by JR Thompson
He left the nasty old bird and reluctantly climbed the stairwell. Aged blood stains spotted several of the stairs, probably from the Duke’s fall. Collin felt a slight ice-cold breeze rush by him. Looking around, he saw no place wind could have been blowing in from; he hoped it was only his imagination.
At the top of the stairs, he saw a room off to his right. Even though the rest of The Creepy Masselli Place had been empty, this room had a queen size bed in it. The odd part was, the mattress didn’t appear dusty. There were no mouse droppings on it. It looked kind of… new.
Collin spent a short amount of time in the bedroom checking for signs of recent activity. He couldn’t find anything besides the too clean bedspread.
Moving on, he entered the restroom across the hall. He turned on the faucet, but the pipes had been winterized. The ceiling was starting to come down as the roof appeared to have been leaking for quite some time.
Seeing a small closet in the restroom, Collin decided to have a peek inside — that was the last thing he remembered. He had opened the door and the next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark place. Where am I? My head is killing me. Why does my stomach feel like it’s been beaten to a pulp?
Somehow, he had gotten out of the house and into a garbage dumpster about three blocks away. Collin’s assumption was that someone must have been hiding in that closet. He, or she, must have hit him over the head and then given him a good beating to make sure he was dead. Perhaps he drifted out of consciousness, which had inadvertently saved his life. Like a bag of garbage, his lifeless body had been tossed in the dumpster to be transported to a dump completely undetected.
Collin pulled himself up to a standing position, where he discovered it wasn’t only his head and stomach hurting — he was sore all over. He hoped it was just from lying in such an uncomfortable position for who knows how long. Climbing out of the dumpster, someone shouted, “Get out of there, you old bum!”
Collin was too tired, sore, and confused to even bother with a response. He gave himself a once over — he was filthy dirty. His polo was covered with a thick slime, the seat of his khakis was covered with what felt like spaghetti sauce, and my shoes, he panicked, what happened to my shoes? The one on his right foot had a small hole just above his big toe and the left one had turned from black to gray. Collin smelled like a combination of rotting hamburger meat and sour milk; there was no way he could go in to work until he had a long, hot shower.
He got in the hooptie and turned on the motor. Glancing at the clock on the radio, he was shocked to discover it was already 3:55 pm — his shift was almost over. Brock was going to be expecting a ride in twenty minutes. There was no time to go home and shower. He would have to pick Brock up looking and smelling like trash.
Collin drove to the tree nursery and sat in the parking lot to wait on Brock. He watched three vehicles come down one of the dirt roads about ten minutes after 4 pm. He watched for Brock to get out. One by one, each vehicle emptied; Brock was not there.
“Can I help you?” A man asked.
Collin looked down at the man’s feet. At least he has some style.
“I’m here to pick Brock up.”
“He doesn’t work here anymore, pal.”
Collin asked for an explanation, but the man said he was not at liberty to discuss the details. Collin asked if they could at least tell him when his employment ended, but the man firmly told him he would have to ask Brock for that information; it was not his place to discuss a former employee’s business affairs.
Things were not looking good for Brock. First, Doc Fennel had disappeared on the same day Brock had a family emergency and left work. Now, Brock was not at work again and someone tried to kill Collin at the same address that had been on a note inside of Brock’s wallet.
Collin drove home, hoping with everything in him that Brock wasn’t there. He needed time to tell Alayna what had taken place; he needed time to bathe and to put on some fresh clothes. He prayed Brock hadn’t done anything to his family. He was beginning to fear he had made a very bad decision in allowing Brock to live with them.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time he needed. On his way to the house, he caught sight of Brock leaving their driveway on foot. He looked madder than a teenage cowboy who had just been thrown from a bucking stallion.
His eyes were wide and a little bit bloodshot, his face was a deep shade of angry red, and instead of walking, he was stomping. Collin threw the Jeep into park and got out, frightened that something terrible had possibly just taken place.
Seeing Collin’s physical state, Brock temporarily forgot whatever had angered him. “What catastrophe entangled you?” he asked.
“Never mind me. What did you do to my family?” Collin barked, without thinking twice about it.
“Your horse, I believe, is prancing backwards. It is your family who has provided an offense to me,” Brock snapped back.
Collin was more confused than ever, “What are you talking about?”
“Ransacking my room was out of line. Alayna nor Remington should find satisfaction in destroying our home before leaving the premises.”
Collin was scared out of his mind. Alayna was always home. She never went anywhere without telling him ahead of time; she couldn’t. They didn’t have a vehicle and the nearest neighbor was miles away. How could Alayna and Remington both be gone and why would they have ransacked Brock’s room?
Collin convinced Brock to go back to the house so they could look things over together. He wasn’t sure if Brock had been victimized or if he had been the perpetrator of a crime. Either way, he wanted to know his whereabouts at all times.
Inside, every inch of the house looked normal. Nothing but Brock’s room appeared to have been touched. His mattress had been thrown off of his bed, his dresser had been turned upside down, his clothes were thrown all over the room, his closet doors were wide open, and holes had been knocked in the bedroom walls. If it wasn’t Brock trying to pull the wool over his eyes, someone had been in Brock’s room looking for something.
