Haunting Me, Haunting You

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 13: Haunting Me, Haunting You

The laughter seemed to be coming from everywhere in the house, not just the kitchen. A little girl’s voice, echoy. It sent a shiver skittering down my back because I heard the voice even more distinctly this time and couldn’t deny who it belonged to.

I remember a time before my parents died when Patricia and I had wandered into the woods behind our home. Actually, not so much wandered, because Pat led me there. She was always doing stuff like that, mostly because my mother and father or some teacher told her not to. Like I told Sturdevant, Pat was the rebellious one (though if she knew what I did for a living she sure get a laugh out of it. Shy little Chloe, pulling out her goods for a bunch of slobbering men. Maybe she would even be a little shocked and even as a kid that didn’t happen to Pat very often. I almost let out a laugh myself, but at the moment I felt too haunted to appreciate the irony in it.)

Anyway, we spent about an hour in the woods going absolutely nowhere—Pat said she had a secret destination in mind and I would love it, but even at seven it didn’t take me long to figure out she was full of crap and just wanted to go exploring because she’d been told not to leave the yard. And she wanted me along as a partner in crime for when we caught, which we always did, and nine times out of ten I took the fall for it. My own fault, I s’pose; I should have known better, since she was always doing it to me.

You can probably see where this is going. We got lost. Pat was real good at getting us into trouble but when it came to getting us out…not so much. Well, maybe I should say she was good at getting herself out of trouble and leaving my ass in it.

An old guy who lived a few streets over happened to be in the woods at a stream, fishing. He found us and brought us back to my parents, whom he knew from a couple town hall meetings my father had gone to. We tried to get him just to let us off at the top of my street, but he, being the good Samaritan, insisted on bringing us to our doorstep. Of course we couldn’t tell Mr. Good Samaritan he had just assured us of being grounded for God knew how long and possibly a decent spanking.

I got the spanking. Pat somehow managed to screw her way out of it and make my dad believe it was all my big idea to go into the woods and that I had dragged her along. To this day I don’t know how she got away with some of that crap. Not only wasn’t I smart enough not to keep being led astray, but my folks weren’t bright enough to figure out she was playing them. That’s what I thought at the time, anyway. Now, I just have to wonder whether they weren’t being harder on me because they thought I was the responsible one. I’m pretty sure they’d be spinning in their graves if they knew I took my clothes off for money.

Yes, I feel guilty about that sometimes, in case you’re wondering, but that’s something I’ll write about some other time. There are too many things I feel guilty about to get into them now; it would take too long.

Anyway, the point of my story is after I got punished I told Pat, who got away with only a couple days grounding, and she’d laughed that same laugh I was hearing now. That fluttery annoying little chuckle she gave me when she knew I was pissed at her because she’d managed to lay all the blame at my doorstep again. I think there was a little bit of guilt mixed in it, but with Pat it was hard to tell.

Sometimes I wondered why I missed her tormenting me so much. It was so unfunny at the time I constantly wished I was an only child. Now, I miss every stupid joke she never got to play on me and every spanking I didn’t get because I she and my parents weren’t in my life.

The laugh came again, jerking me out of my thoughts, and I shivered.

“Pat?” I said in a much weaker voice than I wanted. “Pat is that you?”

The laugh grew stronger, crescendoing, then falling. I wrapped my arms about myself, telling myself again it could not be her, that she would no longer be a child. She would be my age, thirty-six, thank you very much John Sturdevant.

The laugh had seemed louder from the direction of the living room this time. I peered at the doorway leading to that room, thinking about that idiot horror movie girl with the psycho killer in the house again and wondering if I wasn’t still that little girl who had followed her harebrained sister into the woods.

If you think I went toward the living room anyway…well, you’re right. I did and I knew better, but trouble seems to have become—maybe it always was—my new profession.

Arly’s living room looked kinda eerie or maybe it was just the ghostly voice weighing on my perception and mood. Sunlight sliced in dusty arcs through the partially opened blinds, falling in dagger patterns over the old cedar chest beneath the window and across the carpet. Otherwise the room was quaint, with a couch, large screen TV, end table, old brick fireplace against one wall and not a hell of a lot else. Arly wasn’t big on clutter, unlike me, who liked the comfort of “stuff.”

