My office is on the corner of North Hampton and 56th, what some people might call Hampton Heights, and others consider a slice of urban decay. I call it cheap rent, and I share the building with shadows and silence. The neighborhood thrives on secrets, its inhabitants and the patrolling cops alike keeping their business to themselves. Not a place a young girl should loiter in the small hours of morning. Which is why I was more than a little surprised to find a 14-year-old Asian girl sitting outside my office one chilly Friday morning.

“A little early for a visit,” I said.

“It’s 10,” she said. She was a slight girl, a hair over five feet with long black hair and the ramrod straight back of a teen trying to make a good impression on an adult.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I slid the key into the lock and opened my office door.

“Winter break.”

“Huh.” I walked inside. “Come on, it’s freezing.” I waved her to follow me. She did.

I’m pretty sure my office was zoned as a studio apartment, but the owners had been too excited about having a tenant to put up much of a fuss about how I used the place. It smelled as musty and old as it looked. I put my coffee on the walk-through kitchen counter, hung my coat on the rack, and crossed uneven hardwood to sit at my desk. She was still standing near the doorway.

I wondered what I must look like to her. I was stocky, shorter than average, but still a head over her, with the wide-shouldered build of a linebacker. My hair and beard were long, tangled messes because I had skipped the morning shower. I would have smiled at her, but I’ve been told by more than one woman that my smile is more off-putting than my stern face. I had no clue how to put her at ease. For someone whose job it is to find kids, I’m pretty damn bad at talking to them when they find me.

“Do you want a coffee or something?” I asked. “I don’t have any of that Monster or whatever you kids are drinking these days.”

She smirked. “It’s Celsius now. But no, thanks.”

I nodded. “Take a seat. Might as well tell me why you’re here.”

She took a seat in the padded accent chair in the corner. It was an awkward several feet from my desk, but it was the only chair in the room. I’d meant to purchase actual office chairs but hadn’t gotten around to it in the last few years.

The girl sat primly in the chair, like something might jump out of it and eat her. She was trying her hardest to give an impression of someone professional and unbothered, as if any teenager ever could. There was desperation in those eyes. If she had a hat, it would be in her hand. The poor girl was terrified.

“Let’s start with your name,” I said.

“Chee.”

“Hmong?” I asked.

She nodded, surprised.

“I have a doctor colleague who helps me out on occasion. He’s Hmong.” Truth was, Fong was a good friend. He was also my cultural bridge to the neighborhood Hmong community. Being white had its advantages in many areas; communicating with minority community in-groups was not one of them. He helped me pick up a few words and understand the culture where I wouldn’t otherwise. That being said, after doing this for a few years, I had picked up a few things myself. Like common names.

I rummaged through my desk drawers for a fresh notepad, settled for a half-used one, and wrote Chee at the top.

“Okay, Chee,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“My sister’s missing and no one is looking for her.”

Chee laid it all out for me, and I scribbled the pertinent bits on my notepad: 16-year-old older sister named Bao, went out after dark two nights ago, hasn’t come home.

“What about the cops?”

“We tried. They say she is probably a runaway. But she’s not.” There was more desperate fear in her eyes than before. Maybe Chee was better at staying proper than I gave her credit for.

“I believe you.” I did, for the most part. At least, I didn’t take what the cops had to say as proof of anything. It was a rare day the boys in blue made an appearance here. Even rarer was the day they would help find a near-grown Hmong girl. “What about your parents?”

She shook her head. “My mom is too old to do anything to help. And my dad… Well, he’s gone.” She said it with the uncertainty of someone still trying to figure out how to tell people. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“Nobody else in your family will help?”

“My dad was the clan leader. Without him, no one has any obligation to me or to Bao.” She paused.

A teenage girl whose dad recently died loses her sister and has nowhere else to turn. Call me a sucker, but how could I say no?

“Any idea where to start?”

She beamed. It might have been the first genuine smile I’d seen on her. “My uncle. My mom and I live with him. I overheard him saying he saw something to the police, but I couldn’t hear what. They didn’t let me out of my room.”

“Your mom’s then.” I stood up. “You coming?”

She blanched, started to say something, stopped, and finally said, “Yeah.”

I grabbed my coffee and coat.

“I can’t pay…” she said, then added, “much, yet.”

Of course not.

Chee’s mother’s house was a few blocks away, but we still drove. The sky was a clear blue and the sun hung up there like a big lie. Not a single ray of heat reached the earth today. It was early enough in the morning that the temperatures hadn’t climbed above single digits. They likely wouldn’t all day. Even with the heater blasting, my fingers were numb on the steering wheel.

I stepped out of the car and the air bit at my cheeks. Why did I live where the air hurt my face?

There were no cars in the driveway, and the garage door was open to an empty workshop. Did she walk to school every day?

