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.

I was waiting in line somewhere and scrolling when I saw that she was tagged in a post by Mr. Walker, my high school principal. The post said that it was with great sadness that Mr. Walker had to announce that Ms. Brown had been found dead, stab wounds covering various parts of her body. I remember being sad but also a little confused about why Mr. Walker was the one posting it. It didn’t seem like they had been all that close when I was in high school though I supposed that I didn’t know a whole lot about their lives that way or the other. I didn’t like Mr. Walker all that much, so I didn’t reply or react.

Imagine my surprise when, later that day, Ms. Brown posted an inspirational quote. At first, I assumed that someone close to her had taken over the account and had wanted to cheer up people who were hearing about her brutal death. But then people responded to her, and she responded back to them, and the replies sounded like Ms. Brown. I looked up Mr. Walker’s profile because I was going to tell him that I didn’t think his joke was funny at all. When I looked him up, not only did I no longer see the post about Ms. Brown, but I also found an announcement that Mr. Walker had died nearly a year ago, and that this was now a legacy account. There was something about celebrating his life rather than dwelling on the circumstances of his death, but nothing all that concrete. I looked at the profile pic, and it looked a little off. I couldn’t exactly explain how, but his face seemed unreal. I decided that I must have just not remembered how Mr. Walker looked and went back to scrolling.

I thought for sure that I’d gone crazy, wondering why I thought that I’d seen that post in the first place. I thought about sending Ms. Brown a message; not telling her about the post, but just seeing how she was. I decided that it would be weird, so I just let it go. Fast forward a few more days, and I start seeing posts from people I went to high school with, talking about how awful it was that Ms. Brown had been murdered. When I looked at the news from my hometown, I found that she’d been killed exactly how Mr. Walker’s account had described. I thought about reaching out to the police, but what could I say? I didn’t take a screenshot of the post or anything (I didn’t think that I’d had to), and I felt like if I did come forward, the police would likely start looking at me.

I donated a little money to her memorial fund, and I tried to mostly forget about it though I did check the news for updates. Police had no real leads; there was no physical evidence. They didn’t even have a murder weapon, and nobody had been seen coming into or leaving her place. There was a lot of rumor and speculation (I come from a small town, and a murder like that is very big news), but nobody could come up with anything concrete.

A few months later, I saw a second post from Mr. Walker. This time it was a decent (but not star) football player. He hadn’t lived in our hometown for over a decade from what I could tell. This time, Mr. Walker’s profile claimed that the kid had died in a car accident. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t send him a message saying “a Facebook ghost is going to kill you,” but I didn’t want to just let it hang, either.

I sent the kid (though he was an adult like me by now) a quick message: “Don’t know why, but you popped into my head the other day. How are things with you?” I looked at his profile pic. His eyes were wrong. I’m not sure what the opposite of sparkling is, but that’s what his eyes were doing. They were like two black holes that you couldn’t quite focus on but that you could feel the light getting sucked into.

The kid didn’t answer my message. I didn’t really blame him; it must have seemed weird that he was getting a message from some random dude from high school. Or maybe he never even checked his messages. I knew people who went months without checking their messages. Either way, it wasn’t long before I saw that he had crashed into a tree. Officials suspected drunk driving. That was possible, but it was too big of a coincidence for me. I had no clue why a Facebook ghost would want to fuck with me. I’d never been on Mr. Walker’s radar as far as I could tell. I checked his profile again. This time, his picture was a cluster of houseflies that looked vaguely like a face. I closed my browser and rubbed my eyes. It had to be a hallucination.

That night, I went into a couple of Facebook groups from my hometown, seeing if there was any chatter that suggested anyone else was seeing this. There was some weird shit, for sure (an argument about whether this one bar had been on Elm Street or Pine Street), but nothing that made me think that anyone else saw Mr. Walker’s ghost posts. Though maybe, like me, they didn’t want to put themselves out there. I didn’t want to spend too much time searching, either, in case someone eventually came looking through my history.

Four more months went by, and I started to feel like maybe things were okay. But then Ms. Brown tagged Mr. Walker in a post that said that this old hall monitor, Mr. Edwards, had died in a hunting accident. This time I took a screenshot. I tried looking up Mr. Edwards, too, seeing if I could try to give him some kind of hint or suggestion. But I found that this time, it wasn’t a warning, the death had already happened. Police treated it as an accident like with the football player, but that couldn’t be true.

