I shoved the letters back into place, slammed the box shut, and stuffed it into the drawer, but my hands were shaking too hard to get it to close clean. The key clicked in the lock. Devin was back? I shoved my phone in my pocket, blessing all that was holy or unholy that I usually had it on silent. Another movie rule — don’t go sneaking around with your ringtone turned up.
I shoved myself down low, heart hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it, and stared around the room like there was going to be a secret passage out of here if I just looked hard enough. And, of course, there wasn’t. There was nothing, except me in a corner of a narrow storage room with my back to the wall and a dude that might have tried to kill me the other night coming through the door.
The back door whispered open, and I leaned in, tucking myself under the desk, leaving the chair where it was -- we weren’t both gonna fit.
Footsteps. Soft, deliberate.
“Honey, I’m home,” Devin crooned to himself. I think? Had he seen me break in? Had he just waited, or was he fucking with me? Was Regan okay? Maybe he’d just been hiding out there in the middle of bum fuck, waiting to see which of us came strolling along like…I couldn’t even.
My fingers danced over the keyboard.
Group text: Distraction now! Not even enough time to hit any fun emojis; that would tell them I was serious.
He was there somewhere. The footsteps had stopped, but the lights were still off. Something wasn’t right, and I was hoping against hope I wasn’t going to hear something like…
“There you are.”
Jesus fuck. Nowhere to run. No way to hide. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes, turning to find…nothing.
“I took care of it,” Devin said, his voice moving away, and then a little buzz, like a bee. A voice? More footsteps, and then I could see his legs as I peeked out from my sad little nook. He was fiddling with something on a shelf, phone in hand.
Jesus fuck again. My whole body shuddered, as a wave of relief washed over me. He didn’t know. Well, not yet.
When he turned, I shoved myself as noiselessly as possible into a little ball, and went on, “No. No idea. I sold them #9, and threw them something poetic about true love and soulmates — the usual.” He took a step closer, and I could see the toe of his boot without even leaning out to peek. “No, it’s just valerian root and a few other harmless things. Might make someone sleepy, but I don’t keep anything special in the shop.”
The special he said with a little emphasis, and I wondered if he regularly played with poisons. There certainly was no such thing as a ‘love potion.’ But a poison?
And then light flooded the room, and I thought I was going to pee. His boots were caked with mud, both of them facing my direction, and he was listening. I could hear the faintest of voices, as if someone was yelling, or he had the volume up too high.
“Maybe, but oh, hold on…” He paused, and then I knew I was going to pee.
Just then, I heard a faint thumping, and the boots turned.
“Someone banging on the door. Fuck. That’s what I get for turning the lights on. Gotta go. Customers.” He took a couple of steps and said, “Hey, it’s the busiest night of the year. I gotta make my rent still. It’s not like I’m rich — yet.”
And then the footsteps headed away, and I squeezed my thighs shut. I really did have to pee, but not here and not now. When I heard the door open, and Devin’s spiel, “Welcome, travelers, to The Serpent & Rose. I’m — oh, you’re back,” I slipped out of my nook and went right out the back door. I didn’t even look back. I didn’t hear anything, but a familiar voice, and went straight down the path toward a giant tree and a shadow there that looked remarkably like someone I needed to hug.
The shadow moved when I reached the tree, and Regan said, “That was close. How did you…?”
“Linds, queen of distractions.” It was her voice I’d heard. I turned and looked back at the little shop, then down at my phone. The call had been from Regan, and Linds had responded to my text. I tapped out a quick message back to her, hit send, and then looked at Regan.
“You weren’t gone long.”
“Dude moves fast for a lame goth guy. I could barely keep up and not give myself away. About a hundred yards down that way,” she said, pointing towards the river, “he turned into the trees, and I wasn’t going in there. I waited, listening, but he could have been anywhere, and I didn’t know if he’d seen me or not.”
I nodded, looking at my phone again when it buzzed. Lindsay always made me giggle. “She had to go back, she told him, to get me some crystals for my birthday, which is coming up — not, but she had to wait until we were distracted with bourbon. Okay, that sounds like us.”
“Heh.”
“She got me a mojo bag — no idea what that is, a citrine for abundance and joy and a bundle of cinnamon sticks for success, luck and energy. Remind me to give that girl a hug.” I tapped a response.
“Gotta do more than that. Let her tell you all about it without interruptions.”
I glanced up, a wry look plastered on my shadowed face — she knew the one, even if she couldn’t see. “That’s asking a lot, but okay. I just told her to go back to the room, keep on the Reddit thing, and we’d catch up.”
“And?”
“Pout emoji.” I looked back at the back door of The Serpent & The Rose, and then looked down the path toward the river and the treeline. “Let’s go see where he went.”
