by Brian Harmon
“I do like red roses, but I like other flowers, too. Like those kind right there.”
The man looked at Eric, bemused.
“I should really let you two get back to work,” said Eric. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
But Brooke went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “You just like buying red roses because you think that’s the only kind you can buy that makes you look romantic instead of like a pansy.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the man, but there was a wounded look in his eyes that told Eric she knew exactly what she was talking about. “Anyway, here you go.” He unlocked the door and swung it open, puzzling over it. “Maybe I didn’t lock it all the way or something.”
“That could be it,” Eric agreed. “Maybe it didn’t quite catch or something.”
He nodded. “You might be right. I’ll keep an eye on it. Maybe it’s just one of those one-time sort of things. If it happens again, I’ll have the locks replaced.”
Eric apologized again.
“Not your fault, buddy. Honest mistake.”
These people were nice. Eric almost regretted lying to them. But he had no intention of telling them the truth.
“Come back and have a beer sometime during business hours, why don’t you?” said the woman.
“Oh, I might. It’s a real nice place you’ve got here.”
“Thanks,” said the man. “We’re real proud of it. I’m Leon, by the way. Leon Rufar. That’s my wife, Brooke.”
“Brooke,” said Eric. “Right. This is…”
“Big Brooke Tavern,” said Brooke proudly. “I’m Big Brooke.”
Eric had thought Big Brooke was a place, not a person, but it was just as apt. Brooke was quite…big…after all… “I’m Eric Fortrell.”
Big Brooke gave him a curious smile and said, “Bring me a pretty flower, Eric, and maybe I’ll give you something on the house.” This offer came with a mischievous wink that left Eric baffled and more than a little uneasy.
Leon rolled his eyes. “Jesus, woman…”
Eric bowed out the open door with an awkward smile. "Thanks," was all he could think to say. Then he was walking down the sidewalk, squinting in the bright sunlight again, the daisies rustling in the breeze.
His phone chimed at him, alerting him to a new text message.
It was from Isabelle. As always, her messages went straight to the screen, never giving him the option to view or ignore it. This one read, I LIKE YOUR NEW GIRLFRIEND
Eric shoved it back into his pocket. “Ha ha.”
Chapter Two
With the daisies finally resting safely in the passenger’s seat of the PT Cruiser, Eric started the engine and then sat silently behind the wheel for a moment, reflecting on all that had just occurred.
Could that really have been Aiden Chadwick? It didn’t seem possible. Why would he be back now, after six long years? Where had he been all this time? Why did he disappear in the first place? And why did he seem so determined to remain missing?
He supposed it didn’t matter. The boy had vanished again, just as mysteriously as the first time.
He wondered if he should contact the police. It was a criminal investigation, after all. He could tell them what he saw, let them look into it. But then he’d have to admit to his own crimes. He didn’t exactly break into that apartment, since the doors were unlocked, but he was still trespassing on Leon and Brooke Rufar’s private property. That didn’t look good, regardless of his motives for doing so. And if something turned up missing, he’d surely be the one blamed.
He recalled the apartment. The reeking bathroom. The garbage. The laundry. Those maps… Something about all that was unsettling. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt very strongly that contacting the authorities would be a mistake. At least until he understood things a little better.
But what more could he do? He’d lost Aiden.
For that matter, how, exactly, did he get out of that apartment unseen? The paper sack was there, sitting on the counter, proof that he’d been there, but the only way out was through the tavern. Did Aiden know another way out of the bar? Or was it possible that the Rufars were harboring Aiden?
There was an idea… Maybe Aiden had his own key. Maybe he could come and go as he pleased. But then how long would it be before Leon and Brooke realized that he’d been lying to them when he told them that he entered their tavern through the front door? He gazed through the windshield at the bar, wondering.
“Wait…” He leaned forward, squinting into the sunlight at the upper floor of the tavern. From here, he couldn’t see the broken window. There was no sign of the plywood with its curious peepholes. Instead, all four second floor windows were intact, with curtains visible through the panes of each…curtains that weren’t there when he was inside looking out.
He looked across the street, but from down here he couldn’t see the tower that he’d spied through those two holes. Where was that, anyway? It still didn’t ring a bell. But then, he wasn’t in the habit of memorizing every structure in the city. He’d only seen the tower, so he probably just didn’t recognize it by itself.
He leaned back in the seat again and closed his eyes, but his thoughts remained drawn to Aiden. He couldn’t help but feel that their encounter was somehow significant. He kept thinking about that strange day last August…
He put the PT Cruiser in gear and checked his mirrors. Then he paused. Was there something else he was supposed to do?
His phone alerted him to another text message. He pulled it from his jeans pocket again and read the screen.
SPARKLING JUICE
“That’s right. Thanks.”
NO PROB
Eric dropped the phone into the cup holder and drove to the shopping center. At the grocery store, he purchased the four bottles of sparkling grape juice (two white, two red, as requested) and returned to his car. As he was fastening his seatbelt, his phone rang. He didn’t have to look at the screen to know it was Karen, wanting to know what was taking him so long.