I logged out of Facebook and stayed off for weeks. Every now and then, I looked at the screenshot, wondering if I should delete it or who I could possibly reach out to. I decided to look into Mr. Walker. Maybe there was something in his death that would tell me what to expect. What I found at first was that he had died alone in his apartment of natural causes. I thought about how to find out what the actual story was, but again, it was hard to reach out to anyone without leaving tracks. Would I call a coroner or something?

Instead, I called my parents, mainly just to hear their voices. My dad answered the phone, and we talked a little bit about fishing and the Packers’ chances for the coming season. It was only a few minutes before he handed me off to my mom. She talked a bit more about the town. After a few more minutes, she said, “You sound sad.”

“Homesick, maybe,” I said.

“You’re always welcome to come back, Honey.”

I’m not sure why that caught me off guard, but it did. Maybe part of my brain had figured out that I wanted to see my hometown again, see if I could get a feel for the ghost, and that part of my brain told my conscious mind to call my parents. And so I decided to head home. I was in the airport, waiting for my plane (delayed half an hour), when temptation got the better of me and I went back on Facebook. The very first post was from Mr. Walker with a bunch of replies. The strange thing was that it didn’t seem to talk about a death. Mr. Walker’s post was “The kids may go on their way, but they never stop being a Wildcat.” The replies varied from “so true” to “go wildcats!” to “we’re with you Mr. W!”. And they were from tons of profiles, many of them were people I’d never heard of. Some of their pictures were yellowed, with old-timey clothes. One was nothing but maggots, moving. Another was a pile of rotting meat. I logged out again.

The whole plane ride home, I expected to die. A plane crash, a hijacking, anything would have made total sense to me. But I made it to Chicago, through O’Hare, and to my hometown without dying. My parents were both there, waiting for me. We hugged, I took a leak at the airport, and we drove home. Mom had made a roast which was delicious. As we ate, I asked, “Has anything weird been going on in town?”

My mom frowned. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know, like, weird chatter around town. Like about Ms. Brown, for instance.”

My mom looked down, and my dad looked up. Eventually, he said, “They keep saying they can’t say anything. At first, we thought that it was because they were closing in on someone and didn’t want to tip their hand, but, by now, we figure that they just really don’t know anything.”

I shook my head. “That’s awful.”

“It is awful,” my mom said. She went on a short monologue about everything Ms. Brown did for the community. I knew a lot of it, but there were a few new pieces of information. I didn’t know that she’d volunteered at the animal shelter after she had retired. Ms. Brown had never posted about it. I nodded and ate. I wondered if someone’s death was being posted to Facebook as I ate.

After dinner, I helped with dishes, thanked my parents for everything, and headed to bed. Before I went to sleep, I did log on. Instead of a specific death announcement, there was an image of several dead bodies, totally unrecognizable. One was a pile of dismembered limbs. Another was a badly charred person. Another was a body whose head was beneath the wheel of a car. Each one had gotten a heart reaction from Mr. Walker and comments from other people. I shivered, closed my browser and turned off my phone. I stared at the ceiling for a while before I was able to drift off to sleep. When I did fall, I had dreams that I couldn’t remember but that I knew were awful. When I woke up, I went downstairs, rubbing my eyes.

My mom and dad were talking quietly. When they noticed me, my mom came to me and hugged me. She was crying. My dad told me that an apartment building in town had caught fire. Dozens of people had burned alive. I hugged her back.

We had a quick breakfast and then picked up some supplies to drop off with the few survivors. When we got home, my mom took a nap, and my dad and I went for a walk. He asked me, “Why did you ask about weird stuff? About whether weird things were going on or not?”

I thought about it for a second. “There’s been some weird stuff on social media. It’s kind of hard to explain because it’s not threats that I can report or anything, but I don’t know. It just makes me wonder if there’s some common root to all the awful stuff that’s been happening.”

“But you don’t know anything.”

I sighed. “Dad, the longer I live, the more I know that I don’t know a single thing.”

My dad patted me on the shoulder, then he side-hugged me. When we got back to our house, I asked to lay down for a little while. I went back on Facebook and scrolled for a little bit. It took me a while, but eventually, I saw that my whole family was doomed. There was a series of posts celebrating my parents and me. There wasn’t a specific announcement about how we’d die, but I couldn’t see us not dying after the kind words.

