by E A Comiskey
“I think your mother wanted you in the house, Burke. You should hurry,” Stanley said.
Burke stood and turned toward the house, but as she crossed through the dappled light, her steps changed to the slow, forced movements of a person trying to walk through deep water.
She halted and stood stock-still.
Albert stepped onto the sidewalk. “Hello again, Burke.”
She turned around again and blinked at him, long slow blinks like an overtired child.
“I had a marvelous time last night.” He snorted once through his swollen nose. “For the most part.”
She eyed him over her shoulder and pressed a hand against her heart. “Really? I was so worried that you’d be angry with me. I can’t believe I was so mean to you at the end.”
Albert’s grin grew even wider and more terrifying. He brushed her words away with a gesture. “It’s forgotten. I was wondering, will you go out with me again tonight? I want to show you something.”
Burke bounced on her toes like an over-excited schoolgirl. “I love surprises!”
Stanley stepped in front of her. “Did you forget? We’re leaving town today. You need to get ready to go.”
She scowled at him. “I want to go out with Albert.”
“We’re leaving, Burke. You need to come with us.”
“We’ll go later. I want to go with Albert tonight. I want to see the surprise.”
Albert beamed at her. “I’ll pick you up early. How about four?”
Her expression brightened to pure joy. “I can’t wait.”
He seemed on the verge of saying more, but then turned and squelched back over to the geekmobile and drove away.
The two men turned toward Burke, who remained in the same spot, arms limp at her sides.
“Burke? Are you all right, dear?” Stanley asked.
“I’m very privileged. Half the girls in the world would kill to go out with a guy like Albert.”
“Last night you were ready to shoot him in the foot and string him up for bear bait,” Richard said.
She rolled her eyes. “I was just tired and cranky. Seeing him again, I guess I realized I was wrong. I’m very lucky he’s giving me another chance.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen. “I’m going to hop in the shower and get ready. I want to look extra nice.”
They watched her disappear into Maddie’s house.
“This is bad,” Richard said. “Something is very wrong here.”
“It’s certainly a complication,” Stanley agreed.
Frustration and concerned boiled up in Richard’s gut. He wadded the blue towel into a tight ball and hurled it at the car. “Dagnabit, man! What just happened?”
Stanley rubbed the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand. “I don’t know, Dick. I wish to God I did, but I don’t.”
Anger, hot as a red poker, flared in Richard. “You don’t know what the naked monster in the garden is. You don’t know for sure who this Umbra is. You don’t know what this mission to Mars is all about. You don’t know why the people at that party were acting like a bunch of goll-derned warm-blooded zombies and now you don’t know what’s going on with Burke. Tell me what you do know, oh great and mighty hunter!”
Stanley put his hands in his jacket pockets and continued to stare at the door through which Burke had disappeared. “I know we’re in over our heads, old boy, and we’re going to need some help.”
Richard deflated. “If only you knew where to find it,” he said.
Stanley nodded. “If only,” he agreed. “That would be a plus, for sure.” He sighed. “But take heart, my friend. If I’ve learned anything over these long years, it’s that help tends to come to those who are on the right path. The universe provides.”
“Well what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to make some calls, but I think our best course of action is to wait and see what Burke has to tell us when she gets home tonight.”
“That’s your big plan? You want to sit around on your wrinkled up, bony old butt and wait to see what happens?”
“What are you going to do?” Stanley asked, finally meeting his gaze.
“Well, dagnabit, I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not just going to sit around here waiting for my beard to grow.” He stomped across the yard toward the leaf-covered street, remembered he was unarmed, went back past Stanley, into the house, and fished his revolver from his duffle. Tucking the weapon into the back of his pants, he offered up a quick prayer that he didn’t blow off a butt cheek, and headed back out past Stanley again, leaving him standing there in the yard waiting all alone. Best way to wait, in Richard’s opinion, if that’s all a man had the gumption to do.
The cool air whispered hints of winter and snowstorms, but the sun shone warm on his face and the brisk breeze carried the sweet scent of decaying leaves and woodsmoke. Autumn magic worked its way into his blood and soothed his angry spirit. Motion. Action. Doing something. That was just the ticket. Shoving worry deep into a dark corner of his heart, he focused on the moment.
When he’d lived in the southwest, autumn invariably left him homesick for Michigan. Sure, the winters could crush your soul and the summers would leave you prostrate with heat stroke, but the beautiful glory of autumn, Mother Nature’s last wild burst of life before she gave up the ghost, made all the rest worthwhile. It occurred to him as he padded along, dry leaves crunching pleasantly under his sneakers, that if he saw his own life drawn out like a calendar, there was a good chance he was in his very own November. “Nothing wrong with that,” he said out loud.
Mrs. Distel’s porch was cleaner than the average modern housewife’s kitchen. Despite being nestled in a neighborhood of old-growth maple and walnut trees, not a single leaf lay upon those white-washed boards. No spider dared spin its web upon the pristine surfaces. The glossy paint shone so very glossy in the afternoon sun that he could see a distorted, shadowy reflection of himself in the smooth columns that extended from the top of the half-wall to the roof above. A pretty cut-glass light fixture sparkled above the imitation-brass and ivory doorbell. He pressed his finger to the round button and a moment later one beady blue eye peeked out at him from between the slats of the window blinds. The sharp snick of locks being disengaged apparently meant he’d passed inspection.