Chee’s mother was a stout woman who appeared to have had Chee later in life. She wore her age with the bearing of someone who had earned every wrinkle and spot. She greeted us at the door and, with a fuse equal in length to her height, began yelling at Chee in Hmong.

The conversation flew past me like I had front row seats at the racetrack: loud and fast. I tried to keep up, but the few words I recognized were “Bao” and “meeka”, which had something to do with being white. Hang around enough Hmong folks and you’re bound to be talked about.

After a while, I started to shiver, the cold creeping into my bones. The mother-daughter yelling match was oblivious to the cold, however, and blocked me from entering the door. I considered returning to my car and wiping my hands off the whole business. But I’d already promised Chee I’d help. Damn principles. I really needed to work on those.

A stooped, elderly man appeared in the doorway, appeared to scold Chee and her mother, then turned to me.

“Come in before you freeze your asses off,” he said. That I understood.

The inside of the house was bare, save for a large and comfortable couch. There was a large empty space on the other side of it, as though the room was meant for hosting many guests who hadn’t been seen for some time. Once we settled in, and my teeth had stopped chattering, the old man, who Chee explained was her uncle, spoke again.

“You’re supposed to be in school.” He was a tall man, bent under the weight of his age. Still, he commanded a presence of authority in the room that the women deferred to.

“It’s winter break,” she said under her breath.

The old man scoffed. “It’s January. I’m not that old.” Boy, did I feel dumb. He turned to me. “We’re very sorry for the trouble our niece has caused you. Thank you for returning her to us. However, I have to ask you to leave so we can address this family matter as a family.”

“Wait…”

The old man stood up. “To your room Chee. Sir, I can escort you out.”

Chee stood. “He’s here to find Bao.”

Her sister’s name blanketed the room. Everyone fell to silence. Chee’s uncle flushed. That interested me. It was one thing to be shocked by the mention of your missing niece, another to get angry.

“The police are looking for her,” Chee’s uncle said.

“The police are doing nothing,” Chee pleaded. “No one is doing anything.”

Her uncle snapped at her in Hmong.

“He will help,” Chee said. “He finds people. That’s his job.”

“It’s also the police’s job,” her uncle said. “Go get ready for school.”

Chee opened her mouth to protest some more and looked at me. I nodded my head towards the hallway that I assumed her room was down. Finding no allies, Chee stormed away. I felt a little bad for the kid, but I needed her uncle alone.

“If you’d please leave now, sir,” her uncle said. “I have to call the school to see if someone can pick her up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that quite yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Chee’s a child, you’re right about that. But she’s right about something else.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I told her I’d help. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a client and I don’t abandon clients until I’ve done my part. Right now, that means trying to find Bao. Chee doesn’t know much, but something tells me you know more. So you’re going to spill and then I’ll save you a call to the school and drop her off myself. Fair trade?”

The man studied me for a long moment, features hard. Maybe bursting into someone’s house with their teenage niece and yelling at them wasn’t the best for building rapport.

“Thov, kuj xav pab koj.” My Hmong was not perfect, but even the attempt softened his features. He continued his study of me. Whatever he found, he appeared satisfied with.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Owen. Owen Ashton.”

“You’re Fong’s friend. He talks about you. Says you found his cat.”

I sighed. “A long time ago, yes.”

He nodded. “Do you have a business card?”

I paused.

“I’d rather not send my niece off with a stranger. I’m sure you understand, given everything.”

“Sure.” I reached into my pocket and produced a business card. It was plain beige with my name and contact info under the words Private Investigator in bold lettering.

He took it and sat down.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“Bao was out late two nights ago. She never came back. That’s about all Chee told me.”

He scoffed. “Of course it is. Did Chee tell you Bao was a little whore?”

“No, she didn’t.” I held my poker face.

“She was all around town with these boys. Not Hmong. Not even Asian. Whites, Blacks, Mexicans. Everything but Hmong. She was trying to shame our family. Mao and I,” he gestured to Chee’s mother, “we tried to stop it. Scolded her. Grounded her. Forbid her from seeing them. But she was so determined to ruin us.” He spat the words like rotten milk. I got his meaning.

“I get your meaning,” I said. “What happened to her?”

“What do you think?” he said. “A damn boy. I went to check on her one night and she was gone, her window open. It was two days ago now. First night of this cold. I couldn’t let her be alone out there, so I went looking for her and found her. Then, I saw her.”

“Bao?”

“No,” he whispered and leaned in. “Poj Ntxoog.”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“A little ghost girl,” he added.

“How did you know?”

“Her clothes. She was wearing rags, almost nothing, but she didn’t look cold. It was below zero, but she wasn’t shivering at all. And she wasn’t wearing shoes. Her feet were bare and they were…” He choked up. There was honest terror in his eyes. “They were backwards,” he said when he had gathered himself. “There wasn’t anything else it could be.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. I didn’t know which way I was going but I just ran.”

“And what about Bao?”

