Bottom Feeder

by Matt Cole

  Deena had no idea how boring a real trial was. It was nothing like she had seen on television or the movies.

  Each lawyer, both prosecution and defense, began to use up their remaining peremptory. It wasn’t until the seventh venire man of the afternoon that both Sanson and Thornsberry found a juror they each could live with. Somewhat surprisingly, it was an outspoken male nurse married to a state trooper for over twenty years. At first this caused Sanson some concern. Tilting back in his chair and stroking his goatee with his left hand, he posed a carefully worded question.

  “If a state trooper were to say something was black and somebody else said it was white, would you believe it was black because a state trooper said it?”

  “I don’t think so,” he fired back. “I know some troopers who are color blind.”

  His response drew laughter from those in attendance in the courtroom, including Deena. The response prompted another rebuke from Judge Shadwick. “This is not a comedy club, please contain your laughter.”

  For a while it looked as though the nurse had stepped over the lines as an undesirable by admitting that his views could be influenced by his friends and family and even the media at times. On the contrary, Thornsberry led him out of the mire by eliciting his assurances that he could view the situation with an open mind.

  Deena was beginning to believe that there was no chance of getting both the defense and the prosecution to agree on twelve jurors.

  Over the next several hours many more prospective jurors came and went. At the rate that each was expending their peremptoriness; things were not looking good at selecting a jury for the trial.

  Deena and the rest of those in attendance felt that this was supposed to be a great day for the community but instead it was turning into a blue day. Everyone was feeling the same, except for Frank Marsden. Of all those present, he was the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself. Clad in a different pair of pants but the same old jacket he had worn on several of his previous court appearances, he perched alertly at the defense table, his gray-green eyes sparkling and jumping anxiously. While Judge Shadwick plodded through his usual litany of questions in his best monotone voice, Frank Marsden rocked back and forth in a padded swivel chair that had replaced the wooden straight-back assigned to him in his prior appearances. Twice Frank Marsden laughed aloud, and several times he got into deep, energetic discussions with Sanson. When it came time for him to return to his cell for the night and the delight of most in the courtroom, Deena included, he even forgot to shuffle. Instead Frank Marsden tilted his head to the side and looked at Deena. It was then he smiled and she felt uneasy, almost ill.

  It was as if he knew something she did not.

  * * * *

  Mike Leopold’s home was something right out of history of America. A shanty in the woods that looked like it belonged in the eighteenth century, nestled in a cute little spot in the wintry landscape where, despite its charming and picturesque appeal, dark and deadly creatures could lay within.

  It consisted of a foundation of stones or a series of stone piles, but like those homes built this way if you use stones and expect your house to remain plumb where the winters are severe you must dig holes for them at least three feet deep in order to go below the frost-line. Gary Chapel noticed that Leopold needed to fill in those holes with broken stone, on top of which he could make a pile of stones to act as support for the sills; but the simplest method is to use posts of locust, cedar, or chestnut; or, if this is too much trouble, pack the dirt tightly, draining it well by making it slope away from the house in every direction, and laying the foundation sills on the level earth. In that case Mike Leopold needed better use the chestnut wood for the sills; spruce will rot very quickly in contact with the damp earth and pine will not last long under the same circumstances.

  “I need to lay off the cold medication,” Chapel said as he parked in the rutted lane outside the shanty and followed a broken path in the snow to the front door. It was just a house—quaint, certainly—but a house in the woods and nothing more. In his five plus years with the department, he had been to many a backwoods cabin, cottage, or shanty in the forest just like this one. Mike Leopold’s was no different. Not at all.

  He had left the courthouse earlier after feeling his time had been wasted sitting there watching the two lawyers argue over potential jurors. His forty-eight hours had nearly come and went.

  Now, however, he had to deal with another possible fiasco—Mike Leopold.

  On the tiny front porch, he rapped on the door just as he heard deep growls emanating from the other side of the door. Oh, right. Mike keeps dogs or mutts, mongrels or something. Presumably, he would keep them at bay.

  “Jasper, quiet!” a man’s voice commanded and the noise from within instantly subsided. A second later Mike himself opened the door. “Detective.” Wearing an old, tattered cardigan sweater over thick sweats and a black turtleneck, he offered the slightest of smiles. “I had hoped that you may stop by.” He stepped out of the doorway and inclined his head, a wisp of graying hair showing prominently on the side of his head. “Please, come in.”

  The dog, Jasper, lay on a padded bed near an antique-looking and dusty sofa. A fire burned brightly in the hearth. Every window ledge and end table was covered with pots of small, trailing plants that were brown and drooping, and softly burning candles, dripping wax.

  “It’s about time you came to talk to me.” Leopold waved Chapel into his seat and the dog, watching every movement, didn’t rouse.

  “I’m taking a chance in listening to your tall tales about monsters, Mr. Leopold.”

  “Does that mean that you don’t believe me? Then that makes me ask why are you even here?”

  “I didn’t come here to argue.”

  “What do you want from me?” asked Leopold.

  “I want you to tell me about the monster who you claim lives in the basement of your former childhood house on Douty Street.”

