"I knew she was fucking off. She's a stone cold bitch, or was." Mr. Cohen said.
"She was just depressed because her husband died. It drove her crazy. That's all." Linda tried to defend her friend.
"Linda honey, you can't tell me you haven't noticed the way she treats him. She never let Joseph sleep over and he's really skinny." June said.
"What? Like she was starving him?" Linda asked.
"Folks, I think we are all done here." The police officer said. He finished his interrogation of all the people present. Sadly, the woman's death was the easy part of the investigation, but the child abuse had torn his heart open.
"What about Joseph?" Mary's husband asked.
"He is being remanded into the local child protective services pending further investigation."
"But this is a small town in a rural county. Where is he sleeping tonight?" Linda asked.
"At my home actually. My wife is on the way to pick him up. I'm sort of the fall back foster parent for the town. Pretty much every troubled kid in Maywood has stayed under my roof at some point."
"That's very noble of you. Is Joseph okay? I mean is he hurt?" Mary asked.
"Doc Huber came to look at him. He's underweight and there are old bruises on him. This wasn't and isolated event. He's been getting abused for a while now. His behavior is very telling, I've seen it before."
"Oh god! How did we not see it?" Linda cried.
"I told you! She's a stone. Cold. Bitch!" Mr. Cohen said. He never liked Victoria.
"Well folks, I won't detain you any longer. You're free to go home. I have your contact information if I need it."
"Thank you officer." Mr. Cohen said. The group watched as officer Johnson picked up little Joseph and hugged the boy, cradling him like he was his own child before handing him off to a lovely woman that was clearly his wife. They let out a collective sigh born of heartache and guilt. Joseph was in good hands now.
XxXxXxXxX
Loki was grateful that he didn't have any other reservations booked until the following weekend. He needed time to recover after the horror he'd witnessed. His parents had had their moments when they'd been angry or frustrated with him for being lazy in school or smoking pot. His parents had never done anything like that to him. His mother had loved him. Loki palmed the locket containing Frigga's hair, playing with it for comfort.
With the couples and their children now departed the house felt empty. Loki decided to fill his time by cleaning. Jenny, his new cleaning girl had taken care of everything the police would allow, but the purple and red rooms where Victoria and her son had stayed were still in disarray and needed to be cleaned.
Loki had expected things to be out of place in the red room. They certainly had been in the green room where the other children had bunked together. The only thing that had been touched was the bed, which Loki stripped. He went into the purple room next and stripped that bed as well. He gave the bathroom a quick once over and then turned to leave. The faint whistling of the wind drew his attention. He turned back and looked at the mirror on the far wall. Like the one in the blue room this one too had become off-kilter.
He hadn't mentioned the hidden hallway to the police. Everything had happened outside. The hidden passageways between the rooms had not been involved so Loki didn't see a point in saying anything. He felt unease when the mirror swung ajar. He stepped into the inner sanctum to check and see if anything had been disturbed. A quick patrol up and down the corridor revealed nothing and so Loki went back into the purple room, pulling the mirror back into place, never seeing the painting mounted on the other side of it.
XxXxXxXxXxXx
"What is this place?" Loki asked as he looked around at the strange desert landscape. The blonde man was with him again. His cerulean eyes were distant and full sadness. He looked sweaty, like he hadn't showered in a long time. A thin layer of sand and dust covered him in grime. Loki noticed the dog tags then, laying against his brown pit-stained t-shirt. He was wearing desert camo-pants also and tan dessert boots. This man was a soldier.
"This is where I belong." He said.
"Who are you?" Loki asked. He noticed a matching jacket with a name label stitched onto it. "Odinson?"
"Yes. You may call me Thor."
"What are you doing here Thor?"
"I'm waiting to die."
"Why? Come home with me. You shouldn't stay here. It's not safe here."
"This is where I belong." Thor said. Loki heard a sound behind him that belonged to some sort of wild animal. A glob of congealed saliva landed on his shoulder as hot breath puffed against his neck. He turned and saw a great brown bear with glowing red eyes towering above him and ready to strike. It roared.
"Ahhhh!" Loki screamed awake. He was drenched in sweat and could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He reached for his phone to text Emily, but then stopped. He hadn't told the Starks about what happened. If they found out his very first customer died while in his home it would have caused all kinds of drama. Loki didn't want that. What happened with that first group was an apparition. He didn't need his friends jumping on his back about selling this place when he hadn't even gotten started yet. He put his phone down and took a few more deep breaths.
"Thor." Loki remembered the man's name. Thor Odinson. Loki hopped out of bed then and pulled out his brand new laptop. He typed in the name into the Google search engine hoping to get a hit. His search took a while. He had to weed through many pictures and references to men with the same name but not the same face. An old headline from an article in The Army Times caught his eye. The article was a little over seven years old.
Incident of Friendly Fire under Investigation
Pvt. Earnest Kinney was shot and killed on Sunday during a fire fight with enemy combatants in a small town bordering Fallujah. The bullet came not from the enemy but from his platoon mate Cpl. Thor Odinson. According to eye-witness testimony what occurred was a tragic accident, a miscommunication that ended the life of one of America's heroes. Cpl. Thor Odinson has been questioned pending an investigation regarding the life insurance benefits of Pvt. Earnest Kinney. Cpl. Thor Odinson is listed as the decedent's beneficiary of $500,000.
Next to the article were two photos of the soldier's mentioned. One of them had the unmistakable cerulean eyes of his fantasy man in the desert. Loki stood up and pulled out the champagne he'd purchased for his guests and drank straight from the bottle. His dream man is a real person.
"Why am I dreaming about you?" Loki took another drink from the bottle and pondered the possibilities.