That was not the most important question left to be answered. Where were Alayna and Remington?
CHAPTER 18 – CAUSE FOR CONCERN
“Okay, Brock. Tell me everything. When did you find the house like this and furthermore, why are you home so early?”
Brock, as usual, had a story to tell and as usual, he spared no details. Shortly after Collin had dropped him off for work, Victoria showed up at the tree nursery; he had no idea how she had found him.
“A finger rapped me on the shoulder, I turned about, and there she was,” Brock said. “She insisted our conversing was vital, but I contested the notion on account of my employment. She said, ‘It’s never a good time, is it, Brock? Never a good time to take care of your wife and son? Never a good time to make things right with the people who love you?’ I was ambivalent, Collin.”
Brock said Stephen wasn’t having any of it. He walked out into the field and said, “Lady, you need to be moving along, now. My guys have work to do and you’re getting in the way.”
Victoria apologized for interrupting, but insisted it was important.
Stephen, getting more hateful, snapped, “Miss, nothing you have to say is worth the money I’m losing right now by these guys not working. They’re on the clock. Beat it.”
“Suddenly, it was as if a foreign spirit bedeviled me,” Brock continued. “My wrath became excessive. I pressed my nose tight against Stephen’s. Belligerently, I cautioned him to never elevate his epicene voice at my wife that way again — not if he desired all of his limbs to remain intact.”
Collin didn’t say much of anything. He couldn’t. Brock’s mouth was running faster than a hare at a greyhound track. “Victoria attempted to make amends with Stephen and blamed herself for my misconduct. She withdrew herself from the premises and I started to go back to work. Stephen said, ‘Not so fast, Brock. The way you talked to me a moment ago could easily be considered insubordination.’
“I i
mplored his pardon, but he wouldn’t hearken unto me, Collin. I even gravitated to my knees.”
With his eyes growing wide, Collin said, “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Perchance that was a slight miscalculation, but I did implore him. I’m sorry Collin. I know I deflated your assessment of me.”
Brock said he had hitch-hiked his way back to the Russells. “A teenager, of all people, picked me up. He said he had only had his license for two weeks. It was obvious too. You should have saw the way that kid hit the brakes. Wow! I don’t know how he passed his test,” he said.
Collin loved how Brock felt the need to share every detail of every minute of his experiences. He continued, “He was a nice kid though. I gave him a few bucks for his gas and invited him to church. He said he might come sometime.”
Eventually, Brock got to the part of the story Collin had been waiting for. He said he had gotten to the farmhouse around 4 pm and had found the front door unlocked, just as it always was when Alayna and Remington were home. Walking in, he had no reason to suspect anything was amiss other than the fact that the house was so quiet.
He had been flabbergasted when he walked into his bedroom and automatically assumed Alayna and/or Remington had trashed it.
“You should never assume something so horrible about my family,” Collin scolded.
“Should I hide from the example of you and your wife assuming I’m an anthropophagite? Or from the way you just assumed I had perpetuated an act of violence upon your family?”
Collin cleared his throat. “Yes, you should ignore our mistakes,” he said with a slight smirk on his face.
Somehow, Collin was suddenly penetrated with a sense of peace; his family was safe. In a calmer fashion, he began perusing the house for a note. Alayna would definitely have left one if she had departed from the house willingly.
In a matter of minutes, he found one on the coffee table, in plain sight, “Collin, I got stung by a hornet and started swelling profusely; I couldn’t find my EpiPen. I am heading out to Remington’s bus stop. If the driver will cooperate, I’m going to see if he can drop me and Remmy off at the Waldorf Clinic. Can you please come by and pick us up when you get home?” A short distance below the note was a P.S., “In case you’re wondering, and I know you are, I’m wearing those gorgeous pumps you bought me for my birthday.”
Collin laughed, How did she know what I was thinking?
At least, if nothing else, Collin knew his family’s whereabouts and that they were safe. He asked Brock to leave his room like it was and to just try to think of any ideas as to who might have been in his room. Collin was not about to pick up his family still looking and smelling like a hobo.
After showering, he informed Brock they would be going together to pick up Alayna and Remington. On the way there, he dodged Brock’s questions about what his day had been like. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk about it —it had more to do with the fact that he feared Brock might have had something to do with how he ended up in that dumpster and he was not about to help Brock inwardly glory in the monstrosity if he was indeed responsible.
When they arrived at the clinic, Collin asked Brock to stay in the Wagoneer so he could have a few moments of privacy with his family. He didn’t say so, but he wanted to talk to them about how Brock’s room had gotten ransacked.
Inside, he found his wife and son sitting alone in a corner of the lobby; no one else was in sight.
“I’m so sorry,” Alayna apologized. “I know better than to not keep my EpiPen handy.”
After the hornet had stung her on the shoulder, the swelling had made its way up into her neck. She was thankful the clinic was willing to see her on such short notice; the doctor probably saved her life.