I stood there a moment, feeling…what? I guess the only way to describe it was the feeling you got as a kid when you had fallen half asleep in a darkened bedroom and you felt something from the closet slinking out and pulling on your blanket-covered toes. Whatever it was made your insides get all warm and squishy and made you want to pee the bed the moment you felt those blankets being tugged down along your body.

Then you’d wake up, of course, and everything would be ok because you’d realize it had only been one of those weird waking-dreams. I had that same feeling now, but the problem was I wasn’t in one of those waking-dreams and whatever was coming out of the closet was somehow, weirdly, real.

It sounds stupid. All right, I know that. But a lot of things sound that way since the Sisters of the Snake and stupid usually translates into someone getting hurt or killed because stupid isn’t stupid, it’s deadly. I know I am not making a lot of sense, but something just dawned on me and changed that slithery closet feeling to another: dread. Because if that voice did belong to Pat, and was a little girl’s voice, that meant that Pat…

Was dead. She had died as a child and now I would never have my sister back.

No, it’s not her I told myself because I felt tears coming.

“It’s not you!” I yelled. I think I was yelling to convince myself and chase away the horrible feeling in my gut.

Chloe….(Chloe…Chloe…Chloe…)

“No…” I whispered, hearing Pat’s voice come with another burst of laughter. This time there was a distant quality to it, like in the phone call I’d gotten during the storm.

Chloe…ring…ring-a-ring…of roses…

I froze, wanting desperately to be asleep, having a nightmare. I wasn’t asleep. But I was in a nightmare.

“No, you can’t be Pat! Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

A snap came from behind me and I let out a startled sound. I forced myself to turn, knowing I wasn’t going to like what I was going to see…

Part 12: Beware of Monkeys Bearing Gifts

Where in the world is Arlo Grimm Part 12: Beware of Monkeys Bearing Gifts

After pulling the object out of my backpack I handed it to Sturdevant. He took it like I had just handed him something I’d pulled out of a medical waste bag, then relaxed after peering at it for a moment. His emotional sigh was almost audible.

“Looks old…” He turned it over in his hand.

“It is. Six-hundred years, I think. My parents told me they bought it at an antique shop in France.”

He nodded, nothing dawning on him yet, but I knew it would. He was too good a detective for it not to. “Silver?”

“I think so. Or pewter, maybe. It’s pretty tarnished.” I glanced at the silver locket he held in his open palm, a heart rimmed with deep blue stones within raised fleurs-de-lis. “I think the stones are sapphires, but I’m only an expert where large diamonds are concerned.” I winked at him as he glanced up at me, but he wasn’t in the mood for humor and, really, neither was I. I could still hear that child’s laugh in my head and see that monkey on my patio.

“This symbol…” He ran his index finger over the top of the locket. “It looks Chinese, maybe, or Middle Eastern.”

I shrugged. “Mom and Dad never mentioned anything about what it could be when they bought it for my sister. I think they just thought it was pretty. They got me an antique doll. I used to collect them.”

A memory came back to me and with it deep sadness welled in my heart. When Patricia and I were sent to the home we weren’t allowed to bring much more than the clothes on our back. What happened to my doll collection, I never knew. I suddenly missed it, despite the dread in my stomach the locket in Sturdevant’s hand dredged up.

Why did the locket bring me dread? I think I was going to have to tell Sturdevant that now because a look flashed across his face. It wasn’t a pleasant look; it was one that said, “Oh, crap, I just realized something bad”.

“Wait a minute,” he said, confirming the look. “Where’d you say you got this?”

I tried a smile but I’m pretty sure it came out constipated. “The monkey gave it to me.”

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “The monkey you found on your patio…the one you let into your apartment and the one you now think is a bunch of Cheetah bones in that box?”

“Yeah, that one, Curious Skullface.”

I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. “But you just said your parents bought this for your sister in a shop in France.”

