by Ray Garton
Craven jerked his hand away, frowning. “Okay, then, um, what kinda music do you like?”
“Good music. The best.”
“Like who? Like what?”
He smiled again, showing his two rows of fangs. “We have a wonderful sound system. My favorite music is piped everywhere, loudly . . . and it is always playing.”
Craven’s frown deepened. “But what is it?”
“Lawrence Welk and Wayne Newton,” the man said, his smile growing, his fangs sparkling. He grabbed Craven’s hand suddenly and tightly. Very tightly.
Craven began to scream as he saw the room dissolve around him.
In seconds, they were gone . . .
BAIT
This is for every parent who ever thought they weren’t neglecting
their children . . . and realized too late that they were.
“Go over to the dairy stuff and get a gallon of milk,” Mom told them as she stood in the produce section of the Seaside Supermarket, squeezing one avocado after another, looking for ripe ones. “Low-fat, remember.”
They knew, both of them: nine-year-old Cole and his seven-year-old sister, Janelle. Their mother always ate and drank low-fat or non-fat everything. And besides, they knew the brand of milk on sight. The two children headed down the aisle between two long produce display cases.
“And hurry up!” Mom called behind them. “I wanna get out of here so I can have a smoke. Meet me up in the front.”
“She’s always in a hurry,” Janelle said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. Usually to have to smoke.”
They found the dairy section and went to the refrigerated cases, scanning the shelves of milk cartons, different sizes, different brands. When he spotted the right one, Cole pulled the glass door open, stood on tip-toes, reached up and tilted the carton off the fourth shelf up, nearly dropping it. He let the door swing closed behind him as they started to head for the front of the store to find their mother. But Cole stopped.
“Here’s another one,” he said quietly.
Janelle stopped, turned back. “Another what?”
“Another one of those kids. On the milk cartons. See?”
He turned the carton so she could see the splotchy, black-and-white depiction of a little boy’s smiling face. It was such a bad picture — as if someone had run the boy’s face through a disfunctioning copy machine — that he looked more nightmarish than pitiful. But pity was exactly what the black writing on the carton seemed to be aiming for; Cole read it aloud to Janelle:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?
9-YEAR-OLD PETER MULRAKES
Last seen in Eureka, CA in parking lot of Safeway
supermarket. Missing — 1 year, 7 months.
There were a few more details that Cole skipped over, along with a phone number to call if anyone should see the boy or have information regarding his whereabouts. At the very bottom, he read silently, to himself:
A NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY SERVICE
OF VALENCIA DAIRIES, INC.
“Where’s Eureka?” Janelle asked.
“Couple hours down the coast from here, I think,” Cole replied, staring at the haunting face with its smeared features and splotchy eyes. “I wonder where they go,” he muttered to himself, thinking aloud. “I wonder what happens to them when they disappear . . . who takes them away . . . and why.”
He turned and went back to the dairy case, opened the door and began turning the other milk cartons around.
“Mom said to hurry,” Janelle said. “She wants to smoke.”
“In a second.”
Each carton had a face on it, some different than others: little boys, little girls, some black, some white and some Asian . . . but all with the same splotchy features and blurred lines that would make the children almost impossible to identify, even if they were standing right there in front of Cole.
“They have ’em on the grocery bags, too, y’know,” Janelle said, in her usual matter-of-fact way.
“Yeah . . . I know.”
“What the hell are you two doing?”
Cole spun around, letting the door close again. Their mother stood with her cart, frowning at them.
“C’mon, now, I forgot the fish,” she said, waving at them. “Hurry up. I wanna get out of here.”
So you can have a smoke, Cole thought.
They went to the seafood counter where, beyond the glass of the display case, Cole and Janelle looked at all the shrimp and scallops, squid and octopus, all kinds of fish, clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters, eel . . .
Like a dead National Geographic special, Cole thought.
Some of the fish were still whole, and their dead, staring eyes looked like glass.
“How did they kill ’em, Cole?” Janelle asked.
He blinked; at first he thought she was still talking about the faces on the milk cartons, because they were still on his mind. “The fish? They caught ’em on hooks.”
“How?”
“With bait.”
“What kinda bait?”
He hated it when she did this. “Sometimes other fish. Y’know, smaller fish than them. And sometimes other things . . . whatever the fish like to eat.”
The man behind the counter offered to help Mom, and she said, “I’d like a couple of swordfish steaks, please.”
“Sorry, but we’re out. Till tomorrow.”
A sigh puffed from her lips. “You mean, we live right here on the coast and you’re out of swordfish?”
“’Fraid so, ma’am.”
“Okay, then . . . how about shark?”
“Oh, yeah, got some fresh shark steaks here. How many?”
“Two. And, uh — ” She looked down at Cole and Janelle.
“What do you guys want for dinner?”
“Not fish,” Cole said. “I hate fish.”
Janelle added, “So does Daddy. He said so.”
“Well, that’s just too bad for him. He could stand to lose weight and red meat is really fattening. Besides, it causes cancer. Fish is good for you, so what kind do you want?”
