Thomas Craig - The Outkast

Besides a congealment of blood on Robert’s bed, the search through the house yielded nothing.

Then, they decided to go through Robert’s room one more time before giving up and leaving the house to devise another solution.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Allan asked after a while. He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about sticking around here-the location of his near-death-but evading responsibility seemed to be an uphill task now that Brian was here to supervise.

Brian favored him with a scalding look. “Well, I’m damn sure we’re not searching for your missing butt, Deputy.”

That didn’t sit well with Allan. Nonetheless, he shrugged and went on with his business.

Brian said, “Clues, Allan. Anything at all-that’s what we’re searching for. Anything that can lead us to the…” He paused, watching Allan, who had already dropped down on all fours, poking his head underneath the bed frame, his butt jutting out behind him. He was probing the space down there, doing a darn good cop’s job. “… anything that can lead us to it ,” Brian finished.

Allan’s butt reversed, dragging the rest of him out from beneath the bed. He rose. With his back still turned to Brian, he dusted the object he’d ferreted out. Flipping it over and over, he said, “Check this out, Sheriff. I just found something, which is worth anything .”

“What?” Brian inched closer.

Allan turned around. There was a mischievous grin spread all over his face.

“A diary?”

Allan nodded. “Says ‘The daily reports from Robert’s funny dreams.’”

They flipped through the pages and were profoundly amazed at what they read from the boy’s secret writing.

In it, Robert Smallwood talked about a recurrent creature in his dreams called The Outkast . He further commented on how the creature scared him, even though when he woke up many times, he hardly remembered every part of his dreams. His writing was a mishmash of fearful emotions of nightmare and exhilarating feelings of pure adventures of journeys made into the Unusual .

“That’s some wealth of imagination going on for a twelve-year-old, huh?” Allan cocked his head to one side, anticipating a comment from Brian. He got one.

“I don’t think this is just a work of imagination, Allan?”

“Really? You don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t. I have a hunch there’s something concrete buried in there, something real and revealing. Something alive and breathing. The boy reads a lot of crooked books-and he’s a twisted kid, no doubt. But my gut feeling keeps nagging at me to see the wood for the trees.”

“What’d you suggest, then?”

“That we keep reading.”

“All right.”

So, they continued, Brian doing so with keen interest, hoping to fish out some clues.

Brian cast a brief glance at Allan. The look on the deputy’s face divulged the fact that he practically had no interest to tarry here this long, but Brian didn’t act like he noticed a thing.

The Outkast, Robert wrote on, hated everyone so much that he believed they deserved to die. He had been alienated from the community, and he lived alone, away in the ____________________

There was a blank space in the rest of the sentence, the last line on that page.

They skipped to the next.

The creature in the boy’s dreams believed Robert and him were the same, that they were of the same true blood and essence of life.

“Could he be making reference to their DNA, Sheriff?” Allan asked with a curl of his lip.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s a possibility,” Brian said. “I won’t be surprised at all if it turns out to be the case.” He ran the tip of his finger along the lines of Robert’s writing, as if the pages were specially made Braille that gave understanding not to the sightless but the curious at heart.

From the hallway, Holly’s wail filled the night.

Even though Robert was still young and not fully made yet, The Outkast would whip him into shape. He would instill the insensate spirit in him, adequate to carry on the work of casting the impure blood into the pit of hell, when he, The First True Blood, would be gone to the place of glory. The boy would learn all of this at the feet of The Outkast, watching as blood flowed from their enemies.

Brian frowned. “You see that?” he said, glancing briefly at Allan.

“Yeah, I do. The kid’s story’s getting better.”

Brian shook his head slowly, but didn’t say a word.

The next part of the piece spurred them to set off.

Robert described the domicile of the creature, based on his experience from the dreams, as a place full of blood, death, and wonders.

The Outkast lived on the outskirts of town. Repelled by the hypocrisy of human, he had chosen to live among the trees, in the deep bowels of Cave Kushi . It was located twenty miles northeast of River Sebastian, close to a trail accessible through a dirt route at the end of Sebastian Road.

“Where the hell’s Cave Kushi?” Allan grunted when they got outside.

“Twenty miles northeast of River Sebastian.” Brian’s curtness rang clear. To Deputies Craig Nelson and Dwayne Haughton, he said, “I’ll ride ahead with Allan while you follow us.”

“Where’re we going?” Dwayne asked.

“Down the River.” Brian dashed to Allan’s patrol car, searching for a map.

“Oh,” Craig observed. “We’re heading back to the crime scene?”

Allan moved closer to Craig, and placed one hand over his comrade’s shoulder. “No, buddy. We’re actually heading to Cave Kushi. ”

Craig frowned.

Allan said, “You know where that is?”

Craig shook his head.

Allan looked in Dwayne’s direction. “Do you?”

“Never even heard of it,” Dwayne said.

Brian returned with a big map. “We gotta be on the move presently.” He gave them a quick run-down of the situation and why they were heading that way.

“A fantastic way, in my book,” Allan commented.

“Get in and let’s hit the road, boys” Brian said, walking to the driver’s side of the cruiser.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Allan called after him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“No time to think. Get your butt right in the car. Now!”

Brian pulled out and drove off.

Allan was his right-hand man, in a manner of speaking. He could be a very dependable lieutenant when he chose to be such. But he could equally be an outright jackass whenever he so desired. Brian had learned enough about Allan to take him in hand without getting himself excessively ruffled in the process.

With the map laid out on Allan’s lap in response to Brian’s instruction to check it intermittently as their journey progressed, he said, “This still looks like some fantasy tale to me, Sheriff. We don’t even know where we’re going.”

“How many times have you said that, and how many times have I given you an answer as to where we’re going?”

“I mean, we know it’s some kind of cave, but we don’t know our way there.”

“We’ve got the map.”

“Damn right. I have it all spread over my lap. Point is, what if this map doesn’t lead us anywhere? What if it’s not up to snuff to do the job-provided there’s any job to do in the first place?”

Swerving from side to side to avert potholes, Brian said, “It’s done the job so far, hasn’t it?”

“It’s done the job so far ’cause we’re still in a familiar territory. Over there, I can see Cynthia Drake’s house. On the left-hand side, a little ahead of us, is Ted Folsom’s place. We just drove past Michelle Charles’s cottage.”

“Brilliant. You’re paying attention to your surroundings.”