Gary's Children (Shingles Book 2)

by Rick Gualtieri

  The girl rolled her eyes at him, held up a finger, and began to turn in a circle, obviously trying to make a game of it. Goddamned kids.

  He saw her point at Mike, then Jake. Next was Paul. Then Cabot, Anthony, and finally Kurt. Him? It’s always the quiet ones.

  However, just as he was concluding who the culprit was, she made one final move and ended with her finger aimed straight at him.

  Gary was not amused. “Enough with the joking around. Who’s your father?”

  “Really, Dad?” she asked with a grin. “Stop kidding already.”

  Whoever this girl was, she was either having a joke at his expense or monumentally stupid. Either way, it wasn’t funny. Gary had work to do and a date to plan. If this kid didn’t vacate the premises immediately, he was going to...well, okay, he wasn’t sure what he would do. But, when in doubt, bullshit until you can figure it out.

  “Listen, kid,” Gary said, unzipping his briefcase. “I’m gonna go put my lunch in the break room. Go back to whoever your mom or dad is by the time I return, and we’ll forget this, chalk it up to a joke. Otherwise, I’m going to have to go talk to...”

  His voice trailed off as he spied the object sitting at the top of his briefcase. He reached in numbly and pulled out the Jacklight, its rubber tip still glistening with viscous moisture. How the hell had it gotten in there?

  Must have accidentally packed it when I...

  “I would have been your daughter,” the girl said insistently from over his shoulder, causing him to jump. He turned toward her and then found himself involuntarily backing up a step. Her eyes had become all glazed and glassy, as if they belonged on a doll.

  Or a corpse.

  “And you would have been my daddy,” she continued, “if you hadn’t sent me down the drain.”

  “What?”

  “You just couldn’t wait, could you? I would have been a good daughter. All A’s and B’s at school, minding my manners, helping out around the house. But now, all I am or would be has been flushed away.” She took a step toward him. “Why, Daddy? Why?”

  As the girl moved, her skin took on a sallow, washed-out tone. Gary noticed her hair, previously full and bouncy, was now wet and dripping with gray sludge. A few dollops hit the floor with a sickly plop.

  “Why did you send me down to the dark place, Daddy?” The girl’s eyes sunk even further into her head until they were barely specks, peeking out accusingly at him from far away.

  “Get away from me,” he said, raising the Jacklight as if it were a weapon.

  “Why, Daddy?”

  Gary closed his eyes as she reached a hand to his cheek. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”

  “The fuck, man?”

  He opened his eyes and let out a yelp. The girl was gone, and his chair was in the same position as he’d left it. He looked down and didn’t see any sign of whatever had been dripping from her hair. It was as if none of it had happened, like it had all been in his head.

  “What the hell is in your hand?”

  All in his head, except apparently whatever he’d said and done. He looked around and saw heads popping up over cube walls all around him, like curious prairie dogs.

  A small logical voice in Gary’s head cried out that he should downplay things—laugh it off as a joke, and then put the goddamned Jacklight away as fast as was humanly possible. Sadly, that voice was quiet compared to the screaming questions in his head demanding answers as to what the fuck was going on. “Did you see her?”

  “Huh?” Jake asked, from over the cube wall, viewing Gary with a look that was a definite downgrade from how he normally spoke to him.

  Gary turned to another of his coworkers. “Did you?”

  One by one, they shook their heads, then made eye contact with each other in a way that suggested they thought he’d maybe stepped out for an early liquid lunch.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he cried. “You’ve gotta be shitting me. Someone had to have seen her!”

  “Seen who, Gary?”

  He turned to find Laura standing outside the entrance to his cube, one eyebrow raised.

  “Our daughter.”

  “Our daughter?” she echoed before turning to his coworkers. “Okay, show’s over. It was just a joke, people. Let’s not milk it any longer than it needs to be. Back to work.”

  Heads popped down again, and grumbling could be heard throughout the floor, annoyance that the distraction was over and it was time to get back to their dreary jobs. Once things had died down, Laura stepped closer to Gary and lowered her voice. “Now, care to say that again?”

  “We...we had a child. She was a girl, about eight years old. Here for take your daughter to work day.”

  “Bring your kids to work day isn’t for another two months and...wait.” She stepped in even closer. “Listen, I know what we talked about, but children? Don’t you think that’s getting ahead of ourselves? I’m just looking for a bit of fun, nothing serious.”

  “She was sitting right...”

  “I mean, you could have said no if you didn’t want to go out.”

  “Listen to me. She was right here!”

  Laura stepped back and let out a sigh, switching to her manager face in the space of a second. “Okay, I can see you’re having a moment. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off. Collect your thoughts, calm down a bit. We can take a raincheck and talk about it some other...” She glanced down, obviously noticing what was still in his hand. “What the fuck?”

  “I can explain,” he blurted out, despite that being such a deep pile of shit that she could’ve paddled a canoe on it. But he could tell it was too late. The look on her face said it all. Though she’d been the one parked at Titty City Bang Bang, he was being judged as the pervert.

