What the Hell Did I Just Read

  “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do. I’ve done something awful, Amy.”

  “Uh-oh. What’s her name?”

  “Nothing like that. What I’ve done … I’ve let you believe that if you ever left, that I wouldn’t make it. That either I’d hurt myself, or just crash and burn. I knew you believed that, and I let you keep believing it, on purpose. Because I wanted you to stay. Because I had come to believe that you were my little magical bubble of protection against all of the awfulness out there. All the awfulness inside me. But I want you to know I’d be okay. If you ever decided you weren’t happy and bailed on this, I’d be upset for a while but I’d move on, because I’m a grown-up and that’s what grown-ups do. They don’t hold people hostage.”

  “I am happy, David. I love you.”

  “That’s good. That’s great. But if that changes. If I change … go. Just, go. I saved your life once and now you’ve saved mine every single day after that, day after day, month after month, year after year. You don’t owe me anymore. In the grand scheme of things, I am an able-bodied white male with above average intelligence living in the richest civilization that will probably ever exist on this planet. I had every chance, and all of my problems are purely my own. But above all, I want you to be happy. Even if it’s with somebody else.”

  “I know, you’ve said that before—”

  “I never meant it. I mean it now.”

  Amy started to answer, but instead let silence take over. They lay there together, a dry island in the rain, Amy feeling David’s chest lift and fall under her. She started to drift off to sleep.

  He said, “There’s something else I need to confess. But I need to show it to you. So that you understand.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “We have to go outside. To see it.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “It really can’t.”

  * * *

  David led her to the car again and drove them around the pond, to the church. Amy had a thought that he had arranged some corny marriage ceremony, but instead he parked and walked right past the church, to a winding gravel path that led down to the water.

  Amy followed and near the bottom, David had said, “It’s here.”

  “What’s here?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “You’re scaring me. Tell me what we’re doing.”

  “Amy, I do things sometimes, and I don’t remember them afterward. But it’s still me. It has to be. It doesn’t make sense to think of it any other way.”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Finally, he said, “John and I … we didn’t find the girl, Maggie. Everyone is still out looking for her right now. But I know where she is.”

  Amy went cold. Without another word, David headed toward the water. He kept walking right into the pond, sloshing through until it was up to his knees.

  Trembling, she followed him, her vision blurring as raindrops splattered off her glasses. David waded out toward the pile of loose rock that had been the mouth of the mine way back when. He approached a rusty NO SWIMMING sign that was now half-submerged.

  She saw that tied to its post was a length of white plastic pipe, curved over at the top, as if to prevent rain from getting in. David stopped there and leaned his ear down toward the pipe, as if he was listening for something. Amy forced her feet to move, feeling like she was in a bad dream. The thought that swirled around her head was, You knew it was going to end like this. She waded out into the freezing water and arrived next to David, looked down, and screamed.

  The pipe was connected to a hose and the hose was connected to a clear plastic bag about the size and shape of, well, the little blond girl that it clearly contained.

  “She’s alive,” David said. “Sleeping. I gave her something.”

  “You gave her something?” Amy thought she was going to throw up. But three seconds later, she swept that thought off the table and was up to her shoulders in freezing water, dragging up the bag, which had been weighed down with four cinder blocks. David was helping—knowing exactly how to disconnect the weights—and together they dragged the girl to shore.

  David handed Amy his pocketknife and she sliced open the thick, watertight plastic. She cradled the little girl in the rain, Maggie’s breath coming and going softly. Amy muttered incoherent reassurances to the girl, and to herself, and to nobody in particular. It was just a noise she was making.

  David said, “Amy, look at me. I need you to listen carefully. Are you listening?”

  She didn’t answer, but met his eyes.

  “I’m not David.”

  Amy said, “We can … look, she’s unharmed, you didn’t hurt her, on some level you must have come to your senses, you must have—”

  “Hey. Amy. This is not a metaphor. I’m not David. I look like him, I sound like him. I’m not him. David is at John’s house right now, still lost, still trying to solve this. You can call him. And in fact, I want you to do that, in a moment.”

  “What? What are you talking ab—”

  “I need you to acknowledge that you heard what I said and comprehend it. I know you don’t fully understand but I need to know you at least took in the words.”

  “You’re not David. Then who are you?”

  “I’m going to go now, I won’t harm or pursue you, and you’re going to make your phone call. Oh, and in all the excitement, you’ve forgotten to get your prescription refilled, you need to get David to pick it up today or else you won’t be able to move tomorrow morning when your back seizes up.”

  “Uh … okay.”

  “And Amy … you deserve better.”

  “What? I—”

  But he was gone. Vanished, like a popped bubble. The little girl moved in her arms. Maggie’s eyes were half-open, looking but not seeing, in a drugged haze. Amy pulled out her phone, called David, and he sounded frantic.

  “Amy! Is that you!?!”

  11. THIS ISN’T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, I SWEAR

  Me

  Coming back from Chastity Payton’s house, I was worried that when we pulled into the Venus Flytrap parking lot, we’d find Ted Knoll waiting for us again. He wasn’t.

