The morning after I killed the werewolf, I was lying on the bed of our hotel room when Nick bursts into the room carrying two cups of coffee and a newspaper. He gave me the cup and opened the newspaper. The insides of the newspaper fell out onto the ground as I sat up and looked at him. I put my coffee on the table beside my bed. The front cover had nothing interesting on it like it normally did. No fires, no murders. I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to tell me. “It took me a while to find it. A city twelve miles north of Chicago, so obviously nobody really cares. Kelpie.”
“What?” I asked. “Like the Irish and Scottish sea horses? Those are myth.”
“You’ve been in this business your whole life and you still believe in the idea of myths?” I glared at him. “Yeah, alright, so certain ones are, but not…just read this,“ he said, then sighed and handed me the newspaper.
Seventeen-year-old Evanston boy, Kyle Elliot, found dead off coast of Lake Michigan by 27-year-old James McCove. Kyle’s parents reported the boy missing last Thursday night after saying he was going to go swimming with friends. His body had washed up on shore while James and his fiancée were taking engagement photos. “By the time we saw him, he had to have been dead for at least three day,” says James. Kyle’s friends have remained silent on the occurrences of last Friday night when the three friends went out for a fun last day of summer vacation. Further investigations to come.
“His friends aren’t saying anything? Why?” I took a sip of my coffee. It burned my tongue, but I’d had worse burns in worse places.
“Well, they either had something to do with it, or they saw something they shouldn’t have. Like a horse….swimming in the water…that was a woman a few seconds before.” He nodded after each pause before he went on to explain another aspect of the Kelpie.
“The chances of this are really low, you know,” I said, standing up to start packing my belongings.
“Yeah, but Sage, it’s only twelve miles away. If this is a kelpie and I miss it, I will be so upset.” He walked into our small bathroom to get his belongings.
I signed and said, “You’ll just be upset if the kelpie turns into a model and you miss it.” He leaned back out of the small bathroom and smiled at me. I rolled my eyes and lay back down on the bed.
So, within ten minutes, we had our belongings in the back of our 1963 Opel Kadett. We were heading out of Chicago limits, and halfway to Evanston, Illinois. It probably helped that Nick didn’t like going the speed limit. He insisted on going 65 through a 45 mph zone. I didn’t necessarily agree with this tactic, but I also was not a good driver and had no say in how the car was operated. Good enough to get my license, bad enough not to be allowed to drive. When we fist started Watching together, he used to say, “Are you the one driving? No. You are in the passenger seat. You know what passengers do? Nothing. They sit there and let the driver do what he needs to. Drive and listen to good music.” I quickly stopped pestering him about his driving.
Nick happily drummed away on his steering wheel to the Metallica song that blasted from the Opel’s stereo system. When he was happy, it made me happy, but I was tired. I hadn’t had very much sleep the night before because of the werewolf. I leaned my head against the window and slowly fell asleep into a dream.
In my dream there were two people, I think they were angels. There was a female and male. They couldn’t be anymore than twenty-five. The female was in blue skinny jeans, a neon green shirt and a neon blue hoodie. She had blonde hair. The boy had light brown hair. He wore nice-fitting jeans, a dark blue t-shirt that read, “Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of the song?” Their names were Colleen and Rupert. The topic on what they were arguing about was still not entirely clear. Something about how Mordechai will bring about the end of the universe. “The world’s not the only thing ending. We are talking about ending on a colossal level. We’re talking the whole universe!” Colleen had angrily yelled at Rupert. Rupert took a step back from Colleen, just as the ground below him disappeared and he fell deep into the earth.
“Rupert!” Colleen screamed his name and quickly ran to the edge of the hole. She jumped as though to follow him down, but just as she would have started in, the ground reappeared. She landed hard with a thump. She patted the ground. A dark shadow crossed over her face as she looked up. She looked straight at me. “This is your fault.” She took a step towards me and raised her hands. A bright white light blinded me and suddenly, I was falling into the bright sunshine.
