#psychopomps

The door creaked open. An older argid woman, with the face of a raccoon and a long, lemurlike tail, reared her head through the crack. The tips of her ears turned gray a while ago, and her general stance had shifted into that of a toad over time; she stared the duo down, two aviari with uniforms and guns, and scowled.

“I’m assuming you’ve got a warrant?”

Don Jon gestured to his partner. St. Vrain dug in his jacket and pulled out the envelope. Jon ogled the hobbling woman, puzzled about why she trusted them enough to open the door before asking for a warrant. She must be new here, he thought. Any worker here longer than three months knows we’d have our foot in the door the second the knob was turned otherwise. He could have done it, key word here being could. Don didn’t operate that way. Scalpels, not swords.

“Looks real. Is it?” She turned to St. Vrain.

“Yes it is, ma’am. You’re not in trouble, we’re just doing some further investigation.”

She sighed. “Alright, come in. Don’t touch anything.”

The agent chuckled: “I mean, it’s a search warrant, we kinda have to-”

“Then don’t touch anyone, you hear me?”

“Can do, ma’am.”

If the outside, faded and slumped, looked bad, the inside looked deceivingly better. Bunks lined the walls, empty of workers. Here, every species you could take account for on Earth populated the stained spring mattresses at night, and filled the silage and chemical plants in the daytime. The sheets were probably lice-free, in the way that playing slots probably might win you a thousand dollars on the first pull. Don didn’t feel like leaning in close to check. It wasn’t what he was here for anyhow.

He pulled his PDA — a CIVET pad, issued specifically for law enforcement—out of his jacket and clicked it on. The little machine whirred and buzzed as it flickered to life. “Lieutenant, could you maybe watch the door for us? Make sure nobody interrupts the interview?” St. Vrain nodded and marched over to the door, standing watch. The old argid glowered. “You really know how to make a lady feel welcome in her own place of business.”

“It’s just a few questions, ma’am. You’re not in trouble.” He didn’t look up, flicking the machine over to the “notes” section of the program. The mechanical keyboard was in shorthand, punched into the documents with one thumb; for anyone who didn’t know the language, a pen for scribbling in indecipherable pixels was available. Jon started clicking away, making note of what had already been said.

“Because the damn army cops showing up to my door twice in a week is such a good sign of that.” She limped over to a card table and snagged a chair, dragging it behind her with a grating roar. “Lemme siddown, I’m tired as all get out.”

“Fair enough, ma’am. First question: what is your name?”

“Well, what’s yours, agent?” She crossed her arms and leaned back. The agent was beginning to realize letting her get the chair was a mistake. It wasn’t for exhaustion, it was for reinforcement.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“I’d like to know the name of the bastard bothering me on such a lovely day.”

He sighed. “My name is Agent Don Jon. I’m a Psychopomp, and I operate in the industrial zone and the Bluffs.”

She chortled, rough and dusty. “That your real name, Donnie boy?” He smiled back, depriving her of the joy that the brief mockery gave her. Don Jon was used to being the butt of the joke because of the name the Springs gave him. Being in on it took the wind out of people’s sails pretty quickly. Her own smile gave way to a familiar scowl.

“No, ma’am, it isn’t. Now, what’s your name?”

“Wisteria Bushtail. Female, argid, 68, whatever you got us putting on the ID cards.”

“I see. Next question: what have you heard about the recent disappearances in the industrial area?” He looked up from his CIVET and observed her reaction. If she reacted, he couldn’t tell; she slouched, but stayed still and emotionless as a statue. “Haven’t heard anything,” she said, “and disappearances, dear, ain’t nothin new.”

“How so?”

She shook her head, sizing him up. “C’mon, agent, this is your job. Rolling Thunder Deathwish, RRAW, even LUnA if they get desperate — anyone’s fair game for ransom and killin’. I bet you a quarter of the people in this town are missing at any given time before popping back up.”

