Dead Roots (The Analyst) Page 22

  “It's a non-disclosure thing. Government work, you know.”

  “What, so I don't find out that there are monsters and ghosts living in my town?”

  “Hah. I guess you have a point,” Tom snorted.

  “Come on, just give me a hint. I won't tell.”

  “Well. My house was haunted pretty badly when I was little. I got put into therapy for a long time. They tried to put me on a bunch of different medications. Some of them I took, some of them I didn't, most of it either made me worse or made me feel, just… completely dead, emotionally. I couldn't reconcile what had happened to me with a bunch of doctors telling me it wasn't real. Part of me felt like, I guess… yeah, I knew what I'd experienced couldn't have actually happened, but... I don't know. I guess it just stuck with me.”

  “Right.”

  “Things got really bad at home. I grew apart from my parents. Especially my mother. The ghost liked to use her form, and I wasn't convinced that she was really my mother. Eventually my parents split up and we moved away. The hauntings stopped when we moved. But I was fucked, for years.

  “I kept going to doctors, and I guess one day when I was sixteen, somebody in the DPSD heard about what I was going through. I got referred to one of their professional case workers and learned about what had really gone on. I learned all about hauntings and they put me through the correct therapy to actually help me get better and not just pretend none of it ever happened. I couldn't tell my mother or anyone about any of it, but I got better. So a few years after that, they got in touch with me again and asked if I wanted to be an Analyst, and I took it up. What else was I going to do?”

  “So they don't just memory wipe you or something?” Heather probed.

  “They do their best to cover up supernatural aggression, but in some cases they'll try and groom the person to work for the agency in one capacity or another.”

  “You think they'll ask me to?”

  “It's possible. You definitely have a good background for it. You'd make a killer field agent, with your law enforcement training.”

  “Huh. Could be something to think about.”

  “You want me to mention it to Margaret?”

  “Yeah, I think I do. I'm not sure I could stay here after all this.”

  Heather took a long swig from her beer. She snipped the end of the thread and put the needle down on a piece of gauze.

  “All stitched up. Bit late to get any ice on the eye, though.”

  “Thank you, Heather.”

  Heather nodded and gulped from her beer. She lit a cigarette and sat down next to Tom. Aloysius put his head on her lap. She scratched his nose affectionately.

  “What kind of... what do you call it, creature, monster? Ghost?”

  “Entity, usually.”

  “What kind of entity haunted you?”

  Tom sighed, preparing for more sympathy.

  “Akebara.”

  Heather was silent for a moment, leaving only the faint, chaotic chatter of the TV and Artie's snoring. Tom looked over at her. She took a long sip of beer before turning back to look at him.

  “So what is this like for you?”

  Tom thought on it for a moment as he gulped from his own drink. His head was feeling a little dreamy.

  “I've fantasized about coming across Akebara again. I thought I'd feel like a knight coming back home after years of training, to slay the dragon that burned down his village. I thought this might feel empowering.”

  “But it isn't, is it?” Heather locked eyes with him.

  “Hell, no. I still feel like a cowering child, but the whole world is my closet. This thing is a hundred times more powerful than it ever was when I was a kid... it's grown along with me. Nothing's changed.”

  Heather swished her beer around in the bottle idly and dragged from her cigarette. Tom relaxed a bit in his seat. The absence of coddling, protocol apology for his misfortune was refreshing.

  “Part of why I became a cop was so I could arrest the guy who beat and raped my mother,” Heather said curtly. “He lived with us for a while, but they were never married. Then this one time, we get called in on a sexual assault outside a bar. Perp dropped his wallet.”

  “Him, right?”

  “Yeah. We go to his house, and the guy recognizes me, so he comes at me with a lamp. I shoot him and put him away for ten years. Come to find out, less than a year into the sentence he kills himself in prison.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, that sucked. Kinda took the luster out of it. He deserved it, but it's never felt right. Knowing I contributed to someone ending their own life.”

  “Ahh, that’s different. This is a demon we're dealing with. A creature. A spirit. It's not a person.”

