“You better get home before it’s dark.”
My father would always say that when I visited him, and at the time I took it as just him being worried about me driving home alone at night, as though his only daughter didn’t work and go out more evenings than not. It could have irritated me I guess, or I could have taken it as some sign that he was tired of me being around, but he was always so sweet and earnest about it. I could tell he enjoyed my visits and that he really was worried about me staying too late, silly as that was.
It wasn’t until he was dead that something else occurred to me. That since I was probably twenty-one or twenty-two, my father had never let me stay overnight in his house.
I got the call late Sunday morning. There had been a wellness check the day before after a neighbor heard yelling coming from the house and no one would come to the door. When the cops went in, they found my father laying dead on the kitchen floor.
I asked why it’d taken so long for me to get the call, and the detective was apologetic. Said that part of it had been a mix-up about who to call—I was the only child of two only children and Mom had passed when I was in middle school. The other part…well, he said he’d talk to me about it when I got there to identify the body. I tried to press him for more details over the phone, but he said it was best to wait so he could explain everything more fully.
I was a mess the whole drive over. My father had only been fifty-two and in pretty decent health as far as I knew, and the suddenness of it all was hitting me hard. What made it worse was what I wasn’t being told. The cause of death, the circumstances beyond him being in the kitchen, and then there was this nebulous “talk” the detective wanted to have when I got there. By the time I pulled up at the county hospital I was wound so tight I felt like I might jump out of my skin as I waited for the elevator to take me down to the morgue floor. I was twenty minutes early, but when the doors opened, I saw a heavyset man in his sixties looking up at me uncertainly.
“You Dana?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Detective Culp?”
He smiled. “Culpepper, but close enough.” He shook my hand and beckoned for me to follow him into a small waiting room, his smile fading as his expression grew more pensive. “I’ll go in with you to view the body, but we need to talk a second first.” When we were seated, he looked down at his broad hands bemusedly, as though he wasn’t sure how to start.
“Detective, is there something going on with my father’s death?”
He jerked his eyes up and shrugged, almost apologetically. “Not exactly. Not in the way you might think, at least. The M.E. did the autopsy this morning…” He held up his hand as though to ward off any potential anger from me. “Standard procedure when we have a suspicious death, I assure you, and…”
I broke in. “Sorry, are you saying you think my father’s death was suspicious? And you said on the phone a neighbor had heard yelling? Do you think someone killed him?”
Culpepper frowned slightly as he looked up at the ceiling. “No…no, not exactly. I mean, no. We don’t currently think anyone killed your father. The yelling…well, that may well have been him. And the examiner is still waiting on the bloodwork, but so far she hasn’t find any specific cause of death, which honestly isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Sometimes people just…stop, I guess. When that happens, it just gets written up as unknown or heart failure. Like a doc buddy of mine once said, everybody dies of the same thing—their heart stops beating for too long.” He met my eyes and flushed a little. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to make light of…”
I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. But…why did you guys think it was suspicious if there’s not any obvious signs of him being injured?”
His red face swiftly paled as he looked away again. “It wasn’t that there were no injuries. It’s just that they were all old. And the nature of them, the way everything looked…” The detective cleared his throat and seemed to have to force himself to ask the next question. “Do you know if anyone could have been abusing your father? Or if he was into any kind of…well, alternative lifestyle?”
My eyes widened. “What? No. What’re you asking me? What did you find?”
Shuddering slightly, he glanced back up at me. “Ma’am…he was covered in bite marks. Not fresh ones…other than one or two, and even those were scabbed over when we found him.” Culpepper stood up and began to pace around the small room. “Examiner says that based on the scar tissue and whatnot, most of them are years old.”
“That…you mean like bug bites?”
The older man froze, as though just realizing he’d left out a key detail and wasn’t yet past the worst part of the conversation. “No…um, the doctor says they all look like human bites. Like a person bit him. Or people, I guess. Because not all the bites are the same size.”
