Of Daughter and Demon

By Elias Anderson

Edited, Produced, and Published by Writer’s Edge
Publishing 2013

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

© 2013 by Elias Anderson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

The Spider Inside

Blood and Gasoline

Bite the Hand

Cookie Cutter Man

To Harry, for giving me my first writing
machine and Nancy, for adopting me in California even though I
wasn’t an orphan; E.C. Belikov for being my writing partner and
friend; Double-A, my co-conspirator, beta-reader, and air-tight
alibi man; the Conn family for letting me be a part of theirs and
Drew for introducing me to them. Passmore: DO SUMPIN; To my Pop,
who helped me find my iron and just gave me the steel; my brother
Noah, who makes me feel better even when I’m not; and my sister
Molly, the last American gypsy. Much Love to my family in Montana
(except Mike and Myrna, who can suck it) and Oregon, especially
Nik, my own personal Tyler Durden. Oh and Urg, my arson services
are still on the table. Flessner, April, Gumby, and The Doug: I
never see you, but I love you. Though he may never read this, I’d
like to thank Brent, because he’s always believed in me.

To Dayna, Iris, and Addie; the three chambers of my
heart.

We Don’t Rest In Peace We Just Disappear

- The Distillers

I was mixing a drink when I got the call.

“You’ll find the body in the basement of the
house on the corner of 110th and River Way.”

Sure, I knew where the voice meant. And it
wasn’t so much a house as it was a burnt out husk. A giant corpse,
like one of them bums you sometimes see on the late news that a
couple frat boys decided to bathe in gas and cleanse in fire, but
if the corpse they were talking about was two stories high. People
been trying to have that house torn down for years. Bad things have
a way of happening there. It was built in the twenties or maybe the
1910s, but it wasn’t until 1942 that they found the bodies in the
walls. I’ve seen pictures, skeletons with cement stuck to the ribs,
people that died choking on wet foundation and never got a chance
to scream.

The couple who found the three bodies had
been remodeling the basement and broke through a certain wall, and
oops, look what we have here. It’s rumored, and this is bullshit
you ask me, that the ghosts of those three men were still in that
wall, and when the couple broke the wall down they freed the
ghosts, who then took vengeance on the only people they could find
to blame.

The couple died six months after the bodies
were found. They still can’t be a hundred percent on what happened,
because both the husband and the wife bled to death, eviscerated,
and the knife that did the work--big job, a foot long butcher--had
been washed and was found in the sink without any prints. All the
doors were still locked from the inside, dead-bolts, chains, the
whole bit.

For the next ten years the house was shuffled
back and forth between buyers and was never lived in, and then it
became a brothel, and I don’t think anyone knows all the things
that happened over the course of the next thirty-six years. People
disappeared. People were robbed and killed and beat and sold. Some
a them were young girls, no older than six or seven. Some a them
were little boys.

Thirty-six years that went on, how, I don’t
know. Money is my only guess, and it’s probably the right one. You
wouldn’t believe what a few grand could buy you in them days if it
lined the right pockets. It closed eyes, closed mouths, closed
cases marked as unsolved or death by misadventure. It’s just the
same today, except the price is higher.

Then, in the winter of ’88, maybe early ’89,
a priest set the place on fire when he found out his son was being
serviced by male employees. A priest, you believe that? Killed
nineteen people, burnt ‘em to death because he couldn’t handle the
thought of his kid in a same-sex gang bang. Then he shot himself,
the priest did, right there in the street in front a the house.
They say that dark stain out front is his blood, and that it will
never wash away.

It’s made of brick, that old house. It still
stands like a monument to shit, it’s another empty god in a world
full a them.

Since then it’s become a popular place for
rapists, sometimes it’s a shooting gallery. Point is you don’t go
in there unless you got good reasons or bad business. A little girl
had been missing for four years, and I guess that was reason enough
for me.

It had been slow all day so I closed up shop
and armed myself. I may have a reason to go down there, but I ain’t
stupid, not so much that I’d walk into a deathtrap like that with
no means a defending myself. I got my gun, a .45, and tucked it
into the holster in the back a my pants. I also brought a real
sharp knife, a flashlight, and a lead pipe.

By the time I cross the river and get down to
110th there’s about an hour a light left. Wish I had more time, but
the longer I sit wishing for it, the more time there ain’t. And
this can’t wait until morning. The body will be gone by then, if
it’s even still there. The rats have had plenty a time to carry it
off and eat it, and I don’t mean the kind with four legs.

The house feels empty though. I stand on the
sidewalk looking up at it, and it’s about the emptiest thing I ever
saw. I’m cold, but I got my gun, this knowledge warms me up.

“You ain’t goin’ in there, are ya mister?” a
little voice on my left asks. I jump. Just like a little girl, I
jump.

I look down and there’s a kid on a bike,
wearing only a helmet and short pants.

“Are ya?” he asks. “Mister?”

“I got to.”

“They goan kill ya.” The kid kicks his foot
against the cold cement and rides off, whistling a sad tune, maybe
the last tune I ever hear. Not so bad, really. The stain on the
sidewalk really does look like blood.

There’s no door on the house, I walk in like
it’s a cave right here in the middle a the city. Most of the floor
in the front room is gone, there’s a mountain a trash and boards
and bricks been set up near the edge and used for stairs. If a
goddamn smack-head can make it down so can I, so I proceed directly
into the bowels a the house.