Turns out it’s easy to track Mr. Size Twelve Boot along a muddy river bank pathway, especially when it looked like this was a regular route for him, and there were all sorts of clues that he took a sharp left about a hundred yards from the big oak. Repeat customer for whatever was in that dense copse of trees, and the moment we looked back and saw the lights still on at Devin’s place and no flashlight coming our way, we both flicked our own flashlights on and took the detour, too.
We weren’t ten or fifteen yards in when we saw our destination. There was no doubt. The whole place smelled like smoke, and the closer we got to the little lean-to, the stronger the smoky smell became. I looked at Regan as we both shone our lights on the place. “Too late, I think.”
The shack looked like something out of a campfire horror story. Hidden in a copse of trees, the kind that look like they lean in when you’re not looking, to listen better. The door was closed, but the window glowed pale gold — like someone had a candle or a lantern inside. The light flickered, then went out, and I ducked, pulling Regan down with me, aiming my flashlight at the ground but not turning it off. Was there someone else in there? Had they seen us? The door — there couldn’t be more than one way in or out with a shanty this size — was right in front of us, so whoever was coming out was gonna be right in our faces in a split second.
We waited, and it took a moment for me to realize I still needed to breathe. No footsteps. No door creak. Just darkness. We waited. No one came out. No one went in.
Finally, Regan whispered, “No one home. Maybe a candle?”
I shrugged in the darkness, and without even a signal between us, we circled to the door. I kept my breathing to a dull roar, my heart pounding loud enough to drown out a marching band. Regan tried the handle, and the door swung open with an audible squeak.
But there was nothing. Not another dude hiding in the dark. No Charlie. And I looked back once more to check our six, and no Devin. We were clear. But the air in the place wasn’t. I stifled a cough when I poked my nose in. Inside, it smelled like cloves and smoke and the sharp sting of vinegar. I pulled my sleeve up and held it over my nose, shining the flashlight into the tiny place. Maybe it was big enough to be a bathroom in an apartment, but maybe not. Not a nice apartment, that was for sure. A lived-in one though — or worked in. A crude workbench along one wall. Shelves mostly bare. A few boxes half-open, all of them empty. Someone had definitely been here. Someone doing something. But it was all gone now.
And in the far corner, we could see a wisp of smoke rising from a thick metal ashcan.
“He burned everything.”
“Shit,” I said, and stepped forward, trying to see if there was anything salvageable, but the heat from the can was intense, and the fumes burned. “Jesus fuck!” I said, lurching back, coughing, my eyes on fire. I pushed past Regan and out through the door to fresh air. “What chemicals was he using in here? Is that Love Potion #9?” I laugh-coughed, wiping my eyes, wishing I had some water.
“Now what?” she asked as we stepped back outside.
I took a few deep breaths, trying to clear my lungs, waiting for the sting in my nose and eyes to subside. “That can’t be healthy back there. Do you think he just came in and doused the place in vinegar, then threw everything in that can and set it on fire?”
Regan looked back in through the door and raised her phone. “Dunno, but it just rained, so he didn’t have to worry about burning the town down. Want me to get a few photos for posterity?” She started aiming and clicking before I even nodded. Instead, I focused on feeling my lungs clear and the burning in my eyes ease. My brain was trying to catch up here. So much conjecture. No real evidence, except for the wailing ciphers of a ghost — this was not turning out to be a productive investigation.
“We went in, he said some ominous shit, then the moment we go out, he takes a walk. He cleans and burns everything here and almost catches me rooting through his desk. By the way,” I said, “I found something.”
“Something good, I hope.”
“I think so,” I replied, a bit of a smile on my face, and I held up the locket, popping it open with my thumb.
Regan shined her light on it, then let out a low whistle. “Oh, yeah, these two totally did it. Ya think?”
“For always, even when I hate you. She’s a kid in the photo, but that’s not a kid’s writing.”
“Damn. Now what?”
“Now we get back to the room and link up with Linds. I think I know what to do. We’re gonna start a profile on Reddit.”
It took twenty or so minutes to get back to the B&B, and I gave Cal a wave, grabbed a few cookies from the plate by the stairs and started nibbling. I offered one to Regan, but she said Linds would want two, which was true, and I knew she wasn’t one for sweets. Probably not one for all this sneaking around either. When we’d gone past The Serpent & The Rose again, the lights had been off, and Regan had mentioned she might should have just punched him in the balls and asked if he did it. I laughed, of course, but at the same time I figured it would have been a good plan.
Regan was a little more direct, which came in handy, and I was a little more legal, if you could call it that — let’s not break more laws than the bad guys, I always said, even though sometimes it had to happen. Like when I did a B&E to check for clues in Devin’s shop and ended up stealing that locket.
Okay, so legal was, well, precarious. But so was our position, and maybe it was just violence I wasn’t really up for. That is, until we opened the door to Regan and Lindsay’s shared room.