He shook her head. “Bao isn’t the first girl to go missing around here. There’s been five children in the last three years who haven’t come home. All girls. All around Bao’s age.” He looked up at me, his eyes red and watery. “All of them turn up dead sooner or later. And the Poj Ntxoog is there every single time.”

I drove Chee to school. When I parked out front, she paused and looked thoughtful.

“Not embarrassed by your old private detective, are you?”

She looked at me, uncomprehending. No one gets good humor these days.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Uncle was wrong,” she said.

“About what?”

“The first girl, Mai Neng. I didn’t know her that well, but I know people who did.” She looked at me. “No one saw a Poj Ntxoog around her.”

After I’d dropped Chee off at school, I made a phone call. Fong was a doctor, which meant there was as much a chance of him being on rotation as not when you called. Thankfully, he picked up.

“What can you tell me about Poj Ntxoog?” I said.

“Hello to you too, Owen. I’m well, thanks for asking.”

“Hi, sorry. I’m on the job and need some quick info.”

He sighed from the other side of the line. “We have to work on your people skills.”

“After I find the missing girl.”

“There’s always a missing girl.”

“Fong…”

“I know.” I pictured him raising his hands in defeat. Fong and I had been friends since middle school when we bonded over our love of detective stories. We were cool, okay. Though only one of us ended up following the path. “What was it you needed?”

I let out a strained breath. “Poj Ntxoog?”

He laughed. “I just like making you pronounce it.”

“Fong!”

“Yeah, yeah. Poj Ntxoog. It’s like a little girl ghost. Long hair, bad clothes, whole Asian ghost girl nine yards.”

I scribbled some notes.

“Supposed to have backwards feet,” he continued. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Missing girl,” I said. “Hmong. Uncle who saw her last says he saw Poj Ntxoog there too. Says a bunch of girls have gone missing and this thing is there every time.”

“Weird.”

“Why weird?”

“I mean, Poj Ntxoog is sort of a trickster. Like in the stories, men will be walking alone in the forest, run into one, and fall victim to her. She’s not usually associated with missing kids.”

“That is odd.”

There was a long pause as I wrote some notes. Then Fong spoke up.

“Owen, you don’t think there’s a serial killer or something going around, do you?”

“I can’t say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But it’s too early to say. Could just be coincidence.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence”

“I don’t believe in ghosts either, but I know better than to rule them out.”

Milwaukee Public Library’s Capitol Branch is a small, one-story brick building across from a McDonald’s that gets a lot more traffic. I was never much of a library guy myself; I sourced most of my cheap romances online, but this particular branch was home to one of the best resources in this part of town I had — Doug Shirley.

Doug was a middle-aged black schizophrenic. Which meant he was also homeless, on and off medications, and in and out of jail. He never kept a phone number for more than a month. When he’s not in cuffs or a locked unit of one of Milwaukee’s hospitals, Doug can most consistently be found at the library.

When I walked into Capitol Branch, Doug was in his normal corner chair by a window with a large stack of books beside him.

On his meds, Doug was one of the most articulate, well-read, and well-informed people I knew and trusted. He read everything, talked to everyone, and heard every bit of gossip the Hampton Heights homeless community had to offer. And he liked me, which was a plus.

Days he was off his meds, though, Doug was as unpredictable and scatterbrained as his criminal record would suggest.

He was bald up top except for the sides. When he’s in bad places, he keeps his hair about as well as a bird’s nest. Today, the sides of his head were cropped short, the white-gray hair almost a layer of dust. A thick five-o’clock shadow was apparent even though it was noon.

I sat in the chair beside Doug and plucked a book from the pile: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“What’s the theme this week, Doug?” Doug’s reading spells always had a theme, though they could range from as simple as dinosaurs to as esoteric as written by a Sagittarius.

He grunted a greeting but didn’t look up from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to answer. I hazarded my own guess.

“Missing girls?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. I was close. I took a peak at a third title. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly.

“Missing kids.”

Doug smiled. “How you doing, Mr. Ashton?”

“I’m great, Doug. How are you?”

“Perfect. Weather couldn’t be better for some mysteries.” The wind was howling. Goosebumps rose on my skin. Sometimes cold was a mindset.

“Speaking of,” I leaned in. “I’ve got one I could use some help on. In fact,” I tapped the top book on his pile, “I think it fits your theme.”

“For real?”

I nodded. “What have you heard about a little Hmong girl? Went missing maybe 3 days ago, lives on 54th.”

“Hmong?”

“Asian.”

“Oh.” He thought about it for a moment. I let him. “I don’t know nothing about Asian, but I know a girl was supposed to have been out too late by the creek a few nights ago. Damn cold.”

“Lincoln Creek?”

He nodded. “Richie saw her. Said it was damn cold out. Too damn cold for a little girl. Said he wanted to help her, get her home, or warm or something. Tried to go up to her, but…”

“But what?”

“But Richie got spooked.”