  Heather swilled the last of her beer and leaned over to Tom. “Yeah, I guess you're right. Still, though, Tom Bell, if you can take something away from this-- I'm not gonna feed you all that shit about a man should dig two graves. Revenge, when it's righteous, can feel pretty God damn good.”

  Tom grinned, sipping his beer.

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Yeah, you're welcome.”

  Heather finished off her beer and shifted on the couch. She laid her legs across Tom's lap, laying back and closing her eyes.

  “I'll help you get him. It. Whatever.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tom put his legs up and let his hands rest on Heather's bare thighs. She shifted her toes to rub at his chest reassuringly.

  “Night,” she mumbled.

  Tom didn't answer. He nursed at his beer for a long while. He watched TV, listened to Artie's snoring, and squeezed Heather’s warm legs. He wasn't sure when he fell asleep, but he briefly awoke once; when Heather got up to switch off the light, before returning to the couch.

  10

  “Mother”

  Tom's phone was vibrating. He groggily fished it out of his jacket on the floor. Sometime during the night Heather had gone back to her bed.

  “Hello?”

  “Tom, oh my God. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, hey, Maggie. Just a few bruises and a couple stitches.”

  “Tom, I feel terribly for you, but there's kind of an emergency.”

  “Sheesh. I almost died.”

  “I'll sympathy fuck you twice to make up for it. I promise. Turn on the news.”

  “What channel?”

  “It's on all the networks, just go.”

  Tom grabbed the remote off of Artie's lap and surfed through the channels.

  “What's goin' on?” he asked blearily.

  “Just tell me when you see it.”

  He kept clicking. Finally he landed on MSNBC. Morgan Bailey's face was looking back at him.

  “We're just glad to have our little girl back. We just want things to go back to normal.”

  Tom was instantly awake. He turned up the volume.

  “What the fuck?”

  “She turned up in the middle of the night,” Margaret said hurriedly. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “Not a thing. We've been at Heather's all night.”

  “Who's--?”

  “Local cop,” Tom said quickly. “Been helping us out. She's seen some of the happenings. We may have to recruit her.”

  “Okay, I'll look into it. You need to find out what this is all about. Is Artie watching?”

  “I thought I was off the case.”

  “Don't fuck with me, Bell. You're there, and something is happening.”

  “Fine, fine, I'll wake him up, hold on.”

  Tom shook Artie heavily. The TV had switched to a shot of the Bailey house, and an attractive newscaster was giving a recap of Susan Bailey's disappearance. Nothing he didn't know already.

  “What. Fuck, what,” Artie grumbled, rubbing his eyes.

  “Susan Bailey turned up,” Tom said. Artie's eyes widened and he reached for his glasses.

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. I've got Margaret on the phone.”

  “Tom,” came
Margaret's voice.

  “Huh?”

  “Something is up with Susan. What channel are you on?”

  “MSNBC.”

  “Okay, let me switch over, see if they get a good shot of her...”

  Tom and Artie watched in silence. Margaret said nothing. Molly Bailey was on, now, and she was in tears.

  “It's not over yet,” Mrs. Bailey said weakly. “It's not over, it'll never be over. My little girl.” The shot changed.

  “Bad press, huh?” Tom offered.

  “Watch this,” Margaret's voice said. The shot on TV changed to Morgan Bailey, stroking his daughter's head. Under the anchor's voice, Mr. Bailey was conversing with a police officer. Susan Bailey stood at chest height with him, his hands on her thin shoulders. She looked like she hadn't eaten in weeks. Her eyes were sunken in and her face had a placid expression, an empty frown. She shook gently, arms folded as if to armor her.

  “Do you see it?” Margaret said.

  “No,” Tom said, raising an eyebrow. “She just looks traumatized. She's been missing for months.”

  “Ask Artie.”

  “Artie, do you see anything weird?” Tom asked. Artie rubbed his glasses, squinting. He rubbed his chin.

  “I sure do,” Artie said. “That isn't Susan Bailey.”

  “What?”

