Old Flames, New Haunts

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 21: Old Flames, New Haunts

1:00am

I closed the door to my townhouse apartment and pressed my back against it. Just standing there in the dark, I took deep breaths and fought against the exhaustion and dark emotions crawling through my system.

Going back to work had been harder than I thought. It was bad enough the guys seemed a little drunker than usual tonight and Pete had threatened to take a baseball bat to two of them, but the thought of the Red Lagoon and my job having been where I first met Arly had played on my nerves all night. A ball of emotion lodged in my throat and tears swelled in my eyes. Jesus, I missed him. I guess I hadn’t realized quite how dependant I’d become on his being there when I wanted to call, when I needed someone to talk to. All those little things you take for granted when you’re in a relationship…

All those could be taken in a single instant and leave you wondering how you had ever gotten along without them.

Stop it! I told myself, sniffling. Just stop it! You’ll find him. I know you will. Just don’t lose it. That’s what they want.

They?

Just who the hell were "they", anyway? The demon girl had said “us”, hadn’t she? Did she mean a collective Evil or did she have demon pals?

I forced the thought from my mind and snapped on the light switch on the wall next to me. The chandelier above the table in the raised dining room to my right came on, stinging my eyes. I pressed my lids shut, shoving myself away from the front door at the same time.

I opened my eyes slowly, locked the front door, then tossed my backpack and keys onto the table. With a heavy sigh I grabbed a diet Coke from the fridge and descended the three steps to the living room. I flicked on the table lamp and stared at all the boxes, deeper feelings of sadness washing over me. More plans and dreams mocking me. And nowhere to turn, no assurance that Arly was even…alive.

I felt like crying again, but I forced myself not to. I didn’t even know my next step and everything seemed to be crushing down on me but I had to keep myself together. It wouldn’t help to fall apart now.

I knew I would have to keep telling myself that because I was certain things would get a whole lot worse before they got better. They always did in New Salem.

An annoyed groan came from the corner and I saw Puddin’ Head giving me the hairy kitty eyeball from his throw pillow in the corner. He had one in every room, did I tell you that? He’d made it pretty clear he owned the place and me, not the other way around. I let him think that. I’d get even when it came bath day.

“I’m not in the mood,” I said to him, going over and giving him a pat. I had a feeling he either could tell my stern tone wasn’t serious or he just didn’t give a damn, probably the latter. Cats.

I heard a slight tapping on the slider doors and suppressed a shiver. If it was another damn ghost monkey…but no, it was just a few dime-sized raindrops hitting the glass. No thunder this time, anyway, and I was thankful for that, because if the power went off now I just might let out a shriek.

I went to the sectional and dropped onto it, every muscle feeling leaden, acutely aware of my perfumed sweat. I should take a shower, but the thought that bad things happened to chesty blondes in showers in horror movies didn’t motivate me any. I’d put up with myself until morning. No one got murdered in the shower in the morning, did they?

After setting my Coke on the coffee table next to my copy of Night Demons I located the remote in the cushions and flicked on the TV. The late news was on, probably as depressing as always but at least it was some noise. My ears were still a little dull from the blaring speakers at the Lagoon anyway. An Asian woman reporter had just finished interviewing some doctor or something from New Salem Memorial.

…the latest outbreak of the mysterious disease that has hospitalized four people in New Salem over the past week. Doctors caution everyone not to panic until they locate its cause. The disease is characterized by eruptions of sores across the face and body that leak pus, nausea and vomiting, and a curious darkening of the skin. So far the victims have all been homeless men from the waterfront area.

In other news, a second waterfront murder appears to be the work of the New Salem Ripper…

I flicked it off. Noise or no noise, disease and murder were too much. I didn’t need anything that gloomy right now.

I heaved myself out of the couch and a heavier pounding of rain brought my attention back to the slider doors.
That’s when I saw Arly and let out a scream…

The Old Bump and Grind

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 20: The Old Bump and Grind

The Red Lagoon hadn’t changed much since I’d last been in it, but I did see Pete had added a pole to the stage that jutted out into the center of the room. Above it the huge twin speakers were silent, but on the stage a young woman with small perky breasts practiced her routine on the pole. I didn’t recognize her, so she must have been a recent hire.