“Spooked?”

Doug shook his head. “Says he saw a ghost.” Then he shrugged. “I figured he was off his meds.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Don’t know. Richie says he got so scared he ran off and forgot all about her ‘till he was at the tent.”

“Thanks, Doug. I’ll let you read some.” I slipped a ten into the book I was holding and put it back on top of the pile. “That’s a good one.”

I got up to leave. “Oh, Doug.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d Richie know it was a ghost?”

Doug shook his head. “Said something about long black hair and dirty clothes. Sounds like he’s watched too much J-horror to me.”

Sometimes being a detective is about following people, sometimes it’s about talking to people, and other times it’s walking through the freezing cold along 21 square miles of urban watershed looking for clues.

From where Chee’s uncle and Richie had seen the girl, I managed to narrow my search to the few miles near Hampton Heights. In the hours it took me to search, the sun descended below the horizon. As soon as it did, the cold crept deep into my bones. I was wearing a heavy wool overcoat and a sweater underneath. Even still, I could not stop my teeth from chattering. My nose stung as if the cold was its own scent.

Without the sun, a few streetlights lit the neighborhood in a dull fluorescent glow. It was not the best to search for clues under, so I pulled out my phone’s flashlight. My fingers, numb even through my gloves, struggled to keep the light stable.

The ground was a frozen block of snow. Nothing fresh had fallen in the last few days and, even with the wind, the snow was too frozen to have shifted much. Which meant, after a few hours of looking, I noticed what I would not have been able to if there had been fresh snowfall or even low enough temperatures to melt: two sets of footprints headed into a dense cluster of trees at the water’s edge.

That’s where I found the body.

I was far from the streetlights, so I only had my phone light to see by, but I could tell he was not Bao.

He was a young man, maybe mid-twenties, white, slight of frame, with large eyes. He had been dead for a few days. How many was hard to say. The temperature had preserved him and his wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression. His pants were down to his knees. A set of frozen imprints in the ground suggested he had been kneeling when he pulled them down.

A girl goes missing three days ago. She’s last seen near a park. A boy, dead for about that many days, is found in the same park. There was a chance this dead boy had nothing to do with Bao; that he was a coincidence. But Fong was right. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

I wasn’t a woodsman by any means. I wasn’t about to track a deer through the forest by tracks and tufts of fur. But what even I could do was see there were three sets of footprints here: two sets of boots walking into the trees, one set of boots walking out the other way and ending by the road. Beside it, another set of bare feet walking towards the trees. Three people here? The wind rattled the branches above me.

I looked back at the boy and grimaced. A dead body is a little above my paygrade. With a surge of good decision-making that often eludes me, I took out my phone and dialed the number of Sergeant Laity, my usual source of insight into Milwaukee PD. He picked up on the 5th ring.

“What do you want, Ashton?”

“Nice to hear from you too, Laity. I’m doing swell by the way.”

“It’s fucking 11 at night. I left my pleasantries in my dreams.”

“Old man much?”

“I work odd hours. Look. Why are you calling?”

“Dead body in the woods by Lincoln Creek. Looks like it might have been here a while.”

“Jesus Christ, Ashton. Call 911 with that stuff, not me.” He was awake now.

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t see me. “He’s dead, Ashton, and not going anywhere. Didn’t seem like much of an emergency.”

“For fuck’s sake, stay put. I’m calling it in.”

“No can do.”

“What do you mean no can do? You found a dead body, Ashton. Stay by it.”

“Can’t. Missing kid might not have the time.”

“God Damn it, Ashton…”

I hung up the phone. I’d already started to follow the boot prints out of the trees and towards the road. The bare footprints stayed beside them the entire way.

The footprints faded away much before they neared the road, but I followed the direction they pointed me towards: to an old, single-story apartment building with boarded windows. It looked how I imagined my own office building would once I left.

One window was shattered inwards into a pile of glass and snow. I glanced around. No one was out—too cold and late—and slipped through the open window.

Inside was not much warmer than out as the wind howled in behind me. My breath still puffed out in front of me. The tips of my ears burned, and I wondered if I was dumb enough to have given myself frostbite. I pulled my jacket tighter and walked deeper into the building.

Whatever the layout had been before, the building was now stripped to its skeleton. Gapped hardwood floors groaned under my weight. Beams and the remaining dry wall shrieked in protest as the wind outside threatened to rip the building apart. The boarded windows offered little light. I pulled out my phone’s flashlight again. It cast dark shadows that moved as I walked like the figures at the edges of my vision. The moist scent of mildew itched at my nose. The air was heavy with dust and who knew what else. My skin crawled with the imagined grime.

Maybe I should have waited for Laity. Hell, I’d settle for Doug right now.

I turned one corner, holding my breath, praying not to see a dead little girl, and found empty space. It happened again and again as I moved through the labyrinth of indiscernible rooms until I was sure I had been mistaken and the girl was not here.

