A Gut Feeling

Jordan was too surprised at the sight of the grey-haired girl from last night to think twice about going into the house.

It had a similar layout to her parent’s home, though there were significantly less items in it. There were some pictures hanging on the wall of Frank and a woman that she assumed was his wife, all in various tourist type locations. Whoever she was, Jordan didn’t see her anywhere around here.

Not that Jordan was looking hard. Something about the girl kept Jordan’s eyes squarely on her. There was a word on the tip of her tongue but her brain was too fogged up to find it.

“Grey’s a bit shy.” Frank led her to a small card table where the dining room would be. The chairs were far nicer and comfortable, and the two girls were served a collection of home-baked cookies and a cool glass of milk. “Not one to trust strangers. Not that I can blame her, these days. How’re you settling in, Jordan?”

Jordan was mid-dunk of her cookie. “As well as I can, I think. It comes in fits and starts.”

“Might help if you tried doing something that you like.” Frank smiled. “You still have your ham radio?”

He knew about it? “No. I think it’s supposed to be on my desk. But it’s gone.”

“Ah. Well, I know you wouldn’t have thrown it out.” Frank took one of the cookies and nibbled at the edge. “Elijah still has his. He would let you use it if you asked, he always liked you. But you may want to do it soon.”

Jordan stopped staring at the girl sitting across from her who was eating a chocolate chip cookie drenched in milk. She thought back to how they reacted when her brother arrived in the police car. “Is that because he was supposed to leave town?”

Grey nearly dropped her cookie and looked at Frank. He lightly raised his hand to calm her down.

“DeVon has been… pushing… him for a while. To tell the truth, people have been slowly filtering out of town for years.” Frank stared at the cookie crumbling in his hand. “This town’s got a cancer in it. Eating away at what made it great.”

She looked back to Jordan. Grey seemed to be waiting to see what Jordan’s response would be.

Even through her clouded judgement, Jordan admitted that something was off. Everything seemed a little too perfect. Like things hadn’t seemed to stay just how she should remember them. But that they had.

“My family is acting strange,” she said.

At last, Grey spoke. “Trust your gut.”

Jordan missed whatever Frank said next. That was a wonderful voice she had.

----

It wasn’t much longer until Jordan had to make her way back home next door. Frank and Grey were nice enough people. Grey herself opened up a lot after telling Jordan to trust her gut. Quite the charmer once you got to know her.

Her father Stewart was sitting on the front porch, rocking back and forth on a rocking chair as he knocked back a cold beer. He didn’t look worried about Jordan coming out of Frank’s house. Raising his bottle, he mock-saluted Frank. “Hey Frank. Still setting up for some gardening?”

Frank had pulled a large bag of fertilizer out of the back of his car. “Yeah.”

“…You sure you don’t need a hand with that?”

Frank frantically waved his hand even as he struggled under the weight. “N-No, I’ve got it. Don’t worry.”

Stewart looked like he was giving it a second thought, but turned his attention back to Jordan. “Hey. Feeling better?”

“A bit,” she replied.

“You know we’re only trying to look out for you,” he told her. “For what’s best.”

Best for who? Jordan didn’t ask. Instead, she parked her hands in her pockets. “I know.”

Stewart downed the last of his bottle and followed it up with a light burp. “The family’s going to church tomorrow morning. You should go.”

Jordan felt a prickling on the back of her neck and a pit in her stomach no amount of dinner would fill. “I’m not sure.”

Stewart slowly turned to look at her, eyes narrowed and hand gripping his bottle tight. “You’re going to church.”

The words came naturally, as a reflex. “No.”

With an inhuman growl, Stewart rose from his rocking chair. A meaty hand pushed her against the house’s façade. Stewart’s face was within a hair of Jordan’s, his canines more pronounced than they should be. “Good girls. Go. To. Church,” he snarled. “This isn’t a debate.”

Jordan remained leaning against the house, trying to calm herself down even after her father let her go.

----

Jordan knew her dinner would be cold when she finally came in. The rest of the family had eaten without her and were sitting on the couch. A rerun of an old television show was playing on the screen.

As she ate, she saw that someone in the family had moved her bottle of Lethenine next to her plate. Jordan was already feeling nauseous and no amount of her mother’s cooking was fixing it.

Unable to eat much else, she dumped what was left of her dinner in the trash and looked at the medicine one more time. Jordan pocketed the bottle; she could take the pill later tonight.

Jordan didn’t want to be in the same room as her father right now. She snuck upstairs to her room, past the rest of her family and threw herself onto her bed.

She hadn’t noticed before, but the bed was a little lumpy in spots. It was an older mattress. But something scratched at the back of her mind.

Jordan slipped off the bed and reached between the mattress and the box spring. There was several somethings in there. They felt like paper. She pulled her hand back out and flipped over what had been there.

Her face immediately began to blush. In Jordan’s hands was a risqué lingerie catalogue. She tossed aside in shock but kept looking at it before immediately reaching back under the mattress to see what else was there.

More racy pictures of women. Romance novels with women on the cover. With her face a deep shade of red, she quickly stuffed everything back where she’d found it.

Why these things were here wasn’t a question she could ask her family. There was starting to be a long list of questions.

Maybe it was time to take Frank up on his suggestion and talk to Elijah. She turned off the lights to her room, cracked open the window, and crawled onto the roof.