New Story: Harry Potter Meets Law and Order

Today I am writing from Airlie Beach, Queensland, Australia. Along my wayward travels, I've had time to start on a new book. It's nothing like the sunny beaches and gorgeous rainforests I've seen in Australia. It's the new addition of Monster Force, a noir detective story with a fantasy twist and a darkness I can't seem to get away from. I haven't come up with a for-sure title on this one yet, but I'm open to suggestions.

I think of this series as Harry Potter meets Law and Order. So, to set the scene. . . DUN DUN!

9:37 AM

134 Franklin St.

Shady Grove Borough, Burgundy

All it took was one sighting.

Miss Regina Devoe, a stooped old woman who walked the neighborhood every day, rain or shine, saw the seven-year-old child with frizzy red hair coming out of the empty building, the same girl she’d seen in the back of the local advertisements. “HAVE YOU SEEN ME?” the smiling little girl’s picture pleaded. Miss Devoe had.

No one lived in upper or lower apartment in the building the girl walked out of, hadn’t for years. As far as Miss Devoe knew—and, in her neighborhood, she knew a great deal—the city owned it. Foreclosed when the economy slumped and the neighborhood slipped into a sad state, then lost again when the bank folded and the Shady Grove sank into its present, sadder state. Block after empty block, it went from ghost town to shantytown when the drifters, runaways and druggies moved in. But there was no one like little lost Ruby.

Miss Devoe had seen other children going in and out of the apartment. She ventured to guess one girl was about fourteen, another boy about the same. But this one, this little, bright-eyed, carrot-topped child, wasn’t older than ten.

Then there was the man; a dark-jacketed, dark-hooded figure that might’ve been a spectre—and Miss Devoe though he was at first. Like a bat, he hurried across the streets just after sun down and flitted back just before sun-up. Devoe only saw him occasionally, but enough to know he was a man and much older than the children coming and going from the same building.

She called the police. They said they’d look into it. But, weeks later, no patrol cars showed up, other than the usual for the druggies and drifters. She called again. Nothing. But when she saw Ruby’s picture—lost Ruby, kidnapped Ruby, scared, abused, mistreated Ruby—she went down to the station.

Oddly, the officers had no memory of her call. No report had ever been filed. As for the building in question, no one seemed to own it, no records existed for it. The officers responsible for patrolling the area didn’t want to discuss the house. When the precinct captain pressed them—feeling the pressure from furious old Miss Devoe, who’d gone utterly ignored for weeks—they confessed to having nightmares whenever they drove by the place.

“Nightmares?” the captain looked across her four patrolmen standing in her office, all of them looking at their shoes. On the edge of a furious chew-out, the broad, big-busted woman stopped herself. “What sort of nightmares?”

One cop looked up. “What’s the difference?”

The captain straightened. “It could be the difference between a dark magic haunting and you four being a bunch of pussies.”

“Drowning,” one cop, a tall, thin man on the end, muttered. “I hate it. Worst fear.”

The man next to him glanced, then looked down again. “I have these dreams like, like I’m falling. Like I’m falling off a cliff.”

The captain studied him. “You’re afraid of heights, aren’t you?”

He shuffled his feet, as if the ground were about to give way, and nodded.

“And you?” the captain continued down the line.

“I see my kids leavin.’ And my wife,” said another.

“I’m trapped in a cave,” said the last. “All dark, no way out.”

The captain pondered their responses a moment. “Would you all agree those are your worst fears?”

After a moment, two nodded. The others mumbled agreement.

“And you always get them after going by that house? You’re sure?”

The officers exchanged looks. The tall man in the middle finally met her eyes. “That’s why we stay away.” His voice was soft, guilty.

She nodded. “All right, dismissed.” She waved them out and they looked at her, wide-eyed. “This isn’t just some kidnapper in that house. It’s a ghost, some type of ghost, or maybe a vampire, or God knows what else, using black magic. I’m calling Monster Force.”

Ollie and El watched the house for a week in an unmarked blue sedan down the street. The first three nights yielded nothing. Couples argued regularly, loudly in the street, cars roared past, windows shattered, the occasional gunshot fired, and sirens screamed through less often than they should’ve—but there were no kids and no black-jacked man matching the local precinct’s description.

