33. A COMPLETELY UNEVENTFUL DENOUEMENT. WE CAN PROBABLY CUT THIS PART, SERIOUSLY, STOP READING

Where the flood had receded, it had left behind a thin film of dried mud that turned lawns, sidewalks, and blacktop all the same grayish brown, like we had all been sucked into a sepia-toned photograph. But the town was still here.

We were doing Amy’s belated birthday at John’s place two weeks after the actual date, having agreed to at least hold off on the celebration until we were no longer at risk of trench foot. The stealth house had made it out of the flood needing only new carpet on the first floor (which had been badly overdue anyway, the old carpet having been assaulted by everything from coffee spills to fireworks burns).

We showed up at the door at eight that night, to hear John screaming at someone from inside. The last phrase I heard before we knocked was, “That shit isn’t cute anymore.”

He yanked the door open and let us in without a hello. He looked like shit, like he was five days into a bad flu.

John had been fighting with Joy. She was off in a corner, messing with her phone, as if she’d checked out of the argument long ago.

To John, I muttered, “So … she’s still here.”

John snapped, “She won’t fucking go! This is fucking ridiculous.”

Joy looked up from her phone and said, “I dumped his stash. He’s not happy.”

“You … what?”

“The meth, the Adderall, the weed, all of it. Down the toilet it went. Whoosh. Bye-bye.”

John stabbed a finger at her. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

I said, “You’re arguing with a swarm of shape-shifting bug monsters, John.”

Joy said, “And losing!”

Amy said, “I’m going to go get the casserole out of the car,” and went back out. There was no casserole, or anything else, out there.

I paused to contemplate the ridiculousness of inserting myself into this discussion, then said, “Seriously, uh, Joy, you can’t make somebody stop being addicted that way. You get rid of the drugs, the addiction is still there.”

She shrugged. “So? Doesn’t mean I have to make it easy.”

John looked at me. “See? This is fucking bullshit. I didn’t ask her to live here. I didn’t ask her to fucking watch my every move like she’s a fucking parole officer. You know I sleep on the couch? In my own house!”

“You know you made her, right? I don’t mean you made her stay here, I mean you made her, like that’s the end of the sentence.”

“That’s what I keep saying. You see those clothes she’s wearing? They’re actual clothes! She bought them! With my credit card! She can make herself appear to be wearing anything!”

Joy, still staring intently at her phone, muttered, “I like to shop.”

“My point,” I said, in a lowered voice that Joy could probably still hear, “is that you can presumably make her just go away, right? I mean either go away as in leave, or go away as in, poof, she’s just gone. Hell, John, there’s a real Joy Park out there in the world. How would she feel knowing you’ve created a clone of her and that you live with it?”

Joy said, “It?”

John said, “Yes, Dave, if the actual porn star Joy Park somehow shows up here from Korea, we will have to deal with that.”

Joy said, “Actual?”

He said, “You know what I mean!”

Joy looked up from her phone. “Do you really want me to go? If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

John took a deep anger-control breath, his hands balled into fists in front of him. He turned back to her and said, “I’m not saying you have to go. But you don’t control my life. This can’t be how it is.”

Joy shrugged. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.”

John started to explode again, but I put up a hand and said, “You’re ruining Amy’s birthday. Come on.”

I went and stuck my head out the back door, and found Amy standing on the stoop, watching Nicky pull up in her Toyota Prius. John insists on inviting her to everything, just because she’s been a dear friend for the last twelve years.

I said to Amy, “It’s over, you can come in.”

Nicky uncoiled herself from within the Prius, carrying a plastic box full of cupcakes. Her eyes were a pair of black portals into a soul that harbored only spite.

“David!”

“Hello, Nicky.”

“I have two red velvet cupcakes in here, those are yours! If somebody tries to take them, smack ’em! Did you know red velvet is just chocolate with red food coloring added?”

“No.”

Lying bitch.

We went inside and Joy’s face lit up at the sight of Nicky. “Heeeey! There’s my girl!”

They hugged. I assumed that no one had explained that she wasn’t human; I’d have to take Joy aside later and let her know.

Amy pulled a birthday card envelope from her purse and said to John, “Why did you mail this instead of just handing it to me?”

John looked confused. “When did you get that?”

“It was in the mailbox when we went to check on the apartment yesterday.”

“I have no memory of sending that.”

I examined the card. “Postmark is three weeks ago.”

John saw my expression and said, “Hey, I wonder if it’s a clue. Open it.”

Amy said, “I’m almost afraid to.”

She opened it and inside was a card that said HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, DAD, in festive text that had been scribbled out with a ballpoint and replaced with BIRTHDAY, AMY SULLIVAN in John’s handwriting.

There was something inside.

A scratch-off lottery ticket.

We all froze.

I said, “No. John … you bought that on the Soy Sauce?”

Amy looked alarmed. “That’s like a form of cheating, right? We … we couldn’t. Could we?”

I said, “Well, the whole thing is a scam. So, what, somebody buys a ticket with a one in a billion chance of winning, not knowing that in reality they had a zero in a billion chance? Seems like a pretty miniscule difference.”

It said across the top in silver letters that the grand prize was ten million dollars.

Amy said, “We’re giving half of it to charity.”

I said, “Fine. We don’t even know if it’s a winner.”

John said, “I’m actually pretty sure it is.”

Amy fished a nickel from her pocket and scratched off three rows of boxes.

We had won.

$250.

John said, “Hey! You can buy Amy that book now! Almost. You can probably talk them down.”

Amy said, “What book?” I had never told her about the signed copy of Hitchhiker’s I’d shopped for. We had decided that my decision to follow through on treatment was my gift to her. Still seemed like she was getting cheated, but whatever.

