, not in this weather, and most certainly not with Holly waiting on him.
“They were killed -- his parents I mean. They were killed, right before his thirteenth birthday, and he was ferried off to what he was told would be the ‘safety of London’ in 1645. He was put in an orphan’s home, but an ambitious woman sold him to a blacksmith for the price of a pair of boots. He was the blacksmith’s slave for almost a year before he escaped, only to be gathered up as a ‘ne’er-do-well,’ and shipped to the colonies to be a bound servant.”
“I’m going to check on…her. Is she your sister?”
“Yes, she is. But not in a way you’d understand.”
Matthew did his best to look sympathetic. This kid still saw children and adults as being in an ‘us versus them’ situation. “Hey, I was a kid once, too. I know you don’t think grown-ups understand you, and what you’re going through. I’m not your enemy though. I’m here to help.”
Shaking his head slowly, he replied, “You really don’t get it, Deputy.”
***
Matthew looked into the cluttered bedroom where he’d left the little girl to pack up a bag of her things. He found her exactly where he’d left her, standing next to the bed in her long, dingy white t-shirt, staring at her feet. She glanced up at him only briefly as he walked over to her and opened the empty black garbage bag that had been crumpled on the filthy mattress.
He’d gotten the bags out of his cruiser, one for each of the children when he’d gone out to call in. The bags were enormous and durable, intended for yard waste. They were lucky he still had some in his trunk from cleaning out his garage. Because of the worsening weather, the social workers had asked the dispatcher to have him bring the children to them at the hospital on his way back into town.
Bringing them back with him didn’t seem so bad an idea, but he’d been told to have them pack up personal items and clothes if they had any. That proved more difficult than anticipated. The only way he could get that boy to agree to anything was if he agreed to listen to the boy’s tall tales, ‘for his own good,’ as a warning of the boogeyman that was going to get them if he didn’t just leave the kids here and go.
“Why aren’t you packing?” He asked her, glancing around the room for what she might want to take with her. “Are your clothes in these boxes here?”
She looked at him like it physically hurt her not to speak, and yet she stayed silent.
Matthew knelt down next to the two cardboard boxes on the floor next to the mattress. He opened each one and found nothing but paper – sheet after sheet of lined paper colored on in black and brown crayon. He thought those were probably the only two colors she had. He began to scan the room again for anything else that might contain clothing. It really was quite a mess.
“Where are your clothes, sweetie?” He asked, looking back at her. She just stood there staring at him, her eyes barely holding back the tears.
“If I leave you here, and go back and check on…him, will you promise me you’ll put your clothes in this bag?”
She continued to stare at him catatonically, for several moments before finally nodding her agreement.
“Okay then. I’ll go, but when I come back, I really want to see that bag have clothes in it. Please.” He waited for her to nod again, and then stood. “Alright.”
***
“He worked as a laborer, as in ‘doing the hard work,’ by hand, in Virginia for a while. This wasn’t even the United States back then, did you know that?” The boy asked the question with a genuine sense of reverence, and wonder.
“What year was it?” Matthew asked the boy absently.
“1646. He was fourteen. He was bought by man and kept as slave, not as bound servant.”
This kid had to have studied this in school recently, or seen it on TV. Matthew felt like kicking himself for not retaining more of the history he’d studied in school. He really wanted facts to shoot holes in the story he was being told. If he could break the story, maybe he could get the boy to tell him what he was really doing here, and where his parents were. Even just his name would be nice.
“So he was a slave again? Or did the little boy just feel like a slave?” Matthew asked, fishing for more personal information.
“Yes. Again.” He stopped folding a pair of underwear and looked at Matthew as though he thought the deputy was feeble-minded. “The man bought him. That made him a slave. The man would only call him ‘boy,’ and beat him horribly all the time.”
“Boy, huh? Is that why you won’t tell me your name? Are you really the ‘boy’ in this story?”
He rolled his eyes at Matthew in disdain. “My name is gone. So is hers. They aren’t coming back. Ever. That’s just how it is.”
“If you were abused, we can help you. There’s never an excuse to beat kids. Never.” Matthew rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed it gently.
The boy looked up at Matthew, smirking slightly with a glint in his eye. “Spare the rod, and spoil the child, Deputy.”
The look in his eyes gave Matthew a chill, making him step back from the boy.
“Anyway, the man’s wife was the only thing that made that time bearable. She educated him for a while, gave him books to read, and helped him get more of the German accent out of his voice. She gave him hope – for a while anyway. All good things must end though. Right, Deputy? She and the man took a trip to Europe, and when they returned she was not well. They called it the White Plague.