I came to a wide, high-ceilinged room that I figured was the lobby. Where there should have been a staircase down was a gaping, black hole in the floor. I stepped away from it.

I passed my light over the room one more time and froze. A dozen feet away, in a shadowed corner of the room that still managed to elude the light, a figure was curled into a ball. A young girl. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but I thought there was a faint rise and fall of her chest. I let out a sigh I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I took a step forward, but stopped.

At the edge of my phone’s light, a length of black hair shuddered as if blown by the wind, and vanished back into the darkness. My mouth went dry. Blood thundered through my ears. My breath came short and shallow. My legs tensed like springs ready to burst at the slightest movement.

Whatever it was remained cloaked in blackness an inch out of sight. I crept the phone light over, unable to keep it from shaking, to reveal another figure. Another girl. Short. She stood still and silent. Her features were indistinct under a blind of long, black hair. Her arms hung limp at her sides. She wore clothes so filthy, they may as well have been wrapped in rags. Pale skin betrayed scars and bruises over most of her body.

I told myself this was a normal girl, a scared girl, maybe even an abused girl. She was probably just as scared at that moment as I was.

I almost believed it.

“Are you alright?” I took a step forward. The girl did too, her backward feet landing toe first before flopping onto her heels. Nope, not normal.

Bao was still in the corner, shivering and taking shallow breaths.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I said. “I’m here to help.” I took another step towards Bao. The Poj Ntxoog took another step to stay between us. It was silent the whole time, save for the sick slap of sole against floor.

Whatever it was, it did not look strong. I thought I could take it in a fair fight. But I also remembered the boy, dead in the park. Frozen in place mid-movement. I had never put too much stock in ghost stories, but I wasn’t an idiot either. Still, Bao was in the corner, shivering and presumably starving. For all I knew, she had moments left.

I began to take another step forward.

“Wait!” a girl’s voice said from behind me. Chee’s voice.

I didn’t take my eyes off the Poj Ntxoog. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“It’s almost midnight,” she said. “I saw you outside and…” She trailed off, her eyes wandering towards the Poj Ntxoog.

“Looking for your sister? Didn’t you hire me for that?”

“Is now the time?” she said and walked forward toward Bao.

“Wait.”

She didn’t. “Mai Neng?” She whispered. The ghost girl said nothing. Chee advanced. “It is you.” Chee spoke to the Poj Ntxoog in Hmong. Though the ghost didn’t speak, it relaxed. Chee walked past it to her sister and shook her awake. Bao stumbled to her feet and put her full weight on Chee’s shoulder. They staggered towards me. I didn’t dare move until they were past the Poj Ntxoog and had reached me. I put my coat over Bao.

“Can you make it outside?” I asked.

“I think so,” Chee said.

“Good. Go. The police should be here soon. There’s something I have to check.”

Chee gave me a questioning look. Her sister moaned and shifted on her shoulder. “Be careful,” Chee said, and she half-carried Bao out of the room.

I looked at the hole in the floor where the stairs should have been. It held wide like a gaping maw eager to consume. I felt eyes staring back at me from within. The Poj Ntxoog still stood where Chee had spoken to her. I couldn’t see any eyes under the mop of hair, but I felt her regarding me.

I didn’t believe in coincidences.

The Poj Ntxoog did not move to stop me when I approached the hole. Within the hole, I made out the tops of washers and dryers against the wall. This must have been the laundry room. I could fall on top of them without too much trouble. Probably. I gripped the edge, slid over, and toppled onto machine tops.

What I found there was a matter for the next day’s paper.

I stood outside, coatless, and shivering after I had given my statement. A lanky cop strode over to me from the abandoned apartment complex. He was about a foot taller than me and, even with being rail-thin, cut an imposing figure.

“Laity,” I said. It was all I could do to keep the shivering out of my voice.

The sergeant nodded. “Ashton.”

“And didn’t make a single dime on it.”

“Another pro bono?”

“What can I say? I’m a bleeding heart.”

Laity looked over to the ambulance where Chee and Bao huddled together under a paramedic’s blanket and my coat. Chee was crying. He sighed.

“I don’t think I can give you shit for it this time,” he said. “But keep it up and we’ll see.”

“I’m not in any danger of getting evicted,” I said.

He nodded. We stood in the cold for a long time.

“They called the cops, Laity.”

He grimaced. “I know.”

“They talked to the same Uncle I did. The footprints were right there for everyone to see for days. All they had to do was look. And now five dead girls, going back who knows how long.”

Laity’s wide, mustached face was set in deep thought. He was silent for a long time. “The guys did what they thought was best with the information they had.”

“When the hell did you get so political with me? It’s Owen. Don’t bullshit me.”

Laity went stern. Anger flashed through his eyes. For a moment, I wondered if my friend was going to hit me, or worse, arrest me for condemning cops. My chest tightened.

