Strange Candy

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  She turned onto her back as much as the air tanks would allow, kicking backward. "I'm going to hurt them."

  "You can't do that," I said.

  "Watch me."

  I started paddling after her, but she was going to get to shore first. My adrenaline rush was over: Irving's death, the birth, and the bite wound. Blood was running down my hand, and with the blood, pain. I was tired. Susan was still running on rage.

  She was sitting down in the shallows taking off her flippers. Priscilla, the other junior ranger, moved over to help Susan take off the tanks.

  Priscilla towered over Susan, heck, she towers over me. Priscilla is six foot one and has the strength to match the size.

  Susan was free of the tanks and going toward the prisoners. I yelled, "Stop her!"

  Priscilla looked toward me, but didn't move.

  "Stop her! Susan!"

  Priscilla laid the tanks on the ground and moved toward my wife.

  I lay panting in the shallows, struggling one-handed to get out of my diving gear. The shot echoed, loud enough to make me jump. I twisted around, one flipper on and one off.

  Susan had Jordan's rifle. She was pointing it at the two men. Another shot rang out, and the men started screaming. She was shooting into the ground, right next to them.

  Jordan was trying to talk to her, but she motioned him away with the rifle.

  Priscilla knelt beside me in the water, undoing the last strap of my equipment. "Talk to her, Mike. Somebody's going to get hurt."

  I nodded, shrugged out of the buoyancy vest, and walked toward Susan. She was firing into the ground, in a pattern around them. So far, I don't think she had hit either of them, but only skill and plain luck had saved them. Luck would run out. Part of me wanted them bleeding, hurt. Maybe we could hang their dead bodies near the entrance to the park with a sign: "These Men Killed One of Our Animals." Yeah, maybe that would convince the tourists to behave.

  "Susan, give the rifle back to Jordan."

  "They killed him, Mike. They killed Irving."

  "I know."

  One of the men said, "She's crazy."

  "Shut up," Susan said.

  "I'd do what she says, mister," I said.

  The man huddled against his companion. Both of them looked white in the moonlight. They stank of beer and urine.

  "They slaughtered him," Susan said.

  "Give me the rifle, Susan, please."

  "What's going to happen to them? If I don't hurt them, what will the law do?"

  "A hundred-thousand-dollar fine, or a mandatory ten-year prison sentence."

  "Do either of you have a hundred thousand dollars?" she asked.

  The men looked at each other, then at me. "Answer her," I said.

  "Hell, no. We haven't got that kind of money."

  "Susan gave a thin, tight smile, and handed the rifle to Jordan. "You better pray you get ten years apiece, because if you don't..." She knelt beside them. "I'll hunt you down and shoot you both."

  "Hey, lady, it was just an animal."

  I grabbed Susan and pulled her to her feet before she could slug him.

  Jordan said softly, "I'll let you have the rifle again."

  Susan leaned into me. "You're bleeding."

  "A present from Little Irving."

  She held my hand in her smaller ones, but I knew she wasn't trying to stop the blood flow; she was looking at the bite radius. My wife the scientist.

  I missed Irving when we went down to the barricade. No happy snorts, no bubble blowing, no dragon head butting your ribs. It was lonely. Baby Irving is like most of the monsters, shy. The best picture we have is a night shot of ripples on the water. My bite mark did prove our point. Pictures of my hand will make up part of Susan's report.

  Susan now thinks that all lake monsters are capable of cloning themselves by parthenogenesis. The clone is born at the death of the parent. That would explain why no one has ever seen more than one lake monster at a time. It also explains why both lake monsters that had been autopsied in the past had unborn babies. Pollution killed them all. Irving died from injuries, so his baby lived.

  The problem is that cloning leads to mutation and genetic drift. You need sexual reproduction in a vertebrate to keep the species healthy. Maybe centuries ago the lakes were all connected, but as the land closed in and isolated the monsters, they had to survive long enough to reproduce, so they cloned themselves. The individual genotypes were saved, but there is no known natural way for lake monsters to find mates. Without help from man, lake monsters are probably a dead end. If we don't kill them off first, that is.

