by Devon Monk
Then Ryder had gone out of state for six years of college, and I figured all those years of me finagling to get them together were wasted.
But he’d come home almost two years ago now.
And look at them: in love.
Hatter snapped his fingers. “Jean?” he said in that Texas accent that I thought he just put on so people would buy his long-and-lanky, easy-going cowboy vibe. “I think we broke her.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “Like anything about this job can break me. What is it, what do I have to do?”
“You do know what day today is?” Hatter asked.
“September thirtieth?”
Shoe snorted a laugh, which was all the laugh that man could make. Shoe had been Hatter’s partner when they’d been on the force up in Tillamook before we’d stolen them for the force here. He was Hatter’s opposite in just about every way. Short, wide, reticent, suspicious, and seemingly humorless. Seemingly, but not actually without humor. Get a few drinks into that man, and he was a hoot.
“Try again,” Hatter suggested. He waggled his eyebrows and bit down on a juicy grin.
“It’s the first,” Delaney said, totally squashing his fun. “October first, Jean. Tonight, when the sun goes down in three hours, you’ll need to be ready.”
I heard her, but the only words that registered were the date. October first. Already? Yes, of course, already. I’d just been admiring the autumn leaves and reminiscing about Halloween.
How had I forgotten the horror we had to deal with every October?
“Jean?” Delaney said.
Hatter snapped his fingers again.
I glanced up at him. At her. At all of them. Felt the fear crawl over my skin with prickly feet. “The gnomes.”
It came out as a rough whisper.
Shoe snorted again.
“We hear it’s a problem,” Hatter drawled. “You folks have to deal with them every October? That right?”
I tried to talk, but my throat was too dry. So I swallowed and tried again. “It’s more than that.”
“It will be fine,” Delaney said. “I did it the year before last. No big deal.”
“If you call that slimy disaster no big deal,” I said.
“You’re being dramatic.”
“We were scrubbing pixie puke off the highway for weeks.”
“Pixie puke?” Ryder asked.
Yes, he’d lived in Ordinary all his life, but he’d only recently found out about the secrets it held. He always jumped in and asked questions whenever we mentioned a new kind of creature that he didn’t know lived here.
Delaney had made us swear not to clue him in to any of the supernaturals because she liked to make him figure it out on his own.
Frankly, I thought she used that knowledge in exchange for kinky sex or something.
“The papers said it was a hag fish spill,” Myra supplied.
Ryder frowned. “So pixies look like snot eels?”
“Not at all,” Delaney said. “But when gnomes make an entire swarm of pixies puke, it gets pretty slimy. All over the highway. All over half a dozen unfortunate cars. Smells like rotten fish. And takes days to clean up.” At the look on his face, she smiled. “Aren’t you glad you know that little factoid, Mr. Bailey?”
“Uh, not really.”
“Like I said,” I said, “disaster. And before you say anything,” I jabbed a finger toward Myra, “I have two words for the job you did with this last year: chocolate toilets.”
Myra had the good grace to wince. “We took care of it.”
Was she blushing? I hoped she was blushing.
“We replaced every public toilet in Ordinary, including the heads in half the boats docked in the bay. If I never see another stanky wax ring, flange, or flapper in my life, it will be too soon.”
“Good band name,” Hatter noted.
“Flange and Flapper?”
“Stanky Wax Ring.”
I grinned at him. There was a reason he and I got along like sinner and sinnest.
“Are you done?” Now that was Delaney’s boss voice.
“With?”
“Stalling to try to get out of this? I’m sending Hatter out with you.”
“I can do it alone.”
“You won’t because I said you won’t. I expect you to update me as soon as you make contact.”
“Contact?” Hatter pulled a stick of gum out of his pocket and tossed it in his mouth, breath-freshening like an interviewee in suck-up mode.
“The head gnome,” I grumbled. I stormed over to the little table in the hall that held the coffee pot and usually a few snacks. Nothing but dregs and crumbs. “I expect a fresh pot of this when I get back.” I lifted the coffee pot. Shook it.
Four sets of fingers zeroed in on noses.
“Oh, for real?”
Delaney chuckled. “I’ll make coffee before I end my shift. Call as soon as you find the leader.”
And because she was my big sister, and because she sounded genuinely concerned, and because I knew just how dangerous this assignment could be, I nodded.
“Where have we last seen headless Abner?” I asked.
“Myra?” Delaney asked.
Myra shook her head and sat at her desk. She tapped a screen there. “Last we saw him, he was on the corner of Ebb and 4th.”
“By the old fire hall?” I asked.
“That was last March. I drove by yesterday and didn’t see him.”
Of course she had. Myra was thorough like that. Responsible. Got things done in the proper order of doing them. Despite the milk chocolate toilet debacle.
“We’ll start there.” I grabbed my coat.
“What do they look like?” Ryder asked all casual, like he wasn’t chomping at the bit to find out a little more about Ordinary’s more unusual citizens.
“Gnomes? They look like gnomes,” I said.
“So....red hats?” he ventured.
“You’ve seen gnomes, Ryder.”
“All right,” he said in a go-on tone.
I just grinned. “Maybe if you do something kinky for Delaney, she’ll tell you all about it.”