The door wasn’t even locked. In fact, it was ajar. Regan nudged it open with her foot, her right hand balled up into a fist, and a look on her face that told me she was a little over our fun, spooky weekend.
“She’s not here,” said Regan flatly as we stared at the room that looked like a hurricane Lindsay victim, but didn’t feel like one. Like, her cell was under the bed.
“Fuck,” I groaned, and got down and grabbed it. “Fuck fuck fuck. Regan?” I turned and looked up at the seething black woman who’d done her time in the Marines. “Cal is downstairs. Maybe we should…”
“Have a chat with him,” she said, and I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. “Somebody’s going to cry tonight, and it better not be me.”
She turned, and I was right behind her, closing the door. Girl was locked and loaded, a locomotive coming down the stairs, and I scrambled to keep up. She even grabbed a cookie and shoved it in her mouth, and then I knew shit was going sideways. I grabbed two because I’d seen something like this before, and there was no popcorn.
Cal squeaked like a mouse when she grabbed him and made him part of the fridge for a few seconds. I winced, wondering if the fridge would recover. Cal, a normal looking dude in a village full of Halloween junkies, sort of bounced off what looked like a newer model Samsung, and then he melted under Regan’s stare while also remaining upright because she had him by the collar.
“Spill, geek.”
“Cal, you were doing so well with the bourbon and the snickerdoodles, and now our friend is missing, and her best friend is probably going to hurt you something awful, and I can’t help you because my hands are full of delicious cookies.” I shrugged. “I think you’re on your own if you don’t tell us,” and here my voice sort of got a bit louder — seemed louder because Regan somehow read my mind and added her voice to the last bit, “where the FUCK OUR FRIEND IS.”
It’s probably some boy’s fantasy to get manhandled by girls — the internet was weird, but this wasn’t one of those moments, and I got the impression right away that Cal knew it. The tears started before the words, and I almost felt sorry for the guy because he was sort of cute, and these cookies were the bomb.
“Devin. It was Devin. He came in and wanted — I’m sorry. Was I wrong?”
“Wanted what, douchebag?” said Regan, and all I could think of was that Cal was too scared to close his legs, and he was about to regret that.
“In one of the rooms. I know. I know. I’m not supposed to. And please, I’ll make it up to you. I need this job. I’ve been here for six years. And he’s a cool guy. Did he steal something? Oh my god, no, please don’t tell me he stole something. He just wanted to look for — I actually don’t know. Jeez Louise, he gave me a hundred dollars. It’s in my pocket. You can have it.”
I stepped up and laid my hand on Regan’s shoulder. Her right hand was a balled-up fist that was about to make this a crime scene, and I didn’t want to have one friend in jail and one missing. I felt the tension ease just the slightest bit at my touch, and then I peered over her shoulder at the sniveling wiener who just offered me a hundred dollars to replace my friend, and I dropped my hand and said to Regan, “Hurt him.”
“No! No! Please. What happened? What did I do?” Cal’s eyes were bulging, tracking the fist that came up.
“Your fucking friend Devin took our friend, you asshole! You let him in, and he took our friend. She’s gone!” I stopped for a moment and just trembled, my own fists balled tight, and I could see the black eyes coming Cal’s way, and I wanted to deliver one of them. And then I stepped back, as did Regan, because, well, Cal’s pants developed a leak, and then so did the floor around his house slippers.
“If she’s hurt, Cal, I’m going to come back and hurt you,” Regan hissed, her voice so quiet I had to dial it in and shut everything else out. But Cal heard her. “I’m going to come back and hurt you real bad, Cal. Now spill all the tea, dickhead, and you just might walk away from this without the help of a paramedic.”
Cal spilled. All the fucking tea.
Author’s Notes: This is again one of those episodes where something took a left turn that I hadn’t counted on. But this one I sort of manufactured when I got to it — that is, Lindsay’s kidnapping. That was never part of the plan, but when I arrived at this part of the story, I needed something to raise the stakes, and I needed Sesame and Regan to have a bigger showdown. Besides, we all know by now that Lindsay would have complained later that she never gets to be the one who’s kidnapped.
In fact, that statement wouldn’t be true because in Sesame Swallow’s debut novel, which I’m still working on, the entire case revolves around Lindsay’s disappearance. This is, in fact, the trio’s origin story — how they all met, but Lindsay still would have said that shit.
And now we’re down to two episodes — the next one should hit around the 27th, and the final one on Halloween itself. Hope you’re having fun with this!
Go on to episode 13, bitchachos!
Sip, Swallow & Scream
r/Poe @PoeHunterPA -- FOUND: Rare Poe manuscript, potentially unpublished. Looking for a serious buyer. DMs open.
