The Neverglades: Volume Three: The Neverglades, #3

By David Farrow

It's been one year since the Inspector and Sheriff Marconi disappeared into the netherwastes. One year of relative peace and quiet for the people of Pacific Glade. The monsters are gone, crime is down, and things are starting to look... well, normal.

But normal can't last forever. Everything changes when the unconscious bodies of Marconi and the Inspector are discovered in the forest. Nothing will wake them up, but that's not the only problem - their return trip has torn open the walls between dimensions, and reality is slowly coming undone.

The only way to save the duo (and existence as we know it) is to find the pieces they left behind in their journey across the multiverse. But traversing dimensions comes with its own set of dangers, and not everyone may come back unscathed... or come back at all.

In this third and final collection, battles are fought, familiar faces return, and the story of the Neverglades comes to its epic and emotional conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Farrow
• Release date: Aug 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393592273

Book preview

The Neverglades

~ volume three ~

DAVID FARROW

illustrated by  CHRIS BODILY

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Lance Buckley

Illustrations by Chris Bodily

Copyright © 2021 David Farrow

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To the Eternal Easters, for seeing this journey to its end -

and to you,

for following every step of the way.

The Third Man

ATWATER

WHEN I WAS A ROOKIE back in San Francisco, I lost one of my best friends in a shootout. It was a pretty standard drug bust: a couple of dealers cooking up meth in the basement of an abandoned condo. We thought it would be an in-and-out, grab the perps, get home by dinner sort of situation. The building was surrounded and the crooks had nowhere to run. I wouldn’t say we had our guards lowered, exactly, but no one expected things to go south the way they did. Not really.

Most of these dealers, they know a homicide charge is way worse than a trafficking one, and it’s a million times better than getting shot by a cop. They have the sense to know they’re fucked, so they go in quietly. Not these guys. They were the kinds of dealers who liked to dip into their own stash, and when we showed up at their doorstep, they were methed out of their ever-loving minds. They were the ones who opened fire first. My friend Jimmy was unlucky enough to be at the head of the pack, and he got a bullet in the forehead. Dead in seconds.

As Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

When you’re a cop, you have to accept, deep down, that death is just part of the job. But it’s all hypothetical until it happens to someone you know. Losing Jimmy, it hit me hard. I had trouble holding a gun for a while. My hands would get all clammy and the pistol would slip out of my fingers. The station chief took pity on me and put me on more lowkey assignments for a couple months. Outwardly I griped about being demoted, but inwardly, I was grateful for the reprieve.

Mourning Jimmy wasn’t easy, but it made sense. He was here, he was gone, and then we had to deal with the aftermath. That’s just how it was. Death isn’t simple, but it does have a way of putting things in perspective. It’s easier to move on when you know you’ve said your last goodbyes.

Ambiguity, though – that’s what gets me. It’s why I’ve always struggled with missing person cases. That not knowing, that elusive answer, keeps me in limbo. Everything is so much more cut and dry when you have a body. I know that sounds pretty heartless, but it’s true. I’d rather have an answer than not. Even if that answer is hard to stomach.

I could really use some answers these days.

It’s been almost a year since two friends of mine went away. We’d been through hell and back, the three of us, but this time they were going somewhere I couldn’t follow. I made them promise to come back. For a while, I honestly thought they would. But it’s been months and months and we haven’t seen a trace of them.

Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse: a figure in a long jacket entering a bar, or a policewoman driving her car past me on the sidewalk. Every time I do a double take, and every time I’m disappointed. It leaves me with this hollow feeling in my gut, like something has been ripped away from me. Something I’ve been trying to hold onto for longer than I can remember.

I don’t let it keep me from living my life. I still go to work and throw back drinks with the crew and curl up on the couch watching stupid TV shows until two a.m. But those friends are the first things on my mind when I wake up in the morning, and they’re the last things I think of when I’m drifting off to sleep. I’ve heard people say that’s what happens when you love somebody. You can call me a softy, but it’s true. I love those two. And I miss them something fierce.

It’d be easier if I could mourn them, as horrible as that sounds. But how do you mourn someone you’ve lost when you don’t know if they’re lost to you forever?

