Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Thirteen: Prey (Part 1)

"Why didn't the police ever check there?" he thought to himself, scrolling back through the video on his phone.

"Didn't they search all the buildings on Tamarama Street?"

"Stupid cops," he muttered and thumbed the button for his email.

It surprised him that Josie had accomplices, he was a such a loner. In fact, Grotty Greg had really never seen BK speak to anyone or hang out with anyone. He seemed lone wolfish, but not in a cool way, in a weirdo-psycho-serial-killer kind of way, like he was making bombs in his bedroom or something. Grotty couldn't imagine Josie convincing anyone to commit a crime with him. But obviously he did.

The new girl was a wild card, he didn't know her at all, and Manhattan, well, she was stuck up, hung out with buff surfer dudes, the kind of guys who wore Speedos. Grotty hated guys who wore Speedos on principal, and also the girls who hung out with them.

"So why were the three of them taking kids?" he wondered.

He didn't know. Couldn't even imagine it. But he knew he had to find out. This was his chance to save the kids, to be noticed for his bravery and smarts. This is the day that would change his life.

Grotty Greg pushed his big thumb into the keyboard and sent the video to everyone on his contacts list, including Angus Louden, all the kids at school and Rhonda Blathers. In no time, they would all be here, at the Organic Food Store, to see him save Trinket and Marty.

Greg Umple looked up and saw that they hadn't closed the side window.

"Perfect," he heard himself say.

It was like the store was inviting him in.

Grotty pulled himself up onto the trash can, and heaved himself through the window. He landed in a bucket of mops, and amid all the crashing and clattering of brooms and dust pans, he missed the window sliding shut, the lock bolting closed.

Not that it mattered. Nothing would stop him from being inside the Organic Food Store. This was the day that was going to change everything in his life.

He just knew it.

&&&&

It was easy to get in the side window. They knew it would be.

But what struck Josie as odd the minute he fell through the window, onto the floor, somewhere to the left of where he landed the last time, on the dead baby skeleton, was the smell.

It wasn't like that before.

It was acrid, sweet, rotting.

Like something was dying. The others, Emerald and Manhattan, with Bacon poking out of the top of her back pack, smelled it too.

Bacon grumbled low, sniffing the air, and Manhattan put a hand gently on his head to comfort him, and then put him on the floor, letting him nose around.

"It's okay, boy."

But they all knew it wasn't. Something had gone terribly wrong in the Organic Food Store.

That's when Josie heard something - the crackling and scurrying of something below him. He looked down, a roach, a big one, stumbled along the pitted wooden floors and tumbled under an old dusty table and then scurried under the door to the cold room.

"Just a roach," he said.

He was used to seeing them under the kitchen sink, behind the washer. Sydney was hot and cockroaches loved the warm climate. They were in every house, and they could fly.