Delaney sighed and covered her face with one hand. Ryder let out a surprised laugh, but that look in his eyes as he watched her reaction was all lust and love.
“Maybe I will,” he said quietly.
I gave him two thumbs up.
What could I say? I was a romantic at heart.
Chapter Three
Hatter and I drove past the old fire hall, which was a box of a building barely big enough to hold two parked cars and a can opener. The parking lot of a restaurant with mural of a disappointed crab stretched out east of the little fire hall. Short brown grass cut a small swath on the west side by the fire hydrant.
The building wore an indifferent coat of yellow paint, and the glass garage doors took up the whole face of it. There was a sign on the door saying the meeting had been moved to the community center. The sign was faded. I didn’t think this old place had been used in years.
A perfect spot for headless Abner.
“You gonna let me in on this?” Hatter asked like he was wondering if I wanted to split an order of fries. And if he’d actually asked that I would have told him no, because, hello: fries are not for sharing. But this was about gnomes and gnomes were an all-hands-on-deck problem.
“I sometimes forget that you don’t know everything about Ordinary.”
“Does anyone?”
I shrugged and decided to drive around the block one more time just to make sure I had covered the hall from all angles. Gnomes were tricky.
Hatter fiddled with the vent. “I’ve done a fair share of pitching in when your father asked, but it wasn’t all that often. He liked to play things pretty close to the vest about this town.”
“He had a protective streak a mile wide. Delaney inherited it.”
“Pretty sure all his daughters inherited it.”
“Fair.”
“So, gnomes?”
I sig
hed. “I don’t know how it happened. Some people say it was a drunk witch. Others say it was a curse-happy harpy. I’ve even heard whispers that the local Jinn did it as a revenge-wish fulfillment. But whoever or whatever did it, we have to spend every day of October mopping up after that mess.”
“Still don’t know what mess we should be mopping. Gonna stop talking in circles any time soon, or should I pay for an extra ride?”
I gave him a short smile. “That wish, hex, spell, whatever, fell on all the gnomes in the town.”
He frowned.
“The garden gnomes. The statues people put out in their yards and think are cute? Those gnomes.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “I thought we were talking living breathing sorts of people.”
“We are. For the thirty-one days of October, the garden gnomes come alive. They are living, they are breathing, and they are pissed off little buggers.”
He laughed. It was a squeaky, hissy sound that I liked. Hatter was fun to be around. He had a way of making things seem like they weren’t as bad as one might think, and that there was room for a little fun shoved between all the responsibilities of this job.
“So we should be looking for something on the move?”
“Not until sunset.”
“They only come alive at night? That’s not creepy.”
“Some of them are okay, I guess, or at least not creepy, really. But angry? Oh, yeah.”
“What do they have to be angry about?”
“Spending eleven months out of the year frozen as stone? Hating that they have to wear the same dumb hats every day of their lives? Or, oh, here’s a good one. That time they found out a gnome statue got the job for that travel commercial. A gnome statue that wasn’t from Ordinary.”
“Didn’t go over well?”
“Ca-frickin’-lamity. We had to round them up into one of the storage units, and then red hat our way in to calm them down.”
“Red hat?”
“It’s a gnome thing. If you put on a red hat, preferably pointed, they’ll think you’re one of them.”
“Even though I would, presumably, be taller than a garden gnome?”
“Yep.”
“And human, and alive, and a cop?”
“It’s like bats seeing with their ears. If a gnome sees a red hat, you’re a gnome.”
He grinned and snapped his gum. “I do not know why I didn’t ask to be transferred to this town years ago. You have all the fun.”
I gave him my evil laugh. “Oh, we’ll see if you still think that when you’re done with gnome duty, buddy.”
“Bring it on, Jee-jee.”
I flipped him a finger and scowled at the nickname even though I sort of liked it.
“We need to go on foot.” I pulled into the parking lot next to the old fire hall.
“Statue, right?”
“Yep.”
“Is there a reason you call him headless Abner?”
“He has no head, Hatter.”
“Doesn’t that make it difficult during negotiations?”
“He’s good at charades.”
“You’re serious.”
“As a....” I patted my chest and made my fingers into claws.
“Serious as an angry monkey? Mad monkey? Monkey Jean? Monkey in jeans?”
“Monkey? How did you get monkey out of this?” I repeated the motions. “Heart attack. It’s heart attack. I’m as serious as a heart attack. You suck at charades. You are not allowed to handle the negotiations with Abner.”
“All right then. I’ll...” he pointed at his eyes, then tipped his fingers down and made scissoring motions, “follow your lead.”
We started off toward the hall. As the dark of evening thickened into night, the chill of winter pinched goose bumps from my skin. I zipped my jacket and scanned the tall grass. It was possible someone had finally gotten rid of headless Abner. It was possible he’d been taken to the dump. I shuddered a little. Most gnomes that were thrown away stayed inert during October. But there were...rumors. Reports we’d never been able to verify.
“Your face,” Hatter said, as we rounded the corner to the back of the hall. “What are you thinking about?”
“Zombie gnomes.”
