Fueling my fears was the overwhelming smell of rot, which smacked into me the second I stepped inside the house. Cat feces mixed with garbage, maybe? Hopefully, in fact. That was much better than the many other options that had jumped to mind, like death. I tried to breathe through my mouth so I wouldn’t gag. But the filth in the air was palpable. I could feel it gathering in a sour blanket over my tongue.
It was dark, too. The curtains were pulled shut, the only light from a single standing lamp in the corner. Not dark enough, unfortunately, to hide the mess. There were boxes overflowing with clothes and papers and dusty Christmas decorations, and stacks and stacks of old magazines. In the open kitchen beyond, I could see dirty dishes and open food packages covering every available surface. An orange tabby cat was sitting in the center of the cluttered stove next to half a dozen industrial-size bottles of moisturizer. There were three more cats in a circle on the floor. I would have missed them if one hadn’t switched its tail. They were staring up at two parrots in a cage hanging from the ceiling, waiting for their chance at a tasty treat. When one of the parrots ruffled its feathers, all the cats sprang to life, circling below like sharks. I waited for the man to shoo them away, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Hannity starts in ten minutes,” he said, stepping around me to his recliner. “So you’ll need to make it quick.” He dropped himself down and jerked out the footrest in one practiced motion. He pointed at a couch that was either heavily patterned or very dirty or both. “Have a seat if you want.”
“Oh, okay, great,” I said, feeling my way carefully, praying I wouldn’t trip and end up facedown on the revolting carpet.
“Sorry it’s so dark,” he said, motioning to the curtains. “Got to keep them closed. Otherwise, when the drones come, they’ll be able to take pictures of everything. A couple shots of me looking long in the tooth, and”—he snapped his fingers—“like that, they’ll convene a death panel.”
Naturally: death panels and drones.
“I understand,” I said. That you’re delusional. “With the curtains closed, I guess you couldn’t have seen anything related to what happened to the baby?”
“Who said that?” He sounded defensive again. “Damn police. Because I won’t talk to those numb-nuts doesn’t mean I don’t know things. I just don’t think it’s my job to do their job by spying on people. I believe in personal liberty: every person’s right to do as they wish.”
“Including leaving a baby out in the woods?”
“Who the hell am I to judge?” He shrugged.
His beliefs seemed mostly random and nonsensical, but there was a thread of extreme conservatism. I hoped if I pulled at it, something interesting might unfurl.
“But if we don’t hold people accountable for their actions, what kind of world will we have?” I asked. “A welfare state.”
“You got that right.” He narrowed his eyes at me. Then he nodded as though he’d come to some conclusion. “Come on, let me show you something.”
He waved me down an even darker, more cluttered hall, where he could be planning to house me. I hesitated before following. I’d been out of shape for a long time, but I’d have to hope that I’d retained some kind of muscle memory if he charged at me.
“Did you see what happened to the baby, Mr. . . .”
I pulled out my phone as I walked behind him, quickly texting Justin the man’s address with no explanation. If I didn’t come home, it would at least give him a place to start. He was going to love hearing why I’d sent it, when I was forced to explain later.
“I didn’t see what happened to the baby,” the man said, turning in to the laundry room to the left of the door out to the garage. “But I seen something.”
Inside, there was a telescope pointed out the window. He walked right over and placed a satisfied hand on it, as though it were the answer to all my questions. I stared at it, unsure what to say. The telescope made me feel better and worse—better about the possibility of this man having seen something useful; worse about the kind of person he was.
“What did you see?” I asked, my voice a quiet rasp.
“You believe in ghosts?”
No. But that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. “Sure, I guess,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I saw one.” He leaned over to peek through his telescope. “Late one night, couple weeks ago.”
“What did you see?”
He looked back at me and nodded gravely. “It looked like a girl,” he said meaningfully. “Crawling out of the creek. She was covered in something, too, like war paint. Dark, you know, like that camouflage.”
“Camouflage?” Curious, not skeptical. Inquire, don’t challenge.
“Yeah, all over her face.” He demonstrated how she might have applied it.
“And you saw her climb out of the creek?”
“I saw her twice. This time she came out of the creek and threw up. And she had the war paint. Last time, no paint. And she was running, in a red dress.”
“This time?” And I’d been so hoping he’d say something that would prove him less delusional than he seemed.
“Yep, this time she climbed out and threw up.” He shrugged. “Bent over the yard down there. Drunk, maybe. Then she took off, ran that way along the trees. With the paint on her face.”
“When was the other time?”
“Oh, long time ago—fifteen, twenty years. Long, long time. It was the night that kid fell down and hit his head at that party.”
“But it was the same girl?”
“Yep.”
Great.
“I went outside with my camera, so I could get proof this time. You know, send it into one of those ghost-hunter shows. But by the time I got out there, she was gone. Disappeared.” He clapped his hands together. “Just like that.”
“So you don’t have any pictures?”