Nero
I have them drop me off at the entrance to the trailer park. Todd smiles, a wistful, soft half smile that doesn't know pain but is well acquainted with fear. I wave to him a bit, then walk away. The car pulls away after a moment. His brother in law, he said. I've seen men like that before, they come through, but they don't stay. They like to ask where parts of the woods are, that nobody goes. I don't pretend to know why. I know there are mysteries I don't care to solve. I have enough of my own. More than, in fact. But in a world where I know humans are some of the safer creatures out there, there are even some humans I balk at. Emmy taught me when I was small. I would sit in a booth while she waited tables, and she'd quietly whisper to me, see there, table 7? He's up to no good. He's a bad man. I'd ask her how she knew. She'd shrug, say that we don't always need reasons for things to be true. I figured she was right.
I listen to the quiet crunch of gravel and leaves under my feet. It's a warm night. Yet Todd Blaine was freezing.
I knock, three times, then two raps, at the trailer door. Emmy opens it quickly, a sweatshirt wrapped around her shoulders.
"Well?" She asks, quietly, as I come in. We bolt the door, then drive the brick in front of it.
I heard it again I sign, going to the map we have on the wall. I place a tack along route 7, and draw another red thread.
"I don't like you doin' this," she says.
I was right though. It's not looking for me I smile.
"What do you mean?"
And I think I found who it is looking for I sign, before picking up a piece of paper. On it I write, 'Todd Blaine'.
"Who's that?"
Someone who got taken, along with his family, here, I put another tack in the map.
"What did it take from him?" Emmy asks, walking over. She's still in her Jack Daniels ripped tank top from the bar, and she smells like bad whiskey and cigarettes. I lean against her instinctively and she wraps an arm around my shoulders.
We don't know. I take out my phone and google the case. I find it in a matter of minutes.
"It got his mom and his cousin," she reads, as I hand her the phone, "Right when it got you—why didn't they link this?"
They weren't looking for that. It was later, they were pulled out of the car I sign.
"He got away then?" Emmy asks, frowning, then looking back at the board, "What did he say?"
He doesn't remember. He thinks maybe it took his memories. I don't think that. I heard it twice tonight, once on the road, before he came. Then again at a diner, where we stopped. The whole place shook, I heard it, nobody else did though, they thought it was an earthquake. It wasn't. It was coming after him I tell her, fixing some string on our board. Every single abduction, all mapped out. So far Blaise and I are the only ones we knew of that lived. Now we have Todd to add to it.
"So it wasn't finished with him?" Emmy says, folding her arms, "Why? It got interrupted? Now it wants him again? I mean why isn't it succeeding, then?"
I don't have any answers, but I like the questions we're finding, wouldn't you say? I smile a little.
"Yeah, yeah, it's more than we've had in months, and nobody else had to die for it."
Yet
"True. Okay, yeah, are you gonna talk to him again?" She asks.
I think so. I hope so. I told him about me, he was interested in finding out what happened because they never recovered the other's bodies. Unrelated to the mystery that will probably lead to all of our deaths, but important to me while I still have my life, he was handsome I grin.
"Shut up," she tugs my sleeves, "You're not allowed to date people you find along the side of the highway while you're looking for a monster. That's a new rule."
Shut up, he was nice as well. He said he'd help, and he gets to help while being pretty, that's a rule I laugh but of course silently, always silent.
"I better get to meet him," she says, "You gonna meet Blaise tomorrow and tell her?"
Yeah probably, I'll try to get him to come. He seemed to lack the proper adult supervision that generally hinders monster hunting I grin but tug my arms away to talk. She was never holding me that tightly.
"Okay, let's get this thing labeled and get to bed, huh?" Emmy asks, going back to our board, "We both have early shifts."
You should go to bed, I'll finish this, I know she's been at work all night. She probably only got home an hour or so before I did.
"I'm fine," she says, messing up my curls, smiling now, "We've got this. We don't got this. But."
But someday we'll know a truth that probably isn't worth knowing?
"Yeah. But it deserves to be found."