I was saved by another cop I didn’t recognize approaching us. “Sarge,” she said to Laity. “Kid’s mom is here. She won’t let us take her to the hospital.”

“God damn it.” Laity made to storm away.

“Wait,” I said. “I might have a way to help with this.”

When Fong had finished examining Bao, we stopped by my place for a nightcap. Or a morning cap. It was nearly six by then. My place was small and a mess, but Fong didn’t say anything. He was short, bald, and had gained a lot of weight since graduating from medical school, but Fong was good people.

“How was she, if I may ask?” My curiosity was burning.

Normally, I would expect my friend to stonewall me with some spiel about doctor-patient confidentiality. Today, however, he sighed. “She’ll be fine. Malnourished and dehydrated, obviously. Some bruises on her wrists. But other than that, she’ll live.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sign of other injury. She wasn’t raped, Owen.”

I let out a tense breath.

“Cops figure out who the dead boy was?” he asked.

I nodded. “Boyfriend. Ran off one night for a romantic evening, only he wanted it a little more romantic than her. Things got rough. Report will say Bao defended herself, knocked him out, and he froze to death by the creek.”

“And what do you say?”

I thought about it. “Boy didn’t have any bruising to suggest how he was knocked out. He was bigger and stronger than her. She was too disoriented to even make it home. Something else knocked him out.”

“Poj Ntxoog.”

“I don’t think it was that either.”

“Come on, Owen. You’re telling me you don’t believe? After all this?” He gestured around the room with his whiskey glass.

“It’s not that. I don’t think it was a Poj Ntxoog. I think it looked like one. You said Poj Ntxoog isn’t associated with missing kids, right? They’re tricksters. Which goes to reason they wouldn’t be protectors either.”

He nodded.

“Chee didn’t call it Poj Ntxoog when she saw it,” I continued. “She called it by name. Mai Neng.”

“The first girl.”

“Exactly. And there was something about the bodies. What this guy did to them. He turned their feet around, Fong. Turned them backwards.”

“Jesus christ,” Fong said. “This is fucked.” He downed his whiskey, and I poured him another one. He stared at it thoughtfully. “They’re going to catch him.” It sounded like a statement, but it felt more like a question.

“I don’t know.” We sat in silence, waiting for the sun to rise on Milwaukee.

Kasy prayed the List of Gratitude as she and her mother left the high gate circling the compound and walked the sidewalk to the clinic. Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful day. Thank you, Lord, for my life on Earth. Thank you for my sight, my smell, my ears, my skin, to witness your Creation. It hadn’t been but a few years since He had seen fit to reset the world. The compound sat on Turkey Mountain, where the inhabitants could see the overgrown mess where Tulsa used to be, know that other American cities had had a similar fate, thank God for sparing their flock, and thank Him for punishing them.

They turned at the broken stoplight that swung and spun on its wire. On the left side of the road where the park used to be was an encampment—all snapping blue tarps, smoke. Blanket-wrapped huddled masses queued for soup at a stand near the road. The wind shifted. A moment later, the odor smothered them: unwashed armpit, crotch, ass, and burning garbage and leaking propane. Kasy and her mom stepped into the road to go round the tents rippling in the breeze. Further on, someone lay in the road with a filthy pink blanket over them. Their feet were bare. Further on, a man chopped at the air with a metal spatula and yelled at the empty sky. Each shout gouted cloud-breath into the frigid air.

Thank you, Lord, for leading us out of there. Thank you for leading us to our Shepherd, Robert. Thank you for a roof, for beans, squash, and bread, for hot water at the lift of a handle.

Kasy stopped her silent prayer to look over the line, in case her aunt was there. Her mother put her hand on her cheek and gently nudged her face forward again. Her mother’s expression was sorrow overlaid with determination. It felt like a betrayal of her mom to search for her aunt. Besides, her aunt had chosen to no longer be her aunt when they parted ways. Kasy looked away. They had to focus on those who wanted to be saved.

The clinic was in the strip mall tucked between the pizza parlor and the DMV. A message had been slashed with deep red paint over its mirrored doors: The Shepherds are Wolves that Learned How to Use a Crook. Like you would know, Kasy thought. He welcomed me and Mom into the fold after the Summer of Storms and gave us food, shelter, community, and purpose, when so many people had lost theirs, and never regained it. She prayed God would open their mind, by a transformative event or by crushing open their skull.

The clinic looked like a DMV, a place to process people, rather than a sacred place. The “take a number” ticket machine by the door was empty. So were the eyes of the receptionist. A massive picture of downtown Tulsa pre-Summer of Storms with domino-like buildings colonized a wall. There were women older than her mother, with snowy hair. There were women her mother’s age, with gray-streaked hair. The group Kasy herself belonged to—with people who      could be called women, but her Shepherd called them “on the cusp”—was the largest. One of them had brought a girl, a child, who sang softly to herself and drew stars on her arm with a blue marker. The scent of synthetic blueberry fought the stale, bad-breath smell of the clinic air.

