Disappearance of the Half-Child

There was a strangeness that followed Jodie Doubleday her entire life, now she has been taken.

Disappearance of the Half-Child

1.
There was an exquisite contrast between the cold steel of the revolver and the soft suburban hands now wielding it. Moira Doubleday was pale and unsteady as she trained the sights of the gun on the man standing before her. With the pair behind a row of derelict houses, she spoke, her voice was shaky, her daughter was missing.

“W-where is she? What have you done with her?” she asked, her voice louder than she anticipated.

The man before her was a neighbour, Edwin Salamander, and he was covered with a slick layer of blood that painted his face and chequered shirt. The blood of course had origins in another matter, not wholly unconnected to the abduction of Moira’s daughter, but added totally to the distressed mother’s confusion.

“I-I heard her scream and I-I” but before he could finished the deafening crack of the gun shattered the still morning air and Edwin promptly fell to the concrete beneath his feet. He felt warm sticky life-blood spilling down his neck, and the searing heat now present alongside his head told him that the top of his ear had been shot clean off. Moira had dropped the revolver in shock, not ever meaning to have pulled the trigger. Edwin made a second attempt at explaining his situation.

“Mrs Doubleday, please, I swear to you I came running when I heard your daughter’s scream, just as you did. This blood, it’s from another matter, and it in no way is it Jodie’s. I had botched the butchering of one of my animals, when amongst the ruckus I could hear her scream before somebody silenced her. I swear to you I mean no harm.” Edwin’s voice trailed off to a whisper, he knew his words were not reaching Moira, who was now in a crumpled lump against the pavement and slowly descending into shock.
“Look at the cut of you, after doing something awful. All that blood. What have you done with her?” Moira barked venomously.

Mr. Salamander approached the widow cautiously, flicking the spent weapon that lay on the ground away with his foot. Any attempt she made now to speak emerged as nothing more than a croak, her eyes darting furtively around as the blood soaked man drew nearer, attempting to help.

“Moira, I know this may seem absurd to you, and my words may not carry weight just yet, but I believe I know who took Jodie, I know why they have taken her and I can cast a good guess as to where they will end up by the end of this day. It is in her best interest that we act now with speed and without the folly of doubt. The police will have nothing, no help or knowledge, to offer us. If we have any hope of finding Jodie before she is taken beyond our reach you must trust me, if only for a moment.” said Edwin, who was cool and calm and proffered a helping hand to the lady sobbing beneath him.

There was a warmth emanating from Edwin, a trusting energy with a source unknown. She caught the metallic smell of the fresh pigs blood now drying on his face, his shattered ear adding to it by the second. Despite this something primal, deep within her, knew he meant no harm. She reached up and took his hand to rise again to her feet.

2.

Moira was sat at the foot of a cluttered kitchen table, her face pale from shock, trembling hands struggling with a tumbler of whiskey. Edwin was stooped over the kitchen sink, the last of the blood now being washed from his face and a stained bandage wrapped around his left ear. His head was still ringing from the gunshot as he sat down opposite Moira, filling himself a generous measure of the cheap whiskey which resided in a plastic bottle atop the table. He waited for her to settle, and after a fashion he spoke.

“Allow me this chance to explain myself, and at the end, if you believe me to be a liar, you can use my phone to call the police. Yet before I finish I would ask you to indulge in me your trust, even just for a moment. Mrs. Doubleday I have been living here in Old Man’s Wharf for eighteen years, and in this time I have devoted all of my efforts to the one job I was tasked with many, many moon-turns ago. The task of watching over and protecting your daughter Jodie. I have prevented harm from coming to her with great success until this unfortunate morning. I know the child is not your own, nor your husbands. I also know the strangeness that has followed Jodie all her life. She has never slept, not a night since she was born. She has never gained strength from eating our food and always has seemed to you to be half present. But Moira, I need to hear in your own words about the morning you found her.” said Edwin in a calm, knowing voice. Moira began to speak up with an air of confidence.

“It was eighteen years ago this morning, when we found her. My husband and I were out hiking in the forests under the Grandal Mountains. There was not a puff of wind, and a stillness seemed to enshroud us both, yet out of the quiet we heard the unmistakeable sound of a baby crying. We moved quickly amongst the trees, but even now I have few words to describe the moment we found her. Growing out of the forest floor, bursting from the crust of spent pine needles and dead foliage was a basket woven from roots and flowers. It seemed, woven not by hand but by the forest itself. And there within the basket we saw her, her eyes an oak-ish green, like acorns. In that very moment she seemed to install within us a wholeness, one we had tried to find by trying for a child of our own. But it went deeper, an instinct felt deep in our bones, something primal. We bundled her away and within weeks we had documents forged, she would now be our natural daughter. As she grew, the strangeness grew with her. At first we thought she would die, she would not eat, nor sleep and it was only when we called Doctor Neeson that we gained a clarity about the totality of the oddity that was now our child. She had a pulse but no discernible heart. Under her skin was not soft but as hard as the bark of a tree. But she was so beautiful. There was a perfection that radiated from her pinkish skin and her gaze reached down into the depths of me. We knew she was like nothing we had ever encountered. So we kept her sheltered and hidden as best we could, for years, until this morning.” at that Moira shuddered and a torrent of tears erupted.

“Apart from yourself, and my apologies, but your deceased husband, it was only Doctor Neeson who had knowledge of Jodie’s condition? You never spoke of it to anybody, you never divulged details to the Shepard’s who found their boy in similar circumstances?” asked Edwin, even though he knew the answers, he needed to ask.