He stilled, then his smile swept up wide. “Just adding ‘zombie’ on the front of a thing doesn’t make it more frightening, you know. Watch: Zombie potato. Zombie turtles. Zombie accordion.”
“Sure, you talk big now. See how hard you’re laughing when a zombie gnome is eating your brains.”
“Will it even know I’m edible if I’m not wearing a red hat?”
“Ha. Ha.”
We’d finished the perimeter of the building and I paused, hands on my hips, scanning the damp grassy stretches farther down the road. It was getting too dark to see much without flashlights.
“Should I secure zombie-killing bullets? Or is this a hammer-and-chisel-to-the-heart kind of operation?”
“Look, smartass. We don’t even know that there are zombie gnomes. I’ve never seen it, and neither has Myra or Delaney.”
“So what you’re saying is there is no danger.”
“What I’m saying is, if there are zombie gnomes, and we have heard rumors that say it’s possible, then we have no idea how to restrain or kill them. So laugh about that, why don’t you.”
And the jerk did.
Chapter Four
Turned out headless Abner was a no-show. He wasn’t in any of his typical haunts. He used to belong to a rental on Ebb Street, but it looked like the new rental agency had finally done away with him.
“So what’s the next move?” Hatter asked.
It was super dark now, and we were parked on the corner of Anchor. Mr. Denver lived there along with his wife. Mr. Denver was a retired music teacher with hearing damage, and Mrs. Denver slept with a jet engine she insisted was a white noise machine. She also collected yard art. A lot of yard art.
Including a boatload of gnomes.
The little buggers were hiding in the bushes, stacked up the edges of the front steps, hanging on swings from the porch rafters.
A quick count gave me thirty of various sizes and accouterments. Some with shovels, some with buckets, some with lanterns, flowers, bunnies, mushrooms, and one with a gun.
I was keeping an eye on the one with the gun.
“We wait for them to wake up.”
“Sun’s down,” he noted.
“Yep.” I took a drink of my soda, didn’t look away from the yard. “Any minute now.”
“There some kind of strategy to this?”
I saw a branch rustle, grass wave. This was it. “Think like a gnome.”
I pushed out of the truck and strode to the yard knowing there was no way Mr. and Mrs. Denver would hear us.
It was important to pick out the leader of the group. Not easy since they all looked pretty much the same. All the boy gnomes had beards, all the girl gnomes had braids.
“We going to see anything else come alive?” Hatter whispered as we came up on one side of the big rhododendron bush at the edge of the property. “Flamingos? That bear statue over there?” He waved toward the garage.
“Just gnomes.”
I didn’t know if there was a time-release on the spell, hex, whatever it was, but one minute they were statues, maybe a random shift or blink here or there, and then they were all alive.
I stepped out from behind the bush. “Is headless Abner still one of you?”
Three dozen gnomey heads turned. Three dozen sets of gnomey eyes looked up at me, lingered on my badge, then looked away.
Well, they all looked away except for one gnome. She was vintage, chubby, with happy round features and two long blonde braids falling from beneath her hat. She wore a long dress and a scowl.
“Gnice to see you, Officer Reed.” She said in passable English, though there was a bit of an accent–nothing I’d heard from any creature except a gnome. I didn’t know what it was, but it always caught at my ear, as if there
was a silent letter in there somewhere I should be noticing. “Who’s the gnew partner?”
“This is Officer Hatter. He’ll be your secondary contact for the month.”
She was still scowling, but wasn’t looking at us anymore. Gnomes had short attention spans. Sometimes that worked to our advantage.
“Why are my apples purple?” She shook the basket hanging from the crook of her arm as if that would do something useful. The little stone apples clacked like a fistful of marbles. “Why are all my apples purple?”
This was bad. Gnomes were creatures of habit. If one found out someone had updated their paint colors with a little bit of whimsy, it did not go over well.
“They’re plums,” I said.
She glanced up at me, then back at her basket. “Plums?”
“Plums.”
“Oh,” she said with a quick smile. “How invigorating. Plums.” She stood a little taller, tipped the knob of her chin upward. “I wouldn’t suppose any of the other gnomes have plums in their baskets, do they?”
I had no idea.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “You’re quite the trendsetter. So, about headless Abner. Have you seen him?”
“Why would you think I had?”
“You’re in the most heavily populated gnome yard in town. I just thought someone would have brought him this way.”
“He’s gnot at the hall?”
“No.”
She turned around, a shuffling, rocking motion as if her legs were made out of flat-bottomed ice cream cones.
She made a show of looking at the gnomes who had all crowded up to stand behind her.
“He’s gnot here,” she said, as if just noticing.
“Right. Do you know where he is?”
“Gno?”
I waited.
She shuffle-rocked back around to face me. “He’s gone.”
“Gone, gone, gone,” the gnomes whisper-chanted behind her.
Great. They’d gone from unalive to culty in ten seconds flat.
“We are without a leader.”
“Leader, leader, leader.”
“A gnew leader must be chosen!”
“Gnew, Gnew, Gnew!”
“Only the most worthy shall lead us. The most trendsetting.” She reached into her basket and grasped a plum, then held it up over her head as if it were a torch. “She who holds the plums of prophecy!”
