And Crawling Things Lurk

“Sombitch ate my friend,” Jackie mumbled, and then pointed at the bottom of the slope. “Righ’ over there. Sombitch ate Josie. Took her away in Erica’s cart and ate her.”

Muri leaned forward to look into Jackie’s eyes, patting his knee with her hand, “Oh, Jackie, you know they aren’t real when they do that stuff. You told me how they come out and show you their teeth, and even call your name. You told me you know they aren’t real when they do that stuff.”

Despite her conversation with Officer Evans a week earlier, she had been down into Jackie’s world almost every day. She didn’t stay long when she came, and she was still leery of trying to insert herself too deeply into the society of the Hole; although, they all did seem to be nice. They weren’t at all like she had envisioned, certainly safer to be around than Tory and his friends. And Jackie accepted her friendship with no questions asked...except when she first showed up, he asked if Officer Evans knew she was there. She considered her answer of “mm-mm” to have been non-committal, and she couldn’t help it if Jackie took it as a yes.

Jackie wrapped his arms around himself, comforting himself. “But she ain’t been around since. Three ’r four days, and she ain’t been back since. And Erica ain’t seen her cart, neither. They’re both gone.”

Josie’s disappearance was a popular topic of conversation around the Hole, although far from the only one. Except for Jackie; he spoke of little else. And, although she didn’t become aware of it for a day after it happened, it wasn’t hard for Muri to pin down when Josie was taken – or whatever; it was the day after she decided to become a friend to Jackie.

“It’s been a week, Jackie.”

“Oh... Well, ya see? A week, and she ain’t been back since. She left her cart and all her stuff righ’ there. It’s still over there in her place where I pushed it. And she ain’t been back. It tried to bite her head off, then it picked her up and put her in Erica’s cart and took her away to eat. And Erica ain’t had her cart since then. Jus’ like I tol’ you.”

“But, how do you know she didn’t go to someone’s house? Didn’t you say she has a friend with a house?”

“She din’t go there. I asked him. And ever’body else, too. Nobody’s seen her.”

Muri scooted over next to his slumped and odorous form, slipped her arm around his neck and pulled his head over onto her shoulder. “But, how could something like that happen? Spiders don’t go around eating people. You know that. ...And if you stopped drinking a little bit, you’d know it a lot better.”

He started to pull away from her, but she held him firm until he relented and rested his head back on her shoulder. Still, he said, “You gonna preach at me, too? You soun’ like Evans. Always telling me I drink too much. I got a righ’ to drink.”

“Oh, stop it. You know you drink too much. You told me so, yourself. More than once, too. So just stop being like that. You know I’m not preaching at you. You know I just want to see you get better.”

“But you don’t believe I saw a spider with big teeth take Josie. ...No, not a spider…a old woman with big teeth – no...somethin’ with big teeth that looked like a old woman. You’re callin’ me a liar.”

“I am not! Not really. I know you see those things, but it’s in your mind that you see them. And you know that.”

He started to jerk his head up and she pulled it back down to her shoulder. He raised it up again, but slowly, and she let him.

He looked around straight into her face and got a look of pleading in his eyes. Then, like his mind had gathered its strength and sloughed off the alcohol fog, his gaze bored into her for a moment before he said, “I don’t think so. Not this time. I think it was real.”

“Oh, come on, Jackie –”

“No! No, listen. I been thinkin’ about it hard. I don’t know how, or what, but something got Josie. Okay, not a spider. It looked like an old woman, but it was something else. You gotta believe me. You gotta help me make Evans believe me.”

She peered into his face for a long time, finally shaking her head, but not so much refusal as resignation. “He’ll think I’m as drunk as you. He’ll think you’ve been letting me drink out of your bottle.”

“But, he’s gotta find Josie. I looked, but I can’t find her anywhere. He’s a cop. He’s s’posed to find people that get lost...or taken. That’s his job!”

“How could he find her? Where would he look?”

“I dunno. But someone’s gotta look. Josie’s a person. She’s a real person – a good person. Anyway, she was before she got ate.”

Jackie curled away from her, continued to curl around until he was like a fetus in the womb of the Hole.

Muri stood when she heard his breathing even out into soft snores, then she headed for the ramp. Before she got there, though, she veered over to Josie’s nook, a space that was partly enclosed by a thick stand of reeds beneath the overhanging trestle. There was little to establish it as the abode of a person: a narrow, thin mattress fitted with plastic garbage bags over each end to keep it from soaking up rain or dew, and an old and wobbly shopping cart filled to the top with plastic bags containing the worldly wealth of the person.

Muri walked over to it and laid a hand on the handle, like she was feeling for a trace of the last hand that touched it. It wasn’t likely that Josie would just walk away from everything she owned, but how could it have happened like Jackie believed?

But he also believed the spider behind his spot comes out of the shadows and growls at him and calls him by name.

...No, he doesn’t.

He didn’t believe that at all – only while it was happening. But afterwards he knew it was all just seeing things. Not like now, with Josie. She’s been missing for a week, and he still believed it. He believed it more every day.

Maybe she would talk to Officer Evans.

Jackie groaned and rolled over, his eyes fluttering as they opened until he could tolerate the blue brightness before him. He smacked his lips and tried to remember if he had finished the bottle he had when he came down. He vaguely remembered that Muri was there before he had closed his eyes, but he couldn’t remember emptying the bottle. He raised his head enough to look around his space with hope beginning to warm his innards. He wanted to put some fuzziness over the vision stuck in his memory of big teeth and Josie. But there was no bottle.

“Gotta get another bottle.” He rolled over until he was face down and pulled his legs up under him, then pushed with his hands as he walked forward, and finally straightened up from his waist. He wobbled a couple of times, got his balance, and hitched up his pants. “Gotta go to the store and get a bottle. Oops – gotta pee, first.”