“No. Not a soul. She was our angel. A gift from God himself. All we ever wanted was to protect her, to love her and now - Oh God. Now we have failed. She’s gone.” said Moira.

“I am familiar with your daughters condition Mrs Doubleday and I assure you she is special. We will find her. But we must now act fast. Jodie is what we call a Half-Child, a child of the earth. Legend is they have been gifted to the earth, and there are many more like her, however there are powerful people at work attempting to do a great evil. It is these people who I believe to be her abductors, and there is one way to find out but I will need your help.” Edwin said, as he gathered himself and stood back from the table. Trusting him, Moira followed.

Edwin and Moira gathered items which they might need, torches, rain coats, food and water. He stashed the revolver in the knapsack among the other supplies and ushered Moira into the jeep kept parked in his garage. The two strangers, bonded now by a shared goal, took to the road in the hopes of finding the missing girl. Little did they know it would be weeks before they found Jodie, and in the effort would become ensnared in a plot much larger than either of them could ever have anticipated.

3.

Jodie Doubleday sat shackled to a rusting drain pipe in a mouldy cabin not far from her home. Her eyes were trained on her abductor. The man in question was named Herman Eckbert, a slight wiry creature, balding and pale at the wrong side of fifty. He was pacing impatiently over floorboards that were too dank and rotten to creak, eyes avoiding Jodie with great effort. He had been holed up in this cabin for over six weeks awaiting instructions and now he was becoming frantic.

He crossed the half-lit room and peaked out the shuttered blinds to catch a glimpse of the world outside. Golden light from a harvest moon illuminated the woods around them and as he turned his back they both heard the lonely cry of a wolf, being carried on the song of the wind. His gaze turned to Jodie and when he caught her eye in the lamplit cabin he thought just for moment there was something other in place where her eyes should be. She flicked him a smile and said “I now know you, Mr. Eckbert, you will remember that. Won’t you?”. At which he shuddered, saying nothing he brought his attention to the old newspapers scattered over the kitchen table.
Herman was not in control, he knew this, he hadn’t been in control for weeks. The cabin he rented was situated at the edge of Grandal National Park, and the presence of the half-child had been drawing out creatures from it’s depths since their arrival. The rotting wood erupted in a plumage of fungi within their roost. Hundreds of birds began to gather in the trees and on their slate roof, talons scratching incessantly. The grass and moss outside had grown at double the pace, gifting the hut with an aura of abandonment, and wolves now roamed this blushing wilderness.

The gurgling hum of a car engine emerged from the driveway, unexpected. It sent Mr. Eckbert into quite the flurry. Hurried footfalls could be heard crunching on the gravel path and as they approached he deftly armed himself with a long cerated blade that lay just inside the cabin door. A voice could be heard pleading through the divide, desperate and panicked.

“Please, you have to help. My husband is in the car, he’s having a heart attack. I have to use your phone, I need to call an ambulance.” A lady’s voice begged.

“We have no phone here lady. Best you get back in the car and drive to the hospital yourself. I can’t help you.” Herman responded, unconvincingly. His eyes darted to Jodie.

The panic induced by their new arrival carried with it the promise of Jodie’s rescue. To his folly Eckbert cracked the door an inch, and with that chance the lady at the other side cocked the muzzle of a pistol and pointed it straight at his heart. Before he could raise the blade that his hand carried, she hissed, and five words were shot at him, “just stop, you are done.”. With that Moira Doubleday stepped in over the jam of the door, and Herman Eckbert fell back on himself trapped and defeated. Jodie noticed a gauntness in her mother, pale in face and gashed with a horrible wound over her left eye. Behind her a man she recognised to be their neighbour, Edwin Salamander, followed her mother inside the cabin and surveyed the frail man cowering on the wooden floor. Within minutes they freed Jodie from her bonds and she stood with them, looking down on Herman Eckbert. The captive man now pleaded.

“I am a professional, this was just another job. Let me go, and you will never hear from me again, I swear it.” Herman said, but he was cut short by the arrival of another guest.

Rising up the front steps of the cabin could be heard the soft, heavy footfalls of a shaggy grey wolf. With padded feet he entered through the door, and Moira immediately stepped back with a whimper and spun the gun around to meet the beast. Jodie raised a hand to calm her mother.

“He means us no harm, you can point the gun elsewhere. Honestly, Mom, don’t be afraid.” Jodie said, instilling a calmness in her startled mother.

The alpha circled Herman, sniffing the sickly sweet sweat that was beginning to soak his clothes. He was at eye level with the floored man. With teeth bared he had a growl like thunder, everyone in the cabin could feel it rolling in through their bodies. He quietened and Jodie spoke up, her eyes burning into Herman’s with intensity.

“I have told you, Herman, that I now know you. I will allow you safe passage this day, but not before we make use of you. I want you to stare deep into this wolves eyes, for he will haunt you long after you leave this place. You are to make good with the days you have left in this world, but if you fail to transmit kindness I cannot warn you enough of the horror that will befall you. You will be watched always.” Jodie spoke softly, almost kindly.

Jodie Doubleday took Mr. Salamander to the side, he would remain behind to question Herman further. They would leave him here in the presence of the wolf, after which Edwin was to leave Eckbert disappear into the night. They had become ensnared in a plot that was finally starting to unwind, and there was important work to be done. As she left the confines of the cabin the birds in the trees slowly returned to their faraway homes. The wolves dissolved back into the night and vibrant energy that enshrouded the cabin moved elsewhere.