Meddling Kids

by Edgar Cantero

  Kerri was in deep slumber. Alarmingly deep.

  Nate’s sleeping bag was empty.

  Andy put on a sweater and started shaking Kerri. Tim was already considering digging his way out of the tent.

  “Kerri. Wake up. Wake up!”

  “What…” Kerri muttered languidly, opening her eyes, then trying to rub the waking world off them. “What’s happening?”

  “Put on your clothes, quick.” She didn’t know what was happening. Only that it was happening again.

  She zipped the door open.

  The lake, the mountains, the sky were gone.

  A white mist had drowned the camping site. The colorful plastic equipment and the tent itself could hardly fight it. Tim slipped out, and Andy lost him just three yards ahead. The grass, the dirt, the microscopic pebbles just faded out past that distance, erased from reality.

  She squiggled her feet into her sneakers, pulverizing the dirt. Kerri crawled out, now fully awake and fully distressed.

  “Where’s Nate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Andy, what the fuck?!”

  “Calm down! It’s just fog, right?”

  Somewhere out there, Tim burst into a riotous bark.

  “Tim! Come here!”

  Andy surveyed their environs, breathing hard, assessing the situation. On the bright side, maybe their island of visibility wasn’t that narrow; she could make out the first line of trees behind the tent, some ten yards ahead. For the first time, she heard a familiar sound: the hollow knock of the rowboat against the dock pole.

  On the not so bright side, Tim’s barking had turned to growling. The threatening kind.

  “Tim!” Kerri called, stepping forward. Andy grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back.

  “Go to the car.”

  Kerri spun 360 degrees, her hair too agitated to swing gracefully. “Which way is the car?!”

  A new sound was slowly rising over Tim’s growls, taking shape like an underground train or the murmurings of an angry mob. A hateful, familiar sound. Although “familiar” could hardly refer to something so alien. It resembled breathing, but it was distorted, tortured, broken. It had qualities that should not be associated with breathing. It was viscous, and jagged, and swarming.

  Tim recoiled into view, resolute to defend the girls, snarling in a portentous pretension of viciousness. Andy read the confirmation in Kerri’s eyes: they both knew that breathing. They’d heard it before.

  She scanned the camp for a potential weapon. A pool cue. Any kind of stick. A medium-sized stone. Only the frying pan was red enough to call her attention. She crouched to grab it, and both her knees gave out and hit the ground. She had to sarge them up, gritting her teeth: Get up, ladies.

  And then came the most unexpected roar. Mostly because, she was sure, it had come from Tim.

  The dog leaped forward into the fog again, and they heard a crunch, and Tim’s unbelievable snarling, and the sound of flesh being torn, and the wheezing breath segued into the sound of a radial saw cleaving through metal. It took a long while for the mind to accept that that must have been a scream of pain.

  More loud, ill-boding barks were heard. And steps that sounded too close together, and something plumping into the water.

  Kerri managed to push words out of her throat. “Tim! Come!”

  The answer was the wheezing again, only different. Raspier, hollower, astoundingly clear. Perhaps because, as the girls understood in a synchronized, heart-stopping realization, it was only about six feet away. Behind them.

  It staggered out of the mist onto their island of visibility; they saw it instantly. But they didn’t react at once. It took some time for the human brain to comprehend. A few things could be established without ambiguity. It stood, or slouched, on two legs. And the upper limbs, overjointed as they were, might have been called arms. The limbs in between were harder to classify. It wheezed—a gurgling, cackling kind of respiration—but it was difficult to ascertain through which of the slit-holes in its emaciated torso, all below a ribcage that was gaping open, ribs jutting out through the skin. And it had a face of a sort. Most of its head, wobbling sickly at the end of a twisty-tendoned neck, was blank, all smooth gray salamander skin; but a single feature, a deep barbwire impression from absent ear to absent ear, smeared with black blood, seemed to mark where the mouth was supposed to be.

  Andy became aware she would have to react way before her reflexes did. Or her heart. Her whole body was literally paralyzed. The literal literally.

