The highway

Gerard enjoyed driving. He still drove the family Oldsmobile, a hulking black boat of a vehicle that he had learned to maneuver through the tightest spaces without the slightest scratch.

He remembered when the interstates began their creep across the countryside in the 60s; he had been a staunch opponent of the idea.

Man’s most disturbing quality was their ability to proliferate. Any attempt to amplify the speed at which that expansion occurred was a recipe for disaster in Gerard’s mind, even now.

However, after experiencing the open road himself, his opinion had lost some of its old bite. Now, he maneuvered his car through the Georgia rain with an almost cheery air.

It felt good in whatever passed for a soul in the old butler, making his way through the world in something so deliciously ominous in form. He was astounded by how many Normals let their children in automobiles. His love for his car was born of his taste of the gothic, but its ability for sudden and indiscriminate violence was certainly a plus. Last time Gerard had checked, the general public was supposed to rally behind the sanctity of their rapid lives. In the driver’s seat, a smirk pulled at one corner of his mustache.

Not so different, after all. Martin’s voice in his mind drove the corner of a smile back down. For a dead man, his brother-in-law had never quite seemed to finish sodding all the way off. At least, Gerard didn’t feel like he was gone.

The rain had gone from a drizzle to wide sheets as he’d gotten into town proper.

No one in town noticed the regularity with which the sun disappeared. It had been at least ten years since they had seen a straight week of clear days. They seemed to accept it in stride, and all the better for them. Even Nasties need groceries.

Gerard pulled into the grocer’s parking lot, his large hearse wagon groaning as it ascended the slick tarmac of the ramp.

The first time he’d come here with Martin, the grocer’s had been one of a number of businesses in the strip. Now, Walsh’s had expanded their square footage a great deal, and they were the only business still in operation. A few years ago, the owners had even purchased one of the neighboring stores when it went bust, converting it into a walk-in meat freezer.

After he’d parked and killed the engine, Gerard pushed out into the rain, one hand held ineffectually overhead. Through the gloom of the storm, Gerard could see the up-lit sign over the store, white letters over chlorophyll green: WALSH’S PRODUCE.

Michael and Susan Walsh had run the two staple stores in town since before even Martin had lived here. They were each of them in their 60’s, but their bright smiles and lively personalities made them seem barely a fortnight into their middle ages.

When Gerard made it inside, partially soaked around the edges, it was Michael that greeted him from behind the counter.

“Mornin’ to ya, Gerard,” the old Irishman said his name like his parents had (jer–rod) and the butler often caught himself slipping into the brogue when he heard it. “Christ, but your man his lordship doesn’t half love sending you out when it’s pissing it down, don’t he? Hellish timing.”

“And a balmy day to you, Michael. Indeed he does. Er, doesn’t. I think it’s his daft brain. Only remembers things when the weather’s right,” Gerard had been drying his hands on a hanky, and brought himself to the counter and offered Michael a dry hand to shake. “Good to see you. chum.”

Despite being a stereotypical Normal, Gerard liked the grocer. Martin had spoken fondly of him. When Gerard took over as caregiver for the twins, he’d gotten to experience Michael firsthand. He was as cheery as he was caustic, and nothing sparked his ire like the affluent.

“Aw no,” Michael shook Gerard’s hand, but his face was twisted, “don’t be calling me that. We can be mates or pals–even comrades, but don’t be calling me ‘chum.’ Sure, we’ll be going for some aul croquet next, eh old boy?” Gerard laughed heartily, expelling a single sharp breath out of his nostrils.

“Alright, mate. Yes, it’s true. My employer sends me into the elements too regularly, but you haven’t seen what my day is like when it’s nice out. Nasty.”

“I don’t envy you, Ged lad. It’s bad enough ye’ve got to do the bidding of some rich tosspot, nevermind all that King’s rubbing off on you,” Michael said, shaking his head.

When Gerard took over, when Martin and Vanessa went away, the story agreed upon was that he butlered for the bedridden millionaire who bought the house on the hill after the previous owners left. It was convenient. Under the old setup, Gerard was usually in the house all night, asleep all day. No one in town was likely to recognize him.

