Bone Meal Broth Read online

  The flashlight was an industrial floodlight with a rechargeable power pack clipped onto the bottom. Go big or go home. Roy had a shirt with that slogan emblazoned on it, a nondescript basketball player under the words. He’d had that shirt back in high school, even though he wasn’t on the basketball team. It still fit, so he wore it on days when he was painting houses.

  Out in the woods, it wasn’t much of a search. They split up, and Julia called Susan’s name a few times. The girl followed his light, rushing up to Roy out of the darkness and hugging his leg.

  She was crying and clutched a small toy in her hand.

  “It’s okay now. Your mom’s right over there,” Roy said, bending down. He seated the girl in the crook of his elbow and lifted her up. “Grab my neck.”

  She did. The toy was wet and furry, brushing up against his skin.

  “Why don’t you give that here and I can put it in my pocket,” he said, not waiting for a reply and taking hold of the figurine.

  “Ms. Crest, over here,” he shouted, and watched as the flashlight beam bounced through the trees, heading toward them.

  “Holy sh—” he said, looking down at the toy. “Is that Grizzlor from Masters of the Universe?” It was hard to see in the dark, but the toy looked similar to one he’d had in the mid-eighties.

  “Huh?” the girl asked, her tiny breath hot on his neck, sounding like she was falling asleep already. “I found it in the woods.”

  Roy held the figure up to the light. “I had this one when I was a kid,” Roy said, just as much to himself as to Susan. “This must be a new version, though.” He gave the toy a squeeze, the furry flesh going soft like a stress ball. “Neat.” Though the fleshy give unnerved him.

  Julia’s light pointed right at them, blinding him. He dropped Grizzlor into one of the pockets on his cargo shorts and lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

  There were more tears in Julia’s eyes than there had been in the girl’s. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything really,” he said, and tried to shift Susan over to her mother, but the girl was latched on.

  “She’s down for good,” Julia said, smiling, her face not quite dry even after wiping it on her sleeves.

  They walked back to the house, and Roy gently pulled free of Susan’s grip and laid her on the living-room couch.

  “Do you have dinner plans?” Julia asked.

  The pair followed the giant, losing sight of her only once, but never losing her smell. She wasn’t quiet; being that big, she couldn’t be. But they could have found her if she’d managed to remain silent. They were trackers, and their father had trained them well.

  After nightfall, when they were close enough to her, the creature’s howls were a wall of sound waves that seemed to buffet their bodies like physical blows.

  Their spears would probably be unable to pierce her tough hide; even if they could, the wounds that they would inflict would mean nothing. They would need to think of some other way to reclaim their father’s body.

  Dinner was mac and cheese, served in a long Pyrex dish. Well, it was last night’s half-eaten mac and cheese, thrown in the oven for ten minutes.

  She set the dish down on the table, and Roy pulled his chair closer, the excitement on his face disproportionate to the quality of the meal. Julia hoped that the handyman wasn’t reading any more into this than she intended. She was lonely in the new house, but it was not that kind of loneliness.

  “This looks great,” he said, as she spooned out two portions and placed one of the paper plates in front of him.

  She laughed. “It’s not much of a dinner. I’m usually better than this, but with the move and everything ...” It was a lie. She’d never been much of a cook, she wasn’t that kind of mom. That had been Darren’s job. When it was Julia’s turn to prep dinner, most of the time she’d call out for pizza or Chinese.

  “No, this is perfect.”

  She watched him eat a forkful; he looked like he’d burned himself but was pretending that he didn’t. He took a sip of Coke.

  Behind them, in the living room, she could hear Susan stirring on the couch. If her daughter was awoken by the sound of macaroni and cheese, it would save her the next twenty minutes of stilted conversation with Roy the plumber.

  “Are you up, Suzy? Come eat.”

  Susan walked out of the darkness of the living room, rubbing her eyes against the light of the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  “It’s okay, hon. But we’ll talk about it later. We’ve got company now. What do you say to Roy for helping me find you?”

  “Thank you,” Susan said, suddenly bashful, staring down at her bare feet. “Can I have my toy back?”

  Roy rumpled her hair, clearly unfamiliar with talking to little girls. “Sure thing, squirt. I forgot I had it.” He half stood and pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to Susan.

  She took her place at the small table and placed the toy on the table.

  “I think that may be a collector’s item, Suzy,” Roy said. “You may want to give it a wash, though, with some soapy water.”

  “He’s right, Susan,” Julia said. “Your doll stinks.”

  It was true, but the little girl seemed unfazed by the stench.

  “I found him in the forest, some boys must have left him there,” she said, then twisted the doll’s legs so that he was sitting cross-legged in front of her plate.

  The creature seemed too detailed, too pliable. He lacked the bright colors of most toys, and there was something too organic about his muted color palette.

  “How are you two liking the area?” Roy asked, taking Susan’s attention from the grotesque little monster.

  There was noise on the back porch—scratching.

  “Well, it is weird to get visits from raccoons every night,” Julia said, hiking her thumb toward the glass double doors of the porch. “That’s not something we get in Boston.”