When they wouldn’t respond, she ordered some whitefish.
Janelle leaned over and whispered to Cole, “Poor fish. I don’t wanna eat ’em if they’ve been tricked into bein’ killed.”
Cole looked over the top of the counter to the enormous swordfish on the wall behind it. It was shiny and regal, with its long, needle-like nose jutting into the air. And, of course, it was very dead.
Once they had the fish, they had to walk fast to keep up with Mom on her way up to the register. They stood in line for a while, then when they got up to the counter, they started looking over the racks of candy bars and gum to their right, asking Mom if they could have some.
“No, absolutely not, you know what that stuff does to you?” she hissed, bending toward them. “Just go on outside and wait by the car. I’ll be right out.”
So, they did. But not before Cole noticed the brown paper bags that were being packed with groceries at each counter.
Smeared faces looked back at him from the sides of the bags as if they were watching him lead his sister out of the store. The faces were haunted . . . and haunting.
On the way to the car, they passed the newspaper vending boxes and Cole stopped when he saw a picture of a little baby on the front page of the local paper with the word MISSING! beneath it. The word made him stop. He read the headline, frowning:
2 MONTH OLD BABY STOLEN FROM CRIB
IN MIDDLE OF NIGHT —
POLICE HAVE NO SUSPECTS
Cole stared at the baby for a while, frowning, wondering what had happened to it. Who would want to take a little baby? Why?
With a slight burning in his gut, he turned and hurried after his little sister toward the car.
They stood by the car, kicking a smashed aluminum can back and forth between them over the dirty pavement. The nearby ocean gave the chilly, damp breeze a salty smell and seagulls circled overhead, calling out sharply.
The musical voice of
a little girl called to them from a few yards away.
“Hey! Wanna see my puppies?”
She stood beside a grey van. The sliding door on the side was half open.
“What kind of puppies?” Cole asked as he and Janelle took a few steps toward her.
“Little bitty ones.” She held her palms a little ways apart to demonstrate.
“Let’s go see the puppies,” Janelle said, smiling.
“Okay. But keep an eye out for Mom . . .”
Mom pushed her cart of grocery bags through the automatic door and stopped just outside the store. The door closed behind her with a hum as she fished a Marlboro out of her purse and turned against the wind, leaning her head forward to light up.
It was while she was lighting her cigarette that the grey van drove by.
By the time she lifted her head, taking a deep drag on the cigarette, the van was already gone.
So were the children . . .
Cole awoke in complete, solid, almost tangible darkness.
It was a silent darkness at first because of the loud ringing in his ears and the throbbing in his head. The ringing eventually subsided — slowly, gradually — and was replaced by the cry of a baby.
No, no, the cry of two . . . no, three, maybe four . . . no, several babies.
And somewhere nearby there were voices that barely rose above the crying of the babies.
But there was something else . . . something weird . . . something wrong . . .
The ground beneath him and the damp, cold darkness all around him was moving . . . tilting back and forth . . . this way, that way, back and forth.
He reached down to feel the surface beneath him, but suddenly realized that he could not move his arms. His wrists were tied together behind him and his ankles were tied together before him.
Then he noticed something else: a low rumble that made its way through the surface beneath him and up into his body, gathering in his chest like quivering indigestion. It sounded like an engine.
Are we on a bus or something? he thought, then: We? We?
“Janelle?” he said, his voice hoarse and weak. “Janelle, you here? C’mon, Janelle, say something!”
“Who you talkin’ to?” another voice asked. It was the voice of a child, a boy, somewhere around Cole’s age.
“What? I’m . . . talking to my sister,” Cole said quietly, uncertainly.
“Who?” a little girl asked from somewhere in the darkness — not Janelle — her voice trembling. “Who are you talking to?”
“My sister, Janelle. Janelle? You there? C’mon, Janelle, you gotta be there!”
The voices paused for a long moment. Cole could hear the babies crying, some of them gurgling and making spitting sounds, and when he listened very closely, he could hear the breathing of other children . . . some of them were even making purring little snoring sounds . . . and some of them rustled now and then in the dark.
He called for Janelle a few more times, raising his voice in spite of how much it hurt his head, in spite of the way his stomach was beginning to feel sick because of the lurching back-and-forth movements.
Finally, there was a little voice . . . so small and weak and frightened: “Cole? You . . . er you there?”
“Yeah, Munchkin, I’m here. I’m right here.”
“Where?”
“I’m here, real close. You hear me?”
“I can’t see you.”
“Yeah, I know, but you can hear me, right?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Good, then that’s all that counts right now. We’ll see each other soon. You just lay still and don’t be afraid, ‘cause I’m here.”
“Okay. Good. Okay.”
Her voice was so small, like a thread being pulled through the darkness by a dull needle.
They were all quiet.
A few of the babies had stopped crying.
The voices outside were more audible now, easier to make out.
“. . . ’cause these here sharks are damned easy to catch, and ’cause most of the shoppers goin’ to their local fish counter in the grocery store are so fuckin’ stupid that they . . .”
