by Ike Hamill
“I was doing the dishes when my dad said the strangest thing. ‘Look at her eyes,’ he said. I whipped around, but I wasn’t fast enough at remembering or acting to save him. He was hovering just over her and I told him to back up. Dad thought I didn’t trust him with Donna. That was so sad. He had a massive stroke that night. He was such a good Grandpa. He would have been the best with my real daughter.”
“So you think she somehow caused the stroke?” asked Jenko. His tone wasn’t challenging at all.
“Yeah,” said Carol. “Like I said, it took me a while to figure it out with him. I probably just didn’t want to believe it, that I had essentially killed him by not telling him my concerns.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” said Lynne. “You have to believe that.”
“I believe a lot of things now,” said Carol. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to believe that. Anyway, the next death wasn’t ambiguous at all. I was paying a woman down the street to watch Donna. She’d had a whole daycare of her own before with thirty kids and a bunch of employees, but had gone bankrupt because of the insurance costs. It costs a fortune to run a thing like that. Anyway, she was perfect. Her name was Toni, with an ‘i’,” said Carol. “If you track down her friend, Marcia, she’ll gossip with you about how Toni died. Those two used to talk about everything.
“Toni had been talking with Marcia about Donna. They discussed the best way to tell me what they thought was going on,” said Carol. “I just assume that Donna somehow overheard them, or perhaps she’s a bit of a telepath, who knows? Donna went after her though. The death was ruled a suicide, but I saw the look on Toni’s face. It looked just like Don’s did when I identified his body,” said Carol.
“What was the look?” asked Jenko.
“Hard to describe,” said Carol, “but it was like peaceful icing on a terror cake. Kinda like when an unhappy person is forced to smile for a driver’s license?”
“That’s not a lot of evidence,” said Lynne. “How do you know it wasn’t just a suicide? Maybe she was still upset about losing her business.”
“No, I don’t jump to conclusions. It was Donna. In fact she told me she was going to do it,” said Carol.
“I’m sorry?” asked Lynne. “Your two-year-old?”
“You know what? Wait a second,” said Carol. She walked out of the room and called back over her shoulder—“I was only only able to fool Donna once, but I got evidence." When she returned she was holding a tiny video camera. She handed it to Lynne. “I hid that in my bedroom. It has a feature where it only comes on if there’s movement. Solid-state, so it doesn’t make any noise, and you can just put a piece of tape over the red light. For a while Donna would come into my room sometimes, just after I went to bed. She did it to scare me. I’d be sitting there, propped up on pillows, reading a book and she would be there, just standing at the end of my bed. Then she’d tell me things.”
Lynne hit play. The scene showed a big bed, shot from a low angle by the foot. They could see the bottoms of Carol’s socks and the book that she held, blocking her face. The image jumped. It would show her flipping a page and then a few seconds before it skipped again. On the fourth skip Lynne figured it out: the camera was only recording motion, so it would put itself to sleep when Lynne was reading and then it would wake back up when she turned the page. Lynne glanced at Jenko and guessed that he had figured this out instantly.
When Lynne turned back to the image, a small shadow had fallen on the bed. A little girl moved into frame, shuffling her feet so she wouldn’t make a noise. She was dressed in pink pajamas. Her round head had only a thin, wispy layer of blond hair. There was something creepy even about the way the baby walked. She looked slightly uncoordinated, but confident. Donna reached the foot of the bed and placed her tiny palms on the cedar chest. The little girl bowed her head and lifted herself with her arms. Again, she wobbled with imperfect muscles but never wavered in her resolve.
Her little bare feet came into view as she lifted herself atop the cedar chest and turned to face her mother. In the recording, Carol still hadn’t detected Donna’s intrusion.
The voice that came out of the baby made no sense to Lynne. Even though they couldn’t see the child’s mouth, associating that voice with the image on the screen made Lynne’s skin crawl. The voice was low and threatening—“Carol Knowles-Milden,” it said.
In the video, past the image of the little girl, Carol threw her book down and clutched her chest. “You scared the heck out of me, baby,” said Carol. “What are you doing out of bed?” she asked on the playback. Carol’s tone suggested irritation and fear rather than concern.
