by Susan Laine
Then Ford curled his hand around the back of my head, grabbed me hard, and yanked me close, and then he crashed his mouth against mine. It was fire and staking a claim and need and falling in love, all in one.
That was our first kiss, and to this day the memory of it is visceral, vivid, and alive in every sense. That night he took me to his bed and fucked me for the first time. There was never any question about me giving him my ass. I was sure the whole thing meant more to me than to him, so once he fell asleep, I didn’t linger. I believed he wanted to wake up to find me gone and pretend it never happened.
Because of my preconceptions—or idiocy, take your pick—I was wholly unprepared for the damn near angelic level of righteous indignation I was confronted with when he found me at my house while I was checking the want ads. He was so angry at me for bailing on him during the night. He was shouting at me, waving his hands about, his face as red and puffy as his eyes, and that told me he’d been crying. From his yelling I got the gist of his disappointment. He thought I had rejected him, and it drove him crazy with desperation.
I lunged at him then, wrestled him onto the living room floor with strong arms and hard kisses, and had my way with him. And that day there’d been no question about him giving his ass to me.
We’d been together ever since. That day had been a wake-up call for me, and I suppose for him in a way too. There was no denying what had happened between us. It just was. Larger than life, bigger than either of us. And over the years, he had proven many times over that who he had been before was lost forever. The new man, the new Ford, loved me and only me.
“Spring season will officially commence with the annual San Fran Flower & Garden Show, so I can finally get those trilliums and fawn lilies to bloom.” Ford was the only man I knew or even heard of who got this excited about the prospect of flowers. “They’re so temperamental. They want to grow out in the wild, but I bet I can get them to obey me. Or at least let me charm them into submission.”
His low chuckle tickled at my skin, and I laughed with him. “We’ll go to your floral marketplace tomorrow, I promise. You’ll spend your monthly budget in the span of five minutes, and then I can finally get that burger—”
“How about sushi?”
“Raw fish? Why are you torturing me?”
“It’ll be good for you.”
“Yeah, ’cause I love to end the day with a little raw food poisoning.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”
“Who are you, saying words like that, and what have you done to the real Ford?”
Ford smiled against my skin before planting a soft, tender kiss on me. “I’ll leave that for you to find out, my masterful private dick.”
“Better than a public dick,” we both said at the exact same time. It was a joke between us. Then we started laughing.
And all the while we lay on the kitchen floor with sticky come all over us.
Journal Entry 15, the Chance Case: Revelations
THE next day I was a man on a mission. I returned to Mo’s mansion up in Sea Cliff. As usual, Parkinson let me in.
“Cecil about?” I asked.
“In his study, Mr. Garrett.” Parkinson took my coat and hung it on a rack by the door. “Anything I can get you, sir?”
“No, thank you, Parkinson. I’m on duty, as it were.” I studied him closely and saw his distinguished features revealing the man he was, right down to his base values. He was the only true gentleman I’d ever known, and I felt like a better man for having met him.
“I’ll be in the kitchen, should you need me.” If he guessed my reflections, he didn’t say. I wondered briefly what would make him tell anyone everything he knew.
I shook myself out of that conundrum since there was another line of feline curiosity ahead of me, and I expected death to follow in its footsteps. I made my familiar trek to the study and found Cecil hard at work at the desk.
He looked up as I entered without knocking. “Mr. Garrett? How wonderful to see you again.” I doubted his sincerity, but perhaps he assumed I had found my killer.
He was right too. “Mr. Chance. I’ve come to see Mo’s bedroom.”
Cecil frowned, bewildered. “What on earth for? The place is dismal, the way he liked it. There’s not much to learn from there.”
I shook my head. “No more lessons. I just want to see it.”
“No more…?” Now he was really confused, and he tilted his head, as if trying to solve a riddle. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean I know who the killer is.”
Cecil stood up slowly, anxious. “Have you spoken to the police?”
“Not yet. I need to see Mo’s bedroom first.”
