by Joey Ruff
“Something,” I said. “You miss the sign outside?” Most did. It was little bigger than a phone book, and even when it wasn’t hanging crooked, you didn’t see it from the street unless you were looking for it. “I do paranormal investigations, kid.”
I picked up a business card from the corner of my desk and tossed it at him like a Frisbee. It was a simple card, white with black lettering: “Jonothan Swyftt. Private and Paranormal Investigations.” Then under that in a smaller font, “Your last line of Midnight defense.”
“That like ghosts and stuff?”
I shook my head. “There really aren’t that many ghosts.”
“The Winchester house?” he offered. “That’s haunted.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t, but it sure as shit ain’t ghosts doing the haunting.”
He seemed very confused as he looked away. “Alright, I guess.”
“Look,” I said. “There’s more out there than what you see advertised. Those guys on TV are arseholes and their whole schtick is bollocks. Loads of things can haunt a place: demons, house spirits…”
“Spirits? Aren’t those like ghosts?”
“Not really,” I said. “They’re more like little elves.”
He didn’t say anything at first, but when his eyes fell on the business card, he said, “What’s Midnight defense?”
“I…well…,” I said. “The stuff I hunt: the Fallen, the Korrigan, the Children of Echidna…. There’s not really a banner term, and I don’t like the word ‘monster;’ you say that and people look at you funny.” I shrugged. “The Midnight.”
“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I know there’s no such thing as monsters.”
“You believe in God?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“There goes that argument. You’re in good company, though. I don’t anymore either.”
“Whatever.”
“How about, ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’”
“Is that the Bible?”
“Yes,” I said. “Horatio is a common Biblical name, right up there with Moses and Obadiah. What, don’t they teach Shakespeare in High School anymore?”
He looked uncomfortable, then he said, “Maybe I’ve wasted my time.”
“Believe it or don’t.” I shrugged. “It’s your fucking call. But I didn’t get the scars I have from fishing opossums out from underneath some old woman’s porch.”
He put the business card back on my desk and turned for the door.
“Kid, sit the fuck down.” I motioned to a three-legged stool that sat in the corner. I didn’t get many visitors.
He looked at the stool hesitantly and then took it, brought it over to sit in front of the desk, and squatted atop it. Unholstered his pack and set it limply at his feet.
“Look,” he said. “I didn’t know you were some crazy monster-hunting psychic creep. I just…I heard you were the best, and…”
“Who said that?”
“What?”
“That I was the best. Clearly, that wasn’t listed in a yellowpages ad. I’m not listed.”
Eric took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if he was giving up his argument about monsters being fake or what. I didn’t need him to believe me. Few did.
He reached in to his bag, rummaged for something while he talked. “Oh. Just a guy. My mom’s friend. Jeff…Jim, uh, McTierney.”
At the mention of McTierney, I sat up a little more in my chair. “Your mom’s friends with Senator McTierney?”
“She cleans his house sometimes. When he heard about what happened, how it happened, he gave my mom your card. I overheard him. He didn’t say what you did, just that he’s in your debt for, like, forever. If anyone could do anything to help, you’d be it.” He thought for a second. “You help him get elected or something?”
“His wife was raped by a grindylow.”
His brow furled as he said, “A what?”
“It’s a water gremlin. She got pregnant. McTierney contacted me to…how do I put this delicately? Dispose of the evidence. Kind of ironic given his Pro-Life campaign.” I smiled a little, but Eric gave me nothing.
“I’m supposed to believe that?” he scoffed. I shrugged. “What happened to client confidentiality?”
“What am I, a fucking doctor?”
“You can’t tell me that stuff.”
“So don’t repeat it.”
He stared at me a moment, the look on his face suggested he was trying to figure out who I was, if I really was just crazy.
“So your brother goes missing,” I prompted, glad to be changing the subject. “You said the Senator heard ‘how it happened,’ before he gave your mother the card. What does that mean?”
