“Oh,” I said, “and I just want to let you know that I’ve completely forgotten your birthday next week, because I’m a man and thus care nothing about your feelings.”
“Oh, okay, thanks for letting me know ahead of time.”
I pulled up to the bookstore, the interior still dark. I realized just now that it wouldn’t open for another twenty minutes—I wasn’t used to being up this early. I grabbed the muddy phone we’d picked up at the ice factory and turned it on, the lock screen asking for the four-digit passcode.
“Hey, do you know how to hack into a phone? Like to get past the lock screen? Did you ever have a class on that?”
“Whose phone is it? Do you know their social security number? Lots of times it’s the last four digits.”
“We found it looking for that little girl. I, uh, would be surprised if this guy has a social security card.”
“Wait, does the phone belong to a guy or is this some kind of weird monster situation?”
“Don’t know. It’s an iPhone, if that helps. What code would an unholy predator of the night have on his phone?”
“I was sick the day they taught that.”
I mindlessly punched in the code for my own phone—6669.
It unlocked.
Why did I know that would work?
I said, “Hey, I think I hacked it.”
The home screen looked normal. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. I tapped on the icon for any stored photos and video and braced myself for the worst.
The first photo was of a plate of breakfast food. Looked like eggs benedict.
I swiped it aside.
I sucked in a breath, and Amy heard it.
“What? What are you seeing?”
The second photo was of a little blond girl, bound and bleeding, her mouth gagged with duct tape. I was going to take a wild guess and say this was Margaret “Maggie” Knoll.
I said, “Not sure.”
I swiped to the next photo. A picture of an orange tabby cat, licking the lens. I swiped again.
The little girl again.
Her limbs were a tangled, red mess.
She had been bound and gagged and then … crushed somehow. Like a giant had forgotten she was in his back pocket before sitting down.
I closed my eyes.
I wondered … at age eight, did she know? Was she aware of what kind of universe she had been born into? Did she have even the faintest hint that this was one of the possible outcomes of her life—that she wouldn’t grow up to be a Disney princess, or marry a handsome man at a fancy wedding, or have kids of her own? That she would wind up terrified and alone, in the dark, as some monster’s plaything? At the end, had she still held out hope that her daddy would come rescue her? Or that the crazy man would soften at the sound of her cries?
Or, in her final moment, had she gotten just a glimpse of just how little of a shit the universe gives about her? Did she have the realization that what she had always thought of as a normal human life was just a tightrope walk over an ocean of unfathomable suffering?
I hoped not.
I said, “Well, shit, Amy.”
Amy said, “What?”
“I think we’ve got photos of the victim here. It’s bad.”
“What is it?”
“Bad. You don’t want to know. We’re too late, let’s put it that way.”
“Oh. Oh, god.”
I swiped the picture. The next photo was of John, walking in the doorway of what looked like a church, holding the T-shirt cannon. I furrowed my brow. He was still in court, right?
Remember, Nymph wanted you to see what you’re seeing. This, too, is part of the game.
I swiped.
John again.
Dead.
Eyes open. A cascade of dried vomit running down the side of his black faux-leather sofa. Drug paraphernalia on the glass coffee table in front of him.
“David?”
I thought, no.
This wasn’t denial, this was math. Even if he’d skipped his court date, John hadn’t had time to get home, change clothes (he wasn’t in his suit, in the photo), get out his stash, and dose himself to death. This was bullshit. All of it. More games.
“Yeah, I … these are fake. There’s pictures of us on here, but they’re, uh, not real.”
“Oh, that’s creepy.”
“Yeah, but that’s good. Means the girl may still be okay. He’s taunting us.”
I swiped.
This one was of John and Amy. She was crying, John was comforting her. They were in my apartment.
Ignore it. It’s nothing.
I swiped again.
Amy, crawling, screaming, a pale blurry shape descending on her from behind.
Seriously, why even bother looking at these?
She asked, “Are there any of me in there?”
“No. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Come straight home! Don’t leave me out of this!”
“You need to get some sleep, you’ve been working all night.”
“There’s a missing girl! David!”
“I love you.”
I hung up and swiped to the next pic. Actually, this one was a video.
I braced myself, and hit play.
It was a shot from the passenger seat of the car I was sitting in, being filmed right now. The cameraman was watching me, watching the phone, in real time.
I turned and looked and—
Someone is there.
No one was there.
I looked back down at the phone and saw that I was holding a filthy, pink plastic toy that was only shaped like a phone, a faded and peeled sticker on the front bearing the likeness of a Disney princess. It had a single plastic button at the bottom, and when I pressed it, it played the theme from the movie. That’s all it did.
I closed my eyes and groaned. It was going to be a long goddamned day.
NOTE ABOUT THE FOLLOWING: The accounts of events that occurred while I was not present—particularly those submitted by John—should not be accepted as wholly or even partially true. They are included here only to help fill in some gaps in the timeline of events, but in retrospect I now feel like they only add to the confusion. For this I apologize.
John
After they returned from the ice factory, John had stood in the Knolls’ driveway, facing Dave and Ted. John’s shirt was soaked through. He peeled it off and flexed, the rain splattering off his muscled chest.
“All right,” growled Dave, rubbing a rough hand over his stubbled jaw. “Less than forty hours, that’s what we’ve got to solve this. I’m gonna go search the archives for what I can find on Joy Park, you go see if you can track down this Nymph bastard. But John—you find him, remember we need him alive.”
John lit a cigarette. “I won’t make any fuckin’ promises.”
Dave ran toward his Saturn, slid across the hood, and landed in the driver’s seat. He revved the engine and squealed out of the yard. John mounted the Jeep and unleashed the tiger under its hood, raindrops raking the windshield as he tore through the early morning gloom. He headed for the courthouse.
At least one piece of luck fell in their favor that morning, thought John: the judge in his public indecency case was Roy Heubbel. John and Dave had just six months prior freed his mansion from an entity that presented itself as a giant spider made of the bloody bones of his deceased wife. That meant he owed them one. Sure enough, the judge told the prosecutor to make a deal and John got off with probation and a promise to, in the judge’s words, “Keep that anaconda caged. There are kids around, and you don’t need to go setting them up with false expectations.”