Donna continued—“You’ll kneel before me when I take a throne built upon the skulls of the innocent.”
“Let’s get you to bed, Donna,” said Carol.
“Touch me and you’ll suffer the same agony as your former husband. I’ll drink your blood,” said Donna.
“Come on now, darling,” said Carol. She slid from her bed and put out her hand to the girl still standing on the chest.
Donna gave her hand to her mother and her head turned a bit. Jenko and Lynne could see her mouth as she spoke again. The words weren’t English, and the syllables composing the words didn’t even sound human. Lynne shut her eyes. She wanted to forget the look of that little tongue making those crazy sounds. It looked like her tiny teeth were wrestling with a venomous snake, and losing. Despite her unintelligible rant, Donna jumped down from the chest and allowed herself to be led from the room.
“I thought you said she told you she was going to commit the murder?” asked Jenko.
“She did,” said Carol, “but not this time. This was just the only time I got a camera on her when she wasn’t pretending to be a normal little girl. She’s a treacherously good actress. I wanted so desperately to ask her to talk about other things on this tape—more about how she killed Don, and my father, but I knew if I tried to lead her to talk more she’d suspect something. The only thing I could do was try to get her off to bed, the same way I would do every other night.”
“Well I guess she wasn’t telepathic then,” said Lynne. “She didn’t figure out you were recording.”
Carol shrugged—“She suspected something, I think. She never snuck into my room again like that. She resorted to revealing things at random times—surprising me. She was in the bath when she told me about Toni. She said something like ‘That bitch suspects something. I’ll tell her to eat broken glass until she shits out bloody chunks of her intestines.’”
“Oh god,” said Lynne.
Carol shrugged—“She has said worse. I didn’t think much about it until she told me when and where to find the body. We went over one morning to drop Donna off before work. Just as I pulled up, Donna told me that Toni wouldn’t be coming to the door: she’d be dead in a stinking pool of her own guts. When nobody came to the door I let myself in. She was in the bathroom, just as Donna had predicted.”
Carol’s phone rang just as she finished the story. She excused herself and left the living room to take the call in her den.
“This is awful,” Lynne said to Jenko.
Jenko frowned and offered no consolation.
“Are we almost done here?” asked Lynne.
“You tell me,” said Jenko. “You seeing anything interesting?”
“No,” said Lynne.
“Not even from the baby?” asked Jenko.
“What, from the recording?” asked Lynne. When Jenko raised his eyebrows, she continued—“No, I don’t get anything from recordings, ever. Just from live stuff. Video just doesn’t work.”
“So we’ve got to find this thing then,” said Jenko.
“Oh, no,” said Lynne. “That’s the last thing we should do.”
“I think we have to,” said Jenko. “We have to answer the question, you know?”
“The last thing I want to do is find that thing,” said Lynne.
“Part of the job,” said Jenko. “I’m going to look for the baby’
s room, see if I can get any ideas. Stay here and occupy the mother, will ya?”
“Fine,” said Lynne, frowning.
To kill time while Carol talked on the phone, Lynne ran the camera backwards and watched the scary video a couple more times. Carol had been convinced that she had fooled Donna, but Lynne began to form a different opinion. There was a change in Donna’s stance as Carol rose to take her to bed. It was like the child’s attention turned towards the camera, even though she faced away from the hidden lens.
Lynne paused the tape and looked at Donna’s shoulders. Even the frozen image on the screen seemed to be watching. Lynne imagined the little girl in the still frame breaking free and turning to look into Lynne’s eyes. She shuddered at the thought, and turned off the camera. She set it down on the coffee table and flipped through a stack of magazines, trying to find something that matched her mood. The video camera sat on the coffee table. It was off, but Lynne couldn’t shake the feeling that the girl on the tape still watched her. She hugged her arms in tight and raised one foot from the floor and tucked it in under her thigh. It finally occurred to Lynne that her weird feeling was coming from another source. She was being watched.