His hard exterior began to soften, and I could see the gleam of tears well in the corners of his eyes. He wiped his face with his sleeve and looked away from me for a moment. “I…I’m sorry. I’ve never had to do anything like this before, and it’s still just…it’s hard, Mr. Swyftt.”
I bit my lip. “Take your time.” I think my brow might have wrinkled as I said, “It can be hard to lose someone you love.” I didn’t do well with empathy, Ape had that part right.
Eric nodded. “My mother was going to contact you herself, at least, that’s what she kept telling me, when she got around to it, but she passes out drunk every night, and Adam’s still missing. He’s not coming back on his own….”
“Eric,” I said, my patience wavering a bit. “How did it happen?”
He took a deep breath, gripped the edge of his stool. “He disappeared. Adam just disappeared. After all the stuff with Dewey and the hospital and the attack…and then one day he was just gone.”
“Hang on, you’re getting ahead of me. What’s this about an attack?” I liked attacks. They kept things interesting.
“On Clint Johnson.”
“Right…Clint Johnson. You say that like I should know the bugger.”
“Sorry. He’s my Mom’s friend’s kid.” Eric fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. “Adam got blamed. But he said Dewey did it.”
Sure, I did Private and Paranormal Investigations, but it was all Private lately. With the possible exception of the bum this morning, it’d been all quiet on the Paranormal front. Maybe I was fishing for an edge to keep me interested in the case. “Tell me about this Dewey; what does he look like? Where is he from?”
His face got all scrunched up and uncomfortable for a second. Then, quieter than before, he said, “Nobody’s seen Dewey except for Adam. He’s…well…he’s imaginary.”
Bingo.
I leaned forward in my chair. “So your brother’s imaginary friend attacked this Johnson boy? What does your mom think about this?”
“She’s a wreck. I told you. She passes out every night. I haven’t seen her sober since the attack, honestly. It was only two days after that Adam went missing.”
“When was the attack?” I had a pad of paper now, a pen in my hand. I took notes.
“Umm…” He looked up at the ceiling, eyes kind of lolling around idly. “Like two, three weeks ago.”
“And you said Adam’s autistic?”
“I mean, well, kinda. There’s not really a term for what Adam is. He’s just…special, I guess. Autism is just the best way to describe it to new people.”
He pulled a leather-bound book from his backpack. “I’ve been seeing the school counselor, Tim. He wanted me to write stuff down. I…I marked the page. It’s the last entry.” He turned the book over in his hands a couple of times, and then passed it to me.
I took it and opened to the marked page. I didn’t read the words so much as listen to the voice of Eric Gables – used my ability to hear his own thoughts as he wrote. It was a practice I’d developed over time and was useful. People were careful what they wrote down for evaluation, but they didn’t censor their thoughts.
Mom just sits there. She’s worked all day; she’s tired. She drinks again, blaming herself. She�
��s a bad mother now. She hadn’t drank anything since Adam was two. It was hard enough raising a new baby on her own; he never had a father. I could pick mine out of a lineup. But Adam never even got a name. Mom never even knew him — She just woke up one morning pregnant. It wasn’t immaculate conception, though, just inebriated. No Holy Spirit or anything, just a ghost of a man who never really was.
When she thought Adam was autistic, she blamed the alcohol. Quit cold-turkey. Now she’s drinking again. Sober-by-day picks up a 12-pack on the way home. It’s because she has her own house-cleaning business and she doesn’t answer to anyone. She drowns her sorrows with Clint Black and John Michael Montgomery and her little FM station. She likes their songs, but she won’t sing along. She just cries.
I never go by the hospital. I never go by the Johnson house anymore, either. I haven’t been since Clint’s birthday party almost two weeks ago. I’m not sure if I feel guilty about it at all, I just don’t want Mrs. Johnson to see me. I don’t want to cause any trouble. I don’t want her to ask about things, how’s Mother holding up. I feel bad enough, I really don’t wanna feel worse.
“But what about the birthday party?” Tim asks.
“Clint Johnson’s?”
He nods. “Do you want to talk about that?”