This had the added benefit of putting him immediately in Michael’s good graces. The self-starting immigrant grocer was always on the side of a working man.

“With your support, I’m sure I’ll pull through, Mr. Walsh,” Gerard said. The grim butler flicked his chin at the paper Michael had on the table. “Anything of note in the local goings-on? You know I don’t get out.” Michael unfolded the paper, and Gerard turned away to stalk the aisles. He preferred not to be watched while he shopped.

“Yer lucky, lad,” Michael’s voice came through the paper’s centerfold as Gerard pulled a basket, “This hasn’t got anything half as awful as yesterday’s.”

Michael read a paper a day. He would first make his way through the handful of local newspapers available: the Times, the Tribune, the Chronicle, and the Rest. This usually took him until Wednesday, at which point he began to read whichever rag called to him from the rack by the door. Gerard had once seen him reading a paper called Fun Fungal Facts for Friends, and watched him for signs or symptoms of some mind-bending Nasty for weeks afterward. The man just seemed to need something to read at the counter. Which suited Gerard just fine. He needed something to distract from his grocery list.

What was the right amount of vegetables to make their diet look believable while not overloading the amount of cannibalism the man-eating plants would suffer?

He had tried the children on a Normal diet before. It had been too unpredictable. Now they managed to find a safe food option once every few months, but his progress was easily thrown by the children being children, and having child palettes. One day Triscuits were perfect, the next day they made Husk break out in hives. They used to eat carrots with the joy of horses, until they made Petal so gassy that it caused her brother to lose consciousness.

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This week, Gerard needed eggs, corn, and chocolate chips. The chocolate was a compromise. Husk learned of the existence of meat from the brief amount of television he’d caught, but for obvious reasons they were never to eat meat.

Above all else, Gerard’s duty to the children was to control their potential for bloodlust. Keeping them from the taste of any kind of flesh was one of the surest ways he could think of to keep that side of their nature from them. So, to placate his boneheaded ward: chocolate chips.

Additionally, he grabbed a random assortment of items from each food group. Spaghetti noodles as grains, a bag of apples for fruit, and a block of cheddar cheese for dairy.

For himself, Gerard collected an armful of canned tomato soup, to be seasoned to hell and back until palatable. As he foresaw the taste, the pang of thirst that hit him stretched miles between his parched mouth and the shrivel of his stomach. It wasn’t difficult to hold at bay anymore. But it was always worse.

With a shudder, Gerard stood. He shook nostalgia from his tongue and moved to check out.

Michael was still telling him how boring today's paper was. Nothing so helpful as a Normal able to carry on both sides of a conversation for you. Gerard hardly even had a chance to say something suspicious.

He placed his basket on the counter, and Michael trailed off with a wave of his hand.

“Sorry for waffling, mate. Got all you need here?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The silence grew between them as Michael rang Gerard up. The butler wasn’t fussed, but he saw Michael's face. He was twisting up around his lips, the lack of conversation starving him, as though he were drowning on air. Mentally, Gerard let out a sigh.

“What happened in yesterday’s paper?” As soon as Gerard’s voice broke the surface of the silence, Michael gasped like a drowning victim.

“Ah! What now?”

“You said that yesterday’s paper was awful, or something.”

“Ahh, that,” Michael turned his eyes down as he bagged up Gerard’s purchases. “Proper awful, mate. Surprised you haven’t seen on t’news. Them girls what went missing?” Gerard shook his head. They didn’t have a television in the house; too much opportunity to absorb violence. “Well anyway, they’ve gone missing from all over, think the count was up to 5, yesterday. All young ‘uns, barely out of childhood.” Michael sucked his teeth, and Gerard thought he sensed a social cue.

“Terrible stuff,” said Gerard. “The police think they’re connected?”

“Can’t be sure of that, no. From what t’paper said, the police still aren’t fully convinced it ain’t just kids.” Michael slid the last bag over to Gerard, and the butler counted out exact change. The cashier leaned forward onto his elbows on the counter, and spoke in a hushed voice, his white whiskers hovering disturbingly close to Gerard’s hands, “However, I happen to know from a mate down in Thomasville, where one of dem was nicked from, that their parents are after the police for not doin’ their jobs. Properly— calling it negligence. See, the families are saying there’s clear connection between the lot, and they’re scared he’ll strike again!” The grocer’s eyes were wide as he leaned back, letting it sink in.