Now, that girl is clearly not a woman, nor almost one, Kasy thought. Perhaps she’s special.

The receptionist slid a clipboard under her window, and Kasy’s mom wrote Kasy’s full name, flock number, and more. The little girl sat on the floor and doodled and sang, and the mother sat in a chair and ran her daughter’s hair through her fingers. The mother was Kasy’s age and her throat was unblemished: a small woman with a flat mouth and luscious seal-brown hair. She wore jeans and a nice pine-colored polyester blouse too thin for the weather, and a ratty parka too heavy for the weather. The little girl wore pink pajamas with purple cuffs.

No Ascension robe, Kasy thought. And she brought her daughter to the procedure. Her flock had pecked at her mother for doing the same, but that’s how it was when circumstances demanded it. Since joining the flock, Kasy had mucked stables, baked bread, scrubbed floors, beat rugs, wrung laundry, and raised chickens from egg to oven. She had calluses so thick she could grip a smoking skillet without potholders. When her mom had the procedure and then a fever from it, Kasy swabbed the surgical wound, lifted soup to her lips, wiped the shit, piss, pus, blood and did her mom’s work too. She watched the little ones and taught the older ones. Soon she and her mother were indispensable to the flock. She let herself feel a little pride in her hard work, her ambition, as a treat. That’s how it should be. Kasy joined the rest of the women in giving the new woman an approving, encouraging smile. God loves initiative.

The digital sign over the door blinked. Selena Cruz.

The girl and her mother rose. The leftover women watched her ponytail switch her shoulders with a kind of hungry softness as she went through the door. Kasy’s mother watched the door and her thumb and finger pinched the beads of her rosary. The beads passed through her fingertips and there was no noise behind the door. Kasy’s muscles clenched.

Then, the little girl screamed.

The women shifted, crossed themselves, and signed, “What a pity.” Kasy’s mother touched the scar on her throat. Kasy’s mind frothed. Her body felt galvanized with the screams. Move! Don’t move! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Selena’s cries weakened, as if she had heard. They suddenly cut.

Kasy felt something like a pillar fracture within her. Inside her head was a tinny ringing as if her eardrums had burst and a static feeling. Her heartbeat prayed OGodOGodOGodOGodOGod. Maybe she had misheard. The doctor, surely, wouldn’t have taken her. If he Lifted them high, then what would Kasy’s Ascension mean?

It wasn’t that bad of a trade. You’d swear your faith and loyalty and do the procedure. You and Mom would be taken care of, Kasy thought. But you’re an adult, even if you won’t admit it, even if the Shepherd won’t acknowledge it.

Shut up!

Thirty minutes later, the girl, Selena, and her mother emerged wet-eyed. Selena swallowed, winced. Tears slid down her cheeks. The bandage around her throat had a dot of red where, if she were a boy, her Adam’s apple would be. She held a small blue satin box like a ring box, which her mom took from her and put in her purse.

They really did that to her, Kasy thought with an eerie serenity. Her spirit detached and bobbed to a level above her head. It took in the scene of the women and the girl who they had made one of them. The mother hoisted her daughter to her hip and slung her purse over her shoulder. She made no eye contact with anyone, not even the receptionist, as she signed out.

As she passed, making for the door, Kasy leaned over and pinched the woman’s sleeve. The woman started. Kasy whispered, “Soft serve.”

The other women rustled. Kasy didn’t have to see their hands flurrying to know what they were saying. Kasy kept her eyes locked on the mother’s startled eyes, as if willing the memory to transfer telepathically. Icy-sweet numbing swirl from the gas station. The hand signs for soft serve had not been invented yet, and Kasy could not wait for them to be, nor did she expect the woman would know them. She was just guessing, but she didn’t think the woman would know why soft serve mattered. The woman at the gas station would tell them. Kasy would not let the woman and Selena go, unless they understood everything she couldn’t say.

The woman pulled out of Kasy’s pinch and exited the clinic doors. Moments passed where Kasy wondered if she had said enough. Then, her mother slapped her. Its sound seemed to jolt Kasy awake. She had broken the six months of silence before Ascension. Her mom breathed in rapid puffs, and her eyes were ringed with white. She raised her hand again.

The receptionist hit the silver bell and rose behind the glass partition.

“Who spoke?” she signed. “Raise your hand.”

Kasy would have to start the six months of silence over—if the Shepherd would forgive her and allow her another chance. “The devil is unusually loud within you,” he had said after the previous failure. She had screamed for help when a young boy had fallen from a tree and seized on the roots, bleeding from the ears. She had suggested that maybe this time it was a guardian angel. But her Shepherd’s eyes were cold and remote, and his sermon the following day was about gratitude and duty and the sinners begging outside the walls, and he referenced Corinthians 14:34.