“. . . don’t know what you’re figurin’, that they’re goin’ in to buy shark steaks and they don’t even know that we’re . . .”
There was laughter then, loud, lusty and full of phlegm.
“. . . you moron, ’cause of what we use ’em for! And ‘cause we . . .”
One of the babies wailed for a moment and the voices melted together into a single meaningless sound, and then:
“. . . they go into grocery stores and restaurants as cheap scallops and swordfish steaks and, a-course, shark steaks, so we pick up the money and they can . . .”
“. . . ’at’s why that stuff is so cheap in some places, ‘cause we’re out here . . .”
“. . . people eating more fish these days to stay healthy and lose weight, so we . . .”
There was another noise behind these voices, a noise that was hard to identify at first although it sounded so familiar, as if it were a sound Cole had heard just yesterday, or the day before.
Then, quite suddenly, he realized it was a sound he heard almost every day . . . the ocean.
He was on the ocean! That was why everything was moving back and forth, back and forth!
They were on a boat.
Suddenly, there was a rattling sound and a door burst open, sending blinding light through the darkness. Cole turned his head away and clenched his eyes, squinting.
Heavy footsteps sounded on wood and there was a sharp click! and the room filled with light that was bright enough to ooze through Cole’s eyelids and cut into his head like a hot knife.
There was deep, booming laughter from one man and another barked, “See? Here they are! All we need! Lessee, whatta we want here, now, huh? Lessee . . .”
Cole tried to open his eyes. It was hard at first, painful because of the sudden bright light . . . then he tried opening them gradually, just a little bit at a time. First, he saw only bright light . . . then shapes moving this way and that . . . then the light began to diminish and the shapes began to take more distinct forms . . . features . . . faces . . .
“Well, we’ll need a few a-them,” one man said, pointing to some shelves with rows of cardboard boxes on them.
The other man, taller, bigger, with broad shoulders and big arms, said, “Yeah, okay, you get them. I’ll get these. A couple of ’em. Lessee, lessee, which ones, which ones . . .”
By that time, Cole’s vision had cleared enough to see the enormous, bearded man looking down at him.
“You awake, boy?” the man growled through a grin.
“Huh? What?”
The man kicked him, digging the toe of his boot beneath Cole’s right knee. Hard.
“Owww!” Cole shouted, squinting, trying hard not to cry.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re awake all right. You’ll do.”
The man reached down and slung an arm around Cole’s chest, carrying him over his arm like a sack of potatoes so he was staring downward at the moist wooden floor.
“And you!” the man growled, and his voice passed through Cole’s entire body. Cole could feel the man picking up another body, another child. Then the man turned and said to his partner, “Go ahead and take four of ’em outta those boxes, just go ahead. We’ll need at least that many. ‘Fact, we’ll prob’ly hafta come back in here and get more.”
Cole raised his head and saw all of them, all the children tied up with their backs against the wall or lying on the wood floor. And then he saw Janelle. She looked up and their eyes met.
“Cole!” she shouted, her voice lumpy and dry.
“Don’t worry, Munchkin, just stay right there, don’t you move, and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll see you in a little while, okay? Okay?”
With her little mouth hanging open, all she could do was nod.
The man carrying Cole laughed, long and hard . . . and Cole wondered if the man was laughing at what he
had said to his sister.
The other children disappeared the moment the door was shut.
And then there was sunlight, brilliant and blinding sunlight, and Cole groaned as he clenched both his teeth and eyes.
Cole was dropped, hit the floor hard and the wind was blown from his lungs. He gasped for breath, thrashed around, straining against the ties on his hands and feet, until he was on his back and staring up at the sky: patches of blue surrounded by dark and pregnant clouds.
He saw the other man with things under his arms, things wrapped in white cloths . . . things that were wailing, crying, sobbing.
Babies, that’s what they were . . . babies.
“Okay, we got ’em,” said the man who had carried him out. “They’re all here, so let’s get to it, you guys!”
Lying on his back and watching them, Cole tried to count them.
There were three . . . no, four men. Or was that guy over there the fifth? He couldn’t tell, and quickly didn’t care.
And then one of the men lifted a baby high, dangling from his hand. It was wrapped in white cloth. He unwrapped it until it was naked. He handed it to another man, saying, “Remember, the shoulder, that’s where it’s gotta go.”
“I know, I know, whatta you think I am, some kinda amateur?”
The man held the baby roughly in his left hand.
Cole saw the large, barbed hook in his right hand.
The hook went through the baby’s shoulder.
Blood spurted and flowed from the wound.
The baby screamed so hard and so long that its face turned red as its arms and legs began to flail and kick.
The hook was attached to a cable and was thrown over the side of the boat with a lot of laughter from all the men.
Cole’s eyes were gaping as he stared at them and he suddenly felt as if he might throw up.
A man at the end of the boat holding an enormous fishing pole, like no fishing pole Cole had ever seen before, shouted laughingly, “Oh-ho, well, I guess we’ll see what I get here, huh?” Then he burst into laughter, throwing his head back.