“Cake. Ice cream. Presents.” I try to give him a smile. “We were sitting outside on the back patio. The kids were playing in the yard. It was hot. They had water balloons. Adam didn’t want to play. He wanted to sit and color, but Mother thought he needed to be with kids. It was healthier. Kids should play outside. Adam threw a fit, but Mother made him anyway. Clint Johnson didn’t really like Adam, either. He was a good kid, not really a brat or anything, just didn’t get along with Adam. None of them did. Adam wasn’t social. Sometimes he was violent, if they picked on him.”
“Sometimes kids think it’s funny to gang up on other kids,” Tim adds.
“They soaked him. Adam was drenched. It was all in good fun. But he didn’t know that. So he tackled Clint. He started hitting him, beating him with his fists.”
“What did your Mother do?” Tim asks.
I blink, seeing my Mother reclining in a lawn chair with an iced tea. She talks with four other ladies at a plastic table with a large canvas umbrella. No one pays attention to the children until the screaming starts.
All of the ladies are on their feet at once. Mother’s yelling and tripping down the steps into the yard with Mrs. Johnson on her heels, spurting accusations and profanity. The two women pull the children apart, Adam dripping water everywhere, Clint dripping blood from his nose.
“They were both taken inside,” I tell him. “Adam to dry off, Clint to bandage up. My Mother apologized religiously to Mrs. Johnson.”
“Then what?” Tim asks.
“For an awkward minute, everyone just stands there, unsure. Then they just go on as if nothing happened. About ten minutes later, both women are back outside, talking and laughing, still a little tense. Upset but trying to move on, ya know.”
“And what happened next, Son? What did you see?” It’s not Tim’s voice. It’s Detective Anderson’s. We’re in a private room at the hospital the day of the incident. I’m sitting uncomfortably in a leather armchair, looking at the white walls and the pastel paintings of flower fields hanging on them.
“I didn’t see anything,” I tell him. “Mrs. Johnson went back in the house to check on Clint. Then she screamed.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Not exactly. I heard…I didn’t see the boy. Is he okay?”
“The doctors are with him now. We’ll find out in time. It doesn’t look very good.”
I nod. I look at Detective Anderson’s face. Serious, stern.
“Have you ever heard the name Dewey before?”
I nod, wearily. My stomach turns.
“Your brother is refusing to answer any of our questions, and your Mother seems to be clueless.”
“I heard the screams of Mrs. Johnson,” I tell him. “We all rushed in. My Mother pushed her way past everyone else into the bathroom. Mrs. Johnson was standing in the doorway, her hands over her face. She was screaming and crying. My Mother was crying, and I couldn’t see her, but I heard her voice echo out of the bathroom, panicky, ‘call 911, we need an ambulance.’”
“And Dewey?”
“Adam was in the bathroom, he was crying louder than I ever heard from him before. He was saying, ‘Dewey! Dewey! Dewey did it, Momma! Dewey did it. I couldn’t stop him.’”
“That’s what your mother told me,” he says. “Who is Dewey?”
“He’s a friend of Adam’s,” I tell him. “That’s all I know.”
“What does he look like?”
“I’ve never seen him. To be honest, I don’t even think he’s real. Adam doesn’t really get along with most people. He makes up his own friends.”
Detective Anderson nods. “How long have they known each other?”
“Few months, maybe. I don’t know if you noticed,” I tell him, “but Adam doesn’t really talk a lot. He has a hard time communicating.”
Detective Anderson doesn’t say anything. He stares at the pastel fields.
“He cut him, didn’t he?” I ask.
But he doesn’t answer. Or if he does, I don’t hear.
The days between the accident and Adam’s disappearance are a blur. I don’t know if I sleep at all at night or just lay there. At some point, I find Adam, drawing a picture of a man covered in red bananas.
“Adam,” I say. “What are you drawing?”
He doesn’t say anything at first. He doesn’t look up at me. One of the bananas is leaking. “Clint.”
“Clint Johnson?” I watch the back of his head. “Adam, where’s Dewey?”