I KNOW MY FAIR SHARE of folks from around town, police or otherwise, but my closest friend these days has got to be Ruth Hannigan. We’re an unusual pair. I’m a cop in my late twenties; she’s a middle-aged widow getting her psych degree online. I can’t remember when we first started going out for drinks together, but from day one, it just felt right. She’s got a youthfulness to her that always seems to brighten up the room, and a face that’s easy to trust. I feel like I can talk to her about anything.

Our usual haunt is the Hanging Rock. Not that there’s a better alternative when it comes to hangout spots in Pacific Glade; a town this small has a couple of family restaurants, but only one with an extensive bar and game room. Ruth is surprisingly good at holding her liquor, and she’s a real pool shark too. We’ve spent plenty of Saturday nights getting royally sloshed and challenging each other to drunken games of pool or air hockey.

How’re the classes going? I asked her the other night. She was crouched down over the pool table, staring intensely at the cue ball. The thwack as she struck the ball was as loud as a tree toppling.

Pretty good, she answered. We’re talking about mental psychoses in this unit. Hallucinations, delusions, extreme phobias, all sorts of fascinating stuff.

I totally whiffed my next shot, leaving Ruth a clear opening at the corner pocket.

Phobias are no joke, I said. Remember when that Semblance creep brought everyone’s fears to life last year? We were lucky to make it out of that one alive.

Ruth’s smile dimmed a bit, like it always did whenever we started talking about the town’s more unusual history. Things had been quiet for months now. Ordinary crime was down, and the less ordinary cases (the stuff people might have called supernatural) had dried up completely. No monsters, no possessions, no shapeshifting entities wearing the faces of our loved ones. I’d grown so used to all the strange shit that the absence of it felt wrong, somehow.

Do you think the Inspector leaving made the Neverglades less... weird? I asked.

Ruth was spared from answering by the arrival of Abigail Shannon. The newly appointed sheriff had taken over when it was clear Marconi wasn’t coming back. That night she was off duty. She wore her blonde hair loose, spilling over the shoulders of her denim jacket. There was a manila folder tucked under her arm.

Evening, Sheriff, I said, hoping I didn’t sound as drunk as I felt. What’s the occasion?

Don’t let me interrupt you, she said with a smile. I just came to drop something off. Thought you might be interested in taking a look.

What is it? I asked. I drifted away from the pool table, where Ruth was lining up her next shot.

Shannon glanced around the bar, then back at me. There was a weariness in her eyes that I’d grown used to over the last several months. She’d taken well to the leadership position, no one could deny that, but it was clear she’d been worn down by the pressure of stepping into Marconi’s shoes.

I’ve heard rumors around the station that you’re interested in making detective, she said. Is that true?

Yeah, I said. I’ve been thinking about it. Why do you ask?

She answered by pulling out the manila folder and slapping it into my hand. I propped it open and started flipping through the contents. It was a police report, complete with crime scene photographs and witness testimonies.

Lyonsville PD sent us a new case this afternoon, she said. Robbery and a homicide. The detectives down at their precinct are stumped on this one. If you can crack it, you’d be a shoe-in for the detective position.

Behind me, Ruth sunk another ball into the pocket with a jarring thwack.

Thank you, I said. Seriously. I really appreciate you looking out for me.

She smiled and punched me lightly on the shoulder. Don’t thank me yet. Save it for when you’ve got that shiny new detective badge.

You’re up, Zach, Ruth called from across the table.

Shannon waved at her. I’ll let you get back to your game, she said. Enjoy your day off, Atwater. Let me know how the case goes.

Then she was gone, weaving her way through the sea of drunken bargoers. I looked down at the folder she’d handed me. It was true that I’d been casually dropping hints about wanting a promotion; I just hadn’t realized the sheriff had been paying attention. The fact that she’d come to me with a real stumper of a case, when she could have easily handed it off to a more experienced officer, filled me with a surge of pride.

I placed the folder down, lined up my shot, and smacked the cue ball right in the center. This time I didn’t whiff it.