  “God bless the hi-def changeover. She's twitching like a crack addict. At first I'd probably guess she's possessed, but watch the face... it's moving like something that doesn't even know how to move. Like it's watching the people around it and doing its best to copy them. Look, it's just mimicking the expressions of people around it.”

  Tom furrowed his eyebrows and watched. He picked up on it after a minute: when the police officer talked, Susan's mouth would move gently as if mimicking. Her expression never changed. Her eyebrows would raise and lower at seemingly random intervals.

  “I bet it's a branch, one of those things we saw in the woods. A good one, I admit-- this one actually has a face. But it's telling like a bad poker player.”

  “How the fuck do you do that?” Tom asked.

  “It's my job.”

  “What did he say?” Margaret asked.

  “He says that's not Susan Bailey,” Tom related. “It's something Akebara made. We've come across a few of them already, it's in the reports.”

  “It's trying to make us leave,” Artie said. “It thinks it can trick us again. Killing you didn't work, so it's pretending to let Susan go.”

  “You three need to get over there,” Margaret said over the phone. “Get the media out and go deal with it. Call me when you have something.”

  She hung up without another word. Tom stuck his phone back in his pocket and pulled on his jacket.

  “Go get Heather,” Tom said.

  “I have a horrible feeling about this,” Artie said with a groan.

  “Yeah, no shit.”

  Tom lazily pulled on his shoes. He pulled out his handgun and released the clip, checking the chamber for any dirt or mud from the forest and locking the clip back in. It was then he had a realization.

  “We have no ammo,” he said with a frown. “We left it all back at the motel.”

  Artie clicked his tongue thoughtfully, stopping in the stairwell.

  “Do we have time to go get it?”

  “No. It's a few clicks from here.”

  Artie sighed. “I'll ask if Heather has anything. Probably only has shells for her 12 gauge, though. Go check the shed out back.”

  “There's a shed?”

  “I had to take a piss.”

  ********

  Tom passed through the kitchen and out onto what pretended to be a porch. It was little more than a cobblestone slab on the dirt that connected the doorway to an empty green field. The field gave way to a cliff, lined with trees. Through the breaks in the leaves, Tom could make out a road. A single car drove past at that moment, but he got the feeling there wouldn't be another for hours.

  There was a beaten, but sturdy shed to his right. Aloysius' doghouse sat next to it.

  A weathered padlock sat guard on the tin door, unlocked and its joints lined with rust. Tom pulled the creaky door open. Dust lined the doorway itself, but inside was very clean. There was little at first glance than an assortment of tools. A shelf hanging wrenches and screwdrivers. An open toolbox, presenting box cutters and a plastic flashlight.

  About to give up, Tom pulled out a shelf of the decrepit tool bench on a whim. Inside he found a full magazine of 9mm rounds that looked like it would fit his standard issue pistol. He pocketed this quickly. Next to them were a handful of 12 gauge shells which he stuck in his jacket pocket to give to Heather.

  His eyes followed the bench down. Propped against the tin wall of the shack was a beaten old wood ax. The handle was dented and dirty, but the head was clean, sharpened. Polished.

  He weighed the 9mm clip in his palm. Enough to deal with any unruly townsfolk, but he had a feeling wrenching at his gut that they were getting much closer to the source of this thing than they anticipated. How many bullets would it take to fell the tree of flesh?

  The ax left the shed with him.

  ********

  The citizens of Orchard surrounded the Bailey home, along with a mob of cameramen and police. When they saw Heather’s squad car coming, the townsfolk turned on it, many of them erupting into angry, incoherent yelling. Tom's thumbed his pistol.

  Upon seeing the cameras, he leaned forward to address Heather. The last thing he needed was his face appearing on national TV after the incident in Los Angeles.

  “I need to borrow your sunglasses,” he said. “I can't be recognized.”

  “What?”

  “Please, I'll explain later, I just need them.”

  “This is bad,” Heather said. She took her sunglasses off and handed them back to him. “You boys better know what you're doing.”