  Little Irving's birth put a stop to the Lake Monster Breeding Program. Susan was out of a job, but since she is already living in the Enchanted Forest National Park and has full cooperation of the park service, she has a good shot at new grant money. If she gets it, we'll be studying the sex life of the red-bearded leprechaun. The real question is, are there any female leprechauns? No one has ever seen one. This problem sounds vaguely familiar.

  Susan is happy off on another project to save yet another endangered creature. But I miss Irving, and though Susan would laugh at me probably, I like to think that Irving is somewhere chasing angelic speedboats, or maybe he's got his own wings. Surely, even God needs a laugh now and then, and Irving is a funny guy, for a monster.

  SELLING HOUSES

  This story is set in Anita's world, but Anita isn't in it. None of the main or even minor characters are in it. One day I wondered: What are people with less dangerous jobs doing in Anita's world now that vampires are legally alive? How has it changed other jobs? For instance, real estate...

  THE house sat in its small yard looking sullen. It seemed to squat close to the ground as if it had been beaten down. Abbie shook her head to clear such strange notions from her mind. The house looked just like all the other houses in the subdivision. Oh, certainly it had type-A elevation. Which meant it had a peaked roof, and it had two skylights in the living room and a fireplace. The Garners had wanted some of the extra features. It was a nice house with its deluxe cedar board siding and half brick front. Its small lot was no smaller than any of the other houses, except for some of the corner lots. And yet...

  ABBIE walked briskly up the sidewalk that led through the yard. Daffodils waved bravely all along the porch. They were a brilliant burst of color against the dark-red house. Abbie swallowed quickly, her breath short. She had only talked to Marion Garner on the phone maybe twice, but in those conversations Marion had been full of gardening ideas for their new home.

  It had been Sandra who had handled the sell, but she wouldn't touch the house again. Sandra's imagination was a little too thorough to allow her to go back to the place where her clients were slaughtered.

  Abbie had been given the job because she specialized in the hard-to-sell. Hadn't she sold that monstrous rundown Victorian to that young couple who wanted to fix it up, and that awful filthy Peterson house? Why, she had spent her days off cleaning it out so it would sell, and it had sold, for more than they expected. And Abbie was determined that she would sell this house as well.

  She admitted that mass murder was a very black mark against a house. And mass murder with an official cause of demon possession was about as black a mark as any.

  The house had been exorcised, but even Abbie, who was no psychic, could feel it. Evil was here like a stain that wouldn't come completely up. And if the second owners of this house fell to demons, then Abbie and her Realtor company would be liable. So Abbie would see that the house was cleansed correctly. It would be as pure and lily-white as a virgin at her wedding. It would have to be.

  The real problem was that the newspapers had made a horrendous scandal of it all. There wasn't a soul for miles around that didn't know about it. And any prospective buyer would have to be told. No, Abbie would not try to keep it a secret from buyers, but at the same time she wouldn't volunteer the full information too early in the sales pitch either.

  She hesitated outside the doo
r and said half aloud, "Come on, it's just a house. There's nothing in there to hurt you." The words rang hollow somehow, but she put the key in the lock and the door swung inward.

  It looked so much like all the other houses that it startled her. Somehow she had thought that there would be a difference. Something to mark it apart from any other house. But the living room was small with the extra vaulted ceiling and brick fireplace. The carpet had been a beige-tan color that went with almost any decor. She'd seen pictures of the room before. There was bare subflooring, stretching naked and unfinished.

  The flooring was discolored, pale and faded, almost like a coffee stain, but it covered a huge area. Here was where they had found Marion Garner. The papers said she had been stabbed over twenty times with a butcher knife.

  New carpeting would hide the stain.