I opened my eyes and caught myself right before my face would have planted into the ground. I heard Nick’s laugh. I glared up at him. “Very funny. Hilarious.”
“We’re here!” He said happily. This was one of those moments that I did not like him being happy. It was at me expense. I tried to remember the dream I had been having during those few moments of sleep that I got. I had been having that dream for months and could still barely remember it.
This hotel, Best Western something-rather, was a small step-up from the Heart O’ Chicago Motel we had just stayed in. It looked better on the outside, decorations were better inside, and there were no bugs that I could see before we got to the front desk, which rarely happened. I doubted my brother noticed half the stuff I did though. I try to ignore them, but that doesn’t usually work. Bugs make me more squeamish than killing wolves.
The woman had the front desk had a pained face. Perhaps because her dark brown hair was pulled too tight into her bun. “Can I help you?” she asked as though we were interrupting something important.
“We need a room,” Nick said, smiling politely.
She blew a big pink bubble. “Do you have a reservation?” If that question could be said as a threat, she succeeded in doing so.
“No.”
“Double bed or single?” She asked, obviously still bored.
“Double, please.” Nick replied in the same bored voice as the stiff woman. I smiled. She glared at us and then was quiet for a minute as she looked through a few papers. She quickly typed something into her computer and then went into the back room. Nick and I glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. When she returned, she had two keys. “What are your names?”
“I’m Alex Triol and this is my sister Emily. Sibling trip. We take one every ye-”
“Don’t care.” Nick stopped talking and drew his head back. The woman typed a minute longer and handed the two keys to Nick. She started reading her magazine again.
“Thank you for wasting your time on us.” Nick said sarcastically as we turned to go to the elevator. “We really appreciate it.” She didn’t reply. Nick handed me a key that read 305. Nick pressed the third floor button and the elevator doors closed.
“What’s this?” I asked. “You’re good looks didn’t work?” Nick had a habit for making all the girls like him and do anything for him. His close-cropped light brown hair had grown out and darkened in the last seven years and a lot of woman seemed to like him now.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure,” I said, looking back at my reflection on the silver door. I looked like Nick, but more feminine, and my hair was still so light that it was almost blonde. I seemed to make guys run away from me though. Watching does that to a person. It gives out an aura that many people are scared of.
“If anything in this town is an evil creature, it’s that woman,” Nick said a second later, and with a high-pitched ding, the elevator doors opened into a green hallway with off-white carpet. It reeked of spoiled milk. “And there it is!” I said, pointing out the issue, wanting to go back into the elevator, give the stiff woman my key back, and go back to the Heart O’ Chicago. We walked down the hallway and turned left to go down a hallway. It only had one door at the very end. 305. I unlocked the door and awaited the terrible smell that was sure to come. It didn’t, instead it smelled a little better than the hallway. I took the bed closest to the window where I always slept. “This window has to open…of course it doesn’t.” The window was just a window. “I might break this.”
“No,” Nick warned. “Alex Triol can’t afford that on his card!” He held up the credit card that we were using for this trip. “Go change, we’re going to the police station.”
When I came back out from the bathroom in my pin-stripe pants and white tucked-in blouse, Nick was waiting by the door, ready to go. He wore dark black pants, a black shirt and a purple tie. “Let’s go. I made sure to have my ID in my wallet and caught the door right before it closed.
We walked into the Evanston Police Department and smiled at the old balding man sitting at the front desk. His nameplate said his name was George. “I’m Detective Kate, and this is my partner, Detective Jones. We are with the FBI. We need to see the body of Kyle Elliot.” I told him, holding up my ID as Nick did.
“It was a drowning. Why is the FBI concerned?” the man asked, slowly standing up to look us straight in the face, which was hard considering he was at least a half foot shorter than us.
“We sense foul play.” It was the excuse we used every time. “Just wanted to make sure.” He cautiously looked at us. “So, about that body.”