“And you didn’t even need to write it in your notebook to remember it.” My sarcasm was wasted, but I’m not surprised. He had just renewed his membership in the there’s-something-disturbing-going-on club.

“Oh, cripes.” He started chewing his Juicy Fruit a hell of a lot faster, remaining silent for what seemed like an hour but was probably only a half a minute.

“It gets worse.” I said when he didn’t speak.

“I imagine it does.” He paused, sighed, looked at the locket. “So you’re telling me your parents bought this for your sister in France, what, how many years ago?”

“When we were six. My father took the whole family with him on a business trip.”

“When you were six…and that was how long ago?” He was trying to be funny to alleviate his own dread, I think, but it fell flat.

“If I told you that you’d know my age.” I winked again, but the tension remained think. “I think how long doesn’t really matter so much, anyway.“

His face washed a bit paler. “No, what matters is the monkey gave it to you. How in the hell would he have gotten it?”

I saw him glance at the closed box on the table. I knew he was thinking about the bones and trying to reconcile them with the live monkey passing out antique lockets. I wish I had an answer that might ease his mind, but I was fresh out of reality bites.

“The last time I saw it was when they took Patricia away from the home. She was wearing it.”

“You’re right, this is getting worse.”

I ducked my chin at the locket. “Open it.”

His look said he didn’t want to, that he already had more than enough to ruin a good night of sleep, but he pried at the edges anyway, opening the locket.

Each interior side held a picture of a little girl.

“One of these your sister?”

I nodded. “The one on the left side is. The other is me. Hard to tell us apart looks-wise, but our personalities were a lot different.”

“How so?”

A fragile smile drifted across my lips. “Pat was a lot more temperamental than I was. She was always kinda getting into things, being more rebellious.”

He chuckled. “Says the woman who dances naked for a living.”

“I came into my rebellion stage later on. Pat just seemed born with it.”

He snapped the locket shut. “That still leaves the question of how it got from a child to a monkey some…how many years later?”

“Thirty,” I said without thinking.

“And why he brought to you…”

“Then ended up as bones in a box,” I added.

He clearly didn’t care for that last part. “That’s not possible, Chlo.”

“Was Angelique Ficatier?”

He groaned. I had him there. Three-hundred-year-old witches running around trying to raise demons weren’t really the stuff of reality either, yet it had happened.

He ignored the remark. “There’s a woman at the New Salem Museum of Natural History—“

“Genie Lansing.”

He frowned. “Yeah, that’s her name. She gave Arlo the Inquisition sword to use against Ficatier. She might know what this symbol means.” He ran his finger over the top of the locket again. “And she might know some of the history behind the piece. She seems versed on things French.”

“And things supernatural.”

“That, too. Worth asking her, anyway, though I don’t know what it might have to do with Arlo’s disappearance or how a monkey got your sister’s jewelry.”

“There’s something else about that symbol…”

He let out another one of those long sighs that said he didn’t like what was coming. “I’ve stopped being surprised…I think.”

“That symbol on the locket appeared on my caller ID the night the monkey gave me the locket.”

“I take it back, I’m still capable of being surprised, and not in a good way.” He fiddled with the locket, not looking eager to hear the details.

“The power was out. My ID shouldn’t have been working. But the symbol kept flashing across its screen.”

“And the phone, was it ringing at the time?”

His tone told me he already knew I was going to say something he wasn’t going to like. “I heard something on the other end, a little girl’s voice singing a child’s game. The voice was distorted, like it was coming from a distance or filtered or something, but I swear it was my sister.”

“But your sister wouldn’t be a child now.” That was the practical detective side of him in denial again.

“No, she’d be the same age as me.”

“So it couldn’t have been her.”

“The ID box couldn’t have been working and old monkey bones from a live Curious Skullface couldn’t be in that box, either.”

He didn’t say anything for another minute, likely because there as nothing to say. When he finally spoke, his voice carried little conviction. “All the more reason to check with Lansing on that symbol.”

“Arlo said she’s a bit peculiar.”