The smile faded. “Ma’am, all the people who have gone missing have been staying at your bunkhouse. We don’t want to insinuate anything, but at least four people have gone missing. They all worked nearby, and all their drinking buddies said they set up shop here. It’s suspicious, is all.” Her shoulders shrugged, but her body didn’t move. “Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Dozens of people come and go every day here, agent. Forgive the cliche, but looking for four people in a bunkhouse is like trying to find a needle in a threadstack.”

“Haystack.”

“Pardon me?”

“It’s haystack, ma’am.”

A scoff. “We talking about missing people or metaphors here? I thought your kind was supposed to be professional, scientific?” Ah, yes, the old fashioned speciesism. A less tolerant person would have bit back, told this burrowhead to check if she had any threadstacks down there in the goddamn dirt, you baby-eating, plant-fellating varmint. Not Don Jon. Reforms meant penalizing people for using language like that, and penalties were taken out of his salary. Plus, it was just plain rude, and set a bad example. The lieutenant was watching a professional at work.

“Alright, ma’am, one last question: would you happen to know a Davis McIntyre? He slept here, went missing a few weeks ago, and his family’s worried sick.”

She grumbled, grating her orthopedic boots on the wooden floor. “For cryin’ out loud, I already told you. I don’t keep track of the people who come and go here.”

“You don’t even have a logbook?”

“What’s the point of a logbook? People work here for six months tops, then move to some other Free City. Free Omaha, Free Topeka, Free Okaysee if they’re suicidal. I bet you half the people in this shithole at night aren’t gonna be here the next day.” Shithole, Jon typed in the CIVET. “Bet you double half of them are gonna leave the Gap o’ Lead altogether. Been here since the Rip, and lemme tell ya, ain’t nobody ever stays in this city except the people who wanna suck it dry. Makes you miss the Old Realm.”

The Old Realms, that dying source of nostalgia, had been the banner of militants and most of the first non-terrestrials, the ones who got torn from their old dimensions or planets or whatever it was during the ‘79 Rip and got stuck here.

“Y’know my mom used to fight for the Old Realms with an aviari group. Course, this was in the former Soviets — she had to give it up if she wanted to get here with my dad and me.”

“She a commie? Hidin’ from the ollies?” She said this with a sneer. He ignored it.

“Nope, Jewish. Failed European countries and Judaism don’t really mix, as it turns out — even if you're a convert. I think the giant bird person thing was also a contributing factor.”

“Rough for her, I guess. Are we done here? Can we skip to the part where you trash the place and leave me to clean it up for the rest of the day?” She got back up to drag the chair all the way back to the card table, slowly, loudly, like words through clenched teeth. “I’d like to get back to picking nits out of people’s beds, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, ma’am.” He motioned for St. Vrain to unblock the door and follow him.

The room was poorly lit, which made looking for any evidence of missing persons all the more difficult. You had to strain to see if there were any scraps of paper or diaries under the bed. Coming here, St. Vrain had some qualms about having to break into people’s footlockers, but it looked like he needn’t worry — nobody here could afford a footlocker, much less afford to lock one. Everything they owned, they kept under their pillows.

“I got a flask of…” Don Jon unscrewed the silver top and shot his tongue briefly inside. “What used to be gin. Now I guess it’s nothin’.” He tipped his head back and coaxed the few remaining drops of juniper and sin into his open beak.

St. Vrain was a bit better equipped to see in the low light; aviari had a variety of breeds and forms, and one of these forms looked a lot like the barn owls on Earth. As a result, the lieutenant could see a bit better in the dark — although he still kept his sunglasses on, clutched tight above his nostrils. An odd tic, Jon was meaning to discuss it with the guy later, although it seemed not to affect his vision as much as the former thought. He reached into a pillowcase. “Think I found something papery.”

“A letter?”

He pulled it free of the cheap fabric. “Nope.” A dirty magazine sat splayed in his hands, “Draconics Gone Wild.” The centerfold rolled out, a buff woman covered in scales from tail to snout standing with pudenda spread over the camera. It crackled in the lieutenant’s hands. He dropped it, reeling. “Cripes,” he muttered.