I GOT BACK TO MY APARTMENT around midnight. I had no roommate to disturb, so I turned on the kitchen light and tried to beat back the throbbing of an early hangover. Shannon’s file sat on the counter next to a stack of unpaid bills. I poured myself a glass of water and stared at the folder like it might sprout wings and fly away.

I knew I should probably wait until morning, but hangover or not, I was itching to know what this case was all about. It didn’t take long for my willpower to crack. I drained the glass and placed it in the sink, then flipped open the folder to the first police report.

It seemed like a pretty standard case at first. Two men in ski masks had staged a robbery at a high-end jewelry store (some place called Jasper’s) at the shopping mall down in Lyonsville. They’d taken all the cash from the register, along with thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise. An employee had been shot in the process. The report said that the wound was shallow and not fatal, and the employee himself had actually returned to work three days after the incident. I scratched my head at that one and kept reading.

It was only after the robbers fled the scene that things got strange. Camera footage showed them running along the third floor of the mall and ducking into an alcove that led to a set of bathrooms. The footage showed two men entering the hallway, but no men leaving. Security officers on the scene found one of the men shot dead at the end of the hall; the other had vanished into thin air, along with the stolen jewelry. The hallway itself was a dead end – no exit doors, no tiles in the ceiling to climb through, nothing but a water fountain and a door to the men’s restroom. The officers had scoured the restroom but found no trace of the second criminal or his loot. It was like he’d simply popped out of existence.

This was an interesting case, all right. I read through the files a couple of times, trying to spot any threads the Lyonsville police might have missed, but my head was starting to throb and I doubted I’d make any headway with this limited information. I’d have to check out the mall for myself.

That was a problem for tomorrow, though. I shut off the kitchen light and retreated to my bedroom, placing the file on my nightstand. Then I slipped under the covers and slept like a baby. Hopefully my head would be clearer in the morning.

PACIFIC GLADE HAS A tiny strip mall of its own, but the city of Lyonsville has always had a little more money to throw around, and Silver Moon Square was easily the most ostentatious shopping mall I’d ever stepped foot in. Three stories high, with more square footage than I could even fathom, it was home to four upscale restaurants, a movie theater, an indoor ropes course, and dozens of fancy shops I’d never heard of in my life. I watched from the escalator as shoppers passed by me, expensive bags in hand, laughing and chatting mindlessly. Some of them glanced at my police uniform, but their eyes slid away before long.

Jasper’s Fine Jewelry was located on the third floor. I strolled inside, ignoring the few browsing customers and rows upon rows of sparkling merchandise, and headed straight for the service desk at the back. The employee’s smile dimmed like a dying lightbulb when she saw me approach.

Can I help you? she asked timidly.

I’m hoping to speak with a manager, I said. Preferably one who was here during the... incident the other day.

The girl winced, but pressed the intercom button beside her. Roland to the service desk, please, she said into the mic.

Roland didn’t keep me waiting long. He emerged from the back room in a slick blue suit, his hair combed to the side in a gravity-defying swish, his eyes sharp and shrewd behind his glasses. There was a flamboyant swagger to the way he walked. He approached the service desk, eyed me up and down, and hmphed.

Roland Fox, he said. He didn’t extend a hand to shake. Can I help you, officer?

I hope so, I replied. Lyonsville PD asked me to come down and look into the robbery that happened here last week. I understand you’ve already talked to their department about this – all I’m asking is a few minutes of your time to corroborate some details.

Roland rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest. He turned to the girl at the service desk and made a shooing gesture. Go help a customer or something, Cynthia. I’d like some privacy to chat with Mr. Business here.

Cynthia nodded and slipped out from behind the desk, her body slouched and tense. Roland leaned against the counter and stared at me. His eyes kept flicking from my head to my feet, like he was sizing me up. I felt tiny dots of heat burn on my cheeks.

Fire away, he said.

I cleared my throat, then pulled a tiny notebook out of my pocket. You were the manager on duty the day of the robbery, correct? I asked. Can you walk me through what happened?

I was, and I can, he said. "It was early, maybe an hour after open, so there weren’t too many customers in the store at the time. Most of our traffic comes after lunch. There was one man browsing the wristwatches, and a couple of women checking out the necklace display. They weren’t anywhere near the registers when it happened.

