When Nature Calls

by Harper Crowley

  Ceri perches on the edge of one of the chairs, and Jess and I sit across from her. I pull out my phone and press the record button so we don’t miss anything. Ceri doesn’t even hesitate. Most people do when they know they’re being recorded. Maybe I should ask her to join the team, since she seems to know what’s up, but I have enough to deal with Jess’s moodiness and Russ’s antagonizing her to add another person.

  “So I was listening to the scanner at work when I heard the call about the injured person out in the woods. Then I heard your name and that there was a dead body.”

  “Okay,” I drawl. We know this stuff. I thought she had new information for us. “So what did you find out?”

  “One”—she ticks off a finger—“the dead guy was shot. I heard them say they recovered a probably GSW wound on the victim.” At our confused expressions, she says, “Gun shot wound.”

  “So definitely not a Bigfoot, then,” Jess says.

  “They do have opposing thumbs,” Russ says as he peeks around the curtain. “So theoretically, it’s possible.”

  “Not with a .38 caliber,” Ceri says. “No, this was from a human of some sort.”

  “Okay, so how come Greg kept saying his brother was injured, then, if he’d really been dead all that time?”

  Ceri shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe he was hallucinating or something. Over the scanner, they mentioned taking him to a hospital in Tulsa. He might have hit his head or injured himself in some way.”

  “Or maybe he saw something so terrible that he went crazy,” Jess muses, her eyes lighting up.

  I shudder. She didn’t see the body. If she had, there’s no way she’d be making light of this. “You don’t have to sound so excited.”

  She gives me a mock offended look. “Hey, stranger thing have happened.”

  I turn to Ceri, ignoring my sister’s tangent. “Anything else about the body or any other signs around the house?” I should have looked for Bigfoot prints, and I’m kicking myself now. There’s no way we could have gotten close enough to the house to search tonight, even if we could find our way there without George’s help. And if there’s a murderer out there, I don’t want to be wandering around, looking for a needle in a haystack.

  “Nothing that they said anything about.” She looks troubled by this, and it furrows a line between her eyebrows.

  “Do you think they would? Talk about it, I mean? Have they mentioned anything strange out there before?”

  “Strange as in Bigfoot strange, or strange as in human strange?” Ceri asks.

  I wave my hand at her question. “Any of it.”

  She stares off into the distance, as if contemplating her answer. “They’ve gotten a few calls before about strange sightings and sounds, but nothing like this.”

  “Surely, you have crime around here.” I pause, raising my eyebrows.

  “Of course we do, but not paranormal stuff. Not really.” Ceri shrugs. “Most of the time, it’s domestic disturbances or kids being kids. Every once in a while, we get a lost hunter during hunting season, but most of those are because they got drunk and passed out, and we find them in the morning when they wander out of the woods with a hangover. There are too many disappearances, and my dad just won’t admit that there’s anything going on.”

  “What do you think you dad would say if some major media outlet picked up on the case?” You never know, it could happen. Someday, lightning will strike and we’ll make it big, I just know it.

  Ceri bites her bottom lip. “Maybe they should. I want my dad to take these missing persons cases more seriously.”

  Something doesn’t compute here. “Why do you care, other than it’s your hometown?” I cock my head to the side. “I hate to ask, Ceri, but how are you tied to these cases?”

  Ceri looks down at the table and traces the lines in the wood with one finger for what feels like hours. When she looks up at me, her eyes are glossy with tears. “His name was Jason McCauly.”

  I cock my head to the side and glance at Russ and Jess. They shake their heads. “I don’t remember that name being on the list.”

  She takes a deep breath. “That’s because he was never on the list. Jason was... Well, he was my boyfriend junior year.” Her lips twist into a ghost of a smile. “My dad hated him. He lived on the wrong side of town, Dad said, and his family was always fighting with someone. Dad said he would never amount to anything and that I wasn’t allowed to see him.” She dabs the back of her eyes with the corner of her shirt.