  “There isn't much choice,” said Tom. “The longer we wait, the harder it's going to be to prove.”

  “I don't get it. She looks just like Susan. It's Susan. Shouldn't you be glad about this?”

  “Just trust me,” Artie said. He flicked a cigarette out before rolling the window back up quickly. “That thing is not Susan Bailey.”

  “You better be right.”

  The car pulled to a stop. They were beset by angry townsfolk. At the head of the mob, Tom recognized one face-- Odie, the black waiter from the Garden.

  “Go home,” Odie was yelling. “Go back and leave us to nature. Go back to the city.”

  Heather climbed out of the car cautiously, her shotgun hanging around her shoulder. She held her badge up into the air.

  “Police,” she yelled over the crowd. “Let us through.”

  “You're a traitor to your hometown, Heather Dawes,” Odie exclaimed loudly, his fists balled up. He pointed a meaty finger at her angrily. “Orchard is built on strong family values.”

  “Just fucking save it,” Heather said. She pointed at a nearby cameraman. “Get that thing out of here.”

  “You're a disgrace to this earth,” Odie bellowed. By now Tom was trying to climb out of the car. Odie got in his face, an accusatory finger jabbed at the agent.

  “Get those fucking cameras off me,” Tom said, trying not to indulge Odie's rambling. “I'm with the federal government. Shut the cameras off or I'll have you arrested.” He, too, was showing his badge now.

  “Mother Nature will swallow you up,” Odie screamed. Tom had no choice but to face him. Odie's spittle was spattering against his face. He held an arm up to shield himself from Odie's outbursts and the prying news cameras.

  “Her roots have taken here, and she protects this place. The people of Orchard are Mother Nature's children. You leave or she'll eat you whole, boy. Tear you limb from limb and feed you to the wolves in the forest.”

  “What did you just say?” Tom asked, resisting the urge to take off his sunglasses.

  “Oh my God,” Artie said as he came to Tom's side in the crowd.

/>   “What the fuck did you just say?” Tom repeated.

  “This place is Mother Nature's. It all starts here-- human beings, returning to the earth, returning to the wild. You fuckin’ city boys, bringing your guns and your drugs and your poor manners, your frightening lack of social graces. Mother Nature will raise her branches and strike you down where you stand. Get out of here. Get out of her town, and get away from us.”

  “I've heard enough,” Tom snarled. He tried to push past Odie. Odie shoved him against the car. The big waiter gripped Tom’s collar and raised his fist.

  “You're no threat to her,” he shouted in Tom's face. “Leave here, or serve. Leave here, or serve.”

  “You better take your fucking hands off me before I put you back in the earth.” Tom drew his pistol and jammed it against Odie's stomach. The crowd shouted louder. They took steps back, everyone pointing at the gun in unison.

  “Let the world see,” Odie yelled at the nearby cameraman. “See how this man treats those he feels to be beneath him. Mother Nature's reckoning will swallow all of you whole. Her roots and branches will tear down your buildings. She will envelope you.”

  Tom ducked as he heard Heather's shotgun go off. She had fired a warning shot into the air. She stomped forward and threw Odie to the ground with the weight of her firearm.

  “Let us through,” she spat as she stepped over him to reach the cameraman. “I told you to turn that shit off,” she yelled. Heather wrestled the camera out of its owner’s hands and threw it on the ground. The casing cracked and pieces flew off. The cameraman was off like a shot, fleeing back down the hill to his news van.

  “Children, these traitors are no threat to us,” Odie yelled from the dirt. “Spill their blood on Gaia's ground. Feed her verdant, fertile grass.”

  “We are going inside, now,” Heather yelled at the others. Tom, Artie and Keda ran behind her. She leveled her shotgun at members of the crowd, who were advancing on them with looks that could curl paint from brick. Tom felt a woman from the throng grip his shoulder. He turned and punched her in the jaw, sending her hurdling to the ground. The woman issued an inhuman wail that cut the air like a dying animal. Several of the crowd joined in and began yelling at Tom wordlessly, making a cacophony of incoherent screams.