The forecast was right; it stormed like hell. Fortunately, we were safely tucked away in a one-bedroom motel room. It was cramped, but we made it work, taking turns in the bed like we were on guard duty against bed bugs.

This is getting out of hand.

That last group, the one the others were talking to when I made my abrupt salutation yesterday, WAS a family. They were fishing in the little creek beside our path. Initially, their interview produced the same result as all the others; the parents hadn’t seen Brase.

As Cal was giving his description, though, “Big guy, very fuzzy,” and Brooke was displaying a photograph of him, one of the kids reacted. Brooke compared it to when a child gets told something they don’t understand, how they just stare back, lip curled, in obvious confusion. Seeing this change in the child’s demeanor, Brooke gently angled the phone toward the perplexed girl.

“This is my brother,” Brooke said. “We really need to find him. Have you seen him?”

“Now hold on,” the father began to protest. “I told you, we ain’t--”

“Yeah,” the girl interrupted mildly. Dad shut up and stared, wide-eyed, at his daughter. “’Think so.”

Brooke crouched until she was eye-level with the child and gave her a warm smile. “Are you sure, honey?” she asked, nodding toward the phone. “You saw him? His name is Brase.”

“’Brase?’” Older brother snickered. “That’s a weird name.” Dad silenced the boy with a light shoulder shake.

The girl, embarrassed by the sudden attention, looked away bashfully, folding her hands behind her back.

“Please,” Dean urged one parent, then the other. “Please.”

Mother rubbed the back of Daughter’s head encouragingly. “It’s ok, honey. You can tell them. Did you really see this woman’s brother somewhere?”

The child glanced up, nodding at her mother. “’Think so,” she repeated. “He was with the melted man.”

Mother frowned, “Uh… who did you say, dear?” An apologetic smile to the strangers.

“The melted man,” the girl restated more confidently. She glanced at the photograph of Brase and then nodded again.

“Did you go to the fair last night?”

All eyes on Cal now after he asked that question. Brooke rose to stare at him, mouth slightly agape in confusion.

“Well, yes, actually,” Father admits.

“The one in Dubois?”

“That’s the one; why?”

Mother taps Daughter’s shoulder as she gently asks, “Honey, is that where you saw this woman’s brother, at the fair?”

“Mm-hmm,” the child confirms.

“With the melted man?” Cal asked her.

“Mm-hmm.”

Father looked at Cal with mild suspicion. “Do you know who she’s talking about?”

“Yeah, Cal,” Dean echoed. “Do you?”

“Unfortunately,” Cal said, reaching into his pocket. “Get Prov over here. I need to call Brent – or Laurel – or.. somebody.”

“Why?” Brooke demanded. “Cal, who the --” she censored herself abruptly. “Who IS this ‘melted man?’”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Cal glanced up as I approached, shaking his head. “Trouble.”

~~~

The family offered to drop us off in Clearfield. It wasn’t very far away but a combination of the impending storm and rekindled urgency welcomed the invitation.

The “melted man.” Yeah, that’s an appropriate enough appellation. Assuming the daughter wasn’t lying or misremembering, this, finally, was our first real clue.

… Even if it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. ASSUMING (as Cal had done upon first hearing the name), that the girl was referring to our disgraced ex-carnival employee, it created more mysteries than it solved.

Why was Brase with him? And, more importantly, why did he apparently leave the fair with him?

The rest of the girl’s family didn’t recall seeing either the Melted Man or Brase which wasn’t very encouraging, but, again, difficult to believe as it was, the little girl was adamant that she had.

So, after clamoring into the back of a pick-up (a means of transportation I do not recommend), Cal and I came clean. With the rising winds chewing up half of our words, we described our first near-miss with MM. Then, we detailed seeing him outside the fortune teller’s tent, and summarized Samuel’s description of the man and his history. We made special note of how strange he acted, particularly during our first meeting, when we didn’t yet know anything about him. And, of course, we mentioned his vaporous disappearing act when Cal sought out an employee after seeing him the second time.

“Yep, sounds dangerous,” Dean said we were finished. “So it makes perfect sense that you didn’t tell any of us.”

That was exactly what I’d been dreading.

I looked to Brooke, but she was staring over the edge of the cab, lost in thought. I whispered (which, in that environment, required my normal speaking voice), “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

She didn’t respond for a few seconds and I starting worry that I had just made a huge blunder, possibly an unforgivable one. Finally, she turned around, took my hand, and squeezed it. “It didn’t matter earlier,” she said. “Now, it might, and you have.”

That was it. No accusation, no argument; just pragmatism.

I am, in my approximation, the luckiest human being on the planet.

Dean let us have a little more, but even he let it go before long, and by the time we reached Clearfield we were all on the same page again. We thanked the family (with special, heartfelt gratitude to the observant young lady), hopped out, and got to work.

We paired off, spread out, and appealed to the locals.

It’s true, we had no reason to believe that Clearfield would hold any special significance to our investigation. Brase and his new friend(?) COULD have come that way, but it was at least as likely they hadn’t. Still, Clearfield was the closest town and, armed with our new lead, we needed to start somewhere. Now we weren’t just asking the local populace about Brase, we were including the Melted Man in each of our surveys. The name felt awkward to continuously repeat, but since both Cal and I had immediately known who was being referenced when first hearing it, it seemed likely the same would happen for anyone else who had seen the guy.

Nothing. “Melted Man,” “former carnival worker,” “face very badly burned and reconstructed.” We tried ever permutation short of, “the brooding guy who almost attacked Cal,” but we still weren’t getting any hits. No one had seen Brase OR the elusive ex-carny. When Dean and Cal rejoined us near the end of the search, they reported similar results. By then, the rain had begun to fall with more sinister clouds threatening in the distance.

One truism about life, though : “It’s always in the last place you look.”

We were in a laundromat, and it was definitely going to be our last stop for the night. Heck, we wouldn’t even have gone inside, but it was on the way to the motel. Both the wind and rain were picking up and the streets had already emptied. It was time to call it quits.

“It’s open, though,” Brooke insisted as we passed the laundromat. “Come on, I think I see people inside.”

She opened and rushed through the door before we could protest.

There WERE people inside. Three older women occupied the small building’s only furniture : an old card table and musty, high-backed chairs.

“I TOLD you she’d come,” one said as they all turned toward the jangling door, apparently expecting a delinquent fourth player. When they found us instead, the other two players chuckled at their mistaken comrade.

“Hi,” Brooke said, “didn’t mean to startle you. We’re just looking for my brother.” And so it went. This is Brase, he was at the fair, have you seen him? No’s all around.

Through the front window, Dean watched the storm intensify, “Gonna be a bad one,” he reported.

“Just another minute,” I urged.

Melted Man, used to work for the fair, badly burned in a fire, reconstructive --

Laughter. Why laughter?

I was at Brooke’s side a moment later.

The same woman who had mistaken our arrival was laughing as if Brooke had just told her an amazing knock-knock joke instead of describing a potentially dangerous criminal. Even the woman’s friends appeared confused by the outburst.

“Excuse me?” Brooke said.

The woman’s laughter eased into lingering chuckles as she dabbed her eyes. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “If your brother is spendin’ his time with that man, yu’can stop your searchin’ right now.”

“Why?”

Sober again, finally, the woman shrugged and said, “Well, because he’s already dead, honey.”