Hedge

The stool, tight and unadjustable, would have to do, even though it placed Merido at a foot below his interviewer, a woman who was just about eye to eye with him when they were both standing. Maybe she did this on purpose, as a tactic, Merido thought.

“How many wires are inside the average insect?” she, Ms. Reffid, said.

“Excuse me?”

“The average insect. How many wires are inside of it?”

“None?”

“You’re not sure.”

“None.”

“Ok. Well, would you like to begin the interview?”

“That question wasn’t part of it?”

“No.”

“Ok.”

Ms. Reffid went on to ask Merido where he was the night of such and such, at certain times. She’d ask the same questions several times, but only after asking other ones in between. This must be another one of her tactics, thought Merido. Can’t blame someone for having tactics, schemes, and angles. Cunning people always had some up their sleeves, and very crafty people often had many.

“The girl was seen by the hedges outside your garden. Then she was seen to be swallowed up by the hedges. That is a quote from an eye witness. More than one, in fact. Do your hedges often swallow people up?”

“You mean literally? No. They are only yew and boxwood. They don’t have the ability to…”

“No mouth. No stomach. Not possible to swallow up anything, not literally.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Why do you suppose so many people described what they saw in this way? And why do you think they reported seeing her reemerge, roughly an hour later, smiling?”

“I suppose she might’ve pushed her way into the hedges to go exploring, and had such a nice time playing there that she stepped out smiling.”

“You didn’t see her in there?”

“No, as I’ve said, I wasn’t home at the time. But children do sneak in there, local children.”

“Why did you say ‘local’ there? As opposed to what, children being bused in to trespass?”

“I just mean they’re familiar to me, most of the kids back there. Neighbors.”

“But not this girl?”

“No. She is not familiar to me at all.”

“She kind of looks like you.”

“Like me? No she doesn’t. At least I don’t think so.”

“She looks like you dressed like a little girl.”

“She’s two feet shorter than me, clearly. And I don’t dress like a little girl and play around in my backyard. I imagine my neighbors would’ve said they’d seen me doing that before.”

“First time for everything.”

“She doesn’t even look like me.”

“Alright. I will check into your alibis.If I can confirm you were at this Foxy Rabbit tavern at the time you say you were, then you’ll no longer be a suspect.”

“I’m a suspect now?”

Ms. Reffid pursed her lips. She should not have said that.

“You may or may not be,” she said, affecting a casual air.

“Just to be clear, am I suspected in kidnapping this child, or am I suspected to be this child? And if the latter, then how is that even a crime?”

“It’s true that if you are the little girl then no crime has been committed. But if you’re not, then she is a girl who’s gone missing, which may or may not be a crime.”

“Who even called this in?”

“I can’t discuss that. Thank you for your time.”

~ * ~

The whole business was creepy, there was no denying that, thought Merido, alone again in his house. He stared out at the hedges bordering his property. It wasn’t quite a maze back there, there was just a little bit of interest to the walking path in the garden.

Why should people think he was the one back there, pretending to be a little girl having the time of her life? And who called the police to report she was missing if they aren’t even sure she exists?

She goes back there, emerges fine a little later. That’s hardly a kidnapping or crime. The whole business made his head swirl.

He fixed himself a drink and sat on the wicker chair which faced nothing. He was not interested in seeing anything at all for a moment. Not seeing, not feeling, not thinking. Just drinking and being quiet.

It began to rain. He returned to the window because the rain is something he could look at and listen to.

Someone’s back there, he thought before he’d even reached the window.

For a second, he thought he saw someone standing at the edge of the property. Short, pigtails. A smile. An awful smile. A smile with too much smile in it. Then they dashed backwards through the hedge.

He grabbed an umbrella and practically jogged back there. His hedge was actually quite dense and not the easiest thing to jump through. In fact, jumping through it seemed impossible. One could only press and wriggle through. He tried to do it just then himself, but feeling his skin on his forearms begin to scratch up, quit.

He walked out and around to scan the road for anyone who might still be traipsing around back there, but saw no one.