“Watch your language, young man. We don’t take the name of the lord in vain here.”

“I said ‘cripes’, lady.”

“It’s close enough,” she spat. She sat on a bunk — presumably her own — and watched the two men poke and prod around the bunkhouse, coming up empty handed with anything that could possibly assist them with the case. She took no joy in it, rocking back and forth on the uncomfortable springs. She looked bored out of her mind. After crawling on their hands and knees for the better part of an hour around the bunks, the men gave up.

“Would you happen to have a lost and found here?”

“Sure, people lose things and other people find ‘em.” That meant no.

“What about other floors?”

“Nope. It’s just this one.”

Jon dug his hands in the pockets of his coat. They held nothing but loose bullets, lint, and dinner mints he sucked on when he needed a sugar fix. He took a deep breath. “Drat. Alright then.” He drew the pistol from his coat and fired a shot in the air. Dust rattled down from the rafters where the bullet made impact into hard wood.

“What the hell are you do-”

He leveled the gun at her head. “Tell us if there’s another floor or I’ll blow your goddamn brains out, witch.” The lieutenant stepped over to block the door again. Wisteria’s hands trembled. Things were getting serious for her and fast. “Okay, okay, fine! Th-there’s a basement. You access it from the outside window, down the fire escape! Just please don’t touch the cross-”

Agent Don Jon breathed out slowly from his mouth. His gun was in his holster. No bullets riddled the roof. He felt the same change, same lint, same dinner mints in his hands. Everything was right with the world.

“Drat, alright then. C’mon, lieutenant, let’s go.”

“Roger.” The two filed out of the room, with Catherine following close so she could shut the door behind them. They strolled to the bus stop.

“So, are we heading back to the station to put the case on ice, or-”

Don Jon doubled over, exhausted. A migraine washed over his temples, flooding it with pressure and sleep. “Drops, please.”

Without hesitation, St. Vrain pulled the container from his pockets and deposited a couple of psionic gumdrops into the agent’s waiting claw. He popped them onto his tongue, mashing them up against the roof of his beak. His body recoiled at the taste, equal parts zinc-like chemical burn and fecund scent. The migraine faded. The lieutenant rested his hand on the agent’s back, patting him gently as the heart began to catch up to the mind.

“What did you see?”

“Threatened her. Used my service weapon. Coaxed a basement out of her. Apparently you can get in through the fire escape-” He coughed, snottily and rough. “Pardon. There’s a fire escape around the back we can get into.”

St. Vrain cocked his head. “You think she’s been kidnapping people?”

“I dunno, Jerome. I just know she’s hiding something. And basements are great hiding places when you don’t know they exist.”

***

She’d dozed off on a cot from the looks of it, with her shape tossing and turning under sheets as seen through the window. The two huddled together in a crouch. It was hell on St. Vrain’s knees, but Don Jon’s longer legs didn’t even register an ache. The two followed her shape moving in restless sleep around each window, before finally coming to the back of the house.

“Where’s the damn fire escape?” Don craned his neck around, searching for a hole in the ground or some sort of hatch. No such luck. The back half of the bunkhouse was cluttered with felled tree branches, scattered car parts, and an entire damn windmill, lying on its side.

St. Vrain scratched the top of his facial disk, trying to figure something out too. “Maybe it’s under the junk?”

“She’s an old woman, lieutenant. I don’t think she’s lifting all this.”

It hit St. Vrain the second he stepped forward. “Agent, come feel this,” he whispered harshly. The lieutenant fell to his knees, his hands on the grass. Jon did much the same.

“What am I feeling, Jerry?”

“You ever play sports, sir?”

“Chess club count?”

He fought the urge to roll his eyes. He lost. “Look around you.”

Dead grass covered the lawn like yellowing stubble. Weeds shot up like whisps of balding hair, rebelling against its barren fate. “She doesn’t seem to be into yardwork, so what?”

