Silver and Salt

by Rob Thurman

  “My mee-maw,” she corrected, several tears running down her face to drip onto the pony and snot gathering on her upper lip. She was scared. She was petrified and I knew I should feel bad about that, but I didn’t. She could be scared or she could be snatched up by the next human monster. We learned in class that the ends didn’t justify the means. Bullshit. We learned wrong.

  With the pony back against her chest, her arms wrapped more tightly around it. She either forgot the bogeyman gave it to her or thought she’d saved it from him. “She’s the only one I can tell.” In a quick, jerky movement, she wiped her running nose with her arm before moving it back to cuddle the toy. “My daddy died and mommy is in that place for people who stick needles in their arms.”

  Daddy dead and mommy in rehab or prison. The rusty machinery of the world at work. I shouldn’t blame normal people who can’t see. Blood and rust sometimes were too close to know which was which.

  Before I could warn her to tell her grandma, an Oldsmobile, old and big enough that I thought they’d all disappeared to make some sort of car Stonehenge far away, screeched up to the curb about thirty feet away. “Mels, honey,” called a voice coarse with cigarettes, alcohol, any sin money could buy, but it was a cheerful voice and that was something. “Come on, kid! Supper’s cooking and it’s dance night at the VFW. Got to feed your scrawny little butt, pick out a dress, and get you to the sitter. Hurry, hurry! Run, little Miss Chickadee.”

  Melanie ran quicker than the wind, leaving the sharp scent of the salt of her tears in the air. I yelled after her, “Tell her, Melanie. Tell her about the boogety-man.” But the car door had already slammed after her and the Oldsmobile was pulling away. I hoped she’d heard me. I hoped she’d remember what I told her. Picking a strand of yellow ragweed, the same color as Melanie’s sandals, I tossed it into the wind after her. “Good luck, Mels,” I said under my breath. “Stay away from the ‘boogety-man.’”

  I thought she would. I’d scared her. I’d made her cry and I wasn’t sorry. I was…proud. Someone needed help and I’d given it to them. It wasn’t how a normal person would do it, but I wasn’t normal. Right now, that didn’t matter, because I’d pulled it off. I’d done it with a fake monster over the real one, but as long as it kept her away from strangers, she’d be okay. And she had listened to me, her eyes huge on finding out the bogeyman was loose. She believed me. I’d saved her. Me, the half-monster. I’d saved a little girl.

  She would run like I’d told her if the invisible man showed up again. There’d been fear in her brown eyes, fear and belief. The monster, the “boogety-man,” had been close enough to touch her. He had talked to her. He could’ve eaten her up. She had more than believed it. She knew it. Yeah, I had faith she’d keep away from him.

  And she had.

  Too bad for Mels that the boogety-man didn’t do the same for her.

  The Boogety-man

  A week later, Melanie was found dead in a dumpster behind a fast food burger place five blocks from her house and two blocks from the park. The window to her room had been pried open and Melanie taken…by the “boogety-man” I’d told her wasn’t in her room and under her bed anymore, but out in the rest of the big, wide world. Sometimes, you can’t know what a monster will do, not the real ones and not the lesser, invisible-man kind.

  I turned off the TV, blacking out the news from sight a helluva lot easier than I could from my mind. I let the remote fall from numb fingers as Niko finished fixing us supper, his blond braid swaying across his back. Whatever he was cooking was something nutritious—I hated that word—with rice and vegetables sizzling in a pan. He’d been paid; that meant our food would be healthy for a day or two if far less tasty than a pizza. That was good. I wouldn’t have to make up an excuse as to why I wasn’t hungry. Niko’s “nourishing” as he called it, food was excuse enough. I pulled my knees up to my chest and looped my arms around them. I’d thought…I’d been sure Melanie would be safe. I hadn’t guessed he’d go after her if she wouldn’t come out to him. What to do now?

