Chapter 4

The Feds

Author's Note: I'm baaaack! So this year I'm going to proceed with the original plan of getting this out over the course of October and finishing up on Halloween or the Day of the Dead. I wanted to post this on Friday the thirteenth but sadly I missed most of the world on that – oh well, it's still Friday the thirteenth in Hawaii I'm sure. If I fail to meet the Halloween deadline (teehee) I'll continue posting at a rate of (hopefully) a chapter a month.

I don't want to put it on the specific chapter to avoid spoilers but sexual trauma survivors or suicide attempt survivors should be aware there will be a chapter that may be triggering – I always try not to be too lurid with such things and given one of the films that inspired this fic I imagine most of the fandom has seen worse, but even so I like to put out the warning.

I'm always very visual in planning out my stories, but with this one even moreso than usual. I considered doing it in screenplay format and may rework it as such at some point in the future (obviously for a different site since fanfiction does not allow scripts) but decided to write in prose form first since I have more experience with prose. As such I'm experimenting with ways to convey visual elements of film such as montage in prose form. Will it go horribly or splendidly or something in between? Guess we'll see.

For the life of her, Edith couldn't imagine why they were dredging the lake for the poor little Voorhees boy now. It had been so long – and nothing had been found all those decades ago when it happened. She hadn't believed it when Tom told her. His grandson Keith had stumbled on some men with heavy equipment in the woods, and when he asked them what they were doing they told him they were looking for a little boy who'd been drowned. No one had been up there since the horrible incident a few years ago – and they'd been the first people up there in decades – so there was only one little boy they could be looking for. Even Tom seemed to have thought Keith was pulling his leg.

But then, one day, they came to the diner. Two of them anyway. Strangers were such an unusual sight, the locals couldn't help but file in to discreetly stare at the passersby. Or at least they assumed they were passersby. They were a heavy, rough sort – obviously people who worked with their hands. "What brings you here?" she asked as she brought them coffee.

"We're just here doing some work up at Camp Crystal Lake," one of them said casually.

You could have heard a pin drop in the diner. "What kind of work?" Edith asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

"We were hoping to find a little boy who drowned years ago – a relative paid us to go out and look for him." What relatives had that poor boy had besides his mother, now dead herself? Maybe his father's family had finally grown a conscience and decided to help find the little boy whose existence they had ignored. Times were different now, after all – people didn't hide away their addled relatives anymore.

"I hope you find him," she said without elaboration, and set the coffee down, doing a poor job of hiding her nerves. There was something evil about that place, and while part of her wanted the little boy to be found and rest in peace, after all these years, there was a part of her that thought they ought to just leave well enough alone.

The phone rang three times, four times. Frank was getting ready to leave a message when there was finally an answer.

"Lou Vasquez speaking," the gruff voice of Frank's partner from long ago said.

"Hey Vasquez, it's Frank."

"Hernandez? I thought you dropped off the face of the Earth," Vasquez said jocularly.

"Nah, I just retired. You're the one that got Shanghaied by the feds," Frank answered in kind.

"So how are you doing Hernandez? You finally get a lady to help clean up that toxic waste dump of a bachelor pad?" Frank glanced around at his apartment, which was in serious disarray, not the least of which involved plates and mugs in need of washing that had a tendency to accumulate on the coffee table until well after Frank had run out of clean dishes and been forced to become resourceful.

"Afraid not, how's your ball and chain?" he asked in turn. And so the small talk went on and on for a bit – and then Frank broached the subject he'd called about.

"So … I've been looking into something for a gentleman who lost his daughter …"
"So you went the private investigator route after all? And here I thought you were too lazy to pull that off," Vasquez teased. He'd always been on Frank's case about his apparent lack of ambition – once Frank had become a detective, he hadn't really cared to advance too much further in the ranks. He'd never had ambitions of becoming a police chief or joining the feds the way his former partner had. He just wanted to solve crimes in his hometown, do some good in the world, and retire when he reached the right age – the fact he was even looking at this was shocking to him. He could guarantee he wouldn't be if it weren't a local girl involved.

