What the Hell Did I Just Read

17. JOINING MAGGIE FOR BREAKFAST

The three of us headed to Loretta’s house, but had decided that we wouldn’t stop if Ted’s car was parked there, since we assumed he still was determined to shoot me on sight.

No Impala. Still, we took the minor precaution of parking at Taco Bill instead of in front of Loretta’s house. The restaurant had a spray-painted sign in the window that said:

STILL OPEN

FUCK THE FLOOD

… though it looked like they had maybe forty-eight hours before the cooks would be standing in puddles while they grilled the flank steak. Cars were creeping down the street, swerving out across the painted lines to avoid the overflowing gutters.

To John, I said, “So, this meeting you had with the NON agent Friday night. You’ve no recollection of it?”

“Well, you know how it is on the Sauce. You see things. Seems like a dream, or the memories from when you’re a little kid, the ones where you’re not sure if they happened or if your brain just cobbled the memory together after you’d heard the story secondhand. So, I have this memory of running out of the Beanie Wienie building and I think, ‘I need transportation.’ Then this guy on a crotch rocket Suzuki motorcycle—just like the one I owned years ago—rides up and asks if I’m John, says he got a letter five years ago telling him to deliver a motorcycle to that specific place and time. So, I jump on and I ride and I run into the NON convoy. I somehow know which truck has Agent Pussnado in the back—”

Amy said, “Excuse me, who?”

“The agent we just talked to? Anyway, I jump off the motorcycle onto the hood of the truck—no, this is how I remember it—and they screech to a stop and I yell at the driver that I need to talk to her, that it’s for everyone’s safety. She lets me in the back of the truck and it’s just me and her. I tell her I need five minutes, she says she needs eight inches.”

Amy said, “Oh my god.”

I said, “That is not what happened.”

“That’s how I remember it, I swear!”

“Do you remember anything else from when you were out? Anything that’s not completely fucking stupid? Anything about Loretta, or Maggie, anything that would help prepare us for what we’re about to walk into here?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. You?”

“No. I had a vision I ran into Nymph and he tried to tell me the meaning of life, then I woke up.”

Amy said, “Anyway. Obviously I have to go in again, because I assume Maggie and Loretta both still think you’re the kidnapper.”

“You’re not going in there alone. Not after what happened last time. If we have to just barge in and do it by force, we will.”

Amy said, “Do what by force?”

“Take out Maggie?”

“The sign said ‘Talk to Loretta,’ not ‘Murder Loretta’s child.’”

“It’s not a child!”

“We don’t know that yet. Look, you guys feel free to keep debating it, I’m going in. I’ll stick my phone in my coat pocket and you can watch—”

I said, “But what if Maggie turns into—”

“Shh. Let me finish. The danger isn’t Maggie turning into a big snake monster or something, the danger is she messes with my brain somehow. If she turns into a big monster I’ll scream and run away. If she starts messing with my head, you guys will need to get me out of there and slap sense into me.”

I said, “I don’t like it either way.”

“Sure, and you can sit out here and contemplate how much you don’t like it while I go inside.” She opened the door. “Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

We watched from afar as Amy’s red coat bounced through the rain. She knocked on Loretta’s door, then apparently got an okay to come in. I started watching on my phone, but didn’t have a great view—the camera was just barely peeking up over the pocket of her coat. Amy pushed in through the door and appeared to be responding to a friendly greeting that I couldn’t quite hear over the rustling of her coat against the microphone.

I said, “I don’t like this.”

John said, “Yeah, I think you said something about that. We’ll give her one minute, then we bust in.”

Amy entered the living room. We could faintly hear Loretta talking from the kitchen, saying, “… actually she’s handling it better than the grown-ups. But you know, kids are tough. John was here yesterday, he explained everything. I know you’re trying to help, despite what Ted thinks. And now all those other kids are missing … awful.”

Amy said, “Oh, I didn’t know John had come by. What, uh, did he explain, exactly?”

On Amy’s camera, we watched Loretta step into view, holding a mug of coffee.

Half of her was missing.

She looked like she’d been torn apart by a great white. Most of her neck was gone, to the point that it should have been impossible for her to hold her head upright—just a white spinal column and a yellowish ligament surrounded by ragged meat and open air. About a third of her torso had been ripped away, from armpit to hip.

She continued talking like everything was fine. I could see her windpipe twitching, her exposed lung inflating and deflating with each breath.

That woman should not be alive.

John gave a start and I knew he could see it, too. But Amy replied politely to the conversation, oblivious.

Loretta said, “John told me the police had turned you loose, that the bad guy had the same build and hair color as your David but that they’d eliminated him as a suspect. Still, I’d prefer he not come in. Maggie is still in bed but I don’t want to scare her. So, what do you need?” Through the video feed I watched as the woman’s stomach twitched and quivered as it digested some bit of breakfast.

Amy said, “I’m not sure. You know, we’re still just trying to help however we can…”

“Well, I know there’s more to this,” said Loretta, causing a little flap of skin to bounce around her throat. “Maggie wasn’t acting right, before the abduction, I mean. I know this was something … unusual.”

Amy said, “Has Maggie acted strangely since she’s come back?”

“Not considering what she’s been through, you know.”

“Can I see her?”

Loretta invited Amy to follow her to Maggie’s bedroom, and the camera tracked the mutilated woman down the hall. She opened a bedroom door a crack and said, “Mags? You awake?”

The answer that came from the bedroom was a terrifying guttural squeal. John glanced at me. Amy reacted like she heard an adorable child’s voice and said, “Oh, you can just let her sleep. I didn’t intend to—”

Loretta said into the bedroom, “I have someone who wants to see you, real quick. Won’t be one minute.”

“KREEEEE … KUKUKUKUKUK!”

“It’s okay, she’s helping the police.”

“EEEEUUUUK. Eeeeeee…”

Loretta pushed the door open.

Lying on the bed was a maggot.

It was approximately the same size as a human child. Its skin was translucent and I could see its digestive system working, grinding up what looked like scraps of meat and leather.

John said, “Huh.”

I said, “I’m going in—”

“Wait.”

Amy said, “Maggie?” and moved gingerly into the room. The view from the phone leaned over the bed. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Maggie” screeched and clucked and made sucking noises.

Loretta sat down on the bed with “Maggie” and the creature squished its way over to her. The mother laid her hand across the maggot’s back, the monster’s face resting a circular row of teeth against Loretta’s abdomen.

“I’m just so happy to have her back home. My heart breaks for the other parents missing their babies today but I have to admit, I’m selfish. I’m happy to have Maggie back and above all else, I want to make sure they never try to take her again. If you guys can help me with that, nothing else matters.”

I knew that the lingering effects of the Soy Sauce were the difference between what John and I were seeing versus everyone else—if I concentrated, I found I could actually see the formation of fuckroaches swarming around the maggot, twitching and writhing in the vague shape of a girl. If I concentrated a bit more, I could see the little blond girl they were projecting to the rest of the world, the child Amy was seeing, the one that had been woven into all of Loretta Knoll’s memories. Then in a blink it was back to the larva. Hungry, pulsing.

“Maggie” opened her slimy mouth and took a bite out of Loretta’s belly, ripping skin and fat and chewing noisily. Loretta didn’t even flinch.