“Except this one spot?”

Jon looked down, running his hands through the blades of supposed Kentucky blue. It clicked. Dead leaves and trash bags covered the edges of the plastic grass. This lawn hadn’t gathered debris on purpose — someone had decorated it. The duo stepped back, grabbed the heavy sheet of astroturf, and pulled it up. There it sat, a concrete block and a wooden hatch, wedged in the dry ground.

“Shit howdy,” Don Jon said while setting the sheet on the ground beside them. “Good work, officer.”

St. Vrain carried a utility prybar with him in case any doors or windows needed forcing. There was no need; the door rattled open the second he pushed down. Nothing locked it or kept it closed except for Earth’s closest friend, gravity. Behind it was an inky blackness, a hole emptied of visuals and sound. All that the eyes maintained for company was a rusty emergency ladder stretching a foot into the abyss before vanishing. St. Vrain fiddled with his belt and handed Don Jon a flashlight. He held the other in his hand, lightweight and flimsy, before joining the agent in scanning the floor with yellowing beams. Without so much as a “Geronimo”, Don Jon slid down into the basement.

At first it looked normal. Buckets of paint, neglected and dried out, stacked up like skyscrapers against the stone wall. Between them, cobwebs stretched abandoned by their weavers. There were piles of broken furniture, old mattresses, discarded sacks that held ghosts of long devoured potatoes and beans. A ladder, presumably leading up to an exit hidden under the main level, leaned against an alcove. This was the only place where shafts of light from between floorboards decorated the basement; everywhere else was absent. Don Jon heard St. Vrain land behind him with a thump.

“You good, bud?”

He brushed himself off, having landed on his side and coated himself in the bituminous dust of the cellar. “I’m gonna need to do laundry, but other than that, peachy.”

Jon’s beam met the lieutenant, but his face wasn’t what caused the agent to jump. It was the face behind him. “Jesus Christ!”

In a flash, St. Vrain drew his gun and swiveled, expecting company. In a way, Don Jon was right. It was, in fact, Jesus Christ. A whole wall of Him, in fact. His face was sown into several samplers lining the walls in beautiful threadwork. He collected himself and joined the lieutenant in illuminating the dark wall.

After the Rip, a lot of enties lost faith in their deities and began to take stock in the ones surrounding them. They’d join the regular religions as part of the congregation, much like Don Jon’s parents, but some of them had their own takes on the divine of Earth. The Church of the Brazen Beetle as founded by the bug-like ixchel was the biggest still kicking around, taking Christ’s crucifixion and putting him in a boiling brass beetle instead, miraculously emerging after three days. The Abraxian Draconics were flagellants who beat their scales bloody in service of inciting war between angels and demons. Whatever religious beliefs the sarxyces hid behind their empty-eyed masks seemed to be compatible with any religion they liked, as they’d often wrap themselves in crucifixes and shinto symbolism as amulets adorning their robes and coats.

The Argid Orthodoxy was different. Argid Orthodoxy supposed that all events that took place in the Bible took place in their realm, and that the Rip was their form of judgement. Those who ended up on Earth after that day believed themselves to have been cast into Hell, and sought to perform near-pagan rituals to return to glory and the heaven promised to them. The religion maintained a dwindling clergy of old folks, violent militants, and edgy teenagers who snorted glue behind the school dumpster. Having images of the Argid Christ, his snout wet and ears glowing, in one’s home was a sure sign of holiness and redemption, along with crosses encrusting the walls like barnacles. Down here, St. Vrain and Jon were met with nothing but His holy gaze.

“Gives me the creeps,” whispered the agent. St. Vrain nodded to no one in particular. “Alright, let’s look for evidence. Clothes, letters, signs of struggle, so on.”

Lots of things littered the ground — empty bottles of wine, torn up paintings of Argid Christ, snack cake wrappers licked clean of frosting — so searching was difficult. The dirt stained Don’s tan claws a dirty black, and the same for the knees of his service pants. Finally, his hands brushed over something, something he thought felt like a pebble before. He brought it close to his eyes, shining a light on it. St. Vrain shuffled over to see. Pinched between talons was a human tooth. Breath stopped moving between the two.