  In all fairness, his internal voice rationalized, she’s not the one who mistook Monday for bring your wank toy to work day. And even if she did, she’s not out here waving it around like Excalibur pulled from the stone.

  “You know what?” she said, in a tone that told Gary what was coming next, “that thing we talked about in my office. Let’s just pretend that entire conversation never happened. And forget about taking the day. Why don’t you take the rest of the week off? Mike can cover for you.”

  “Fucking A,” Mike exclaimed in a loud whisper from over in his cube.

  “Yeah,” Laura continued. “Take the week off, get your head screwed on straight, and when you come back, make sure it’s without that...thing.”

  She turned on her heel and retreated back to her office, slamming the door behind her with a finality that told Gary everything he needed to know.

  6

  HARD DRIVE

  Gary was tempted to pack up his entire cube and take it with him. After all, if one were to read between the lines, one could easily see how this was going to end.

  At the same time, he could imagine what a strange conversation that would be with human resources. Talk of sex shops, adult novelties, and imaginary daughters. If he were in Laura’s shoes, he’d probably just lie and claim he’d caught him surfing porn at work. Much easier that way.

  Of course, that wouldn’t stop people from talking, and he had little doubt the office gossip ring was going to have a field day with this one.

  Either way, none of this was his concern for at least a week, and maybe indefinitely.

  After standing there considering possible outcomes for several minutes, all while the eyes of his coworkers snaked back over their cubes to catch glimpses of him, he simply grabbed his jacket, his briefcase, and the Jacklight, too, then headed out to the parking lot as if he were doing nothing more than leaving early for the day.

  As he reached his car, he realized he’d been entirely focused on the rational parts of what had just happened—like his future employment—completely ignoring that a ghost girl had appeared to him, called him daddy, and then disappeared.

  And this wasn’t the first time a kid had shown up somewhere they shouldn’t have been, only to mysteriously vanish min
utes later.

  What the fuck is going on?

  The other two times had been easy to dismiss, but now he realized that they were possibly connected. And, if this last one was any indication, whatever was happening appeared to be escalating.

  He pulled out of the parking lot in his aging Kia Spectra, still trying to figure out whether he was losing his mind or actually being haunted by dead children.

  The miles passed, and he replayed in his head the strange things that had happened. He was fairly sure he didn’t have a brain tumor. There had been no dizziness, no fainting spells, and the only headaches he’d experienced were of the normal variety with the typical causes. But if the cause wasn’t physical, then what did that leave?

  Gary glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Why me? I’m an okay guy. I take good care of my stupid cat, and I don’t go out of my way to hurt anyone.

  “Except for the ones you’ve flushed down the drain or wiped away with tissues.”

  Gary screamed out as the voice spoke. He looked again into the rearview mirror and this time saw the face of a teenaged boy with a tight blond crewcut staring back at him.

  “Remember Tara Pullowitz?” the boy asked, as if sitting in the cramped confines of Gary’s backseat was the most natural thing in the world. “She wanted to do it with you after that movie you went to see. You could have pulled over and had her in this very car.”

  “What do you want?!” Gary cried, trying desperately to look in the mirror while keeping the car straight on the road.

  But the teen ignored him. “I could have been conceived right here. But you got nervous, worried what your mother would think.”

  “You’re not real!”

  The boy blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, they were gone, and in their place were black pits of liquid nothingness. “You dropped her off, went home, and locked yourself in the bathroom. That was the end of me. Squirted across the tiles and wiped up as if I didn’t matter at all.”

  Gary turned to face his accuser. “Go the fuck away! I didn’t do anything to...”

  The back seat was empty.

  He was talking to no one but himself.

  Gary looked to see if the boy was still in the mirror, but he slammed into a parked car before he could confirm it.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It wasn’t a bad collision. Fortunately, it was only a thirty-five mile an hour road, and Gary had already been driving with his foot on the brake after spotting the creepy fucker in his back seat.

  After parking and inspecting the damage, though, he realized it would definitely require some work. His eleven-year-old car wasn’t really the issue. Nothing a trip to the local scrapyard for a new bumper wouldn’t fix. The brand new Miata he’d hit was a different story. Its rear end and part of its side were scratched all to hell.

  However, the cost to his wallet was of secondary concern compared to the dead kid who’d been bitching him out.

  Gary stopped mid-thought. Was the kid actually dead or just unborn? Did it really matter? Sadly, he’d been too busy trying not to piss himself to ask.

  Still, despite all he’d seen and the fear that continued rippling through his guts, a small part of his mind demanded that there had to be a rational explanation. Kids didn’t simply appear out of nowhere and berate people for not conceiving them.

  He proceeded to thoroughly check the inside of his car, including under the floor mats, looking for anything that might turn up a clue. The trunk was next in his half-crazed search for answers—as if he’d open it up and find some practical joker sitting inside waiting to be caught. He was just climbing underneath the back wheel to check for hidden projectors in his undercarriage when a cop car pulled in behind him.

  Gary heard the sound of a car door closing and pulled himself to his feet.

  “Are you okay, sir?” the officer, a slim woman with short auburn hair, asked.

  “Um...yeah. Just...checking for...err...structural damage.”