Yet God abhorred a liar. She slowly lifted her hand.

As she did, so did everyone else in the waiting room. Her spirit made a great shout.

The receptionist looked round, astonished. Then, with jerky angry hand motions, “I’ll end the appointments for today and send you home to your Shepherds.”

Hands stayed in the air. Eyebrows slanted and furrowed. Who needed hand signs when veins throbbing in their temples could speak more eloquently?

The receptionist threw up her hands and sat back in a huff. Hands lowered back into laps. Kasy’s heart felt too swollen with neighborly love and relief. But she still thought about Selena. She shouldn’t have Ascended at all. Why hadn’t the doctor stopped them?

She soothed herself. It’s done now. They might be able to join a flock based on the strength of their offering. It is what it is.

Immediately Kasy hated herself for that thought, because she always hated it when her mother said it to her. She had hated it after they had to leave their tornado-smashed home in Verdigris for Tulsa. She had hated it after the city cut disaster funding after they got there. She had hated it when her mom got the procedure to get them accepted into the flock. She had forgotten that she had hated it. If Kasy had been a boulder, it is what it is was the river that would wear her down to a pebble before carrying her with it.

The sign over the door blinked: Casy Hernandez.

Kasy was used to her name being misspelled. Today it felt like evidence for the devil. Her mother crossed herself as Kasy stood and went through the door.

The room was small, low-ceilinged, cave-like. There was a chair like the one at the dentist’s, and a young nurse on her knees, wiping the floor. The nurse held up one finger—the first and oldest and most recognizable hand sign—and continued wiping up the fine spray of blood. Her eyes, too, were wet.

Kasy plucked a sanitizer wipe from the tube by the door and knelt. The nurse waved, shaking her head, but Kasy shook her head back. She threw the pinked sanitizer wipe into the trash and beat the dust off her robe. I’m already here. It’s too late.

She eased onto the chair. There was a ghost of warmth on the vinyl. On the counter, the scalpels, slicked with girl-blood. Suddenly she hated that nurse.

She asked aloud, “You’re going to get some fresh scalpels for me, right?”

The nurse blanched. Kasy insisted, “You do use clean ones, right? God may have invented germs, but he also invented soap.” Her voice had gone hoarse after not being used for six months. It was a voice she wouldn’t want to hear in the dark. But how that nurse nodded! Her hand spidered towards the doorknob.

Childishly, Kasy thought, You’d tell on me? But the Shepherd would make her do more than stand with her nose in the corner. She should have been dismissed when she first spoke. Instead the nurse gathered the dirty scalpels and set a tray of fresh ones on the doctor’s cart. She was red.

Kasy lifted her arm to sign, sorry. But when she peeled her arm off the armrest, there was a scent of blueberry. Her forearm was smudged with blue ink.

“For God’s sake.” Her disgust was made dreadful by her voice. The nurse snatched another sanitizer wipe and offered it to Kasy. Her eyes pleaded. Kasy snatched the wipe and rubbed down her forearm and the chair arms. A lemon smell replaced the blueberry. The nurse slipped out of the room.

Kasy imagined the mother adjusting her daughter on her hip outside and walking towards the gas station. It didn’t sell gas anymore—no point—but sold caloric encouragement. Greasy pizza slices, hot dogs, plump, sweaty, brown, rolling alongside dry yellow taquitos. Donuts with translucent glaze. Coffee—not the real stuff, not anymore—but the soft serve was real, cool and soothing and soft. A sweetness sliding down tongue to belly. For whatever change could fit in a child-sized pocket, you could get a spoonful of strawberry or cherry preserves from the lady who ran the register. If you hung around tonguing the swirl’s point sideways, she’d tell you about how ice cream used to come in a thousand flavors, but the most common flavor came from a rare orchid far away. How ice cream now comes plain, and they had to make their own flavors. It was most unbelievable that ice cream could be better, Kasy had thought then. Her mom had last taken her when she was ten, before she had gotten her own procedure.

But that’s enough fairytales, said the gas station woman. I’ll introduce you to a good Shepherd. Just come back here when you Ascend. It’s tradition. Ice cream makes everything better.

The nurse returned with a doctor in his dirty white coat.

He said warmly, “Kasy Hernandez, sorry for taking so long. Lean back, lamb. I can’t get at your throat if you’re sitting up.”

Her mind howled the same words her aunt had howled about joining a flock, This isn’t right, nobody sane would make you to do this—

What else can I do? Kasy prayed. She imagined prayer rays beaming out of her body even as she leaned back in the chair. What can I do now? She wanted her mom to hold her hand—no, she wanted her aunt to take her hand and pull her out of the chair and run. She wanted to run back in time and pull the little girl out of the chair, and her mother, and every woman who had lurched away with their voices in satin boxes, and all the women waiting with their ears turned towards the door.

The scalpel had just penetrated her throat when she let out a monstrous scream.