FIVE: Ticker (Part 1)
"Emerald!....Emerald, have you seen my scuba gear?!"
Emerald could hear her dad perfectly from under the covers. She pictured him wiping a swoop of hair off his forehead, only to have it fall right back again over his glasses. His hair was always flopping into his eyes.
Harold trawled through boxes in the living room, over-turning clothes and dishes packed in newspaper. They hadn't quite unpacked, although this was nothing new.
Since Emerald's mom went missing somewhere off the Great Barrier Reef the year before, things at home had been a little disheveled, disjointed, and sad.
Imogen had been a squid researcher. She was from Fiji and Harold was from Vietnam. But they met somewhere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Harold and Imogen boarded the same boat. They were young protesters trying to stop fishermen from shark finning, a practice where the shark's fins are cut off (and used to make shark fin soup), and the still alive sharks are thrown back in the ocean. They die there, unable to swim or feed or defend themselves.
Harold had watched Imogene free a shark before it could be finned and thought she might be the most beautiful and strong woman he had ever seen. That was the moment, he decided he would stop at nothing to make her happy every day of her life.
When Imogene went missing, Emerald and Harold spent every moment searching for her. They often let the dishes pile up in the sink, let the vegetables go rotten in the bowl on the counter, let the mess run up on their house. They just wanted her back.
They missed her in all the big and small ways, every day.
"Emerald, I know you've been out diving....I'm also missing my salinometer, my chemical test kits and my oxygen probes....I know you know where they are!"
Emerald glanced at her closet. She knew where it all was. But she needed to make one more dive in the afternoon. She was sure Bangkok was in the area, feeding on schools of small fish. She was sure if she could take one more dive, she'd find him. And to do one more dive, Emerald was going to need the extra equipment. She needed to observe him, get a better idea of his powers.
Emerald heard her father's footsteps and sunk under the blankets, playing dead.
The door creaked open. Emerald held her breath.
Harold stood there in the mess that was his daughter's room, scouring the debris for any sign of his equipment. Then he walked over and kissed her blanket-covered head.
"I love you," he said it so softly, and with so much meaning, it was like a feather that weighed 1,000 pounds.
Then, he left, closing the door behind him.
He didn't like her talk of sea monsters, and giant killer squid that could live on land. It went against everything he believed in his completely logical, scientific mind.
Harold thought Emerald had gone a little berserk after her mother had gone missing. But that was understandable. He had too, in his own private way.
"There's no monster," he thought, "just global warming, just our pollution killing sea life."
That was why he had moved them to Tamarama, to study the sudden disappearance of small fish along the coast. And mostly, he thought the change would be good for her. Emerald needed a new adventure, one not connected to her mother.
This thing she had with a sea monster named Bangkok was a manifestation of her missing her mother. Howard Phan was sure of it. He did not believe that anything like the Bangkok of her stories was possible.
But he wanted Emerald to be okay, more than anything, knew that Imogen would've supported her, believed her, helped her. His wife was both equal parts scientist and dreamer. So he decided he would support Emerald no matter how crazy it seemed. Whatever Emerald needed to make peace with the loss of her mother, whatever she needed to get through it, he would provide it.
And if what she needed today was his salinometer, well, he'd let her have it.
Howard Phan packed his gear - the parts he could find - and stuck his pack in the backseat of his Jeep. He pulled away from the curb, thinking of his daughter, of his missing wife, his broken and hurting family.
&&&&
"I saw it with my own two eyes," Doris Kippelibby was wearing her fanciest frock, a tent-like number, with matching salmon-color lipstick. She had Moo-Moo tucked under one arm.
"Moo-Moo saw it too....That boy from down the street, Jonesy, his name is, J-O-N-E-S-Y, that's how you spell it....sneaking across the yard, sneaking like he was up to no good."
She talked right into the microphone of Rhonda Blathers, Australia's most well-known investigative journalist, who had gotten down to Tamarama Street as soon as they heard the news on the Twitter. Her cameraman and side-kick, Horace, had a big camera and light trained right on her face.
"Tamarama Street has become a very dangerous place," she said, her mouth turning into a wet, salmon-colored frown.
"Idle minds." Doris Kippelibby said, thumping a fat finger against her temple.
"But did you actually see, um, the alleged perpetrator..." Rhonda Blathers checked her notes, ....um, Josie Brown?"
"Jonesy? Oh yes, saw him running across the lawn."
"Was that his yard or your yard?" Rhonda Blathers pushed her glasses up her nose.
"His yard."
"So you saw him in his own yard?"
"Well, at first it was his own yard but then I saw him slither, like the snake he is, into Gerty's yard...Gerty, that's the victim's mother," she thumped a big fat finger across Rhonda's notebook.
"Did you get that?...slithered like the snake he is..."
"Um yes, thank you, Mrs. Kippel...
"Kippelibby. K-I-Double P-E-L-I-Double B-Y..."
"What time did you see all this, Mrs. Kippelibby?"
"I'd say around 10."
"That isn't terribly late for a boy to be out in the neighborhood...That couldn't have been what made you suspicious?"
Horace and Rhonda glanced at each other, deeply disappointed there wasn't more to her story.
Horace turned off the camera, removing the camera from his shoulder.
"Oh no, that's not all....there's more!"
Horace hoisted the camera back up and turned it on. The spotlight shined on Doris Kippelibby's round, shiny face.
