All through his nightly routine he pondered Happy being his only recourse when it came to the case of the mysterious pools of blood. Did he really bring her into another investigation? What kind of parent asked a child to lead them to a body or three? If he didn’t ask or have her help, if he didn’t follow her leads, where would the investigation take him?
He crawled into bed, gently as to not wake his wife.
He’d have to ask Happy in the morning what she thought. Maybe her insight was at its end and she’d played her part. He’d have to run with the information she’d given him about Melinda and see if Hairy Pete knew who Melinda was last servicing.
He could do it without her if he had to.
The conundrum was knowing there would probably be four victims this year. If he didn’t ask Happy for help would it cost someone else their life?
“It’s called exsanguination.”
Butch’s eyes flipped open at the sound of Happy’s voice as she stood over him.
“What’s she talking about?” Erin murmured.
He sat up and flipped the light on, illuminating the room and sending long shadows across the wall. Happy hadn’t moved, still standing beside the bed, her pupils dilated so wide he could barely see their usual blue, her face chalk white
“Happy?” He asked gently.
“It’s called exsanguination,” she repeated.
“What’s that?” Erin asked from her side of the bed.
“It’s when someone pokes so many holes in you the blood can’t stay in,” Happy answered, her head tilted to the side. “He took my eyes.”
“What is she talking about?” Erin whispered, panic lacing her words.
“Didn’t you hear me, bitch?” Happy growled. “I’m talking about bleeding to death in the street.”
Butch hustled, standing from the bed and dragging Happy out of the room before Erin got any more upset.
“What is going on with you?” He asked in the hallway as he towed her into her room, closing the door behind them. “What’s going on?”
“It’s time to find us. If you find us, you find him.”
“Us?” He sat her down in the desk chair in her room, squatting in front of her. “Who’s us? Who’s him?”
He moved her brown hair aside and inspected her face. She was completely devoid of expression, her wide eyes distant.
“Happy?” He whispered.
“If you find him, you’ll save her.”
Butch felt a chill run down his spine. Even her voice was foreign, deep and emotionless.
“Who needs to be saved? Happy?”
“Number four.”
The killer’s fourth victim of the year.
He hesitated to ask but pushed the question out anyway. “Where’s Happy?”
“Inside. Deep inside.” Her head tipped to the side again. “So she won’t see.”
“Won’t see what?”
“Take us to the car now,” she instructed, ignoring him.
He left Happy in her room, sitting as still as a statue, while he went to get dressed.
Erin was waiting for him, the blankets clutched to her chest.
“What was that?” She whispered forcefully.
He shook his head, sliding his pants on. “She has a gift Erin. She can’t control who and what she sees.”
“I can’t have this here,” she told him. “This isn’t the kind of thing we can handle, especially with a baby on the way.”
He strapped his holster over his shirt and threw a coat on.
“We can,” he said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. I promised her we would give her a home. A family.”
His hand was turning the knob when she said, “You promised me the same thing when we got married.”
He paused for a second but didn’t turn around or answer.
Instead, he walked out the door and closed it gently behind him.
Butch checked Happy in the rear-view mirror again. Her eyes were closed but he knew she was awake. Occasionally she’d straighten in her seat or press her hand to the window, directing him where she wanted him to go.
He wasn’t sure where their destination was but somehow she knew. Whoever she was. If there was one thing Butch was sure of in this situation it was that whoever he was talking to wasn’t Happy. It was her body and her voice but not her.
“I’m number one,” she said into the darkness, her breath fogging the window as she pressed her forehead to the glass.
“What’s your name?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she told him as she swiveled her head to face him. “She can hear your thoughts, you know. You and your wife.”
“Who? Happy?”
“She knows her time is up with you.”
“Her time isn’t up,” he argued then thought better of it. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
He didn’t even know who he was talking to.
“Where are we going?” He asked instead.
“To a hole in the ground,” she answered. “Where the dead weep, day and night.”
That sounded ominous.
He drove on, the city thinning making a gradual change to suburbs.
“They’re waiting there now. It’s here.”
Butch pulled the car over to the curb, parking in front of a school as she instructed.
