On the way out, John bumped into Herm Bowman, the detective who had bailed on the Maggie Knoll case earlier that morning. John grabbed the passing Bowman by the elbow and said, “Hey, we’re still working this Knoll thing. We’d have already found the girl if I didn’t have to come tend to this bullshit. But I knew if I didn’t show, they’d put out a warrant for my arrest and I know how you guys hate having to get out in the rain. But now, I need your help.”
Bowman shook off John’s hand. “You want sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.”
“Ted didn’t want me talking to the mother, Loretta, but I’m doin’ it anyway. She live in town? What do you know about her?”
“Yeah, in that yellow house next to Taco Bill.” He didn’t misspeak. That’s the name of the restaurant. “But instead of wasting your time, why don’t you just go back home and shoot up with whatever drugs you’re on this week.”
“I will,” said John as he turned toward the door. “But first I have to go do your job.”
Thunder clapped as John tore out of the courthouse parking lot. He flew past the closed drive-thru liquor store, past Curry’s Tire and Body (with its terrifying mascot made of tires standing sentry out front) and Taco Bill—a Taco Bell that was given the order to close by corporate, only to be stubbornly kept open by the owner. He had altered the sign over the entrance (by sawing out an extra “L” from the sign in the parking lot, turning it into an “I” and attaching it with duct tape) and modified the menu to serve a combination of vaguely approximated Taco Bell dishes prepared by his wife, with a full range of hard liquor added to the beverage list. Smoking was allowed, and after 9 P.M. all of the TVs inside were switched to soft-core Cinemax porn. Everyone agreed it was not only an improvement, but was now the best restaurant in town.
Loretta’s house was next door, a run-down 1970s era ranch house with filthy yellow siding that had probably been on there since the Carter administration. No distinct decorations on the outside, probably a rental. John knocked and a tired but handsome thirtysomething woman with mousy brown hair and sad eyes opened the door, clutching closed a bathrobe. She said nothing.
John said, “Ma’am, I’m not going to ask to come in because I’ve already intruded too much just by making you answer your door. But we’re working with your husband on Maggie’s disappearance, as consultants. I have a few questions but if you don’t want to talk, I’ll leave. Just say the word. I’m not the police, but I’m telling you now, they can’t help you. And what’s more, if we can’t find the girl or the man who took her, then I think the cops will turn their eyes toward you and Ted as suspects. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Ted says Maggie was just … gone. Like she just turned into smoke and blew away. Was he telling the truth? He didn’t … do something, to her, did he?”
“No. We have reason to believe it was, well, something else. I know you’ve been through an unthinkable ordeal this morning but I promise you I’m here to help. If you’re worried that I’m armed, let me show you.”
John peeled off his shirt, to show that he had no weapon stashed in his waistband. His naked torso glistened in the rain.
“All right, I’ll give you a few minutes, then I have to get ready for work. Come in.”
Loretta handed John a towel before retreating to the kitchen to make coffee. Hers was another barren home—a place quickly rented after the separation, maybe in hopes it wouldn’t last long.
She came back with the coffee and John said, “Ted says he actually had warning this was about to happen. A strange man, named Nymph, came to the house a week ago, making weird threats. Did he tell you about that?”
“No. But we don’t talk—”
“Did anything like that happen to you?”
“No, Ted asked me the same thing earlier, when he called. Did he tell you about the drawings?”
“The what?”
“He probably wasn’t even listening. Here…”
Loretta shuffled into her bedroom and John followed. She handed him a stack of drawings on dog-eared construction paper. Magic Marker stick figures, flowers, houses, mountains. Fill colors spilling wildly over the lines. No matter who you are or where you’re from, we can all look upon the raw, energetic creations of children and agree that they are very shitty artists.
Loretta said, “Those are all from the last week. We homeschool, I was doing an activity where she was to draw the future. Instead of spaceships and flying cars, she drew this.”
The first drawing featured a crude house shape with a steeple. A cross on the front. So, a church. The next drawing was a crowd of stick figures, but in the background was that church again. The next was a drawing of the family—scribbled strands of yellow around the head of the smallest figure. And there was the church, up on a hill in the background. She’d even drawn a little angel floating in the sky above it, her haphazard scrawls making it look like it had about eight limbs.
John said, “This church? That’s what we’re looking at?”
“The church, and the man without a head.”
John looked back down at the stick figure family portrait. Mommy, Daddy, Maggie with the hair … and next to her, another stick figure, with no circle where the head should be.
“The one with the crowd of people, you’ll find him in there, too. He’s in all of them.”
“Did she ever talk about it? Like maybe it was a dream she had or something?”
“I asked her after the first one, the portrait of us at church. I said, ‘Who’s this guy here without a head?’ and she said, ‘That’s not a guy, it’s a drawing.’” Loretta laughed. “Maggie was like that. I thought she kept including him in the other drawings as a joke, because I had pointed him out. But now … I’ve spent all morning looking back on everything she said and did, picking it apart, trying to find clues. Like in a movie, you know, there’d always be some clue. In real life, nothing makes sense.”
John said, “I’m going to ask you what is going to seem like a very strange question. Was there ever a situation where Maggie acted like she had spoken to you or her father, or otherwise interacted with you, only you have no memory of it? Like she had made up a memory of a conversation or maybe mistook someone else for you? Or Ted, either one?”
All of the color drained from Loretta’s face.
Me
I walked among the shelves in the bookstore’s basement, smelling that old-book scent that would probably mean nothing to future generations. Amy is all about that smell, of old paper and ink and time, pages touched by long-dead hands. I think she just likes that sense of being among ancient knowledge, feeling like the past is something sacred rather than the actions of a bunch of bucket shitters who were even more stupid and superstitious than we are now. To me, it just smells like old sweat and dirt, but it means something to Amy and that’s what matters today. Even though the whole thing is completely pointless since she has access to every book ever written via a device that is never out of arm’s reach.
That reminded me—I brought up my phone and did a quick search for “Joy Park.”
Titties. My screen was full of them.
“Joy Park,” as it turned out, was the name of a very famous, very big-breasted Korean porn star. After the pages (and pages, and pages) of Joy Park titty pics ran out, all I got was a couple of links to a place in Akron, Ohio—just a regular ol’ park with basketball courts and such—and a few more non-porn girls with that name. Nothing related to anything weird, no news articles about missing kids, or occult rituals, or anything else remotely interesting. I tried searching for any mentions whatsoever of people with the last name Nymph and found that wasn’t even a real surname, which I guess shouldn’t have surprised me.