The Outkast

ambulance.

“I hope he does,” Brian said. “He’s got so many deep wounds all over him, enough to kill an elephant-which conveniently explains why he’s unconscious. But the emergency workers said he’ll come around pretty good.”

“What’s the news from the Coroner’s Office?” Allan asked as they began to walk back to Holly’s place.

“Another interesting story,” Brian said. “One of the boys at the lab screwed things up. The hair at the scene came from two sources-Robert and someone else. But they never saw that important fact until recently. Damn lab techies.”

“Who’s the other source?”

“Still unidentified.”

“So, they don’t have the DNA results from the blood samples for us yet?”

“Not Trevor Carter’s.”

“What?” Allan stopped in his track.

“Yeah, I know. It’s shocking. The blood on the knife as well as the one in which the strands were marinated came from the same person.”

“But not from Trevor?”

“No.” Brian went up the porch steps, and added, “Not from Robert, either.”

“This is getting more and more exciting,” Allan remarked.

“I want you to add to that excitement the fact that Ed Gibson’s running a different version of his story now.”

“Which is?”

“He was out to get a pack of cigarette when it all happened last week, and he held that important piece of info back at the start of this investigation. Hell, even past the middle of it.”

******

“I don’t really think it’s a good idea to go back in there unless we can get reinforcement,” Allan had observed when Brian had decided to head back to Holly’s.

Now, once in there, Brian suggested they comb through the house for any giveaway signs in relation to the thing, as Allan had chosen to refer to the night intruder.

Holly was howling away in her room, which was good. Brian thought the last thing they needed was a contentious woman breathing down their necks while they tried to make headway. Better to have her stay in there and cry her eyes out.

Besides a congealment of blood on Robert’s bed, the search through the house yielded nothing.

Then, they decided to go through Robert’s room one more time before giving up and leaving the house to devise another solution.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Allan asked after a while. He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about sticking around here-the location of his near-death-but evading responsibility seemed to be an uphill task now that Brian was here to supervise.

Brian favored him with a scalding look. “Well, I’m damn sure we’re not searching for your missing butt, Deputy.”

That didn’t sit well with Allan. Nonetheless, he shrugged and went on with his business.

Brian said, “Clues, Allan. Anything at all-that’s what we’re searching for. Anything that can lead us to the…” He paused, watching Allan, who had already dropped down on all fours, poking his head underneath the bed frame, his butt jutting out behind him. He was probing the space down there, doing a darn good cop’s job. “… anything that can lead us to it,” Brian finished.

Allan’s butt reversed, dragging the rest of him out from beneath the bed. He rose. With his back still turned to Brian, he dusted the object he’d ferreted out. Flipping it over and over, he said, “Check this out, Sheriff. I just found something, which is worth anything.”

“What?” Brian inched closer.

Allan turned around. There was a mischievous grin spread all over his face.

“A diary?”

Allan nodded. “Says ‘The daily reports from Robert’s funny dreams.’”

They flipped through the pages and were profoundly amazed at what they read from the boy’s secret writing.

In it, Robert Smallwood talked about a recurrent creature in his dreams called The Outkast. He further commented on how the creature scared him, even though when he woke up many times, he hardly remembered every part of his dreams. His writing was a mishmash of fearful emotions of nightmare and exhilarating feelings of pure adventures of journeys made into the Unusual.

“That’s some wealth of imagination going on for a twelve-year-old, huh?” Allan cocked his head to one side, anticipating a comment from Brian. He got one.

“I don’t think this is just a work of imagination, Allan?”

“Really? You don’t think so?”

“No, I don’t. I have a hunch there’s something concrete buried in there, something real and revealing. Something alive and breathing. The boy reads a lot of crooked books-and he’s a twisted kid, no doubt. But my gut feeling keeps nagging at me to see the wood for the trees.”

“What’d you suggest, then?”

“That we keep reading.”

“All right.”

So, they continued, Brian doing so with keen interest, hoping to fish out some clues.

Brian cast a brief glance at Allan. The look on the deputy’s face divulged the fact that he practically had no interest to tarry here this long, but Brian didn’t act like he noticed a thing.

The Outkast, Robert wrote on, hated everyone so much that he believed they deserved to die. He had been alienated from the community, and he lived alone, away in the ____________________

There was a blank space in the rest of the sentence, the last line on that page.

They skipped to the next.

The creature in the boy’s dreams believed Robert and him were the same, that they were of the same true blood and essence of life.

“Could he be making reference to their DNA, Sheriff?” Allan asked with a curl of his lip.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s a possibility,” Brian said. “I won’t be surprised at all if it turns out to be the case.” He ran the tip of his finger along the lines of Robert’s writing, as if the pages were specially made Braille that gave understanding not to the sightless but the curious at heart.

From the hallway, Holly’s wail filled the night.

Even though Robert was still young and not fully made yet, The Outkast would whip him into shape. He would instill the insensate spirit in him, adequate to carry on the work of casting the impure blood into the pit of hell, when he, The First True Blood, would be gone to the place of glory. The boy would learn all of this at the feet of The Outkast, watching as blood flowed from their enemies.

Brian frowned. “You see that?” he said, glancing briefly at Allan.

“Yeah, I do. The kid’s story’s getting better.”

Brian shook his head slowly, but didn’t say a word.

The next part of the piece spurred them to set off.

Robert described the domicile of the creature, based on his experience from the dreams, as a place full of blood, death, and wonders.

The Outkast lived on the outskirts of town. Repelled by the hypocrisy of human, he had chosen to live among the trees, in the deep bowels of Cave Kushi. It was located twenty miles northeast of River Sebastian, close to a trail accessible through a dirt route at the end of Sebastian Road.