Father of the Deceased

by Egon Grimes

  “Hold strong in the lord!” the priest shouted as he fired a pistol into the face of a child, ignoring a team of flying monsters only witnessed by his frightened eyes.

  The child dropped, glaring with sad eyes at the fallen of her tribe that surrounded her. Her mother, who took shots into both shoulders, tears streaming into a tiny puddle under her face, looked up the wall toward the line of torches. The fire glinted and then began to jump from man to man. The flames took on different lives, different monsters, creatures, beings, to match the inner workings of fears. Some felt teeth while they burned, other felt knives, bullets, and claws.

  The fire continued its dance, but not before the remaining La’aklar people took shots. The priest, who’d managed to foresee the outcome, had hightailed into the darkness.

  Dhaksa held Vadrossa back, for they would fight, but not until they knew they would win.

  Fear had them. Fear was the rarest of emotions.

  “We go now,” Dhaksa said after the shots ceased.

  Into the tunnels, quickly Dhaksa recognized the priest from before, running toward them. The man’s speed was a crawl when compared with Dhaksa. In a single fluid motion, Dhaksa latched onto the man’s head and kicked out his foot into the center of the man’s chest. His fingers dug deep into the skull, his neck snapped and his body went limp.

  Already feeling the disastrous situation below ground, Dhaksa fell to his knees, blood and brain oozed down his forearm. He let out an agonized howl, squeezing the decapitated head between his long muscular digits.

  Vadrossa looked at his brother anticipating an answer, but his brother didn’t speak. He dropped down into the light dusting of snow that had fallen and waited for his brother to guide him. For two days, Dhaksa and Vadrossa sat in the bleak cold, not eating or drinking, just sitting in silent vigil.

  —

  One by one for the coming months, they feasted on the bodies of the La’aklar people, the men with guns fueled the fire and scented the air, but never became food, there was plenty enough to eat.

  Ninety years later, Dhaksa hadn’t uttered a word and took a seat, waiting to die. His leg had grown limp and useless, old with age sickness. The end was on the horizon. Death was upon their blood. Once Dhaksa went, Vadrossa wouldn’t be long for the world.

  Dhaksa finally spoke, “We need strength, Vadrossa. You will bring about the second coming.”

  Just happy to hear his brother’s voice, Vadrossa turned from a meal of bear fat, a stupid smirk strewn about his face. He thought about the statement after the initial surprise wore away. “How can—?”

  “Eat and see. I will be with you. You will be my hands and feet and legs and will, together we will bring pain to man, worthless man. We will claim what is ours, what is our destiny.”

  Like a bullet, Vadrossa felt his brother’s presence within in his mind and set out. He bathed in the river at his brother’s control, and continued on foot, southbound, toward an unfamiliar world.

  Fitting in wouldn’t be easy, but was passable as a transient homeless. Vadrossa finally stopped after many uncertain days and watched all the strange and worthless people around him. Inside, his brother’s eyes spied value hidden within the ranks of worthless bodies.

  He’d killed and gathered parts from strange people, but all for sustenance, they never amounted to anything, never held any value. The wolf man was to be last, had to be, so long as the distant man had the tongue.

  —

  Vadrossa knew a familiar need, something rare, something similar to the desire within Dhaksa, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  There was his hope that the wolf man was the last, but he doubted it would end, doubted he could return and live with his brother, that shared feeling in his mind promised more work ahead.

  The entire circus pack-up took only an hour and they were on the road, stopping about thirty miles north. Just as they took everything down, it all went back up. That was life for these people. It would be death for many.

  20

  Lou met Maurice on the station’s front steps.

  “Whoa, buddy, you can’t go in there.” Lou stood with his arms wide, helpless.

  Maurice pushed his way around his partner, who expected a push, but wasn’t overly resilient with concern over keeping the grieving man away from his daughter. Intentional helplessness, a slip really, Lou did wish Maurice would leave, but how without force, that was impossible.