“Elensal,” he says.
“Where is that?”
“That’s where the dragons are.”
He sets his picture aside and pulls out another one. This has lavish green hills and a mountain spire in the center surrounded by black, red, green and blue dog-like animals with wings and long tails. There’s maybe a dozen of them, maybe two, and in the top left corner is a blood-red sun.
“Is that it?” I ask.
He nods. He’s looking at me and smiling. He never looks at me. It’s unsettling, and I look away. “I’m going to go there, Eric. Dewey’s going to show me the Rockbirds.”
“Adam, what happened with Clint?”
This time, he looks away.
“Where did you get that knife?”
He’s drawing black lines by the sun.
“Adam?”
“These are the Rockbirds.”
“Adam!”
He scoots his chair back across the linoleum floor and stands up. He walks to the kitchen door.
“Adam!?”
“There wasn’t a knife, Eric.” He doesn’t stop walking, and I can only barely hear the last, “Dewey used his claws.”
I blinked a few times.
“Shit.” I shook my head. There was a strong pressure behind my eyes, and I rubbed them before pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He sat at the edge of his seat. “You started twitching a little. Your eyes were doing this….” He tried to mimic it, fluttering his eyelids nervously. Ape says it looks like a person in REM sleep – like I’m dreaming. “And then….”
“I’m fine.”
“But….”
“I’m fine, kid.” I put a thumb to my temple and rubbed. “This Detective Anderson the one looking in on your brother’s case?”
“Yeah. He’s a friend of my mom’s. They went to school together.”
“Your mom’s got a lot of friends. You know the precinct he works in?”
“No. I…I can find out.”
“It’s okay. I’ll make a couple of calls. I’ll have to go and talk to him. What’s this Elensal place?”
“I have no idea. Adam used to draw dragons all the time, but there was…a
turning point, I guess you could call it. Once he started talking about Elensal, his pictures of the dragons changed. They became scarier. More detailed. Do you think that means anything?”
I stood from the desk and grabbed my jacket from the coat rack.
“Could be. It’s early still, don’t know what’s important. But I’ll keep it in mind. You have a number, in case I need to get hold of you?”
He dropped the cash envelope on my desk. “Number’s on the back of the picture. Why? Where are you going?”
“Seems like I need to have a talk with this Detective Anderson.”
Seeing me standing, he stood, too. Put the backpack over his shoulders again. “So does this mean you’re taking the case?”
I nodded. “Can I keep the journal? Just…for insight. I’ll give it back when I’m done.” I walked him to the door and pushed it open for him.
“Yeah, of…of course.” He took the hint and walked through it, stood there on the landing. “Mr. Swyftt…”
“Yeah, kid?”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“I haven’t done anything yet. But I’ll be in touch.”
4
I walked back to my desk and phoned the house. Nobody answered, which was odd, as Ape was expecting me.
I made a few more calls and found out where Detective Anderson worked. By the time I got to the precinct, it was already 3 o’clock. The precinct was quiet, and I left my name with the receptionist. She was a mousey looking girl, glasses and braces, scraggily brown hair pulled up to make her look like she was just waiting for the high school chess team to start practice. But she had a nice voice, confident and playful, not at all what I would have expected, which is why I figured they had her answering phones.
She asked me to have a seat in the little waiting area and picked up the phone, spoke melodically into it. She had a voice for phone sex, maybe ran a 900 number on the side. I guess these days it was all webcams and internet videos, but knight’s-pawn-to-B-5 over there didn’t look like she could pull that off. But she was sitting down, I couldn’t tell what her arse looked like.
I sat on one of the hard plastic chairs. The table beside me held a stack of magazines, and I selected one that boasted articles about make-up and sex positions, things titled “Does He Really Love Me” and “How to Shed Those Extra Pregnancy Pounds.” On the cover was an actress called Julia Roberts in what looked like a sixth-grader’s Sadie Hawkins’ dress: a shiny strapless navy blue number secured by a ribbon and bow six inches thick.