What the Hell Did I Just Read

  To Ted I said, “Did you call the cops after that?”

  “I did not.”

  “Because you don’t think this was just some local deviant. Or else you wouldn’t have asked for us.”

  “Also, don’t got much use for cops.”

  “Tell us about that encounter, from the start.”

  “It was last Sunday. After church. I was in the driveway putting an alternator on the Impala. Guy walks up, dainty little guy, looked like a fag, or a child molester. Got this lispy little voice, holding a cigarette between his thumb and index finger, like you’d hold a joint. Made this little duckface every time he took a puff, I wanted to punch him before he even said a word. Came mincing up the driveway, I didn’t even see a car pull up or anything, he was just there. Maggie was in the yard with me, chasing the cat around. This guy comes up, says his name is Mister Nymph. Actually referred to himself as ‘Mister.’”

  “Wait, say the last name again?”

  “Nymph, like short for ‘nymphomaniac’ or somethin’. That’s how I heard it anyway.”

  It wasn’t a name we’d run across before.

  Ted continued, “So he looks over at Maggie, and he’s got his leering look, you know, and says I have a beautiful daughter. Starts asking me a bunch of weird questions about her. Then he says—”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Started out random things. How much does she weigh. Do we let her eat meat. I’m not answering any of these as he asks; I’m just asking him who he is, what does he want. But he just keeps up with the questions. And they just get creepier as they go. Does she shower or take baths. Do my wife and I allow her to see us naked. Do we let her shop for her own underwear.”

  “Like he was trying to get you agitated, then.”

  “Guess so, yeah. Told him to get off my property; he said he was just asking questions. I tell him he’s got five seconds to get off my driveway, tell him that he’s threatening my child, as far as I’m concerned. I say that in this state I have grounds to kill him where he stands, based on that alone. Finally he says, and he’s saying it like he’s shopping for a car, he says, ‘I’ll take her.’ Says he’ll be back in a few days to pick her up. I take a step toward the guy, big wrench in my hand. Then I turn to check on Maggie real quick, just a split second, then I turn back to Nymph and—”

  “And he was gone,” finished John.

  Ted nodded. “I asked Maggie if she saw where the guy went, she said she didn’t see nothin’. Said she saw me standing in the driveway alone, yelling at nobody. By the next day, I was doubtin’ myself.”

  John said, “You thought it was a hallucination?”

  Ted shrugged. “Came back from Iraq, had the PTSD, dreams mostly. Figured … I dunno. Also done some substances in my time, before Maggie was born, but I’ve heard about how that stuff stays in your system. I guess I wanted it to be that and not this other thing. The shit that they say goes on in this town. The reason everybody moved away, the reason I got this house for fifteen grand. I had always figured it was all panic and superstition. I’ve seen plenty of women and little kids torn to pieces, and the culprit wasn’t no monster. Men do it just fine.”

  I said, “So, what exactly are you willing to believe?”

  “I believe in results. I believe in technique. What you two do, either it works or it don’t. If it don’t, I’ll find somebody else.”

  I said, “The way I try to explain it to people is this. You look outside in the daytime and there’s the sun. It’s there, everybody agrees it’s there, everybody knows what it is. But what you don’t realize is that the sun is also really loud. It’s a giant ball of nuclear explosions. Have you ever been really close to a lightning strike? You know that clap of thunder that’s so loud that it almost makes you piss your pants? Imagine hearing something that loud, nonstop, day and night—that’s how loud the sun would be, even from a hundred million miles away. About a hundred and twenty decibels. The only reason you can’t hear it, is because your ears aren’t equipped to—there’s no air in space to carry the sound waves. Do you understand? This universe is full of huge, powerful, noisy things that you just can’t perceive the right way, due to how your sense organs are built. John and I, our senses are a little different than yours, that’s all.”

  John said, “It’s kind of like how you can’t hear that your pet goldfish is just constantly screaming, but other fish can. Now this particular guy, Nymph or whatever his name is, he’s not in our database—”

  Note: We do not have a database.