He nodded. “That she is. Call her first and set up an appointment. Be punctual; she’s anal as hell, Arlo told me.” He handed me back the locket. I tucked it back into my backpack.

“I’ll try her. Honestly, mostly because I have no idea what else to do.”

His expression turned as serious as any I had ever seen on him. “I’ve been on the force a lot of years, Chlo, and frankly I have no idea where to look next, either.” He grabbed the box of monkey bones from the table. “I’ll take these to the lab for all the good it will do and keep trying to find out where Arlo last went, who he might have seen, but right now…”

I nodded, my head heavy, then stared at the linoleum floor. “I know, John…” My voice came out almost a whisper. “Believe me, I know.” I looked up at him. “I’m trying to stay optimistic, trying to tell myself there’s some reasonable explanation Arly left without saying anything to me, but…”

“But monkey bones and missing lockets showing up don’t do a damn bit of good for your confidence...”

“No, they don’t.”

He nodded, an expression like a pallbearer’s on his face, then turned and went to the door. He paused, after opening it, hand on the handle. “Thirty-six,” he said.

“What?”

“Your age. Thirty-six.” He smiled.

“Don’t you have criminals to go beat with a hose or something?” I was a little irritated with myself because I realized he had taken advantage of my state of mind to trick me into giving out my age. I don’t know why that even bothered me, other than maybe I subconsciously worried more people would point out the difference in ages between me and Arly if they knew an exact number.

“In New Salem?” he said, grinning. “We use stakes and wooden mallets for that.” He chuckled and closed the door behind him.

I didn’t stay annoyed with myself for long, because the moment after he left the child’s laughter started again…

Friends Don't Let Friends Play with Monkeys

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 11: Friends Don't Let Friends Play with Monkeys

“I saw the monkey.”

“What monkey?” He almost winced. He knew what was coming.

I ducked my chin at the box. “The one in that box.”

He looked at me with that stupid expression again. “The one in this box?”

I think his voice went up an octave but I was uttering this nervous little chuckle myself to cover the fact that what I had just said sounded incredibly crazy and incredibly impossible.

I nodded. “That one in that box.”

“But these are just bones, Chlo. And they look old, way too old to have been from something alive recently.”

We both knew that statement was pretty ridiculous in light of what had happened a short time ago with that zombie that almost killed me.

“It’s the same monkey, the one I saw in my apartment last night.”

“What?” Now I was sure his voice had jumped an octave. “Last night?” Not only was fear and puzzlement on his face, but an unspoken “Are you crazy?” hung at the end of his words.

I bit my lower lip, looked at the floor, sighed, looked back up. “I couldn’t sleep. I was down on the couch reading when the power went off during the storm. During a flash of lighting I saw something on my patio. The something started tapping on the glass.”

“And that something was the monkey in this box?” He didn’t want to believe it, I could tell. But he did. Six months ago he might have passed it off as the ravings of a lunatic; he couldn’t now, not in New Salem, not after the Sisters of the Snake.

“Only he had skin and fur and stuff.”

“Well, that’s a real big relief.” His sarcasm was duly noted. “I mean, it would have been much worse if the bones were walking around on your patio on their own.”

“Like worse hasn’t happened there?” It just slipped out and he sobered immediately. I could tell he was just trying to keep his own sanity, which, if I guessed right, wasn’t hanging on by a lot since tagging along with Arly and me.

“All monkeys look like.” His tone didn’t carry a lot of hope.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the same monkey. I’m sure of it.”

“Monkeys aren’t native to New Salem…” He kinda mumbled that. He was probably trying to talk himself into something, but it didn’t help if his gaze riveting back to the box were any indication.

“I’m aware of that. I have a sordid history with them.”

“I hope that’s some kind of joke aimed at your profession…”

I smiled, almost genuine. “It’s not. None of my customers ever threw poop at me.”

“So this monkey on your patio…” He looked back to me after flipping the box top flaps shut.

“I call him Curious Skullface.”

“Encouraging.” He frowned. “Maybe he was just somebody’s pet who got loose.”

“People can’t have monkeys as pets anymore.”