“You can only see the top layer of bites in several spots. I say top layer, because in a number of places there’s old scar tissue overlapping underneath. I counted forty-seven bites total, but my guess it’s actually much higher than that.” The medical examiner pointed to a red oval on my father’s cheek with a pen. “This one and one on his right buttock were the freshest. Only a day or two premortum would be my guess.”
Culpepper glowered at the woman. “Jeez, Mary. She doesn’t need all the gory details.”
The examiner flicked her eyes at Culpepper and then at me. “I think she can decide how much detail she wants, Jimmy.”
I nodded distractedly. Everything felt staticky and unreal—this…none of this could be right. There had… “…to have been some mistake.” I looked back down at my father’s face and the two scarlet crescents burning there. “Or…if not a…I don’t understand.” Taking a step back, I shook my head. “I would have known. I would have seen them, wouldn’t I?”
They both looked at me sympathetically, but it was the doctor that spoke. “Not necessarily. Aside from the recent one on his face, all the other bites are primarily confined to his torso and his…waist region. None are on his arms or legs, or other places where they’d be commonly seen unless you’ve had to take care of your father at some point where you needed to bathe him or whatnot.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh. “No, he was never bad sick, and he didn’t want help with anything.”
Culpepper nodded and started shuffling forward. “Well, you said this body is him, so that’s all we needed. Let me get you…”
I stared at him. “What’re you…No. You need to find out what happened to him. You’re telling me that different people were going in and fucking biting him for years? And he let them without asking for help or telling anybody? Why would he…”
“Not different people. At least in the bites I can clearly discern, I think it’s likely that the wounds all came from the same source.” She gestured to the sheet covering him up to the neck. “If you want, I can…” Culpepper shot her a dark look and she trailed off with a shrug.
I frowned at the detective. “But you said it was different people. Different size bites, you said. Not that it makes that much difference maybe, but at least if it’s just one person it makes a bit more sense.”
He let out a sigh. “Me and the doc are of differing opinion on that point is why.”
The doctor rolled her eyes. “It’s not a difference of opinion so much as he’s stubborn and probably wrong. What I said is that it is likely the same person based on the bite patterns, but I can’t deny that there are at least a dozen different sizes of bites on your father’s body.”
Clenching my fists, I shook my head. “Well then you’re saying it was from a lot of different people.”
The woman’s expression softened a little. “No, honey. What I’m saying is…look, the oldest bites I can make out are the smallest. The newer bites tend to get larger up to a certain point and then stop growing.” Looking back down at my father, she shrugged slightly. “I can’t explain it, but it looks to me that the same person was biting him the entire time. They were just a lot smaller when they started.”
“Ms. Pembry, Dana, before you go…I…well, I want to apologize for how we told you about all this.” Culpepper shook his head and looked out across the hospital parking lot. “It’s got us confused too, and I assure you we’re looking at every lead, but I still wish we’d found a better way to drop all this on you.”
I nodded, my voice thick with emotion. “I…I understand. Just…if someone was hurting my Dad, you find him…or them…okay? Please.”
The detective met my eyes. “I swear we’ll try our best. And…” His face brightened. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something too. When’s the last time you talked to him? He didn’t call or text you around the time this would have happened…his passing, I mean. Mary said it was probably about an hour before we got there, and based on the neighbor’s call, that’d make it about three yesterday afternoon.”
Sniffling, I nodded. “No, I think the last time I talked to him on the phone was Thursday maybe. He didn’t sound weird or anything. And I sent him a text after that…maybe Friday or early Saturday, but he doesn’t always get them. Out where he lives…um, where he lived, the cell service switches to roaming a lot, so there are times when he won’t get texts I send for a few hours or even a day or two. Same with stuff from him to me.” I gave a watery laugh. “And that’s when he remembers to keep it charged.” Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I checked it again with a sigh. “But no, nothing.”
“Okay. It was worth asking. They took the phone into evidence this morning, but I think it was dead. If they get it going again and we find anything, I’ll let you know. And if you get any delayed messages, please save a screenshot and let me know, okay?”