Gerard finished collecting his groceries and receipt. When he spoke next, he tried his damnedest to sound casual.

“Where did they say they were taken from, again?”

The setup was always the biggest pain. You could weave as many charms or tripwires as you wanted, no one had ever managed to come up with an easy way to magic up a Mess Room.

Oh yes, any number of vile Nasties from worlds beyond could be summoned to spit acid or fire or some such on your many enemies, but Satan forbid some wizard pen a dusty old tome on how to get blood out of suede.

Gerard had gone back for another cache of supplies, but he needn’t have. There was a sizable stock of tarpaulins, duct tape, and rope in what was once servants’ quarters in the house. Buying supplies was a way for Gerard to drum up the momentum he needed to actually do it.

Unlike his last undertaking, there was no build-up. He’d taken none of the usual preparations, no researching potential loose ends, there were no false identities scrounged up to hide behind as he gathered evidence.

There were just five missing children and a hunch. He disliked the concept of hunches, but when they were this strong, they were impossible to ignore.

As Michael had rattled off neighborhoods that had lost a girl over the summer, Gerard had listened, drawing a map in his mind. To make it to each of them in a single night would be impossible. They spanned the width of the Southern half of the state. But if Gerard’s hunch was correct, he wouldn’t need to go that far.

Monsters—that is, the monsters that Normals produce—were always up to some silly rubbish like this.

Oh, I’m off to do my very own satanic ritual. What shall I use? Should probably be something proper hellish, like a pentagram! The star of Satan himself, muahaha!

That was how Gerard imagined it.

You might as well add a bleeding sixth point while you’re at it, lads, he thought to himself, maybe you’ll get lucky and summon the Mashiach!

But for all his griping, Gerard was secretly relieved. Normals latching onto iconography was dependable. Under the shelter of the open car trunk, he drew out the points Michael had given him in order of the disappearances.

There, perfectly in the center of this prick’s pentagram, was a remarkably remote steel mill. In fact, he couldn’t be sure, but Gerard thought he knew that mill to be abandoned. He might have even busted a punk here once before, back before the twins were born. He had been out at night more often, then. They began to bleed together after a certain point.

So, he had to count his curses. It wasn’t that they were wrong to use a pentagram, in any case. What little he retained of Martin’s attempts to teach him magic did include the sacrilegious star, but hardly to the extent the Normals seemed to think.

Gerard didn’t have especially high regard for the arcane arts. He preferred to work with his hands. But even he knew that among the flavors of magic, shapes didn’t top the list.*

(*Although, it was a bit of a “low floor/high ceiling” situation. Gerard knew that an arcanist focused ONLY on shapes could make even the most primal of Nasties go mad. One needed more than a star loosely factored into the choice of venue for that, though.)

A trip along two tarmac arteries would lead him to the approximated epicenter. An hour’s journey from the house, at most. He would return home, put the children to bed slightly early, gather what he needed, and be on the road by 9PM.

There were still some grooms he could raise to patrol the grounds, and the enchantments on the lock would shut the house down if he locked it from outside.

A sneering voice whispered in his mind. All of his justifications echoed with guilt. Surely the right thing to do wouldn’t need so many excuses.

He shook the notion from his head, focused on the road ahead. What he was choosing to do was difficult. There were precautions required to do it right. And he did it not for himself, but as a public good.

This was a habit he’d picked up from (and indulged in) Vanessa. A healthy way to supply his needs while still maintaining the almost-spotless moral record of the family.

The risks were known, and they were necessary.

Whatever ritual this plonker had planned, Gerard was sure it wouldn’t kick off until midnight. All of the hours that the Normals thought of as “witching hours” were after midnight.

Silly. As a creature bound by the hours of the sun, it was hard for Gerard to see why witches might make a difference between midnight, or 1AM, or 3AM. But in this case, the knowledge of Normal theatrical tendencies served Gerard well. His schedule was assured.

I’ll be back in no time.