by Wilson, Tia
Don’t take the bait Tom thought as he watched the train cross the bridge that spanned the wide open canyon ahead. He flexed his injured shoulder and winced from the pain, it felt like the bullet was lodged in his bone. Tom pulled up his shirt and checked the wound on his side. The wound had started to knit together and the bleeding had stopped.
Oishin reached out and ran her finger down his side and caressed the muscles of his stomach. Tom pulled away from her touch. “You’re still in shape,” Oishin said with a purr in her voice
“Don’t,” Tom said taking a step back from her.
“Can’t a girl have a little fun. I haven’t seen you in a hundred years,” Oishin said and blew a kiss in Toms direction.
I see she hasn’t changed in our time apart Tom thought looking at her and wondering what he ever saw in her. When he thought about the heart wrenching pain he felt while he searched Ireland and then returned to Europe it felt like it was a different man doing those actions from his memories. Who he was back then was nothing like the man he had become under Elder Silas tutelage and Tom wanted to keep it that way.
“The car is over there,” Tom said and started heading in the direction of the bridge. Sometimes it was best to not engage with Oishin and she would eventually grow bored and leave him alone, thats what he hoped for.
A car with false plates was hidden under a heavy tarp behind one of the thick concrete struts supporting the bridge. Tom had a contact source the car and hide it in this location yesterday. He checked under the rear bumper and ran his fingers along the underside until he found the metal box. He yanked the metallic box off and pushed open the flap and a key was inside of it.
“Get in,” Tom said unlocking the doors, “if we make good time we can be in Twin Rock by nightfall.”
Oishin bent down and kissed the top of her babies head as it began to stir in her arms and she whispered something to it that Tom couldn’t hear. “We will need to stop and feed the baby soon,” she said.
Tom nodded and replied, “I have a place we can go to an hour from here. I need to get this damn bullet out of my arm before I can heal.”
10
The Police
Detective Roberts slid his fingers across the touchpad and rewound the video file. He scratched the three day stubble on his chin and looked up at his partner Detective Olive Burnett to see what her reaction was. She had the same blank expression as he had, a professional expression you pick up over the years, in these situations it was best to show no reaction as anything could spook the parents.
The Thomson's sat on the couch with their arms wrapped around each other. The mothers eyes were red and puffy from a morning spent crying and the father had a cold distant look that Detective Roberts had seen once too often. A lot of the times the mothers seemed to hang on to the hope that their kid was still alive, some fathers seemed to give up hope almost immediately as if their view of the world was one of utter bleakness and to hope was a folly.
Chuck Roberts had got the call right after nine, a child abduction. He was still drunk from the night before and woke up beside a woman he didn’t recognise and who was at least fifteen years older than him, possibly even over fifty. He couldn’t face the shower and wiped himself down with a damp cloth before putting on yesterdays shirt. “Let yourself out,” he said to the lump in his bed as he left. The apartment was nearly empty with basically nothing of value and he didn’t worry about leaving a stranger alone. What is she going to do, make the place even scruffier, he thought as he started his car.
He picked up Detective Burnett at the corner coffee shop she drank at. She was the same age as him and while his face was heavily lined and always seemed to be in a state of prickly stubble, she looked fresh faced as if she had just stepped out of the academy. This sometimes worked to her detriment as other cops would treat her like she was a fresh faced cadet.
Burnett passed him a coffee from a cardboard tray. “You still stink of booze,” she said rolling down window. “Did you tie one on again? How many nights is that in a row now, five, six?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Roberts said and took a gulp of his coffee. It was lukewarm, sweet and just what his hungover body needed.
“What have we got,” Burnett asked.
“A kid snatched from his bedroom. Two patrolmen were called out earlier in the day as two young boys, the one who was snatched and his cousin who lived next door said they saw a zombie coming out of the earth,” Roberts said.
“There’s too much of that shit on TV, warping their minds. What do you think the connection is?” she asked.
“I don’t know, maybe they stumbled across some backwoods guys camp and he chased after them. You see those stories about the hermit living out in the woods and stealing from houses?” Roberts said.
Burnett slapped his cheek and said, “If you don’t have a shave people will start to think you’re a mountain man.”
They had arrived at the Thomson's house an hour later in an area were the houses were spaced apart by large swaths of land. The Thomson's house was at the end of a single lane dirt road off the main beat. Two identical large wooden cabins sat next to each other at the end of the road and the Thomson's were standing at the door waiting as the two detectives pulled up.
The father was an architect and had designed the houses next to each other, a perfect mirror image. The mother was a home maker and was the first to notice that her son was missing when she went to wake him up for breakfast. Roberts had ran through the usual preliminary questions seated across from the two parents, whilst Burnett walked the length of the back garden and walked along the tree line.
Cops would always talk about their gut, the mysterious near mystical sixth sense that allowed them to tap into some higher power or some sort of other mumbo jumbo. Roberts didn’t buy into the whole idea, his gut worked on facts and facts alone. He built the interlocking systems of a case up through eye witness statements, dogged research and sheer hard work. His gut never helped him solve a case, only hard work.