  Mike Leopold stared out the window, where the tiny flames of the candles reflected on the panes and ice outside. “Do you really want to hear about the monster? Or have you come to make fun of me like everyone else has in this town since that night of the fire?”

  “Please, just tell me what you th—I mean—what is in the basement.”

  “I first saw the monster a month or so before the fire. But I heard it before that. It talked to me inside my head…it asked me to do things for it.”

  A frisson of disbelief tickled the thin little hairs on Chapel’s nape. “What type of things did it want you to do?”

  “Bring it things.”

  “What things?”

  Leopold turned to face the detective again and her pale eyes cut straight to Chapel’s soul. “Animals.”

  “Where did you get these animals? Did you kill them?”

  “No. It wanted them alive. I set traps in the backyard, caught squirrels, brought home stray dogs, and looked for other ways to bring it animals.”

  Detective Gary Chapel held up his hand. “Now, wait a minute—what did this…”

  “Monster.” Leopold could see that Chapel was having a hard time in saying the word.

  “Okay, monster—what did it do with these animals?”

  “It would at first cover them with this horrible smelling slime,” Leopold explained. “Then, well, it would…”

  “What?”

  “It devoured them.”

  Chapel shook his head. “This sounds crazy, Mr. Leopold.”

  “I know. But I am telling you the truth!”

  “It sounds to me that all you are doing is trying to justify your actions of killing animals as a kid,” Chapel said.

  “No, no…you got it all wrong…I didn’t kill anything or anyone. I wanted to kill the monster and lord knows I tried…”

  “The fire?”

  “Yes, I started the fire that burned down my house,” Leopold replied with tears in his eyes.

  “And killed your family,” Chapel added callously.
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  “No. My family was already dead. The monster had prepared them by covering them in its slime. You see they were dead or dying at the least. I saved them from a far worse fate.”

  On the floor beside Leopold, the mongrel dog stretched and yawned, large, yellow teeth showing before Jasper closed his golden eyes and slept again, his breath whistling softly through her nostrils.

  “Okay, let me get this straight. Your family, your mother, father, and brother and sister, were all covered in this slime by the monster, right? This means they were dead or to be eaten?”

  “They couldn’t move or talk. They were dead, disappearing inside the slime.”

  Almost as if he were in a self-imposed trance, Leopold stared into the fire, then started talking about seeing a tentacle. Gary Chapel tried to press him when he trailed off, but Leopold could give nothing more concrete: no more descriptions, details, or features of the monster.

  Nothing to make Detective Chapel believe Mike Leopold’s story.

  Leopold at a snail’s pace surfaced and said, “You need to stop the monster,” which only fueled Chapel’s feelings of disbelief and anxiety.

  “You know about the arrest and crimes of Frank Marsden who was living in the basement of that house, correct?” Detective Chapel asked.

  “Yes. But he isn’t the monster.”

  “Okay, say there is a monster in the basement…why didn’t we find it when we, the police, searched the basement, Mr. Leopold?”

  “It lives under the basement, below ground, detective.”

  Chapel stared blankly at Leopold as thoughts and images of the filled in hole ran through his mind. “There was an area of the basement floor that looked as if it could have been a hole once.”

  “Did you unearth it?” Leopold’s face lit up.

  “No. We had all the evidence we needed to prove our case against Marsden.”

  “Except the bodies of those women, right?” Leopold said.

  “Correct.”

  “Listen, Detective Chapel, you need to open that hole and kill the monster inside it. The disappearances won’t stop; the killings are not over…”

  “I don’t know…”

  Leopold went to stand before Chapel. “You know I speak the truth, don’t you? Deep down inside you know that this isn’t over. I feel it too! Have there been more disappearances?”

  “Yes, but nothing too close to Strafford.”

  Chapel’s cell phone rang. “Hello, yes…okay…I see…all right I’m on my way.”

  After hanging up he looked at Leopold. “Mr. Leopold I will take a look again at the basement and that hole. That is all I can promise right now.”

  “Fair enough I just hope you do find that thing and kill it before it kills someone else’s family,” Leopold said calmly.

  With that Detective Gary Chapel made his way out.

  Chapter 24

  When Deena Hopping got back from the trial that night, she went directly to the parlor, where the ashes from the fire were now gray, smoldering ingots while Maggie and Deena opened presents for Christmas, albeit it a few days early, around the tree with childish excitement while Willard sat like a ghost in his chair and watched them.

  “Exactly what I wanted,” Deena cried and extracted a pair of Coquette slippers, made from Australian sheepskin, shearling lined from a mass of rattling tissue paper.

  “Try them on, dear. See how they fit. They didn’t have eights, so I had to take seven and halfs.”

  Deena started eagerly into them while Maggie chatted on.

  “The store said they’d take them back if they didn’t fit.”

  Deena stood up and shuffled around while Maggie laughed. “They fit perfectly. Couldn’t be better.” Deena kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “Then what is the matter, dear?” Maggie looked for her reaction.

  “It’s nothing.”