~ * ~

A call. Late. He was up but pretended to be woken up by it.

“Yes?”

“Your alibi checks out, Mr. Vrev.”

“Ok.”

“It does not rule out the possibility you may have ever impersonated a child in your backyard, but at this time, I have no evidence to confirm that speculation either. More importantly, I am certain you were not present when the child went missing.”

“If she was only gone for an hour, why should she be thought of as missing?”

“She was seen again an hour later, but that doesn’t mean she was found. I’ll reach out to you with further questions when appropriate. Thank you.”

The line cut out. He was glad it did. So the girl was gone after all. Still gone. Maybe that was her in his backyard earlier. Maybe she’s hiding out by his house.

He’d check more thoroughly in the morning. If he could find her, or evidence she was camping out there, it might save his home being ransacked by the investigators.

“Good idea,” said the little girl, whose smile had too much smile in it.

“Thanks, missing little girl,” Merido said, giving her a thumbs-up.

She returned his thumbs-up with one of her own, only her thumb went up higher than it ought to. But that’s ok, he thought, as long as she’s having a nice time.

The rest of the night was empty of dreams.

~ * ~

No sign of anyone back there. Not that he could see anyway.

“Good morning,” he heard a voice say behind him, but when he turned, no one was there.

The hedge began to shake then and he worried it would be the girl, though he could not remember why he should be so worried about seeing her.

But it was Ms. Reffid who emerged through the thicket just then, looking the worse for it.

“Not easy to get out of that, is it?” she said, as if this were some fault of his.

“It’s not meant for people to use it that way. The opposite, actually,” he said.

“I suppose you’re looking for evidence she’s been here.”

“Or might still be here,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I thought maybe she could be hiding on my property. I thought if I looked myself, it might save me the trouble of having you and the other police tear everything up.”

“Oh, I’m not with the police.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m an independent contractor.”

“Oh god, I assumed you were.”

“Yes, I could tell, and I didn’t correct this assumption, which was an assumption of my own, because it was useful to me. You wouldn’t have shown up otherwise, would you have?”

“No, not likely.”

“Though you’re not really up to much these days, are you,” she said as more of an observation than question.

“I’m taking some time to myself.”

“How’s that going for you?”

“Relaxing, until this business.”

“Really? Seems like you’ve spent an awful lot of time in that pub.”

“Just to be social. Not to be too much of a hermit.”

“Is that what you are normally? A hermit?”

“Can be.”

“I see.”

“So what are you then? Private investigator?”

“Yes.”

“Who hired you? Parents?”

“She had none. Or rather, I don’t know if she had any, because I can’t identify her.”

“Wait, you mean to tell me you’re trying to find someone that you’re not certain exists at all? Who the hell would pay you to do that?”

“Someone interested in things that may or may not exist.”

“Oh god, you’re some sort of… Ghost hunter, aren’t you.”

“Not ghosts, no.”

“Then what? Demons? Witches?”

“People, but people that don’t belong where they pop up.”

“I don’t want to help you anymore. I don’t believe in any of this stuff.”

“I understand. Well, I won’t bother you again then.”

“Thanks.”

He noticed then, without looking at her directly, that she was still staring at him, or in his direction.

He looked and saw that she was giving him a big thumbs-up.

Her thumb growing upwards but remaining thin.

Growing and growing.

Then everything darkened and went quiet.

~ * ~

At the pub that night, he spoke with the bartender about the matter. She usually had insights into interesting matters, fringe subjects.

“You ought to let this person help you, I think. Doesn’t sound like she’s after anything from you. Why not?”

“Because it means she’ll be snooping around at all hours. And if something happens to her on my property, then what?”

“What would happen to her?”

“Oh, anything. Maybe she trips and breaks her ankle or something. Or maybe there is a little girl and she kidnaps her, and now I’m an accessory, or whatever.”

“I see. Well, better to limit her visits to the daytime and keep an eye on her. If anything happens, you call it in right away, which would make you much less suspicious.”

“I don’t want to babysit a PI. I’m supposed to be relaxing.”