  I couldn’t tell the police what I’d seen, as we were on the run. We spent our life on the run, from Sophia’s creditors and knee-breakers to the monsters. They’d put Sophia in prison, no loss. But they’d put Nik and me in foster care until Nik turned eighteen, another year. And I…I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be with people who didn’t know about the monsters that would circle their house. That didn’t know what would irritate me and what would make me mad and what I could do if I got mad. People who wouldn’t have any idea that I needed help in watching the dark, watching for Grendels, and, if they knew, impossible as that was, wouldn’t care if I needed help or not. Couldn’t be bothered to do it. I’d be alone. Just me, the monsters, and people who’d be eaten because they didn’t know to lock all the doors and windows before night. Who didn’t know to sleep with knives under the mattresses or to keep at least one knife hidden in every room. Stupid, stupid people who didn’t know fucking anything.

  Thoughts tied in panicked knots, I managed to stop myself a second before I would’ve started rocking back and forth. Niko would’ve seen that in a heartbeat and he wouldn’t let it go. Okay. Okay. I had to think. I took a deep breath and didn’t waste time finding it ironic I was more afraid of foster care than supernatural monsters. Taking hold of my emotions and mind, I shook them both ruthlessly. I could handle Grendels, I could handle this. Calmer, I considered the options. The first one I’d already thrown out. No police. What else could I do?

  I could leave an anonymous tip like they do on the crime shows or in real life when you want to snitch and not get shot in the head for it. That wasn’t direct contact with the police, and I could use one of the school phones or hop a bus, go to the nearest mall—nearest being at least forty minutes away, make the call there. But the man…there was nothing to say that would help the cops. He had average hair, not brown but not blond, either. He wasn’t tall, he wasn’t short. Wasn’t fat, wasn’t skinny. Wore the same thrift store clothes everyone did around here. Jeans and an old shirt that could be black or could be a dark blue that was practically black. I hadn’t been close enough to see the color of his eyes.

  He was as I’d thought when I first saw him. He was a predator, the city his wilderness. He had a natural camouflage that was so good, it was freakish, goddamn genetic. You could walk right past him and not see him at all. I’d notice him again if I saw him, but it might take me more than a few seconds, maybe an entire minute, which was fucking unsettling, considering my near lifetime of training that forced me to notice virtually everything in my immediate and not-so-immediate area. The police already knew where she’d been found, though. They’d cover that area for blocks, blocks including the park. I knew wherever she’d been found, he’d killed her in the park. That was his place—where he found them and where he ended them. His fucking lair. Maybe the police would find her blood there. Maybe they’d find him. Find the invisible man.

  I knew they wouldn’t.

  A monster had gotten Mels. Nothing would change that for her. She’d been happy with her toy pony, running to her grandma’s car with her scabbed knees pumping, her sandals flying, and then was gone. No more parks, no more freckles, no more ponies, no more Mels. That’s what monsters did. They took everything in your life and then they took your life, the whole thing.

  I studied my reflection blankly in the TV screen, wondering how he found her. Trying to think like a monster would think. He could’ve gotten Mels to tell him where she lived. Mels had been trusting. She’d trusted me and I was half “boogety-man” myself. She wouldn’t have told him her direct address, little but not stupid, but the block she lived on, maybe. Then he would’ve known to watch for her and see which house she went into there. He had probably had said something close to “Do you live on Daisy Avenue? Is that why you have daisies on your shirt?” And Melanie, who hadn’t known about monsters before me, would’ve giggled. She knew about mee-maws that liked to dance, moms with needles in their arms, and, yeah, sh
e would’ve giggled at the silly man. “There’s no Daisy Avenue around here.” She lived on this or that street. Whatever street it had been, they might as well call it Little Girl Lost Lane now.

  I thought I’d saved her. I’d been proud of myself. I couldn’t count the times on one hand I could say that.

  I rested my forehead on my knees as I heard Niko say supper was ready. Mels wouldn’t eat supper again, thanks to that monster. The police wouldn’t find him. He was so weirdly intangible and vague, he could barely find himself some days, I’d bet. No one would recognize him from a description of basically anything and nothing all in one. No one would turn him in, since no one would be able to see him. That was that.

