by Tobias Wade
This time, the only thing he’d be able to do is take the case. But I knew that, even if he was allowed, it probably wouldn’t matter. How many stories had I heard over the years about girls who go missing and never turn up? Or if they do, it’s only their body. I didn’t want him to spend forever looking, and I didn’t want him to bring me home to our parents in a bag.
In the back of my mind, it struck me as absurdly funny that I was being taken to who-knows-where in the trunk of a car in the middle of the night by a coworker I thought I knew, and one of my biggest concerns was how it was going to affect my family.
I started to shriek with laughter and tears and terror. I beat my hands and feet against the roof of the trunk, throwing myself wildly around. I vaguely remembered something about punching out tail lights and sticking your hand through the hole, so I tried to figure out how to do just that. Then we stopped.
I could hear crickets in the stillness that followed. Then squeak of his car door, and the crunch of leaves under his feet as he came around the back to the trunk. I always hoped that, if anything like this were to ever happen to me, I’d be brave; I’d fight like a cornered animal with teeth and nails and the fury of someone hell bent on survival. When he opened that trunk, I huddled as far back as I could and wet myself. He grabbed me and yanked me out like I weighed nothing, was nothing, and threw me to the ground. My eyes darted around: a shack, woods, a long dirt driveway, and nothing else. The trunk had felt less claustrophobic.
His fingers closed on the back of my neck and he hauled me toward the door. If I went inside, I was never coming out. My screaming barely seemed to bother him. He even looked amused. The door was pushed open and I was dragged, kicking and clawing uselessly, over the threshold.
There was a cot with a filthy mattress in one corner. I was forced onto it and tied to its metal frame by heavy ropes which bit roughly into my wrists. The smell, oh god, the smell. Old piss, sweat, horror. It told a tale of other women before me; I couldn’t begin to guess how many. Greg leered down at me, his bearded face at once familiar and a stranger’s. I stared at him through unblinking, wide eyes. He crouched beside me, and his breath was hot against my cheek. “I got tomorrow off so we could have some fun.”
He slapped me hard when I started to scream again. “Knock that shit off.”
From his pocket, his cell phone started to ring. Given the odd hour, he seemed surprised.
“Oh, it’s the boss man,” he said lightly. “I better take this.”
He shoved an old rag from under the mattress in my mouth and I gagged on the acrid taste. He chuckled at me, patted the cheek now swelling from his slap, and took the phone outside. My parents must have called our boss when I didn’t come home, I thought, my eyes squeezing shut. Mom could never sleep until she knew I was back. I could hear Greg adopt a sleepy sounding tone, saying oh no, he hadn’t seen me on his way home. Why? Oh dear, no, he’d gone the opposite way to go camping for the night. Big fishing plans tomorrow. On and on, all lies.
My thoughts went again to Leo. How would he find me? What would he have to learn about my last night alive? What would he have to tell my parents? Greg Halloway’s awful smirk trailed behind each question. Somewhere, a tiny voice, almost indiscernible from the rest of the mess, filled my head with my brother’s voice.
I’m coming. Hold on.
I cried at the cruelty of my own mind and its wishful thinking. I cried for my brother and my parents. I cried for myself and for the life I’d never get to lead.
People do unspeakable things in the dark when they think they’re alone. Greg kept doing unspeakable things long after day had overtaken night. I stared at the tarpapered ceiling and wished myself away. The pain grew into a fire, burning over every inch of my violated body, and then to icy numbness before erupting once more with the latest flick of his knife or the shifting of his weight.
Every time I cried out, in the back of my mind, my brother’s voice.
I’m coming. Hold on.
I screamed at the voice, demanding it shut up, telling it to stop taunting me. No one was coming, but it kept repeating itself. And it was getting louder.
I’m coming. Hold on.