He took notes as the mother spoke about her panic at him being missing from the bed and the father interrupted and said, “Did they tell you about the video?”
Roberts sat up straight in his chair and thought, you probably should of opened with that Mr. Thomson. “No, what video?” he asked.
The father pointed across the open plan sitting room and across to the kitchen, a small camera was affixed to a cupboard and pointed at the back door, he pointed at another one looking up the stairs.
“I have them all over the house. They are small WIFI cameras. A tech genius I designed a house for gave me a box of them as a thank you. They record constantly and save everything to my laptop.” He picked his laptop up off a low table in front of his and walked across to the large kitchen table.
“Those numbers along the side are the cameras. Ten in total,” Mr. Thomson said pointing at the screen, “Camera one points out to the back garden, two to six are downstairs. The rest cover the stairs and the hall upstairs.”
“Any in the bedrooms,” Detective Roberts asked sitting down in front of the laptop.
“My wife didn’t want any installed, she thought it would be a bit creepy,” Mr. Thomson said.
Detective Roberts selected camera one and hit play. The video showed the back garden though a grainy night vision filter. “Do I have to forward the video ahead?” he said.
“No. I’ve edited the video down to where the,” he said pausing for a moment and unable to say the word, he continued, “to where the attack begins.”
Roberts looked up at the standing man and said, “What did you do with the rest of the video.” He said it in a flat affectless voice not wanting to spook the father. The grim truth about a lot of these missing kids cases was the father turned out to be the culprit. Mr. Thomsons helpfulness might be a cover to deflect suspicion Roberts thought as he hit play again.
The bush at the back edge of the garden rustled and a naked man stepped out onto the lawn. He had long greasy hair an
d a beard and his body was streaked with dark mud. A naked woman stepped out from the bushes and joined him. Junkies hopped up on some sort of crazy cocktail Roberts thought as he watched the slowly unfolding video. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as he watched the two dirt streaked vagrants cross the lawn and then enter the house. Roberts scrolled back in the video and rewatched a segment of it.
“What is it?” the father asked looking over Roberts shoulder.
“It’s nothing,” he said as the video continued to play. They are sniffing the air like a pair of animals he thought to himself, an uneasy feeling in his stomach as the video file continued to play. The uneasiness only increased as the events played out on the screen in front of him. He remembered something he’d once read about fairytales and there original purpose. Many of the stories were thinly veiled parables that tapped into deep seated human fears. Roberts was sure he had read one story when he was a child about trolls stealing children to raise as there own. He knew in the real world that whatever these two naked freaks had planned for the child it wasn’t going to be to raise them as one of their own.
The video ended and Roberts closed the laptop. “We will need to take your laptop and any other drives with security footage back to the police station,” He said.
“Yes take whatever you need,” Mr Thomson said, his face looking pale and drawn.
“There are some more police officers on the way to check the crime scene and dust for prints. Myself and my partner are going to have a look around your house and then check out the woods,” Roberts said handing the father a card, “Call me if you think of anything else. I will be in touch with you again.”
The two detectives drove in silence for a couple of minutes after leaving the Thomson's house. Roberts broke it and said, “Did you ever read fairytales as a kid?”
Burnett looked at her partner not sure where this was going. “Sure, the usual stuff, big bad wolves, little virginal girls in deep dark woods being stalked. They are all about sex right, the ultimate transgressions?” she said with a grin.
Usually Roberts would take her bait and the conversation would turn to the dirtiest of subject matters, he had said things to Burnett that he would of never shared with a wife or girlfriend. Roberts was still shaken after the video and wasn’t up for fooling around. “The video of the abduction. I don’t know I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said as they drove along the winding road, the forest thankfully getting smaller in the rearview window. Something in Roberts tone made Burnett stop as she was about to crack a dirty joke.
“You ok?” she asked him.
“The video, something wasn’t right about the abductors. It got to me in a way. I thought I had,” he said trailing off.
Burnett put her hand on his arm and rubbed it. “You said they looked like junkies right? You know how messed up those people can be. Did I ever tell you about the raid on the Polter buildings?”
“Was that the place with the three floors of meth labs?” Roberts asked.
“One and the same,” she replied, “they had taken over an old paper mill and the top floors were all labs. Top of the line stuff. No bath tubs for these guys. My team came in the rear of the building, sweeping across the old factory floor before heading up the stairs. There was this bundle of dirty rags in one corner that started to move as I got close to it. The stinking rags fell away as a near naked man, and the only way I can describe it was unfolded himself from his resting place. He was all bones and hard lines, covered in streaks of thick grease, long hair and broken yellow teeth. He stood up and looked at me with red rimmed eyes, he looked like something from a child's worst nightmare. This skeletal figure started to jerk and twist and walk towards me, he raised a stick thin arm and he was holding a jagged piece of glass in his fist. Blood dripped from between his finger as he came towards me. I ordered him to stop and he kept on coming. What ever he was on I’m not even sure if he could see me, he probably saw a winged demon brandishing a flaming sword. He charged at me. I got off four shots, hit him with three, and he went down. You know what was the freakiest thing?”