  “But you didn’t listen, did you?” I ask. This is it, this is the connection we were missing, the one that tied Ceri to the cases. It probably won’t help us solve the case, but it’s one more piece in the puzzle.

  She shakes her head. “No, but then one night he was supposed to pick me up. We had made plans for me to sneak out and meet him by the old bus station, and I did, but he never showed. And I never saw him again after that.” Her breath hitches in her throat. She folds her hands in her lap and threads her fingers together. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I thought that if I told you about Jason, you might not come.”

  “Why isn’t he listed as a missing person?” Jess asks.

  Ceri grimaces. “Because they say he ran away, but he didn’t. I know he wouldn’t. My dad said he got into a fight with his dad and ran off, but I know he’d never leave me.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask gently.

  “Because we were supposed to get married. He bought a ring and everything, he said. He was just waiting for me to graduate.”

  I lean back in my chair, digesting the new information. “Are you sure he didn’t run away? I mean, maybe he got into some trouble and decided he wanted to start over somewhere new. It’s possible.”

  Ceri sniffles and dabs at the corners of her eyes. “You didn’t know him. Jason would never have done that.”

  Okay, she’s never going to believe anything bad about her missing boyfriend. “Did they ever find any trace of him?”

  She nods. “His car. It was found behind an abandoned gas station two weeks after he disappeared. My dad said he abandoned it there and walked out or got a ride from someone, but I know better. Jason would never have left me like that.”

  Another missing person. Another abandoned car. Toss in a dead body, an injured, hallucinating hiker, and bloody camping gear, and these cases are looking a lot less cold and unconnected than they were when we took the case.

  We finish up with Ceri a few minutes later and hightail it out of her house before the good sheriff decides to go home early.

  “I call dibs on research,” Jess says, hopping into the passenger side seat.

  “You just don’t want to do your homework.” Russ grins.

  I smile. “I don’t know, I’m sure you have some math to do.”

  She sticks her tongue out at me. “I’ll do it later. This is more important.”

  “Just let her do it or she’ll never stop complaining.” Russ pulls out his phone. “I’m going to find us a nice hotel, even if we have to drive an hour to get there.”

  Chapter 19

  “You should let Russ pick the hotel room more often,” Jess says, walking out of the bathroom the next morning with a towel wrapped around her head and her toothbrush still in one hand. “This is a lot better than what you usually choose.”

  I grimace. “That’s because he doesn’t have to pay for them.” I grab my jacket and usher Bear into the crate tucked between the two double-sized beds. “Sorry, buddy. I don’t think they’ll let dogs in the hospital.”

  He whines and curls up on the sweatshirt I tossed in there as his bed.

  Jess ties her hair back and slips on her jacket as I knock on the adjoining door. “Meet you outside!” I yell. I can’t make out Russ’s muffled reply, but I don’t care. That’s what he gets for costing me over a hundred bucks a room on this place. He’s lucky I let him sleep this long. Maybe tonight, I’ll sic Bear on him while he’s sleeping. A grin tugs at the corners of my lips. Yeah, th
at sounds like fun. After I shut the door, I slip on the Do Not Disturb sign. Bear needs his beauty rest more than Jess sometimes.

  Russ jumps into the van and plops the laptop bag on the seat next to him. “Give me a bit more notice next time, will you?” He yawns. “I just finished naming and organizing all of the files and uploaded them to the website.”

  “We thought you were sleeping,” I say. If I’m going to go down for waking Russ up, I’m taking my sister with me.

  He scowls and pulls up directions to the Tulsa Grande Valley Hospital, the closest hospital to Atopka. Russ prodded a little and found out that’s where Greg was taken.

  “Will they let us in to see him?” I ask, shooting him a glance. I was surprised he’d gotten that much out of the switchboard operator when he’d called.

  “I hope so,” he says.

  “Not making me feel all that confident there.”

  He chuckles. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Famous last words,” Jess pipes in from the back seat.