“You mean the Black Plague?” Matthew thought he had finally found the mistake that would let him break the kid’s story.
“No. I mean the White Plague. Google it if you have to, Deputy.” He was so cocky and sure. Matthew made a mental note to look up ‘White Plague’ on his phone when he got back in the cruiser.
“When she died, he killed the man. Beat him to death with a curtain rod while he slept. He just grabbed what money the man had on him and he took off.”
“Did he take his sister with him?”
The boy stopped sharply and looked at Matthew. It was the first time in his life that Matthew really understood the old saying, ‘If looks could kill.’ The awkward pause stretched on for several long moments before the boy turned and continued talking and packing.
Matthew could tell he was having an effect on this kid. He wasn’t sure if the boy was getting tired of all the lies and stories, and might be getting ready to tell the truth, or if he was just tired of being interrupted.
***
The girl was still in the room where he’d left her, but she wasn’t packing like the boy was. He could see the bag sitting open on the floor next to the mattress. It had a few pairs of underwear in it, and she sat next to it with her face in her hands.
“I thought we had a deal. If I left you alone, you’d pack.”
She di
dn’t even look up at him. She just took the bag in one hand and scooted over, tears pouring silently down her face, and began to take socks from under the mattress and put them into the bag. Whatever issues that boy might have, were nothing compared to the mess that was this little girl.
Someone had done something awful to this child. He wasn’t entirely sure that the boy hadn’t also done things to her. She was in a sorry state, and all he wanted to do was scoop her up and hold her. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right, but that wouldn’t help her right now, and he knew it. She just had to finish packing so he could get her out of this place, and to someone who really could help her.
He watched her for a few moments as she moved at a snail’s pace. She was doing what he asked of her – she was simply doing it as slow as humanly possible. She had clearly been through a lot, so Matthew decided he’d let her move at her own pace. After all, she was at least moving.
Matthew turned and walked down the dimly lit hallway to the stairs. Looking down across the front room where he’d come in, he thought it seemed even darker now than before. He kept seeing things move in the darkness. There were likely all shapes and sizes of rodent and vermin all around him. He couldn’t wait to be out of this place.
He eased himself slowly down the stairs and made his way through the voluminous black of the empty room toward the door. He didn’t like leaving the boy alone any longer than he had to. He was sure that kid was just sitting up there in that room, not packing, and devising some kind of escape plan.
As he opened the door, Matthew was shocked at how much the temperature had dropped outside. The cold hit him in the face like he’d walked into a freezer. It wasn’t just the cold that made Matthew shudder, the rain had gotten worse, and ice had started to coat everything.
He left the door standing open so there was less likelihood that the kids would lock him out as he walked to his cruiser. The sounds of the porch and even the gravel had changed now, with a coating of ice. Driving back into town was going to be awful, and there would be more wrecks like the one this morning.
They would ask him to stay on and keep working into the next shift, but he couldn’t. Not tonight. He had to get back to Holly, and sort things out. He’d already lost enough time dealing with how slowly these children moved.
He had to hit the door to his cruiser a few times to break it loose of the ice before he could get it to open. Everything was icing over too fast. This weather was going to be awful. As he settled down in the seat and started the car, he decided he’d leave the engine running with the heat on when he went back inside. Maybe then, he hoped, the windows and doors wouldn’t freeze up, and he’d actually be able to get the kids into town a little easier when the time came.
Matthew glanced briefly back at the dark, imposing house. The building itself made him uneasy, as if every window was another set of eyes peering out at him, examining him. This place, he thought, could do with a good bulldozing, and soon.
He was about to head back inside when he noticed his phone still lying on the dash. He thought about it for a second before he retrieved it, second-guessing himself. He unlocked it, opened a web browser window, and began to type. His mouth opened slightly as he looked at the search results in front of him, but the only words that escaped his lips were “White Plague… tuberculosis.”
***
“New York City is where I left off. That’s where the monster found him.” The boy immediately picked the story back up when Matthew appeared in the doorway. “He had made it to New York City from Virginia, and New York has always been full of monsters, whether people can see them or not.”
“Monsters aren’t real, son. The only real monsters are people who hurt other people, or hurt children,” Matthew said, sure that if he kept it up, he’d eventually get through to this kid.
“It was a monster, Deputy. A real one. It ate people. It caught him, and kept him for four years. Enjoying his fear. Enjoying what his blood tasted like. Finally, it decided that it liked him, so it drained him, trained him, and made him into a proper and civilized monster as well.”
“A civilized monster?” Matthew asked.