  Instead, it was Detective Bowman.

  He stepped out of his cop SUV and met us at the foot of the stairs. His young partner stayed in the car.

  As I approached, I said, “Are you here to give us our reward? For finding the girl?”

  “I think you can guess why I’m here.”

  I headed up the stairs and Bowman followed.

  John said, “You don’t have a warrant. That means you can’t come in unless we invite you.”

  Bowman said, “You’re thinking of vampires.” He walked into the apartment after us, shaking rainwater off of his jacket.

  I said, “So, I take it you’ve heard from Mr. Knoll.”

  “Actually, I had a long conversation with Maggie. Where were you last night, between the hours of two and three A.M.?”

  “Asleep. In my apartment.”

  “Anybody that can verify that?”

  Amy said, “I can.”

  I said, “No, she can’t, she was at work.”

  “I came home at three. Night lunch. You were asleep.”

  “Anyway, then I woke up in the predawn hours because you needed me to do your job for you. Remember that? You gave me the finger and drove merrily into the night? Then we solved your case?”

  “And now I have the victim pointing the finger at you, and an extremely convenient failure of the victim’s Littleton alarm system, with your girl in position to sabotage it.” That clearly startled Amy. I hadn’t mentioned that part to her. Still, she said nothing. “And the father, he’s made an ultimatum—either we haul you in, or he buries you himself.”

  “Then arrest him.”

  “He hasn’t committed a crime yet. That would be for after he shoots your ass. And that’s only if he refuses my offer to help him get rid of the evidence.”

  “Even if you think I did it, a
ren’t I also the guy who brought her back? So what’s the charge there, we took a little girl to visit Mine’s Eye then brought her back home eight hours later? For what? We didn’t even get paid for the work.”

  “And then we found out there was another victim. At least one.”

  I said, “You think I did both? At the same time, across town? And never got spotted? It’s weird how you switch between having a really high opinion of me and a really low one.”

  He shrugged. “Well, somebody did it.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a person. Which you know damned well.”

  “Do I know that?”

  John said, “So, now if we go and find the other kid, that just casts more suspicion on us? Well, guess what—we’re going to go find him anyway. I’m sure you understand, at this point heroism is just a reflex for us.”

  I said, “And just to be clear, the only way to prove to you that we weren’t behind this would be to successfully find the guy who did it, and for it to turn out to be an actual human being you can book and prosecute. Right?”

  “Actually, Wong, if I see you anywhere near any of the victims’ families again, or see you talking to witnesses, or otherwise doing amateur cop stuff, I will haul all three of you in for interfering with a police investigation. And I’m using the word ‘haul’ here to describe tying you to the rear bumper of a squad car and dragging you across town. You’re going to stay home, you’re not going to leave town, you’re going to wait for me to tell you what to do. Understand?”

  I said, “Of course. What you say goes. After all, you’re the police.”

  He turned and opened the door and was aaaallllmost all the way out, when there was a thump from another room.

  We all turned, including Detective Bowman.

  Another thump, like someone kicking a door.

  Coming from inside my junk room.

  The detective said, “Who else is here?”

  Simultaneously:

  Amy said, “It was the wind.”

  John said, “It’s the dog.”

  I said, “I don’t hear anything.”

  The detective pulled his gun and said, “Get back. All three of you, go to the other side of the room.”

  We did.

  Thump

  I said, “I don’t want you to take this as a threat, but the last cop to come into my house and yank open doors to investigate strange sounds, well, he kind of wound up with a monster in his face. And I don’t mean it was near his face, I mean it was literally inside his face.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Still, he approached the closed junk room door like he thought a velociraptor would come crashing through it at any moment. He positioned himself outside the door and, with his gun held close to his body where an assailant couldn’t grab it, he reached out with his left hand and pushed the door open.

  He jumped back from the door to create distance, then trained his gun on whatever horror was in the room. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see inside but I mentally prepared myself to go running out the front door if he got yanked into the room by jaws, paws, tentacles, or a beak.

  The detective looked inside, took in what he was seeing, then spun and aimed his gun right at me.

  “Get down! Get on the floor! All three of you!”

  “What is it?”

  “GET DOWN!”

  We obeyed, the three of us exchanging looks. I had already pretty much guessed what he had found in there. Amy seemed quite sure she knew.

  The detective grabbed his walkie-talkie and called in a squad car and an ambulance.

  He had a young child, he said.

  Alive, but unconscious.

  * * *

  We were handcuffed in the back of Detective Bowman’s SUV—Amy’s right hand cuffed to a belt loop—and had been sitting there long enough to see the sun go down. Red and blue lights flashed across the beads of water on the windshield. The employees of the Venus Flytrap had all gathered up front, muttering to each other, covering their mouths in shock. I watched as Chastity pulled up in an old but impeccably maintained Range Rover. She jumped out and ran toward the stairs, then was restrained by a pair of street cops, reassuring her that her little boy would be right down.