  “—but everything’s a mystery until it’s not. This looks like what we call a ‘locked room’ abduction. Victim missing, but no sign of entry or exit. We’ve seen a few of them before.”

  Ted said, “If you don’t mind me askin’, how many of those times have you found the victim alive?”

  “More than you’d think,” answered John. The answer is one, by the way. “When they say the things that happen around here are beyond understanding, that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes weirdness occurs and everybody is perfectly fine afterward. Maggie could just turn up in her bedroom again, five minutes from now.”

  “Is that what you think will happen here?”

  Before John could answer, I said, “We don’t think anything right now. We’ve been at this for a while, and here’s what we’ve learned—however you think it’s gonna go, is not how it’s gonna go. About here is where I usually tell people not to get their hopes up, but I don’t think I need to say that—you know what the world is like. So, instead I’m just going to say that we’ll do our best.”

  Ted nodded. “Part of the job is that guy, Nymph, whoever he is, we find him and destroy him. Alpha Mike Foxtrot.”

  John said, “You can take that to the fuckin’ bank.”

  The detective held out his hands and said, “Guys, I’m standing right here.”

  Ted said, “So, if this is what we think it is, where do you start looking?”

  I thought, good question.

  John said, “The fact that he came to you in advance is important. He could have just snatched her in the night, presumably, but there’s a game being played here. So that means there’s a good chance we’ll hear from Nymph—or someone like him—very soon. At that point, we try to figure out exactly what ‘game’ he’s playing. And then—”

  I finished for him. “We don’t fucking play it.”

  Ted nodded. He seemed to have gained some confidence from this conversation, which meant we had done a good job of concealing the fact that we had no idea what the hell we were doing.

  The detective looked at his watch, nodded, and said, “Well, looks like you guys have it handled.”

  He turned and strode down the hall and out the front door. I hurried after him.

  “Hey! You’re not walking away from this—wait!” He stopped to open the door of the SUV. I put a hand on it to keep it closed and he gave me a look like I was a mosquito he was about to splatter. “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, I have to call the feds, of course. We’ll have a team from the FBI here in half an hour, they’ll work with a local task force of a dozen of our finest men!”

  He knocked my hand aside and ducked into the passenger seat. He slammed the door and the other cop started the engine. I knocked on the window and he rolled it down.

  I asked, “Wait, was that sarcasm?”

  “What do you think? I’ll see you boys later. Or not. Who knows? I’m going back to the station.”

  “You can’t just walk away from a missing child!”

  “Watch us. You think this is my first day on the job? You think this is my first day in this town? You heard the story, even if we don’t exactly know what’s going on, we know enough. If They took her” (I could hear the capital “T” in his voice), “then it’s like trying to rescue an orange after it’s been juiced. Not my monkeys, not my circus.”

  “It literally is! This is your job.”

  His shoulders slumped. He let out a tir
ed sigh. “You’re right, you’re right. Here, let me give you something. It might help.”

  He stuck his right hand inside his jacket, then pulled it out to reveal he had his middle finger extended. He stuck his hand out of the window and sped off down the street singing, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOUUUU!!!!”

  I watched the SUV’s taillights dissolve behind a gray curtain of rain. I would have called the guy’s superiors to complain, but the chief would just say the same thing, only louder.

  You might be wondering if the “They” he was just referring to is the same “they” who showed up at John’s place a few weeks ago. The truth is that nobody knows. Lurking behind everything are these walking shadows who can manipulate a human soul as easily as a finger puppet is manipulated by a drunk mime’s penis. Here in our world, there are people who do Their bidding willingly, others who do it unwillingly, and still others who serve Their purposes without even knowing They exist. So, yeah, I admit it probably does make it hard to fill out an arrest warrant.

  I sighed and made my way back inside.

  As soon as I arrived back in the living room, Ted said, “Thought he’d never leave. So if we’re gonna hear from Nymph, when do you think—”

  His cell phone rang.

