J A M E S

 

It was almost midnight, way past Lilly’s bedtime. Kendra was long gone. Michelle and Rain had stopped by—Rain gushing apologies. James couldn’t concentrate. Dread was all he had, a rising, suffocating sensation, an unbaked loaf of bread plumping up out of control, stealing the space for his lungs.

It shouldn’t be taking this long.

They should have brought Lilly home hours ago.

“What’s going on?” he asked Wesley again. The patrolman had grown secretive—whenever his phone rang he stepped outside to answer it, and evaded James’s questions upon coming back in. “Is something wrong?”

“The detective’s coming to explain. He’ll be here soon.”

Detective. Explain. These were the wrong words. James paced around the living room, compulsively scratching his hair. It was probably standing on end, but he didn’t care.

“Soon. Soon. That’s what you tell a toddler who can’t tell time. That’s what you say when you have no idea. Do you understand what this is doing to me?” He sounded hysterical

and with his hair all affright no wonder Wesley backed away.

“I’m sorry Mr. Wolf.”

While eating casserole they were “James” and “Wesley,” but with the deterioration of events—the detective’s coming to explain—the officer had reverted back to hesitant formality.

Finally the detective came through the door, his skin as gray as concrete, and James almost laughed when he introduced himself.

“I’m Detective Harrison Gray.” He was a cliché in a spartan suit, his demeanor as grave as the grim reaper.

“What’s going on?”

“Do you want to sit?” the detective asked, the instant host in a house he’d never been in. James responded to the detective’s authority and perched on the edge of the couch.

“Is she okay?” He wanted to get on his knees and pray. He wished Kendra was still there, to hold him up, to provide ballast against this somber professional who was sinking his ship.

Detective Gray sat too, angling himself toward James. In his presence James shrunk, a baffled child in need of the idealized patriarch who could tame the chaos. Wesley stayed by the front door, hands in front of him, deferential and ready.

“Mr. Wolf, I’m sorry we’ve kept you in limbo. We wanted to have a better handle on the timeline of events. When we went to Dr. Kempner’s place his van was in the driveway and his apartment door unlocked. When we entered the residence…. I’m sorry to say, we found him Dr. Kempner deceased on the floor.”

James gasped, and the connective tissue that held him together started to disintegrate. “Lilly—is Lilly dead?”

“No, no. We don’t think so. She wasn’t there, but there were signs that she had been.”

“What are you saying?” The disintegration process stalled, trapped in a murky nowhere, unsure whether to course-correct or finish its self-demolition. For hours he’d feared the worst, and then believed she was safe, and now he didn’t know what to think. Were they back at the beginning?

“Is she still missing?”

“I’m afraid so. Mr. Wolf, I don’t want to keep the truth from you.” Cracks appeared in his concrete forehead. “There were signs….”

Signs of what? Bad signs, or the detective wouldn’t have hesitated. James’s panic bubbled up again. “Is she hurt, did you find blood? Did someone kill the doctor so they could kidnap Lilly?”

“Not that.” The detective pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his bulging jacket pocket. He unfolded it so James could see the contents. “Does this underwear belong to your daughter?”

James blinked. The torn yellow fabric came into focus but…. There was so much fabric, they were so large. Nothing like the dainty little girl’s panties he’d been washing for years. “I think so, maybe.”

“We found these in Dr. Kempner’s bathroom. He was in another room, partly unclothed. We believe…. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But we believe Dr. Kempner may have sexually assaulted your daughter, and she…. She’s quite strong now, isn’t she? With her size?”

James nodded. Nodded and nodded. If he kept nodding his head would bobble off; already his eyeballs were coming loose.

“We think Lilly might have killed Dr. Kempner, and then ran—”

A keening sound ripped apart the room, a scream that couldn’t squeeze through James’s tightening throat. The patrolman hurried over and gripped his shoulders to keep him from tumbling onto the floor. James saw in his tearful eyes that he was Wesley again, a sympathetic father.

“Maybe not, you don’t know…” James hyperventilated, the words a plea that would rewrite the past. He didn’t want it to be true—that his daughter had lost her innocence, or that she possessed the ability to kill a grown man. “You can’t…. It’s not…”

Wesley sat beside him, held him upright so the detective could finish.

“I’m sorry, I know this isn’t what you want to hear. There were signs—based on things we found in the apartment…. We think he might have drugged Lilly—”

“She’s just a little girl!” James screamed. Part of him whispered, A little girl in the body of a monster.

“We’ve expanded our search; the news helicopters are helping. We consider it likely she’s on foot, which gives us hope that she isn’t too far ahead of us.”

It was meant to be optimistic news: she was out there, alive, lumbering away at the speed of a behemoth. But a waterfall of red erased what James could see, or even think about. His child had been hurt (blood). His child had attacked her attacker (blood).

“How? How did she…kill him?” Did Dr. Kempner have a gun? Or maybe she grabbed a kitchen knife. But that whispering inside him knew. She didn’t need a weapon. He felt her strength the last time she embraced him with her boa constrictor arms.

“Signs indicate…. Your daughter’s…very large now. The coroner’s initial impression was that Dr. Kempner was crushed, based on the condition of his torso.”

The blood cleared from his eyes as James blinked. What the detective was saying couldn’t be true. Yes it could. Lilly wasn’t some boulder that rained down from the top of a mountain.

“Was it an accident?” James asked, still unable to envision Lilly with murderous rage.

“Maybe—if she wasn’t sure of her own weight, strength. You don’t need to worry, Mr. Wolf. Given the other evidence, that Dr. Kempner lured her, drugged and assaulted her, self-defense is….”

James tuned him out. The detective couldn’t grasp his actual concern. Every instinct as a father told him to snatch the car keys, drive every street of every town until he found her. But every instinct as a man told him to lock the doors. And not let her in if she ever came back.

His worst fears had come true.

His daughter was a mutant. Grotesque. And deadly.