Note- This one was kind of interesting in that I ended up researching old cookbooks. That’s where it really started from.. my desire to work Chicken Loaf into a sentence on purpose.
Chicken loaf. Eugh.
Mr. Henson may have been the most popular man in the town of Smallwood, at least among the kids.
That’s not to say that grownups didn’t like him; certainly they always made time to have a chat and shake hands with the nondescript man of medium height. And ladies always remembered to take him a casserole every week or so, since the passing of his dear wife Eva.
But kids will always flock to someone that has time to listen to their stories, and time to show them one of the many interesting things he knew how to do. And from time to time, he’d pay the kids for collecting glass for him, if he was working on one of his mosaic projects.
Annie and Mitch’s dad said that he was a jack of all trades, or maybe more of an artist of all trades, since whatever he did had to be done with a perfectionist’s bent. “But then, you expect that from folks like him. I think it’s the money, myself, that made him odd when Eva died. Eccentric, I guess, considering,” Mr. Blundell said, blowing out the match from lighting his pipe after dinner one summer night. “You two be sure you’re polite, and forget what I said about oddness. It’s true that he knows a good many tricks that it wouldn’t hurt either of you to learn.” And then Mr. Blundell disappeared behind his paper, as he was wont to do.
Mitch cleared the table and Annie got the dishes done just in time to go listen to the radio before bedtime, always careful to steer clear of Mr. Blundell. He’d had the deep V crease between his eyes that meant he could blow at any time, as Mitch put it, as though he expected his father to puff up like a balloon and pop, scattering bits of himself all over the slightly shabby living room.
Sometimes they whispered about that at night, about how to keep their father from redecorating the house in a rather gross way.
“I think you should remember to put away your shoes more,” Annie said.
“I think you should stop nagging me about my shoes!” Mitch was tired of this fight; as far as he was concerned, shoes wound up where they wound up, and if someone wasn’t wise enough to step over them, they deserved what they got. Life was too short to go about minding the whims of ten year old boys and shoes.
“Maybe we should spend more time at Mr. Henson’s,” he put forth. A dangerous thought, almost as if they were saying they’d prefer Mr. Henson as a father more than their own. Which of course, wasn’t the case. Mr. Henson always had time to talk to them, but he wasn’t father, with his pipe and his occasional bouts of good humor. It was just as the times got worse, so did Mr. Blundell’s moods, not that they were to worry about it. Both children thought this was perfectly ridiculous, like ignoring a huge sinkhole in the middle of the yard. You can step over it for awhile, but eventually you’re going to have to deal with it.
“What about every other afternoon we check on what Mr. Henson’s doing, and if it’s something neat, we ask the right questions?” Annie said, hesitantly.
“I think that’s fair enough.. and let’s make sure we have plenty of bottles for him. I bet if we scout around the pub, we could get those really interesting blue and green ones.”
Sleep soon claimed them both, full of the plans and intentions children have.
The one real problem with their plan was Mrs. Magruder.
Some people are dissatisfied with everything and everyone that comes into their view, and reflect their thoughts with a sourness of expression that makes them difficult to want to deal with. Mrs. Magruder was one such lady.
In her fifties (maybe) or sixties (more likely, especially when she frowned), she had been employed by Mr. Blundell to keep care of the house and the children. Mitch and Annie rather hoped that their father had had a different view about the definition of keeping care was than what Mrs. Magruder had.
Mrs. Magruder’s definition was to make a half-hearted attempt to tidy the rooms, send their clothes to her sister for laundering, and feed the children sandwiches. Duty done, she would then retire to Mr. Blundell’s chair with the paper (which she carefully refolded every evening), and put her feet up on the hassock. Short of a bomb detonation under her blunt roman nose, she would remain there until four thirty, at which time she folded the paper to conceal the fact that she’d read it quite thoroughly and kept the best coupons, put her shoes back on, and wandered into the kitchen to torture food into a semi edible state.
One of the quirks of their steely-eyed housekeeper was to believe that all children were constantly up to no good. She lived in fear that her comfy chair would be removed if Mitch and Annie were caught being up to no good on her watch, and acted accordingly.