  The morgue was located in the basement of the station. Maurice picked up speed, Lou on his heels. Someone not familiar with the bowels of the building would likely find the number of doors intimidating, the flickering ceiling lights dirty and bug covered, the light green walls with paint peeling and without luster. At the end of the long hallway was the unmarked door of the old morgue. A place they used for time sensitive cases and during backlogs.

  Maurice pushed, stalling his progression momentarily, and Lou grabbed onto his shoulder. A loud, firm smacking noise sounded, like the clang of chubby kids cannon-balling into a pool, when Maurice’s fist crashed into his partner’s neck. Lou fell hard, not expecting the contact. He scrambled to his feet in time to see the heavy door swing.

  “Genner? What are you doing here?” D’Souza asked.

  Rosalind’s body, slabbed. It lay on the table, her head tilted backward and jaws open, showing the crude slices.

  “Did he fuck her?” Maurice asked through clenched teeth.

  “No, this was not sexual. The examiner found no foreign fluids, his words,” D’Souza said.

  The examiner was a short, round, middle-aged man with soda bottle glasses. He adjusted them and looked toward Maurice. “He stole her tongue.” D’Souza shot an angry glance at the examiner as if Maurice wouldn’t have found out. “What? He is the girl’s father. This isn’t something I planned to keep to myself.” The examiner’s pupils magnified to a couple inches in circumference by the lenses of his glasses. “Guy took her dress off, but didn’t have sex with the body. Maybe the other body startled him before he could do it. Before she was a body, of course.”

  The examiner’s brutal honesty was a welcome change from the constant pussyfooting. Maurice glanced back to Lou who was rubbing the side of his neck. It was a relief that his daughter died a virgin and remained a virgin in death, but the missing tongue clicked too clearly with the voiceless image the fortune-teller showed him.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked D’Souza.

  “Nothing at all, Captain,” Lou said dropping his hand to his side, revealing a red patch on his neck.

  Maurice said, “Show me the picture of the man.”

  D’Souza looked at his men. “You’re off duty. I can understand your need to act, it’s why you’re a good cop. I know what you want to do: find the man rip his tongue out, maybe play with him a bit, and finally kill him. I’m not going to stop you, but when we find out who he is, it won’t be tough to make a connection and I don’t want to lose two men. So go on and look for the guy, but Lou can’t help you.”

  “Raw Daily,” Lou reminded Maurice. D’Souza shot a grave eye. “What? Those photos are still up. I am just telling him the name of the site. The entire planet can see the pics, why shouldn’t Moe?”

  Maurice looked at his daughter, lying under a thin bed sheet, dead, her mouth cut open and her dress set aside as evidence for later. All he could think was that she must be cold down here, cold on this table, cold and dead, dead cold.

  21

  Rhoda was up, drinking coffee and pacing around the kitchen. Dribbles of milk ran down Ruby’s chin as she smacked her lips and continued shoveling Fruit Loops into her mouth.

  “Mom, where’s Dad?” Ruby asked, chewing a rainbow.

  “He…he went out.”

  “He doesn’t have to go to work again yet does he?”

  “No, we are all going to be a close family for a little while. Nobody is going anywhere and we’ll all be together.”

  “Good. I miss Rosalind.”

  Rhoda couldn’t respond,
turned her back to her daughter and began to cry. Maurice pulled back into the laneway and jogged into the house.

  “Dad!”

  “Where were you?” Rhoda asked, still facing the sink.

  “I had to find out about what happened at the cemetery. Hey, Ruby, I want to talk to your mother, parent stuff, would you go to your room?” She frowned, but left the kitchen, swiping at her chin. “Someone did dig her up.”

  “Wait, why, what?” Rhoda spun around as she spoke, wishing she’d misheard.

  “Someone dug her up and cut out her tongue. Nobody knows who he is yet. Just a second.” He ran into the living room to snatch up the tablet. He found the site and the pictures in the time it took him to get back to the kitchen. “This reporter was there when it happened and he got pictures of the guy, but in night vision.” He sat and Rhoda watched over his shoulder as he scrolled through the slider. “Have you ever seen that guy?”

  “No. Is that him then?”