Mrs. Dister opened the door only far enough to peek out at him—just far enough for him to observe that she wore a pink cotton muumuu with a pink cardigan over it and a little pink knit hat pulled down over her wispy silver hair. “May I help you?”
“Actually, I’m hoping I can help you,” he said. “My daughter, Maddie Hallman, lives right over there.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of Maddie’s house.
Mrs. Distel smiled. “Yes, of course, I know Maddie. She drove me to church every Sunday when I was laid up with a broken leg two years ago. Fred Castleberry has the hots for her, you know.”
Richard rubbed a hand over his mouth, willing the traitorous organ to stay shut and not get him in trouble. When he’d achieved confidence that he retained full control of himself, he forced a smile that he hoped didn’t look like the crap-eating grin Stan Kapcheck wore half the time. “That’s my girl. Everybody loves her.”
“She wonders if you do,” the woman said, arching a wiry grey brow at him.
“Excuse me?”
“She told me that one day when we were working in the garden. She said you always tried your hardest to do your duty by her and she hasn’t the slightest doubt about your loyalty to her, but she has never been quite a hundred percent certain of your love.”
If I leave right now, maybe the thing from the garden will come back and kill her in the night, he thought with some satisfaction and rubbed his mouth again.
The annoying voice of conscience on his opposite shoulder spoke the same words in an entirely different tone of voice, If you leave right now, the thing from the garden may well come back and kill her in the night. What if it were to set its sights on
Maddie after that? He sighed and his lips betrayed his age by making the same flapping sound as an old stud put out to pasture, which only made him want to sigh again. If the monster killed her, the old woman’s blood would be on his hands. He’d come to do a thing and do it, he would.
“So, anyway,” he said. “My daughter tells me that you had quite a scare the other day and I was wondering if you’d tell me more about it.”
“Why?” She pressed the door a fraction of an inch closer to closed.
“I’m a hunter.” He couldn’t help but stand a little taller at that. Of course, this crazy old bat had no idea the massively important connotations his statement held, but she didn’t need to know. He knew. That was enough. Most of the time. “I’m not so bad at tracking things, figuring out what they are.”
“I know what it is,” she said.
This did not match up with the story he’d been told. “You do?”
She nodded and the door opened a bit wider. “Yes sir, I do. I might be an old dog, but I am pretty darn savvy when it comes to learning new tricks, and I got me a desktop PC. I went on the interweb and asked around in some chatter groups on the Facepage and no one knew anything for sure—just lots of guessing and speculation. But then I followed the surf and one thing led to another and when I connected the dots... BAM!”
He jumped at the exclamation. “Bam?”
“BAM!” she shouted again.
He waited expectantly.
She nodded at him with wide eyes.
“So...” he prompted.
She glanced around as if to make sure no one eavesdropped and then leaned out toward him. “El chupacabra.”
“El chupacabra.”
She nodded again.
He rubbed his mouth.
“You’re not a believer,” she said.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Oh, no. I believe.”
“You look skeptical.”
“No one is less skeptical than me,” he assured her.
She lifted her saggy chin, as if to challenge him. “So, now tell me. You want to hunt el chupacabra?”
The merciless steel of his revolver pressed against the small of his back. “Very much,” he told her honestly. “Mind if I take a look in your garden?”
She studied him long enough to make him feel as if she might be seeing right through his skin down to something he might not want the world to see, and then she shrugged and said, “Okay, then. Help yourself. Don’t step in my kale. It’ll go a few more weeks if you don’t crap it up with too much plodding around back there in your big honkin’ man feet.”
She slammed the door in his face without so much as a by your leave, and for good measure, the blinds clicked shut a second after.
“Hmphf,” he groused. “Oughta let it eat her,” he mumbled out loud this time. He couldn’t lie to himself, though. The thought of bagging el chupacabra intrigued him. Bonus points for doing it all on his own while Stanley sat around waiting. So, he tromped back down the freakishly clean steps and followed a path of identical fake stones around to the back yard.
The garden proved to be as tidy as the porch, a perfect rectangle of rich black dirt with a few neat bunches of kale and a handful of Brussels sprout stalks still growing at one end. Two apple trees and a small grape vine grew close to the back door. Two garden gnomes and a shiny blue glass orb adorned a flowerbed near the house. A blue jay shouted at him from its perch on a wooden feeder that hung from a black iron shepherd’s hook.
“Mind your business, bossy,” Richard told the bird.
It watched him with a suspicious black eye.
The dirt of the garden had been turned in long, straight rows. If forced to hazard a guess, he’d say Mrs. Distel used a gas-powered rototiller back here, and finished her work by drawing wavy lines along the paths with her rake. No way she’d turned rows that tidy by hand, but all around the kale the rows were marred by footprints. He crouched lower to get a better look. The clear outline of two bare feet, toes and all, were plain to see. A man didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce there had, indeed, been a barefoot human-like creature back here munching on the kale. Compared to his own sneaker-clad foot, the print in the mud was quite small—smaller than he’d expect from a college kid. More like a very petite woman or even a child.
