Inner Demons

Madman in Polka Dot Socks

When death's avengers came knocking at the door, Lindsey's internal body clock told him it was daytime. He pulled his bedsheets over his face and released a groan loud enough to challenge a lion's roar. His days usually consisted of sleeping and eating whatever food Mrs. Akers brought down, and heading outside at night briefly enough to throw it back up. The amount of activity in the last few days was unprecedented – at least compared to the last twenty years.

"Stupid little... early rising... where's my left sock?" Lindsey spun in a circle on one foot, searching the room. He did not have many belongings, and most of them never left the basement. That should have made it difficult to lose things, but he still managed to do it on a regular basis.

At last, he spotted the elusive red polka dot sock under the table across the room. He had no idea how it got there, but he did not really care. If the boogie monster liked to crawl through the cracks in the floor and shuffle his clothing around, that was perfectly fine with him. Lindsey hopped over to the lonesome sock on one foot, not daring let his naked foot touch the freezing concrete, then put it on. Just in case, he pulled on his raincoat, then the scarf, then a random pair of sunglasses before heading to the trapdoor to listen to their visitors. The floor between the first floor and the basement was thick enough that sound could barely make it through, so he lifted the trapdoor slightly to listen.

"Have you seen this woman?" Lindsey did not dare to open the trapdoor wide enough to let himself see the proceedings, but he imagined the questioner was holding up a picture of a living version of the face he had seen last night.

"No, sorry. What happened? I've gotten two have-you-seen's in the past two days. The other one was a white boy with long, ugly brown hair. The have-you-seen, not the asker. Was that kid working with your girl?" Mrs. Akers's crackling voice reached through the narrow trapdoor crack.

The other voice, another woman, responded, "No. I don't know about any other missing folks, so that boy must have been from out of town. Do you have somebody living with you here? Some of your neighbors down the hill mentioned a tall man leaving then returning to the mortuary yesterday evening." Lindsey cursed himself for deciding to get his supplies before Daisy's killing. He would have never done it if he had known that the police would launch a serious investigation into the woman's disappearance.

"Oh, that's Lindsey. His father worked for me until he died, so Lindsey took over. He's a great kid, just a little scared of the sun. That's why most people don't see him. He doesn't go out often, so I doubt he saw your girl." Lindsey waited anxiously for the woman's response.

"I would still like to question him. Just to be sure."

Lindsey heard Mrs. Akers sigh. "Alright. Just let me close the shades first."

Lindsey slowly let the trapdoor close, then tiptoed back down the stairs. He hung up the raincoat, keeping the scarf around his neck and the sunglasses in hand just in case. His blue pajamas were decent enough, so he headed up the staircase again and pushed the trapdoor open all the way.

"Did I hear someone knocking? Oh, hello." Lindsey waved at the visitors. Two young women and an older one sat in the darkness on Mrs. Akers' couch. Each of them wore a police uniform. "Did someone die? If they have no living relatives, we'll bury them for free. I call it the 'Dead and Lonely Clause.'"

The older policewoman frowned at him. "Mrs. Akers just told me you grew up here, but your accent says otherwise. I don't even recognize it." So they had a Sherlockian sheriff, or at least he assumed she was the sheriff.

"My dad traveled around Europe a lot before settling here, so I picked up my accent from him. So are you looking for a corpse or looking to bury one?" Lindsey smiled at the younger policewomen, hoping that he came across as sweet rather than nutty. Given that he was still in his pajamas and avoiding the sunlight, they probably thought he was the latter.

"We're actually looking for a woman who disappeared. Her name is Rosie." The sheriff handed him a photograph; it was Daisy's dead ex, though the photo was a little old. She must have had a working camera, or one that used to work at least.

It was time to create an alibi for Daisy. Lindsey knew it would be safer to simply tell them everything, but spinning lies would be good practice if he was going to be leaving his latest safe haven. The most important step was to base the lie on a central truth. "Well, Daisy came to talk to me the day before yesterday, pretending that she had a dead body. In reality, she wanted to ask me for help with calming down an argument between her and Rosie. Then, last night, Daisy came back and explained that Rosie had stormed out. That's all I know about Rosie, though. I never met the woman in person." He handed the photograph back to the sheriff.

Mrs. Akers nodded as he spoke, as if his lie confirmed her suspicion that Daisy was interested in him. Lindsey hoped that the rest of the post-Flu world was as gullible as her. He slid out of the way as a beam of sunlight worked its way through a crack in one of the shades, then looked to the trio of policewomen to see if they bought his story. The sheriff still looked suspicious, but her companions had nodded throughout his explanation.

"Alright. That would explain why some neighbors saw her head up the hill to the mortuary last night. Come to the police station if you decide to tell us anything else." The sheriff did not seem to trust him, but pretending to be skeptical had probably led her to plenty of unexpected confessions in the past.

The trio stood in near-unison as they prepared to leave the house. Something tapped at the edge of his mind, something he was forgetting. Oh, shoot. "Before you go, watch where you walk. Daisy and I nearly fell into a bit of a drainage sinkhole by the mortuary when we were talking last night. There might be more of them lurking around out there, waiting for the unsuspecting passerby. The bodies down there seem to have gotten mad about getting stuck in the ground, so they're trying to bring us down with them." Lindsey giggled to himself, then rushed back down to the basement. He was not about to let himself get caught in the crossfire of sunlight that would inevitably stream through the front door.

Lindsey sniffed the air after he reached the bottom of the staircase. He knew the policewomen were walking around the building, and he knew when they stopped at the most recent burial site. However, their scent quickly retreated down the hillside until the strong smell of preservatives filled his nose once again. Lindsey packed his blood bottles into a duffel bag along with his clothes, then added his collection of sunglasses. If the sheriff's case progressed in the right direction, he needed to be ready to leave earlier than he had anticipated.

For now, it was time to scare off the sunshine with his banana yellow raincoat. Lindsey changed into his best sun-avoidance clothing and prepared for Long Walk No.2 (in the past twenty years or so), which would be slightly longer and a million times more exhausting than the previous day's Long Walk No.1 (in the past twenty years or so).