  “No, I am showing you pictures of some other guy. What a stupid question. Jesus Christ.”

  “Don’t snap at me. You’ve been running around and I’m here looking after Ruby while you do God knows what. So what if I’m not up on everything like you are?”

  “Up on everything? Nobody knows anything.” He stood and began pacing.

  Rhoda watched him and became a dizzy. “Are you hungry?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. He began muttering and then jetted upstairs. Rhoda followed.

  He was packing a suitcase and Rhoda knew immediately what that meant: Maurice was going to desert her.

  She flipped the flap closed over his luggage. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I have to find him, get her tongue back. She’s in trouble,” he rambled, not concerned with how any of it might sound. “I saw her. The other night I met a physic, she could contact the dead. I know it sounds wacked, but she was real.” He flipped the flap. “Rosalind’s in trouble and it has to do with the guy and the tongue.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Aren’t you listening? Rosalind is in trouble, she needs me,” he tossed a handful of clean underwear into the case.

  “Ruby needs you, I need you, at home. Not out on the road on a witch hunt,” Rhoda said, spilling more tears down her cheeks.

  “It could be a witch, you know, or a warlock.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re having a breakdown. Days ago you got on my case about ghosts and fairy tales, this isn’t like you.”

  “Rhoda, if you saw what Miss Bănică showed me, you’d believe.”

  Jeans and some t-shirts made the packing cut.

  “Take me to her. Does she have a storefront where she rips people off or does she do it in her house? Maybe she has a hidden camera TV show. The Grifter Hour, today’s guest is a sad man who misses his daughter.”

  He scoffed. “Her office or business or shop or whatever caved and then evaporated into nothing,” Maurice said not stalling a second as he packed.

  “Listen to what you’re saying! Take me to her house then.”

  “Can’t, it burned down after we contacted Rosalind. A dark force had her, Rhoda. Something evil.” He zipped the suitcase.

  “You’ve lost your mind. Are you going off with this woman? Are you sleeping with her too?”

  This question stopped Maurice’s busy work. “Huh?”

  “Are you having an affair?”

  Maurice scrunched his entire face, making it a third of the size smaller. “I’ve never cheated on you, never. I never will.”

  “Then why are you leaving with this woman?”

  “I’m not, she’d dead. The dark force sickened her somehow. She died helping me. Rhoda, she showed me Rosalind’s pain. I’m not crazy. I questioned that myself, but Miss Bănică’s entire life is gone, any physical trace she lived here is gone too. Some people will remember her, but it doesn’t matter, I have to stop this thing.” He pulled two handguns from a case in his lower drawer.

  “Guns?”

  “You aren’t listening at all are you? This isn’t a joke and I’m not nuts. Rosalind needs me. She may need more than me, but—”

  “We need you.”

  “Sorry, once I hear the direction, I have to go.”

  Maurice went down to the kitchen poured a coffee and went to the backyard, cell phone and cigarettes in hands, waiting for the call Lou promised to make. He lit and inhaled, chasing it with a mouthful of hot coffee.

  22

  Alejandro Villanueva, Wolf Man of Bantam Family Circus according to the sign posted outside the Freak Tent, formally known as Wolf Boy, pounded hunks of rebar into the ground with a twelve-pound sledge. The air was already hot and thick, the hair covering almost his entire body matted with sweat. It was how he liked it. Existing hot and damp was all so much more natural than performing. Work, any work at all, that kept his body fit was all right by him. Nights on the road were long and could mean grievous changes, mostly around the mid-section. Activity kept things tight.

  The circus was his life. The circus was his family.

  As a small child, Alejandro’s parents had the difficult choice of keeping the boy around to almost certainly starve or send him away. Many of the locals didn’t smile upon his furry back, suggesting that it was a constant reminder of the reality of evil. Many regarded him as a plague on the village, but he was only a boy, a scared, furry-bodied, little boy.

  Phil Bantam had just started helping his father with work not directly tied to operations—acquisitions and advertising. The Bantam Family Circus had had wolf men before, but it had been some time since. Knowing what the people wanted was the first battle of the war. People liked wolf men. Not terrifying, but weird and non-threatening enough to have to be real. Nobody would bother gluing hair to their entire body for circus crusts.