He looked around for any other clues, not knowing what he hoped to find, exactly. Just when he was ready to give up and go back to Maddie’s house, he spotted a bit of yellow under a nearby privacy hedge. Squatting down, he reached out and pulled a banana peel from under the fallen leaves. It was almost entirely brown, with only a few remaining spots of color. Richard dropped and looked carefully at the earth around the bushes. He found more footprints and an oval of squashed grass and leaves where the thief had clearly sat for some time. “Who the devil are you?” he asked, but only the rustling breeze answered him.
No closer to understanding and in no big hurry to return to Maddie’s and hang around with Stanley, he took a slow walk around the block, eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. His mind whirled with worry about Burke, questions about Albert, visions of spaceships and Martian colonies, and ideas about what kind of creature looks like a human but runs around naked in the night. Not a single answer presented itself, but when he came upon Maddie’s property by way of the back easement, he noticed a scattering of banana peels on the grass around her large wooden compost bin.
He crossed her yard and poked a banana peel with his toe. “Like your bananas, do you?” From there, he spotted another peel covered with empty shells under the hazelnut bush, and from the hazelnut bush, another in the hedge that grew around the foundation of the house. Here, too, bare footprints dotted the mud. Whatever the creature was, the night they saw it in front of Maddie’s window wasn’t a one-off event. The thing was camping out right under their noses.
All the rich holiday foods he’d enjoyed in the past two days churned in his guts. There were entirely too many questions in their lives right now and not nearly enough answers.
Maddie took the plate of heated-up stuffing and pie out from under Richard’s nose and replaced it with a bowl of turkey and rice soup. She set a small glass of prune juice next to it and started to walk away.
“Hey!” he protested. “What gives?”
She called back from the kitchen, an annoying, disembodied voice of reason, “You’re going to tie yourself in knots and end up sick if you keep eating like you have been. The feast is over. Time to take care of your tummy.”
“Humph,” Richard groused. “Ain’t worried about my ‘tummy’ for seventy years, but apparently I’m in the second grade again.”
“I can hear you,” she called.
“Good!” he shouted back.
Burke picked up her spoon and started eating in weird robotic motions that sent shivers down his spine.
“Burke, do you remember what you told us about your table mate at last night’s dinner?” Stanley asked.
Burke nodded without breaking the rhythm of scooping, swallowing, pausing, scooping...
Maddie set a bowl of soup at her own place and took her seat. “So, Burke and I were talking, and we agree that she’s very lucky to have met Albert. Who would have thought a car accident could be so serendipitous? I was just telling her that I think she ought to—”
The doorbell rang before they learned what it was Burke ought to do, feel, obsess over, or believe according to her mother. Maddie dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin embroidered with a grinning pilgrim couple and dashed off toward the front of the house. Stanley met Richard’s eye and then stood and followed her, one hand tucked in the pocket of his trousers where he, no doubt, hid some sort of weapon.
Richard watched Burke. She stared straight ahead and continued slurping soup. He wondered if they should hogtie the girl and get her out of town. True, she could take either one of them in a fair fight, probably both of them together, but there was a time when dirty tricks were the order of the day.
A soft murmur of voices rose up from the other room, drawing his attention in that direction. No one screamed or fired a gun, so presumably the visitor was a friendly. Stanley confirmed that by taking his hand out of his pocket and extending it toward whomever had entered. A moment later, Luke entered, hat in hand, and nodded in his direction.
“Good to see you again, Richard. I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted a meal. I simply wanted to bring Maddie a thank you gift for the lovely dinner the other day.”
Maddie bustled by with her arms full of red roses. “This seems like more than a little thank you, Luke. My goodness. You probably could have bought groceries for a week with what these cost.”
He twisted the cap he held. “It’s not like I can’t afford it. Worked all those hours for all those years. Might as well spend it on the people I care about. Not like I can take it with me.”
Stanley gestured toward the table. “Care to join us? Maddie made a fine pot of soup from the leftovers.”
Richard scowled at him. Mighty presumptuous of Stanley to be inviting the neighbors over for soup that wasn’t his to share. “Man didn’t come over for lunch.”
“No, he came with a grand gesture.” Stanley clapped him on the back and gave him a wink and a smile. “Well played, old boy. Well played.”
Color rose in Luke’s cheeks like he was a pimply-faced sixteen-year-old picking his date up for the prom. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
Burke finished her soup, lay her spoon down next to the bowl, and stared into space.
Worry lit a fire under Richard’s butt. Sitting back and letting this date happen simply couldn’t be their best option. Annoyance that Luke’s presence meant he couldn’t speak freely to Stanley only added fuel to the fire of his anxiety.
“I think we ought to stick to the plan. We ought to head out this afternoon. Soon. Now. Ten minutes ago,” he blurted.
“Dad?” Maddie stood in the kitchen doorway, holding a large crystal vase in her arms, the flowers artfully arranged within it. “Why would you say that?”