  “It’s a dream,” Kerri piccoloed next to her.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s a dream!”

  “Kerri, open your fucking eyes!”

  The thing responded at her outburst with its own roar, debunking Andy’s sketchy perception of its face by proving that the moving jaw was the one on top. Nothing out of its throat, not even the chord-gashing furnace scream, could have impressed Andy more than the sight of the hundred long, needle-thin teeth dirty with the creature’s own blood.

  At least three of those teeth broke when Andy’s right arm finally reacted and whacked the frying pan across its face.

  Tim rushed onto scene, barking, trying his best to scare the thing away. Andy pushed Kerri back, remembering later she had not checked to ensure it was clear behind them. She couldn’t tell where the tent was anymore. She was lost.

  The thing stepped forward, a sort of webbed two-fingered foot finally making Tim cower, and it thrust a clawed hand at Andy’s face. She jolted back, her legs about to give way again, but she managed to push off with all her strength and launch a kick. It connected; the monster screeched and stared eyelessly at Andy in incredulity. Then its jaws opened once more in a scream to show the actual mouth within.

  And then its head exploded.

  Black matter and pieces of cartilage splashed onto Andy’s sweater and face.

  The headless thing wavered and collapsed on the ground, its medial limbs still twitching.

  Nate lowered the smoking shotgun, gaping at the corpse. Then he polled the girls: “We were all seeing that, right?”

  —

  Andy tried to remember how to breathe. She turned to Kerri for help: she was standing right behind her, next to the tent (there it was!), catatonic.

  Tim sniffed thoroughly the wreck on the ground, then jumped over it and ran to Nate, erect tail signaling extreme concern. About effing time, he strongly communicated. We could have died here—we were lucky the thing’s head exploded!

  “Where the fuck did you get that gun from?” Andy asked.

  “It’s Uncle Emmet’s; I put it in the trunk. I just went to the car for my pills.”

  “I’m gonna faint,” Kerri announced.

  “No, don’t,” Andy bade, holding her. “Kerri, take deep breaths. Deep breaths.” She tried to demonstrate and failed miserably. Even her lungs were rebelling. “Okay, okay, look, everyone’s fine, right? So the next step is…”

  She looked for the next step. Her eyes couldn’t pan past the gray limb-tangle of a corpse on the ground, its three-dimensional volume, the space it stole from the natural world.

  “Holy shit,” she concluded, and fell on her knees.

  Nate pulled his shirt up to his mouth and spoke through it. “Next step is, we get the fuck out of here.”

  “Okay,” Andy answered. Some wind was blowing; visibility was improving. She started to make out the amber blur of the Chevy Vega. It had been ridiculously close the entire time. “Take care of Kerri and pack up. But don’t bother taking anything that won’t fit with you in the backseat.”

  “Why? Wait,” he asked and self-answered. “We’re gonna…We’re carrying this?!”

  Andy looked up, the adrenaline she’d failed to use bleeding through her eyes. “This is the thing that has almost driven us mad for thirteen years. God help me if I’m not putting it on the Pennaquick Telegraph front page.”

  It had been only early morning when the attack occurred; the fog had de
ceivingly enhanced the twilight. The sun was just beginning to rise between karsts of scrap metal when the racing-striped station wagon made a quick stop by the junkyard. Nate jumped out of the car and climbed the shivery stairs of the watchtower, three steps at a time, and banged the door on top.

  Andy, staying at the wheel with the engine running, saw him a minute later returning downstairs, with Captain Al hurrying behind—the latter only wearing what seemed like a bathrobe, and hopefully underpants beneath, and striding barefooted through the aluminum-littered grounds.

  “See, here he comes,” she reported to Kerri. “Captain’s in charge now, like he used to be.”

  Kerri had not uttered a single sound since they’d propped her on the front seat. Tim just didn’t know what to do to earn her attention.

  Andy watched the rearview mirror as Nate opened the trunk, where they had dumped the skull-torn corpse of the wheezer after wrapping it in a tarpaulin. When he slammed the trunk closed, Captain Al was transfigured, his hangover banished from existence.