  Then a paramedic carried Michael Payton’s tiny body down the stairs, the boy wrapped in a blanket. Chastity easily shoved the two cops aside and flew up to snatch her baby from the paramedic and clutch him to her chest. A Channel 5 news team was there to get it all on camera, as were most of our neighbors—word travels fast anytime there are cop cars at the Wong residence. The child and Chastity were loaded into an ambulance and soon after, a crime scene team started filing up and down the stairs, all of them about to be very confused by the shit they would find in my apartment. Will somebody in the evidence room be in charge of figuring out what that clown painting is saying?

  Detective Bowman’s partner, the square-jawed dude with the fancy hair, climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV. Bowman was standing under the awning of the dildo store, talking to one of the crime scene techs, hopefully warning them about grabbing anything in the apartment with their bare hands.

  To Bowman’s partner, John said, “The only thing that bothers me about this bullshit is that I’m pretty sure the real bad guy is still out there. You know we didn’t do this, and you know you need us. So what good does booking us do, other than let you cover your ass by closing the case?”

  He said, “Shut your trap. I’ve got no patience for this bullshit.”

  Bowman slid into the driver’s seat. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I said to him, “Will you just listen to us? You know this isn’t going to trial. This stuff never goes to trial. The prosecutor probably looks these cases over, shakes her head, and pours herself a stiff drink while figuring out how to explain to the press why she dropped the charges. Every time.”

  Amy said, “Guys, he’s not taking us to the police station.”

  Bowman glanced back at us and said, “She’s right. Got a new procedure these days.”

  He drove us south, past some cornfields and around the scrap-yard, where we’d seen the guy hunting the BATMANTIS??? on Chastity’s video. We turned into the lot of a large building that had been a farm supply store years ago, but had apparently been renovated and reopened under new management. The only marking was a nondescript sign at the entrance of the parking lot declaring it the IAEEAI LAB AND WELLNESS CENTER.

  Sitting in the parking lot were several trucks, the kind of flat-black military vehicles that you see around Undisclosed now and again, and that you generally pretend you didn’t see.

  I’m not sure how many members of this shadowy organization John and I have killed over the years. This is partly because I’m not sure which of their employees were ever actually alive and partly because I’m never clear if it’s the same organization from one time to the next. Do you have that one corner in your town that’s a different restaurant every two years—a burrito shop, then a Chinese place, then a Pop-Tart buffet—because nobody can ever make it work but they keep trying anyway? Well, it’s kind of like that, only instead of trying to squeeze a profit from a shitty location with no parking, they’re trying to control vast, dark energies they barely understand. And, instead of skipping town once the lease runs out, they suffer screaming, spurting deaths that are but a warm-up for the unending frenzy of ravenous jaws that await them beyond the veil. But, hey, maybe it’ll work next time, guys!

  John and I had once dedicated ourselves to investigating the origins and power structure of this group, a task that we diligently pursued for more than twenty minutes while waiting for a pizza delivery to arrive. A Google search found sites full of animated GIFs tracing it all back to either an occult-obsessed nineteenth-century billionaire, a 1961 Soviet military teleportation experiment, the Illuminati, or “The International Jew” (the pizza arrived before we could find out his name).

  Bowman’s SUV rolled to a stop a short distance from the vehicles. That is, the complete
ly dry vehicles, standing on completely dry pavement, in the middle of a downpour, in a parking lot with no roof. I thought I could see raindrops splattering and bouncing off an invisible barrier overhead. I sighed. They apparently hadn’t wanted to get wet.

  Out of the trucks walked a dozen figures in hooded black cloaks, like the guys who had shown up at John’s place a few weeks ago. Or, maybe it was the exact same guys, who knows? Under their robes they were wearing modern body armor and they were carrying bulky weapons with no obvious holes where bullets could come out. They all wore those droopy masks—at least, I think they were masks. They formed a circle in the parking lot and started chanting and drawing on the pavement with what looked like vials of blood.

  Amy rolled her eyes and said, “Really?”

  Detective Bowman took a drink from a flask he’d hidden under his seat and said to his partner, “You know, law enforcement has changed quite a bit since I was in the academy.”

  A ramp was extended from the back of one of the trucks, and a pair of normal-looking humans in business attire used a hand truck to roll down what looked like a huge, black, featureless casket. They wheeled it out to the middle of the circle of chanting cloaks and set it up on end, like a vampire was about to walk out of it (note: vampires aren’t real).

  One of the suits—a woman—gestured in our direction and Bowman said, “Will you willingly get out and walk over there, or do we have to march you over there at gunpoint? You know how I hate getting out in the rain.”

  I said, “This isn’t right, Detective. You’re supposed to uphold the law. Whatever’s about to happen, you know damned well we don’t deserve it.”

  “Hey, you know who else said that very thing to me? Literally every scumbag I’ve ever stuffed into that back seat.”

  John said, “You see those guys out there summoning the devil or some shit, right?”

  “Is that what you think they’re doing? Because I’m pretty sure all that witchcraft mumbo jumbo is supposed to protect them from you. And yeah, we’re dropping you off here because nobody’s sure a cell can even hold you. Now get the fuck out of my vehicle.”