The Red Lagoon was New Salem’s only topless joint, pretty tame as far as these places go. It’s where I met Arly. At this time of the day it wasn’t open for business but I saw Pete behind the bar, setting up glasses. He smiled when he saw me approaching.

“Chlo! What’s shakin’?” He said. He was a large man with too much belly weight but a good guy and every stripper’s dad. He watched out for us. Nobody touched his girls, and Arlo backed that up.

I gave him a half-hearted smile, though hiding the nerves I fought from my encounter in the street a few minutes ago wasn’t easy. I was still shaken and I bet my face was three shades of pale.

“Like the song, says, Pete, the hips don’t lie.”

“Good to hear, Chloe. Wasn’t sure I’d see you back here again.” Ah, a note of hope in his voice. That was good.

I got right to the point. “Need a favor, Pete.”

“Name it, Chlo.”

“Need my old job back, at least temporarily?”

“The corporate world not treating you right?” he asked with a twinkle in his tone.

I thumped my backpack on the bartop, then slid onto a stool. “No, haven’t even gotten time to pursue anything. I need the flexibility of the club back, for a short time anyway.”

“What’s going on, Chloe? I know that look. Saw it back—“

“I know, back with Ficatier and her winged monkeys.” I frowned. “Might be on the same level.”

Pete’s face dropped. He didn’t know a lot about what had happened, but he knew enough to be worried. “Christ, not again. What’s going on in this town?”

“The million-dollar question, isn’t it?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Arlo…I haven’t seen him in more than a week. I got a whole freezer of grease burgers goin’ to snow.”

I felt like crying. Again. But I didn’t. “He’s missing, Pete. That’s why I need the flexibility of this job, so I can hunt for him.”

“Have you called the police?”

It was a natural question but I gave him a look of “duh” anyway. “They can’t find any leads.”

“Do you have any?”

I shrugged. “Not sure, just a bunch of weird stuff that may or may not be connected.”

“Weird stuff follows you around now.”

“Sure seems to, doesn’t it?”

“Like flies on crap.”

“That’s very delicate, Pete.”

He grinned. “My wife says I got a way with words.”

“You’re a smoothie, I’ll give you that.” I flashed him a warm smile. “Thanks for letting me come back.”

“Door’s always open to you, Chlo, you know that.”

I nodded, slid off the stool. “See you tonight, then.” I started walking away.

“Chlo?” I heard him say behind me.

I turned my head back to him. “Yeah?”

“You find, Arlo. Find him safe. He’s like a brother to me.”

“That’s the plan, Pete. That’s the plan.”

I was home about fifteen minutes later, not only feeling the jitters over what had happened with the demon girl in the street on the waterfront and missing the hell out of Arly, but also stricken with a weird sense of depression at having to go back to stripping. I never thought I would feel that way. I guess it was because I had thought I was leaving an old life behind, getting ready to start a new one by marrying Arly. But now everything just seemed…the same.

I know I am being a bit of an ingrate and should be counting my blessing Pete had just given me my job back just like that. But I couldn’t help it. And where before I kind of enjoyed the power whipping my top off gave me over men, now I felt a little…embarrassed. Weird. I’d get over it once I got back into the routine but even so it was a feeling I never thought I would have.

It took me another fifteen minutes to get changed into some lose clothing and a sweat band.

On the second floor on my townhouse apartment I had a room I had converted into a small dance studio. I’d put in a ballet bar on one wall and a rollaway dance floor, plus I had a kick-ass sound system in the corner. Afternoon light arced through the windows, shafts filled with twirling dust, reminding me I hadn’t bothered cleaning up in here because I had planned to use it as storage for a little while instead of a studio.

An annoyed grumble greeted me as I switched on the CD player, the annoyed grumble only a cat roused out a nap can make. I gave Puddin’ head a “don’t-go-there” look because my mood was already south of the border. Puddin’ Head used to belong to Granny Watson until the Sisters of the Snake murdered her. I had adopted him. He was a huge tabby that looked more like a steroid-enhanced Tribble and sometimes his personality was a lot like Martha Stewart’s, but I had gotten attached to him. He never hesitated to give his opinion, though, and right now his opinion told me he’d planned a nap day and wasn’t appreciating me starting a dance routine again.