A tiny pair of eyes stared in through the glass the patio door. Lynne tried, but couldn’t call for help, or even look away. She was transfixed by the little girl’s eyes. Lynne had to remind herself that the face was only two years old. The eyes looked so wise, so crafty, so sad. She stood and walked towards the patio doors. The little girl had dirty feet, and the hem of her little dress was tattered and muddy. Aside from those two shortcomings, she appeared perfectly presentable. Lynne dropped to her knees when she got to the door, and hunched down so she would be at the same level as the girl’s perfect, blue eyes. The closer Lynne got, the more she dismissed her early judgement—Lynne could see nothing wrong with this baby.
“Hi, little girl,” said Lynne. She felt like part of her brain was turning off, but it was a pleasant feeling. “Are you looking for your Mommy?”
The baby nodded her head. With the movement, Lynne realized that a red and yellow ribbon about an inch thick trailed down from the girl’s braids down to the patio. It made a little puddle of ribbon at the girl’s feet and then weaved a haphazard path to the lawn. The trail of ribbon took a sharp left at the birdbath and then Lynne lost track of it.
She didn’t even have to really consider her next move. Despite what Carol had said about Donna being a murderer, this was a child in need and Lynne wouldn’t turn her back.
“What’s your name?” asked Lynne.
“I’m Donna,” the girl said through the glass.
That sobered Lynne quickly. It was not the response she expected. It was succinct, accurate, perfectly formed, and sounded wrong coming from such a small girl. This voice had a past; it was small, but mature. Lynne tried to shuffle a half-step back from the patio door, but her shoe caught the carpet and tripped her up. She landed hard on her butt. The baby studied her with an intense glare. Lynne couldn’t hold the gaze; she looked away. She realized that she had just lost a staring contest to a two-year-old, but was happy for the clear head that came when she broke eye contact.
“Jenko?” she called.
“Hold on,” she heard Carol say into the phone in the next room.
Carol and Jenko appeared at the same time, in opposite doorways. Carol froze. She saw her tormentor for the first time in a day and her hand flew to her face and she zoned out. Jenko was more useful. He retreated when he saw Donna. Lynne heard another door open and shut from the front of the house. The baby glanced up at him and then was off, before Jenko even got within ten feet of her little legs. Jenko turned back long enough to enlist Lynne in the chase and then took off across the lawn, holding his black bag away from his side as he ran. Lynne exited through the side door and caught him at the edge of the woods.
“Wait, wait,” said Lynne. “You don’t have to chase her, let her tire out and figure we’re not looking and then I can lead you to her.” As she said this, Lynne watched the ribbon trail off after the little girl in the woods. It wasn’t real. Lynn decided that the Ribbon was like the Sparkle—it was another power that she had and just recently discovered or perhaps rediscovered. Like all Lynne’s powers, this one seemed familiar, like some part of her always knew how to track Changelings by their Residual Ribbons. Just to be sure, Lynne tried to grab the ribbon at their feet. As she suspected, it passed right through her hand, undisturbed by her attempt at physical contact. “You don’t see that, do you?” she asked Jenko.
Behind them, Carol stopped at the door and leaned out, like the patio was covered with acid and she had forgotten her rubber boots—“That’s her,” Carol yelled.
“Thanks,” Jenko muttered, waving dismissively. “So you can see something? What is it?”
“It’s like a ribbon,” said Lynne. She described how the ribbon trailed after Donna.
“Lead on, slow,” said Jenko. He dug around in his bag and pulled out a handgun.
Lynne stopped and turned to face him with her hands on her hips—“You’re not going to shoot her,” she stated, her tone flat.
“Relax,” he frowned, “it’s a tranquilizer dart gun." He pulled out a strap from a side pocket and slung the black bag over his neck, resting it in the middle of his back to free his arms.
“Oh,” she said. She adjusted her shirt and turned back to follow the ribbon. The Changeling had ducked in and out of low bushes and thick stands of weedy trees—places she could weave through but adults would have a hard time with. Lynne veered around the tangles and picked up the path between clumps by the telltale ribbon. Jenko walked a few paces behind, holding his dart gun with both hands, ready for a surprise.