He’d seen some things in his career he’d initially thought unlikely that ended up being true but this was beyond that. He highly doubted whatever this ghost was trying to show him was in an elementary school.
“Not in the school,” Happy said from behind him. “Beyond.”
He turned to see her looking at him but not with Happy’s eyes. Those eyes belonged to someone else.
“How do you keep reading my mind?”
“I don’t. She does.”
On that thought, he got out of the car and let Happy out of the back.
She picked her way confidently past the school grounds and beyond the playground. Abutted to a piece of conservation land the school gave way to a maze of paths on a parcel of wetlands. They traversed the trails until it opened into a great open area.
Butch looked around, having never seen such a thing.
Acres of open land interspersed with huge mountains of sand and rock lay before him. He stepped up to one of the hills and touched it, rubbing it between his fingers.
It was gravel.
Happy continued on, skirting the mounds until she stopped in her tracks, looking down at the ground. Butch followed, curious but also cautious. If anyone knew what he was doing they’d think he was nuts. In his defense, they’d thought the same thing when he’d let Happy lead him to Lainey Kinsley last year but they’d have never found her body if he hadn’t.
When he stood next to Happy and looked down there was a manhole at her feet.
“There’s too many of us inside,” she said. “We’re ready to go now.”
His confidence in the situation wavered as he questioned what he was doing. Stooped down, about to open an unknown manhole cover, he looked at Happy again. Her eyes, usually so expressive, stared at the cover waiting for him to lift it.
He put his gloves on and opened it.
Happy sat on the bed at Butch and Erin Hardy’s as the first rays of the morning sun streamed in through the window. The sound of the front door slamming shut had echoed through the room a few minutes before and now she could hear Butch and Erin fighting in the kitchen. They were trying to be quiet but there was no point. She could hear them inside, their voices living in her mind.
She desperately wished she could remember what happened but no matter how hard she tried the memories from last night were lost. She knew she’d been awake, there were vague blurs of a car ride and being near mountains but the details were hazy. Like she’d been there but somehow wasn’t really there. At first, she’d tried to convince herself it had all been a dream but she knew better.
She didn’t often wake from dreams sitting in the back of a police car, flashing lights illuminating
the night around her. She’d been somewhere but didn’t remember anything about it.
She knew Butch had been there. He’d told her he’d see her in the morning and sent her home with a woman in a uniform. Erin had been terrifyingly quiet when she’d opened the door to let her into the house.
“You know you saved us, right?”
Melinda sat on the desk across from Happy, now free of blood, her body whole.
“I didn’t do anything,” Happy said.
“You was just you. That was enough. Yo daddy came and found us. Now we all going somewhere else.”
The two other women now stood behind Melinda, both looking like they were alive and normal. The newest one, the one who’d lost her guts everywhere, didn’t look so scared anymore. She kind of looked like the girl from the story Butch read to her sometimes, the one about the girl that followed a rabbit down a hole.
The lady who usually floated didn’t look scary at all. She kind of looked like a school teacher might look, but with a tattoo on her cheek.
“Are you going to heaven?” Happy asked. That’s where Lainey had gone when she’d been found.
Melinda shrugged. “I hope so. I ain’t been that bad. We wanted to come say thanks.”
Happy nodded, not sure what she’d done but satisfied that they’d be gone.
“Look at my nails,” the ghost preened. “I still look fly and I’m dead as hell. Ain’t nothing keepin’ a fine ass woman down.”
Happy wiped her sweaty palms on her old jeans; the ones she’d gotten from the social worker while she lived in her last home. Sadness swamped her and her heart pounded as she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Knowing what was coming she stood, gathering the paper shopping bag full of her meager belongings and holding it close to her chest.
When Butch opened the door, eyes red rimmed, she was ready.
Her time here was done.
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About the Author
Jenni Rose is a sometimes writer with an all the time imagination.
More often than not, she can be seen typing away in the waiting rooms of local gymnastics gyms or dance studios.
Married mom, business owner, writer, taxi driver, and accidental chicken lady.
www.jennimrose.com
[email protected]
Dead and Buried: Where the Bodies Lie (Chasing Happy Book 1) Page 3