_______ Town was already on hard times, and did not need those cosmopolitan city folk coming in and ruining things further. Of course, some of the big money, the lifeblood of the town, came from the city but the disease passed through just as easily and in the first weeks of the new year, there was a hell of a mess to clean up.

Some wealthy lunatic had apparently launched what could only have been a gigantic art installation of metal framework and shattered glass at the top of the old condemned public housing and then just left it there. Rows of plants had apparently been left sitting in the cold air over winter and until someone braved the creaky elevator (who was paying for that?) next spring, they had been unattended. When recovered, the entire rooftop was beginning to develop an overgrowth, vines crawling up the metal latticed dome, glass with only barely-visible tips glinting out menacingly from the dirt.

A fine memory of the installation’s previous owner. The recovery team returned a carefully removed, carefully sharpened shear blade to the house and left in case the owner ever returned. A bell on a string, tied to the plaster-covered handle, could sometimes be heard when the wind grew strong. Of course, not many people were ever around to hear it. Even if they were in the area they would not stand under that building. It creaked horribly in the wind and in addition sometimes dirt and shards of glass would come flying off. There were rumors of desiccated fingers and toes joining the rain of debris. These rumors were so charming that they made teenagers screech at their sleepover parties. And so the rooftop greenhouse made its way into the town’s culture, as if that culture were not strange enough.

The blinding half-glass half-stone tower out in hills was a little more obtrusive. Unless some major machines were called in from the city, getting enough power out to the windy valley to take it down was nearly impossible. It was too hard to tear down the stone, too easy to break the glass, the cellar was flooded, and pulling all the white tile lining the moat would take too long. Just driving out there in a four-wheel-drive was tough. There were signs that someone had cleared a road out there at one time but had long grown over, with trees tipped over in their path. The overgrowth was natural, but the trees in places appeared to be deliberately cut, with the smooth sweep of a saw or with some manner of axe. As you got closer, the trees thinned out as the ridiculous concrete moat consumed the landscape but there were a lot of axes lying around.

The place was rarely touched or seen, except by hikers. They did not get closer than the moat (falling in would mean a messy or slow death with no hope of rescue) but passing by was often in their favor. You could find anything from small, useful hand axes to large ornate battle axes carved with angels and roses that nobody of this time would ever need. Hikers were sometimes saved by coming across a free blade they could use to chop through some branches or crack open a can of beans. Sometimes a less than savory character would raid the area for expensive axes to auction out for a sweet dollar via the city black market, but for some reason the axes always mysteriously disappeared before reaching their buyers.

And while on the topic of unsavory characters, the town was relieved to find a dropoff of such people lately, at least loud and shameless ones. After a massive arrest and shootout down at a local diner (the holes were still being repaired) some of the major members of a gang involving illegal clothing manufacturing and exporting were taken into custody. Their factory was shut down, and shipping containers containing a dangerous load of puffer jackets, thermal undergarments, and denim containing toxic dye were disposed of. A body was found among the clothing pressed out of shape and that too had to be disposed of, albeit by different authorities.

The visiting patrol force from the city, after a particularly spectacular bust of a violent church invader, and the subsequent low-key escape of the same person, left for the city once again. Reports of disappearances (and bloody reappearances) of bodies in the city drew them back. Whatever they had been looking for in the small town had gone.

Before leaving, Ravel peeked into Lei’s house. He was not really hoping to say goodbye, he was actually more afraid of Lei being there than her not being there. What would she say? What could he say? Ravel feared both argument and physical confrontation, and Lei had always been likely to supply both.

He was relieved. She was not there. Nothing was. All furniture had been moved out. The place smelled damp and it appeared that there were at least two mosquitoes per square meter. Someone had left the back window open. Ravel left quickly.

The place went up for sale a few months later. A year after that, Val’s house entered the market as well, having been handed to the Long corporation somehow, who fobbed it off on a local realtor. The realtor found a perfectly maintained door left unlocked when they went to check it out. The place was huge and airy, but entirely empty, obscenely clean, smelling a little excessively of bleach and old air freshener, but nothing an open window wouldn’t dispose of. There was a side door that led to what appeared to be a small bedroom. On an empty bed frame, there was a cardboard box of things in the side room with a note from the old owner. The old owner’s handwriting was a mess.

Toss or keep anything you like -V

The one who’d left it the house to the realtor had the initial M, and nowhere on the records was a V mentioned, but that wasn’t a great concern to them at that moment. At the top of the box were the house keys. Underneath, some paper with primitive doodles of flowers and houses. Under that, some blank stationery, a pack of birthday candles, a computer magazine, a flower pressing kit, and some stuffed toys.

The stuffed toys looked very old. They may have been cats at one time but eyes and ears were missing, along with hair, whiskers, stuffing, and the little thing toys need to be loved by children and not give them nightmares. The flower pressing kit consisted of two pieces of plastic with a loopy logo, pressing sheets between them and a screw at each of the four corners to tighten the covers around the sheets inside. It contained some little lavender flowers and various red and green leaves. At the very back, a naive child had decided to press some kind of insect between the sheets, and the thing had burst into a black smudge from the pressure. But the flaky, shimmery black shells and crooked legs gave the thing away. Too small to be a cicada, too hard for a fly, but too hard for a beetle.

Suddenly alert, the realtor took the box to the police. These insects were known by the police and a few conscientious people as the remains of the faceoff between the local killer, the Weeping Blade and the city legend, the Sentinel, twenty years ago. The bodies of both were found lying in the house, or what was supposed to be their bodies. One was an old man, twisted over a railing, the other young and cut nearly in half by his own saw. It was the same house where a family had been murdered by a clown only a few years earlier.

That house had never been resold. Upon visiting Val’s house again, with time with police in tow, the realtor sighed. It was a shame; both his house and the old one were really interesting places that should have been passed on to the new generation, but of course a city eccentric would ruin it.

The police shuffled around and found a single locked door in the side room. They were pondering over if it was necessary to knock it down, agitatedly searching the ring of keys for a possible alternative.

The realtor sighed again and loudly, and looked for something to do to make himself look less worried about selling the house, less indifferent about the case, whatever. He decided to test if the electric company had reconnected the house.  There were no bulbs yet but the reconnected fridge seemed to be on. And so, the realtor pulled the handle and saw through to the other side.

The smell blasted forth. It wasn’t just different. It was unbearable.

The bodies were piled high. In the heated glass prison, they were sagging, virtually melting over each other. There had to be at least twenty, no, more, the room seemed to stretch on forever in a sort of hellish landscape of limbs and torso and maybe heads, unidentifiable things that might have once been heads.

The air was thick with blood and vapor, just laying eyes upon the sight brought forth tears that felt like bile.

The police charged back over, towards the fridge, then pointedly away. Murmurs. Bad memories. Someone dragged the realtor away. One of the policemen, although none of them could tell you who, made a call. Retching, giving a report. It was too late for cake, though.

The death figures for the _______ Enclave skyrocketed that day, that week (it took a while for anybody the muster up the drive to count the bodies.) The blip was passed out of the Enclave and into the real world that children of the Enclave like Lei and Val had never seen. And, tapping away at a screen with the faces of our good friends on them, the real world had to make a decision.

 

THE END…