Little Girl Lost

I looked around the classroom. Except for the bizarre red color, the thin film of dust overlaying everything in the room, and the sense of abandonment and age that I could feel and see, it looked as though the children and their teacher had stepped out for a fire drill. Pencils lay in the small groove at the top of many desks, small childish tooth marks in the thin yellow paint of the pencil, rendered by a child in deep thought, returned spelling tests and other such paper paraphernalia generated during a school day lay on the desks, or had slipped down to the seats or the floor. A list of chalk-borne spelling words in a column on the left side of the old-fashioned blackboard. The words, 'Our Country Tis of Thee....' on the right side. Dust streaked paper portraits of American Presidents carefully cut from some teacher's guide book, and matted with black construction paper, now drooping from their corners, the last a hearty looking Bill Clinton, little imagining where his dick would take him.

In spite of the easily seen abandonment of the place, there was no significant indication that anyone had touched anything in, or outside, the building. Surely, in eight years someone would have moved furniture out, perhaps cleared the building for sale...something. This place looked as though everyone had just gotten up and walked out, never looking back. What could cause them to do that?

Come to think of it, there had been little to no graffitti or other common vandalism anywhere inside or outside the building. I guessed the place had the whole town spooked, including the punks. The 'up' side to a haunted building, I thought to myself.

I moved to the center of the room, shunting aside the little, almost toy-like desks, which gave off tiny shrieks as they grudgingly moved across the dirty floor and I began setting up the equipment as Kes had shown me. I was intent on putting the sound recorder on its correct setting, when I looked up, almost peeing my pants. Standing no more than ten feet away from me, near the back wall of the classroom, stood a little girl, looking just like the murdered girl, staring at me. "What the fuck..." I said under my breath. As a cop, my philosophy is, rule out the impossible, then what's left is the solution.

It wasn't possible for a dead girl to stand around, even in an old school, so I ruled that out. A neighborhood girl no doubt, I guessed I had been wrong about the school scaring off kids. I looked down to set the recorder on the floor, and when I looked up, she was gone. "Now, how did...." I thought. Then it occurred to me that I was between the doorway and the little girl, and no way she had gotten by me, at least not that fast. And if she'd gone out one of the painted windows, the room would have been blasted with midday South Texas sunlight.

So, maybe my 'rule out the impossible' theory needed some work. The best backup theory I had at the moment, was that I hadn't seen any little girl. My suggestible mind, already supplied with the image of the girl, had patched together shadows and a toppled child's desk into the ghost of a murdered girl. That particular thought made me sad. To think that the only remnant of a sweet young girl's life, in my mind at least, might be a mistaken confusion with some furniture. No happy school graduations. No wedding day, shared with her parents and friends. No children playing around her, returning a lifetime of love. No peaceful death surrounded by her family, after extending the family of man through one more generation in such a long, long line of generations.

The thought made me tear up, and I wasn't really embarrassed. I don't know if it was the miasma of the place, but Kes' family loss really did sadden me terribly. I was thinking about this, looking back at the carryall, as I walked through the doorway. I felt a chill, quickly looked up and saw my father, holding the same little girl's hand, as she stood next to him, no more than a foot away from me. Both of them with set, determined expressions on their spectral faces. I could almost see through them. Almost. If I hadn't jumped from the unexpected shock, I would have run into them. Or through them.

"Kendall, you've got to leave," the specter of my father said.

"Dad, Daddy, what....how? Dad, you're ....dead." And then the shock of the experience really hit me.

The first twenty seconds of this strange conversation was like seeing a deceased loved one in a dream. It doesn't seem at all odd that you're talking to someone that you know is dead, and they to you. But the next twenty seconds was like awaking from that dream. You realize that, no matter how much you might want it, it can't be. "Explain this," I said, in a firm voice. My best cop voice.

"Kendall, you're in danger. You must leave, please. You can't help her or me. It's here" Daddy said.

"Help...'her?' Who, the little girl? Is that Izel?" I said, already beginning to believe in the impossible.