“Alright, should we call for back-up?” The lieutenant reached for his radio.

“Now hold on, buddy. What kind of person leaves a single tooth?”

St. Vrain looked anxious to call it in, get some more people down here before something bad happened. “Maybe it got knocked out during a fight?”

“Maybe,” he cooed, “but if I was planning on taking a body to another location, I’d make damn sure I have everything, and I’d remember knocking out a tooth. No, this tooth means that there’s a body nearby. Keep looking.”

“Ok, sure.” Exasperated, he holstered his walkie-talkie and kept scanning the room.

One more pass over the wall of Christ stirred something queer in Don Jon’s gizzard. All the crosses, the arms equidistant and the center braced with a smaller set, were all parallel, pointing up and down. Except for one. One sat right next to a worn down, dirty visage of the Lord at boot level. A human Lord.

He walked over, his eyes fixed on the painting, and turned the cross right-side up. The image fell to the floor, kicking up dust. He already knew what it was, but he could hear St. Vrain groan under his breath as the dark cloud cleared. Another dark hole for them to crawl in and die. Jon took no joy in it either — at 6-foot-something he was basically spelunking indoors at all times — but it was hard on St. Vrain.

“You don’t gotta go in there if you don’t want Jerome. Just stand watch and make sure nobody comes down here. If they do-”

“Shoot ‘em?” He drew his pistol again, undoing the safety.

“I mean, ask questions first, but yeah, then shoot ‘em.”

St. Vrain turned his back to the wall and kept his eyes trained on the ladders down. Meanwhile, Don Jon stripped himself of his coat and clip on tie, set it on the ground beside him, and began to wiggle into the burrow.

Don Jon didn’t take stock in species-based traits, but he did take stock in one thing: argids can fit their fat little bodies into a Pringles can if need be. Thankfully, this was not a Pringles can he was crawling into, but it spread a bit tighter than your average playground tube. His shoes pushed him further into the dirty burrow, his elbows getting him further. It must have been six, ten, twenty feet before it remembered to open up, the sides of the walls finally making distance from the flashlight clenched in the agent’s beak.

When there was finally enough room to squat instead of crawl, he tried to get his bearings. The ground around him was warm, and felt like it was humming. Maybe I’m under another house’s water heater, he thought, or a power station. Hell, maybe it’s just the Earth. The cavern sloped upwards, a construction feat that would impress the agent under any other circumstance other than this.

Something made a noise.

“Mrhrhrmm. Mrhhrrmmr! MRHRHRM!”

It didn’t sound pleasant. Reflexively, he almost went for his pistol, before looking around him. One bullet might collapse the whole thing.

“RHHRHRMRMRH!”

It was getting the louder the closer he got to the top of the slope. The stomach turned, the mind reeled, he braced for the worst.

He still wasn’t prepared.

It was a human male at some point. There was a human face, with a cheap sex toy ball gag wrapped around its head, spittle and teethmarks around the clown nose-like bit. Don Jon assumed it had human brains, and human thoughts. Everything else was out the window. A draconic arm had been stitched where original had grown on the left, and an argid arm sat similar on the right. they seemed sown on crooked. For the legs, he expected more species, an action figure mix and match. How naive. That was where the arms went. Of course, there were other legs attached — an ixchel leg stapled loosely to a knee here, a human palm splayed and grafted on the other. Neither were in very good health, with the knee palm having rotted to the point of dangling from its owner. Then his chest, dear God, his chest. Tails, claws, ears, genitals, anything that could be sown onto a thing was sown on.

Everything left over was behind the poor man, composting. There were a lot more than five missing people.