"I heard, from Mrs. Fockerson at the Organic Food Store...you know she told me while we were buying some kiwi they just got in....Well, she said, Jonesy tried to abduct Trinket right out on the street last night. Almost killed her with his malicious teenage-boy-hands."
She said "malicious teenage boy hands" very mischievously.
Rhonda Blathers took notes furiously.
"Attempted abduction last night...." she scribbled, then looked behind her at Horace.
"Look's like we got ourselves a story."
&&&&
They took Josie to the police station.
He had been there for what seemed like hours, with different detectives coming in and out, asking questions, bringing him cups of water, offering him potato chips from the vending machine. Some of the detectives were gruff and short with him, nearly accusing him of taking Trinket, or worse, killing her, or working with someone else to abduct her.
Other detectives were softer, kinder, tried to talk music with him. They seemed to understand that there was probably a logical explanation for all this and they wanted Josie to share it with them.
But he shared nothing.
They all thought he was a child killer. No matter what they said, he could see it in their eyes. And maybe they were right, he wasn't sure at all.
He faced down every detective with small, curt, unhelpful answers, as he tried to search the vaults of his memory. He didn't know what had actually happened to Trinket, although he remembered standing over her, the hunger for her flesh sweeping over him, like a tide pulling him under the ocean.
He had been powerless to all of it. But it was all so murky, the details so far away.
He didn't think he was capable of hurting anyone, ever, but even to him what he remembered seemed damning. He remembered the crush of her blood in his mouth. He remembered feeling invincible.
There was nothing he could say that would be truthful and not make him look clinically insane. So he said little.
Until his parents burst through the door.
&&&&
Phyllis and Portland nearly knocked Josie over hugging him.
"Oh sweetie, sweetie, you poor thing....Officer, what is he doing here?"
"Josie is being held for questioning in the disappearance of Trinket Parsnips," the detective said in a hard, un-yielding voice.
Josie thought he looked like an oak barrel. He had a big chest, suspenders that made it seem even bigger, and a handlebar mustache that sprung out of his face and twitched about like a nervous squirrel.
Josie did not like Detective Angus Loudon at all.
"Our son would never hurt anyone, Detective," Portland said and put his hand on Josie's shoulder in solidarity.
Josie felt a lightness. They would get this straightened out. It would be okay.
"Josie is a good boy, detective. I'm sure this is all a crazy mistake."
"I don't think so, Mrs. Brown," The Barrel said, "Josie hasn't been very forthcoming about why he was found in Trinket's bedroom."
"He was i-i-in Trinket's room?" Phyllis looked like she had been slapped across the face.
"That's correct," said The Barrel, checking his notes, "the room was torn apart, the child missing, your son found on the floor covered in filth and what we think is her blood all over his face."
"B-b-but, there must be some m-m-mistake," Portland was babbling, stuttering, trying to right all this in his mind.
"Josie, t-t-tell him you didn't do it."
Josie looked at his shoes. He wasn't sure he did it, but he also had no idea how to start explaining why he was in the room.
"Your parents are here now, son...tell them why you were in Trinket's room? Did she make you mad? Gerty said she had been crying a lot lately, was she keeping you awake? Maybe things got out of hand when you went in her room to quiet her down...Is that what it was, son? Did you kill her by accident? Did you take the body some place and bury it? Is that why you are covered in filth?"
"Josie, tell them you didn't do this!"
"Or maybe you are working with someone...did you get Trinket out of her room and hand her off to someone? You know, we could go easy on you if you did the dirty work for someone else....what was his name, Josie? Who are you working for?"
Josie kept staring at his shoes.
"You've been wanting to hurt Trinket for awhile now, haven't you, Josie? You've been having nightmares about it...."
Josie jumped a little in his seat. How did they know about the nightmares?
And that's when something happened, something Josie never would've suspected. It was a look between parents, triggered by the word 'nightmares'. The discussion they had with Josie in the kitchen.
Weird things happening.
There's something wrong with me.
Drowning.
Trinket Parsnips passed out in my arms.
A monster is going to take her.
The things he said to them in the kitchen ran through their heads like ticker tape.
Something happened over Josie's head, something he didn't quite see but he felt, like the wind, all of a sudden, changing direction.
His mother let out a small breathless wail.
"No..." and then she sunk onto the floor sobbing.
"Oh no, oh no..." Portland held onto his wife, cradled her while she shook and sobbed.
Josie looked over at them and caught his mother's red, swelling eyes.
There was nothing there, but recrimination.
"Oh my God, what have you done?"
He looked to his father. Portland was looking away, staring at a knot in the wall. He couldn't make eye contact.
"Dad, I didn't...."
His father put up a hand to stop him from talking.
"We'll need a lawyer now," Portland told the police officer, and then lifted his wife from the floor and got on his phone and starting making calls.
"But Dad..."
He wanted to tell them everything, Bangkok, the nightmares, the visions, how he was drawn into the monster's hunger, how he was there when Trinket was taken, all of it. He wanted to let all of it go and hand it to the people closest to him, and ask them for help.
But he knew they would never listen. His parents, the people who brought him into the world, the people who should've loved him the most, believed he was capable of killing a child. He had to stop himself from just dissolving into a little pile of shaved metal pieces, splintered dust on the floor.
His parents didn't know him at all. He was watching his whole world come apart.
Josie Brown knew two things for sure: He would never trust a grown-up again. Ever. And he was sure nothing would ever be the same.