Haunted Organic

by Kim Foster

  "I c-c-can't...I tried. I can't shake the monster when he gets in me," Josie realized that he was talking to someone who didn't blame him for the disappearances of the kids.

  "I-I-I have a knife..." Josie was getting up to show her the knife he had stashed in his jeans, but Teta waved him to sit down.

  "You will need more than this knife," she said.

  Teta took a long sip of tea and set the cup down.

  "Emerald's father, he's a marine biologist, said it was radiation, Fukushima, the earthquake, that it did things to the sea creatures and the reason I can sense him..."

  "Fables!' the old lady screamed at him in a shrill voice.

  "Science does not tell us everything,” she said, and Josie remembered that Howard had said the same thing to Emerald back at their house.

  She came out of her chair, so she was a few inches from his face. It was the first time anything in the house had scared him.

  "Bangkok is as old as the sea. Yes, these things – earthquakes, human-created disasters - change him, give him powers, advantages, but he has always been among us."

  The old woman sat back in her chair, her eyes never left him. Josie remembered Emerald’s board and the photo of the Ghost Baby, Clio. Josie wondered how long Bangkok had been alive, how many children were taken. Decades? Centuries?

  He wasn’t sure they would ever find out.

  "You can sense him,” Teta said. “Because you are The Shintawk."

  "What?...the Shin-what?..."

  "Not only can you feel the monster, but you know what he is going to do."

  Josie thought about this. Yes, he knew what the monster was going to do, but Bangkok could easily control his mind.

  "We can change that" the old lady said abruptly, as if she heard his thoughts.

  "You can see...You know what I'm thinking?..." Josie started to ask.

  "Eh," she said, waving her hands, "I am....sensitive,"

  "You read people's minds?"

  "Some people."

  "Me?" "Yes."

  Josie felt invaded, like his thoughts were now completely on display. He fidgeted in his chair. He wasn't sure he liked his thoughts being on display for the old woman to examine.

  "I don't look for everything in your brain," Teta said, chuckling. "I only see what I need to see."

  Josie smiled uncomfortably, but he still he wasn't sure.

  Did Teta know the thoughts he had about her granddaughter? Was she listening when his mind wandered over to thoughts of Rasha?

  This made him look away quickly. But if she did know, she wasn’t saying. And Josie was grateful for that.

  "I will teach you to keep Bangkok out of your brain," she told him, "but we must work quickly.

  ✽✽✽

  "When you really see something, really see it, know every inch of it, " Teta told him, "it will no longer be a threat to you."

  Josie was not sure how long he had been in Teta's house. Time seemed longer there, drawn out. It could've been minutes or hours, he wasn't sure. There was something about her that was dream-like.

  Teta sat with him on the little loveseat, and held Josie's head in her crooked hands. She put her lips to his forehead until they almost touched him, her long gray curls draping over both of them, the smell of her, of bread, and lavender, and magic smoldering around them.

  They she spoke unfamiliar, old words in Arabic. And they blew, like a gentle breeze into his thoughts.

  Whatever she said or sent to him as a message appeared as a ghost in his mind. First they were kind and sweet creatures, little blue ladies with smiling faces and long flowing tulle dresses, and little funny men with top hats and tap shoes, and floating ghosts and green fairies and sparkling nymphs.

  Then, that changed. Teta's Arabic became harder, more startling. But she didn't stop. Her lips moved against his forehead. Her thoughts sliding into his thoughts. The nymphs changing to monsters now, coming harder and harder now, each one more oafish and deranged and maniacal than the next - a crazy, cackling man in a straight jacket, laughing hysterically each time he was whipped with pipes, children's heads sitting on a shelf, bloodied and purple, shrieking at him and blaming him for their deaths, an ogre pushing old people out of a tall building, laughing as he watched them tumble to the ground. A baby in a box, buried alive in a casket, her mouth stuffed with dirt and worms.