"I was helping an employee set up our new display when we heard the first of the shouting from up front. There were two men, average height, wearing black jumpsuits and ski masks, and they had these guns – He gestured with his hands. - about yea big."

How many shots did they fire? I asked, scribbling down the details.

"Just two. One was a warning shot; the other was the real deal. Our cashier, Julius, tried to reason with them instead of just handing over the money, which is what we tell everyone to do if they’re held at gunpoint. Guess he wasn’t paying attention at orientation. The first guy shot him right in the side and took the money anyway. The second one smashed open our displays and started shoveling our stock into this big sack."

Is Julius okay? I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

Roland made a dismissive gesture with his hand. He’s fine. Bullet barely grazed him. They patched him right up and he was back at work in a couple of days. He’s actually on register right now if you want to run a few questions by him.

Thank you, I think I’ll do that, I said. Thanks for your help, Mr. Fox.

Please, it’s Roland, he replied. He reached into his pocket and drew out a business card, which he slipped quietly into my hand. Give me a call if you think of any other questions, officer. Or, you know... His eyes flicked up and down again. If there’s anything else I can help you with.

I smiled faintly and tucked the card away.

Julius clammed up when he saw me approach, much like Cynthia, but a little bit of coaxing got him to open up about the incident. He told me how seeing the armed men had knocked him for a loop, how all his training for this sort of situation had flown straight out of his head. He showed me the bandage over his ribs where the bullet had zipped through the side of his chest. He told me how he’d laid there in a puddle of his own blood while security officers tended to his wound and asked where the robbers had gone.

I told them as much as I could about what happened, Julius said. He was a young kid, maybe nineteen or twenty, with the faintest trace of a Canadian accent. I was having trouble staying, you know, conscious. I’d lost a lot of blood.

But you were back at work only days later, I said. Wasn’t that hard for you? Why would you want to go back to a place where you’d been shot, and so soon after it happened?

Julius shifted uncomfortably. He ran a nervous hand through his mop of black hair, which made him wince.

Do you know how expensive it is to go to the hospital these days? he asked. My mom and I, we just moved here from Canada, we have no insurance or anything yet. I got shot and I had to choose between dying or getting hopelessly in debt. He took a shuddering breath. It’s fucked up, man. I’m back here because I have to pay for my hospital bills somehow.

It’s hard, as a cop, to stay professional when someone drops a bombshell like that. I felt bad for the kid. I wanted to do something more for him, to let him know that we’d catch the shooter, that everything would turn out okay – but it wasn’t my place, and how could I be sure of that anyway? So I shook his hand and thanked him for speaking with me. Sometimes, that’s really all you can do.

I’D GOTTEN ALL THE info I could out of the Jasper’s employees, so my next step was to retrace the path the robbers had taken. I could picture them, hefting their sacks on the security footage, scrambling out of the store and out into the sparse crowd of early morning shoppers. Everyone had seen their guns and wisely gotten the fuck out of there. The thieves had run past the food court, past a boutique and a sporting goods store and a pharmacy, before ducking inexplicably into the dead-end hallway. I followed their path and peered down the empty corridor.

The walls were white and clean, with a few framed ads plastered here and there. I tried lifting one of them, just out of curiosity, but they were stuck tight. The tiles stretched out in a pristine white-and-yellow checkerboard pattern. There was nothing down this way except the door to the men’s room, a single water fountain, and a sign reading PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE MERCHANDISE IN THE RESTROOM. The report was right. There were no other doors down this way, and no ceiling tiles the thief could have climbed through. I tapped on the walls just in case, but I was hardly expecting a secret door to pop open, and of course none did.

The men’s room was the only place left to look. I pushed open the door and stepped inside, taking in the row of gleaming sinks, the spotless floor, the graffiti-free bathroom stalls. I got the sense that this place got a hefty cleaning several times a day. There was a narrow janitor’s closet tucked in the corner of the room, but it was locked when I tried the handle. Still might be worth checking out if I could track down someone with a key, but I doubted the surviving thief would have had time to break in before security arrived at the scene. Like the hall outside, there were no ceiling tiles in the room. There was nowhere to go except out the way I’d come.