Greg was taking his time, but the cuts were starting to get deeper, less careful, and I knew he was almost done with me. How many hours had it been? Enough for the sun to look like it was starting to set through the shack’s single window. I found myself drawn to that window and the rays of golden light that streamed through it. Even as Greg started to get up, his already bloodied knife held tight in his fist, I remained focused on those last few strands of sun still reaching toward me.
I’M COMING. HOLD ON.
The window exploded inward. Greg leapt up, stunned, staring at the black hood of the Ford Explorer where the wall had once been. Standing beside it, a man, tall, bald, wrought from iron.
“What...?” Greg asked dumbly, unbelieving.
Leo’s pistol was already up, but he was looking past Greg, to me.
“I almost didn’t believe it. I thought it was a nightmare and then Mom called...” He said, his voice choked. For a moment there was fear, and relief, and so much love written on his face as our eyes met. “I don’t know how, but I heard you.”
I sagged against my restraints, sobbing pitifully, wanting to run to my brother, wanting him to take me home. Greg moved, little more than a flinch, and Leo’s eyes were back on him. All else was lost behind a mask of black, terrible fury. “I heard everything.”
I hadn’t noticed the radio in Leo’s other hand. He raised it to his lips. “Dispatch, this is Detective Cooney, badge number 7362, Walsh County Police Department. I located missing person Kerri Elizabeth Cooney. She was still with her assailant. A struggle ensued, he attacked me with a knife. We need an ambulance six miles down Old King Road as soon as possible: one female in need of immediate medical attention, one male, deceased.”
Greg’s mouth fell open. He dropped his knife. “I’m unarmed!” he said desperately.
“I’m not,” said Leo.
He cocked back the gun’s hammer and took steady aim.
The Little People
Grandma Eileen came into some money in 1962 after the death of Grandpa Joe. She used it to move herself and my father far away from the only life they’d ever known, from a small village in Ireland to a bustling U.S. city. She made a name for herself there as a seamstress, selling her craft to “the high society folk”. Dad got himself a couple of business degrees and started helping out on the operation side of things, and it was through his work that he met Mom.
By the time my brother, Allen, and then myself, were born, Grandma’s solo operation had grown into a family run corporation. She oversaw a handful of dry cleaning and fitting shops with enough employees to run each.
We were a tight-knit family and, since Grandma would have been on her own otherwise, all lived together in a large, two story house. My parents remodeled the second floor into an apartment so Grandma would have her own space away from the rambunctious activities of two young boys. When my parents went out, Allen and I tromped up the stairs so she could watch us. This inevitably lead to arguments over incredibly important matters like who got to sit in the big red recliner, what to watch, and who got to snuggle Priss, Grandma’s sweet Maine Coon.
It seemed to me that Grandma always sided with Allen, which he lorded over me with a smug smile while I was left sulking and petulant. When I tried to tell my parents about the obvious favoritism, they just said that Grandma loved us both equally.
In addition to her obvious bias, Grandma had also always been a little eccentric. Dad said it was left over superstitions from the Old Country, omens of bad luck and the like. When she sat us down one night while we were visiting the apartment, I wasn’t concerned.
“Never speak to the Little People,” she said gravely. “If they ever make themselves known to you, don’t acknowledge them. Don’t even look at them. Do you understand?”
&n
bsp; “Why?” I asked at the same time as Allen. “Who are the Little People?”
She regarded us with an almost panicked expression. “No questions. Just listen and do as I say, okay?”
I squirmed nervously under her intense scrutiny and managed a stiff nod. Allen furrowed his brow uncertainly, but finally did the same. Grandma remained thin lipped and serious throughout our visit, her eyes darting to and from the front windows at the smallest of sounds. I was relieved when my parents came home and we were free to go back downstairs. Our subdued behavior for the rest of the night didn’t go unnoticed and, when Dad was tucking me into bed, he asked what was wrong.
“What’s a Little People, Dad? Grandma was talking about them.” I paused, hesitant to make myself seem like a baby. “She made them sound scary.”
He chuckled and I immediately relaxed. How bad could it be if Dad was so dismissive?