The radio was never turned on while she was in residence, as it would corrupt their minds. Books were also suspect, and she held that children should only read the classics, and never comic books or penny novels. Chores, she held, were the best way to develop growing minds and bodies, and she kept the pair busy with all those tasks that Mr. Blundell believed were her sole province.
If, by some chance, all the chores should happen to be done, and she was deeply enough buried in the paper, the children would then be free to quietly play outside.
So it was the day after the whispered conversation that Mitch and Annie rose even before Mr. Blundell to do all the chores they could see as needed to be done. Astonished, Mrs. Magruder’s mouth dropped open upon her arrival, showing the lack of several very important teeth.
“Well now, what you do you know? I suppose that’s what happens when children know what’s good for them,” she said, a slow, somehow frightening smile lighting her usually sour face. She patted them on their heads, a little overly hard, and pressed a shiny new dime into each of their hands. “There now, children, why don’t you run along and play?”
Overcome by their good fortune, (and not realizing that Mrs. Magruder was to give them a dime a week as allowance and typically ‘forgot’ to do so) Mitch and Annie bolted from the dim, dreary house with an air of holiday about them.
So it came about that by 2 o’clock, they were peeking up Mr. Henson’s drive and into his workshop. The workshop was really nothing more than a big wooden barn, filled with all kinds of curious items guaranteed to start a kid asking questions faster than you could say, ‘What’s that?’
On this particular day, he was bent over his bench, painstakingly gluing a piece of brilliant blue glass into place. He greeted Mitch and Annie without looking up.
“Well hello there! You’re just in time, especially if you have some glass for me… it’s so hard to get just the right pieces in just the right colors,” he turned his head sideways, and gave them his warm, friendly smile. He made Annie think of a sheepdog, looking out from under his shaggy dark hair, his dark eyes twinkling.
“Yes,” Mitch said shyly, “we do have some glass for you. Can we watch a while?”
“Watch? But of course you may, young Mitch! And more than that, you can lend a hand and learn about mosiacs, you and Annie both.”
Exchanging grins, they stepped up onto the boxes that Mr. Henson provided, and gasped at what was laid out on the bench. The afternoon sun was slanting through one of the windows and setting the piece alight, catching all the colors of glass and porcelain. “The colors are pretty, Mr. Henson, but I don’t know what the picture is supposed to be,” Mitch said.
Mr. Henson chuckled and tousled the boy’s hair. “And let this be a lesson from art that applies to life,” he said, lifting the boy up and backing away so Mitch could see the piece at a distance. “Sometimes, you can’t see the design of the powers that be by looking right at it, but you have to step away and look at the overall pattern.”
“It’s… it’s an eye!” Mitch said, turning to grin up at Mr. Henson.
“Absolutely correct. Come, Annie, though he’s spoiled the surprise a bit, no reason you shouldn’t have a look too!”
And it was an eye, but not like one painted and flat. It had depth, with all the different shades of blue woven together… it took Annie’s breath away when she, too, saw the overall pattern Mr. Henson spoke of.
“I’ve never seen an eye that many shades of blue before! It’s beautiful,” she said softly.
Mr. Henson smiled sadly. “It’s meant to be my Eva, a real lady, and if I’m taking a little bit of artistic license, well, she was so lovely that she deserves to be portrayed as beautifully as I can arrange.”
Mitch and Annie looked down, not knowing what to say to this, but the moment was broken when Mr. Henson clapped his hands together briskly. “Now, let’s see what you have there!”
Before long, the trio was companionably smashing glass together, which was somehow very fun even when you were allowed to do it. Mr. Henson made them wear gloves to be safe, but even that didn’t take the fun out of the work. Even better, he explained why he was looking for pieces of a certain size, and encouraged them to help him choose what they thought the best ones were.
The clock tower chimed four and Mr. Henson shook his head in surprise. “Well, here we are but half done… do you two think you could wander this way again tomorrow? I could use the assistance, and in return, I’ll set up some smaller pieces that you two can work on. After all, you’ve supplied enough material for them!”