“How else can they blend in and hide around people? They can’t just run around the streets looking like monsters. They’d be killed.” The boy said it like it was common sense, and he couldn’t believe that Matthew hadn’t just known it.
“The monster was a man then?”
“It looked like a man. It had been a man once. It wasn’t a man anymore.”
“Oh, I see what you mean.” Matthew said, believing this would finally be the key. This story was cracking. The monsters really were men, and now he’d find out more about who had abused this boy.
“After he became a monster too, he was taught to stalk people. Not stalking like there are laws against, but stalking like a hunter cat – one of the big ones –would do. He learned how to shut off his emotions, how not to care. He didn’t care about much anyway, but this was the last step in making him completely into a monster, in his own right.”
“So, this monster made him a monster?”
“Yeah…and he’d never have to be afraid of anything again.” There was almost a dreamy reverence in the boy’s voice when he said it.
Matthew took note of the slight shift in the boy’s tone. This kid was still afraid and didn’t want to be anymore. Matthew was growing more and more determined – he had to help him.
“And what did he do now that he was a monster?”
“The only thing he could do.” The boy said matter-of-factly. “He killed the monster that made him a monster.”
The boy placed the last article of clothing in the bag, and then dragged the bag over to an old broken chest lying on its side. He forced it open, causing further splintering of the already cracked wood, and began to remove his few personal items. A series of trinkets that looked like little more than worthless junk passed through the boy’s hands as Matthew watched. All the while, the boy was still telling his story, obviously taking his time in filling the bag. “He had now become the monster. Now, he had power, and he had no fear. He felt nothing, but he had everything. The world opened up to him. His sociopathic nature took over – stalking and killing.”
“Sociopathic?” Matthew asked, puzzled to hear the word.
“I’m sorry, Deputy. Should I use smaller words, so you can understand me?”
They both stared at each other for a moment, neither one flinching, before the boy looked back at what he was doing and continued to speak.
“He made dark alleys and abandoned buildings his homes, and preyed upon anyone foolish enough to go alone in the dark places. He followed the sad and worthless to their homes and ended them. You could almost say he was doing the world a favor.”
“How are killing people doing the world a favor?” Matthew asked in stunned disbelief.
“He was getting rid of the people who didn’t deserve to live. The awful people, the kind of people that hurt others, and end up filling up the jails and graveyards anyway.”
The boy dragged the bag behind him to the other side of the mattress, and Matthew stepped far enough over to see what he was now loading into it. There were stacks and stacks of paperback novels, all in varied conditions. Some were tattered, worn and missing their covers, while others looked pristine and well cared for. Matthew thought he finally understood where the boy’s story was really coming from, as he read the author’s names: Anne Rice, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Thomas Amo. This kid was just blending together all sorts of scary fiction to hide himself behind.
“He kept everything fluid, changing his M.O. as he moved all over the country. It was how he never got caught. He collected funds and new identities as he went. He made himself impossible to track – new towns, new faces, new victims.” The boy sounded more reverent than afraid describing this.
“This guy sounds like all the bad guys from the last ten years of murder movies all rolled into one. Like he might be the worst of th
ose books you have there. If he was real, and really like that, then I should arrest him, right?” Matthew asked, hoping he could show the boy that he would protect him, and he could tell him the truth now.
“No, Deputy. Because he is real, and he is really like that, and you should run.”
***
As he walked down the hall toward the girl’s room, he could swear he heard whispering voices somewhere off in a distance corner of the house. He knew it was only the wind, but he stopped to listen anyway. He felt like there were eyes on him. This place was really giving him the creeps.
He walked into the room where the girl sat, looking at her half-filled bag. She seemed so distant, like she’d gotten lost in what she was doing as she sat, her face still wet with tears.
“C’mon, sweetie. You’re almost finished. Let’s keep packing, okay? We need to get going before the storm gets any worse out there.” Matthew nudged her slightly and she went back to putting things in the big black bag.
This little girl was the reason Matthew had become a cop. She was a victim who needed to be helped – to be saved. He only wished he could offer her more comfort, and somehow make all her pain go away. He knew she would be better in time, but her silent tears broke his heart.
He stepped back out into the hall and could swear he saw something move in the shadows near the top of the stairs. As he started walking that way, he told himself that it had only been a rat or a raccoon, no real threat, but his hand still found its way to his sidearm.
He heard something moving downstairs. This was getting to be too much. He took out his flashlight and wandered down into the dark. The long, black flashlight’s batteries were almost dead and he knew it, but having it in his hand made things seem more sane. He was hearing things off in the dark and seeing movement where he knew there shouldn’t be any.
“This place is getting to me,” he said aloud as he turned and started back up the stairs.