“You could do to stay out of here during the day. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy your company, and your tips even more, but it would be good to be elsewhere while the sun’s still up, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, there’s something to that. Sure.”

“Besides, maybe this is some sort of otherworldly presence and she can extract it from you, or be rid of it however that can be done.”

“Maybe so. I don’t buy all that, but I suppose it’s possible.”

“Anything is. Anything at all is now.”

~ * ~

The next day, he was sitting in a lawn chair as Ms. Reffid crawled the perimeter of his yard, checking the dirt as intently as a hound that’s caught a scent. But she had not caught a scent, not yet.

“There’s got to be something to this spot, if you say you’ve seen her here too.”

“I saw you there. Yesterday.”

“I know. That’s why I went through that spot. That’s where she was seen by the neighbors.”

“You know, I haven’t seen my neighbors in days.”

“They think you might be up to something. They’re keeping their distance.”

“They’ve told you that?”

“Yes.”

“God, what idiots.”

She stood then and slowly walked over to where he sat.

“Have you been seeing her? Or anything else, lately?”

“No.”

“Nothing strange at all? Because it could be a sign that your mind is beginning to be affected by being so close to an area like this.”

“An area like what?”

“A disturbed area. A thin area. Use whatever analogy or metaphor suits you.”

He took a long look at the area she’d gestured towards.

“Those are hedges,” he said without any playful sarcasm behind his words, as if he were willing it to be true.

“Those are hedges, yes,” she said, in a different sort of way.

~ * ~

“And what if thumbs were worms, emerging from the soil, yet still acting as fingers to lure you down, or if you can’t be lured down, maybe just grab you and pull you down?”

“That would be messed up, missing little girl.”

~ * ~

“How long until you’ve rid the place of whatever this is?”

“Rid? Who said I could do that?”

“Then what are you poking around for every damn day, if you can’t do anything about it?”

“To understand, first of all. I can’t do anything about it until I know what I’m dealing with.”

“You must know by now, based on what I’ve told you.”

“It could be so many things.”

“You can’t do a thing about it, can you. You’re just here to waste my time.”

“It hasn’t revealed itself to me yet. Only you. It isn’t vulnerable to me until it reveals itself to me.”

“Why hasn’t it, then?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t think I’m worth it, I guess.”

Merido could see she was sincerely wounded by this thought, so he pressed no further.

~ * ~

That night, the world opened up. And a hand came out. The hedges framed it, like the sort of portrait you stand up next to your bedside, when you’ve got something to put in it.

He felt genuinely that he would be hurt, badly, by this hand.

Then, she was there. Apparently, she’d been camping out after all. Ms. Reffid, that is.

She stood before the hand, which came down on her, not to squash but to rake down toward it.

Down into the earth below the hedge it went, and Merido assumed Ms. Reffid with it.

~ * ~

The next day, he wished to report his dream to Ms. Reffid, but she never showed. Nor the next. Nor the next.

He began to worry it had really happened, but what could he do but stare at the soil below the hedge, which looked undisturbed.

Ms. Reffid had said it was disturbed, but it did not look disturbed, or feel disturbed, not to Merido anyway.

Maybe she meant “disturbing”. It could be that, especially when he thought of his dream happening there, let alone when he permitted himself to wonder if it was a dream after all.

~ * ~

Over the next few days, then weeks, he was able to put it out of his mind and convince himself Ms. Reffid had given up and left on her own.

He had no evidence to the contrary. Nothing he could hold or see or measure.

He passed the remainder of his “sabbatical” the way he had before the call from Ms. Reffid, in the bar mostly.

The neighbors even began to speak to him again.

And just before bed, every night, he would look out the window at his backyard and say, “Goodnight,” though no one out there ever replied.

The goodnight he heard back came not from the backyard, but in his bedroom.

“Sweet dreams,” the voice said.

“You too, missing little girl,” Merido said.

Then he’d shut his eyes and pretend to sleep, while whatever watched him continued to stare at him, unblinking, holing up a thumb with too much thumb, and smiling a smile with too much smile.