He groaned one of those cat groans then heaved his furry bulk off the pillow I’d put in the corner for him and padded from the room.

“Critics…” I mumbled.

I placed a CD into the machine and frowned again, not looking forward to how sore I was going to feel tomorrow or how many drunks were going to be ogling my boobs tonight, but put into perspective those things were probably the least of my worries for the moment…

Old Haunts

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 19: Old Haunts

As I drove along the waterfront I couldn’t get rid of the feeling Genie Lansing had been hiding something and that the monkey somehow belonged to her. Had she sent Curious Skullface to give me the locket? I would have bet on it, but why hadn’t she simply explained her reasoning earlier instead of the cryptic crap? That was the trouble with supernatural stuff; it all came in riddles. Nobody, Good or Bad used a direct line.
One thing I did know: the more I thought about that woman, the less I liked her. And she hadn’t much on deposit in that department to begin with.

And now the monkey bones were missing, not that they could have told me much anyway. Those, I am certain, were a counter to Lansing, a warning. Again with the cryptic stuff. And again I got the thought Evil just enjoyed the Game far too much.

My gaze focused back on the road ahead as my front tire thumped over one of the old trolley tracks that were still embedded in the blacktop along the waterfront. I saw the sign for Gibson’s Antiques, which wasn’t more than a few blocks from the Red Lagoon and butterflies suddenly fluttered in my stomach.

I think I told you I had stopped stripping recently, right? But I never told you why. I guess, it was because the closer I got to Arlo and with our engagement I had started to feel like I didn’t need it anymore. I mean, it was good money, more than I could make sitting behind a desk in an office but I had started to change inside and the sense of control I needed over men had mostly dissolved. With what I had with Arly, I felt…well, I felt like I wanted to surrender that control. Because with him it felt…mutual, is the only word I could put to it.

I had planned to be sending out resumes over the past week and taking just something enough to pay my rent up until we got married and moved into together. So I had told Pete—he owns the Red Lagoon—I was taking a leave of absence. But then Alry had gone missing. And I found myself not only with much of a desire to spend my time job hunting but needing the flexibility in hours stripping gave me to search for Arly. The supernatural didn’t have much respect for scheduling.

I had some money stashed away—actually a good chunk—but it wouldn’t last forever, either. So I found myself without a lot of options. Stripping gave me freedom to come and go as I needed—Pete was good about that and a friend of Arly’s, so he’d understand if I needed to take off at a moment’s notice—plus it would pay my rent and bills for the moment, at least until I found Arly.

Or didn’t.

The thought made me shudder.

Did I miss it, you night ask? Stripping, I mean? I guess maybe I did in some ways. You don’t do something like that for as long as I have and not feel some separation anxiety. But that type of career wears on you too. Hell, some girls it eats up completely because they getting drugs and alcohol and...well, other things. I was never like that, but as you now know my age it’s obvious l I couldn’t do it forever. No matter how good shape I’m in, things start droppin’ sooner or later.

Pete was going to be surprised to see me so soon, I think.

The waterfront was littered with shoppes, canneries, a marina, old factories, bars and the usual tourists trap souvenir places. Traffic was kinda light, but New Salem is not a large town, only around 50,000, I think.

I blinked. Something horridly chilled went through my insides.

Because now…

Now all the traffic had vanished. There was just…nothing. No cars, no people. The sides of buildings suddenly looked blurry, distorted in a way I can’t explain, buzzing with some formless fluttering anti-light.

The trolley tracks and blacktop had also disappeared. Now I saw only an endless expanse of gray cobblestones and the car shook over each of them.

And snow.

Drifting out of a formless colorless sky.

I stamped on the brake and rolled down the window, looked up. No not snow. Gray flakes. Flakes that lazed down onto the cobblestones and skittered along as if they had a life of their own.