He started to open the front of his pants when his mind heard Josie’s scolding voice almost like she was there, “Jackie, even a dog don’t pee in his own bed. Move over outa your space and do it.”

He made it over to the edge of the river and added his contribution. Then, as he staggered towards the bottom of the slope that led up to the rest of the world, he glanced over at the cart in Josie’s space. Like he was drawn to it, he stumbled and wobbled over to it. His hand moved slowly, softly over the sun-baked and cracked plastic of the handle, touching where she had touched, where she would never touch again.

“Damned thing shouldn’ta ate you. You were a good person, Josie. You were a real person. Somebody oughta find you. You shouldn’t be just forgotten. I’ll find you, Josie. I’ll find you.”

At the top of the ramp, he stopped and looked about. He had no idea which way to go to start looking. Should he go into the old buildings across the tracks? They were probably locked up, though. Should he go downtown? She might be prowling about in the alleys; she did that sometimes. But, if she was doing what she always did, why didn’t she come back to the Hole? Because she got ate, that’s why. So, if she got ate, she ain’t going to go prowling the alleys or anywhere else. Maybe he could go as far as the bottle store, then if he didn’t see her or get another idea, he could get a bottle and...and stop looking.

“No, dammit! No!” Even though his words were slurred to the point of mumbled gibberish, in his mind they were clear. “I won’t stop looking, Josie. I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”

Muri felt relieved. When she admitted to Officer Evans that she had seen Jackie a few times in the past week, that Erica and Joe were nice, too, and then described what Jackie told her about what happened to Josie, all he did was give her a frown and say, “You’ve really gotten yourself wrapped up with the Hole folks.” With his eyes peering over the lip of his coffee cup into Muri’s, he added, “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

Muri scrunched around on the bench they shared beside Dairy Queen and took another sip of her lemonade. She hunched her shoulders and tried to hide the grin that said, yes, he was right, but... “Jackie’s my friend. He’s really a nice person once you get to know him. He just kinda needs someone to tell him what he doesn’t like to hear.”

“He does, that.” Don let a chuckle soften his next words. “Like that his story of seeing someone with big teeth eat Josie is less than believable. You said even he admits he was smashed at the time, so whatever he saw, or thought he saw, came out of the bottle. Josie’ll turn up, and he won’t even remember that particular hallucination.”

“But you’ll still look for her, won’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll even give her a ride back to the Hole when I find her, just so I can see if Jackie still remembers what he’s claiming.”

“Just don’t make fun of him when you do, okay? He’s really worried about her, and it’s ’cause he cares.”

“I know he cares. And I promise I won’t make fun of him, but you might be getting yourself involved in people and situations that a pretty, little girl like yourself isn’t equipped to handle. Jackie can be a nice person when he tries to be, yes, and the others down there may be nice, too, when it suits them. But they are not the most trustworthy persons around. Something could happen to you down there, and I might not discover it for days. I don’t want to scare you, but –”

“Jackie wouldn’t let anyone do anything to me. He wouldn’t!”

“Oh, Muri, hon, you really don’t know Jackie. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t know anything about him except what I’ve told you, what he’s told you, and whatever you’ve seen. I don’t know hardly anything, myself, and who knows how much of anything he’s told you is the truth?”

“Then I’ll go talk to his Gramma and find out more about him.”

Don started to tell her to just do what he and her parents have said and stay away from Jackie and the Hole. But the stubborn determination in eyes that wouldn’t turn away from his told him she was not going to be so easily deterred. And Jackie’s Gramma was a nice lady; she just couldn’t handle Jackie and his problems. It shouldn’t do any harm for Muri to talk to her.

“Go ahead,” he said with a shrug. “Do you know where they live?”

“Just do me a favor, okay?” Don asked as he pulled open the door and Muri started to slide out of the front seat of his patrol car. “Don’t tell your mom I’m the one that brought you here. She’d skin me.”

“Okay,” she answered with a grin. “I won’t if you won’t. It’s our secret.”

“Great,” he moaned when he joined her on the sidewalk. He opened the picket fence gate and stepped aside while Muri walked through and waited for him. “Why do I let me get myself into these messes?”

They were half way to the front door when he felt Muri’s hand slip into his, and he knew why.

The door opened slowly at Don’s knock and a small, elderly woman peered out through the crack. With the sun behind him, he realized, he couldn’t be more than a silhouette.

“Afternoon, Missus Simms. It’s Officer Evans. This is Muri, a friend of Jackie’s. She’d like to talk to you about him, if that’s okay.”

A smile of recognition lit up her face as soon as he spoke. “Well, of course, Officer Evans, come in.” The door swung open and she stepped back.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Muri. Jackie talks about you all the time. He just thinks the world of you. Come in, come in. I’ve just made a pot of tea. Would you like some?”

While Gramma and Muri sat on the sofa and talked about their mutual interest over cups of tea with honey, Don moseyed over to a doily-covered sideboard. Prominently displayed to right and left of an 8 X 10 portrait photograph of a younger Jackie in his army uniform were two other frame sets, both double-sided 8 X 10s. Each set contained a military medal mounted on satin behind the glass on one side with the citation describing in detail the actions for which the medal was awarded and on the other side. Don leaned over to read one of the citations without having to pick it up. After a moment, he picked it up and sat with it in a nearby chair as he became engrossed.

Some minutes later, Don had replaced the second frame and was leaning over examining the medals when he sensed Muri beside him.

“Gramma went to heat some more water. Did you know Jackie played baseball in high school? He was the catcher. And he got pretty good grades, too. Are those Jackie’s medals?”

“Um hmm.”

“So, he really is a hero?”

“Um hmm.”

“I knew he was. I didn’t have to see them...but I’m glad I did.”