“I’m aware of that, Chlo. I meant a trainer or something. Should be easy enough to check if there was a traveling circus in town who lost one.”

“You won’t find one who did because—“

“Because he’s in this box.”

I nodded. “Because he’s in that box.”

“And this monkey who was alive one minute then old bones the next, did he just run off or keep tapping on your window all night?”

“I let him in.”

“You what?”

“I know, but I had a pipe. I figured I could brain him if something happened.”

“He could have been rabid. Monkeys are fast. You wouldn’t have had a chance.”

I sighed. I couldn’t really think of anything to explain my stupidity. “I know. I kept telling myself I was like one of those stupid women in horror movies when they know a psycho killer’s in the basement but they go down there just the same.”

“That about covers it.” He tried a grin. “No offense.”

“You’re lucky I’m too shaken up to take any. Anyway, he left me something.”

Sturdevant twisted his face up into this expression that said he really didn’t want to hear anymore but knew he was going to listen anyway. “I should know better than to ask but what did he leave you?”

“This…” I grabbed my backpack from the table and unzipped a flap.

Dead Time for Bonzo

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 10: Dead Time for Bonzo

“Dammit, Johnny, you scared the hell out of me!” I blurted at the man who stood in the kitchen doorway. The look of shock on his face told me he hadn’t expected to find me here, either.

“Sorry, Chlo, the door was unlocked, so I opened it quietly just in case.” Detective John Sturdevant eased the door shut behind him and gave me one of those caught-with-your-finger-up your-nose smiles.

I nodded, forcing myself to calm a little. “In case of what?”

Detective John Sturdevant was one of Arly’s closest friends from his cop days. He was younger than Arly, had a couple kids he constantly talked about, though they were in the custody of his ex-wife (he said it was better that way because with what his job entailed she could provide more stability. But when he talked about them it always came with the pain of being separated from their lives and all the things he was missing out on.) He’d gotten pretty deep into the Sisters of the Snake case, denying the existence of the supernatural practically the whole time—until he was forced to accept it. It had put a wedge of sorts between him and Arly, who had a hard enough time believing it himself, but they would still have died for one another. Sturdevant was a practical no-nonsense type cop who preferred muggers to witches, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. At least he used to be. You can probably guess things have changed.

He stepped closer to the table, his gaze flicking to the box, then back to me. “Arlo gave me the key to his place after the...well, after what happened last December. I didn’t know anyone else had one, except maybe David, but I know they don’t get on very well.”

“David’s a bit of a prick, to say the least.”

Sturdevant smiled and fished a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his suit coat pocket. “So Arlo says. But he did help with that whole Ficatier thing.”

“Arlo and I probably owe him our lives. Wish I could say that made me like him better, but…”

Sturdevant pulled a stick of gum from the pack and slid the rest back into his pocket. He unwrapped the piece, folded it over three times, then popped it into his mouth. The fruity scent of it filled my own nostrils and the memory of Patricia chewing that weird T-berry gum rose in my mind. That was one thing my twin sister and I had never had in common.

“I hear ya. I should have figured Arlo would give you a key and I did see your car in the driveway, but after what happened last year I’ve learned not to take too much for granted.”

“I could tell you a thing or two about that after that coma Ficatier put me in.” I couldn’t stop a shiver from shaking me visibly. Sturdevant gave me a sympathetic expression.

“Don’t worry, last I knew that witch musket was back at the museum. It’s harmless as long as none of the Sisters get hold of it and they’re all gone, now.”

Even though he tried to say it confidently I could hear the same note of doubt in his tone I felt in my gut.

“Are they gone, Johnny?”

I didn’t like the flicker of fear that hit his face. “Course they are, Chlo. You know what happened at the mansion. They have to be gone.”

“And now Arly is.” I choked back the ball of emotion growing in my throat.

He shook his head, but some doubt still showed in his eyes. “This has to be something different. They failed their mission. Even if somehow Ficatier got out, whoever she answers to wouldn’t have tolerated such a monumental failure. Even Hell has its upper management.”