  “You get used to them,” Roy said. “Besides, they just want a friend.” He looked at Susan, who wriggled up her face. “They bite, though, so don’t go near them.”

  They ate for the next ten minutes, the small talk not only bearable but enjoyable.

  Roy was a nice guy. Maybe tomorrow Julia would spend some time preparing an actual meal.

  Watching through the door, they could see the monsters gathered at a massive altar, their father’s body laid at the center, contorted into a mockery of life.

  The outside structure was massive, and they could not find a point of entry from ground level. They could climb, though, and climb well. The second-floor chamber where they were able to gain entry was slick and white, cavernous like all of the rooms. But this one seemed filled with various torture devices.

  The boys could find something to use here.

  During a lull in their conversation something hit the floor upstairs and caused all three of them to jump.

  Susan whimpered.

  “Don’t worry. Nothing’s up there. I probably left something on the edge of the sink,” Roy said to the girl. He looked up at Julia. “I hope whatever it was didn’t break any tiles, but if it did, I’ll fix them. Of course.”

  A few moments later there was another sound and he went up to check it out, leaving the two girls to clear the table. They threw out their paper plates, and Julia spooned the remnants of the mac and cheese into the garbage disposal.

  “I hope it’s not the toilet again, I thought I had that set,” Roy said, moving from the hallway to the stairs.

  Julia heard him mount the carpeted stairs and head for the second-floor bathroom. When he spoke, it sounded familiar. Darren had been good with his hands and had done all the maintenance work back in Boston. Maybe inviting Roy to dinner had been a bad idea. Julia had let this stranger slip into their lives too quickly and he was feeling at home, even though he was the hired help.

  She turned her attention to Susan; men had occupied too many of her though
ts today, had for the past year. All she should care about was her daughter.

  “You can’t do that again, kiddo. You can’t run off. The woods are dangerous.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t. It was scary,” Susan said.

  She cleared the toy off the table, pretending he could fly and then dropping him so his legs bounced along the floor before picking him up again. The toy didn’t sound right, making more of a splotching sound than the familiar clatter of plastic.

  “I was scared too,” Julia said, catching Susan by the chin and gently pointing the girl’s face up to her. “I’m not mad, you aren’t in trouble. I just don’t want anything happening to you.”

  “Out in the woods, I found a dead—”

  Susan didn’t get the rest out because of Roy’s scream.

  Once they’d used their knives to cut through the thick mesh that kept them out of the smooth, white room, they worked together to lower themselves down the uneven footholds.

  There was one close call, a moment when it seemed possible to slip onto the polished white stone below, but then the very footholds beneath their toes opened up to reveal compartments full of all manner of weapons.

  If they were going to get their father’s body back, they would have to come up with some traps.

  The cut was so deep that Roy had to check if he still had a pinky toe.

  “Fuck,” he screamed, no longer caring if little Susan heard him or not.

  He pulled his foot up and plucked the razor blade out from the joint of his toe. The blood flowed, dark at first and then bright crimson as the droplets flattened against the white bathroom tile.

  Before he took another step, he checked the floor around him. The blade had been jammed between the doorway and the first tile, where there was no grout. There was a line of six identical blades still there. It was a miracle he hadn’t been cut worse.

  Roy tried to imagine who would do such a thing, how damaged a little girl would have to be to set such a dangerous booby trap, but then he remembered the sound he’d come up to check out.

  “Are you alright?” Julia yelled up from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Call the cops, I think someone is in your house,” Roy said, looking around at the ransacked bathroom, the contents of the drawers strewn onto the floor.

  He looked to the ceiling, where something was stirring at the top of the linen cabinet, just a second too late to avoid the iron. It sailed across the room, the cord used along with some sort of pulley to guide the corner of the appliance into his left eye.

  The hit was so hard that cartoon stars flooded Roy’s brain. Blam-o!

  Roy’s cheek was wet with blood and eye fluid before the back of his head hit the tile. The room swam in his good eye, his limbs feeling weighted down by the injury. In the distance, further than it could have possibly been, he could hear Julia calling to him, her voice panicked now. It should have been; after all, he had been able to tell her that she needed to call the cops. He hoped she had listened, because he felt he wasn’t going to be much help to her and Suzy.

  There was a sensation like pins and needles in his hands and feet. Someone was going through his pockets, but the only thing Roy could focus on was the ceiling, his eye making wide, clumsy loops as he tried to hold on to consciousness. The sensation was not entirely unfamiliar; Roy felt that it was much like going to bed drunk, trying to steady the room so nausea didn’t get the better of him. Only there was a lot more pain than he was used to.

  The world had gone dark by the time the small shadow crawled up on his chest. Roy must have been in a half dream, because he was hallucinating about Susan’s Grizzlor figure.

  Grizzlor dragged the blade of his spear across Roy’s neck, and Roy couldn’t see any more.

  As predicted, their weapons seemed to bounce off the giant’s hands and feet, but one of the brothers had been brave enough to climb up near the beast’s mouth. The skin of its neck wasn’t nearly as tough as the rest of its hide.