On the dirty sleeping bag he writhed and moaned, banging his head against the dirt floor. Don Jon tried to suppress the tide, tried to batten down the puke building in his throat, the panic of seeing such a thing and seeing it move. He tried to look at something else in the room, something not dominated by threadwork and rot. An electric lantern. An IV stand. A golden cross hanging from a nail. Everything around them: Hell, Hell, Hell.

Finally, he got close enough to reach. The man stopped thrashing and screaming wordlessly through his gag as Don Jon began to undo the buckle.

“The king the king?”

“What?”

“Be you the king of all of the holy most Argid greatness, shown of which I am to be the new son of, never before living before now on this Earth and bringing us out of Hell’s judgement, the king the king the-”

“Slow down, please. I’m with the WRDF. I’m here to help you.”

He didn’t obey. He went faster, bellowing and growling in a voice ragged from screaming. “Please, please so thirsty, bring the liquid, bring the liquid to make my limbs so whole and filled when I become the most of all yes to reach and grab all of mankind, so thirsty, so thirsty…”

He looked around, dazed. He knew the guy wanted water, but there weren't any bottles or jugs of it lying around exactly. Then, he looked at the IV bag again, hanging from its stand. Saline. Dear God, he’s delirious. It was all that was down here. He took the bag off the stand and squirted a bit of it into his mouth, just enough to wet his lips.

“Thank you, oh thank you,” he stammered, “Mother was dutiful and penitent and forgot to water the vessel in, the vessel thanks you for the vessel secures a place for your sinner self in the true afterlife, an escape from Hell, yes, an escape from Hell with me and Mother, yes!” He began laughing, then screaming, then laughing again. All Don Jon could do was sit and watch.

“Are you…” The bile rose in his throat as he began to ask. How can you be professional? “Are you Davis McIntyre?”

“Bad name! Bad naaaame! Mother mustn’t hear that name or she adds more dutifuls upon the vessel! The vessel must be saved!” He writhed and pleaded. “Please don’t say that name, good sir, that name makes Mother add more dutifuls upon the body, and I already have so many, please don’t say that name, thirsty, so thirsty…”

He yammered on, rolling his head in circles. His limbs splayed along and rolled on the bed like petrified spider limbs, dangling in the air as if it had been freshly killed. Don Jon took the response as a yes. Sitting cross-legged on the packed down dirt, he pointed his flashlight down the slope, then back to McIntyre, thirsty thirsty McIntyre. He wouldn’t fit. He’d amassed too many limbs.

“I’m… I’m gonna come back for you.” He left out the word “try” in the response. And “with an excavator”. And “also dynamite”.

“You are saved my friend! You are saved with me and Mother! So thirsty, so thirsty…”

He slid down the hill, stopping before slamming his head on the shrinking cavern. Back through the little tunnel.

His parents were so worried when they went to the station. They’d let him get a job cause he was 18 and he wanted a moped to ride around town. They thought he’d been kidnapped and robbed. They thought he’d been killed. Jon had to tell them the truth. He tried not to think about it, and it didn’t work. It was just thoughts of his splayed, surgically tortured body writhing in pain, or attempting to walk out of the hole, or riding on a moped. Actually, that last one was pretty funny. He chuckled for a second. Then he wanted to die when he realized what he was chuckling at. Sick fucking world. Sick fucking people.

He breathed in the stale air of the basement like gulps of wine when he was out. St. Vrain looked him over. “What’s wrong? Bodies?”

He coughed. “Worse.’

“What’s worse than a dead body?”

“W-wanna find out? Call for back-up.” He stifled a gag and stayed on his knees for a second before wobbling upright. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. If you see the bunkhouse owner, kill her.”

The ladder to the yard, rusted as it was, thankfully held both of the men’s weights as they pulled themselves out into the light. Jon had never been so glad to see the eternally cloudy sky.

“We got a 21-3, unknown but dangerous, send back-up to 2873 Washington Street-”

“Excuse me!” A wiry voice hollered at them. Don Jon drew his pistol and bore down on the source — a balding man in a bad dress shirt and tie. “Who are you people? What are you doing to my property’s yard?”