I looked straight at him, unwaveringly. Cecil pondered for a moment but then seemed to come to a conclusion, and he nodded firmly. “I’ll show you.”
As we walked the winding staircase, the steps silenced by the velvet carpet, I couldn’t help but notice how quiet and still the house was. Nothing stirred or rattled. Whatever sounds might have emerged from the kitchen were muted now by the distance.
We came upon a dark-green door next to the playroom door, on the opposite side of the hallway.
Cecil nodded toward the door. “This is it.” He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. “I won’t be coming in, if you don’t mind.”
“No. I don’t mind at all.” In fact, I preferred it that way. At this point, I was certain we both sensed it coming upon us. The revelation.
The door creaked as I opened it, and I stepped inside.
There was a simple metal cot bed, like an army bunk, pushed against the wall on the left, and a sturdy cherrywood dresser on the right wall, in between the windows blocked by wooden shutters. There was nothing else there. If this was Mo’s bedroom, his life must have been too bleak to think about.
I felt shadows closing in on me from the corners, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up in warning.
Then the door closed behind me, and the lock clicked ominously, but I wasn’t really surprised. I turned toward the door and heard the faint sound of a grandfather clock ticking away in the background and Cecil’s breathing just behind the sturdy oaken door.
“You really are quite clever, Mr. Garrett.” Cecil’s voice was muffled by the wooden barrier. “Perhaps too clever.”
“I noticed you locked the door—from the outside.” I spoke more calmly than I felt because a surprise element could come from the front and from behind. “I saw the scratch marks on the lock on the outside on my way in. There are none on this side. Key scratch marks. Mo didn’t lock this door to keep you or anyone out of here. You locked the door to keep him in here.”
Cecil’s low grunt morphed into a pleased laugh. “He was always screaming. Every time he went into that bedroom. In the middle of the night, I heard him, shouting at the top of his lungs: ‘Monsters! Monsters under the bed!’” Cecil sneered mockingly. “That kid was doomed. He would’ve lost his mind a million times even if I hadn’t… given him a little push.”
“I know. The mescaline was in his evening tea, wasn’t it? Night after night, for who knows how long. You told the police Mo experimented with every science known to man, from theoretical physics to dangerous chemistry. You never said it, but you led the police to believe he had made the batch of mescaline himself and committed suicide. I’m curious, though. Why didn’t you fake a suicide note? I mean you hired goons to attack me, so surely for a man with your abilities….” I left the sentence trail off as I waited for the inevitable.
“Why bother?” Cecil chuckled, cold as ice. “His history of mental instability was well documented. I didn’t have to write anything. I showed the playroom to the police, and they were sold.” His voice came through clearer, suggesting to me he was pressed right against the door. “You really should start carrying a gun, gumshoe. Maybe then you wouldn’t be trapped in there—with all the monsters under the bed.”
It was my turn to laugh, though I admit I wasn’t feeling
as confident as I should have. “Actually, you don’t know how right you are—and how wrong.”
The hairs on the back of my neck tingled as they rose. I felt someone behind me—or more to the point, something. The room overhead was lit, and a massive shadow was cast on the door all around my puny little shadow. Whatever it was, it may have stood on two feet, but it was in no way human.
Monsters under the bed. That was what Mo had screamed into the dead of night, his pleas falling on the deaf ears of a greedy murderer who falsely professed familial love.
I had to keep talking before I lost all nerve.
“What you may not have known, Cecil, is that the monsters Mo spoke of… they’re real. There were, and are, monsters in his room, in the dark, under his bed.”
On the other side of the door, Cecil laughed scornfully. “Well, there must be something about the room, if it made you, too, crazy so quickly.”
A hot breath fanned across the back of my neck, high up, and I was pretty sure I heard a growl. “The only thing you don’t know, Cecil, what you never knew about Mo, was that he knew you. From the very beginning of your deception he knew what kind of man you were, and what you were after. He foresaw his own death at your hands, but he was man enough to face his fate dead on, pardon the pun. In fact, he allowed himself to die so the trail could lead back to you. Not only was he courageous and steadfast, but he gave you time and an opportunity to disprove him—to change his fate. But you never did.”