Amazed at their good fortune, the twosome thanked Mr. Henson excitedly, and raced home before Mrs. Magruder could get up from their father’s chair and wonder where they were.
True to form, she merely peered over the paper when they came in at a quarter past. She made no comment, but they noticed an empty glass on the table next to her, the kind Mr. Blundell had after a day in which the V in his forehead was very deep.
Dinner took an eternity that night, and for once, even Mr. Blundell noticed that the food wasn’t the best. He muttered about seeing what possessed Mrs. Magruder to boil a perfectly good steak, and then to boil it with cabbage to boot. “If you two weren’t so fond of her, I’d seriously consider finding someone else, someone that doesn’t abuse a good cut of meat.”
“Maybe we could get her a cookbook,” Annie ventured.
“Maybe not a bad idea. I’m sure we have some around here somewhere,” he said vaguely.
For as long as they could remember, Mr. Blundell did not talk about their mother. Annie was the eldest, but even she didn’t remember her very well. Whenever a topic of conversation threatened to go in that direction, it trailed off, fell flat, and found a new direction.
“I’ll look in the attic tomorrow, Daddy,” Mitch said bravely into the silence.
Mr. Blundell gave a sharp nod, and pushed his plate away. “If you don’t find something by noon, why don’t you head over to the secondhand book shop? There’s got to be something,” he muttered, reaching for his wallet. He shoved a five dollar bill at Annie. “And for heaven’s sake, go to a diner for lunch while you’re at it. What she serves you two when I’m not here doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Annie giggled as she started clearing the dishes. “It’s not that bad, but thank you Daddy!”
The next day began much as the day before it, with Mrs. Magruder waving them off, her thoughts on Mr. Blundell’s fine chair and newspaper. They dutifully went to the secondhand book store and found some rather battered Betty Crocker cookbooks, then to Lou’s Diner for lunch.
Tammy, Lou’s waitress, had none of the usual spring in her step today. Instead of the usual smile of welcome, her mouth just twisted to one side in a parody.
The children watched her, feeling a distinct sense of wrongness as she fetched out their hamburgers and fries. “It’s like she’s sleepwalking,” Mitch whispered.
“It’s like she’s not there,” Annie said.
They talked about it all the way home, where they silently placed the cookbooks in a could not possibly be overlooked place on the counter next to the stove. There were soft snoring sounds coming from Mr. Blundell’s chair, so they decided to leave well enough alone and hope that the plan worked.
Their murmurings about Tammy’s odd behavior continued right into Mr. Henson’s workshop, and unlike most adults, he noticed.
“Now then, what’s bothering you two so?” he asked, putting down his tools and wiping his hands on a rag.
“Well, sir, it was Tammy, you know, the waitress over at Lou’s,” Mitch started. Mr. Henson nodded thoughtfully, settling onto one of the tall stools at the workbench and looking very serious indeed. His brows drew together, not in a V like Mr. Blundell’s, but in a firm, thoughtful line, his lips pursed.
In the face of all this attentiveness, Mitch faltered and looked to his sister. It took a moment for Annie to think of how to put this to a grownup; even though Mr. Henson was different, there were limits as to how far different could go.
“She didn’t seem herself today. Usually she teases Mitch about how he’ll be a heart breaker some day, and she kind of play fights with Lou in the back. She just wasn’t like that, like she wasn’t really there,” Annie broke off, seeing Mr. Henson beginning to look very concerned indeed.
He nodded, as though he had come to a sudden decision, and then Mr. Henson did something that they’d never seen him do before. Rising, he shut the big double doors that led to his workshop, then came back and hunkered down between them.
“You’re very smart children to have noticed something like this being amiss. So I’m going to tell you something very important, something that you can’t talk to other people about, because you never know which ones aren’t what they seem. Do I have your words on that?” His eyes focused perfectly upon each of them in the dim light, and it was unthinkable to lie.