  The afternoon sunlight streamed in the west-facing window and illuminated a hole in the wall. It was about the size of a fist and stood like a gaping reminder in the center of the off-white wall. As she walked closer, Abbie could see splatters along the wall. The cleanup crew usually got up all the visible mess. This looked like they hadn't even tried. Abbie would demand that they either finish the job, or give back some of the deposit.

  The stains were pale brown shadows of their former selves, but no family would move in with such stains. New paint, new carpeting; the price of the house would need to go up. And Abbie wasn't sure she could get anyone to pay the original price.

  She spoke softly to herself, "Now what kind of defeatist talk is that? You will sell this house." And she would, one way or another.

  The kitchen/dining room area was cheerful with its skylight and back door. There was a smudge on the white door near the knob but not on it. Abbie stooped to examine it and quickly straightened. She wasn't sure if the cleanup crew had missed it or just left it. Maybe it was time to hire a new cleaning crew. Nothing excused leaving this behind.

  It was a tiny handprint made of dried blood. It had to belong to the little boy; he had been almost five. Had he come running in here to escape? Had he tried to open the door and failed?

  Abbie leaned over the sink and opened the kitchen window. It seemed stuffy in here suddenly. The cool spring breeze riffled the white curtains. They were embroidered with autumn leaves in rusts and shades of gold. They went well with the brown and ivory floor tiles.

  She had a choice now, about where to go next. The door leading to the adjoining garage was just to her right. And the stairs leading down to the basement next to that. The garage was fairly safe. She opened the door and stepped onto the single step. The garage was cooler than the house, like a cave. Another back door led from the garage to the backyard. The only stains here were oil stains.

  She stepped back in and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment. Her eyes glanced down the stairs to the closed door of the basement. Little Brian Garner's last trip had been down those stairs. Had he been chased? Had he hidden there and been discovered?

  She would leave the basement until later.

  The bedrooms and bath stretched down the long hallway to the left. The first bedroom had been the nursery. Someone had painted circus animals along the walls. They marched bright and cheerful round the empty walls. Jessica Garner had missed her second birthday by only two weeks. Or that's what Sandra said.

  The bathroom was across the hall. It was good-sized, done mostly in white with some browns here and there. The mirror over the sink was gone. The cleanup crew had carted away the broken glass and left the black emptiness in the silver frame. Why replace anything until they knew for sure the house wasn't being torn down? Other houses had been torn down for less.

  The wallpaper was pretty and looked undamaged. It was ivory with a pattern of pale pink stripes and brown flowers done small. Abbie ran her hand down it and found slash marks. There were at least six holes in the wall, as if a knife had been thrust into it. But there was no blood. There was no telling what Phillip Garner thought he was doing driving a knife into his bathroom wall.

  The master bedroom was next with its half bath and ceiling fan. The wallpaper in here was beige with a brown oriental design done tasteful and small. There was a stain in the middle of the carpet, smaller than the living room's blood. No one knew why the baby had been in here, but it was here that he killed her. The papers were vague about exactly how she had died, which meant it was too gruesome to print much of it. Which meant that Jessica Garner had glimpsed hell before she died. There was a pattern of small smudges low along one wall. It looked like tiny bloody handprints struggling. But at least here the cleanup crew had tried to wash them away. Why hadn't they done the same in the kitchen area?

  The more Abbie thought about it, the madder she got. With something this awful, why leave blatant reminders?

  The little bathroom was in stainless white and silver, except for something dark between the tiles in front of the sink. Abbie started to bend down to look, but she knew what it was. It was blood. They had gotten most of it up, but it clung in the grooves between the tiles like dirt under a fingernail. She'd never seen the cleanup crew so careless.

  The boy's bedroom was in the front corner of the house. The wallpaper was a pale blue with racing cars streaking across it. Red, green, yellow, dark blue, the cars with their miniature drivers raced around the empty walls. This was the only carpeting in the house that had some real color to it; it was a rich blue. Perhaps it had been the boy's favorite color. The sliding doors to the closet were torn, ripped. The white scars of naked wood showed under the varnish. One door had been ripped from its groove and leaned against the far wall. Had Brian Garner hidden here and been flushed out by his father?