"Nah – just looking into something for a nice family. Did you ever hear …" he suddenly hesitated. He knew exactly how crazy all of that stuff sounded. He'd have to start slow – the last thing he wanted was for Vasquez not to take him seriously. But that was all the more reason to ask about the case in question. "Did you ever hear about the case in Mexico where five kids from Katy went missing, with tons of blood left behind, and one survivor who came back spouting nonsense?"

"I can't say I did," Vasquez said, which was actually a good sign. "You have a lead?"
"Possibly – but I think it's big. Spread out, I mean. I think it's going to require the feds."

"Well if it's something only happening in Mexico …"
"It's not. I think it's happening all over the US – I've got cases of weird disappearances with similar groups of victims in multiple states."

"Groups? That's starting to sound a little weird, Hernandez …"

You have no idea. "Believe me, I know. Usually five kids – high school or college age – sometimes a couple more."

"So what are you thinking – white slavery?"

"Maybe – or maybe ritual murders," Hernandez offered cautiously.
"Oh my God – you're not some small town cop, Hernandez, please tell me you haven't fallen for this Satanic ritual stuff!"
"Trust me, I know how goofy this sounds. I wouldn't even bring it up but I don't know what else to think here – we're looking at an alarmingly specific pattern here."

Vasquez actually laughed. It was a short, gravelly laugh, but still. "How much you getting paid for this wild goose chase, Hernandez?"
"What I was making on the force." The line was quiet a long time – Vasquez must have realized Frank wasn't going to move mountains unless there was something to it for that kind of money.

"I assume you've got a case file put together?" Vasquez asked flatly.
"You know it."
"Can you fax it over to me?"
"Gotta have a number for it."

"Well get a pen and paper out you lazy idiot."

The autoclaves on the third floor were the worst.

Herbert was hardly the easily rattled sort, but from the very first time the autoclaves on the fourth floor were full and he'd had to cart the neatly wrapped surgical tools in need of sterilization to the ones on the floor below he'd gained a subtle but undeniable aversion to the place. Unlike the autoclave on his floor that was a piece of standalone equipment in a small room, or even the tiny ones he had used in Boston that had to be hand filled, the autoclaves on the third floor were built into the wall of a cavernous room that put him in mind of the crematorium at his grandfather's funeral home. The only other equipment in the room was a massive dishwasher for cleaning glassware that didn't need to be cleansed with hydrochloric acid and a small sink and counter on which to set items to prepare them for either dishwasher or autoclave. At least three hundred square feet of the room were wide open, inexplicably, which induced some kind of odd sense of reverse claustrophobia whenever Herbert stepped into it. Everything echoed in that room. He was always glad to get the steam sterilization cycle going and leave. Were he a less fastidious person, he might have been prone to "forget" he'd started the cycle and leave it longer than he should have.

Once more, he wheeled two loads of surgical tools into the elevator and down to the third floor. It was quiet – was it a holiday Herbert had forgotten about? Possibly.

He turned the key in the room and found it empty. He didn't hear the mechanical groaning or hiss of steam from either – good. He probably needed both for today. He went to the logbook which sat on the counter by the sink and noted the time. He was the only one to use it so far today. He opened the massive steel doors to the one on the right, somewhat closer to the door, which was on the opposite wall from the ovens and pulled the basket from the chamber.

He wasn't going to be able to load all of the tools into one oven, so he dutifully loaded about half onto the basket. He might as well start it before loading the other and somewhat stagger the task of retrieving the tools later. He pushed the basket along the tracks back into the chamber – and heard the clattering sound of something falling. Herbert cursed a little under his breath and rolled the basket back out and took the trays of tools off. He couldn't imagine how whatever had fallen had managed to fall from the trays – they weren't at all over-stacked – but that did nothing to change the necessity of retrieving it. At least the autoclaves hadn't been used today so they would be cool to the touch and he could climb in right away.

He peered in and saw something glistening in the very back. How in the hell had that even happened? The basket hadn't even gotten in that far. Maybe the instrument had bounced? He had no choice but to go crawling in despite the numerous posted safety warnings and his own trepidation. He pulled the basket all the way out onto the part of the tracks that disconnected – getting it all back together to put it back in would be a nuisance but couldn't be helped – and disconnected and wheeled the thing out of the way.