  The cop narrowed her eyes and then asked, “Are you the one who called this in?”

  He tried to compose himself as best he could. “Yes. I’m Gary Handler. I called you guys.”

  “What happened?”

  Shaken as he was, he had enough sense to know that trying to report that he’d crashed his car in broad daylight because of ghosts was a surefire way to end the day locked up. “Baby squirrel ran across the road. I didn’t want to hit it. Thought I had enough room, but guess I misjudged.”

  Though he’d made up the lie on the spot, it seemed plausible enough to him. After all, the little rats seemed to love playing chicken with cars.

  Apparently it was the right call as all the tension seemed to drain out of the officer’s face. She smiled at him. “Awww. Poor little guy. That’s nice of you to swerve out of the way. Too many bastards in this town will run them over and just keep going.”

  Gary nodded, but then gestured toward the Miata. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

  She stepped over and looked at it. “The owner around?”

  “No idea. Nobody has so much as stopped to ask if I was okay.”

  “Are you okay, sir?”

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking, Officer...”

  “Nuttal.” She held out a hand.

  Nuttal? And a squirrel lover, too? Fuck it, I’ve seen weirder things today. He took her hand and shook it.

  “It was good of you to stick around. You could have just hit and run.”

  He shrugged. “I figured who ever owned this car is kind of like that squirrel. They didn’t ask to be hit.”

  “That’s...sweet.” She looked him over, then smiled again as her eyes reached his. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll make this easy. I’ll take your statement and your information and then you can be on your way. We’ll call this one no fault, so your insurance company doesn’t ding you too hard.”

  Gary smiled back. “That’s really nice of you, Officer Nuttal.”

  “Call me Cathy.”

  “Okay, Cathy.”

  Gary reiterated his lie, and she wrote it down. He affirmed that he was okay and his car was drivable. So far, it was going better than he could have hoped, not hurt by the fact that Officer Cathy Nuttal wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes.

  He was almost feeling somewhat better about things by the time he handed over his license and insurance card. Cathy turned back toward her cruiser to run a check on his information, purely standard procedure she assured him.

  The moment she moved, though, Gary nearly shit his pants.

  A little girl was standing directly behind where the officer had been not two seconds earlier. She was maybe ten or eleven, with glasses and pigtails. She wore a t-shirt and shorts, revealing one scraped and bandaged kneecap.

  Please just be passing by, please be passing by.

  “I tripped and fell on the way to the library,” she said to him.

  Gary glanced toward Cathy, now leaning in the passenger side window of her cruiser. She was ignoring him and the child while she did whatever it was that cops did. He turned back to the little girl and gave her a sheepish smile.

  “I study at the library a lot. Helps me get straight A’s. That makes my mom and dad really proud.”

  Okay, this isn’t so bad.

  “Or it would have...”

  Fuck!

  “...if you actually asked my mom out.” The girl stepped toward the oblivious officer and stared at her backside. “But you’re not going to, are you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Gary muttered.

  The girl turned toward him again, and Gary saw that a thick grayish ooze was starting to seep out of her nose and ears. It hit the ground with a sickening drip. “We both know I’m going to end up like all the others...in the only home we’ll ever know.” She mimed flushing the toilet, dripping even more of the vile liquid onto the ground.

  That gunk was now leaking from nearly everywhere on the girl. She reached out a hand and placed it tenderly on the officer’s back, leaving
behind a sticky handprint on her otherwise spotless uniform. “Goodbye, Mommy. Daddy’s going to send me away soon.”

  “I won’t do it,” Gary said. “I won’t!”

  “Excuse me?” the officer asked, pulling her head out of the squad car.

  “Yes, you will.” The girl’s voice was barely understandable now, grayish pus bubbling out from between her lips.

  Officer Nuttal stepped forward, holding out Gary’s ID. “Everything checks out.”

  He numbly reached out and took it, just as the child stepped into the officer’s space, her body somehow superimposed over the cop’s, rendering the cute police officer a bizarre mashup of undead horror.

  “You seem a bit shaken up,” the girl and the officer both replied, their voices melding together in an unnatural way. “How about I treat you to a cup of coffee?”

  “No,” Gary whispered, his eyes opening wide as the ooze from the girl seemed to stain the front of Cathy’s uniform and then began to pool at her feet.

  His nerve broke.

  “NO!” he cried, then turned and ran, leaving the somewhat bewildered police officer to stare after him as he sprinted away down the street.

  7

  DAYCARE NIGHTMARE

  Gary wasn’t sure how long he ran or how far. It was all a blur to him, albeit a blur with a lot of screaming on his part.

  When he came to his senses again, he was somehow standing at his own front door, digging out his keys to let himself in. He had just heard the click of the deadbolt disengaging when he froze with his hand on the knob.

  Please be empty. Dear God, let it be empty.

  Gary flung the door open and quickly hit the light switch. Thankfully, his living room appeared to be unoccupied. He took one shaky step forward on legs that felt like rubber before movement registered in his periphery and he let out a screech that very few children—ghostly or otherwise—could hope to match.

  He backed up into his kitchen, crying out, “Please leave me alone!”