Both Annie and Mitch nodded eagerly. To be taken into confidence, like they too were grownups! It was a heady moment, tainted only slightly by fear of what Mr. Henson had to tell them.
“Not everyone we see is what you’d call a real person. They have enough of something in them to prop them up for awhile, but in the end, it drains away. People that aren’t real don’t have souls, or consciences, and when whatever was animating them goes away, they can become dangerous,” Mr. Henson had lowered his voice, as though he expected the unreal people to come and take him away for even whispering about them.
Wide eyed, Annie and Mitch began reordering their ideas of the world.
The moment for confidences was over, and Mr. Henson went and opened the doors again, letting the summer sunshine back into the workshop.
That was the day that Annie decided to make a mosaic of the sand and sea, and Mitch of a night sky.
“Those are definitely some worthy and challenging subjects for your first projects! Let’s go looking at the bits we have to work with, shall we?” Mr. Henson pulled out a large chest, and in every drawer there was a glittery paradise of color twinkling back at them.
What they had not realized was how much time it can take to make a mosaic, even a small one, with someone like Mr. Henson guiding them. It was a week to choose the colors and the scenes, another week to learn how to select the proper angle of glass to be sure the light was reflecting back correctly, and a third week to choose all the correct colors.
And in all that time, he said not a word about people without souls.
But Mitch and Annie talked about it a lot.
“Do you think that’s why mom left?” Mitch asked one night, having come into Annie’s room after the lights were out. “Do you think she lost her soul?”
“I don’t know… but that’s kind of what she was like,” Annie said quietly. She remembered those days, the way her mother would slink around the house and avoid the gaze of her small daughter. It hurt to remember those times, to remember her mother’s face. It hurt to start to see her mother gazing back at her in the mirror, and she took pains to keep her hair in braids so it wouldn’t flow loose around her face like her mother’s did, those dark, shining strands that invited stroking.
“And did you notice Mrs. Magruder?” Mitch asked, not bothered about details of a mother he didn’t remember at all now.
“No, what about her?”
“She’s.. changing. She doesn’t even notice if we do the chores or not before she sends us out.”
Annie thought about it a moment. He was right… there was a floor that she’d mopped in a rather slap dash manner. Mr. Blundell’s muddy footprint had been smack in the middle of the floor, and she hadn’t seen it until they came home before dinnertime. but Mrs. Magruder hadn’t noticed at all.
The day after this discussion, Mr. Henson was frowning as they came into the workshop. He was wiping his hands free of black sludge, which had also dripped down his pant leg.
“Oh!” he said, looking up at their entry. “I was just getting cleaned up.”
Annie had already gone to her mosiac, which had a number of pieces placed, but not yet glued in. Mitch simply stared at the gooey mess that Mr. Henson was making faces at. “What is that?”
After glancing at the doors out to the street furtively, Mr. Henson replied quietly. “Well might you ask. This is how you know someone isn’t real.. this is what’s left over after whatever they are drawing energy from is gone. Stay back,” he said to Mitch, who leaned in closer in horrified fascination. “I’m not yet sure that it can’t infect others on its own… not that it could take your soul, but I believe it can corrupt you into acts that are better off unthought of.”
Her attention torn away from her work, Annie swiveled on her stool and stared, her eyes wide. “What happened?”
Mr. Henson tried to smile at her in a reassuring way and failed. “I’m sorry, Annie, but you were right about Tammy. She won’t be able to hurt anyone now, though.”
“How did you know?” Mitch asked, awed.
“Same way you two saw it, and I’m still amazed that you were able to pick up on it so quickly! It took me years to be able to find them, and longer to understand what they are.” This time the reassuring smile succeeded. “You two are very lucky, and special to have found the calling so soon.”
He stared at the half finished mosaic he was working on. “Like my Eva. You remind me of her, sometimes, the pair of you. She was special, too.”
The air was very still in the workshop, the golden afternoon light filtered in the high windows to illuminate the eye. Sliding down from her stool, Annie came and put her hand over Mr. Henson’s, and unwittingly asked the question that every adult in Smallwood at been trying to ask for years.