  “Police station,” he ordered, going for the door to get in the backseat.

  “We never got the cops involved so soon before,” Nate said.

  “You never blew anyone’s head off before.”

  —

  Rumors abounded on the life of Blyton Hills’ deputy sheriff, Sam Copperseed, before he joined the Pennaquick County Police in 1964. He was known to be a Walla Walla Indian, raised in a traditional community in northeastern Oregon, and his first uniform had been the black-and-green one of the forest rangers, until the realization that human carelessness was the biggest threat to the environment compelled him to switch to an outfit that allowed him to arrest idiots. This motivation behind his enrollment determined the type of policeman he’d become. As assistant to Deputy Sheriff Wilson, and in contrast with the latter’s warm, cordial, first-name-basis approach to law enforcement, Copperseed cultivated the persona of the cooler, stricter cop whose zeal for law abidance could not be placated by an appeal to old friendship or the memory of a shared childhood. It was even historically plausible that Wilson and he had consciously assigned themselves these roles, and Copperseed was fine with his, certain that never being the public’s favorite was no hindrance to becoming its finest. Copperseed had been, in fact, one of the reasons the Blyton Summer Detective Club, back in its heyday, always hesitated to bring their cases to the attention of the police, for fear that the friendly Deputy Wilson would be out on patrol and they would have to share their childish suspicions with then officer Copperseed, whom they never managed to impress.

  But this time Andy was confident in their success. The minute she and Captain Al and Tim climbed up the steps of the humble police station, crossed the empty reception room, barged into the new deputy’s office, and unrolled the tarpaulin wrap on the floor, exposing the decapitated nightmare within, she knew she had hit a new milestone in her career of jaw-dropping walk-ins.

  Copperseed, albeit on guard, stayed behind his desk through the whole performance, only leaning over to decipher the abomination on the floor once unveiled, a hand sheltering his nose from the insulting smell. Andy could read in his grimace how hard it was to, first, make heads or tails of the whole mess and guess where the head in particular would have been, and then, at a later stage, to reconcile oneself with the notion of such a monstrosity ever existing on God’s green earth.

  Once he looked up at the fully dressed woman and the half-naked man and the blue-gray Weimaraner, however, he seemed to have sketched out a considerably accurate picture of the situation.

  He sat back on his chair and proclaimed: “See? This is why I never drink tap water.”

  Andy smiled: she was able to identify with his tough-guy underreaction.

  Copperseed picked up his phone and dialed. “Morning. Deputy Sheriff Copperseed, Blyton Hills. I’ve got a four-one-nine-Charlie. We will need a forensics team and possibly a consulting biologist.”

  Andy jumped in: “Hey, I have a biologist right out—”

  Al just needed to touch her arm.

  “Yes,” Copperseed continued on the phone. “Yes, from State. Possibly. Thank you.”

  He hung up and faced the captain.

  “Al. Good to see you.”

  “Deputy,” Al replied, smoothing his bathrobe.

  Copperseed addressed Andy. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  It took her two minutes and forty-seven seconds to retell the events. She never faltered once. She was good at reporting to authorities; the fact that this time she was sure to be innocent of any charge just made it easier. As did the fact that Copperseed was starting to look like the kind of cop she would have chosen to handle this situation. Copperseed had always struck her as a sort of sulky patrolman who couldn’t find his place in always-friendly Blyton Hills. But in thirteen years, Blyton Hills had degenerated into a town that needed less of a Carl Winslow police type and more of a Dirty Harry. And 1990 Deputy Copperseed’s weathered skin and dry smirk could more than pass for Clint Eastwood grit.

  After he finished up his notes, Copperseed asked, “Are you still staying at Mrs. Shannon’s house?”

  That caught Andy by surprise. She hadn’t even thought that the deputy would have recognized her after thirteen years, linked her with Kerri, or remembered Aunt Margo’s married name.

  “Yes.”

  “How is Mrs. Shannon?”