I got up and went down to the kitchen. My dad was watching sports clips on the iPad. I wanted to tell him that he should do something great with the last moments of his life. But he was happy watching sports, and I couldn’t explain to him that he should be a saint before he was murdered in some untold way. “Dad,” I said.

“Yeah,” he looked at me.

“I love you and Mom.”

He smiled but kind of shook his head. “We love you too. Always.” I looked at him, and, over his shoulder, I saw out the window. There was something tall and moving. Its skin was an amalgam of scales, worm skin, exposed flesh and exoskeleton. Every place I looked, it was something terrible but different. I tried to smile for my dad, then I turned away.

I headed to the living room. My mom was reading. She looked up and smiled at me. It was a simple gesture, but I really did appreciate the sign of connection. I went to her and hugged her. I held her for a long time. When I let her go, I was ready for the end. I knew that it would happen, and I was actually at peace with it.

There was some scratching from outside. “Do you hear that?” my mom asked.

“Hear what?” I asked, hoping to stave off the horror as much as I could until all that was left of us was pictures of corpses and the intangible comments of people we hadn’t actually seen in forever.

She put her feet carefully on the floor, stood, but the floorboards creaked. Tiny feet racing past the door. If she kept the door open, they’d be heard in the walls. If she stayed up past two in the morning, with her door closed, she could catch them sneaking into the bathroom to steal her hair clips or trying to drag the bag of bread into the vent.

No lights, but the flashlight she swung about, searching them out. Her aunt got upset if she drove by and lights were on too late at night. No need to waste electricity, Florence would snap, her eyes full of calculations, spreadsheets, costs of every light left burning into the night. Valerie went toward the bathroom, found the toilet paper pulled down, a metal hair clip left on the linoleum. What did they do with her hair clips? She checked the mouse trap beneath the sink. It had snapped but the mouse had either been purloined by the vent dwellers or sprung by the mouse. Had she not watched a mouse nibble the peanut butter from a trap, the tiny pink feet resting on the bar that snapped down on whatever part of the mouse body it could? Delicately nibbling that peanut butter and not snapping that trap on itself. A bit of blood, which meant the mouse had been taken from the trap or had freed itself. She reset the trap, closed the cupboard doors beneath the gunky sink bowl encased in a square of counter painted a flat gray. Her toothbrush, her Dollar Store tooth paste. Almost out.

Having to ask for money to buy tooth paste made her drop her crusade to catch the little critters that lived with her in this house and get back to job hunting. She was down to something like fifty bucks. She owed St. Luke’s that and then some. Maybe not get ovarian cancer, maybe not get everything yanked out at thirty-one, maybe have a real job with insurance attached next time, dummy. She laughed at such a concept as wild as having a good job with a fantastic salary, with health insurance that actually paid for health stuff. She just needed a couple jobs, save every penny, live off boiled eggs and Top Ramen until she had enough put aside for an apartment, car payments, other living expenses and she’d be set for life. More laughter except it seemed she screamed and smashed the little clown painting her aunt had hung. Florence loved clowns. It was unnatural.

After cleaning up the broken clown picture, Valerie went back to her bedroom, to force herself to scan the local jobs market. An owl called outside, another answered. Clicks from the walls all around her as if those others yelled at the owls or were afraid of them. Perhaps ten minutes went by as she scanned job listings for long haul truckers, business managers that needed advanced degrees but were expected to work for minimum wage or as interns. Work at home assembling this or that. She had giant gaps in her retail-heavy resume, as well as her love life.

A small tap at the bottom of her door, the rustle of small voices, another tapping.

Valerie took a deep breath. Deliberate tapping. When they avoided her or ran from her? She had no idea what they looked like. Or what they were. “What do you want?” She called out, not leaving her bed. Tapping, louder now.

“You?”

A strange gritty little voice, a small throat cleared over and over. Her heart slammed about in her throat, her lips opening. Tap tap tap! She crossed the floor, expecting something to stab her ankle or bite her leg. She pulled the door open and yes, there stood three creatures, not even a foot tall, with great yellow eyes on stalks, like fried eggs. They wore bits of socks, no socks she had ever owned. Neon green for one, bright orange and red for another and the third wore a bit of blue scarf wrapped about its middle like a skirt. A sort of gray-green skin, smooth and shiny, hairless skin. Very long fingers, six fingers and two toes on each long foot. A slit for a mouth, which rippled and formed sounds, before she understood the sounds were meant for her.