  Or had Phillip Garner only thought his son was in here? For it was certain the boy had not died here. There were no bloodstains, no helpless handprints.

  Abbie walked out into the hallway. She had walked into hundreds of empty houses over the years, but she had never felt anything quite like this. The very walls seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, but waiting for what? It had not felt this way a moment before, of that Abbie was sure. She tried to shake the feeling but it would not leave. The best thing to do was finish the inspection quickly and get out of the house.

  Unfortunately, all that was left was the basement.

  She had been reluctant to go down there before, but with the air riding with expectation she didn't want to go down. But if she couldn't even stand to inspect the house, how could she possibly sell it?

  She walked purposefully through the house, ignoring the bloodstained carpet and the handprinted door. But by ignoring them she became more aware of them. Death, especially violent death, was not easily dismissed.

  Rust-brown carpet led down the steps to the closed door. And for some reason Abbie found the closed door menacing. But she went down.

  She hesitated with her hand almost over the doorknob and then opened it quickly. The cool dampness of the basement was unchanged. It was like any other basement except this one had no windows. Mr. Garner had requested that, no one knew why.

  The bare concrete floor stretched gray and unbroken to the gray concrete walls. Pipes from upstairs hung from the ceiling and plunged out of sight under the floor. The sump pump in one corner was still in working order. The water heater was cold and waiting for someone to light it.

  Abbie pulled on all three of the hanging chains and illuminated all the shadows away. But the bare lightbulbs cast shadows of their own as they gently swung, disturbed by her passing. And there in the far corner was the first stain.

  The stain was small, but considering it had been a five-year-old boy, it was big enough.

  There was a trail of stains leading round the back of the staircase. They were smeared and oddly shaped as if he had bled and someone dragged him along.

  The last stain was in the shape of a bloody pentagram, rough, but recognizable. A sacrifice then.

  There was a spattering on one wall, high up without a lower source. Probably where Phillip Gar
ner had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

  Abbie turned off two of the lights and then stood there with her hand on the last cord, the one nearest the door. That air of expectation had left. She would have thought that the basement where the boy was brutalized would have felt worse, but it didn't. It seemed emptier and more normal than upstairs. Abbie didn't know why but made a note of it. She would tell the psychic that would be visiting the house.

  She turned off the light and left, closing the door quietly behind her. The stairs were just stairs like so many other houses had. And the kitchen looked cheerful with its off-white walls. Abbie closed the window over the sink; it wouldn't do to have rain come in.

  She had actually stepped into the living room when she turned back. The handprint on the back door bothered her. It seemed such a mute appeal for help, safety, escape.

  She whispered to the sun-warmed silence, "Oh, I can't stand to leave it." She fished Kleenex from her pocket and dampened them in the sink. She knelt by the door and wiped across the brownish stain.

  It smeared fresh and bloody, crimson as new blood. Abbie gasped and half-fell away from the door. The Kleenex was soaked with blood. She dropped it to the floor.

  The handprint bled, slowly, down the white door.

  She whispered, "Brian." There was a sound of small feet running. The sound hushed down the carpeted stairs to the basement. And Abbie heard the door swing open and close with a small click.

  There was a silence so heavy that she couldn't breathe. And then it was gone, whatever it was. She got to her feet and walked to the living room. So there's a ghost, she told herself, you've sold houses with ghosts before. But she didn't pick up the soggy Kleenex and she didn't look back to see how far down the blood would go before it stopped.

  She was out the door and locking it as fast as she could and still maintain some decorum. It wouldn't help things at all if the neighbors saw the real estate agent running from the house. She forced herself to walk down the steps between the yellow flowers. But there was a spot in the middle of her back that itched as if someone were staring at it.