“They’re just a fairy tale, kiddo. Let me guess, Grandma was saying to ignore them or something, right?” When I nodded, he said, “She used to say the same to me when I was your age. It’s just one her stories that she brought over from Ireland, don’t worry about it. You get some sleep now. Love you.”
Reassured, I was able to fall asleep quickly and peacefully. Grandma’s warning about the Little People didn’t trouble me again and, soon enough, I had forgotten all about it.
“I want to pet Priss now!” I whined at Allen, who had been hogging both the recliner and the cat all afternoon. He stuck his tongue out at me and hugged Priss closer to keep me from trying to take her. I balled my hands into fists and breathed heavily through my nostrils, as if my frustration would do anything but make my brother keep Priss from me even longer.
“Grandma!” I finally shrieked, “Allen won’t let me play with Priss!”
I heard her clucking her tongue from the kitchen. She poked her head in, but her ire seemed more aimed at me than Allen. “What have I told you about yelling in this house, young man?”
With no help coming from her, I grumbled something about going to play outside. I stomped my way down stairs and out to the backyard. I plopped myself down with a huff and began plucking blades of grass and tearing them to shreds. I’m not gonna cry. I’m not gonna cry!
“You ok there, child?” someone asked.
I jerked around to find the speaker. Half hidden in Grandma’s rose bushes was the tiniest person I’d ever seen. I thought I’d been mistaken at first, that it was a trick of light and shadow, but no, there was certainly a man there. Standing at no more than two feet, he was dressed in delightfully bright colors from head to toe, all of which seemed just a hair too big for him. His hat, a floppy thing with a tinkling bell on the end, kept sliding down over one eye.
He grinned at me and offered a flourishing bow which sent his hat to the ground and revealed a shiny bald head. I giggled despite my nervousness, watching him scramble to pick it up and set it back in place.
“You seemed sad just the now.” There was a sweet lilt to his voice, the kind Grandma had. “Are you alright?”
I bit my lip and started to get up. It wasn’t his smallness that unsettled me—a child’s mind is very accepting—it was the fact that he was a stranger. My parents’ lessons about Stranger Danger were not unheeded.
“Wait!” He held out a hand. In his palm was a perfectly smooth, round rock that changed colors as he moved it about in the sunlight. “Take this, it will help you feel better.”
I was fascinated by the stone and took a step forward, but stopped myself before I reached him. “I’m not supposed to take things from strangers.” I felt a touch of pride at having remembered that.
“Right you are, lad, right you are! So let me introduce myself so that we can be friends, aye? My name is Coilin. I don’t usually come out when you folk are around, but you seemed so sad that I wanted to do something for you. You’ll let Mr. Coilin give you this nice present, won’t you?”
It was just a stone, a very pretty one, what harm could come from that? And he was so very small. I checked to make sure we weren’t being watched and hurried over to take the gift. He dropped it into my open hand and cheerfully encouraged me to give it a good look over. Feeling more at ease, I sat in front of the bush and thanked him for the rock.
“Why don’t you tell me what was troubling you before, child.”
I frowned sharply, my mood darkened by the reminder of Allen and how horrible he was being. I closed my fist around the stone. “My dumb brother always gets to do whatever he wants and Grandma just lets him,” I complained, and was gratified when Coilin tilted his head sympathetically. “He’s mean to me, but he gets away with everything!”
“Oh aye, I understand. I have brothers too, you know, and sometimes I feel the same way.”
It felt good to finally be able to talk to someone who understood. “It’s not fair!”
“Not at all!” Coilin agreed. “Do you know something...I think I can help you!”
“You can?”
He nodded so eagerly that the bell on his hat jingled. “It sounds like your brother could use a little taste of his own medicine, hmm?”
That sounded exactly like what he needed. I leaned forward, excited to hear Coilin’s idea.
“Take that stone I gave you and put it in his shoe!”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment; that didn’t sound like it would be a very effective way to exact my revenge.