After listening to her story, Collin asked if she or Remmy knew what happened to Brock’s room. Alayna said the room was fine when she left the house and Remington had not even been inside after school.
Alayna admitted to leaving the door unlocked before rushing out of the house. As far as whether Brock trashed his own room or someone else got in the house and did it, she had no clue.
Collin didn’t know how to transition from that topic to his experience at The Creepy Masselli Place — he decided to save that conversation for another time.
When they got to the Wagoneer to head for home, Brock was gone. Unlike Alayna, Brock did not leave a note; they had no idea where he had disappeared to. For a little while, they sat there on the parking lot thinking he had just gotten out to stretch his legs.
After ten minutes of waiting, Remmy started complaining that he was hungry.
“That’s right,” Alayna said. “He didn’t get his after-school snack.”
Collin took some change out of the glove compartment and walked Remmy over to a snack machine just outside of the clinic. Remmy got himself a Reese Cup and a can of soda.
After getting back in the Jeep, they waited twenty more minutes before reaching the conclusion that Brock must not have been planning to return. They could only assume he left angry, still not trusting that the Russells had not demolished his room.
The only other possibility that made any sense, even though Collin was the only one who knew about it, was that Brock had attempted to take Collin’s life earlier on Spudd Avenue. Perhaps he was worried that he was about to be caught and he disappeared before another investigation could transpire.
When they arrived back at the house, Collin convinced Remington to take a bubble bath. Remmy usually took showers, but everyone in the family knew if he took a bubble bath, he wouldn’t come out for at least an hour. That would give Collin plenty of time to tell his wife what had happened to him earlier in the day.
◆◆◆
Alayna couldn’t decide how she felt after hearing his story. On the one hand, she was furious. As far as she knew, Collin was at work all day. Had an emergency arisen, she would not have known where to even look for him. Had he gotten killed at that house, the police wouldn’t have even known where to begin looking for his body. Collin had committed a crime by entering a house that didn’t belong to him; he could have gotten locked up.
On the flipside of that coin, she was more than thankful that Collin was safe. She knew it was only by God’s grace that she had not become widowed.
Then there was the fear factor. Why did Brock have information about that house in his wallet? Was it Brock hiding in the bathroom closet? If so, why did he try to kill Collin? If it was him and he really was a cannibal, why did he not try to eat him when he thought he was dead? Could it have been someone else? If so, who?
Whether it was Brock or someone else who destroyed the bedroom, would the person come back? What should they do if Brock returned, claiming he had nothing to do with it? What if he had some kind of logical story about why he wasn’t in the Wagoneer when they came out of the clinic?
Too many questions and not enough answers. Alayna thought it was time to notify the police.
“I don’t know,” Collin told her. “If we get the law involved, we are going to have to tell the whole story — including the part about me being inside of a house I didn’t belong in. We would have to tell them about how we pretended to be moving into a neighborhood we weren’t really planning to move into. They would undoubtedly ask why we took in a man suspected of trying to eat other human beings. Honey, do you want the law to know our son has been sleeping on our bedroom floor for this length of time?”
Alayna was frustrated. Why did Collin always have to be right?
He wasn’t finished yet, “We would look like horrible people. I could quite possibly get arrested and there would be a high probability that Remington would be taken away from us.”
◆◆◆
Remington didn’t stay in the tub as long as he would have normally. He came out after about twenty minutes and he immediately sensed something was up. He could feel the tension or fear or whatever emotion was polluting the atmosphere. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We’re just tr
ying to figure out what happened to Brock. That’s all,” Collin said.
As the words seeped out of his mouth, Brock hobbled through the front door with a blood-stained shirt, a black eye, and a busted nose.
“Alayna, take Remington with you and go to our room,” Collin ordered.
CHAPTER 19 – FACT OR FICTION?
Collin stood to his feet and told Brock to follow him back outside. “Where have you been?” he asked.
Brock couldn’t believe the first question he was asked was where he had been. What about asking if I’m okay or what happened to my face? He could tell where Collin’s mind was.
“You think I exterminated human flesh tonight, don’t you?”
“The thought had crossed my mind. Look, Brock, questionable things are going on around here and you need to level with me. Where were you and how did you get so beat up?”
Frustrated, Brock explained that a masked man had ripped the Wagoneer door open and put a gun in his face. He forced Brock out of the vehicle and into his own.
“The automobile departed. We journeyed a short span of only five or ten minutes. He maintained a sidearm in my face while he was driving and cautioned me not to move or I would become a corpse.”
Brock said the man forced him out behind an abandoned building where a couple of other masked men joined them and started pounding on him. They insisted they knew who he was, where he lived, and who he lived with. They knew Collin worked at the Just Right Shoe Department, Remington attended Clayville Middle school, and that Alayna spent most of her days home alone.
More importantly, his attackers had warned him to back off of the disappearance investigations. They said if he or any of his friends got the police involved or continued snooping around, there would be trouble. Brock claimed the men could have killed him. He felt like the only reason he was still alive was because his attackers had wanted to use him as an example to scare everyone else away from their investigative work.