  3. JOY PARK

  Ted’s ringtone was “Flight of the Valkyries.” He answered and immediately his expression made it clear who was on the other end. Not “Mister Nymph,” but his little girl.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and said, “Oh thank god. Shh … listen. Baby, where are you?” A pause. “What? Hey, tell me where you are…”

  John muttered, “Put it on speaker.” Ted tapped his phone and I heard the tinny voice of a little girl, in midsentence.

  “We saw Prince Blacktail and we took a picture of him and Betty the Bear and I ate a chocolate pickle on a stick.”

  Ted said, “Maggie, where are you? Who are you with?”

  “Do you want to talk to Daddy?”

  “I’m here, this is me. We’re at home. Where are you?”

  “I can’t hear, the people are really loud. It’s really crowded. We’re in line for the Night Wheel.”

  Ted looked at us. None of us had any idea what that meant.

  John said, “Hi, I’m a friend of your dad’s. Are you at a park? Like an amusement park? Tell us where you are and we’ll come join you.”

  “We’re at Joy Park! It was a surprise for my fly box!”

  It was word salad. Ted closed his eyes, I imagined the rage and frustration turning his brain into a sputtering pot of chili. “Honey, can you hear me? Do you know what town you’re in? Or, do you remember how long you drove to get there?”

  “Do you want to talk to Daddy? Hold on.”

  “No, honey, I … are you still there?”

  There was a pause, some faint voices on the other end. Finally, a male voice came on the line. It said, “This is Ted. Who’s this?”

  Ted, the one sitting in the room with us, looked at his phone, then looked up at us. We had no suggestions.

  “Who are you, you son of a bitch? Bring back my daughter!”

  From the phone, a man with a very similar voice said, “What? I ain’t got your daughter, dude.” A faint female voice could be heard asking a question, and the man on the phone replied to her, “No idea, somebody she dialed on accident.”

  The call disconnected.

  Ted stood bolt upright off the sofa, looked at me, and said, “What the fuck was that?”

  Another good question.

  John said, “Try to call her back.”

  He did, and shook his head. “They turned it off.”

  John was quickly scrolling through something on his phone. He said, “I tried doing a search for Joy Park. I don’t find a place by that name. Not within driving distance. Lots of, uh, people.”

  I said, “Maybe we heard her wrong?”

  “Even so, what place like that would be open before dawn?”

  Ted said, “That sounded like me. On the phone. And in the background, that was Loretta. What is this?”

  John said to Ted, “Keep in mind, again, that call was placed for a reason. What you heard, what you were allowed to hear, somebody did that to get you to react in a certain way. Regardless of who or what is behind this, never lose sight of what we said a minute ago—what’s happening here is a game.”

  Ted’s phone dinged—an incoming text. He showed it to us—a photo. A large, run-down building with a rounded, redbrick rooftop.

  John said, “That’s the ice factory.”

  I said, “The fact that he—or it—wants us to go there tells me that going there is a terrible idea.”

  “What’s our alternative?”

  I thought, move to a different town? but said nothing.

  Ted said, “Let me get a weapon.”

  “A thing like this,” I said, “probably cannot be killed with a gun.”

  “He’s right,” said John. “It will take several guns, at least. Can you dual wield?”

  Ted nodded and jogged down the hall, a little too enthusiastically. I glared at John. “Any bystanders get shot, it’s on you.”

  * * *

  We were all in John’s black Jeep Grand Cherokee, the hood of which was entirely covered by an airbrushed mural of Satan holding an ax, chopping the head off of a naked woman above the words EZEKIEL 23:20. The paint job wasn’t John’s work—the Jeep had come from the cops’ impound lot and they wouldn’t tell us anything about the previous owner, only that he was “Never, ever coming back.” They had given it to John as under-the-table payment for some work we did for them, which I think was a good deal for the cops as I estimated the blue book value at about negative two hundred dollars. John and I were in front, Ted was in back. We rolled through the downpour, a sunrise having drowned somewhere behind it.

  Ted had brought three guns with him and at the moment was loading bullets into a pistol magazine. He said, “All right, tell me exactly what I’m walkin’ into here. In terms of their capabilities, strengths, vulnerabilities, anything you know.”