With the air conditioning blowing across him, he sat behind the wheel and told her his story, beginning with his sighting of Aiden Chadwick and ending with his uncomfortable escape from Big Brooke Tavern.
“Are you sure it was Aiden?” she asked when he was done. “I mean how many years has it been now?”
“About six. And I’m not sure of anything. But it definitely looked like him. I couldn’t forget his face. It was everywhere you looked for months after it happened.”
“How did it happen again? Didn’t he disappear right under everyone’s noses?”
“He did,” Eric recalled. “He walked into a gas station one afternoon while his mom was filling the car and never came back. That’s why it was such a big deal. They have him on security cameras. He just walked in and never left. No one ever figured out where he went or how it happened. The media had a field day with it, turned it into the biggest story this town’s seen since the big fire in 1881. Scared the hell out of every parent in Wisconsin.”
“That’s right. I remember. It was really scary.”
“I don’t know where he’s been all this time or why he suddenly showed up again.”
Karen was quiet for a moment. Then she said in a hushed voice, “You don’t think he could’ve been… You know. A ghost?”
Eric would be lying if he said it hadn’t crossed his mind. After all, he’d had some experience with ghosts. Sometimes it was impossible to tell them apart from the living. “It’s not impossible, I guess, but I didn’t see the sixteen-year-old Aiden who vanished six years ago. The Aiden I saw was older. About six years older, I’d say. He had longer hair, a good amount of stubble on his chin. If it was a ghost, he didn’t die anywhere near six years ago when he vanished.”
“Well that’s a relief, I guess.”
“Also, ghosts don’t generally eat that much junk food,” he added, recalling the grocery sack Aiden left sitting on the kitchen counter.
“I suppose not.”
/>
“I still don’t understand how or why he disappeared or what made him suddenly turn up today.”
“Those are good questions. A better question is should I be jealous of Big Brooke?”
Eric sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“I hear she’s real popular with the men-folk around town.”
“I’ll just bet she is.” He recalled that wicked wink and her promise to give him “something on the house” if he brought her a pretty flower. Add to that her…ample assets and he was sure that she commanded a lot of testosterone-fueled attention. “You know her?”
“Not personally. I’ve met her a few times at church functions. She’s…”
“Big?”
“Yes. Loud, too. You always know when she’s in the room.”
In the background, Eric heard Diane ask, “Are you talking about me in there?”
“Big Brooke Rufar,” replied Karen.
“I know her. She makes good wings at the tavern. And the best taco dip I’ve ever had. Delicious. Why are we talking about her?”
Why indeed, wondered Eric. He’d just spotted Creek Bend’s most famous missing person and Karen wanted to discuss the buxom bartender.
“Eric bumped into her. I think she likes him.”
“Really?” said Eric.
“Oh, he totally couldn’t handle her.”
“I know, right?”
“I mean, can you picture him? He’d be like one of those little purse-dogs trying to mate with a Rottweiler.”
Karen started giggling. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
“I’m still here, you know.” But they were both already giggling uncontrollably.
Eric lay his head back against the headrest and waited. This conversation, like so many before it, was rapidly deteriorating. He loved Diane. She was a wonderful person and a great friend, but she possessed a sometimes shockingly immature sense of humor. Whenever she and Karen were together, every discussion, if carried on long enough, would eventually go south. And for some reason they especially enjoyed ganging up on him.
“Oh god…!” gasped Karen. “I totally just got this image in my head of her dragging him around by his—” The rest was mercifully lost in a loud snort of laughter.
“Nice. Well, I’m hanging up now.”
She didn’t seem to care. She and Diane were both laughing hysterically now.
Eric disconnected the call and dropped the phone into the cup holder. Immediately, it chimed at him. A text message. Begrudgingly, he picked it up and glanced at the screen.
ARF ARF
“Et tu, Izzy?” He dropped it back into the cup holder and pulled out of the parking lot.
As he drove toward his home, he thought about the maps in the apartment. What were all those circled locations? What did they mean?
Specifically, he recalled the location that was crossed out in red marker. That wasn’t far from his house. In fact, if he took a little detour, he could drive right past that area.
And since he was no longer in any hurry to get home and be laughed at, he decided to do just that.
He passed his usual turn and drove three blocks farther to Hosler Avenue, where he made a right and drove another block, past Ednos Street. This was the area. This was all residential, middle class. Nothing particularly impressive. Again, he wondered if this was all some kind of convoluted burglary scheme. Was there something in one of these houses that was of particular interest to someone? With as little as he knew, it would be impossible to know which house it was. Aiden’s maps were as imprecise as they were vague. Those circles had encompassed the majority of the block. And the fact that this particular circle had been crossed off might have meant that it was a mistake, that there was nothing here and never had been.
But then he saw it: a narrow, weedy lot wedged between two neatly mown lawns. Several large trees crowded the property. Fallen branches littered the rough ground beneath their twisting boughs. Barely visible in the high brush and weeds was the crumbling remains of a structure that might have been a house in utter disrepair fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. Little more than half its walls remained standing. The bristling skeleton of a rotting roof jutted out of one side of the rubble. The other half had collapsed entirely into the ruined yard ages ago.
