Stories of Myth and Legend: A Short Story Collection

The Message

(Story Content Warnings: Mild swearing, themes of/brief non-explicit domestic violence.)

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Joseph Manolo Martinez had only been Sue's partner for two weeks. They'd spent enough time together in those two weeks for her to learn three definitive things about him.

1. He sometimes drank his coffee with condensed milk.

2. He spoke Spanish fluently.

3. He was not a morning person. If they were to rank her colleagues in descending order of "Most a Morning Person" to "Least a Morning Person", he'd rank at the bottom. She hadn't thought it was possible to find someone less of a morning person than Natasha Cooper, she of the three cups of coffee before 10:00 a.m., but apparently it was.

It was this last fact that led her to believe that the Night Watch asking for them, specifically, at 5:45 in the morning was some kind of cosmic joke.

Sue arrived at Joseph's house by six. He looked miserable; his hair was a mess, he hadn't shaved, and it looked like his sweater was on backwards. "Tell me again why Night Watch can't handle this?" he asked as he got into her car.

"Because their shift is up soon and they want to go home? Sue guessed. "Or they needed our expertise in something. Why are you complaining? Shouldn't you be waking up by now anyway?"

"I don't get up until seven."

"What, seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. Not all of us are masochists." He leaned against the passenger's side window. He looked like a kid about to drift off for a nap during a long road trip. The position made it easier to tell that his sweater was on backwards. She could see the tag sticking out, just under his chin. "Sun's not even out. God didn't intend for us to be up this early."

Should I say something? I should definitely say something.

"I'll take your word for that. Your sweater's on backwards, by the way."

"...hell..."

He was able to fix his sweater without stripping entirely. His hair remained a lost cause.

They had to drive out to the edge of town to answer the call. This area, in terms of isolation, halfway between the houses actually in town and the farms that dotted the land around Willow Creek proper. Everyone had plenty of space, but you could still see your neighbors down the road if you stood at the end of your driveway. She'd lived in a house like that as a kid, just on the other side of town. They didn't need a house number, though they'd been given one. The cop cars parked at the end of one driveway was a pretty obvious giveaway. Nothing looked wrong from the outside of the house, and there weren't any ambulances. She took that as a good sign. There was only one officer standing outside the house: a man with blue eyes and his face half-buried in his scarf. "Hey, O'Malley," Sue said as she got out of the car. "What's up?"

Officer Nathaniel O'Malley pulled the scarf off his face. "So, who's up for a spirit hunt?"

Joseph yawned noisily. "Spirits need to keep better hours," he said. "What are we looking at, exactly? Scale of Casper to Poltergeist?"

"No idea. Whatever or whoever it was, it didn't respond when we tried to get an EVP. There were a few cold spots and we picked up some residual electromagnetic energy, but nothing active. EMF readings we got could've been from the toaster, for all I know." He shrugged. "The family, the Grangers, were pretty freaked, but nobody was hurt and we were able to convince them to come back from their neighbor's. Far as I can tell, it just made a lot of noise and left. Min's inside with them, just in case."