“What happened to Eva, Mr. Henson?”
It hung there, a tremulous girl-woman’s question. Perhaps it was her innocence, or her likeness to Eva herself that prompted the reply that no one else had been able to coerce. After what seemed like an eternity, Mr. Henson sighed.
“An Unreal person killed her.”
Eva, he told them, in a long, halting recital, had taught him how to destroy the Unreal. She put a name to something he’d felt the wrongness of since he was Mitch’s age. Together, they’d done what they could to protect Real people, trying not to draw attention to themselves, and always trying to learn more, hoping for the day they could stop the Unreal at their source.
She’d told him of a secret society that her parents had belonged to, before they had gone missing somewhere in the East during World War I. Though she’d been looking for other members, she had never found them. Her only clue was a battered symbol her mother had worn around her neck. (He sketched it out on his drawing table, but neither Mitch nor Annie had seen it before.)
One day, she’d left him a note in their cryptic code, meaning that she had found another, and was taking steps to prevent it from harming innocent people.
But Eva never came back.
When Mr. Henson had gone to the cave by the sea they used for such things, he’d found Eva, and he was too late to save her.
“She was very strong, and smart, but there’s something in this little town that was far more powerful. And I’m staying until I find it.”
When they arrived home, a little later than normal, Mrs. Magruder was snoring softly in Mr. Blundell’s chair. Mitch and Annie exchanged a worried look before he went and slammed the door shut just a little too hard.
She jumped, muttered, and shuffled slowly into the kitchen to prop the new cookbook open to something called ‘Chicken Loaf’.
“She never used to sleep before,” Annie whispered.
“She never used to touch Dad’s bottle before either.” Mitch frowned, trying to look like Mr. Henson and managing it pretty well.
Dinner that night was a moderate disaster, in Mr. Blundell’s words. “Chicken loaf? Why would someone want to make a loaf out of a perfectly good chicken? Is this really in that cookbook?” he muttered, and nothing would do but that he pick up the book to verify the recipe. “Custard like consistency, huh? Well, it has that,” he sighed, and asked Mitch to please pass the bread.
It was that night that the accident happened.
It was a silly slip, one that any other time wouldn’t have amounted to anything but a bruise and sore pride. Annie had been leaning over to fill the bathtub when her hand slipped, and she fell, cracking her head against the spigot. Her last thought before tumbling down a long, dark corridor was that she had seen the black sludge again, on the rim of the tub.
When she came back, it was to a bright flash of light in her eyes, and Annie winced.
“There now, not to worry, Ted, she’s coming back around now.”
“Annie?” her hand was being grasped, and Mr. Blundell’s voice was worried. She wanted to tell him she was fine, but Mr. Henson needed to know about the sludge, but all she could manage was, “Mm okay, Daddy, pinkyswear.”
A warm, deep voice chuckled confidently. “See there? Out of the mouths of babes, as it were. Not that Annie’s a babe anymore, she must be what, fourteen? Fifteen?”
Mr. Blundell’s hand smoothed the loose hair back from Annie’s forehead, avoiding the spot that was oh so sore. “Fourteen, and her mother’s image.”
The doctor made a strange noise in his throat. “Well, Ted, she’s going to need rest and quiet, I believe you have a woman in to see to them?”
“Of a sort, I was actually planning on terminating her employment. Annie’s getting old enough to do for them both. But I suppose we’ll keep her on till Annie’s better. How long will that be, Jim?”
“Oh, give her a week and she’ll be up and around again, but don’t be surprised if she wants to sleep. Keep the woman on for two weeks to be safe, little boys can be a handful.”
Mr. Blundell’s hand came away from Annie’s forehead, and she tried to reach out, wanting it and the absolute sense of safety it conveyed back. But the voices had already moved on.
Mitch was there when she woke up the next day, bursting with news. He had clearly been waiting for quite awhile for Annie to wake up, and the afternoon sun glinted off his dark hair.
“Mr. Henson asked all about you! He was very worried, like this wasn’t an accident, but I told him what Dr. Stamper said.”