  No one would find him.

  No one.

  Unless….

  They knew exactly how to look.

  Unseen Glory

  I looked.

  Sue me. It wasn’t like I was sentimental. Or that I knew what the word meant, for that matter. It was a monster thing. Half-monster, whatever. He thought this territory was his, and he was wrong. Not that I was a killer, not like him. I wasn’t like him in any method or means. I had my own way and my own why of doing things. I couldn’t claim I was a shepherd either, or a barking sheepdog, or anything else. It didn’t matter what I was or if I had any idea whatsoever about me, myself, and I. All I knew was you did not poach on my fucking territory. I’d walked this route for six months and only seen him once. That made the schools, the park, the blocks between and beyond all mine. He’d also proved me wrong and I didn’t like that at fucking all.

  Mels….

  I didn’t want to think what Mels meant.

  Not now.

  Instead, I worked on being patient, not something I’m known for, but I knew predators—the kind that walked on four legs and the kind that walked on two. Whether it was in the woods, the Everglades, the jungle or in the crumbling concrete wasteland of every city, predators didn’t move on from a good hunting ground. It was the same as when you found a tasty, roach-free Taco Bell. You didn’t stray. You knew a good thing when you found it. Why go anywhere else? The invisible man, if he’d been into seven-layer soft-shell tacos instead of raping and killing little girls, would’ve agreed. You find a hunting ground and stick to it.

  If you’re an idiot.

  What's more, if you’re curious, there are tasty, roach-free Taco Bells everywhere.

  Holing up in one place will cause a pattern. A pattern will get you killed. Niko hadn’t taught me that. It was something I’d been born knowing…in my bones.

  Luckily, my bones and I didn’t have to stay patient long. This monster might be the next best thing to a chameleon, but he wasn’t too goddamn bright. I walked past the park for seven days after Melanie’s body had been found. It was the single place I’d seen him, but for him, idiot, it was a damn good hunting ground he didn’t know enough to give up. Figured. He was a human, by dictionary definition, and not a coyote out in the country. Coyotes that live far from man don’t have to worry about patterns versus a rich hunting ground, but coyotes that live in suburban and even urban areas knew. The invisible man didn’t. He wasn’t half as sneaky as a coyote. Keep that pattern long enough and Mr. Invisible himself would’ve eventually found himself in trouble. When you’re invisible or close to it and the cops are slow, eventually could turn out to be years and years, true. By that time, a shitload more kids would die, true as well.

  I didn’t know those kids, the possible future victims.

  For me, it was difficult to…connect…with their inevitable deaths if Mr. Invisible went to ground here. I couldn’t feel for kids I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure I’d have done anything about the monster in the park if I hadn’t known any of them. Niko would have. Niko wouldn’t have thought once, much less twice, about breaking both his legs and dumping him at the nearest police station. But Niko was human, and that meant Niko thought like a human.

  I didn’t.

  I never had. For all the behavioral and cognitive training that Nik had dragged out of hundreds of psychology books, it hadn’t changed me. All the talking and explaining that there was nothing wrong with me—never never anything wrong with me, Nik was adamant on that—but if this helped or that helped, life might be less difficult for me. None of it had made a difference. I hadn’t changed. I wasn’t human. I didn’t think like them. I couldn’t think like them, no matter how I tried.

  I never would.

  In this situation, that was all right. I had known someone. I had connected. It was time to think about her now. Time to think about Melanie. Her daisy shirt. Her yellow sandals. Her pink nail polish. Her freckle spattered cheeks to go with a wide smile and giggle of the catastrophically innocent.

  Time to remember Mels.

  One week of walking past the park, that’s all it took. Seven days, not only the school week, but the weekend too, backpack in place. The possibilities weren’t endless, but they existed. Sort of. I could be getting weekend tutoring, be in a club, some kind of sports that didn’t mind ear-biting, or maybe in the band. He couldn’t have been too suspicious, as that’s what it came down to—seven days. Two weeks since I’d eyed him for the first time. One week since Mels had been found dead. One week, and then there he was.