Even after touching the inside with the back of his hand to ensure himself it was cool enough, it took Herbert a moment to steel his nerves enough to crawl in.

The damn thing seemed to have gotten even bigger since Herbert decided to crawl in – he could have sworn it was not quite as long as his body and he should have been able to reach the fallen instrument easily. Instead, he was entirely in the cursed thing and still had to slide himself a bit further back to reach it.

As soon as he did so, he heard the ominous creak of the door closing and closing fast …

Herbert woke, safe in his own bed, with the slam of the door and the click of the locking mechanism. Even though he woke before things even got hot in the nightmare, he was drenched in sweat. At least he didn't cry out this time.

He put both hands to his face and groaned – not again. Not again.

He was having nightmares every night – he hadn't since the first two months after the incident in Texas. And before then, not since he was a child – when Mother died.

It was just the stress, that was all – he had a committee meeting coming up and those were never exactly enjoyable. Few of the other faculty members understood Herr Gruber's vision and none of them liked Herbert as a person and, even though he was mostly fluent, defending in German was immensely stressful. He knew he wasn't as articulate or expressive in German as he was in English and he stumbled over technical terms and the more he heard the uncertainty and mistakes in his own voice the more frustrated and surly he got – he knew he'd gotten himself into it by choosing to study abroad but he still resented it.

Not that he would have had a choice – not after crossing the Company. He'd wanted to study here ever since he read about Dr. Gruber's work as a senior in high school – but any chance he'd had to back out of it was destroyed when he opened that file.

Psychology was the softest of sciences (well maybe not as soft as sociology), but now and then it produced some wisdom of note – one of these was that people often felt less stressed in a given situation as soon as they knew they could leave it, even if that was the only factor to change. A gilded cage is still a cage, and all of that.

That had to be it. The acute stress of the coming committee meeting and, more broadly, the vaguely claustrophobic feeling that had permeated Herbert's life since the day he'd fled with a fake passport – that was why he was having these nightmares.

And he was definitely imagining that his palms smelled of the rust and smoke of the inside of an autoclave.

It didn't take Lou very long to realize Hernandez was onto something – as surreal as it was. And there was definitely a case for federal action – his first priority was to talk to survivors that had been convicted, probably wrongly, to see what, if anything they remembered – they'd have the most motive to talk, which was both a pro and a con. They might say something true the survivors who had never faced legal action were afraid to – but they might also make something up out of desperation. But the three imprisoned survivors that they knew about were his first stop – then he would go talk to some of the others. Hernandez was interviewing some by phone but Lou preferred to speak to as many in person as he could.

Which meant a lot of trips to various places, much to his wife's chagrin.

The first up was Maya Lawrence – a twenty-nine-year-old woman who had been in lock-up in Taycheedah Correctional Facility in Wisconsin for eight years after the apparent murder of her friends. Lou was shocked the jury had convicted on such flimsy … no, nonexistent evidence – but then in a little town like the town where the alleged murders had occurred, maybe it wasn't that surprising.

The second up was Annie Thompkins – a twenty-three-year-old woman who had been in the secure wing of a mental hospital for seven years on similar barely existent evidence in Chicago (the crime and the trial had taken part in a rural part of Illinois).

The third was Tammy Peters – a young woman residing under house arrest in Dayton, Ohio while appealing a conviction for a crime that had allegedly occurred in 1978. If her appeal failed, she'd be sent to prison.

It was pouring rain when Lou pulled up at Taycheedah in a rental car (he got the best he could get on company money, of course – a sexy little red sports car his wife would definitely not have approved of). He'd already made all the arrangements of course – but he still had to sign in. He went through the formality of flashing his badge and signing the paperwork, then followed a guard through the prison into an interview room. He was separated from Maya by a glass wall – of course she had been convicted of killing four people and disposing of the bodies so well they were never found. The girl behind the glass didn't look capable of such a thing – she was a tiny, mousy girl, pale with curly dark hair and wide brown eyes. She just looked so defeated too – that was another way she didn't look capable of it. Over the years Lou had become very adept at judging people right away – he'd had an opportunity to meet Ted Bundy, and he'd immediately seen darkness in his eyes. Even if he hadn't known what he did, he didn't think he'd have trusted him. This girl didn't look dangerous – she just looked defeated. "Hi Maya, I'm Agent Vasquez."
"They told me you were coming," she said, not quite looking him in the eye. Her voice was flat and lifeless, and she spoke so softly into the phone that he barely heard her. "They said you had questions about … when all my friends died."

"I do, Maya – I think what happened to your friends may be part of a broader pattern …" she cringed, assuming he meant she was being accused of yet more things. "If they are – I believe you've been wrongfully imprisoned," he clarified. She looked up at him in shock.

It was cold and dreary – unseasonably cold, even for this godforsaken city – in Chicago on the day he interviewed Annie. The hospital was a decent looking place, at least – even the secure wing was well cleaned and the staff's voices were soft. Lou had been in a few mental hospitals and this was the first one that didn't make his skin crawl. A doctor met with him when he signed in. "Agent Vasquez, I presume?" a professional looking woman in a pants suit asked and extended her hand.

"It is indeed, ma'am," he answered.

"I'm Dr. Lewis. Thank you for coming. I'm glad you're interested in Annie's case – I have a lot of questions about how the incident happened myself."
"You do, ma'am?"
"Yes – let's walk," she said. She led him through a set of double doors into a long hallway with locked cells with small windows. Lou glanced inside as they passed, and saw the rooms were heavily padded. Most of them were empty, though some held patients in varying states of distress. "We don't like to keep patients here – only when they are at the highest danger of injuring themselves," Dr. Lewis explained. She lowered her voice. "Some days I am not sure Annie did it. Oh I know the police said the evidence was overwhelming, but … I'd put it down to denial and/or hallucinations, but Annie doesn't seem to have any ongoing hallucinations – she never complains of the 'goblins' here in the hospital, or anything else out of the ordinary. I suspect that if she did do the murders, it was only under the influence of powerful drugs – LSD or the like. But the police won't release her blood tests from directly after the incident – it's all very suspicious." Lou was taken aback by the openness of the doctor in this regard – but then he supposed he shouldn't be. And this was the first he'd heard about police resistance to releasing blood tests – that was an angle he had to tackle. He should let Hernandez know – his girl had been hospitalized too.

"Annie – Annie is safe in her room most days. We've petitioned to have her moved to a lower security wing," Dr. Lewis explained when they came to stand outside one of the padded cells. Her voice sounded weary. "But when she heard someone was coming to discuss what happened to her friends she – became violent. She is very suspicious of anyone asking about the incident – it's hard to blame her after what she went through. Usually I tell her visitors to avoid asking about the incident, but … in this case, there wouldn't be a point otherwise. Just don't become confrontational – tell her you believe her, even if it's a lie."
"I was going to do that anyway. I think there's a conspiracy at work."

"No, I mean about everything, even the goblins. Tell her you want to stop the goblins."
"Aren't you people supposed to break delusions?"
"We can only do that from a place of trust – right now, Annie trusts very few people." She opened the cell and Frank stepped inside.

Annie was a pretty redhead – stunning, in fact, even with her short hair unkempt and no makeup to speak of and her eyes red from crying. She sat in the corner, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, bearing the marks of scuffles with orderlies in the form of minor bruises and scratches. Her eyes were wild and dark, and when she saw Lou, in his nice suit, she made a sound of fright and scurried into the opposite corner, trying to get away from him. "I believe you Annie," Lou said, as softly as he could and still be heard, and held out his hands in an open sort of gesture. She looked at him doubtfully. "I believe someone … set the monsters after you," he said. Which was a good way to put it – he truthfully believed someone had drugged her and then taken out her friends, or watched her do it for whatever twisted reason. He may not believe in the monsters, but he definitely believed she had seen them. And that monsters of a different sort were behind the whole thing. "And I'm here to ask what you remember – maybe you can tell me something that will help me figure out who this is, so that I can stop from setting monsters loose on anyone else."

After a long moment, she nodded.

It was a bright, sunny spring day in Dayton, but with a few dark clouds far away on the horizon. Lou knocked on a bright red door adorned with a cute flower wreath with pastel eggs woven into it – someone was excited for Easter despite her situation.

A smiling brunette answered the door. She was well dressed and slight – her ankle bracelet stood out like a sore thumb. Her smile disappeared as soon as she saw him. "Oh, Agent Vasquez. I'm so glad you made it," she said and put on a smile but she wasn't good at faking it.

"I believe you," he said, before even stepping in the door, having learned how important that three word phrase was from his first two interviewees.

"You really believe me?" Maya asked. Life had entered into her voice again like a balloon that had been re-inflated.

"What happened to you and your friends matches a nationwide pattern," he said, careful to choose his words. He didn't want to incur any kind of liability or give her false hope.

"… There are others?" she asked softly.

"There's a pattern," he repeated noncommittally.

"What kind of pattern?" she asked, her eyes wild. It was almost a relief to see life in them, but the wildness was unsettling. Internally, Lou held a quick debate about how much detail to reveal.

"Groups of young people disappearing under mysterious circumstances. I'm hoping that you can shed light on this situation."

"I'll do whatever I can," she answered eagerly.

"Annie, why did your friends go so far away for spring break?" Lou asked. He'd long since decided to sit – it was the easiest way to speak with the young woman and look her in the eye – or as much as she'd allow. He was worried about ever getting back up again but in the meantime this was most comfortable.

"That sounds like an accusation."

"It's just a question – I need to know how the … people handling the goblins are getting people to remote locations."

"It was stupid. Joe had a coupon for a free night at some random cabin in the woods," Tammy answered, then sipped from the cup of tea she'd brewed.

"A coupon? Do you remember how he got that?"
"I … Oh if I'd ever thought that might be important! He'd gotten it in the mail I think."

"At his parents' house? At the dorm?"
"He lived in the dorm so I assume that, but I'm not sure," Tammy lamented. "Damn it! If I'd known any of that was going to be important … I've kicked myself ever since … ever since that night."

"It's all right – you couldn't have anticipated what would happen," Lou assured.

"The house was always weird," Maya explained. She was looking down again, but this time the distance in her eyes seemed to come from vivid memory rather than general despondence. "There were stories, you know – about who it belonged to and whether or not it was haunted. No one seemed to know for sure – there were all kinds of rumors, but they all contradicted each other. We dared each other to run up there and ring the doorbell – we just decided, you know, it would be good spooky fun to stay the night there …"

"Donna's sister told her about it – said there was a place we could go and have some privacy," Annie said to her hands folded in front of her.

"How did Donna's sister know about it, do you know?"

"I don't," Annie said. Lou made a quick note – if Donna's sister would be willing to speak to him, maybe she would remember.

Tammy's tea and Lou's coffee were no longer steaming – so far they'd covered familiar ground, but Lou was hopeful he could tease out another lead from "It was … so weird. There was a basement with all kinds of stuff strewn about," Tammy exposited. Lou's interest piqued – Annie and Maya had mentioned nothing of the kind.

"What kind of stuff?"

"Weird stuff – ancient looking stuff. A book with weird writing on it that looked like it was bound in some kind of skin, a beat up metal ring with an Asian script, and the locket … we picked up the locket. It had a picture of this little girl in it – this sad looking little girl. She was so cute but it was kind of a spooky picture – all black and white and she looked so haunted … Then we heard Laura screaming and ran upstairs …" She shuddered and, for a long while, was especially interested in her dwindling tea. "We found other stuff later, throughout the house – old newspapers and photo albums and stuff that we could piece together something about the little girl – that the cabin had been an orphanage of horrors. There was this horrible old woman who ran it, and she beat the children for the slightest infraction and did worse things to them – made them stand in place for hours and chained them to walls, even cut a little boy's fingers off for stealing. One day the older kids killed her and buried her body in the basement and … I know it sounds crazy but she was still there, and so were all the children that had died under the old hag's care. She made the children do bad things to us and did some of it herself … At least some of the newspapers and things were suddenly in places it hadn't been before – like the children wanted us to know what happened and put it where we would notice. I … I think I gave them some peace, in the end. That's … the only comfort I have." Lou almost didn't want to take it away from her – didn't want to explain it was probably all a drug-induced hallucination, and perhaps the things were put there by conspirators as part of the ritual. "Did you ever see this little girl or any of the other children putting things there?" he asked. It was such an odd question – he wasn't sure it made any difference since even if she'd seen someone else put it there she might not remember it that way because of the drugs.

"No but – how else do you explain that?"

"I'm not sure," he lied for the time being.

Maya twirled the cord of the phone in her hands. They had gone over every gory detail of the night in question, and they were almost out of time, but Maya seemed to still have something to share. "I never stop thinking I should have died that night," she admitted in a voice that was barely audible. It wasn't an uncommon sentiment for survivors, nor a feeling that was entirely alien to him, but Lou never had learned the most graceful way to respond.

"But you're here. And you can help me find the people responsible for what happened to them."

"Maybe I'd feel better if I could." She was silent a long time, and just when Lou was about to prompt her to say something with another question, she spoke once more. "We should have listened to Mrs. Winters."

"I'm sorry?"
"Mrs. Winters. She's … it's not very generous, but she's sort of considered the town crazy lady. We were in the convenience store buying sodas and junk food for the night at the old house, and she came in to get some beer. She … She looked right at us, and she told us not to go up there, that we should just let the house be. She knew we were going to the old house even though we hadn't told anyone. We were spooked, but we went anyway … Oh God I wish we hadn't. I don't know if she knew somehow – I never believed in psychics or anything, but after what we saw in that house I'll believe anything. She must have had a vision or something, maybe just a bad feeling – or maybe she was making shit up and happened to be right, I don't care. But we should have listened. It's still printed on my eyes, just like the walls of blood and Tim's mangled body, the sight of her standing there, pointing us with one gnarled finger and this wild look in her eyes. I can hear every word she said, like it was yesterday." Maya grew more visibly agitated with every passing second as she spoke. And Lou understood that – he'd been in Vietnam, he'd lost some of his buddies. There were moments he couldn't help but return to time and again, desperately wishing he had time to do something else, anything else, to maybe not leave them lying there in the mud.

"I know," was all he managed to say in solidarity. "What was this lady's name again?"
"Mrs. Winters … I think her first name is something like Annabelle … I don't even know if she's still alive." Frank sure hoped she was.

"What exactly did she say?"
"She said, 'You shouldn't go to the house on Gentry hill. Don't deny that that's where you're going. You should leave the evil in that place to itself, if you don't have a death wish.' She spoke with so much certainty. Then she looked at me, and she told me, me specifically, 'You'll live to regret it if you go there.' It's like she knew I was going to be the one who survived – how could she have known that?!" That's what Lou was hoping to find out.

After several cups of tea for Tammy and several cups of coffee for Lou, it was clear Tammy had shared every single detail of that night that she possibly could. Tammy thanked him for coming and saw him out, as politely as though they'd been discussing vacuum sales. "Now I don't know what my investigation will turn up, if it'll be any help …" Lou started to explain as he got his coat.
"That's all right, nothing else has been," Tammy replied with a shrug and opened the front door. "I hope you have a nice flight back to Washington!" A shiver ran up Lou's spine.

Annie had started to go in circles, and Lou knew he had all the information he could get from her. Dr. Lewis saw it too. "I think it's time for you to get some rest Annie," she said. To Lou's surprise, she didn't resist, only nodded and turned to Lou.

"It was nice to meet you," she said and held out a hand. Lou shook it.

"It was nice meeting you too, Annie."

"Please get the people who gave us to the goblins, please," Annie pleaded as she walked away, led by Dr. Lewis. The certainty and urgency in her voice were childlike.

"I'll do what I can, Annie," Lou promised in his gentlest voice.

The revelation about the little old lady came just in time – a brown-clad officer reminded Frank his time with Maya was almost up, in far louder a tone than was needed. "Do you think you can prove that that lunatic killed my friends?" Maya asked, her voice mostly flat but she couldn't keep a hint of hope out of it. Lou was taken off-guard – but now he realized he should have expected it. Maya believed with all her heart in whatever she had seen under the influence of drugs and terror. Of course she thought, when he said he was investigating her case, that when he said there was a broader pattern he was sifting through like an FBI agent investigating a serial killer.

"I can't say anything at this point, Maya …"

She practically lunged into the plexiglass, leaning so close to it that her face almost touched the divider between them. The guard behind Lou stepped forward, a hand on his gun, but she didn't step back. And he was bluffing anyway – there was no way she was coming through that glass.
"Please, you've got to prove it, don't you understand? That maniac is still out there, he could be killing again, he could do this to God knows how many other people …" The desperation in her voice was palpable.

"I'll look into it," Lou promised, it was all he could do. A guard on the other side of the glass stepped forward.
"Promise me you'll get him, Agent Vasquez, promise me! Promise you'll get me out of here." Lou couldn't – he'd promised a woman he'd find her son's killer once, and he hadn't kept it, and that was the hardest way to learn to never make promises. But "I'll do my best," sounded so feeble in the face of Maya's desperation. So he deflected.

"Thank you for your help, Maya, you've given me an excellent jumping off point. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me." He didn't say 'have a good day' as he normally would have because, well, it was a prison.

He walked away, refusing to look back as the guard practically dragged Maya back to her cell.

On the rare occasion there were no customers to wait on, there was always scut work. Cleaning, obviously, and also portioning frozen food from the bulk in which they were received into the portions prepared for meals. This was a slow day in terms of customer service – which meant there was a lot of portioning to do. Marta was hard at work in the back, portioning fries and often sticking her head out to see if anyone was up front.

She'd felt uneasy ever since the investigation started – she ought to feel better, since there was finally someone with some investigative skill who believed her, and there was a possibility, however small, that there would finally be some closure for what had happened. But she couldn't help but feel that a can of worms was about to be opened, and she'd gone through the last week constantly feeling a little sick to her stomach with her heart beating a little faster than it usually did. Which is probably why, when she glanced around the corner and saw a man standing at the counter, she couldn't help but jump. But the man stood there, looking somewhat impatient. He was a rough-looking man with short black hair, wearing a somewhat greasy shirt and work pants. She put on a smile and greeted him with a, "Sorry about that, I was just packaging some French fries, what can I get for you?" while she walked to the cash register at the counter. The man's sour look disappeared instantly, replayed by a smile that was not quite smarmy. She hoped he wasn't one of the creepy ones – sometimes she got hit on, even wearing an oversized T-shirt with the bowling alley's logo on it and her rattiest pair of jeans, both of which smelled like grease and smoke, and wasn't wearing make-up. She was convinced literally nothing would stop creepy older guys from hitting on girls who had to smile and wait on them no matter what they said.

"Oh I don't know just yet – what do you have that's good?" he asked, in the thickest Texan accent Marta had ever heard outside of movies.

"Well, I think the burgers are pretty good. Personally I prefer the cheese sticks to the fries – but if you'd like to try a lot of different things, we have a sampler …"

"Do you have anything like a fish sandwich?" Marta tried not to cringe, and didn't quite succeed. "Not a big fan of fish huh?"
"Um no … I'm afraid not. I mean, I'm afraid we don't' have anything like that."
"Ah darn, I was really in the mood for it. There's just … something fishy in the air, you know?" There was nothing sinister in the words, but it was a bizarre thing to say, and there was a glint, just a glint, of something malevolent in the man's eyes for just a moment.

Marta cleared her throat and kept her composure, even though her heart was racing and she felt kind of sick. Now I'm just being a paranoid lunatic, she berated herself. "Yeah, I guess so," she said with the fake but convincing smile she had learned from years of working at this snack bar.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" the man asked, and the way he was studying her was doing nothing to make her anxiety subside.

"I don't think so," she said weakly.

"No I'm sure of it – you were the girl that went down to Mexico with her friends and the only …"
"I don't want to talk about that." He smiled – it wasn't a nice smile.

"I'm sure you don't. Now how about you put in my order for a cheeseburger with no onions and some of those cheese sticks you mentioned, and a can of Coors?"

"Uh … of course," Marta stammered, and sketched the order down on a notepad and keyed the amount into the cash register. "That'll be four twenty-five." He fished in his pocket for his wallet, and laid a five dollar bill on the table. Marta put the five in and took out his change, avoiding looking him in the eye and longing for the moment she could take the ticket to the cook and go back to portioning fries in the back. She slid open the large cooler behind the counter and fished around for a can of Coors, very aware of his eyes on her back the entire time. "Here's your change – you're number forty-two," she said with a cheerful smile and a steady voice and slid him the Coors and three quarters.

When the food was ready, Marta left it on the corner and called the number forty-two over the sound system and then returned to the back instead of making an effort to take the man his food in person like she usually did.

The whole rest of the night, Marta was on edge even more than she had been the last few days. She'd been recognized now and again, but usually she just got condolences. There was something sinister about incident – nothing she could put into words, nothing he had said was outright malicious, but she couldn't stop thinking over the look in his eyes and the little sneer he gave her as she waited on the one or two other customers of the night, portioned just about everything in the freezer, then finally, mercifully, cleaned up and counted the money for close at the end of her shift. She thought about asking the cook or her boss to walk her to her car, but decided against it.

Her car was parked on the side of the bowling alley, on the side that wasn't lit very well. The walk to the car seemed to stretch on and on, even though Marta was walking quickly with her keys in her hand, instead of shuffling to the car tiredly as she usually did.

The car was unlocked. Marta's heart almost stopped – she didn't want to open the door, but she knew she had to. She smelled it as soon as she opened the door. A sickly, pungent smell with just a bit of salt. And she heard it too – the buzzing of flies. She quickly clicked on the dome light to see if it was what she thought it was, and immediately regretted it.

A rotten, scaley webbed hand, with a sickening cloud of black flies swarming over it, was lying on the passenger seat.

She was back in the bowling alley without being aware of it. "Are you okay, Marta? You look like you've seen a ghost," her boss, John, asked.

"I …" Marta started. She realized she shouldn't say it, just let him see it. She'd spent enough time in the institution to desperately want to not go back there again, and to not quite trust her own eyes. "Someone was in my car, it was unlocked and I think someone put something in the seat but I was too scared to look, will you walk out with me and check?"

"Of course honey," he answered without hesitation, and took off his glasses and set down the shoe rental logbook he was checking to follow.

The walk to the car seemed even longer now. John walked ahead of her, and opened the door while she still stood back a bit.

The fish man's hand was gone. So was most of the smell and every last one of the flies. Marta managed not to gasp, or show her surprise, even though John's back was to her. He clicked on the dome light. "I don't see anything, honey," John said softly, a little confused. She thought about asking John if he smelled the lingering scent of the fish man's hand, but didn't dare. She kept a car deodorizer hanging from the rear view mirror – the scent of the deodorizer was especially strong, as though someone had sprayed a matching scent into the car. Or maybe she was imagining that?

It took Marta a long time to speak. "I'm so sorry, I must have imagined it," she said, and tried to laugh but it didn't sound natural.

"You didn't get into the tequila, did you?" John teased. They kept cheap tequila and vodka behind the bar to make little slushy alcoholic cocktails.

"No, no I just … I'm just a little jumpy tonight, is all," Marta waffled.

"Well, get home safe. I don't want to lose my best cashier."

"I will, John. Thanks for checking with me," Marta said, trying to recover her cool, while she climbed into the car.

Marta turned it all over in her head over and over on the drive home – had she really seen it, really smelled it? Was she still smelling it now? Did people who were crazy smell things that weren't there too? If it had been someone – the man from earlier? – who put it there and took it away, how had they been sure to catch every fly?

Almost in answer to her own question, she heard a familiar buzzing once again, this time close by her ear. Not as loud this time – it was only one rogue fly that was still in the car, and it landed on the passenger window, looking for the way out.