I got out of the car, everything inside me wanting to come apart. I knelt, touched the flakes. Ash. Not snow; ash.

Ashes, ashes…

Children’s voices, rising in the swirling ash. Singing that nursery rhyme.

Death…everyone…all fall down…

Laughter echoed from all around me, a child’s.

“Patricia?” I yelled, suddenly more scared than I wanted to admit. “Why are you doing this?”

I probably should have asked how, because if I hadn’t known better I might have thought I was tripping, but I had seen too many weird things since Ficatier not to question the hows, only the whys.

I saw her, then. Standing about a hundred feet down the road. Patricia, the ash dancing about her, sizzling over her Easter dress, which was gray now, limp and hanging on her small frame.

But it wasn’t really Patricia, was it? No, it was the thing that had appeared over her on the TV screen, superimposed on an innocent face. Its eyes glowed with anti-light and it walked toward me, a deceptively fragile thing.

Its hand lifted, finger pointing at me and I felt the sudden urge to jump back in my car and lock the doors. Like that would have helped.

No, I would stand my ground. I wasn’t going to let any pint-sized whatever get the better of me.

“What do you want?” I yelled at it. “Stop playing games!”

I forced myself to take a step towards the demon girl, and it stopped as if surprised I had stood up to it. At least that’s what I wanted to think. It might have just been getting ready to toast me.

You can’t stop us…

No mouth movement came from the little girl but I knew the words came from her. The anti-light in her eyes grew stronger. She started forward again and I panicked. I reached into the car and grabbed my backpack. My fingers shook like hell as I whisked open the pouch and grabbed the locket. Protection, Lansing had said. I had no faith in that but there wasn’t a hell of a lot else I could think of doing.

Everything vanished.

The little demon girl, the laughter, the ashes falling form the colorless sky.

And everything came back, including a bunch of blaring horns and swearing drivers because I was at a dead stop in the middle of the street.

“Oh, crap,” I muttered and felt heat rush into my face. I jumped back in the car, not even attempting to try to apologize. What would I say, a demon girl made me do it?

What Monkey?

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 18: What monkey?

“Ok, that’s not possible,” I said. “You’re in a box.” Pretty stupid, since the furry little reject was sitting there mocking me in his crinkling forehead way.

I stood still an instant, debating whether to turn and run, or go kick his fuzzy little ass. I decided the latter sounded more satisfying.

“Ok, you…” I muttered and started for him. Probably didn’t take monkey ESP to figure out I was sick of his crap, because he whirled and skittered into Genie Lansing’s office. I half-expected to hear a shriek come from the office, but nothing.

I reached the door and flung it inward.

And stood staring for what seemed like an hour but was probably only a few minutes.

Not only wasn’t the monkey anywhere in sight, but I saw no sign of Genie Lansing. Monkeys are small. He could have been hiding under the desk, hanging from a light, whatever. But Genie Lansing didn’t have that option. She was gone and there were no other exists from the room. Only the front door. And she could not have come out that way. I would have heard her.

“What the hell?” I mumbled, then searched the office thoroughly in case the monkey was hiding somewhere. He wasn’t. Both were gone. Somehow.

You know that feeling you get when you step on a grave sometimes? I got that one now. It started in my heels and shuddered right on up to the crown of my head. My first reaction was to look for reasonable explanations. I spotted a wall vent, about ten by six. The monkey could have crawled into that?
Yeah, and used a little screwdriver to undo the screws, then somehow squeeze his hand back through the little slats to screw them back in again. That made sense.

And Lansing was waaay too big to go out that way, anyway.

That left me with explanations I didn’t really want to think about.

It also left me with another thought. What if that monkey belonged to Lansing? What if she had sent him to give me the locket, knowing I would eventually wind up here asking her about it? For what reason?

There’s something she wasn’t telling you…

That was the only thing I could think of.

But then why send the monkey bones to Alry’s addressed to me? If Lansing owned the monkey, then…

Those bones were a warning from something else. Something opposing Lansing? Maybe. I had seen a peculiar look on her face when I mentioned them. Now that look made sense.

I thunked my backpack on the desk and fished out my cell phone. My fingers shook a little as I located the personal cell number Sturdevant had given me. It took three rings for him to answer.

