The Haunted Traveler December 2017 Edition

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“Rascal is as rascal is,” the man in the engineer’s cap says. You are about to ask what
that comment even means when you are distracted by the teenage boy opening the door
of your truck and burrowing behind your seat. “Hey!” you yell, causing everyone in
your backyard but the teen to stop their search for a second. He continues to root
around behind your seat.
“Tiny!” the man in the engineer’s cap calls out and the teenager pokes his head out
from behind your truck’s door like a meerkat with a bowl-cut. “Do you honestly think
she’d hide in there?” The teenager nods, chastened, and closes the truck door. It doesn’t
quite latch but he doesn’t seem to care: he has spotted the propane tank up by the
treeline of your property and is nearly running towards it.
“Hold up,” you say to the man in the engineer cap. He has walked around you and is
checking your basement hatchway to see if it is locked. “I’d like to know what’s going
on…”
“That would be great,” the man in the engineer cap say, simultaneously patronizing
you and dismissing you. The ten-year-old is now walking around Tricia’s birdfeeder as
if a different angle will reveal secret hiding spaces. The girl with the fantastic ass and
North Face are nowhere to be seen. “So many places to get to,” the man in the engineer
cap mutters.
You’re barefoot but know where most of the rocks are so you go and re-close the
door to your truck. Up the slope of your backyard the teenager is reaching under the
propane tank, parting the scrub grass that’s been growing there for years. There are
wasp nests up there and you’re about to warn him when he stands up and tips back the
metal dome on top of the propane tank. Beneath, wrapped around the inlet stem and
fuel gauge, is the football sized paper nest the delivery man had asked you to deal with
a couple of months ago. With a yelp, the teenager knocks the dome back into place and
swats at the white-faced devils circling his head. Some are on him, black and chitinous,
but instead of running away he lays down again to check beneath the other side of the
propane tank.
Dazed, uncertain, you pass around the back of your truck, the pavement morninghot
on the pads of your feet. How alarmed should you be? What can you do? There
are more people out on the street, some you know and some you don’t; looking under
parked cars, calling out Cadie’s name. At the corner you see Tricia’s black Highlander
turn onto your street; she must have forgotten something. With all that’s going on you
can’t help but feel a little irrational spur of anger: she said she’d be gone two hours. She is
coming on slowly, a mailman is sitting in the middle of the street dumping his mailbag
out.
“Cadie?” the teenage boy wails at your side, startling you. He is welted and puffy
from the wasps that are even now attacking his face. “Have you seen her?” He is crying,
not from the pain of the stings. He shuffles past you, past the middle-aged couple who
are on their bellies crawling beneath the hedges along the side of your house, past the