by Glenn Rolfe
Mud squished around his boots. The air was heavy with fog left over from the storm. Ghosts floated on either side of the old trailer. Shane felt a tingling along his spine. Flexing his grip on his weapon, he ascended the small set of wooden steps to the front door. He hammered three loud knocks and waited.
“It’s Brenda’s sister’s place,” Cote whispered behind him. “Let me.”
Shane stepped back, “Be careful.”
Cote turned the knob and let the door float open.
Following him, Shane gripped his gun as his eyes adjusted and searched for any moving shadows in the dark and seemingly empty rooms.
The front two rooms, a small kitchen and living room, were clear. Shane nodded toward the hallway.
“Stay here,” he said.
“You smell that?” Cote said.
He did. The wet funk reminded him of the time he’d been out helping Mae’s brother Ronnie build a tree house for his niece and nephew. They’d built it across the lake between four huge pines. They had the joists in place and walls up, and were gearing to start on the roof when they noticed an awful scent. It had rained out the day before, halting their progress, and leaving everything soaked. He’d followed Ronnie as they traced the smell. The deer’s remains laid halfway through the decay process, breaking down and covered in a dark, mucus-like gunk. Shane wasn’t an expert on decomposition, but he’d never seen anything like it. The fact that they should have smelled this earlier in the week bugged him, too. It was almost like the rain had dropped the dead and ruined thing there. That same smell hung in there air of the Neilson’s home.
He tried the hall light.
Nothing.
He pulled his flashlight, holding it beneath his gun, and continued down the narrow hallway. The first door he came to was shut. He tried the knob. The latch wouldn’t catch, the knob just spun in his hand. He moved on. The rest of the rooms were empty. Nothing looked out of place as far as he could see. No signs of a break in or struggle. He returned to the closed door, which after seeing the other rooms had to be the bathroom. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that the odor was strongest here.
Cote joined him.
“Mrs. Neilson?” Shane said.
He cast a glance at Cote.
“Ginny, Mike, Laura? Is there anyone in there?” Cote tried the door knob.
Silence.
“Step aside,” Shane whispered.
He barreled forward, throwing his large shoulder into the cheap door.
The smell was horrendous.
He shone the light around and spotted plenty to raise his haunches.
The tub was filled with murky, dark water. Some of which had splashed out onto the floor. The toilet seat below the open window had footprints on it, looked like a sneaker tread. And the heavy porcelain tank cover was MIA.
Where was everybody?
Cote stuck his head in and covered his nose.
“I have to call Brenda.”
“Hold off a minute. Let’s take a walk around the perimeter.”
Mike Neilson’s F-150 sat parked half in the woods.
“What do you make of this?”
“Michele mentioned it. She said it was one of the things that made her nervous. It sounded like nothing to me, but seeing it now, I can understand what she meant.”
“They have another vehicle?”
“Not that I know of. Mike never wanted Ginny to drive or work, or have friends.”
What the hell’s going on? People just don’t disappear.
He gazed over at the Rotenberg’s. No lights there either.
Eight o’clock on a Sunday night and nobody is awake? And where the hell is Horner?
“Let me get some of my boys over here to have a better look around.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I need to have a talk with your daughter.”
Chapter Fourteen
Deputy Horner dressed as quick as he could.
“I have to go, I have to go. Shit.”
“Don’t blame me; you’re the one that said not to stop.”
Horner finished buttoning up his shirt, cursing under his breath at Jake for being so damn sexy. No one on the force knew he was gay, well, maybe the sheriff did, but nobody said a word. Avalon was a small town with even smaller minds. Seth nearly died the day he pulled Jake over for speeding.
“I’ll be back after my shift.”
He leaned over the bed and kissed Jake’s plump limps. God, he was one lucky son of a bitch.
“Be safe,” Jake said.
“Don’t wait up.”
Seth hurried out and down the hall, his mind battling the Oh shit, Sheriff is gonna kill me, and Damn, I don’t wanna leave. Stumbling out the front door and hopping into his cruiser, he hoped his weakness didn’t come back to haunt him. When David Crowley’s scraggly, Jack and Coke voice came over his com, Seth and Jake had just started fucking. He knew he should tell Jake to stop so he could get to the Neilson residence, but he was in love.
Shut up, it’s just lust, not love.
He didn’t feel confident siding one way or the other on that one, and he sure as hell didn’t have time to worry about his love life, his job could be on the line if something happened because of his delayed reaction.
He hit the steering wheel and pressed the gas pedal.
Growing up gay in a small Maine town like Richmond had been hard, but not the outright horror it may have been in one of the hundred redneck towns upstate. He’d lived in Avalon since getting the job with the Sheriff’s Department. He was still feeling out the community. Everyone he’d met seemed nice enough, but when it came to his sexuality, he was always on guard. That’s what made Jake so damn special. Being with him was the only time he could relax and be himself.
As the Truman place came into sight, his stomach turned, like hearing someone else’s vomit slapping the pavement. He pulled in behind the sheriff’s car. Bret Cote’s truck set next to it. Beat out by an off-duty fireman.