I nodded, but I was still having a hard time convincing myself.

“Any word on Arly?” I asked without a shred of hope.

Sturdevant’s confirming head shake still made my stomach plunge.

“Nothing. He might as well have stepped off the face of the earth. Nobody’s seen him. I checked his usual haunts, The Red Lagoon, Chinese place we always meet for lunch…no one has seen him in a week or more.”

“I thought of calling David…”

“Me too, and I probably will at some point, but you and I both know Arly wouldn’t have gone to see him, not the way their relationship is.”

He was right, but David did have certain abilities, ones he had likely inherited from his father, who he couldn’t seem to be in the same room with for more than a minute before an argument broke out.

“You said the last time you talked to him he was looking for Patricia for me?” I folded my arms about myself, the memory of the phone call and that little girl’s ghostly laugh invading my thoughts again.

Sturdevant nodded, snapped his gum. “Said he thought he might have found a lead, but didn’t tell me what it was. He didn’t want to get your hopes up until he knew more, he said.” He stared at me a moment and I could tell his intuition was picking up on my thoughts. Hell, I probably wasn’t being too subtle. I’d never been good at hiding my emotions.

I shrugged, wondering if I should tell him what had happened with the phone call and ghost laugh. I knew he wouldn’t like it.

He saved me the trouble, because his gaze went back to the box and I knew he’d noticed my name on the label.

“What’s this?” Something in his tone said he didn’t really want an answer, at least a weird answer.

“A box,” I said stupidly.

He uttered a small laugh. “Not always hard to get things past me, but that much I figured out.”

I smiled myself, but a sober mood quickly washed back over me. “I found it on the steps when I arrived. Somebody sent it here to me.”

“You get packages here before?” He knew I hadn’t but the cop in him made him ask.

I shook my head. “Never happened before. I was scared to open it.”

He nodded, understanding a mirror of skulls in his eyes. “But you did.”

“I did. Wish I hadn’t.”

“Something tells me I’m going to wish the same thing.” He sighed. Deeply. “What’s in it?”

“Monkey bones.”

Now he just looked puzzled and a little relieved. “Monkey what?”

“Monkey bones. Not exactly QVC issue.”

He cocked an eyebrow, then pulled back the box top flaps and frowned. “Looks like a monkey, all right, ‘cept I don’t like its face. Looks like—“

“I know what it looks like. A little monkey demon or something.”

“Was gonna say, looks like the bones are really old.”

“Oh.” I think he wasn’t going to say that but Sturdevant still had the need to deny the obvious sometimes. I guess I did, too.

“You know who sent it?”

I shook my head. “No idea.”

“Who would know you might come here to find it?”

Shook my head again. ‘I get all my coffee club deliveries at home. Other than that nobody sends me much of anything.”

“But someone has to know you have a connection to Arlo.”

“I would guess.”

“Any idea what it means? Kind of a peculiar thing to get in the mail unless you work in the Paleo department at a museum.”

“No clue, but I’ve been having trouble with monkeys lately.”

He gave me a look that said he wondered if all the supernatural crap I’d gone through last year hadn’t made a few sandwiches fall out of my picnic basket.

“You wouldn’t believe be and you probably wouldn’t want to hear it,” I said.

He seemed to deflate. “Aw, cripes, Chlo, not again.”

“Again.” I said with a nod. “I seem to have become a magnet for, you know…that kind of trouble.”

He knew which kind I meant, of course. Weird crap, things that go bump in the night and sometimes even in the day and usually dragged anyone close to me in with it. He didn’t look particularly pleased.

“I s’pose I should take this down to the lab.” He peered at the box as if it had suddenly been sprayed by a skunk. He tugged a pair of surgical gloves from one of his pockets—which told me he had come here prepared in case he found some clue to Arly’s disappearance he’d missed on his first visit.

“They look old but…”

He just looked at me and I made a face that wasn’t all that far off from the one the monkey had made right before he dropped the—

“Oh, please, don’t say it.” His voice had that funny little hitch, the same one it got when Arly told him the ghost of Granny Watson had appeared on the TV set...