I smell it. I know that smell. My nose leads
me to it, it looks black on the floor in splatters and streams, and
I follow the trail a blood to a door. I open it and shine my light
on a set a stairs wet with the blood. This blood can’t be more than
twenty minutes old. I wonder if it’s the blood I’m looking for, and
what it might mean if it is.

Down the stairs to the basement, to the
cellar, and into the front yard a hell. The vibes down here are
bad. I’m not one to go for all that hippy-dippy bullshit but there
is no mistaking this feeling. People have done wrong down here, to
themselves, but mostly to others.

My stomach turns cold and I start to sweat,
my mouth is dry and then I find her. The only picture I have of her
is four years old, but I can tell right away it’s her. Same eyes,
same blond hair. A little girl named Alice, and she’s far beyond
dead. I ain’t cried but twice in the last thirty years but when I
see little Alice I cry again; here’s a beautiful little girl that
never hurt nobody, a little girl snatched outta her home, a little
girl torn in half. Her legs are about a foot from the rest of her.
My heart stops in my chest when I look in her eyes and they move, I
think she’s somehow still alive and then realize that there are
flies landing on them and taking off, landing and rubbing their
legs together like they do. I shoo the flies away and want to pick
little Alice up but I can’t. I’m too weak. I was too weak to stop
this from happening to her and now that I found her I’m too weak to
do anything about it. She can’t stay down here god dammit. She
can’t stay down here with the rats and the bugs and the goddamn
human filth that see a dead little girl torn in half as the height
of attraction.

I take off my Mack and wrap the two pieces of
her poor little body up. I take my gun outta the holster and take
the safety off and rack it, because any scumbag that gets in my way
now is getting plugged, no questions asked. BAM, right in the guts.
They can die for the next three days in this stinking pisshole of a
dead house and I won’t bat an eye.

Killing won’t bring you back, Alice, but
killing is what I’ll do. Some people just need to be dead, that’s
all. No good or bad about it, just the facts a life.

A half hour later I’m at Joe’s. He’ll sew her
back up, make her pretty again. I use his bathroom to puke, held it
longer than I thought I could. When I come back out he’s holding a
plastic baggie out to me.

“I found this in her hand,” Joe said. I took
it.

“She was holding this baggie?”

“No, I put it in the baggie. She was holding
what’s inside.”

Inside is a blue scrap of torn cloth. I feel
sick when I see it. There are a few drops a your blood on it,
Alice. Was this what they was wearing, whoever did it to you? You
can talk to me, Alice, I’m here to help you. I know you’re scared,
but it’s over now. You can be free and happy up there with the
angels, while I’m down here looking for the devil. There ain’t no
hell, Alice, not for you or me, there ain’t no hell but the hell
I’m in, the one you left behind, and if you tell me this was what
they wore, I’ll find ‘em, and I’ll...well, you don’t need to hear
that part, but I’ll fix ’em. I’ll fix ’em.

Good girl, you did just right. What a brave
little girl you were, Alice, to hang on like that when they were
doing to you what they done. I hope I can be as brave as you.

“Harry, about the funeral...”

“Yeah?”

“Well, you know we won’t be able to release
the body until the crime is solved, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I know. I can still have a
service though, right?”

“I’ll put a call in to Fisher and Sons,
they’ll take care of everything for you, and we can schedule it for
Monday.”

“You remember all that stuff we talked about
before? For if, well...”

“I remember, Harry.”

“You know her birthday? I guess they’ll want
that on the marker, yeah? And that inscription we had. Just in
case?”

Joe nodded. He’s a cop, a coroner, but still
a cop. He knows the score. Normally a fella that brought in a
little girl torn in half to a police coroner would be detained,
prolly arrested and charged with the crime. But Joe, he knows, and
all along, he’s said he’d help. Joe moonlights at a funeral home,
this Fisher and Sons, and I know you’re in good hands now, Alice. I
only wish I had the guts to go and make all the arrangements for
you, you deserve that, but I’m weak, I’m sorry, but I’m just too
weak.

I say thanks and goodbye to Joe and leave him
to his work, sad work that it is. Like fixing great paintings that
mean people destroy. Putting statues that have been beautiful for
centuries back together because someone couldn’t stand it, couldn’t
stand the way anything nice makes ‘em feel. God bless Joe, and all
them like him.

With the baggie in my pocket, I drive down to
the river and park. I bet he’s down here tonight, the little puke.
I walk through the cold wet streets, my eyes burning for that
familiar shape of Gimpy, his peculiar and creepy shuffling way of
walking, his one leg like a man, the other like a child. I find
Gimpy by a trash-can fire, so stoned he don’t know I’m right beside
him, smoking a cigarette. I let him come to this realization
naturally, on his own time. There’s no need to hurry now. I hurry
and I make mistakes, I always been like that. I can think through
most anything if I got enough time. And now time is what I have. I
have the rest of my life to ask questions with my mouth, and my
knife, and my pipe, and my gun, and with red hot pokers, and barbed
wire, and with wrenches, and hammers, and with a blowtorch if I
have to. Anything to get the answers.

Gimpy tries to run when he realizes it’s me
but I grab him before he can even take a step.

“I need you to find something for me,
Gimpy.”

“You--you’re hurting my arm!”

“Just quit bitchin’ long enough to listen,
OK? You know I got money, Gimps, and you know I got plenty of it.
And that I can get more. Don’t I always get more if you need
it?”

“Ow! Y-yes!”

“OK. There’s a little girl that shouldn’t a
been murdered.”

“You know I don’t do kids no more! They did
that chemical thing last time, you know that.”