Shit.
Seth stepped from the vehicle. The fog on this side of town was thick, a full cloud fallen to Earth. The Neilson’s trailer was dark, same as the neighbor’s place. He hadn’t noticed whether the Gilson’s place down the road was blacked out. Could be a transformer. He hoped.
Approaching the trailer’s front door, he pulled his pistol and flicked off the safety. To his left, a screen laid on the lawn beneath an open window. He reached for the com on his shoulder.
Green lights appeared in the fog to his right.
…..
“Goddamnit, we lost him.” Shane placed a palm to the wet bark next to him, catching his breath.
Horner, where the fuck are you?
“You see anything?” Shane said.
Cote joined him and shook his head. “Not in this shit. Don’t remember the last time I’d seen fog this thick.”
The ground cloud was impressive as it was inconvenient. The early fall night was warm and humid; he could hear Mae now whenever he got home tonight. Can’t you please wear the white t-shirts I bought you? You’re making rivals out of me and these pit-stained uniforms.
Staring into the fog, he wondered if they weren’t chasing ghosts, or maybe something more likely, a fisher or a bobcat. Wouldn’t Mae give him the business over that?
“Sheriff, did you hear that?”
He hadn’t heard a thing.
Damn old ears.
Cote swatted branches out of the way, heading toward the lake. Shane followed.
“You mind telling me what you heard?”
“Sounded like something slid into the water.”
“Someone fell?”
“No, like the sound it makes when a gator or croc in those nature shows slides down from the banks to the water.”
Shane sure as hell didn’t hear anything like that. Thoughts of a bad seventies movie he and Mae had seen on their first date came to mind.A creepy, insane movie about a motel that had a guest-eating gator out back.
As t
hey reached the edge of the tress, he wondered how in the hell Cote had heard anything. The lake was a body of ichor stretched out into the strange night. Not a spot of fog to be found.
“How weird is this?” Cote said.
A bad feeling slithered through him. He never ignored his instincts.
“Let’s get back.”
And Horner better fucking be waiting.
…..
Seth Horner aimed at the twin green lights stepping from the cloud. They belonged to a boy.
“All right, son, just…”
Just what? This kid’s eyes are glowing like something from a fucking horror movie.
“What’s your name? What are you doing out here tonight? Do you know the Neilson’s?”
He was babbling, rambling off questions, and stepping away from the boy with the glowing eyes.
This isn’t fucking happening.
You have the gun, idiot. Stop him.
“That’s close enough.”
The kid reached out toward him. It suddenly clicked in Seth’s head just who he was looking at.
“Greg? Greg Hickey?”
A grin lifted below those awful eyes. Something lightning quick shot toward Seth’s face. He craned his neck just before the thing hit. Whatever it was caught him in the lip. The taste lingered on his mouth as he stumbled and hit the ground. He could taste and feel a foul, mucus-like substance clinging to his lips.
He’s just managed to get a knee on the wet lawn when the boy crashed down upon him. Something wet and heavy landed across his forearm and quickly wrapped around his wrist. A tremendous pressure caused him to drop his weapon before he felt the bones break and heard the thick cracking beneath his skin.
His scream was preemptively shut down when his face was driven into the ground.
He couldn’t breathe.
How the fuck was this kid doing this?
Seth wasn’t a wimp, far from it. He felt he could hold his own in almost any one-on-one altercation, yet here he was suffocating under the weight of a lost child with impossible strength.
He had to make a move.
Digging his toes into the soft lawn, he tried to buck the kid off balance so he could escape. On the third try he managed to distract the boy and got his head turned sideways. Gasping for air, blinking the stars from his eyes, he felt the weight lift. He hurried to his knees, a relative term considering his current condition-out of breath and limp-wristed. He would have laughed if his life wasn’t hanging in the balance. Reaching for his gun with his left hand, the green light enfolded him. He stood and raised the weapon at the horrible sight.
The gunshot tore through Greg Hickey’s shoulder with a squelch. A tentacle arm wrapped around his ankles. Seth’s feet were yanked out from under him. The world flipped. His back hit the ground. The back of his head snapped back and knocked everything off kilter.
The air exploded from his lungs as the boy-thing jumped down onto his chest and hurled the tentacle into his gasping mouth. The pain of teeth being broken was dwarfed by the sensation of the slippery appendage sliding down his throat.
Wide-eyed and paralyzed, his last vision was of the dark slime oozing from the gunshot wound in his attacker’s shoulder. Unable to move, Seth’s eyes rolled back and found nothing.
…..
The gunshot put the giddy-up back in Shane’s step. Cote took off like a bat out of hell, leaving the sheriff in his dust, giddy-up or not. He caught more than one branch in the eye on his way out of the woods and by the crooked Ford pickup. Rounding the corner of the trailer, struggling for breath, he found Cote pointing toward a cruiser--Deputy Horner’s cruiser.
“Wait,” Shane said, huffing and puffing.
Cote went to the vehicle and shook his head again.
Hands on his hips, Shane gazed around and spotted the flashlight on the lawn.
Bending down, he reached for the Mag light, his fingers stopping an inch away from it.