Slowly easing herself up, Annie said, “Is Daddy very mad?”
“Naw! Not at all, and that’s the truth. He was just worried till the doc came, then he gave Mrs. Magruder what for about-” and Mitch cut off the sentence at a knock on the door.
In swept the subject of discussion herself, her sour face twisted painfully into a smile and a lunch tray in her hands. The aroma rising from it and the expression on Mrs. Magruder’s face spoke louder than words; she’d had no hand in the preparation of this meal. “And how’s our little patient today?” she asked, putting the tray down on Annie’s lap.
“Thank you for bringing me lunch, Mrs. Magruder. I feel kind of dizzy and sleepy.”
“Dr. Stamper said you should rest for the next few days. I’m to ask if you have a headache?”
Annie nodded slowly, and Mrs. Magruder fished into her pocket and came out with a bottle. “Don’t know that I approve of giving children pills, but the doctor left these for you. Mitch, read this, I don’t have my glasses about me.” She patted his head approvingly as he took the bottle from her.
“One pill every four hours, may cause drowsiness,” he read. Mrs. Magruder grunted, and left one on the tray next to Annie’s glass of milk.
“Don’t tire your sister, young man, and bring that tray back to the kitchen when she’s done.” With that, she swished out of the room, duty done, chair beckoning.
Though the chicken pot pie on the tray was easily the best meal that had been in the house in months, Annie found she couldn’t quite finish it. She let Mitch polish it off, his monstrous boy’s appetite being what it was. “Mr. Henson made it,” he said between bites. “He came to see Dad, told him how big a help we’ve been over the summer, and he asked if he could take me out for an afternoon! Dad said yes, cause he figures I’ll be bugging you too much to get your rest, so we’re going to the coast this weekend! We haven’t gotten to the ocean all summer long.”
He stopped as Annie lay back on the pillows, instantly repentant in the way that only puppies and little boys can be. “I wish you could go too,” he said, in a subdued tone.
“It’s okay, I’m the stupidhead that slipped into the tub.”
Mitch was still young enough to giggle at the insult, and as she started to close her eyes, she reached a hand out to him. With the sunlight pouring in, she thought for the first time that he was really beautiful, from the curve of his giggling mouth to the trusting way he took her hand. It was moments later that the pill had done its work and she was fast asleep.
Her dreams were bad ones, the worst she’d had since their mother had left. Mitch’s dark eyes, so like hers, were filled with glee, and there was black sludge everywhere. They were in a car, going down the windy coastal road, and then in a cave with water smashing against the stone nearby. Tammy was there, but it wasn’t Tammy, it was a black sludge thing, what Mr. Henson called an Unreal, and it had shining fangs.
And then Mitch had fangs too.
Annie woke up screaming, and she couldn’t seem to stop. Mr. Blundell was there, rocking her to him as though she were still a little girl. “It’s the pills, honey, just the pills, shhh now, you’re scaring Mitch.”
But when she looked to the doorway, Mitch didn’t look scared at all. It was a stranger’s look that he gave her, calculating and frightening. She turned away from it, back to her Daddy, who would never let anything harm her. Not an Unreal or Mrs. Magruder or anyone.
Dr. Stamper came back, this time with a shot, and everything melted away again.
Mr. Henson was by her side next, looking very concerned. “You saw something, didn’t you, Annie?”
She blinked blearily and sat up, noticing that it was easier now. “I dreamed things, bad things in a cave by the sea.” And then she blushed, noticing that her bladder was speaking in a very loud voice.
Gravely, Mr. Henson helped her to her feet and followed her to the bathroom, then helped her back to bed. Only once the door was closed did he speak again. “I feel the trouble here with you, Annie, and I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you, okay?”
Tiredly, she nodded, and drifted in and out of consciousness while Mr. Henson murmured. She thought there was a candle burning, but that was confusing, since Daddy didn’t really like candles.
She woke again in the morning, and Mr. Henson was long gone. Turning slightly, trying to avoid the tender side of her head, Annie saw Mrs. Magruder in a folding chair, paper still in hand.