“Do you mind if I call your boss-man?” He looked at us, holding out his hand for our badges. We smiled at him and handed him our badges. He picked up his phone and dialed the number that was on our badges. His volume on his phone was loud so we could hear everything.
“Leslie Dullum. May I help you?” We heard Leslie’s familiar professional country accent come through the phone. Anytime that we, or any other Watcher, needed more information or back up, Leslie was the one to call. If someone did not believe that we were who we weren’t, that disbelieving person would call her and she would confirm that we were whom we said. She was so much help, but she was a demon. We could never be too open around her. We could trust her for ninety-nine percent of the things that happened to us. She had literally worked for Watchers for generations and not once has she slipped up. Every time her human body would start to deteriorate too much, she would find a new body to live in. She always used a vacant body so she would not hurt anyone at all. She currently resided in a woman’s body, which had been tanned too often, and her hair had been bleached too much as well.
Right before my mom died, she told us to go to Leslie. At first, we didn’t trust Leslie and didn’t want to tell her anything. We had not met her except one time. She caught on quickly and sat down, taking her cigarette out of her mouth. “Look, you can go on ahead and put your little pentagrams or whatever inside your rooms and line your doorways with salt or what-have-you, but the fact still remains that I ain’t hurt none a you Watchers. I helped your momma and your daddy and their mommas and daddies and their’s too, and I ain’t never done hurt any a ‘em. I won’t do nothing to you either.” That still didn’t help much, but we at least tried to trust her after that. In these seven years since then, I learned to trust her and I assured Nick that he could trust her too.
“Hello, this is Officer George Carrin with Evanston Police Department. Did you send two detectives to Evanston, Illinois to check up on the body of Kyle Elliot?” He asked, still looking at us.
“Did they say that I sent them to check up on the body of Kyle Elliot?” we heard her ask.
“Yes.”
“Well then, yes, George, I did. Have a good day, George.”
“You too. Sorry for bothering you, ma'am.”
“That’s all right, George. Bye!”
He put down the phone. “Follow me,” he said, walking around the desk and to a set of stairs leading down.
A minute later, we were alone in the morgue. It was cold and smelled of formaldehyde. George had left us alone to look at the body. “Ready?” Nick asked and I nodded back. He pulled back the sheet. There was Kyle Elliot. He looked like a surfer boy. His hair was shoulder length and blonde. “Not what I pictured.” I gave him a questioning look. He sighed and explained, “Any Kyle’s I have ever met have been complete-”
“Okay,” I said, interrupting what was sure to come. “What are we looking for? I don’t study up on kelpie’s very often.”
“Well, usually, a heart or liver will be missing. Sometimes, just bite marks.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So we need to cut him open?”
“Or you could just ask me,” a voice said from behind them. I jumped and turned around to face a smiling young man. He had brown hair and dark brown eyes that crinkled with his smile. “Who’s asking again?” He took a step toward them. We flashed him our badges and told him our names. “Well, I’m not supposed to tell you this, I’m actually not allowed to tell anyone this, but the FBI is bigger than me. I can’t hold anything back from you, right?” He smiled again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. We smiled at his joke. “The poor guy’s heart was missing. His liver is perfectly intact and no bite marks are to be found. It almost looks like the heart was taken out surgically.” Nick looked at me and almost smiled. I rolled my eyes.
By the time we got back out, it was almost dark, so we just continued to go back to the hotel for the night. I was in the bathroom, changing my cloths, when Nick asked through the door, “You want to go swimming tomorrow?”
“I don’t know about this Kelpie thing.” I opened the door. “Really, the chance that this is actually a kelpie is slim to none.”
“He was missing his heart,” he said slowly.
“I know, but,” I sighed. “We’ll just go see what we can see tomorrow.” With that, we turned off the lights and I quickly fell asleep.
prev chapter
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Subscribe
Flag Writing