  There was so much blood that the brother was knocked off his feet by the force of the spray. Although their mission was grim and humorless, the brothers allowed themselves a quick laugh at this.

  Susan had never seen her mother so scared. There was a time when Daddy had come back to the old apartment and started banging on the door. Her mom had seemed scared, but even then Susan had been able to tell that her mom was more sad than frightened. Now, her mom was frantic.

  “I don’t quite know what the emergency is, all I know is that I think there’s someone in my house,” her mother said into the phone. “Just send someone!”

  Gripping the doll tighter and pressing it to her cheek, Susan noticed for the first time how bad it smelled. It reeked of body odor and dirt.

  She tossed the figure away, and it landed with a thud on the hardwood of the hallway, inches from the carpeted landing. She hugged her mom’s leg tightly, the smell of detergent and her jeans more comforting than any doll would ever be.

  “Come with me, baby,” her mother whispered, patting her on the back and guiding her into the kitchen.

  Once there, her mother stretched herself over the counter, grabbing for one of the special knives from the block. The knives had been a housewarming gift from Aunt Sarah. They were very expensive, Mom had told her, and also very sharp. Susan wasn’t supposed to touch them.

  Her mother held the knife in one hand and patted Susan’s back with the other.

  “Roy?” she asked the empty room.

  There was no reply, but there was a soft thudding on the stairs. Not footsteps; they seemed too light and irregular for that. But something was coming downstairs.

  “Get out of my house, whoever you are. Take what you have and leave. The police are on their way.”

  Susan felt her mom’s fingernails scratch against her neck. It didn’t much hurt, but she could feel each individual finger tremble.

  Finding their father on the first floor had not been difficult. He was lying at the bottom of the padded shelves they were lowering themselves down to get to the giant females. They waited over him for a moment before approaching.

  His limbs were sprawled, the wound on his arm no longer weeping from where the gray beast had bitten him. But both his legs were broken, a twisted mass that could not support him if he were still alive.

  Rolling him over onto his side and then arranging his shattered arms and legs into a more dignified position, the boys lifted him up and began to move.

  There was no warning, no creaking of floorboards or click of heels, when the creatures approached the kitchen. They were too small to make any sounds like that.

  Julia gasped, and from below her Susan made a similar noise. Susan’s voice was tinged with a child’s wonder, though, something that Julia had run out of by the time she’d seen her first naked man at sixteen.

  The two furry creatures were carrying Susan’s toy—not a toy, clearly, but a corpse.

  The lead monster waved his free arm, signaling to the other. They stopped their forward march and placed their load onto the hardwood of the hallway.

  From behind their backs, in unison, they dislodged spears, each weapon nearly as tall as the being that wielded it.

  Spreading their arms, they chattered to each other in tiny voices. They were intelligent, used tools, had some kind of language. They were probably a National Geographic reporter’s wet dream, but all Julia wanted to do was crush their tiny bodies under her feet.

  Once they finished conversing, they split up and entered the room, one ducking behind the kitchen island and the other hoisting himself up onto the refrigerator using Susan’s alphabet magnets like a mountain climber might use the colorful footholds at the gym.

  “Mommy,” Susan said, her voice sounding nervous.

  “Don’t worry, they can’t hurt us,” she said.

  As insane as the creatures’ appearance was, Julia couldn’t help but feel relief. A full-sized human attacker, and the sinister designs he c
ould have in targeting a single mom and her daughter, was much more worrisome than some pint-sized fairy-tale creatures.

  Julia took her eyes off the creature scaling the fridge to search for the other one, but she’d lost track of him. She pressed against the sink, then picked Susan up into her arms. She could remember telling the girl just yesterday that one day she would be too big to pick up. Julia had only been partially joking with Susan, because now her arm seemed to strain from the weight. The burst of adrenaline she’d experienced in the woods earlier seemed to be the only one she’d had in storage.

  Susan shrieked, and Julia turned to her daughter just in time to see one of the creature’s hanging from her ponytail with one hand, stabbing at the girl’s shoulder with the other.

  Julia dropped the knife to the counter and swatted at the creature. In her conscious mind she knew that the animal was too small to do her hand any real damage, but grabbing at it felt like attacking a large insect, the irrational part of her brain that squirmed when she thought of earwigs taking control of her hand.

  After a second attempt, she connected and smacked the tiny body off Susan’s back, and it landed in the sink with a metallic clang.

  Pinpricks of blood welled up under Susan’s cotton dress. It wasn’t the amount of blood but the fact that the creature had harmed her child that made Julia do what she did next.

  Turning on the faucet full blast, she directed the stream onto the tiny figure. The creature was unable to stand on the slick stainless-steel surface, slipping as he tried, water raining down on him and sopping his fur. Using her bare hand, she scooted him down the drain, his fingers trying to find purchase on the rubber disposal guard but failing.

  There was a brief moment when she wondered if it was the right thing to do, whether it was unfair or inhumane, but then she felt the coolness of Susan’s tears drying on her neck and flicked the switch.