catalyst: chapter 37
The Smiling Woman
The smiling woman was on the highway out west, heading towards the mountains after her visit to the security at Walmart. They had been unwilling to help her, but she did find out the security footage had already been put online, and the details of the car were posted with it as well. The car had been found abandoned at a gas station a little way out of town, which meant they either ditched it and took off into the woods, or there was another car there that they got away in. Either way, the people at the gas station hadn’t heard or seen anything, and their security system was discovered to be a decoy that didn’t actually record anything. The attached garage hadn’t reported anything as being missing, so that left the police, and the smiling woman, stumped. What did excite her though were the faces she saw in that video, the recognition lighting up her eyes. The voices reacted.
“It’s her,” one said.
“The girl from the apartments.,” replied the other.
The smiling woman was still getting used to the company of the voices. They had started after she had powered down two twins that kept splitting into more and more small meals every bite she took. It magnified the power in the meal, but it also brought the two voices with it. She had learned to let them chatter and tried refocusing on the screen.
The red hair, the golden skin; the smiling woman had stood so close to her link, but it had slid away just as easy. At least she knew where to come back to if pulling this thread left her empty handed again. There was probably something in the apartment, but with the mess she had left behind, going back there was a liability.
It was nighttime and the smiling woman was waiting in her new acquired car, dozing off a little way down the road from the gas station. She saw the truck that had been parked there all day pull out of the parking lot, the lights having all been turned off in the station itself. The smiling woman followed the truck down the small road to the little town the exit sign had advertised. She coasted by as the truck pulled into its driveway.
“Better to go by foot,” she said to her multiple selves.
It would make her harder to trace too if anything happened and she were spotted. Not that any witnesses had supplied anything of use to catch her. One had even taken a video of her in a blood-soaked shirt, strolling down her old neighborhood, and nothing. She didn’t suppose some hicks in the woods were going to get much on her either.
“Oooo. A meal?” one of the twin voices asked.
“Not a meal. An errand. Now, shut up.”
“Yeah, shut up,” the other voice chimed in.
Children, the smiling woman thought to herself.
“Yes?” they answered.
She waived away her acknowledgment with an agitated hand, shaking her head for some peace and quiet.
The warm-light lamps were on when she walked up to the porch and knocked on the door.
“Who’s that?” she heard a woman inside ask.
“I don’t know, probably another cop comin’ out here to ask the same questions again.”
The smiling woman noted how much voices carried past the walls of the house.
“Evenin’, ma’am. Can I help you?”
The smiling woman was silhouetted from the streetlight, but Rodney could see how small of stature she was.
“I heard that maybe my daughter was around here the other day? Abandoned her car?”
“Your daughter?”
“Yes. I saw that maybe she had come through here. Red hair?”
“You’re her mother?”
There was suspicion in his question.
“Yeah, we’ve been looking for her all over the place. Sorry to bother y’all so late, but I saw on the news about the car, and the gas station, and, oh, it took a while to drive out here.”
“How’d you find the house?”
“Oh,” the smiling woman lied, “someone saw me looking in the windows of the gas station and said y’all lived down here.”
“Well, sorry you drove all this way ma’am, but we haven’t seen anything ‘sides what we told the cops. Car was just left there.”
“Hm, that’s too bad. Can I give you my number, in case you find anything else out?”
She put on the best pitiful look she could muster, hoping that between her face and diminutive stature compared to the apparent mechanic that he would be willing to help her. Something felt off to her, though she couldn’t place wait, and the man looked nervous.
“I know, it’s so strange,” she said, conjuring up some tears, “but I haven’t seen her in so long, and you’re the closest I’ve gotten to finding her.”
The man in the doorway looked uncomfortable but relented.
“Sure,” he said pulling out his phone, “what’s the number?”
She rattled off the burner number she had used for a bit, gave the man a fake name, and thanked him profusely before saying her goodbyes. She walked down the driveway as he closed the door behind her, and in the corner of her eye, she saw him immediately make a call. When she was out of his line of sight, she quickly dashed to the side of the house to catch anything useful, if she could.
“Mac, hey. Everything’s fine here, it’s just…this lady just walked up to the house lookin’ for ya. Said she was your momma. No, I don’t know who she was, said her name was Jane. Yeah, I don’t know who she is either. Ok, well, y’all safe up there yet? Okay. You let me know if you need anything. Alright. Bye.”
The man turned to another knock at the door.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, what now?”
This time the smiling woman quickly pushed him back into the house and against the wall, the door slamming behind her. He was slumped on the floor while she squatted over him when another woman came around the corner, shock in her eyes. The smiling woman lunged, grabbed the woman’s head, and cracked it against the banister of the stairs. The woman slid limply to the floor. The man was scrambling now, trying to grab the cell phone that had flew out of his hands and clattered across the living room. The smiling woman turned and leapt onto his back, transforming her fingers into claws that hooked into him like talons. She released her right hand and swung swiftly at the back of his head, bashing it into the floor. She ripped the claws of her left hand out of his back, blood gushing from the deep holes and covered his mouth. She made sure the screams wouldn’t reach the neighbors.
A few moments later, the smiling woman exited the small house and shuffled back down the road, clasping her coat around herself to hide the gore. Climbing back into her car and cleaning the last bits of flesh out of her nails with her teeth, the smiling woman swiped through the man’s phone, his severed thumb in his pocket in case it locked on her again. There were a number of calls and texts on his phone about garage work, some from family and friends sending stupid chain messages to one another, but finally she found what she needed. A pin dropped in a map out in the valley, a cluster of cabins based on the thread of messages.
“So, that’s where they were hiding,” the twins said.
She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and started the car, pulling out of the parking lot of the church she had stowed the car away in. When she rode by, the neighbors were trying to put out the flames with hoses ran from their own houses, sirens sounding from too far away.