Coilin tapped his index finger to the side of his nose. “Don’t worry, lad, trust Mr. Coilin.”
That night, I did as the little man in the bush told me. With some measure of regret because I hated giving it up, I put the rock in my brother’s shoe. I didn’t know what to expect, and spent a sleepless night waiting and wondering. It felt like I had just managed to fall asleep when Allen started to scream.
I rushed from my bed and came sliding into the hall at the same time as my parents, who looked only half awake but wholly troubled. I followed them to Allen’s room where he was standing on his bed, pressed against the wall.
“What’s the matter?” Dad demanded.
“My shoe! It’s in my shoe!”
He was deathly pale and trembling, his eyes wide like saucers. While my parents tried to coax him down from the bed, I leapt at his shoe and picked it up, eager to see what had caused such a fright. When I tipped it, only the stone I’d put inside tumbled out. Although confused, I was quick to pocket it in my pajama bottoms and hold the shoe up innocently.
“You want your shoe, Allen?”
“There’s a spider in there! I saw it crawl in! It’s huge! Kill it, Dad!”
I left while our parents scoured the room for signs of the giant, shoe dwelling spider and hurried back to my own room. I sat on my bed and plucked the stone out to sit in the middle of my palm. I gazed at it wonderingly, gleefully, and knew that the man in the bush was responsible for what my brother had seen. It made me feel like I’d made a powerful friend.
I went back to the bush that afternoon and crouched in the same spot I’d been in the day before.
“Mr. Coilin?” I whispered. “Mr. Coilin?”
There was a rustle and the tinkling of a bell, and then the small, grinning man was standing before me again.
“Hello again, child!” he said cheerfully. “Did you do as I told you?”
I nodded, unable to hide my pleased smile.
“Wonderful! Do you feel a wee bit better now?”
“Yes!”
“But surely one little prank isn’t enough, is it? Not after all he’s done to you.”
This time I was slower to agree.
“This afternoon, when you’re eating your meal, put the stone under his chair.”
“But what if someone sees it?” I asked.
“No one will, I promise.”
Again, I trusted in the little man and his advice. I tossed the stone into place before taking my own seat and waited with baited breath for Allen to join me. Mom made us gril
led cheese for lunch, usually my favorite, but today I merely held the food in my hands and watched. My brother sauntered in and took his place across from me.
“What?” he asked, frowning when he saw me staring.
“Nothing,” I said, quickly taking a big bite of my sandwich.
He rolled his eyes at me and picked up his grilled cheese. He managed three bites before he threw it, gagging, back on to his plate.
“Mom!” he cried.
“Yes, honey?” She was washing up in the kitchen.
“There’s bugs in my food!”
“What?”
She was beside Allen almost immediately, inspecting his sandwich with great concern.
“I don’t see anything, honey.”
“There were worms, Mom! And ants!”
“Are you playing a joke on me, Allen Maxwell?”
“N-no,” he sputtered, deflating completely when she put the plate back down. He saw for himself the only thing on it was a partially eaten grilled cheese.
Mom excused me once I was done, but she kept Allen at the table to talk about what he thought he’d seen. I pretended to have dropped something by his chair on my way out as an excuse to get my stone back, but neither took much notice of me. I could tell they were both a bit worried, but I didn’t let that bother me. I was finally getting back at Allen, and that was all that mattered! I slipped quietly back outside and reported the second success to Coilin.
He clapped with delight at my news, which made me puff up with pleasure.
“Now tell me, my boy, does that make you feel like you’re even?”
“No,” I said, almost crossly. “Tonight we’re going to Grandma’s. She’s always liked Allen more. I want to...to make her eat bugs or something too!”
“Of course.” Coilin nodded gravely. “I believe I could be of some help there, lad, more than just worms betwixt some bread. Bring your granny and your brother out to this very spot tonight and we will give her exactly what she deserves.”
We shared a conspirators’ smile and agreed that I would return that evening after supper.