  I said, “You know how the earth is mostly run by assholes, who got their jobs either by accident, or by being the kids of other assholes, or via some other backroom assholery? Well, it turns out if you keep going up the ladder, past humans and into spirits and demigods and such, it’s just more assholes for several more levels.”

  John said, “Most of the time you can’t perceive them, the same as you can’t detect bacteria in your taco meat until you’re puking your guts out three hours later. But Dave and I are special. We were able to look behind the veil, thanks to some drugs we took, to see the debauchery these unholy bastards get up to behind the scenes, see how their fluids splatter into our reality. We’ve been face-to-face with beings that would give your nightmares nightmares. The first time, Dave didn’t even flinch, he’s like, ‘You wanna see the real monster, it’s standing right in front of you, bitch.’”

  I said, “Also, don’t believe anything John tells you. He tends to … embellish.”

  Ted, realizing that spiel had contained no useful tactical information said, “But these things, they can be killed, right?”

  I said, “Sort of?”

  John said, “You got a Facebook profile, right? You ever get like an annoying ex-girlfriend or something on there, and eventually you just block her? Well, killing the body of one of these things is usually like that. It gets them out of your hair but they’re not really gone. Whether you see them again really depends on how persistent they are. Usually still worth it to try.”

  Ted nodded. No fear, no confusion—he was a soldier evaluating the situation and storing the data as it came, without judgment. He said, “Or, like when insurgents would shoot down one of our drones.”

  I said, “Yeah, that’s actually a way better analogy.”

  We turned into the mostly abandoned industrial park and soon came upon an arched brick rooftop that appeared to be sitting in the middle of a lake—in reality, an old parkin
g lot that was currently under about three inches of water, boiling with raindrops. Of all the creepy and abandoned places in Undisclosed, this one is probably the creepiest and most abandonedest. This is the infamous ice factory, a spot that many around here believe is a portal to Hell.

  I guess that requires some explanation.

  See, as recently as the 1940s, refrigerators were something only rich jerks owned. Everybody else had iceboxes—literal wooden boxes you had to cool with a big block of ice you bought. Those blocks were made in factories like the dilapidated one we were rolling up to right now. The place had been closed since the early 1960s, a brick building in the shape of a Quonset hut, with faint shadows above each window where flames had scorched the exterior.

  Oh, yeah, that’s the “portal to Hell” part. The factory was closed after a horrific fire in 1961, which no one ever isolated a cause for. The blaze supposedly burned so hot that it melted the bricks inside. I know that sounds like bullshit, but according to Munch (who worked as a volunteer firefighter and knows stuff like this), if you can get the temperature up to about four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the clay in the bricks just liquefies like wax. They say the fire department didn’t even throw water at it, they just kept their distance and watched it roar like a blast furnace, the sheer heat wilting trees for a hundred yards in every direction. And then, just minutes after the firefighters arrived, it went dark, like somebody just flipped a switch. Once it cooled down, city officials glanced inside, nodded, then boarded up the doors and agreed to never speak of it again. Nobody had ever bought the factory or the land, presumably because they were afraid the supposed portal would open again and that their insurance wouldn’t cover the loss (and who wants to go to court over the issue of whether or not Hell itself counts as an “act of God”?).

  The whole story was ridiculous, of course—even if a portal to Hell opened up, it isn’t a physical, fiery place. The ancient Hebrew word for Hell is “Gehenna,” which was an actual location outside Jerusalem back in Bible days, a valley where people tossed their garbage to burn it. They used to roll the corpses of sinners down into that putrid burning trash pit as a final posthumous insult, and New Testament writers just took that idea and ran with it. The real “Hell,” as far as John and I can surmise, is simply having to spend eternity with millions and millions of other terrible people with no laws, walls, or even physical bodies to separate them from you. An eternity spent swirling in a stew of ravenous, perverse appetites free of all restraints. Their torture is that they forever consume but are never satisfied, your torture is that you are forever consumed. Also, by the 1960s, consumer-grade refrigerators were common so the whole thing would have been a bad investment anyway.