  “Fine,” Andy answered. “I’ll send her your best.”

  Copperseed nodded, then returned his attention to the blatant profanity on the floor.

  “Will you please help me carry this to the freezer?”

  —

  About ten minutes later, Andy and Captain Al stepped out onto the porch of the redbrick police building. Rain ran down the dirty sign with the county coat of arms.

  “What are you kids gonna do now?” Al asked.

  “We’ll go home,” Andy said, and sighed. The idea that she would have to try to sleep again at some point in her life stressed her out.

  She glanced over at Al. White chest hair rippled under his bathrobe.

  “Do you need a lift?”

  “No, I’m gonna go back in, talk to Copperseed. I’m sure he’ll give me a ride later.”

  Andy gazed at the Chevy Vega parked down the stairs. It did not look at all like a sports car, she was realizing now.

  “I think I broke Kerri,” she said.

  “Go fix her,” Al commanded, unfazed. “We’ve got enough broken parts.”

  —

  Kerri did not utter a word on the ride home. Nor did she seem to notice anything around her, although they drove by several corners of Blyton Hills whose transformation deserved commentary. Andy was so focused on her, she almost hit two pedestrians in a five-minute trip.

  As she stopped at the last light before Kerri’s street, she turned to her and spoke the first words since the police station.

  “Kerri. I just want you to tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” Kerri obeyed, lost in the dashboard. Her fingers idly rubbed Tim’s head. Nate sat behind, gnawing at his nails.

  When they pulled over in front of Aunt Margo’s house, they had to help Kerri out of the car. The keys jingled in her hand.

  “Let me,” Andy said.

  She noticed Kerri pressing harder on her biceps as she unlocked the front door.

  “It’s nothing. We’re safe.”

  Tim proved so by stepping in, relieved to be at headquarters again. He needed to think.

  Nate carried the bags from the trunk and headed upstairs.

  “I’m gonna try and sleep for a while,” he said, not offering much of a chance for objections. “You girls will be okay?”

  Andy nodded for both. Kerri had not let go of her arm yet.

  She kept holding her as they went upstairs. The house, floorboards excepting, remained silent. The common sympathy of some tender music could have been expected.

  Kerri jolted a little when Andy pushed open the door to her room.
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  “Okay, see? We made it.” Andy pulled her inside. “There’s nothing to worry about here.”

  Kerri still refused to let go. Andy monitored her as her eyes swept the tiny flowery room: the bed, the miniature desk, the wardrobe.

  “Kerri. Look. There’s nothing here.”

  “No, no…”

  “I’m just showing you.” She opened the wardrobe, a pinkblast of small T-shirts and pullovers and shorts yelling hello inside. She pulled the chair from under the desk, silent on the thick terry cloth carpet. She made a point to kneel down and check under the bed. “See? Nothing here, except for the guest bed. Come on. Sit down.”

  Kerri carefully sat on a corner of the Darjeeling-colored paisley quilt. From there she closed the door and locked it. Then her attention turned to the opposite wall.

  “Can you block the window?”

  Andy was on her knees, pulling out the guest bed.

  “Kerri, nothing’s gonna come through the window.”

  “I know. But can you please do it?”

  “Kerri…”

  “Please!”

  It did sound more like a command than a plea, but the effort nonetheless pushed a tear down her cheek.

  Andy went to the window and pushed the wardrobe in front of it. The colors inside the room went oh and became very sad.

  “Right,” Andy panted. “Let’s get some sleep now, okay?”

  “No, please—”

  “I meant you, Kerri. Okay? I’ll keep watch. Nothing’s going to happen. But you need to get in bed.”

  “No!”

  “Kerri, come on, please!” She was holding Kerri’s arm with one hand while she opened the bed with the other. “Just lie down.”

  “Don’t leave me alone!”

  “I’m not leaving you alone, I’m staying here with you. Just lie down.” She tried to let her go, but it was Kerri holding on to her body now. “Kerri, you’re having an anxiety attack. I need you to relax and get into bed.”