Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

“She was lost from my sight for five minutes,” a woman in the back row said hollowly. “I have never lost track of her before, not once until tonight…”

“Let’s draw and quarter the turd,” a voice called out from the rear of the tent.

The Long Walker’s face was fixed in an expression Petty could not read. It might even have been sadness.

The men advanced on the preacher, who raised his hands skyward in silent plea. The first man who reached him threw a fist with pure venom; the preacher’s nose exploded. He fell. The men and more than a few women then fell upon him, kicking and stomping.

“Enough,” the Long Walker said, sounding bored.

He took Petty’s hand and led her away from the pandemonium.

THE GREYHOUND PULLED OVERon the side of the road at a quarter past five in the afternoon. Micah exited under a sun hazed with the grit lifting off the breakdown lane.

“Town’s a mile or so thataway,” the driver said, pointing.

Micah shouldered his bag. He had to stop himself from running. After that encounter in the woods, his first instinct had been to set off on foot after the thing that had snatched his daughter. But the creature would outdistance him easily, or back-flank him and kill him… or do something much worse.

Micah knew Petty would not be killed. She had been taken to establish Micah’s purpose, his end goal. Aside from his wife, his daughter was the only person capable of compelling Micah to retrace his steps back… there. And the black thing knew Micah’s heart as well as Micah did himself—better, just maybe.

He had hired a caretaker for Ellen, his wife. He had done so before on occasions when he needed to be away. Ellen’s sister, Sherri, was usually available, but was out of town at present. When Sherri returned, she would take over the caregiver role. Ellen posed only the smallest of burdens. She lay in bed. Occasionally she would rise, eyes open but seeing nothing, lips trembling with words Micah couldn’t quite understand, and pace the bedroom, vanity to door to nightstand. Her comatose state was unaffected. The doctors said this was uncommon behavior, but not unique. Her bedsores often burst during these episodes. Micah would trail her as she walked, dabbing ointment on her sores. The bedroom door was always locked at these times. There was no need for Petty to see her mother that way. Better to remember her as she’d been.

He hired a man to feed and water the animals. By all rights, his crops should die in his absence. But they would thrive. It had made Micah a wealthy man, the envy of those who eked a living out of the same inhospitable soil. But he was no crop whisperer. His fields produced simply because that was part of the deal—and that deal carried terrible penalties, too.

The town of Old Ditch seemed comatose. The industry had moved on, and with it went the hope, and with that went the incentive for the citizenry to improve. The buildings were stooped and tumbledown, as though affected with a case of architectural leprosy. A fine layer of dust had settled over the shop windows. A piebald dog dashed across the main street, through an intersection where the stoplights had gone dead.

Micah stopped in at a diner devoid of customers. The revolving pastry case displayed its unappealing wares: a lemon meringue pie so old the whipped eggs had cracked like the mud in a dry riverbed. A flyswatter lay on the countertop; below the swatter lay the smashed remains of the insects it had squashed.

A man’s face appeared in the kitchen pass. Old, fatigued, a grease-spotted fry hat cocked on his head at a defeated angle.

“What’ll you have?”

Micah set a dubious eye on the deformed pie, the coffee gone bitter on the burner.

“I am looking for a man.”

“We don’t traffic in that kind of business around here.”

“He is English. Black. Speaks with an accent.”

“There’s only one man in town has one of those.”

“Where can I find him?”

The man wiped his nose. “Sure you don’t want something? Hash is the specialty of the house.”

Salmonella is the specialty of this house , Micah thought.

“Just the man and where I can find him.”

Half an hour later, Micah had walked to the end of a narrow street lined with derelict dwellings. He spotted a blank, sun-challenged face peering at him from an upper-story window. The piebald dog moped along after him, flinching whenever Micah turned to face it. He rooted half of a 7-Eleven sticky bun out of his pack and dropped it. The dog ate it with that same flinching fear, as if under the suspicion that the treat was poisoned—as if it had witnessed its fellow pooches die that very way, in moaning paroxysms on the street.

The house he arrived at was small, but in better condition than the others. Micah knocked. Footsteps shuffled to the door.

“Who’s calling?”

“It is me, Ebenezer.”

A pause. A considerable one. The door opened. Ebenezer Elkins stood in a housecoat knotted chastely at the waist. His right hand was bandaged. He was drinking. He appeared to have been doing so for some time.

He bowed and stepped aside. “Come in.”

The main room was unadorned. The walls were bare save for the crucifixes hung at every corner. A small bookshelf with books that appeared to have been well read. Demons in America —that title jumped out at Micah.

Eb gestured to one of two chairs before taking a seat in the other. His bottle sat by the chair leg. He poured himself a splash.

“Where are my manners?” he said, gesturing with the bottle.

Micah consented. Eb limped into the kitchen and returned with a glass. He poured for Micah.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Years,” said Eb.

“Looks like you just moved in.”

“It does, doesn’t it.” Eb blearily stared around. His eyes were bloodshot, but he did not seem especially drunk. “I suppose I never expected to be here this long.”

“Are you well?”

“Not especially. Thank you for asking. You?”

“Not really. What did you do to your hand?”

Eb waved the question away. They sat for a spell, drinking in silence.

“Have you come to kill me?” Eb asked.

Micah shook his head.

“I didn’t think so,” said Ebenezer. “I thought you would be coming soon. I… Believe it or not, I dreamt it. Which may sound ridiculous—or it would have at one point in our lives. Superstitious drivel.”

He refilled their glasses. The hooch was strong, cheap, with a wicked burn.

“Lot of crucifixes,” Micah remarked.

“I got a deal on them. Cheaper by the dozen.”

“The Ebenezer I knew did not have much use for them.”

Ebenezer looked at his feet. Each of them had spent the past fifteen years trying to unbecome the man the other had once known.

“It took my daughter,” Micah said.

Eb looked up sharply. “You have a daughter?”

“By Ellen, yes. Petty. Ellen’s naming. Pet is her common name.”

“Ellen. How is she?”

Micah said, “She is at home and untroubled.”

Eb’s brows knitted. “Her daughter is gone and she is untroubled?”

“She is unaware of the loss.”

The Englishman pursued it no further. “You have a daughter,” he said again, disbelievingly. “Jesus Christ.”

Micah said, “It took her two nights ago, in the woods edging my home. I encountered one of the handmaids. But the other one, the more dangerous one…”

“The Flute Player.”

Micah nodded. “If you wish to call it that. It took my Pet.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard its song on the wind,” said Micah. “It wanted me to hear.”

“And it’s taking her back to…?”