“Sir,” Don Jon started, “please stand back, we’ve got a situation here, and- wait, your property?”

“Yes, my property. I’m the owner of this bunkhouse and I demand to know what you people are doing on it before operating hours.”

Shit. Shit shit shit. It took the agent a lot of willpower not to say it out loud. The last thing the situation needed now was more panic.

“Shit,” said St. Vrain. “Uh, sir, we’ve uncovered something potentially illegal inside your basement.”

“What?”

“There’s some fucked up shit in your basement, sir! I’m gonna need you to stand back.” His hands were shaking as he raised his voice, tone cracking. It was all shaking and trying not to flip out. Sirens were blaring in the distance, and they sounded too far away.

“I wanna talk to your superior officers, dammit, who- wait, who the hell are you?”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Wisteria, swinging the sharp end of a pickaxe into his skull.

He fell to the ground, the lights turned off by a ripped cord. They opened fire, but it was too late; for an old woman she was quick, and already in the bunkhouse with the door locked. Don Jon jumped down the hatch with Jerome behind him, just as Wisteria slid down the ladder.

“You’re surrounded, hands up.” Kill her. “Don’t make me do anything I’m gonna regret.” Do something. Do something so I can take you to your God and have him damn you to the real Hell, you sick bitch.

“Please just put down the pickaxe. The cops are on their way.” St. Vrain’s voice kept calming and heavy, sopping up the rage and disgust from his charge. Deep down, the lieutenant knew this was why he was here — to stop the righteous psionic anger from kicking in. Breathe, he tried thinking to him, hoping in some way he could read those thoughts. Breathe, Donnie. She isn’t worth it.

Don Jon breathes in. She charges at them. He fires twice at her heart. St. Vrain fires once at her knees and misses. She runs forward and tripping, embeds the pickaxe in Lt. St. Vrain’s head, killing him instantly. Two people are dead when they don’t need to be. There’s a pang in the agent’s heart, realizing this is the worst possible thing to do. This is the way to infinite suffering. He makes a one-second plan. Don Jon breathes out, and everything is okay again.

She charges at them. Don tackles St. Vrain. Turning, Jon plants a .45 ACP round, hollow point, in her geriatric knees. She slips and stabs the pickaxe into the wall. She realizes this is her chance. Before anyone gets a bead on her again, she tears the axe from the wall and slams it into the tunnel roof above her, scurrying away.

The tunnel collapses. Everyone is alive.

“You saved my life, sir.”

“Don’t think anything of it, Jerome.” He looked at the tunnel, then back to St. Vrain. “And my name is Simon.”

“What?”

“My name is Simon. Don’t call me that in front of the other officers, please.”

“...can do, Simon.”

***

It took about an hour for the rest of the WRDF to show up, and by the time they did, they needed to call in an excavator, which took another hour. It took an hour for Don Jon to tell everyone what was down there, two hours for them to find the tunnel, and the rest of daylight to tear the roof off of Wisteria’s cavern. By the time they got there, she and Dave were gone. Her vessel had been forced through a freshly dug hole, and they lost her under the power station proper. All the remaining corpses were bagged up, and everyone went home.

There was a cover up, of course. The people who believed Jon supported it because you just can’t tell people that their son was turned into a being of rotting arms and legs by a woman underground. They’d either sue you for lying or commit ritual suicide. They found a body, a John Doe who’d been in the morgue for a while, and brought in a plastic surgeon from Denver to do up his face. He looked almost like the man in the cave, but not really. “That’s bloating,” they told Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre, “it’s natural.”

Everyone mostly got on with their lives. Jerome St. Vrain stayed Agent Don Jon’s watchman. They got to be on a first name basis with one another; maybe not professional, but admirable in its own little way. Don got a transfer to Boystown in the west, “for heroism”.

Deep down, he knew why he was transferred. Nothing would make him patrol that area ever again. Not knowing what he knew. Every step he took, he’d hear the echo of hollow ground beneath him. He’d be haunted by a cry under his feet.: