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Souls of the Night Vol 3

31.

Harper Miller had never asked for much in life. She had wanted a happy family. Nada. She had wanted someone to come to her school's sports days, science fairs, parent-teacher conferences so it wouldn't seem like she had no one. Zilch. At nine, she had wanted a family vacation at Grandpa Walter's. She, Mommy and Daddy in Florida where Grandpa lived in a nice little house. They had sometimes visited him in winter and although Florida was also beautiful in winter, she wanted to go there during the summer vacation and watch beautiful, tanned people surfing or even - crazy child's dream - learn to surf herself.

She also loved her slightly crazy grandpa, who called her every other weekend and told her the craziest but also the coolest stories. Like the one about how he, as a newspaper vendor, had been dealing with New York's gangster crème della crème, including the first gargoyle superstar Adamo F. Dante, who had come to his stall as a crappy bagman and then had been his flatmate. Oh yes, he had only been able to move to Florida because Dante had given him a suitcase full of money - as if everyone didn't know that he had won the lottery. Crazy children's stories from a dear, rather senile old man. Walter had had every single one of the gargoyle's CDs - not because he loved rock music or understood mainly Italian music - but just to support him. He hadn't been an avowed, vociferous gargoyle sympathizer - he was just convinced that this particular gargoyle had been his friend. The memory still made Harper laugh. Or at least grin because the memory wasn't really fresh anymore and - the whole gargoyle issue in her family was just complicated. One reason why her dad and his dad hadn't gotten along well.

But he had loved Harper. And Harper had loved her grandpa.

Well- she hadn't gotten a summer vacation with the family. Instead, she'd witnessed and been the main point of contention in her parents' divorce battle. Her dad had been fired that year and the normal parental fights had gotten worse and worse. So bad that her mom had moved out - without her. And had filed for divorce - without talking to her about it and without "claiming" her. Which had brought Harper to the realization, at the tender age of nine, that she had not just been an accident- but in general an unwanted child that her mother had shackled for years in a relationship that had not made her OR the child's father happy. Not just unwanted but unloved. An accident - undesired by everyone. Except Grandpa Walter.

So while her parents split everything up (except her because her mom didn't want her and her dad wouldn't say no to child support so it was clear she was going to live with him) she spent the autumn in Florida without enjoying a single day because she spent almost every waking hour crying (or exhausted from crying) in her room there. Because not only were her parents separating (she hadn't been shocked, she had seen it coming) but because her mother would move on without ever looking back at her. Grandpa Walter had tried to comfort her but not even his stories had been any consolation.

During this time they had even disgusted Harper. Because her father had always told completely different stories about gargoyles. How he'd been screwed over by them, publicly humiliated, physically hurt, sent to prison for months, and lost his job. And, of course, his increasingly nasty behavior, the increasing arguments, the divorce had been the fault of the gargoyles too - especially Lexington Wywerns, the tech-obsessed gargoyle who had tried to tell HIM, James (Jim) Miller, how to do his damn job. Harper had been glad to get away from her father's stupid hate speech, but she hadn't been able to appreciate her grandpa's exact opposite musings ever since. Her naivety, her childlike awe in this regard had simply disappeared after that year.

When her father had been able to see past his anger about Gargoyles, his messed-up life, his stupid ex-wife and the divorce, he had demanded that Harper should come back to New York. Harper would have liked to stay in Florida, her grandpa had already been looking for schools for her. But her father had custody and Grandpa Walter was simply too old. And - Harper had gone back willingly because if her father wanted her to come back then he at least wanted her in his life. Or so she had thought. Wrong thinking. The hope for love, for belonging - and maybe for more peace in her life now that her father no longer had the opportunity to argue and fight with her mom - had driven her back. A life without a mommy, but many children only had one parent - Harper would manage, and she and her daddy would manage just the two of them.

But ... in New York at the train station, no reformed father welcomed her with open arms. He had called her on her cell phone (the only thing she had gotten out of her parents' divorce) and told her to take the train home. She had been nine years old, her suitcase almost as heavy as she was. At least he had called her - hadn't he? He trusted her to find her way home on her own, that she was a big girl because without Mommy she had to be a big girl and this was a test and at home her Daddy would be waiting for her smiling sweetly with her favorite food. But it hadn't been a test. It had been her life. How it would be from then on.

And now - in May 2023, standing outside the door to his "study" - in the apartment that Grandpa Walter had bought for his son just before he moved to Florida and which was just as old and shabby as it had always been - she felt like she was ten again. Or twelve. Or fifteen. Or eighteen. She was now twenty-three - and nothing had changed in almost 13 years except that she was now an adult. She was alone - with a father who had been getting more and more caught up in his damn gargoyle conspiracy bullshit for years, either lurking outside to uncover evidence of their evil and life-destroying machinations or locking himself in his room to analyze that evidence, maintain his website or chat with other poor lunatics or email everyone from the janitor to the president of the country in attempts to convince them that gargoyles were a plague.

He would love to resurrect the Quarrymen. But he was just a crazy, hate-filled man in his former childhood bedroom. Although by now Harper didn't think she was much different. Wasn't she herself crazy to stay? Her antidepressants made it easier for her - they ensured that she didn't care about many things, that every major emotion or justified outburst of anger was stifled. At least that was how she functioned. Someone had to function here. She stayed. Harper stayed. Where else should she be? She had no hobbies and no friends. She simply didn't have the energy for that. But she had her father. Her father didn't value her much but she was all he had and just having him around made her feel needed or appreciated in tiny moments. She was the one who kept this shit-show running here, who earned the money with her job at Dunkin Donuts and her second job at the morgue where she prepared the dead for cremation. She was twenty-three and knew better what dead bodies felt like, their joints cracking when you moved their limbs despite the remnants of rigor mortis, than she knew what a hug from a loved one felt like. Or the kiss of a boy - so much for that. She had been denied a normal teenage girl's life because she had always had to look after her father. She had to remain the grown-up, the sensible, the down-to-earth one so that he could chase after conspiracies that didn't exist. She leaned her head against the closed door of the room behind which she could hear quiet, grim murmuring. She breathed slowly and deeply. Then she lifted her head and knocked.

"Dad. Dinner's ready. Are you coming?" Same question as when she was twelve, fifteen, eighteen. Maybe once a week, and only when he was in a good mood, she had made him eat with her at the table. Most of the time she left his food outside his door and he ate it cold at some point.

But today was different. No random or even annoyed "Put it aside" sounded through the door of the room. Instead, the muttering stopped, she heard rumbling behind the door, him tripping over something and cursing, and Harper took a step back as her father yanked the door open. The burns from the coffee that one of the gargoyles had supposedly thrown at him in February (or had it been March?) when he had molested them again had healed, but not the small scars from the hot splinters. His gaze was wild, the stench of alcohol and a few days without a shower or change of clothes from him and the room stung her nose - but he was smiling. No, he was grinning.

Harper smiled back automatically. A smile from her father was rare but always held not the danger but the certainty of madness. Her father had never physically abused her, not once in her life had he hit her despite everything, but she was too weak to let it come to a dispute so she literally put on a nice face.

"Good day?" she asked.

Jim Miller's grin turned into a snarl and he opened the door to his stinking realm of madness wider and Harper stepped inside because she hated the craziness in the room but appreciated his willingness to share his supposed latest coup with her. He took her by the hand (today had to be a holiday) and pulled her past his rumpled bed and generally poorly lit mess to his detective wall. Dozens of old or recent newspaper articles, blog posts, photos hung there - connected with colorful threads like he was hunting down the Zodiac Killer and would soon nail him.

"Look at this, Harper," he said with a winning grin and handed her some photos. The first ones showed the usual colorful clusters of pixels from the concealment magic that had made it impossible for years to photograph gargoyles or capture them on film if they didn't want to. Whether the gargoyles themselves had mastered this magic or whether they used aids was not entirely clear, although her father believed it was due to their bracelets or collars, which all of them, even the beasts, wore. Who could say without being in close contact with them themselves or stalking them like her father - although she hadn't believed him for years or had the strength to respond to his fantasies or truths. Magic in general was still difficult for normal people to grasp, and the few who knew magic or could make use of one spell or another watched over these precious secrets like watchdogs. If the rumors were true, then such magic was for sale - after all, even the upper echelons of the Dracon Syndicate could not be captured in photographs - allegedly.

"And now this-," he said and pressed more pictures into her hand. She adjusted her glasses and turned a little more into the light of the desk lamp to see the black and white photos better. Then she looked up questioningly.

Was her father trying to matchmake her?

"He looks good," she admitted (the man looked older than her, but after 23 years she wasn't demanding either).

Her father laughed.

"He is, isn't he? Those damn monsters. He totally passes for human, doesn't he?"

Harper pulled a face and looked again at the picture of the man on the park bench with the way-too-big-but-cuddly-looking poncho and the big dark glasses. It was a black and white picture but there was clearly a normal person sitting in the Manhattan morning sun.

"That's a gargoyle?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes!"

"In the daytime? As a human?"

"Yes!"

She nodded tiredly and contemplated whether the rumor that the gargoyles could supposedly turn into humans for a short time had been made up by her father on his website or whether it had been circulating before. She flipped through the photos and in the last one, the man was sitting with Elisa Maza and talking to her. Harper wanted to groan. How many community service hours or charges was her father going to rack up before he left the woman alone? She didn't have the money to get him out of custody again for violating the restraining orders.

Her father had gone to his detective wall while her mind was whirling and was gesticulating at it. On one picture was a photo of a burnt piece of lawn, on another of a blurred shadow that looked like it had wings covered with white (maybe red in the original) glowing veins (-that could be anything else) and on a sheet in the middle was a drawing of a blue-skinned gargoyle with horns - it looked like a ten-year-old's, you couldn't say her father had much of an artistic streak. He was babbling the usual paranoid ramblings that sounded to Harper like the drivel of Charlie Brown's teacher (or maybe it was the medication that made it so hard for her to concentrate). Should she point out that, surely, this was just a normal man? Not everyone who consorted with Elisa Maza was a gargoyle, a monster or a fey.

"Why would a gargoyle be sitting around in broad daylight? They sleep in stone." she muttered louder than she intended. Her father - close to choleric - made a gruff noise and snatched the photos out of her hands.

"Don't you understand what that means! They are beginning to infiltrate humanity. They can now walk in the daylight. THAT'S the gargoyle with the dreadlocks!"

"The arabic speaking homosexual gargoyle that burned you?" asked Harper.

"The Islamist, faggot gargoyle who let the coffee mug explode in my face and destroyed my Hasselbad camera," her father corrected her with an icy stare, excitedly pawed at the photo, which was not pixelated but blurred, as if a gargoyle (with glowing wings) had flown past at high speed. "But girl! My new camera was able to capture him! And he wasn't a normal gargoyle. This is the one that can generate heat. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose or if he's been exposed to magic - but right now, he's running around as a human. AND he works at LeXA ltd! They're building a terrorist nest there and I'm going to prove it! "

Harper looked at the pictures her father pinned to the wall and bit her lower lip. It was stupid to say anything - she knew that. There was only ever trouble when she appealed to his sanity. Why didn't the medication stop her?

"Dad, he'd be a new gargoyle. Probably one from the exchange program."

"That was one of my guesses, too. I confronted that Wyvern asshole to get a reaction out of him, but the little ass-fucker didn't go for it."

The corner of Harper's mouth twitched. The others were monsters, leeches, freaks, abominations - but there was only one Wywern asshole. Lexington Wywern.

Harper gulped. She didn't want to disappoint him. She wanted to be liked by her father, she wanted to be on his side. But how could she if he was SO wrong?

"I don't doubt that Lexington Wywern has a lover. Let's look on the bright side, at least it's not a girl he could procreate with. But this person in the photos ... can it be that you are so fixated on this one gargoyle - and this man who has the same hairstyle - because he could be Lexington Wywern's partner? Is this another attempt to take him down? Because he cost you your job?"

She ducked under the briefly disbelieving and then immensely disappointed gaze of her only relative.

"Why am I even trying? Get out. I need to connect with people who haven't become brainless sheep from all the medication and federally poisoned tap water."

Harper turned around and picked up some empty plates from past meals on her way out - out of habit.

"The food?" she asked without looking at James Miller again.

"Put it outside."

Okay. Good night, Dad."

"Yeah yeah."

The door slammed behind Harper, making her wince. She'd blown it again. She wanted to be like he wanted her to be. But she just couldn't be crazy his way. She went to the kitchenette. Filled a bowl with stew and placed the bowl and two slices of bread next to her father's bedroom door. Then she ate a few spoonfuls herself but, as usual, she felt sick after a short time, which was more due to her mental than her physical condition. Or so she thought. She mechanically scrubbed the partially mold-covered dishes that she had managed to salvage from his room. Then sie brushed her teeth, put on her pyjamas and lay down with a blanket on the couch that served as her bed. The second bedroom was the darkroom for photo development and her father's archive. Lots of chemicals, his gadgets and many camera models and hundreds of facts or "alternative facts" about gargoyles and cryptids were stored there and for Harper there was simply no room. There was no room for her anywhere, or ever would be. As so often, her antidepressants failed to dampen all her grief and she fell asleep with half-dried tears on her cheeks.

.

.

Jim Miller stumbled to his desk, which was almost buried under evidence of the truth, and drank from the open bottle of Jack Daniels. It WAS evidence. Why couldn't anyone but him see it? Even his daughter was a disappointment to him. He wanted to love her. But she was so damn sensitive and know-it-all, even though she really didn't know anything. She had always been like that - the medication didn't change anything. He couldn't even be really angry with her. He pushed the thoughts of her aside as he always did.

Later he would update his own website, Stony Facts, with the latest post that he had seen one of the gargoyles sitting in the park as a human and that he promised to stay on the case and deliver better photos soon. Photos where he really was a gargoyle because as much as he hated it- Harper was right- all those idiots would see was a guy in a ridiculous poncho sitting there. His Leitz Leica IIIg from 1957 (professionally adapted by him) had been able to capture this blue guy as a human, but maybe he hadn't had the pixelation magic on him then, or maybe it only worked when they were wearing their gargoyle forms. He would stick with the Leica on the Gargoyles and this particular guy - at some point he had to become a Gargoyle again. And if he was really clever, he could get into LeXa ltd and wind up Lexington AND his fire-shitting part-time human lover on what they thought was their turf. Those monsters would all burn in hell.

He'd have to do a little brainstorming. But not alone. He logged into his accounts at Q Anon, the Proudboys and Truth Social to dampen his anger a little and to meet some friendly, less deluded people in the chats there. Truth Whisperer 42, SaviorofRabbits and Fckthm11 and Darkwing1995 always managed to cheer him up. They believed him. He was TheNewHunter on the net and their brother in spirit. He wasn't alone, as the "real" people around him wanted to make him believe. His boys sometimes argued with him about this or that camera model or how to stalk someone successfully, but they never doubted that the Gargoyles were at least as bad as the Democrats who drank children's blood. He needed people like that around him. People who wouldn't drag him down. Allies.

Better still - allies who would take him further in the real world. But where could he find them? He could hardly put an ad in the paper and set up a support group for gargoyle victims so that they could plan as a team how to kill these freaks. Or ... could he? Why not? He had a better chance in the newspaper than on the internet - he didn't know how that asshole Wywern did it, but his own site crashed every few days, had bugs and even his emails were constantly carrying viruses. A gargoylehater ad like that would be deleted immediately for some unknown reason by either Lexington or the social media nazis at Xanatos media who frisked the web for offensive inflammatory gargoyle content. So much for freedom of speech. He was just about to google the requirements for setting up a self-help group when he saw that Darkwing 1995 had logged in. The guy was weird - weirder than others and that meant a lot on sites like this. Most of the time he took little part in the conversations as if he was too good for heated discussions. But Jim reckoned he was one of the more serious, sovereign blokes, and not a pushover either, because when he did comment it was invariably well thought out and more helpful than the ranting of others (or his own). Strangely enough - and this had never happened before - a message popped up from Darkwing before he could write his own terse "hello".

Darkwing 1995: Good evening, Hunter.

... good evening, Jim wrote back, somewhat perplexed.

Darkwing 1995: Still hunting gargoyles?

Jim wrinkled his nose. How did someone manage to come across as an arrogant asshole even in a short first sentence? But the fact that Darkwing was writing with him without Jim himself having typed a novel with his latest woes was interesting. What was going on here?

Always hunting gargoyles, he wrote back.

Darkwing 1995: Interested in giving your cause a boost?

TheNewHunter: Sure. Do you have a tip for me?

That happened sometimes. He had often been contacted on his website that this or that thing had to do with gargoyles and that he needed/could/should research it. But he was no errand boy. If it didn't grab him or it was too crazy, he didn't chase after ghosts.

More than a tip, Darkwing 1995 wrote and he could almost - well - see the smug smirk in the words. Please don't let this be another fourteen-year-old pimply asshole in his parents' basement messing with him.

I'm open to anything, don't be shy, Jim wrote without expecting anything earth-shattering.

He didn't get any words back.

Instead, a photo.

Jim stared at the picture and it took his foggy head a few seconds to realize what he was seeing. Jaw slack, he rubbed his eyes and zoomed in on the picture. He zoomed it out. Damn, there was even a time code - taken only yesterday. But time codes could be faked. You could fake ANYTHING - who knew that better than Jim. But ... it was too crazy - too intimidating. And too good for the whole operation. It could bring down the Manhattan Clan - no, all the Gargoyles. Jim no longer considered himself naive. He didn't chase after every madness. But ... he wasn't without hope either. His hands trembled as he lifted them to the keyboard and he had to take a few deep breaths before typing because Darkwing 1995 had been waiting well-behaved (probably because he knew that everyone needed a few minutes to sweep up the pieces of their mind after a shot like that.

Where was this taken? he then wrote. He didn't want to sound like a beggar pissing himself with joy or fear to get to the location where the picture was taken.

Darkwing wrote: I will tell you that but first you have to do something for me.

Jim rubbed his jaw. How much was left of his father's inheritance after he sold his house in Florida? Not much. Still:

TheNewHunter: How much did you have in mind?

Darkwing 1995: Oh, please. There are so many more useful things than money.

"Of course, you wretched little maggot," Jim grumbled before Darkwing's next sentence arrived.

Darkwing 1995: We both have the same goal. Let's do each other small favors to build mutual trust. Then I'll tell you where to find the location and kill the thing. Pulling the plug is enough, but if you're more the physical type I'd suggest you bring a sledgehammer.

Where should we meet? Jim asked because he assumed it wouldn't work without a private meeting to discuss these "small favors". But Darkwing refused.

Darkwing 1995: Why a meeting? Just follow my plan.

Jim wrinkled his nose. He was actually through with following other people's schemes. But the picture ... the lure. He'd had to eat so much shit for years - maybe this was finally divine justice. In return, he would play Darkwing's game.

TheNewHunter: What's your plan?

Darkwing 1995: We need to kick up some dust first. I'll equip you with resources and knowledge.

What's in it for you? Jim asked.

Darkwing 1995: At least one less gargoyle ... and let's just say spitting in the Manhattan Clan members' soup keeps me young.

And why did that sentence sound sarcastic - even though it was only typed? Jim didn't care. He didn't care about anything. As long as he finally got indisputable proof.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.