  In all his more-or-less unseen fucking glory.

  It was his bad luck that I was on edge enough that it didn’t take a full minute as I thought it could to locate him. Nope, it took less than three seconds for me to ignore the more part of him and see the less of him just fine.

  Ignoring him, I walked into the scrubby grass, dragging my backpack carelessly along the ground, as if I wanted a break. What I did want was to find out what he’d do—if anything. A careful, smart predator would observe his prey a little before deciding if the time was right to take it down. Mr. Invisible, however, wasn’t careful, and he was smart enough for a seven-year-old little girl, but he wasn’t as smart as he imagined.

  He waited fifteen minutes, maybe a half hour. I wasn’t timing the asshole. However long it was, not long enough for the monster he was trying to be, he made his move.

  It wasn’t a great one.

  At least Mels had gotten a pony. Some effort had gone into the production of tricking a little girl. But for me, at least six years older? Maybe seven? He was, what do they say? Phoning it in. The asshole was phoning in a potential abduction and murder. One third at the most of the work he’d put in on Mels. Impressed, I was not. I wasn’t here to be impressed, though. I was here to get some back for Mels, and when he made his move….

  I met his move with mine.

  Guess what?

  Mine was a helluva lot better.

  Mr. Invisible

  The next time Mr. Invisible showed up, I was walking home from school. He picked me up in the park, the very first place I’d seen him. I was trudging down the broken sidewalk and saw him crouching behind that row of thick if sickly bushes. This made the third time now. Three weeks from the first time and a week from the last.

  I was surprised at seeing him again, as surprised as I’d been in—ever, but it passed. I’d thought I’d made him pay for Mels and then some. Lesson learned, message received. But I was wrong again. He’d paid, oh yeah, but he hadn’t embraced the education I’d handed out. I hadn’t thought I was any kind of teacher, but I’d thought I was enough for him.

  Hesitating, I blinked at the glitter of his eyes between the sad gray-green leaves and gave a shrug on the inside. I couldn’t say much shocked me for too long anymore. When you’ve had a serial killer neighbor named Junior and monsters living in the shadows all your life, you get pretty fucking unimpressed with everything else. I hadn’t planned on him ever showing himself another time—as much as he ever showed himself at all, but the world was weird. You had to roll with its insanity and move on.

  The gleam of his eyes tracked me as I moved on. I rolled my own and kept walking. When he started following me, I had to seriously rearrange my personal ranking of levels of douchebaggery
to create a higher level for him. After what he’d done, what he’d tried to do…and he wasn’t stopping even now.

  What an asshole.

  He was a shade, staying far back and sliding from behind the undergrowth to behind street parked cars, not thinking for a second that I saw him. Being an invisible creep was his unique fucking calling, but he wasn’t quite as special as he thought. Such a loser. I finally made it home to our rented, sideways lean of a shack. Key already out, I was inside with the door locked behind me in barely a second. Our neighborhood was dangerous enough that you didn’t want to be caught hanging out on your porch any longer that you could help it…and that didn’t count the inhuman things that whispered in the shadows.

  Retrieving my usual protection from my backpack and shoving it under the couch cushion, I tossed the pack on the floor. Homework could wait. Homework could always wait unless my brother was there to breathe down my neck and slap a book down into my lap. I curled up on the couch. That was a piece of cake for me as I was two inches shorter than any other guy in my class. Still waiting for that growth spurt. For the most part, people thought that with my skinny body, long and untrimmed black hair, pale eyes, and a baby face that I hated, I couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. I was fourteen, though, and fourteen in a world where that was practically an adult.

  Where fourteen was ten years more than old enough to know about men who followed you home from parks.

  Bad people.

  Sick people.

  “Boogety-men.” I expected to hear Melanie’s name for them, a whisper in my ear.

  I didn’t. Melanie wasn’t here to whisper. Melanie wasn’t anywhere. Never would be again.