I could tell by the way he answered his mood wasn’t particularly good.

“I’m at Lansing’s, John.” I said. “Something weird happened.”

I heard a nervous chuckle. “Not that that surprises me, but I have something weird for you, too.”

“Let me guess, it has something to do with those monkey bones.”

“How’d you know?”

I frowned. “A capuchin told me. You know how old the bones are yet?”

“No, I gave them to Strigger in forensics. They have to be sent to a lab for dating, but he thought in the 500-600-year range just looking at them. Problem is when he went to send them the had disappeared.”

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’?”

“The box, the bones. Gone. He said he set them on a counter to pack them up and went off for a coffee. When he got back they were gone. No one in the station took them and they didn’t just get up and walk away.”

“The monkey was here, John. I saw him. He ran into Lansing’s office and disappeared. She did, too.”

“She what?”

“Poof.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You’re tellin’ me?” I hung up with Sturdevant and gave the office one last scan. The deeper I got into whatever was going on here the less I liked it.

I had the feeling things were only going to get worse.

Monkey Jinx

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 17: Monkey Jinx

I paused in the hallway about halfway down and let out the shudder that had crawled up inside me. I am not sure why I felt the need to do that, but I did. Despite the fact I now knew what the symbol on the locket meant—and on my caller ID, which still freaked me out—what did I really have? And how did it get me closer to finding out what had happened to Arly?

The answer was it pretty much got me closer to nothing. On second thought, I think that’s why the shudder came. Because I knew I was still a thousand miles from nowhere. So the locket might have belonged to Joan of Arc. Big deal. Joan of Arc died, what, six hundred year ago? What could she possibly have to do with Arly? Or the apparition that appeared on the widescreen?

I couldn’t see a connection. Not that in this town it meant there was none, but like I told you yesterday I’m not the detective. I’m the stripper and right now I felt naked in ways I had no control over.

You can’t fall apart, I told myself. You can’t lose it now or you’ll be even worse off than you already are.

Did Lansing know more than she was telling me? The thought suddenly sprang into my head. I took a shuddery breath. How could she? She was the one who had given me some cockamamie story about protection symbols and dead martyrs. The woman admitted she hadn’t seen Arly in months. And it was clear neither of us cared for one another, so maybe the curator had just been screwing with me. And then there was that whole little jealousy thing.

I sloughed my backpack off my shoulder and unzipped the compartment holding the locket. I fished out the locket and stared at it a moment, not sure exactly why I was even bothering. I jammed a nail in the crack between the sides and opened it, gazed at the pictures of myself and sister as children.

“What does this all mean, Pat?” I whispered, still not entirely sure I believed what I had heard and seen was really her. “What does this locket have to do with Arly?”

Nothing, my rational mind told me and my stomach sank a bit further. Like the nothing I had gotten from Lansing and the nothing that was going to give me a nervous breakdown if I let it.

I snapped the locket shut and stuffed it into the backpack, then zipped the compartment shut. Whatever the case, I was going to have to decide what to do next because if I sat around just dwelling on what little chance I had of finding Arly I was going to go crazy.

Maybe you already have…a voice came back to me from somewhere in the depths of my mind. Maybe everything I heard and saw, or thought I heard and saw was just me losing it. Maybe everything Ficatier and her Sisters of the Snake had put me through had turned my mind to Silly Putty.

Sturdevant saw it too…

Oh, yeah.

He couldn’t have been going crazy with me at the exact same moment, could he?

I let out a small laugh that held absolutely no humor. This was New Salem, I reminded myself. Anything could happen.

I forced myself to take a step forward. The whole creepy atmosphere of the museum wasn’t helping.

I made it only a handful of steps before I stopped.

I had heard a noise. Not a laugh this time but an entirely familiar little chitter of a thing.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me…” I mumbled and eased around, afraid to see what I knew would be there.

I was right and I couldn’t help the wobble that went through my legs.

It sat in front of Genie Lansing’s partially opened office door. Looking at me. Its forehead doing that crinkly creepy thing.

The monkey.