"It killed her, and planned to take her back with it. In its human form, it was on the way for a few more, and I...I caught it, and 'killed' it. As much as any demon can be killed," the shade of my father said. "Kendall, I've missed you. I so wanted to see you grow up. If I had died normally, I could have done that. Izel and I have fought it for the last ten years, ever since our deaths, and imprisonment here. But she and I are captive to it, and it to us. We're trapped in this school where it killed her. It's slowly winning, and we're getting weaker. Soon, we'll be gone. It will have won, and taken us with it back to hell." His despondency spoke louder than his words.

"A 'demon?' 'It?' Oh, Daddy, no! What can I do?" I said, anguish now in my voice.

"Nothing...nothing," he said sadly. "Save yourself." And then he and the little girl Izel just...flickered out.

I stood, speechless for a few seconds, but then my cop instincts kicked in. I called Kes. "Kes, are you okay?"

"Yes, dear, why?" she asked.

"I just saw what I will swear was my father, and your sister, Izel. And they warned me."

"Your father? What on earth...? Maybe we shouldn't be separated....if you actually saw a manifestation, I'm a little worried about our safety," Kes said.

"But I thought you said there couldn't be any physical danger?" I reminded her.

"Now I don't know, but we could be in some kind of psychic danger."

"Okay, I'll come back to you, I'll just get this room and one more set up, okay? At least it'll give you some kind of baseline measurements." I said.

"Okay, but hurry, darling," Kes said. I finished up in the first classroom, then moved back up the hall towards Kes, and set up more instruments in a classroom two rooms up from the first. I was bent over fiddling with a camera, when It spoke to me.

"What a lovely young lady you are," a mellifluous voice said.

I looked up, to see a handsome man of about 30 or so lounging in the doorway of the classroom, a grin on his face.

"Who are you?" I asked. "This is a 'No Trespassing' area."

"Yes, I know," he said. "Who do you think made it so?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If that little girl had not been so cruelly raped and murdered, her lovely little body and mind tortured and abused, and ultimately destroyed, now rotting in a grave, why, I imagine this little school would still be crawling with such creatures. Who do you think should be credited with changing that for the better?" My skin crawled at his words, and the relish with which he spoke them. I pulled out my Glock 33, my personal weapon, and pointed it at him.

"Put your hands behind your head!" I announced. "I don't know who you are, but you're trespassing here. We'll let the Premont PD sort this out."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Good luck with that, bitch. Maybe I'll shoot your tits off before I kill you. Would you like bullet holes where your sweet little nipples are right now? Imagine looking down at your hot little breasts, and seeing blood squirting out, instead of mother's milk. What would you think, seeing that, then feeling my big, fat cock splitting your mouth and jaw open as I force it down your throat?"

Maybe the creepiest thing about his pronouncements, were the jolly tone he spoke them in.

"Get down on your face, on the floor! Now!" I commanded him, going through the steps. I was afraid the next step would be shooting him in the chest, when he decided to charge me. I could see he had nothing in his hands, so it was an armed police officer against an unarmed lunatic. No matter how rational his tone, his words were pure insanity.

"Will you scream, and babble wordlessly like your pretty little girlfriend down the hall did? She was happy to suck my dick, begged to, actually, even offered to let me fuck her tight little ass. Oh, it was a VERY cozy fit in her ass, though I'm sorry to say I did make her bleed a little, what with me being so much larger than her ass hole could actually take in. But she forgave me, and then begged to clean off my cock by sucking it, and when I came in her mouth, sadly, my seed blew the back of her head off. Or was it this that did it?" Incredibly, he now had a weapon in his hand, a 9 MM, and he was bringing it up to point it at me.

I squeezed off 4 rounds, the explosions ringing through the classroom, and his body was blown backwards through the doorway, into the gloom of the hall. I advanced warily, my weapon pointed at the doorway, as I went to see what damage I'd done to him. Suddenly, the cell phone on my belt chirped loudly, startling me. I picked it up and flipped it open, keeping a close eye on the doorway, but squatting down to present a smaller target in case he returned fire.

"Kendall! Are you alright?" It was Kes' voice.

"Kes, are you okay?" I said.

"Yes, but what was-" she began.

"Can't talk now, wait a second," I said, then put the phone down. I returned to checking on where the stranger had gotten to. I slowly advanced to the doorway, and, seeing no sign of him, edged out into the hall. There was no sign whatsoever of the man, the dusty coating on the hall floor barely disrupted. I rushed back to the phone.