  He tried to wriggle away, but Teta held her head next to his. She didn't stop whispering the words into him and the monsters came at him like some kind of dam had broken, one after the other, unrelenting. In between she told him to focus his thoughts, pull all his strength from the core of his stomach, push that strength up through his body and into his head.

  "Push the monster away," she said, "Push, push with your brain"

  But it was hard. The good, sweet creatures were easy. They floated into his brain, and when he pushed them out, they happily leaped out of his minds eye, doing whatever he asked. The monsters were different. They wanted to take root there, infect him, change his thoughts. They wanted to destroy him, make him angry and sad.

  After what he thought must have been hours, his head heavy and soft, his eyes bleary and wet, he felt the thrum of new words blowing into him. This time, Teta's voice was dark and heavy. There was something hard about them, how fast she spoke, how guttural and scary the words sounded. He felt her fingers on his head, felt her breath on his forehead. Josie waited for the image.

  But what he felt was the bleakest sadness.

  Like all the happy thoughts were being sucked out of his head.

  Then, he saw it. But he already knew what was coming.

  Bangkok.

  First the eels oozing in from the corners. Their bodies were grey, thick, slimy and they curved around the corners of his mind, slithering like snakes. They had terrible jaws, chomping and biting and hissing, always hungry, always looking for prey.

  He flinched. And he felt Teta's hands, holding his head, making his thoughts stay with the monster.

  Then the tentacles got thicker and thicker, he smelled the acrid sea water, and saw the black ink puddling like blood. The squid body, a mass of undulating, jelly, spitting and oozing ink, slithering into full view.

  Then the face. He tried to pull away, struggled to be let loose from seeing it. But Teta's mind was stronger.

  "Look" he heard her say. "Do not turn away."

  And for first time in his life, he didn't turn away.

  Josie looked deep into the squid's face and saw it for the first time. It looked weirdly human, the eels, stuck on the body of the squid, the tentacles more like octopus tentacles, but really eels. It was a strange and rude hodgepodge of parts.

  The antennae moved toward him. Josie pushed his brain harder to see the monster more clearly. He could feel Teta silently approving.

  The head of the monster looked as though the squid had found a dying decayed head in a shipwreck and plopped it on top of his body. Tentacles grew out of the face of the decapitated head. The tentacles fed and lived off the face of the rotting sea corpse, eating it and undulating on it, as if it were their own private garden of food. Josie could see the open, bloody, rotting flesh of the squid’s face.

  Josie pushed his brain hard and saw the eyes, two small black stones, one tiny moving antennae, peeking out from the tentacles, hard, cold, full of hate.

  All the times he had dreamed of the monster he had never seen what it really was, a hodge podge of parts and scraps from the ocean. Not all powerful, a junk heap with the will to kill.

  "When you really see something...."

  Maybe he could do this.

  "Really see it, know every inch of it..."

  Maybe he could fight Bangkok.

  And then, the monster leapt at him. Josie threw his head back, but Teta held him there, and bore down on him with her fingers and her thoughts. She would not let him look away. She whispered into his brain about focusing, pushing, focusing.

  Josie summoned everything he had in his head and pushed back.
At first the monster was unprepared and lurched backward, but then he came at him again, all those jaws snapping and biting at him. Josie focused. He pushed hard, felt the monster move a little.

  But then Bangkok raised itself up on all its tentacles until the whole body moved out filling his minds eyes, taking him over. The monster opened its huge maw. Out flew schools of dead, rotting, partially digested fish, strands of green seaweed, and a spew of black ink that covered the walls of his brain, all his thoughts.

  And he had no control anymore. He tried to push harder, heard Teta screaming her thoughts at him, felt the ink cover him. At first, it was desperate awful blackness and agony and then, came the anger. It came at him, and covered his mind. He wanted to lash out, kill anything in his way. And he was hungry, so hungry he thought he might have to eat everything around him.

  And so he grabbed whatever was in his reach. He didn't want it to be Teta, but it mattered less and less every passing second. He reached for her, grabbed her, her warm body, her soft aging skin, loose and flimsy. It wasn't like young bodies, the rejuvenating tenderness of the meat, giving power, but it was flesh just the same.