  The beige three-story hospital has seen better days. From the sun-bleached, cracked parking lot to the letters missing from the name over the front entrance, I’m half expecting a horde of zombies to burst through the door and chase us down.

  When I tell Jess and Russ as much, Russ laughs. “They’d ignore Jess because she acts half-dead in the mornings anyway, so all I have to do is run faster than you.”

  “Hey, I heard that.” Jess glares at him and I smack him in the arm.

  The gaunt, sallow-looking fellow behind the front counter jumps when we walk in, extending an arm in greeting. “Welcome to Tulsa Grande Valley Hospital. How can I help you?”

  I glance at my teammates for a split second. Jess’s face is buried in her phone, and Russ is examining the old pictures of Tulsa on the walls. I’m on my own. Thanks, guys.

  “We’re looking for Greg Burrows. He’s a... friend of ours, and we’ve been worried about him.”

  Malcom takes us in, his eyes widening. “I can’t give out that information. What’s your name? I’ll check to see if you’re on his list.”

  We’re not, but I let him check anyway. Then I act surprised and anxious, laying on the helpless female act until he offers to put in a call to see if Greg wants to see us. Luckily for us, he does, and Malcom quickly sends us on our way to Greg’s room on the second floor, third room on the right past the nurse’s station.

  Greg’s room is a pale yellow and looks almost nicotine-stained, though I know no one would smoke in a hospital room. The floor is the same gray-and-white speckled linoleum that runs throughout the place, but there’s a yellowish cast under the glaring lights embedded in the ceiling. The narrow hospital bed is stuck right in the middle of the room, back against the wall. Across from it is a small box of a TV playing I Love Lucy. I’m about to make a snarky comment when I take a look at Greg and his bruised and shadowed eyes fixated on the screen. He’s so frail, so breakable, that even the narrow bed seems to engulf him. Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to insult the show if we want the guy to give us answers.

  “You look a lot better now than you did before,” Jess says after we get into his room. She’s always one for tact.

  “Hi.” I grab a metal chair folded in the corner and set it next to his bed. “I’m Meredith Brady. Do you remember me?”

  Slowly, Greg’s face swivels from the TV, and his eyes meet mine. They widen as fear and recognition war within their depths. “You’re the one who found my brother.”

  I nod, wishing he’d had better, less traumatic way to remember me, but it is what it is. “Yeah. Russ, Jess, and I.” I gesture at the other two people in the room. “We wanted to see how you were doing.” And if he could tell us anything about what happened, but I’m not going to dredge up what are probably terrifying memories just yet.

  “I already told the cops everything I know,” he says.

  “We’re not with the police. We’re here investigating the missing people, but we’re not cops.”

  His bloodshot eyes narrow. “How old are you?” He glances from me to my sister to Russ.

  “Twenty-five,” I lie easily. In certain circumstances, it’s been the only way I’ve been able to get where I need to be. “But that doesn’t matter. We were just wondering if there’s anything you can tell us that might help us understand what happened.” Might as well cut to the chase.

  Greg stares at his hands. “The cops said they found my car five miles away from where you found us. Five miles. Can you believe we made it that far after we were attacked? I swear it wasn’t that much, but they wouldn’t lie to me.”

  He looks out the window, lost in his own mind, his own memories, and I don’t want to interrupt him. The thought had flitted through my mind that maybe the bloody camping gear we’d found belonged to him and his brother, but it was so far away from where we’d found Greg that it would be impossible unless someone planted it there. I file the question away to ask him later, if I can get him to focus more on the interview and my questions.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Greg says, his voice barely above a whisper. “I-I guess I knew that, but I swear he wasn’t dead when I left the house. The police said he’s been gone for a long time, but I know he was talking to me. I just... I just couldn’t go in the room. He said to wait downstairs and to send help when someone came. That’s what he said. ‘Send help.’” He swallows hard. “That’s the last thing he said to me: send help.”