“We speak?”

This from the one in the green sock. Holes had been sliced into the sock for the arms to fit through.

“Um,” Valerie tried to get her senses to realize this was real, this was happening. It took a bit. The world seemed made up of spoiled mayo splots and iffy tin foil structures.

“Sure.”

“Toast?” This directed at her from the one in the blue scarf skirt. All six eyes swiveled toward the tiny kitchen, to the toaster sitting on the counter. Their fingers interlaced. All had long pointed little claws. Like a kitten would have. Or a rat. Maybe they were rats that had been mutated by the local chemicals the farmers threw around so carelessly.

“You want some toast?”

“Toast.” This arrived from whispers all over. Toast, toast, toast, toast. She swiveled her head, unnerved and decidedly uneasy.

“I can make some toast,” she told the three emissaries or whatever they were. On went the lights, the creatures blinking their egg yellow eyes but trailing after her as she put bread in the old toaster, got out the Blue Bonnet, the last spoonful of strawberry jam. Moans arose, more of the creatures crept from around the corner, from the direction of the living room. The house had two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a sort of utility room that held the washer and dryer. The previous tenants had trashed it, which is why she could crash here at all. Her aunt was done, done as hell, with renting to strangers. At least for now, until she got tired of Valerie not paying a rent much or at all. Valerie could go, sink or swim right after that exhaustion kicked in. Florence was hard on everyone, even family. It’s a hard world, you can’t be soft—that was Florence’s life motto.

Now there were eight, no, ten, of the creatures with the snail-like eyes and the various means of covering their bodies. One even wore a potholder, with faded snowflakes against a dark blue background.  cut in the sides, the bottom sliced off for the legs. They all climbed atop the table, waiting patiently for toast. A sort of whispering among them, their hands rising and falling or touching. As if they communicated through touch as well as sound. Two rows with five in each. “How many of you?”

The green sock one cleared its throat. “Few.” He made hissing sounds, a clear meow, turned his six-fingered hand into a claw. Another gave that piercing child’s scream of a hawk, flapped its arms, little hand into a claw as well. Another barked like a dog, opened the mouth very wide to reveal small fangs set in the gums. A very long narrow tongue. What were these things? “Few,” said the leader of this band of snail people and all of them looked sad.

“Oh. Cats and dogs and hawks, sure. Coyotes, probably. People. Start on that,” she buttered the first two slices of toast, setting them on a plate, scooping out the last bit of jam, putting that spoon on the plate as an offering. They consulted each other over the jam, pointing at it, having arguments, before the leader began tearing up the toast into shares for each one there. “It’s jam. Strawberry. Do you not like jam?”

“Jam?” The one in the potholder dared touch the jam with its tongue. It garbled out something in a rapid way, nodding, the eye stalks nearly spinning in excitement. The others rushed to get some of that jam on their bit of toast. The sound of munching, the groans of happiness. They sat cross-legged or lay on their bellies, little feet waving. Burps and farts. They were natural, whatever they were. Demons surely didn’t burp or fart. Maybe they did.

“Are you demons? What are you? Why are you in this house?”

The leader sat up, bit of toast yet clutched in his hand. “Too fast.” He finally got out, the others nodding away. “Help?”

That meant talk slower or help them? “Help with what?” She decided to ask as the munching stopped, as the twenty pairs of yellow egg eyes swiveled toward her as she sat at the table, buttering two more slices of toast.

“We go. River. Wings. Teeth! Beaky.” The orange and red socked one got this out, struggling with each word. Did they need water now? Whiskey? “River.”

“River. What river? Do you all need some water or milk? I don’t have any. Water?”

Consultations, hissed arguments, gestures. “Water?”

“The wet stuff?” She pointed at the sink, they all sighed, nodded away, smiling or what looked like smiling with their slit of a mouth curved upward in a half circle. Valerie put water into a saucer, as she had no cups tiny enough for these diplomats. They all politely took a sip, lining up to do so. But it was clearly the toast and strawberry jam they craved, wanted, lusted for. “What river? What do you mean?”

“You. To the river. Nearby? River nearby. Take us.”

Boom went her stymied brain. They wanted a ride to the river. “You want me to take you all to the river. The Malheur? The Snake? The Owhyee? The Boise? And why can’t you just go? Why are you running about the house here at night?”