  For one-thousand dollars, Phil relieved the Villanueva parents of two problems, one being Alejandro’s well-being and the other being too poor to feed their three normal children.

  Clink. Clink. Alejandro hammered.

  “When I asked everyone to pitch in a little I didn’t mean you had to break your back. We have kids hired to pound in the stakes,” Phil said, cup of coffee in his hand, third of the morning.

  “No worries. I like it. It’s good to stay fit.” Alejandro wiped sweat from his eyes. “You could stand to get some exercise too. I know where there’s a hammer with your name on it.”

  “Of course it has my name on it, everything does,” for now. “Property of Bantam Family Circus.”

  Phil mimed a toast with his recently emptied coffee cup and continued on his morning, still clinging onto the off chance that something would save the family business. Alice Blackburn, the circus’ fortune-teller, watched Phil leave and approached Alejandro.

  Alice came from a long line of family swindlers, offering fortunes told in exchange for fortunes paid. It was all bull, she knew and didn’t mind. Her mother, grandmother, and likely great grandmother as well, all told lies in the shape of happy futures; sad ones if they’d had a bad day.

  Being born into the situation made it easy to adapt. Her mother also worked for Bantam Family Circus until two winters previous when she got too drunk and passed out in a snow bank. The circus usually travelled to the southern hemisphere during the winter, that year they had, but agreed to do a special three-night special in the Biddeford Arena and Expo Center. It was a hit and the family celebrated with a few locals out on the prowl for some strange action. Alice found her mother the following morning, underwear pulled down and sitting in a snow bank. At first people questioned an assault, but she was out for a smoke after the show and needed to vacate her bladder, and passed out. Stone cold dead in only a few hours.

  Worse ways to go, but not many as demeaning.

  Seeing the trade and inheriting the tricks, Alice stepped in from the role as ticket collector to fortune-teller. She had as much knowledge of the future as her mother had. None. So when Alice felt something strange in the air, she didn’t tak
e it lightly.

  Maybe she did have some intuition on the future or maybe she was paranoid, in either case, it affected Alejandro.

  “Hey, Alejandro, how are you doing?” she asked.

  The idea that people cared about him always made him happy, as it would most, but he treasured what he had because he had very little. Plus, she wasn’t repulsed.

  “Dear, Alice, what does the future hold? Are we going to have a good crowd?”

  She took out a bag of cigarettes she’d picked up at Native reserve earlier in the week—two-hundred-twenty-five smokes for ten Canadian, a good deal…and so nice of the Natives to share. She lit one and blew out as she spoke. “If I could tell the future, I assure you, I would’ve won the lottery and be on a beach somewhere.”

  “What and leave me behind?”

  “’Fraid so.” She inhaled.

  “Terrible, I thought we were pals.”

  Exhale. “I don’t know anyone who is good enough pals to pay for them to retire on a beach.” She smiled as she spoke. It wasn’t exactly a pretty smile.

  “Things are different with we circus folk, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be circus folk,” he said.

  “Fine, if I win the lotto I’ll move you to a beach with me.”

  “Too hot, sorry.”

  “You shit… I know this is going to sound weird but I had a dream about you,” his interest peaked, “well, more like a premonition.”

  “I thought you couldn’t tell the future.”

  “I can’t, but I’ve had this dream two nights in a row and it’s so strange, yet realistic. I want you to beware.”

  “Oh?”

  “So we are working, at this site even right down to the church across the road, and a man comes, someone else causes a scene so we don’t notice him.”

  “What’s the scene?”

  “Don’t remember, but while everyone is running scared, this man, a beautiful middle-aged, long-haired man, comes along and offers you refuge into a trailer, you follow and he actually makes you cut open your skull with those sheers you pretend to cut your hair off with every night,” she said, nervous, wiping her sweaty palms against her pant legs. “It’s just so real and I’ve had the dream twice. I think you need to watch out that’s all.”