What the hell?
A gooey substance covered the handle.
“What is it,” Cote said, joining him.
Shane raised his chin and spun around sweeping the yard and those of the neighbors for any sign of Horner.
“What’s on it?” Cote said, crouched over, his nose a few inches above the slimed flashlight.
“Not sure. But it ain’t bugging me as much as my missing deputy or the fact that a gunshot rings out and there’s not a soul poking their head out to see what’s going on.”
Not one single light was on in any of the nearest places.
“Wanna check inside again?”
“I got a feeling it’s just as we left it.”
His gut told him they wouldn’t find Horner. Not in the house, not tonight.
They searched the trailer just the same. It was clear.
After making a quick check of the closest yards and knocking on a few doors that no one answered, he wandered back into the Neilson’s yard. He bagged the Mag light, picking it up with a napkin from his pocket to avoid contact with its ooze-covered handle, and tossed it on the front seat of his car.
“This is freaky. Where is everybody?”
Body Snatchers. The movie with Donald Sutherland came to mind. Shane pictured him and Cote being the last people unaffected, racing to get the fuck out of Dodge.
“Shit if I know.”
He reached inside the open window and picked up the two-way.
“Hey, Crowley.”
“Go ahead, Sheriff.”
“You get any calls about a gunshot?”
“Nope. Not a peep. Phone’s been quiet. Why? Something happen?”
“What about Horner? He call in?”
“About twenty minutes ago. Said he was heading over…to meet you.”
“Get Vern over here, and call Gunner Tisdale. I need Horner’s cruiser towed.”
“Is he…is Horner okay?”
“I ain’t gonna speculate on that just yet, but he sure as hell ain’t with me. Just get Vern and Gunner out here. I’m heading over to Bret Cote’s to check on something.”
“Roger that, Sheriff.”
“I’m gonna need to have that talk with your little girl.”
“I’ll have her put some coffee on.”
Chapter Fifteen
Michele woke with a start. She sat bolt upright, the Kindle she’d passed out reading flew from the bed, and thumped on the floor. Her dream was of digging up the backyard at her aunt’s house. She blamed her father’s book.
Running a hand through her long, dark hair, she glanced at her alarm clock and saw that it was almost ten. She’d assumed she slept deep into the night. Her dad had promised to come get her. He would have brought her, unless he saw her sleeping.
Damn it.
She swung her legs off the bed. Ducking her head into the hallway, she noticed the light down the hall. Two doors down, the light to her parent’s room was on. She tiptoed to the door and peeked inside. The book her mother had been reading on the couch lay on the bed.
Her mother and father were both M.I.A.
Grabbing the door handle, Michele pulled the door closed.
The house phone began to ring.
She hurried out to the living room and grasped the hand set of the antique rotary phone her dad purchased at a yard sale.
“Hello?”
“Hey, honey.”
“Hey, dad.”
“Can you do me a favor? Make up a pot of coffee?”
“You do know it’s, like, almost ten o’clock?”
“I do. I’m on my way home--”
“Where’d you go? Aunt Ginny’s?”
“We’ll talk when I get there.”
“Where’s mom?”
“She should have left a note. She was going to go check on your Aunt Lilith.”
“Oh God, it’s Laura, isn’t it? Something’s happened to her.”
“We don’t know anything just yet. Listen, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just start the coffee.”
She agreed, hung up,
and went to the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, the front door opened. She heard her father talking to someone else.
Coming around the corner, she saw who it was.
“Hey, Sheriff,” she said.
“Michele, how are you?”
She shrugged.
“Sorry, dumb question,” he said.
“Is Laura okay?”
Her dad stepped forward and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go in the kitchen and talk.”
After filling her in on what they wanted her to know, Sheriff Davis finished his coffee and started to get up for a refill.
“I can grab that for you,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She brought the cup to the coffee pot, filled it, and stared into the dark drink. She felt numb. Laura hadn’t gone home, and there was nobody at her aunt’s. Gone without a trace.
“You okay?” her dad asked. He stood in the kitchen doorway.
She nodded and turned to their guest.
“Black is fine,” Sheriff said.
“Mind reader,” she said, placing the cup on the table.
“One of my many tricks.” He took a sip and let out an “ah.”
“So, young lady, your father tells me you felt something was off at your aunt’s.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“How’s that?”
“Well….”
She thought of the way her aunt grabbed her wrist.
“Aunt Ginny was acting strange. Like, she was spaced out, ya know? On something?”
The sheriff nodded.
“And Laura, she just figured it was because of Jennifer, but I don’t know.”
“You figured there’s more to it.”
“Yeah. I mean, I can’t say exactly why? But yeah.”
“And your uncle. Did you see him?”
She remembered his truck, parked cockeyed in the backyard.
“No, at least, I don’t think so. I asked my aunt a couple times, if he was there, but she didn’t say. It was one of the things that weirded me out.”
“And you left your cousin there when you decided to leave.”
“Well, I… She followed me out, at first, but she thought it was rude to just leave. She said she was going to apologize for me and stay a bit longer.”