“We watch you. You different.”

“You all watch me? All the time?”

Heads shook, eyes waving back and forth, hands touching, their fingertip claws hooking, being released. “No.” Neon sock one stood, holding its bit of toast. “You not loud. Not bang walls. Not set traps. Not for us. Gray racers, yes. Not for us.”

“I’m not trying to kill any of you. Okay. How did you get here? In this house?”

“Carried. Cage. Escape cage, kill us. Stomp.” Neon sock stomped his two-toed foot, several moaned very softly in stark sympathy. She was reminded of a church meeting, where people rocked and swayed to a preacher telling a sad tale. “We live in walls or down below. Dangers. Can’t get back. Too far. Don’t know here. Outside strange. Inside safe.”

“So, you’re trapped in this house. Because you can’t get back to some river. So, it’s not nearby. Do you know the river’s name?”

“Fastwell Blend,” said the one in the snowflake potholder. He or she or it seemed very pleased to push that from its slit of a mouth. The others nodded, slapped the table top.

Farewell Bend, had to be. The Snake. She considered she had half a tank. It was maybe twenty miles up there, but she couldn’t just drop them off at the freeway truck stop there and wave goodbye. She’d have to motor up into the , going toward Hells Canyon or swinging onto that back way toward Weiser. Which should set her bank balance below zero after buying gas.

“That’s far. Maybe a closer river? The Malheur. It’s a few miles away.”

Eyes studying her. Their whispers full of clicks and hisses. “Fastwell Blend?”

“I don’t have any money. I’m flat broke. Worse than that. I owe so much to the hospital. I maxed out two credit cards, they’re mad at me, too. I don’t have a job. I was sick. I’m fucked. But sure, you want me to drive you all to Farewell fucking Bend and beyond, probably to Huntington or whatever’s up that way, I forget… sure. Let’s go. I got half a tank of gas!” She turned her head toward the sink rather than her intently listening audience of wall dwellers. Snail people. Dwarf demons. A six-fingered tiny hand, oddly very warm, patted her clenched fist which yet held the butter knife. Her stomach hurt at having to remember how much money she owed. Well over a hundred thou and climbing. She had told no one in her family. Her mother had a new boyfriend there in Tacoma, her dad peddled conspiracy theories down in Arizona somewhere and her Aunt Florence allowed her to live in the house the last renters had trashed. With the understanding, said very much to Valerie’s face, that it was temporary. Her few friends were just as broke or worse than she was.

Maybe a good deed would magically restore Valerie to some sort of solvent state. Maybe she’d next be visited by the lottery fairy, who’d hand her the winning Powerball ticket worth millions. Wasn’t that the real American dream anymore? Tears. Were there tears on her fat, stupid cheeks now? More hands patting her fist, murmurs, singing that rose upward like smoke from a friendly campfire.

“Farewell Bend. We go tomorrow. Pack up, wall dwellers. You’re going home.” Valerie stood, set the butter knife down. They all held very still as if they did not believe her. Hope on each little round face, the eyes moving apart, coming together over and over.

“We go?”

 “Yes. Tomorrow. You get your things. Your stuff?”

“Stuff… stuff? Stuff. Ah,” chittering, hisses, clicks, whispers. Nods all around. “Beelingings.”

“Sure,” Valerie replied.

The pile of stuff. The wall dwellers had dragged out or carried their copious collection of hair clips, bobby pins, Christmas jewelery consisting of pins, earrings and necklaces; nails, pushpins, several children’s size scissors, razor blades. Along with bits of cloth, several carefully folded small squares of tin foil, cupcake papers, athletic socks, string, spools of thread, sewing needles, a single knitting needle, a crochet hook. Other objects they had collected and squirreled away for their future trip to the promised land of Fastwell Blend. There were actually about fifteen of the creatures. There were two very small ones and three that seemed elderly, with their eye stalks barely able to hold up their bleary yellow eyes. “Maybe a bag to put all that in?” Valerie showed them a grocery bag from Wal-Mart. They stood back, the ten main ones, discussed this, before shrugging at her. Just a wave of shrugs. “You put your beelings into this. Dump it out there.” She began tossing items in, they chittered in real alarm until one grabbed another, chittered and hissed very loudly, waving a hand about. “Everything goes in here. We take it with us. It goes, too.” She found herself speaking in a weird, stilted way, as if to children who did not understand English at all. They spoke to her in the same way.