I said to John, “You could have won us the freaking mega millions jackpot and you got us two hundred and fifty bucks instead?”

Amy said, “One hundred and twenty-five.”

Out of nowhere, John started laughing. I didn’t know what exactly he thought he was laughing at—I still didn’t have a damn job. But then I was laughing, too. Then, so was Amy. Joy and Nicky asked us what was so funny.

Amy said we won the lottery and that this was the best birthday ever. Joy high-fived her and said she had two different homemade pizzas in the oven and I guess we were letting this thing make food for us now. Then Munch and Crystal showed up and it was like the whole previous month had never happened. Then there was a knock on the door and John went to answer it and standing there was the fancy-haired partner of Detective Herm Bowman.

He asked the three of us to come outside. I had assumed Herm would be waiting out here, but the young man had come alone. I closed the door behind me and said, “If you’re here to tell me more kids are missing, I’ll say right now, I don’t think we’re up for it.”

“That’s not it.”

“And I don’t see Detective Bowman…”

“Nah, he says case is closed. Won’t even talk about it.”

“But you’re not ready to drop it. Right?”

“You see what your reality show friend said about all this? The whole bit about a flying monster, snatching kids?”

“Yeah. So? You were there, what did he get wrong?”

“One, I wasn’t there, not really, and what he got wrong are all the parts that make you look guilty as shit.”

“Ah, I see. Herm’s putting ideas in your head. Well, believe what you want. We all live in the reality we choose.”

“What kind of hippy bullshit is that? Look, the case is closed, like I said. So why not just tell me what really happened? From the start, for my own peace of mind. It won’t leave this stoop and even if it did, who’d believe me?”

“The other cops will believe you, they just won’t care. It’s better that way. Ask Herm.”

“So, like I said. What do you have to lose?”

I glanced back at John. “What do you think?”

John shrugged and said, “Fine. You want to hear a story? Well, buckle the fuck up.”

So, we told him the story just as it’s laid out in these pages. I finished with, “And then we all gathered here to celebrate Amy’s birthday and then you showed up and here we are.”

John said, “Uh, we may not have made it clear but Marconi had two spears on the RV.”

I said, “Right, right. He had lots of them. They were all over the place.”

The detective nodded, thoughtfully. “I was eating a donut, not a McMuffin.”

“Yeah, but it seemed too cliché.”

“You know what? I like Marconi’s story better.”

“Me, too, if I’m honest.”

“Mainly because it actually lines up with the known facts in the case, where your impossibly convoluted version seems carefully crafted to be utterly impossible to verify at every goddamned step. What I know is there were twelve missing kids reported. No follow-up from any of the parents, all of whom are in the wind now, including Loretta Knoll. Sightings all over the place of this supposed bat monster…”

“Which,” I said, “is now scattered in tiny chunks across miles of river. Problem solved.”

“And two victims’ statements identifying you as the perp.”

“We’ve been over that.”

“And one witness saying the bat monster is you.”

This brought the conversation to a screeching halt for several brutal seconds. I thought I heard thunder rumble in the distance, but I think it was just a heavy truck passing by.

Amy said, “What? Who?”

“Philip ‘Shitbeard’ Hickenlooper.”

“Ted’s friend? The one who drowned?”

“Who said he drowned? He not only made it out, but says he watched your man here turn into the Batmantis on one occasion and suspects it in another.”

That brought an even longer silence. Someone coughed.

I said, “Well, that’s just ridiculous. Everything was chaos, who knows what he thinks he saw. That’s probably why he has that nickname. He’s so full of shit he, you know, wears it like a beard.”

“Uh-huh. Did I mention he has you on video? Recorded it at the river, with his phone.”

“When it was dark, and rainy. Plus, any asshole can download video editing software, they can add special effects and everything, make it look so real it’d fool an expert. Doesn’t prove shit.”

The detective just eyed me, silently.

I said, “What?”

“Instead of dismissing the idea that such a video could exist, you jumped right to calling it a well-made fake. Didn’t even ask to see it first.”

Amy said, “There is no video, is there?”

“Don’t need one now, do we?”

I said, “Oh, fuck off. Don’t play your cop mind games on me. Even if this ridiculous accusation was somehow true, and I’m not saying it is, but even if it was, then that still wouldn’t implicate me. If anything, the Batmantis was trying to help. If it turned up where kids were being taken, it’s because it was trying to stop it, and failing. If this ridiculous fantasy of yours were true and we took steps to hide its involvement, it would only be because we knew people would get the wrong idea, focus blame in the wrong place when it was clearly this other situation, with the mine and all that. But we didn’t, because your story is rid—”

“Ridiculous, yes. Remember when I said I liked Marconi’s version better? It’s because I’m pretty sure you people made everything up, the larvae and the mine monster—one big convoluted parable about not judging monsters, just to cover for the fact that boy here started werewolfing out and snatching children.”

I laughed. “Ha! Haha! Ha. No.”

John said, “How about this—in our version, the Batmantis is dead and gone, nobody else gets hurt. In Shitbeard’s version, it’s still around—you know, because Dave is standing right here. Well, if the Batmantis strikes again, there you go, you’ll have your answer. So, you see the bastard, feel free to blow it out of the sky. You have our blessing.”

“I will do that. And I sure as hell don’t need your blessing.”

I said, “Again, you’ll believe what you want. But what you believe, it says more about you than me. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

He walked away, saying, “I’ll be seeing you. That’s a promise.”

He drove off into the night, his completely dry car rolling through the not-rain. I put my arm around Amy.

“I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

The door opened behind us. “Come in, guys!” spat Nicky. “Your pizza’s getting cold!”

The nozzles of the anti-intruder flamethrowers whooshed to life. She was instantly burned to death.

Amy

That didn’t happen.