How could he just disappear? I muttered to myself.

A thought came to mind – one that made my skin prickle. I’d assumed this whole time that we were dealing with a perfectly ordinary human criminal. But there were strange things out there, especially in this neck of the woods, and how could I be sure that something otherworldly wasn’t involved? It wasn’t hard to imagine a being that could open doors to anywhere it wanted. In fact, I had plenty of experience with an entity who could do just that.

Suddenly I didn’t want to be in this restroom anymore.

I WAS HAPPY TO LEAVE Silver Moon Square behind me and retreat to the quiet comfort of my apartment. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, I kicked back on the couch and started flipping through the notes I’d taken. It didn’t take long. Julius and Roland’s testimonies barely told me anything new, and none of my observations on the dead-end hallway could explain how one of the thieves had vanished into thin air. Not using ordinary logic, anyway.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t realize I was sketching in the margins of my notebook. While my brain was elsewhere, my hand had drawn a crude picture of a door: one with a thickly shaded surface and a rune etched into the front. I hastily scrubbed at the drawing with my eraser until it was nothing more than a smudge.

That was when my cell phone rang, making me jump half an inch off the couch. I didn’t recognize the number. Common sense told me to ignore it, but I accepted the call anyway. The voice on the other end of the line was raspy, female, and totally unfamiliar.

Zachary Atwater? she said, before I could even offer a hello.

That’s me, I replied. Who’s asking?

Detective Georgina Prewitt of the Lyonsville police department, and let me just say that I don’t appreciate the sass, officer. I’m the one who reached out to Pacific Glade PD with this robbery case. That means I’m your acting partner until this case is over. Just because we’re outsourcing it to you doesn’t mean you can go lone wolf and snoop around without checking with me first.

Listening to her was like being lectured by one of my old high school teachers; I found myself instinctively sitting up straighter on the couch. I’m really sorry about that, I said. I don’t know if the sheriff told you, but I’m still in the training process for this whole detective gig. If I messed up the protocol, that’s on me.

Prewitt made a hmph in her throat that reminded me of Roland. Be that as it may, I expect you to report anything new you find to me immediately. She paused, then: "Is there anything new report, officer?"

I glanced at the hastily erased smudge in my notebook.

Nothing that wasn’t in the case file, I said. Or nothing that jumped out at me, anyway. Maybe we should compare notes and see if anything adds up.

Obviously, she said. Be at my office tomorrow, ten o’ clock sharp. Then she hung up without saying goodbye.

I stared at my phone for a moment, watching as the call notification blinked out. Then I took a sip from my beer and stared up at the cracks in the ceiling. For the second time that day, I felt my skin prickle at the sensation of a weird doubling, a memory from my past intruding on the present. Detective Prewitt had a no-nonsense temperament that I knew a little too well. I felt like I’d just gotten off the phone with Olivia Marconi.

DUSK WAS SETTLING IN, the sun stuck in its strangely persistent spot on the tip of Mount Palmer, but I wasn’t in a position to enjoy the view. I’d driven my car to the ruins of CAPRA headquarters and parked by the outer gates, hiding myself in the shadows of the crumbling structure. Not that there was anyone left inside to notice me lurking there. The building was as dead as its old inhabitants, a hollow monument to decades of misguided scientific research and wasted, ruined lives. I sat in the driver’s seat and stared through the cracked doors into the empty lobby.

I’m not sure how long I sat there, waiting for signs of movement from inside. It took the rumble of an approaching engine to jolt me out of my trance. I turned to see Ruth’s Camaro rolling out of the forest, its beige surface dappled in the shadows of scraggly branches. She pulled up next to me, then stopped the car and got out. I rolled down my window as she strode over.

You flaked on our dinner plans, she said. I figured you must have come out here again.

I winced. "Shit, I’m sorry.

Reviews for The Neverglades

[max3011 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absorbing, spell-binding. These books are full of heart, awe, horror, and fantasy. Through his amazing set of characters, David Farrow has produced some magical storytelling pieces in these stories. You feel them, and you see them.