“It travel to river? All?” Neon sock asked, gray-green head tilting, eyes blinking at her.

“Yes. All your beelings. All of this goes into bag. It goes with us. Take it to river. All your stuff.”

They all suddenly nodded, sighing at understanding at last. The creatures began to carry their possessions, picked off the floor of this house or taken from drawers, baskets and jewelry boxes, into the bag, with one holding up the side. Valerie made to help but they went very still and careful, almost afraid of her or afraid she’d mess something up only they understood to be right and true. The heavier objects were piled in first, followed by lighter items. All very orderly. The piled crap became crap in the bag. But it was not crap to them, perhaps it meant they could survive in the wilds by a river. Make weapons or housing. Or art or sew clothes for themselves from scraps of a washrag or a torn bit from a blouse.

Valerie glanced at her phone clock. Ten oh seven. She could drive them up there, find a spot, drop them off, get back here by this afternoon. The crunch of tires on the driveway and oh dear, Aunt Florence. The wall dwellers gasped, she just sighed. “Go hide. I have your stuff, it will go here.” She placed the grocery bag beneath the sink, out of sight. They stared at the closed cupboard doors, then at her. “It’s okay. She won’t stay long. We’ll go after that.”

“We hide?”

“Hide.” They rushed toward the living room and the front door. But when Florence knocked, Valerie found nothing in that living room but the hideous brown couch and the mismatched lounge chairs that had been new during the Mary Tyler Moore Show’s run. The giant circus clown painting made her eyes hurt. Florence refused to take it down despite complaints from renters.

“Valerie!”

“I’m here, I was in the back. Hi, Aunt Florence, come in,” Valerie opened the door, let her aunt inside. Florence sniffed the air, then did so closer to Valerie. “Still not smoking dope. What can I do ya for? I have some coffee.”

“I had some. I’m coffee-ed out. I worked the late shift, saw the lights on. What’s going on here at night? I said no parties. I thought you were sick.” Florence stalked about, her nurse scrubs at odds with her character. “I have to go back in, we’re short. There’s a job there. Cleaning. You want it?”

“Cleaning? Uh… sure. What do I need to fill out?”

“I don’t know. Talk to Bonnie. She hires people. I said you needed a job, she needs someone to clean. The floors, bedpans, the bathrooms. She can talk about all that but she needs someone now. Can you start tonight?”

“Uh, sure. Sure. What time?”

“Call Bonnie,” and Florence pulled out a piece of notebook paper with a number scribbled across it. “It’s just . Maybe fifteen hours but it’s something, right? How are you? Don’t keep those lights on all the time. It drives me nuts. I’ll get you some candles. Call Bonnie. What is that smell? Did you get a cat?” Florence pulled no punches, her thoughts were never hidden. She had the jittery charm of a meth addict. That was unkind but true. True things are often not kind. You can be true or you can be kind, thought Valerie.

The creatures had a smell. She did not notice it but now she did. It did smell like a litter box in here a bit. But more green. A vegan cat taking veggie dumps.

“No. Probably something in the garbage.”

“Oh. Sure. Well, I have to go. You should come by for dinner one of these nights. I’ll make a meatloaf. Do you eat meat? I hear no one eats it anymore.”

“I eat meat,” Valerie said, struggling to keep her face straight. “I’ll call Bonnie.”

“Yes! And then you can pay a bit of rent.”

“I sure will.” Valerie waved to her aunt, who turned around and went off to her job at the Fairweather Nursing Facility. Work at the same place as her aunt? All the cuss words, all of them but it was something, indeed. Valerie dialed the number, got the voicemail for Bonnie, the main supervisor and one of Florence’s few friends. Florence had pulled strings, no doubt. “Hi, this is Valerie Pearson. I’m calling about the cleaning position, ?” She gave her number, ended the call. The wall dwellers had trickled out, standing way back, looking very worried. “Just a sec. We’ll go.”

“Go?”

Her phone rang, her few minutes left would hopefully be enough to secure some employment. “Hi, yes, I called about the cleaning position?”

“Florence said you needed a job. Can you start right now?”

Damn it. She looked at the little faces. Rebellion at once. Clean up shit and puke and death or go for a long drive? “I can start later today. I have an appointment this morning. With my doctor. I had ovarian cancer.”