  Willard remained silent. He sat in a chair, his legs stretched stiff in front of him, watching Deena and Maggie. More than a few times Maggie stole glimpses at him. It was a curious absorption with which he viewed the two women, as if they were laboratory animals performing in a maze. Deena could not tell if the spectacle of her and Maggie playing and talking amongst the presents on the floor made him feel pity or contempt. Deena wondered if he liked them or simply thought of them as two silly, aging fools.

  But even as he sat there Deena could see he was weighing something in his head. For some reason her mind fastened on violence. Deena had a fleeting vision of Arlene and her on the floor, pools of blood running in a languid trickle onto the rug, under the Christmas tree, blood blotching the cushions and drapes and spattered over the presents and the brightly colored wrappings. Deena saw in her mind some lurid tabloid story, about a middle-aged couple and their divorced woman friend in a desolate house in the bog, cruelly put to death by monster from the depths of the underworld. In a flash Deena saw it all before her—bright, red, and wet, as if it had happened right there under her nose. That’s what she imagined Willard was weighing that moment—working toward some course of action, some decision that once made would be final, drastic and irrevocable. But Deena put it all out of her mind, and it was Christmas once again.

  “Thinking of Arlene?” Maggie asked.

  They were silent then—all of them. And in some curious way, they were happy, Willard as well.

  “Yes, what do you suppose she is doing tonight?” Deena asked.

  That moment might have innocence if it hadn’t been so strange. Willard gazed from the glass which was filled with brandy, a look of stony impassivity on his face.

  “Why do I have a feeling that you two are going to do something you both may regret?” he questioned.

  It took Willard what seemed ages to bring to an end the drink and place the glass on the table next to him.

  “Like what, dear?” Maggie responded to her husband.

  “I don’t know. I just have a strange feeling about Arlene lately. It is as if she is hiding something.”

  He got to his feet and in silence paced before the fire.

  “I do think that we should check on her, don’t you two?” Deena said, joining Willard by the fire.

  “I’d rather you didn’t, Maggie,” Willard said. “But I cannot ask you not to, Deena.”

  “What do you mean by strange?” Deena replied.

  “There have been a lot of disappearances of late, not just those couples, but there are reports of animals missing.”

  Deena and Maggie exchanged glances. “What? We hadn’t heard of that.”

  “No, I suppose you haven’t,” Willard muttered softly. “But it is true. Cattle, dogs and cats, even a pet goat has been reported as missing.”

  “That is bizarre,” Deena whispered. “But what does that have to do with Arlene?”

  “Nothing, I’m sure Willard didn’t mean anything about Arlene and those disappearances did you, dear?” Maggie stood and stopped her husband from pacing.

  “No, no, of course not,” Willard responded with little conviction.

  “Well, I’m going to go over and talk to her,” Deena announced.

  “Are you sure that is wise?” Willard solicited.

  “She is my friend,” Deena came back with. “Even if she hasn’t acted much like it of late. Thank you both for the gifts and the room. I’ll be back later.”

  * * * *

  Gary Chapel had never been one to sit idle. So today, while the rest of the Sheriff’s Department were swarming all over the other cases and ignoring Chapel’s concerns that the disappearances had not stopped, he was going to track down the truth about the recent disappearances of people and animals.

  So thinking about it, he checked on the reports, then got in his car and drove off. He had one destination in his mind—1420 South Douty Street.

  He cut across town, on a path that would intersect some of the recent areas that had reported the disappearances. He had spied the direction he was headed and if Mike Leopold was right—that a monster lived under the
basement of the house—and not making him believe so farfetched a story, he would be there in a matter of moments and should be able to confirm the story.

  He had made sure to pack several shovels, spades, a pickaxe, flashlights and other materials he would need to dig in the basement.

  Suddenly, Gary Chapel felt foolish and idiotic for believing the tale.

  Had someone or something killed all of those people and animals? Not that the man who he had help capture—Frank Marsden—but then why was he chasing some so-called monster that supposedly lived under the basement of the house where the murders had been committed by Marsden?

  Then there was the deeper question. The one that tore at his soul. Were these disappearances linked to the murders of those first eight victims?

  A coincidence? Could it be true that Frank Marsden was not alone as the culprit?

  Or was the cold, hard truth really about an honest-to-god monster?

  He had not wanted to believe Leopold’s story. The man—Mike Leopold—had made many in the town believe him to be crazy, but Chapel’s thoughts kept circling back to the fact that there were people missing, and this led him to believe that perhaps not a monster but an accomplice of Marsden’s was still out there kidnapping and killing.

  Chapel tugged gently on the steering wheel, guiding the vehicle along the road that wound through the small town of Strafford and directly to the house.

  He was just south of the house now, far from the station, the snow falling around him, the wind a brittle reminder that winter had settled in hard. Eyeing the road, he searched patches of ice, any kind of slick spot that may cause his tires to slide.

  “What the hell is really going on here?” he wondered aloud, his breath a cloud as he adjusted the heater once more.

  The back of his neck tightened at the thought of finding more victims and his eyes thinned as he scoured the road and house ahead.

  There had to be something to Mike Leopold’s story; right from the moment he’d help capture Marsden he had a feeling that there was more to the disappearances and killings than a deranged loner in Frank Marsden. And he was damned well going to find the truth. No matter what it took.