Black Blood

«Was Sullivan sending you? We've been answering the police's questions for days. My wife and I are exhausted. Have a little respect for us», he retorted angrily, pushing the door to close it.

I managed to block it with a foot.

«Please. I'll be discreet and I promise that it won't take me too long.»

He ran a hand through his frizzy grey hair, then scratched his head. He looked at me silently, chewing his toothpick.

«Just ten minutes, Reb. But I don’t intend to disturb Laura, she is resting and she is not feeling well at all», he decided, letting me in.

Laura was Frank's wife, after the disappearance of her daughter no one had seen her again in town. Consumed by pain, she had holed up in the house, coming out no more.

I thanked Frank and, once inside, I followed him into the dining room. I took a seat at the table and retrieved the notebook from my bag along with a pen.

«I am doing this just in the name of the friendship between me and your father», he informed by handing me a glass of water.

«Thank you.»

My parents were friends of everyone, they were two great flatterers, always able to curry favor with anyone and, actually, their relationship with the Weather was fairly confidential.

I, however, with Rose, their missing daughter, had not been able to bond much. We had different priorities due to our age difference.

When she was still a child, I was already in high school.

I had watched her grow, and she had always been a good girl. I remembered that she attended the parish assiduously with her friend Claire.

Now they were both missing.

«I'd love not being here. I am really sorry for what happened», I said taking a sip from the glass.

Frank shook his head and sat down in front of me.

«Let's move on.»

I did not dispute the haste of that big man with an intimidating appearance, rendered almost helpless by desperation.

«Is there any news from the police?» I asked no longer hesitating.

«No news, the investigations are stuck. Rose seems to have disappeared into the air», he reported, crossing his arms on the table.

«What was your daughter's relationship with Claire Harper?» I continued, crossing my legs.

Frank looked up at the ceiling and took a few moments to answer my question.

«They were friends. A bit like you and Hanna Ryder. They were always together. They almost had a gloomy relationship», he confessed with bitterness.

It was as if it costed him to talk about the two girls, he didn't seem to approve their friendship, even if I didn't understand why.

The Harpers were a simple family with no expectations, they enjoyed life in Hazycreek without disturbing or making people talk too much about themselves.

Like Rose, Claire wasn't a bad girl either.

I took notes and cleared my mind.

«Could they have run away together? At their age they are still a little unconscious, perhaps they made a rash and not calculated decision», I proposed thinking about it.

It was a bold hypothesis and perhaps it didn't even make much sense, but I had learned not to take anything for granted and to evaluate every possibility.

«Hard to think. Claire disappeared ten days before Rose», he replied in a whisper.

I couldn't blame him; his reasoning was correct.

«Maybe she reached her. Rose may have disagreed and then changed her mind at a later time.»

«I would love to believe your words, Reb. The hope that my daughter is still alive would not be in vain, but sadly, we are preparing for the worst», he said, drinking half of the water contained in his glass.

«I find it really strange that nothing has been discovered yet. Hazycreek is a small town, how is it possible to disappear without leaving traces?» I considered, reflecting aloud.

«It happens sometimes. More or less every ten years.»

A hard sentence that redundant in my head like an echo.

I was seventeen when three girls mysteriously disappeared into nothing. Even then I couldn't understand it, I had kept the newspaper clippings that reported the news in a locked box.

It could have been a trail.

I vibrated with excitement thinking I was close to a turning point. I could aim high, write a shocking article that would lead me to success. I wanted to fulfil myself in journalism, the ambition was great and now I could show everyone what I was really made of.

I thought about going to my old house and look for those items. I had left them there, I just hoped to find them in their place.

Why haven't I thought about it?

I reflected silently, amazed by how everything seemed to me closer.

«I didn't remember. Do you believe this could mean something?»

«Who knows, people here believe in strange beings, looking like persons. And the punctuality with which these disappearances occur, suggests something malignant. Hazycreek is superstitious, Reb. Look at my sister Mary, exiled from the city, mocked and disgusted by the people of this town. She is considered crazy, just because she is different. We no longer know what to think.»

Frank let out a flood of words difficult to pronounce, there was despair in his voice, resignation and sadness.

Mary Weather was Hazycreek's “freak”, she was considered by everyone a mad visionary with schizophrenia.

She was convinced she could talk to the dead.

She babbled about future predictions, painful events, and sometimes her ramblings were not even understood.

I knew that she had been interned for a long time in a center for mental illness and that she had come back to her senses, but it seemed not to be the case.

«Did Mary express any thought about it?» I dared asking.