“Back again, then,” she said, in a quiet tone. “I’ll go get your food.”
“I’m not really hungry, thank you, ma’am. Where’s Mitch and Daddy?”
Mrs. Magruder stopped at the door, her brows drawn together into an unattractive single line as she looked at Annie in astonishment. “You’ll eat when you’re told to eat, young lady! No wonder why you linger in bed so long,” and she left, slamming the door after her and making Annie’s head throb anew.
Annie closed her eyes for a moment to keep images from being fuzzy, and when she opened them, she saw something that nearly stopped her heart.
There was black sludge on the newspaper.
She wanted to start screaming, but knew that she had to tell Mr. Henson. He’d know what to do about Mrs. Magruder. He’d be able to stop her before she could hurt anyone. Annie tried to take deep breaths and look anywhere but at the paper when Mrs. Magruder came back with another bowl of pot pie.
Oddly, Mrs. Magruder didn’t bring it on a tray, and she didn’t hand it to Annie directly. Instead, she placed it on the night table. She also didn’t meet Annie’s eyes, but turned back to the paper without another word.
Slowly, Annie ate every bite, willing her heart to slow down. When she’d finished, she put the bowl back on the night table and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.
Some time after the clock struck four, Mrs. Magruder rose and folded the paper. Her footsteps went back and forth some distance from the bed, like a pacing animal. Annie kept her eyes shut as far as she could, and wished that she could freeze her face.
The pacing stopped, but Annie heard a low whine, like a dog being kept from a tasty morsel.
Then the clock struck four thirty, and footsteps retreated to the door. It opened, and there was a long, long moment before it closed again and Annie could let out a quiet sigh of relief.
The newspaper was gone, and the sludge with it, and that eased Annie’s heart. Exhausted, drenched with sweat, and knowing that Mrs. Magruder would be cooking dinner and leaving, she rested.
After dinner, Mr. Blundell came to take up residence in the folding chair, and Annie reached her hand out to him. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hi yourself, little girl,” he said with a relieved smile. “Been giving your old man quite a scare. I’m glad you’re awake.”
“Where’s Mitch?” she asked as he took up her hand. Remembering how Mrs. Magruder had paced around the bed, and Mr. Henson’s protection, she felt a rush of relief as he pressed her fingers.
“I would have figured he told you, but then…” Mr. Blundell trailed off. “He and Mr. Henson went camping, somewhere up the coast a bit. Figured you’d have more quiet without that young hooligan around. I hope Mr. Henson can cope with him on his own for a few days.”
Annie felt her stomach turn over. “How were they going to get there?”
“Oh, Mr. Henson has a car, so they drove up. I guess it’s some little bit of real estate he owns, so he keeps it up, said he could use Mitch to help out with trailcutting or some such thing,” Mr. Blundell chuckled. “Even wants to pay the boy for the work, but I said feeding that walking appetite would be enough. He’s a good man, Mr. Henson.”
“Yes, Daddy,” Annie said with a sigh. “He’s a very good man.”
“So,” Mr. Blundell said briskly, “Do you want to come listen to the radio with me? You’re supposed to rest, but I figure you’ve got to be tired of being cooped up in this room and sleeping. Mrs. Magruder told me you haven’t stirred a step. And Mr. Henson said you slept most of the time.”
Before she knew it, she’d been carried and placed in Mr. Blundell’s chair. She’d expected it to feel strange, with Mrs. Magruder’s presence so often located in that spot, but instead it smelled of pipe tobacco, Old Spice, and her father’s brandy, all comforting, homey scents as far as Annie was concerned.
And Mr. Blundell actually listened to the radio shows with her, his paper neglected for the once. He made popcorn for her, and tickled her feet to hear her giggle. It was like the part of her daddy that had gone when her mother had left had just been waiting until it was the two of them again to come out.