Silence hung heavy behind the door, and I could feel his bewilderment as though he were standing right in front of me. “What on earth are you on about, Garrett?”
“Why do you think he waited so long before the end game, Cecil?” I pressed my hands flat against the door to stop them from shaking and to steady myself and my voice. I have to hurry. A strange, animalistic, pungent odor wafted my way from behind me, and I shivered. “He gave you every hint in the book. To stop yourself before you sealed your own fate. But now it’s too late.”
“You’re right about that, Garrett. Time for you to die.” With a tone filled with glee, he sounded triumphant at the thought of another’s death. I didn’t know what he had planned by locking me in this room, perhaps an airborne hallucinogen, or starvation, or some kind of deadly contraption, but whatever it was, he wouldn’t soil his own hands.
“But you’re wrong about Mo,” I continued, and heard his heavy breathing behind the wood. “And you’re wrong about why he was crying about monsters in the night. You see, Cecil, all these monsters… they were Mo’s creations. Like toys, like his fate, like his brother—all his design. You told me he was always the genius whose creations brought life and laughter into the world. Did you never stop to think that perhaps he could create… monsters too?”
A stunned silence greeted me, but I knew he was still there. “Y-you’re mad….”
“From the beginning, Mo knew you were after his fortune. He saw your true face behind the mask of deceit you wear. He peered beyond the courteous smile into the real you.” The floorboards creaked as something inched closer to my back, and the looming black form on the wall and the door grew larger, the details clearing. Hair? Fur? Horns? God. “And that real you is the monster, Cecil. The monsters under his bed. They’re all you. The face of the real you. The merciless beast who shows no compassion, who feels nothing for his own flesh and blood, who would butcher the world for fame and fortune.”
I recalled my dream. Monsters from the sea. Only… I had misheard, or misinterpreted. It wasn’t monsters from the sea, but monsters from the C. From Cecil. Cecil’s monster.
“By God, you are insane…,” Cecil murmured, dumbfounded.
“Even giving you so much of his precious time to come clean, Mo knew you never would. In his bedroom at night, with his imagination, he conjured up images of you as you truly are. A human monster. In this room, every night for eight years, he faced the monster that was you. He had more strength than you ever did. You poisoned him with a drug, unwilling to watch him die by your own hand. You are a coward, Cecil, and Mo knew that.”
“Mo knew nothing!” Cecil hissed, his fist banging on the door. “He was just a crazy little boy—and you have joined him in his madness.”
“The monsters were never here for him, Cecil,” I said at last, coming to the end of my tired tirade. “They were always here for you. And Mo dying has unleashed them. He kept control of your inner beasts for years—and then you killed him and removed the last obstacle in their way. The monsters under his bed…. They’re coming for you, Cecil.”
He let out a choked sound of disbelief. “I won’t listen to any more of this—”
“We all have to face our demons at some point. Your time is now.”
With as much control and tranquility as I could muster, I shifted from the door and backed toward the colossal figure behind me until I hit large muscles and what felt like fur. Something sharp stung my scalp, and I didn’t even want to think about the possibility it could be fangs.
I closed my eyes and slid sideways, turning to the wall, facing the solidity of it, waiting as patiently and motionlessly as I could. The thought of turning around and actually seeing what stood there wasn’t even a passing idea in my noggin.
Less than a blink of an eye later, the bellowing began. I shuddered with my shoulders around my ears, scared but in relative control of my instincts to flee. The deep, hollow sound emerged from right behind me, giving me goose bumps all over, the hairs on my nape standing in frightened attention. Flight or fight dominated my thoughts, and I felt my feet trembling. I had to control the urge to run by remembering these beings were not here for me.
Wood cracked and splintered as huge claws began to pound away at the oaken door, and teeth gnawed on it, the snarling loud and real. I heard the hinges buckling with metallic tearing sounds, the door shattering into a million pieces, and from beyond came Cecil’s sharp, shrill screams.
I pressed my eyelids closed so tightly I feared my eyes would pop inside my head.
Heavy clawed feet thudded past my back, several pairs, running now, my neck feeling the breeze of their swift movement past my immobile back. Cecil’s voice faded away.
I assumed he was running to get some distance from Mo’s monsters. Not that it would do him any good. These creatures were the manifestations of Cecil’s darkest impulses and cruelest motives. As long as he lived, they would never stop hunting him.
I heard clatter from furniture breaking apart, windows being smashed, the whole house being turned upside down. I don’t know how many monsters there were, but even one was enough to rid the world of Cecil.
“Hello.”
The boy’s voice startled me, and I jumped back, turning instinctively to the sound of a human voice.
A young boy of maybe twelve or thirteen sat on the bed, his feet not quite touching the ground and swinging playfully. His dark hair was tousled, and his eyes of indefinite color sparkled like stars in the sky. The faint silhouette of gray wings rose behind his back, but I could not trust my eyes.
I smiled, faintly, I believe. “Hi.”
“Do you know me, Sam?” He grinned as he asked me.
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I do.” I looked around the room, sparse and lacking in all homey touches. “U Mr. E Posh.”
He laughed out loud, clapping. “Yes!” Then his expression grew wily. “Do you know what that means?”
I nodded once more. “I read your books. The same books you have in your playroom. And I read everything you wrote in the room. The nicknames, the Greek alphabet.” His eyebrows rose as he waited for me to say it. “You’re Mozart Chance. U Mr. E Posh. Mo. Morpheus. A god of dreams. You, and your brother, Haydn. Not Shy. I always did think your t’s were more like p’s. Nop Shy wouldn’t have sounded the same, though. Hypnos, your brother, also a god of dreams. Or more to the point, a god of sleep.”
Chuckling, he nodded with a thoughtful look on his face, head tilted to the side as though he was studying me—and he probably w
as. “Cecil was right about you. You are clever.”
“Thanks.” I had never been complimented by a god before, so I do believe I blushed. “So, I was right. About the monsters?”
Morpheus shook his finger at me like a scolding schoolmaster, and light glinted off his silver ring, which depicted the poppy flower. “You really did take a big risk coming in here with just a theory and no evidence to back it up.”
I shrugged, though I felt anything but nonchalant. “Sometimes one has to follow a hunch—no matter where it leads. Even if it’s to perdition and doom.” I dipped my gaze as I dared a relieved chuckle. “I’m just glad I was right about your monsters not wanting me to be their supper for the night.”
It wasn’t until heavy footfalls, raspy gnarling, and a weight of unease settled close to me that I realized the house was silent once more—and the monsters had returned from their hunt, standing right behind me. “Should I, uh…?” Turn around, I finished the thought in my head. I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to.
Morpheus shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Probably not the wisest idea you’ve ever had.”
I bowed in compliance. “I suppose so.” I studied the boy-god and went ahead with my story. Well, his story, really. “You poisoned yourself with cadmium in your lab so that the tests would point to the mescaline Cecil used to make you crazy.”
Morpheus nodded. “True.”
“Do drugs even work on you?”
“No. Good catch.”
“Then why did you ask Giulia for Bliss when you don’t do drugs?”
Morpheus giggled. “For your benefit, silly. For the investigator of my death. So that you would learn Giulia’s true nature.”
“Where did you go when you left Giulia’s place?”
He looked pensive and sad. “I went up the hill of Lincoln Boulevard, and waited there in the car. I wanted to give Cecil the benefit of the doubt. Of course, things don’t always work out the way you dream.” He gave a small chuckle at his own joke. “I prepared myself for death. It was a surprisingly calming experience, if you must know. I felt… centered.”