He pulled up to the crumbling sidewalk in front of the lot and killed the engine. It was utterly out of place. It wasn’t a terribly wealthy neighborhood, but it was nice. The neighbors here took pride in their lawns and gardens. It was surprising that they would tolerate such an eyesore.
He took the cell phone from the cup holder and stepped out into the bright sunlight, leaving the PT cruiser idling. He wasn’t sure it was necessary, but he’d gone through too much with those damned daisies to let them wilt in the heat.
The sidewalk here was in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the lot. The pavement was broken and worn. Tall weeds struggled up through the cracks, brushing the legs of his jeans as he stepped across it. This was strange, too. Maintaining the sidewalks should’ve been the city’s job, regardless of the state of the lot.
He stood amid the weeds and gazed across at the remains of the building that once stood here. He’d never seen it before, but then again, he didn’t often have reason to drive down Hosler Avenue and it was mostly hidden behind the trees at the very back of the narrow lot. It could easily be that he simply never looked very hard at it before. He was no Sherlock Holmes. Karen often reminded him that he wasn’t known for his observational skills.
His phone chimed.
THAT PLACE FEELS STRANGE
“Like the apartment?”
LIKE THAT, YES. BUT SOMETHING ELSE, TOO
“What kind of something else?”
I DON’T KNOW. JUST SOMETHING
Eric hesitated. “Just something” wasn’t very helpful, but he’d learned long ago to trust Isabelle’s feelings.
BE CAREFUL
“Of course.” But the most “careful” thing he could do was get back in his car and drive home. Instead, Eric began walking toward the ruins at the back of the lot.
He could almost see what it used to be. A simple structure, it was probably only a three or four room house, single story, brick, with a tin roof that had rusted almost to nothing over the years. There was a portion of a stone chimney, like an exposed bone shining through the broken skin of a great, rotting beast. It looked even older than he first perceived.
Why was it still here? Everything else in this part of the city was new. Out in the country, on the winding, two-lane roads, he’d seen many places like these. There was plenty of room out there. You left the old where it was and built newer and better somewhere else. But here in the city the trend was to keep moving forward, wipe away the old and replace it with the new. Very little was ever just left to the elements like this.
If nothing else at all, it would be a death trap for curious children.
Maybe it was only a coincidence. Maybe it really was one of the nearby houses that Aiden had intended as the target for his mysterious, crossed-off circle and it just happened that this place was here.
But it was so out of place… It couldn’t be here by chance. It was too much of a coincidence.
And then there was that strange feeling Isabelle had about it…
Although narrow, the lot was deep. He weaved around the dense brush and past a large, sprawling apple tree heavy with green fruit, stepped over a broken limb and approached the front door. …Or what remained of the front door. It was little more than a gap in the crumbling wall. Yet the space behind that doorway seemed especially shadowy, giving it an ominous appearance.
But it was easy to find creepiness in a place like this. His vivid imagination was difficult to control in situations like these. It insisted on revealing hidden horrors in every mottled shadow.
He had to stop and tell himself that there was nothing here.
But he was wrong.
It came from around the intact side of the structure,
slinking through the high grass, a sleek, black shape with a small, narrow head and long snout.
Eric stood frozen in mid-step, watching it. Glossy white eyes stared back at him, sizing him up. It was long and lean, about the size of a German shepherd, but much slimmer. His first thought was that it did not look like it was built for grazing. It had the distinct look of a predator on the prowl, complete with large, yellow teeth that bulged from its streamlined muzzle as if too big to fit in its mouth. They bristled from its lips like the tusks of a wild boar.
What was it doing here? Creek Bend was no sprawling metropolis, but it was hardly the wilderness. There must have been at least half a mile of heavily populated residential and commercial properties surrounding this lot. More than thirty thousand people lived here. He could see at least a dozen houses from where he stood. How could something like this be here?
The creature crept closer.
It seemed remarkably sure of itself.
Eric, on the other hand, did not feel nearly so confident. Slowly, cautiously, he took a step backward.
Movement caught his eye to the left and he caught sight of a second black creature emerging from the gaping doorway of the ruined house. A third appeared behind the second.
Not a pair, but a pack.
Very softly, very quietly, Eric said a very bad word.
Two in the doorway, one on the right. His eyes swept the forest from right to left and spied another crouched beneath a twisted oak tree. The outcome was looking more and more bleak.
This purposeful approach and pack mentality reminded him of wolves, but these things did not precisely look canine, except in their long, narrow snouts. The rest of their heads were a little bit cat-like, but they did not exactly resemble cats, either…or any other creature he’d ever seen before. (And he’d seen some remarkable creatures.) They were either covered in very short fur or were hairless. It was difficult to tell. Very lean, very flexible, they practically slithered through the grass. He could see no ears at all and those white eyes were disturbingly unnatural.
Did he dare make a run for the PT Cruiser? It was so far away, and their legs looked long and powerful. He had no doubt that they would be on him long before he could reach it. Yet there was nowhere else for him to go.