  Tears prickle at the backs of my eyes as the man’s pain engulfs me. God, I knew this was going to suck, but I didn’t know how badly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He studies my face. “Have you ever lost someone, Ms. Brady?”

  I nod and look down at my hands. My fingers are entwined in my lap. “My parents.”

  “Then you know sorry isn’t good enough. I just want to catch the bastards who did this to him. To us.”

  I push my pain aside. Now, we’re getting somewhere. From the corner of my eye, I see Jess pull out an audio recorder and press Record. We won’t post the audio, but it’ll be good for us to go back to in case we missed something. “Do you remember what happened?”

  Greg shakes his head. “It’s all kind of blurry. I mean, we were camping. It was a gift for my brother. He just graduated college, you know.”

  I nod, even though I didn’t know that, and my sympathy for the guy threatens to overwhelm me. I almost apologize again, but I know how empty those words are and how they don’t mean anything when they can’t bring back the missing person.

  “And Fred, h-h-he wanted to sit out in the dark and look at the stars. Said they held the meaning of life and stuff. He was deep like that.” He studies the IV snaking out of his arm.

  Russ leans against the back wall with his hands in his pockets. He won’t say anything in here, not really. Emotional stuff really isn’t his forte. Jess looks out the window while surreptitiously hiding the voice recorder in her hand.

  “Is there anything you remember from that night?” I ask again. “Anything at all?”

  His eyes narrow suspiciously. “Are you guys reporters or something?”

  I fish out my business card. “No, we’re from Brady Paranormal Investigations. We took a case regarding the missing people being reported in the area, as well as strange sightings of a tall, hairy, bipedal creature. We were investigating a known site when we found you.”

  “Huh,” he says, examining my card. “Is that what that god-awful yelling was for? I know I was more than a little out of it, but that was the worst sound I’ve ever heard.” Oh God, he must be talking about the Bigfoot call lessons.

  Russ clears his throat, and Jess snickers. I shoot them both a look. I don’t want to lose what little semblance of professionalism we have by bursting into laughter. “That was a call designed to attract these creatures. The man who was with us, George Smith, has spent years studying them and collecting evidence.” Boy, that sounds a lot better than it actually is. I’m pretty good at th
is.

  He hands me back the card. “He didn’t look like a researcher. More like Grizzly Adams, if you ask me.”

  Another snicker from the peanut gallery. I should have come alone. “Yes, well, looks can be deceiving. So, about that night...”

  Greg’s eyes lose focus. “I don’t remember much. It was dark, and Fred left the tent to, you know, find a tree to...” He flushes under his pallor. “And then he started screaming. It seemed like there was a bunch of people out there, or creatures, or whatever it was. All this crashing and yelling and howling. Like an animal, almost. I-I-I don’t know what it was, but I’ve never heard anything like it before.” He shivers. “I ran out there to help my brother, and then something hit me on the head, and I blacked out. I woke up, and he was hurt really bad, and I couldn’t find our way out of there, so I put him in the tent and dragged him through the forest until we found the house. I couldn’t call for help, because there was no reception, and we were just stuck there. He wanted me to leave, but I couldn’t.”

  Greg clenches the blanket, his hands shaking. “You know, the funny thing is, we weren’t even supposed to be around there. We were supposed to camp by Tulsa, but Fred said he thought this area might have less people.”

  He takes a ragged breath. “If we’d just gone to Vegas, or Tulsa, or anywhere else, he’d still be alive.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say.

  “Yes, I do,” he says, his voice ringing with finality. “If I hadn’t let him talk me into coming to his hillbilly little town, none of this would have happened.”

  Chapter 20

  After we leave the hospital, we head back to Atopka. I want to talk to Ceri and her dad, if possible, to see if we can find out any new information. Jess stays at the hotel to transcribe the interview and give Bear a break, and Russ elects to come with me, stating that it’d be too boring to stay in the hotel room.

  At the gas station, Russ fills up the van, and a familiar beat-up pickup truck pulls in to get some gas.