Maybe, said a little voice that almost sounded like Mitch, maybe this is what daddy is without Unreal people around. Because now there was no doubt in her mind that Mrs. Magruder wasn’t real. That’s why she’d slipped, and why the house had been so bleak and joyless all this time. It was Mrs. Magruder, doing her best to do all the things Mr. Henson said Unreal people did.
She got back to bed under her own power after helping her daddy with the crossword puzzle in the paper, and she lay awake, thinking.
Mrs. Magruder didn’t come on the weekends, so there was time. Time for Mitch and Mr. Henson to come back and help her do whatever it was they had to do.
Saturday and Sunday passed with Mr. Blundell becoming more and more his old self. He mowed the yard, which would do Tommy Hamilton out of his quarter for the month, he cooked breakfast, making her pancakes and eggs into smiley faces. It was a perfect time, and Annie steeled herself to do what she had to to keep it this way.
Then Sunday night came, without Mitch coming home.
They worried, and Mr. Blundell paced. Annie had been reading aloud from Robinson Crusoe when there was a knock on the door.
Officer Thomason stood outside, and he murmured to Mr. Blundell in a low voice for a very long time. Annie’s heart froze in her chest as Mr. Blundell turned to her, bewildered and horrified. He came and picked her up and held her close to him, rocking her against his chest.
“They found Mitch in a field, baby. He’s gone. They think whoever did it may have harmed Mr. Henson, too… there were signs of a fight.”
There was more then, but a little ball of ice had formed in Annie’s stomach. She looked at the officer, and suddenly she saw the scene that haunted him- her brother, laying as though flung into the brush, black sludge oozing from his nose and mouth.
A woman’s shoe prints, low heels, were tracked all around the area, and Mr. Henson was in the hospital. He’d been running blindly, and had run out in front of a truck out of the brush.
Mrs. Magruder was the only one that would have known that they had gone.
The ice encased her now, as she accepted that Mitch had been Unreal, and she was alone.
Even though Mr. Blundell did not go to work, Mrs. Magruder still came at the usual time Monday morning. While she said the right things to Mr. Blundell, who seemed to be in shock, she smiled a small cat’s smile at Annie. Annie stared back impassively.
Mr. Blundell went to lay down with some of his brandy after tucking in his daughter with hands that shook. She kissed his forehead, and whispered, “Everything’s going to be okay, Daddy, I promise.”
“Okay, honey, I’m just going to go lie down for awhile,” he said, yawning.
Annie waited. It was amazing, really, how easy it was to be patient with that iciness that enveloped her. It helped her plan things, like putting the pills Dr. Stamper gave her into the brandy bottle, like having Daddy’s straight razor sharpened. It made her wonder how much black sludge there would be in a detached sort of way.
Officer Thomason had had a very long week. He sat at his desk and took out the bottle in the bottom door, poured himself a half mug, started to replace it, then filled the mug to the brim.
The detective on the Blundell cases watched, then held out his own mug.
“What I don’t get,” he said slowly.
“There’s only one thing you don’t get about this mess, Phil?” Thomason said, too dulled by horror to put any real bite in his tone. Maybe after the scotch.
“You know what I mean. What I don’t get is how the little girl knew something we’d just figured out. Did the old broad go for her too? And why now, when she had years to go after them?”
Thomason sighed and scrubbed his fingers into his scalp. “And why was her stomach filled with motor oil, and the kid’s too? What kind of sick bitch does shit like that? In a small town like this, you got a few odd ones, like Henson himself, but this goes too deep into the weird for me.”
“Girl gonna be okay?” Phil asked after a long pull from his mug.
“I’d say she’ll come out of this fine. She’s a little trooper, that one. Was crying a little when she first called, but answered all the questions with her daddy by her side, and even answered for him a time or two.”
“And Mr. Henson? I’m partial that fella, he’s a good guy.”
“Oh, he was worried like all get out about those two, and seemed to be fit to bust his buttons with pride when he found out Annie had the broad’s number. Doc Stamper says he’s going to walk with a limp, but he doesn’t seem to mind.”
“It’s been one helluva mess, seems like it isn’t real.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Night, Phil.”
Curiouser and Curiouser 