“Oh,” Bonnie tutted at her end, said something to someone else, before resuming the call. “That’s fine. You know where we are? Just get here when you can, I guess.”

“I do know. Okay. Sorry.”

“No problem,” except it was. It was already two strikes for Valerie at Fairweather. Like every crappy job ever lately. She was already at fault, already suspect, already to blame for whatever. Her head ached, her heart ached. She felt more broken by that not disguised at all contempt from this Bonnie than her entire ordeal with her cancer. “I’ll see you whenever, I guess.” Click!

The miles flew, her gas gauge quivered toward not full. She had had a quarter of a tank, not half. Twenty five dollars to fill it. Half of her net worth. Not really her worth because she was over a hundred thou in the hole. Now she owed some rent. She’d scrub toilet, snort bleach, owe rent. Never get ahead. No matter what. Her car would break down. Her cancer would return, this time in her lungs or her brain, though right now she could not afford tests. It would just have to grow away and kill her because she could not afford tests. The wall dwellers dared peek through the windows but mostly kept on the floor so nothing could see them but Valerie. During filling her tank, hoping her bank account had not been emptied by some overeager collections company, they had hidden beneath the seat or in her trunk.

They snuffed the air, studied the sky where a hawk circled high overhead.

“You go?”

“I’ll make sure you all get to the river. Then, yes, I go.”

“Go to river?”

“Yes! This way. I don’t want to risk my car on those rocks. Come on,” she took the grocery sack, went on ahead as they fell in behind her, trotting, even the elderly ones. She slowed after a bit. “Maybe you all can ride on me? On my shoulders, atop my head? In this bag?”

“Claws,” said one, pointing at the hawk. They climbed her quite easily, with was rather repulsive. They seemed hot to the touch. Four rode in the bag, four sat on her shoulders, two on her head.

“I can carry the rest. You’re not that heavy,” she allowed the remaining five to perch in her cradled arms, her hair being used to keep the ones on her shoulder in place, the two on her head also clutching at her hair. Plus the sack and her keys in her pocket, her car locked up tight but who would steal her battered little Chevy Nova?

Onward. It seemed miles to go before she swept. Ha ha. The sun baked her, the dwellers were mostly silent, but chattered amongst themselves at times. She saw the sparkle of the water, smelled the river stink of rapid growth and decay and a dead fish somewhere. Pronghorns bounded off, a pheasant flew up, quail scurried off, before bursting into flight. Carefully, she lifted the two off her head, set them down beneath the shade of a big cottonwood. She put the bag on the ground, the four inside crawling out. She got the four off her shoulders, the others already down that had ridden against her chest. She marked the place in her memory but doubted she’d ever come here again but she might.

“This will have to do. I guess you can find a home somewhere here.”

“River,” breathed out the one in the neon sock, before the others burst into a strange song that all had to join, their voices rising up like the quiver of leaves during a rainstorm. Oh… she watched others with the same stalk-like eyes peeking from under rocks, from the center of bushes, from what looked like animal burrow entrances. They crept out, clearly afraid of her but curious. Hisses and whistles, clicks and taps, sighs. She stepped away from this, feeling she did not belong here now at all. Her fifteen turned, some of them turned, anyway, to watch her go. Little six-fingered hands lifted in farewell. They began to drag their grocery bag toward the oncoming group, who wore leaves and what looked like a chipmunk hide and a length of rope for clothes. Why did they need clothes or coverings? Where had that come from?

Valerie got back to her car. She unlocked it, sat in the driver’s seat. She could just drive up the freeway, when she got to the ramp. Drive toward Portland or even Seattle. Just drive. Beg for change, buy gas, just drive. Disappear. Not show up to mop floors, leave everything she had in her aunt’s house, be alone and free. Get lost. Just get so lost no one could find her, remind her she was a loser who owed, a loser who would never have children now, a loser who had taken weird creatures to the Snake River instead of reporting immediately to work. She needed to find her own Fastwell Blend.

Valerie turned back toward her life, her part-time new job, her aunt’s house. But she found herself packing all her shit, throwing it in her car. She left a note for her aunt, and she got back on the freeway, with twenty five in her account. She got to Farewell Bend, slid by it. Her gaze caught the Snake in her review. She had no prayers or hopes left to give anyone or anything. She just drove until the needle could get no more past the red.