Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

Trey squeezed his eyes shut. “Y-yes.”

“Hypocrite,” said the demon, but he was laughing as he said it. “Here endeth the lesson.”

Trey opened his eyes.

Trey felt his mouth move again. His lips formed a word.

“Username?” he asked.

Anthem looked sheepishly at him and nibbled the stub of a green fingernail. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

Trey stared at her. Gaped at her.

“What—?” she said, suddenly touching her face, her nose, to make sure that she didn’t have anything on her. “What?”

Trey sniffed. He could taste tears in his mouth, in the back of his throat. And there was a smell in the air. Ozone and sulfur. He shook his head, trying to capture the thought that was just there, just on the edge. But . . . no, it was gone.

Weird. It felt important. It felt big.

But it was gone, whatever it was.

He took Anthem’s hand and studied her fingers. There was blood caked in the edges. He glanced at the keyboard and saw the chocolate-colored stains. Faint, but there.

“You got blood on the keys,” he said. “You have to be careful.”

“Why?”

“Because this is magic and you’re supposed to be careful.”

Anthem gave him a sideways look. “Oh, very funny.”

“No,” he said, “not really.”

“What’s it matter? I’ll clean the keyboard.”

“It matters,” he said, and then for reasons he could not quite understand, at least not at the moment, he said, “We have to do it right is all.”

“Do what right?”

“All of it,” said Trey. “The spells. Entering them, everything. We need to get them right. Everything has to be right.”

“I know, I know . . . or the program won’t collate the right way and—”

“No,” he said softly. “Because this stuff is important. To . . . um . . . people.”

Anthem studied his face for a long moment, then she nodded.

“Okay,” she said and got up to get some computer wipes.

Trey sat there, staring at the hazy outline of his reflection. He could see his features, but somehow, in some indefinable way, he looked different.

Or, at least he believed he did.

Don Harstad is a retired deputy sheriff who lives in Elkader, Iowa, with his wife of forty-eight years and two foundling beagles. Don is the author of several novels, including Eleven Days , Known Dead , The Big Thaw , Long December , and Code 61 . This is Don’s first short story, as well as his first venture into the paranormal. He found both experiences to be thoroughly enjoyable.

On Monday, June 7, 2006, a special one-week course began at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy at Camp Dodge, just north of Des Moines. The course dealt with “Intelligence Techniques for Gathering Information from Nontraditional Sources, in Relation to Unusual and Unfamiliar Criminal Activities.” The course, as with all the intelligence courses, was by invitation only. There were three instructors and eight experienced officers as students.

The three instructors were Agent Benjamin Young, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation; Special Agent Norma Jensen, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Deputy Sheriff George Bauerkamper of Dubuque County. All three had been involved in intelligence investigations regarding unusual crimes, and all had at least fifteen years in law enforcement.

The instructors and students assembled in a small classroom that was set some distance from the basic classes, and began precisely at 0900.

Agent Young began. “Okay, okay, hold it down.” That got a laugh, as the room had been quiet. Young leaned on the podium, and said, “Okay. I know all of you. I don’t think all of you know these two,” and he gestured toward the man and woman behind him. “Norma there is with the FBI. George here’s with the Dubuque County Sheriff’s Department. They’ve done this type of investigation. They know their shit. That’s why they’re here. George busted a funeral home that was involved in necrophilia.” That drew a couple of snickers. “Not quite what you might think,” said Young. “George . . .”

The deputy stepped to the podium. He smiled. “Thanks, Ben. This wasn’t a case of some undertaker boinking a stiff,” he said. “This guy was pimping dead folks.”

He had their attention.

“It was a joint task force, the undertaker in question being in central Iowa. I was fortunate enough,” he said, with a wry grin, “to have one of his customers living in my county. This undertaker, he’d been renting the bodies to a group of necrophiliacs. Six in all. When he’d get their preferred sort of corpse, he’d make a couple of calls to the ones whose, ah, criteria had been met by the recently departed, and get five grand for an hour. Alone. With the deceased. Specials went for upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars for a night.” He stopped, and glanced around the room. “Anybody want to guess what a special was?”

Nobody moved.

“A special meant that he’d deliver the departed to your home, and make the pickup when you were done.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” said the Cedar Rapids officer.

“Getting information on this dude was kind of interesting,” said George. “We’ll be discussing that later.” He stepped back from the podium.

“Norma . . .” said Young, indicating it was her turn.

“The one I’m going to share with you,” she said, stepping forward, “involved a man we referred to as the ‘Tour Guide,’ who scouted, obtained, and provided various resorts for the use of several cults in the Southern states, who practiced fun things like pedophilia, demonology, and cannibalism.”

“Nice,” said the woman detective from Iowa City. “Dealt with fraternities, did he?”

That got a laugh, including from Norma. “I think mostly they were the parents of the frat rats,” she said. Another laugh. “Getting intel on him was a real challenge. Not even his clientele knew who he was, and almost none of them ever saw him. Payment in cash, at a dead drop.” She smiled briefly. “No pun intended. Anyway, never the same place twice. Never even the same city. I got to travel lots and lots for that one.”

“Okay, then,” said Ben. “And to tie it in, I was involved in both investigations. So, now you’ve got an idea of what we meant by unusual. Anybody working on one of those right now?”

Nobody was.

“That’s a relief. So, then we can concentrate on these cases. Okay, first of all . . .” He handed a stack of papers to the officer at the right front. “Pass these back. It’s sort of a syllabus, but we’ve kept it pretty vague. Understandably.”

“First thing we do,” said Young, “is define the scope of the investigation. That changes a lot as you go. Then the geographical area, because of jurisdictional stuff. Then describe the offense as well as we know it, and describe any participants or other involved parties. That changes, too. Then we target the weak links, and go for them. Start the dominoes falling, until we get to the top. Just like all intel investigations. Always simple, always easy, and always successful, right?” That was the last laugh of the morning.

They broke for lunch, served in the academy cafeteria. The intelligence officers sat away from the fifty or so basic law enforcement recruits who were also in session, and mingled only at the salad bar. The three instructors hung back a bit, as the eight from their intelligence class went through the line.

“How ya think it’s going so far?” asked Ben as they watched the class fill their trays.