I told him I would and headed for the car. I considered going back home, but I knew I should stop by his house first, if only to make sure everything was locked up tight. So stomach in knots, I turned left instead of right at the highway and headed out toward Dad’s place.
It looked so normal when I pulled up. Culpepper had warned me the crime scene people and EMS might have left a mess, but the front of the house looked undisturbed, and when I went inside, the only signs of something amiss were some dirty footprints in the front hall and the kitchen furniture being slid back against a wall.
Walking through the house, I felt a new wave of shock and sadness. In some ways, this house was my father, and seeing all of his stuff, all the memories that I had of him and of growing up here…well, everywhere I looked I saw a ghost, and seeing it all made me feel more alone, but…it also comforted me some too. As though being around my Dad’s stuff was a little bit like being around him still.
Looking out the kitchen window, I saw it was already getting dark. I was exhausted, and I didn’t want to drive four hours back home. Didn’t want to sit there, wondering what horrible things had happened to my father and how and why, all while feeling even sadder than I would here. Maybe if I stayed in town a day or two, I could help Culpepper find out what really happened to him.
I went out to the living room and laid down on the sofa. I needed a nap at least. When I woke up, I could figure out what I should…
I woke up to a rumble from my pocket. Pulling out my phone, I saw it was a call from Culpepper.
“Hello?”
“Hey, just letting you know. Our technology guy got the phone charged up and turned on. Pulled everything from it, and he didn’t see any visible texts or calls to you.”
“Oh…okay. That’s good I guess.”
He paused and then, “Yeah, but he also said he could see things had been deleted. Not exactly what, but some texts to you were missing. No big deal probably, and if they were sent at all, we should be able to get copies from the phone company. Just didn’t want you getting a delayed message and not expecting it. Let me know if you do.”
“Yeah…um, yeah, I will.”
I closed my eyes again, but it was no use. It was nearly midnight now, while I was still tired feeling, I was also full of a restless energy that made it hard to relax, let alone go back to sleep. The house felt strange now in the dark, and after a few minutes of resisting the impulse, I started going through the house turning on all the lights.
I was switching on the lamp next to Dad’s bed when my phone buzzed again. When I looked at it, my stomach dropped. It was a text from him.
Dad: Srry I culdnt tell you. It wouldn’t let me.
And then another:
Dad: Only kep you safe. It leaves with me.
Hands trembling, I took screenshots and texted them to Culpepper. What did they mean? Had he gone crazy? Was someone forcing him to…what? Be tortured by them? And what did ‘it leaves with me’ even mean? I didn’t have answers to any of it, but I wasn’t staying in his house any longer. I’d drive back to town, find Culpepper, and then find a motel or something. Because even now, with all the lights on, it
Another buzz.
Dad: Don’t go to the huse. I thnk I can stop it. If I go, it goes too. But its
I was heading back through the house now, trying to make my way to the front door. I didn’t remember the house being so big. So dark. Something rustled behind me and I broke into a run.
I was reaching for the doorknob leading outside when something struck me from behind. Screaming, I rolled against the door and into the corner of the front hall even as a searing pain flared across my side. Forcing myself not to panic, I stepped back to the door and yanked it open, running out into the night as I stripped off my shirt.
There was nothing on me that I could tell, but there had been. There had been and…oh, God. I was bleeding.
Heart pounding, I ran and got in my car and locked the doors. I wanted to check my side, but first I had to get away from that place. Backing out too fast, I fishtailed and then corrected, shooting down the highway and back toward the edge of town. It wasn’t until I reached a closed gas station inside the city limits that I pulled over and turned on the interior lights to check what had happened to my side.
I was still bleeding, but only a little now. The twin crescents below my ribs had somehow already started to heal, though they were still burning and very painful to the touch. I sat shaking as I stared at the bite mark. It was very similar to what I’d seen on my father’s face, but…
Buzz. A new text message popped up on my phone in the passenger seat.
Dad: smart. And last nite I thought I herd a baby crying.
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