Their path led downhill where the brush thinned out and the trees were straighter and taller. They picked up their pace a little. Lynne glanced back up the hill, wondering how long the ribbon would extend before it faded. It trailed off into the distance.
“What’s wrong? You lose it?” asked Jenko.
“No. I’m just wondering where she came from,” said Lynne. “When she showed up at the house the ribbon went to the birdbath and then took a left. So she didn’t come from here. Where is she going?”
“That’s a good…” said Jenko. He didn’t finish his thought. Instead he shot a hand towards Lynne, grabbed her shirt, and dragged her backwards.
Her feet tangled and she fell to the ground in a heap, landing painfully on her butt, still sore from her fall at the house.
“Hey!” said Lynne.
“Watch your feet,” said Jenko. He held the gun with one hand and used the other to pick up a stick. “Back up,” he instructed. When Lynne had scooted back, Jenko tossed the stick forward. Lynne never saw the mechanism, but something triggered in the ferns and sharpened sticks popped up from either side of the trail. Lynne yelped and felt a cold lump in the back of her mouth. She realized how close she had just come to being impaled by the trap.
“Oh my god,” said Lynne. “Did she do that? How did you see it?”
“Luck,” said Jenko. “Dumb luck. Although… If you hadn’t been talking about why the girl came this way, I wouldn’t have thought to look. Pretty big coincidence. What made you say that just then?”
“I don’t know,” said Lynne. “It just popped into my head. I almost didn’t say anything at all. It sounded funny when I thought it in my head.”
“Well I don’t care how funny it sounds in your head next time, don’t give it a second thought—just say it,” said Jenko.
“Ha!” said Lynne. “If I say everything that goes through my head, I’ll never shut up.”
“Whatever,” said Jenko.
“Jeez,” said Lynne. “Well thanks anyway.”
They moved off to the side, not on the direct line of the ribbon, and continued forward. Jenko took the lead, scanning the ground. He guided Lynne around a little trap. It was a shallow ditch, covered with sticks and leaves.
“How did that little girl do all
this, and why?” asked Lynne. “It’s not like it would have really hurt us,” she said as she cleared the ditch with one long stride.
Jenko shrugged—“Maybe it’s just meant to slow us down. Does the ribbon go in there?” he asked, pointing ahead. Lynne leaned to the side to see where he was pointing. It was a short shack made of sticks, bark, mud, and moss.
“God, that’s straight from a fairy tale. The kind where the lazy boy gets eaten, you know?”
“Is she in there?” Jenko asked again. He raised his gun and pointed it at the small building as he stalked carefully towards it.
“I don’t think so,” said Lynne. “Looks like she went in and out. The ribbon leads off that way, towards that creek.”
“She knows we’re tracking her,” said Jenko. He slowly approached the shack.
Lynne came up alongside Jenko and studied the building. The horizontal sticks were cemented with mud mortar and the ends looked like they had been gnawed off. A short arch of green saplings formed the doorway. The roof was composed of layers of bark, chinked with moss. As they circled the structure, Lynne realized that it was short and not very wide, but it was long. It looked like a miniature, handmade warehouse.
“It’s like a fairy house,” said Lynne.
“Exactly,” said Jenko. “How much do you know about them?”
“What? Fairy houses?” asked Lynne.
“Yeah,” said Jenko. “Have you ever seen a real one before?” he asked. She shook her head. Jenko explained—“People make imitation ones, but there are real ones, like this. The creature doesn’t actually live here, it’s always a storage place or a portal, or sometimes both. There will be a nest somewhere around here where she actually sleeps. These can also be a trap though, so we have to be really careful.”
“Sure,” said Lynne.
“You go in, I’ll watch for trouble,” said Jenko.
Lynne grunted a surprised laugh—“Are you kidding? After telling me it might be a trap?”
“We have to find out what she’s doing,” said Jenko. “We’ll never know unless we find out right now. If we keep chasing her then she’ll probably loop back around and get rid of the evidence.”