"Kes! Get out now!! Run like hell for the door, and GET OUT OF THE BUILDING!"

"But, but-" she began.

"No questions! Get out! He may be on his way there, go to the street, you'll be safe there, I'm on my way." I rushed down that hellish hallway, keeping an eye out, then when I got to the breezeway door, ran around the outside. Seeing Kes standing near the street, looking perplexed, I called the Premont PD and told them there'd been shots fired at the school. Almost immediately, I could hear the comforting sound of a police siren. The cop car showed up a minute or two later, the car bouncing over the low curb, and the two cops inside approaching us warily with weapons drawn. I told Kes to put her hands up, as did I, and I yelled to them that I was a State Trooper. Of course, they probably would have known that, but it's far better to be safe than sorry, and to give the officer more information than less.

The first cop allowed me to show him my badge, and after I explained the situation, he and his partner did a sweep of the building, while I held Kes. After about a half hour, they called Kes and I in, saying that the building was clear. I asked them if they found anything at all. They asked me to show them where the shooting had occurred. I took them to the doorway, and showed them where I'd been standing, and where I'd fired my weapon. They examined the wall past that point, and the floor, and found nothing, then one of the officers examined my Glock.

"Well, your clip IS short 4 rounds, but that doesn't mean anything. There's no bullet holes, or blood here, ma'am. My guess is that you either shot the guy, and he's got 4 rounds in him, which is unlikely given that there's no blood, or you hit him in a bulletproof vest, and the rounds are in the vest, and he's one sore mofo, or that you imagined the whole thing."

"I heard 4 shots!" Kes exclaimed.

"Yes ma'am," the officer said. "But we don't have any evidence of that. I'm sorry." Kes glared at him, but didn't say anything.

"Thanks officer, I appreciate your help anyway," I said, telling Kes with my eyes that there was no point in making a fuss. She rolled her eyes, but said nothing. The two officers departed, and we were left alone in front of the school.

"Why didn't you argue with them?" Kes said.

"Because it wouldn't have done any good. To tell the truth, if I were in their place, I'd probably have said pretty much the same thing. You could see there's no real physical signs that I ever fired my weapon. They could have checked for gunshot residue on my hand, but what's the point? No apparent crime was committed. We did our civic duty, so let it go."

"Okay then, what DID happen?" Kes asked. I told her about the events leading up to firing my weapon, and her beautiful eyes got wider and wider. "A lunatic? Shot him? Cocksucking?"

The juxtaposition of her words cracked me up momentarily, and I giggled, a welcome relief to the tension I felt - on my behalf and Kes' too. I was concerned for her safety, far more now than had I simply been her assistant and bodyguard. Kes looked confused, then began smiling, and said, "Well, you know what I meant! This guy was threatening you, and he told you that he said that he'd killed me? Clearly, a neighborhood nut, don't you think?"

"Equally plausible," I said, "is that this was the same guy who murdered Izel. And possibly my father."

"But, ten years later-" she began.

"Your father, did you say?" Kes said, catching my last words.

"My father, or his, I dunno, ghost or specter or whatever, said that he had died 'killing' some kind of demon. This could be that demon," I said.

"And it's not unheard of, that a murderer returns to the scene of his crime, even ten years later," I added. "And, in any case, he DID threaten us. We need to work together, I don't want this ending up like some crappy horror movie, where people split up against all logic, then get killed in hideous ways."

"Well, I certainly don't mind spending the rest of our time together," Kes said, smiling at me.

"I like the sound of that. Can I kiss you?" I asked her.

"Please do, ma'am," she said, tilting her head up to me. I brought my lips to hers, and my arms around her, and was reinvigorated by her touch, and by that strange electricity, very strong right then. "I have no idea what that is," she murmured, nuzzling my neck, "but we DO make sparks, don't we?"

I felt so much better, feeling her touch. I had never experienced anything like that before, not even with Sandy, God rest her soul. Was it love? I didn't know, but I never wanted it to stop. Kes looked relieved, too, after we kissed, and held each other for those few short moments. "Wow, I feel like I just drank three cups of coffee," Kes said.

"You mean you have a splitting headache?" I said.

"No, goof, I feel full of energy. How about we get back to work? I have to get something done here, or UT is going to wonder why they bother paying me."