  He struggled to remember her words, how she helped him. But her words fell away from him as if they were thrown out into space, and left to fly away into some bottomless pit in the universe.

  He reached out for them, but they weren't there.

  Bangkok had taken him over now. He knew that. He struggled back, pushed, and for a minute he thought he could almost break the surface, like maybe he could swim out of the murkiness of the monster's grasp.

  But then as if he had been dragged under by the force of waves and gravity, he was submerged again. Lost, drowning, his mind now the monster's mind. His anger huge and insatiable.

  He thought of Teta as if she were a small urchin. Nothing. Just meat.

  And so he held her body in his arms, and positioned her so he could take a huge and juicy bite from the tender meat of her neck.

  And then he felt something hard slam into his head.

  And he felt his whole body fall into the black.

  ✽✽✽

  Rasha Kadoura stood over the Baby Killer with a garden shovel in her hand. She had gotten him good, right on the head.

  His blood was seeping into her rug.

  She wrapped her grandmother up in her arms. She put her face to Teta's lips. Rasha felt her grandmother’s breath on her face. Rasha wept one more time. She couldn’t help it. The idea she could lose both Musa and Teta in one day was overwhelming. Her nightmare. Tears of relief and exhaustion and despair rolled down her face and over her grandmother’s cheeks, as she rocked her.

  Bacon growled and snarled at Josie, and sat on his stomach to keep him from going anywhere.

  But Josie wasn't going anywhere.

  Rasha didn’t need to call the police or ask anyone for advice about what to do next. She caught the boy who took her brother, and was now trying to kill her grandmother.

  She was going to make him tell her where to find Musa. Or she was going to kill him dead.

  twelve

  WOLF

  So apparently Giraffe Boy disappeared into thin air.

  Or he got away, which Emerald was thrilled about. The Barrel was none too happy to find the closet empty.

  He stormed out of the room, and stopped in the hallway.

  "I'm going to squeeze that Josie Brown like the oozing, puss-filled pimple he is!" he roared, his whole body shaking and trembling with anger.

  And then he left, slamming the screen door behind him, and Emerald and Howard with a vague feeling that The Barrel would stop at nothing to find Josie and make an example of him.

  Emerald had to find him first.

  She headed out into the street to see what was happening or if she could get a clue about where Josie went. The sun was hot and strong, and the day smelled of sea and foamy waves. Her street, usually sleepy and quiet, was throbbing with people.

  Botany Cook interviewed Grotty Greg, and a pack of children that formed a posse to look for the dangerous criminal. They played the video of Josie escaping the bathroom and Greg got his pale face right up to the microphone, grabbed it from Botany and said in his most firm, resolute voice, "We are going to save the children of Tamarama Street, not the police, not the grown-ups."

  The children cheered.

  And then Mrs. Kippelibby, in her best pink frock and red lipstick, moved through the crowd of children, parting them like the Red Sea. She moved up behind Grotty Greg, put her ham hock hand on his shoulder and leaned into the microphone.

  "This boy is a hero," Mrs. Kippelibby said, wiping a tear from her eyes and slipping the ball of tissue back up into her sleeve.

  "Greg took his life in his hands to capture the video of that monster trying to get away, and now he has formed a band of children to do what the police have not."

  Mrs. Kippelibby looked over at The Barrel who was ordering police officers around the neighborhood. He caught a glance at the news crew and the crowd that had formed and his mustache flipped around his nose.

  "Greg Umple is going to save us all....that's U-M-P-L-E." she said, jabbing her Bratwurst finger at Botany's notebook so she'll get the spelling down correctly.

  The crowd cheered, and began shouting his name, "Grotty Greg! Grotty Greg! Grotty Greg!"

  Then Botany Cook, with her cameraman Horace, running right behind her, ran across the street to The Barrel, to get his reaction.

  "Detective Louden!" Botany shouted as she ran toward him.

  "How do you feel about losing the alleged killer?"