Roberts shook his head.
“There was a moment when he was running at me that I thought bullets are not going to stop him. It was as if I was infected by his brand of crazy just by being in his proximity. He wasn’t a monster and he went down like any other man. Sometimes when you are exposed to some one hundred percent uncut wacko it can mess with you a bit. That’s all that happened with the video, you saw a pair of unhinged vagrants and it effected you. I’d be worried if it didn’t,” she said squeezing his arm again.
Roberts appreciated the gesture, he still felt chilled to the core. “There was something about these ones, I’ve seen every flavour of odd,” he shook his head as if trying shake free of the hold of the images he had witnessed. “Did I ever tell you about the time when I was seven or eight and I saw someone watching me?”
Burnett shook her head and said, “No,”
“It was an early Saturday morning. I was first up, my brothers were still in bed and my father was snoring his brains out. I snuck downstairs, so pleased with myself. I had the TV to myself and could watch cartoons until my brothers came down and took over and put on endless hours of sports. I was wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa all to myself watching all of my favourites,” Roberts said.
“Cute,” Burnett said interrupting, “I can picture you now in your little smoking jacket and leather slippers.”
“I was alone for maybe an hour. I was watching a cartoon where robots fought plants, or robot plant cars, something like that. I was glued to the action on the screen, totally sucked into the bright and colourful world on the screen. I heard a creak of the floorboards behind me and turned expecting to see one of my brothers about to jump on me. It wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t anyone that I knew. A man in a cheap suit was standing in the doorway to our kitchen. Long stringy hair to his shoulders, his shirt open at the chest exposing red raw scars. He was watching me and smiling. I froze to the spot, felt my throat snap shut like a mouse trap as I tried to scream. I pissed myself and didn’t even notice until afterwards. He simply stood there looking at me with a smile, his lips pulled back as if his teeth were too big for his mouth. Something clicked in me and I was out of my chair and running for the stairs. I had to pass only feet away from him as I ran towards the hall. I didn't take my eyes off him as I ran past, he stood and watched and when I was closest to him he ran his forefinger from his chin and down his neck. As I scrambled up the stairs I was sure he was going to grab me by the ankle and drag me back down. A scream eventually escaped my lips when I got to my fathers room. Everyone barrelled downstairs, my father grabbed his gun he kept by the bed. They could all see that I was close to hysterical with fear. There was no one downstairs, the doors and windows were locked. Pretty soon the tension was broke and my brothers started to tease me for having a nightmare and pissing my pants in my sleep. I never shook the look on the observing mans face as I ran by him, I’d see it as I drifted off to sleep for years later,” he said.
“Was it just a nightmare?” Burnett asked.
“It looked that way. You know how my father was, he double checked all the locks, made sure there was no sign of entry into the back garden. He even took me down to the station to look at pictures of perps to see if I recognised anyone. Zip, nada, zilch. My father told me to stop watching the Saturday morning junk if it was going to scare me and that was the end of it,” Roberts said. His knuckles creaked as he loosened his grip on the steering wheel. “I felt that same nightmarish twinge when I watched the Thomson's security footage. It was like I was seeing something ripped from my childhood imagination,” he glanced at Burnett and said, “I know I’m rambling, this job gets to you sometimes. You know how this one will go?” he asked already knowing the answer.
Burnett nodded her head and said in a weary voice, “The kid will turn up dead in a couple of days and we’ll never catch those backwoods freaks or the file will go
into the drawer of never ending sorrow and join the other countless lost children. Either way,” and she shrugged her shoulders.
He knew what she meant, they would have to move on to the next thing and try to put this case behind them. You always tried to forget, it built up on you layer by layer like a bad paint job. Years of paint hastily painted over the previous coat and no matter what you did, the damp and mould continued to rise to the top. They all had their way of dealing with it, Roberts had been finding solace in a bottle recently. If he was blind drunk maybe he wouldn’t be able to see the spots of mould springing up. He knew in the moments when he was sober that he couldn’t go on like this forever. Soon the damp and mould would spread and the damage would never be able to be reversed.
11
Tom
A packed dirt road ran below the bridge and on the other side of the canyon the rock had been blasted to cut a road through it up and out to the main road north. The car bounced and shook as they followed the road across the bottom of the canyon. Each bounce sent painful shockwaves through Toms shoulders.
He cut corners on the car Tom thought, knowing his contact must of kept most of what I gave him and bought the cheapest hunk of junk. Sometimes humans couldn’t be trusted he thought and glanced over at Oishin. Was she already rubbing off on him he thought.
An hour from the bridge Tom took a weed filled side road with bushes so overgrown that they scratched and slapped against the car as they drove. The front windscreen was filled with an undulating mass of green leaves and snapping branches as they drove on. After a minute of driving by feel the overgrowth ended and opened into a clearing with a square solid looking house sitting in an area surrounded by drooping sunflowers nearly as tall as the sloping roof of the house.
Tom stopped the car and said, “I built this place myself. It’s a straw bale house with mud insulated walls. It’s a fairly simple construction that hides its strength and stability.”