"Alright," I said, "but as your bodyguard, I must insist that we stay together."

"Understood. Now if we hustle up, we can get the rest of the sensors put in today. Unfortunately, we'll probably be at it until midnight," Kes said.

"I'm all yours," I said. Kes looked at me as though she were going to say something, then apparently decided otherwise. She headed back inside, turning to me and said, "Coming?"

God, if this were a porno story, the retort I had ready for her....

We got down to business, working through the afternoon and evening, and by 11 PM, had all the sensors set up where Kes wanted them. "Where's all your instruments?" I asked her, as we walked out the breezeway door into the fresh air. It seemed brighter outside at 11 PM than it had inside the school at midday.

"What do you mean?" Kes said.

"Well, I've seen all the scientific scenes in horror movies. Don't you need a bank of monitors, and oscilloscopes with sine waves in green that go up and down?" I said. "Maybe something else that makes a buzzing noise?"

"Um, no, science has finally marched on past Vincent Price movies. Each instrument we put in place records its data on chips. We retrieve the chips along with the equipment later, then read them on the appropriate readers. We didn't need telemetry here, and it was just an extra expense," Kes said.

"You're so smart," I said, batting my eyelashes at her. "I just LOVE smart women!" Kes rolled her eyes.

"Damn!" Kes said.

"What?" I said, on alert.

"This is Premont, 'Very Small Town,' Texas. It's 11 PM. There is no real food to be had in Premont at 11 PM. We're screwed," Kes said. "And I'm starving."

"I can see you haven't been on many stakeouts, little missy," I said. "There are all manner of scrumptious foods to be found in convenience stores these days." Kes looked at me doubtfully.

"Then you're doing the shopping, dear," she said. That gave me warm feeling all inside. I don't think anybody had ever talked to me like that, other than my parents, and she most definitely wasn't like my parents. We parked in front of the room at our very silent and dark motel. Apparently, this group of hunters were serious about the hunting business, which made me think we might have accidentally ended up in the wrong state.

Then we walked to the Kwik Pantry ("We Never Close"), gathered up Velveeta and Tortilla chips, along with a couple of 40-ouncers of beer, and walked back with the sacks to the room. Kes was munching on chips and chattering about, well, I don't know what, it was late and I was just enjoying the sound of her voice. The room was nicely made up, the queen sized bed all neat, and fresh toiletries in the bathroom. So often in my experience, it was 'do it yourself' as a cop. It was nice to be pampered, even at $59.95 a night.

"I could use a shower," Kes said, in a reprise of the previous evening. But in a slight change of script, I popped up with, "I think you're going to need some help scrubbing your back. I got the impression that it's VERY dirty."

"I believe you're right," Kes said. "And I'm SO tired that I couldn't possibly remove these clothes. Could you maybe help?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, walking towards her. I first lifted up her 'mock-limp' arms over her head, and slowly lifted up her tee shirt over her head, revealing her flat stomach, with its cute inny navel, her unfortunately utilitarian green bra, which she made look pretty, and her feminine shoulders. Her lustrous black hair caught up momentarily in the neck of the shirt as it lifted, then cascaded over her bare tan shoulders as it was released. She looked like some kind of dirty, scientific goddess to me. I threw the shirt on the floor, and looked her over. She had streaks of dust, turned black by her sweat, along her sides, and hips, and shoulders. I touched her lightly there, and there, and there.

I reached around her, and searched for the hook on the back of her army-issue bra. "Say, where'd you get a military issue bra from anyway? You weren't in the service, were you?" I asked, just as I found, and unhooked it. Kes looked sheepish, and said, "I'll tell you that story one day," then she reached forward so that I could pull it forward, off her breasts, and her heartbreakingly magnificent B cups poked up at me, her brown nipples long and erect, the flesh of her areolae pebbled and lovely. I forgot all about that question then. "You're going to benefit greatly from a shower," I said

"Oh, I hope so, " she responded. I put my arms around her, my sweaty skin slipping against hers, our lips meeting again in a long-awaited kiss, her breath warm and sweet, her tongue dancing with mine, our thoughts meshing, electric sparks flying all about us. After a brief 5 minute kiss, I returned to stripping her naked.