  The Barrel got into his car, rolled up the window and made the hand gesture for no comment. But Botany Cook persisted.

  "Detective, have you and the police found any clues of Trinket or Musa?"

  "Is it true the police commissioner is asking about your job, that maybe you'll get fired for losing the alleged killer?"

  The Barrel, his mustache hopping nervously across his lip, gunned the engine. The black, unmarked police car jolted, then sped off. Botany Cook turned to the camera.

  "There you have it folks," she said, her voice smooth and professional. With one hand, she pulled Grotty Greg into the camera frame with her.

  "It seems this is even too much for the police departments...the fate of the children of this community rests on the bravery and ambition of this one child."

  With that, Horace trained his camera right onto Greg's pie face. Grotty Greg grinned, so proud of himself. Emerald was disgusted.

  "How could anyone who picks his nose and keeps a collection of buggers smeared into his math notebook save the kids of Tamarama?" Emerald wondered, as she watched the crowd of kids and admiring neighbors, gather round Grotty Greg. Surely the adults had all gone mad.

  That was when she started walking away from them and down the street. Josie wasn't going to hang around these crazy people. Surely he would try to disappear somewhere, and then she realized he must have gone to the beach or the tide pools. She picked up her pace and walked on the street, unnoticed, in the direction of the Plain House.

  ✽✽✽

  Josie's head hurt bad.

  He reached up and felt the big knot just above his left ear. It was gigantic, throbbing and from what he could tell, it was growing. He tried to push the smog out of his head. He figured he was back in his bed, after another hideous nightmare, but a small part of him knew something was different this time.

  He had seen, really seen Bangkok. Up close. Because of the old woman....

  Teta.

  It all came tumbling back into focus, the Plain House, Teta, the smell of lavender and dough, her whispering into his mind, the monsters, one after the other, the way she taught him to control them.

  But then, he didn't. Bangkok had beat him, taken over his mind. What had he done to Teta? Had he hurt her too?

  Josie tried to scramble to his feet.

  "No so fast, freak!"

  He heard the words and felt a shoe push his face into the
floor and hold it there.

  He struggled to get free, but he couldn't. His face was firmly planted into the floor.

  He looked up with just his eye balls and saw the hair, long strands of red and pink and green dyed hair. And the dog, standing over his face, panting and drooling over him.

  "Here's the deal, you freak," Rasha said, leaning over him, her sneaker still in his cheek.

  "Bacon and I are going to hold you here until you tell me what you did to my little brother," she said, her voice angry and desperate.

  "And to my grandmother. "That made Josie wriggle his face to the side so he could talk.

  "Where is Teta?...Is she okay?"

  "Shut up! Stop calling her Teta! You don't know her!

  "Is she okay? Just tell me that?"

  I'm not telling you anything, freak. I found you about to eat her...who does that?!"

  "I didn't mean to, I mean, maybe I did, but that was because of Bangkok, and she was helping me try to fight him, so we could find Musa..."

  "Musa? Musa? What do you know about Musa?" She pressed her sneaker into his cheek harder, until she felt the bone just under her toe.

  "Ow. Ow. Ow. Wet me wup zo I ken terk."

  "What?" she said, pulling her sneaker off his face a little.

  "Let me up so I can talk."

  Rasha huffed. She didn't want to give him an inch.

  Rasha weighed her options. She thought maybe he was trying to get away, but she also wanted him to talk. She looked him up and down, all crumpled on the floor. He was skinny, not much muscle. She decided she could take him if he decided to run.

  "I'm letting you up, but I have a shovel and I will beat you senseless if you even try to run."

  She removed her foot from his face and he slid up so he was sitting against the wall. Bacon growled at him.

  "I won't run," he said gently.

  "And I won't hurt you."

  "Like you could, freak," and she moved the shovel up in the air like she was going to hit him. Something about hearing her call him a freak hurt him in a deep and lonely place.

  He pushed it away.

  Josie looked around and saw Teta sleeping soundly on the love seat, an afghan thrown over her.