Well-aged Like Swiss Cheese

Chapter 4: Mommy Dearest

Sam entered Clara Clarkson's room to find the forty-something, disheveled woman. She was strapped into the bed with leather restraints. She had on simple white scrubs with a white sheet spread over her legs and up to her waist. She stared at a plain white wall.

"I've said all I'm going to say to any doctors. You might as well shut the fucking door and leave." Her flat affect was perfected. She'd worked a long time trying to seem unmotivated in hopes of finding a way out of this God forsaken place. Yes, she was eccentric, but she never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it.

"You didn't even look to see who came in the room. Maybe I'm not a doctor." Sam smiled and walked closer to the woman. He held his badge.

Clara turned her head just enough to spot the fake badge. "That's a pretty bad fake." She was trying to hide the panic that was beginning to fill her chest. If this is a hunter, then he must be around. My girls had better be safe. Of course they are, I trained them well.

Sam sighed and put his badge away, "You're good. Just as good as your daughter."

"You mean daughters." He'd better mean daughters. Ok, deep breath. She sucked in air.

"Well, I've only met one. Which is why I'm here. I wanted to talk to you about your other daughter. About Sara, she's missing." Clara couldn't hide her emotions this time. She let a silent sob out. Sam continued, "I would love to hear a little more about what you believe may have happened to her. So that we can find her and well, you know, take care of the person," he stopped and cleared his throat. "Take care of the person who took her."

Clara told Sam everything. He sat and listened. Before he left he stopped at her side, slipped a paperclip into her fist. And slowly walked out of her room. The door locked behind him. He'd suspected Clara could pick the lock. He felt sorry for her. She was locked up in here with her family out there and in trouble. He knew he'd want to be out if his family was in trouble.

At noon, the orderly entered her room released the right hand restraint. It wasn't the orderly's day for many reasons. He got stuck taking a cold shower this morning because his water heater in his crappy little apartment broke. His car wouldn't start and he got stuck sitting next to a 300 lb man with horrible body order while he rode the bus to work. He almost gagged but there were no open seats until his stop. Now he drew the short straw and had to bring the strangest resident her dinner.

Mostly it was not his lucky day, because Clara had no intention of staying in this room or building any longer. She had one hand free. She could do a lot with one hand.

No one had heard he orderly scream. He'd had very little time to react before being knocked out and shoved under into the bed. In fact, Clara had been out of the building for fifteen minutes before anyone went looking for the orderly. At 1230, a nurse with neatly pressed scrubs entered Clara's room and found the orderly gagged, and leather restrained to the bottom of the bed. He had a large lump on his head, a broken nose, and most likely broken ribs. She wasn't certain if he was alive. He wasn't moving. Her scream was heard three floors down.

Back at Susan's apartment, she filled the brothers in on her plan. She explained that she believed her sister was either her father's victim or her best friend's victim. During her research she'd discovered the real reason her friend had been so desperate to get out of town. Eddie was a skin walker. Her sister had stumbled upon Eddie's secret earlier in this week. Her plan was simple, she was going to her friend's mom's house, confront her, and kill her if needed. If she wasn't responsible for her sister's disappearance, she'd be vampire hunting.

"So, not only do you know a vampire that's pretty deadly but you are now best friends with a skin walker? Great. I can't wait to hear about everyone else you know." Dean smiled at her.

"Yeah. Well, it's a long drive. So, if you're tagging along, we'd better go."

During the drive Susan could only think about her sister and pray that their friend had a good explanation. Susan and Sara had developed a system of communicating if one had disappeared. This system started simply as a diary that each one would write in frequently. It includes all information about their plans and their activities during the day. They'd been so detailed that anyone reading would have been bored to death. These detailed entries had come into handy more times then Susan could count.

Now that they were older, they moved from paper journals to online journaling. They had befriended Frank, a thief/computer hacker while working a job in Omaha. He was a computer genius. He'd built them their own private website where the two girls could do their journaling/blogging secretly. He made the website unsearchable. If it was discovered, there were more firewalls and defenses that a person would give up trying to read it well before they cracked the code. The local police during their investigation hadn't uncovered the website.

It was through Susan's reading her sister's journal that she found out about Eddy's secret. Sara's code told her that she was meeting and confronting Eddy the day of her disappearance. Susan was grateful the boys had tagged along for the confrontation because she would need someone to keep her restrained if Eddy did have anything to do with Sara's disappearance.

Eddy's parent's house was an old mansion on the right side of the tracks. It was an old district of town but the neighborhood association had obviously done much to ensure the maintenance of the properties. Or, well, the people who lived here were the type of people who paid other's to put a lot of work into their yards. Eddy's house had a brick fence surrounding the three acre wooded lot. An automated gate closed off the driveway. As they approached the gate, a curt, male voice greeted them over the intercom, "State your name and business".

"We're here to see Eddy. The name's Susan and guests."

There was a long pause. The trio listened to the entire song "Highway to the Danger Zone" and the start of "Born to be Wild" before the male voice returned. "The Misses only has time for a short visit. You may pull through the gate." The gate very slowly creaked open.

This chapter is a bit shorter, but I didn't want to break-up the next chapter.