Looking through the windshield at the house, Ollie wondered about the stability of the local cops when they trusted the word of some nosy old bat. Sagging a bit to one side, green paint peeling off the siding with a sidewalk elm threatening to break through the top floor windows, the supposed “haunted” house looked a lot like the other slouching homes in the blighted area. It looked creepy in the dark, that was true, and the druggies did cross the street to avoid it, but, frankly, every house on that street looked creepy at night. With the fall leaves rattling in the air, breath ghosting in the cold night, and insidious dimness strangling every alley, it was a street decent citizens dreaded. But, on the third night of nothing, Ollie silently filed the case in his head on a very long shelf that drew him and his partner on many pointless drives: paranoia.

Still, they had to be thorough. On the fourth day, they returned in the morning instead. Were “ghosts” likely to appear in the morning? No, very rarely. Vampires? Impossible. Dark magicians? They usually met in their covens at night, so likely not. But still. They had to be thorough.

Styrofoam coffee cup in hand and red stirring stick between this teeth, Ollie sat behind the wheel and El sat next to him as the bright yellow sunshine shot boldly down on the dirty street. Though the nights were wild, often violent, the mornings were strangely calm, as if the borough was finally catching its breath. Ollie thought he might catch some sleep if he could get El to keep watch for him.

Just as he craned his neck to take the first ginger sip of hot coffee, thinking of how to get El to hold the stakeout while he slept, three children slipped out onto the street. Ollie froze, open lips hovering over the coffee lid. A boy and a girl about fourteen, just like the woman said, snuck out of a fence gate almost completely covered in browned ivy. Ollie hadn’t noticed it before in the dark, but it was directly adjacent to the backyard of the “haunted” house. And in between the two pre-teens was little, lost, red-headed Ruby, looking just like the photo in the missing child report in Ollie’s file, sitting in his briefcase in the backseat.

Ollie and El both watched intently, silent. Had Ruby been kidnapped by these two older children? Was it some kind of lewd scheme? Ollie watched the girl holding the older girl’s hand as they walked down the street. They all carried backpacks. And lunch pails. The two older children looked bored, but Ruby bounced down the sidewalk, swinging the older girl’s hand.

Ollie drew a tempered breath through his nose as he watched. Are they going to school?

“Let’s follow them,” Ollie murmured, reaching for the key.

El didn’t take her eyes off them. “What about the stakeout?”

“Ghosts don’t come out in the day. Neither do vamps.”

“Dark magicians do.”

Ollie considered it. “Not this one.” Waiting until the kids were well down the street, he started the car and followed at a slow crawl. The three got on a bus, which took them about fifteen minutes uptown and dropped them off just down the street from a towering brick building on a neat block; a private school.

“Unbelievable.” El shook her head as she watched the three enter through the big, open, green doors at the front of the school. “Three lost kids—Where would they get the money for that school?”

Ollie drew another sip of coffee, staring at the school from a block away. Maybe it is just a man. But then how to explain the nightmares? Maybe the cops are just pussies. But in that neighborhood? Ollie felt the familiar sensation of clues—disjointed, random, seemingly senseless bits—scattered around him. And the tenuous threads that somehow drew them all together, threads in a virulent web.

“I don’t see how it could be a ghost,” he said at last. “Ghosts can’t actually appear for any length of time, not the way the woman described.” The rest of the children filtered inside the school, ushered in by teachers, and the front fell quiet. “It must either be a vamp, a rich one, or a dark magician.”

“Ok, but here’s a bigger question.” El turned to him. “Why send the kids you’ve kidnapped to private school?”

It might not have been a bigger question—knowing what kind of monster they were dealing with was top priority in Ollie’s book—but it was an important one. One Ollie could not answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I do know that little red-headed girl was kidnapped, snatched up right from her room a year ago. And she’s from two states away, so she didn’t come here herself. Whatever adult lives in that house—I don’t care if he’s undead, a dark magician or a freaking unicorn—kidnapped her. Let’s get him and bring the kids home."