The clues had dried up. For a while they had been coming quite quickly, almost three a week, but now, nothing. Like theyd hit a dead end. Either they had got the most recent one wrong, or …
“The guy is fucking with us,” Anderson said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Hes watching us, somewhere, and laughing. Laughing at the poor little police idiots who fell for his shit again.”
Richard Anderson, 33 and well and truly over the life of a cop. To make it worse, he was here on his days off. The precinct was short a few because of some long weekend. Anderson said he’d take the overtime. It should have been a soft day sitting around doing fuck all, but here he was, at the ass end of town, in a derelict warehouse because a piece of paper wrapped around a brick had told them to come here.
“Are you sure you read the words right?” Giles asked.
Sara (never Sarah) Giles was nominally in charge of this whole endeavour. A few years older than Anderson, she was over his dramatics. Constantly having to be reminded that he wasnt in school anymore, she had slowly reevaluated her opinion of him recently. She was squatting on one knee so she was at face height with the third member of their little party, a ten year old girl named Sophie.
“I think so,” Sophie said quietly. Andersons outburst had frightened her and she still wasnt sure what to think about him. “The man said to come to the oldest building in the oldest part of town.”
“Here we go,” Anderson muttered as he sat on a barrel that had been left here by parties unknown. “Ask the kid about the strange man again.”
“Shut it,” Giles snapped at him. “She was right every other time.”
Sophie had come home from school one day and found a strange man in the living room. Her mother and father, friends of Giles, had been outside, unpacking the car which was full of groceries, and hadnt seen him. The man had told her things. She didnt understand any of them, and then he had left. Her parents almost had a mental breakdown when the girl related this to them later.
According to Sophie, she had met the man on several occasions after that first one and each time, he chastised her for not following his instructions, which he then proceeded to give to her again. After three times, Sophie finally managed to retell the story with the addition of the man telling her to do things, which resulted in another panicked call to the police and by pure chance, a connection to their family friend, Detective Giles.
“The oldest building,” Giles muttered to herself, affectionately patting the young girl on the head. “There is the chance that there is somewhere older around here,” she said, loud enough for Anderson to hear. “Maybe on the other side of the river?”
The river was wide, slow and deep and was the main point of entry for goods into their city. The city had grown from the docklands – where they were now – and now sprawled more than halfway to the mountains that loomed large not far away.
“The other side of the river,” Anderson intoned in that way where he had already said this before, the town records had said this before and every other piece of documentation that could say something else also said this before. “Was washed away when the river flooded over seventy years ago.”
“Yes, I know,” Giles said. “But there would be buildings over there.”
“They would be younger than this side of the river since the city grew out from here, it didnt start over there, cross the river and then build out. Weve been over this how many times?”
“I know,” Giles said. “I just need something to click. Then itll make sense. All the other clues made sense, so why doesnt this one?”
“Because this guy, whoever he is, is fucking with us.”
Sophie gave him a dagger glance. “No swearing,” she said.
“The only other part of town that this could refer to,” he said, “as we discussed earlier, is under the river, where it was swallowed during that same storm. If a building survived under there for that long, it has more will to live than I do.”
Sophie walked over to the wall behind them, the river was only a few hundred yards away from where they stood. They were technically not supposed to be here, the ground here was soft and easy to get stuck in and it only got muddier and softer the closer they got to the river.
“Its low tide,” Giles said raising an eyebrow.
“And how exactly are you going to get from here to where those other hypothetical buildings are? Its basically quicksand out there.”
“What?” Sophie said, turning and running back to Anderson. “What is that word? I heard him say that word.”
“Which word?” Anderson asked. He wasnt a fan of kids at the best of time, but a small one running at him demanding something was even worse.
“The quick one,” she replied.
“Quicksand?”
“Yes!” she jumped up and down. “I told mom and dad that there was another thing he said that I didnt understand. It was that, something about the quicksand,” she turned to Anderson who nodded at the way she said the word. She beamed happily back. “Something about,” she stopped and hit herself on the head a few times in frustration. “Something about it not being real,” she said at last. “I dont remember,” she said sadly. “But he said it lots, every time I think.”
“Not real?” Giles mused.
“Hes fu,” Anderson started, but saw the girl looking at him. “Messing with us,” he corrected. “This isnt some treasure hunt, or some movie where the young kid takes down a multinational crime ring or whatever. Hes getting his kicks from watching us run around and be played like fools.”
“We found that other girl though,” Sophie said.
When Giles had heard what Sophie said, she had recognised some of the details that the girl had been told as a case she had been working on; a missing girl, about Sophies age. At that point, the child had been presumed dead, but with some extra help from Sophies weird friend, they had located the missing girl and taken the kidnapper into custody. They had all expected Sophie to tell them that the kidnapper was the man who talked to her, but she didnt. She had never seen that man before in her life. Then came some other clues, as they began to call them, leading them to places where things werent quite right. Some trivial, some not. Sophies friend was a font of useful leads and tips.
Which is how they found themselves in an abandoned warehouse, at two in the afternoon on a random Tuesday. A clue about something larger, or so Sophie had said. The biggest one yet.
Giles wandered out the side door of the warehouse and, keeping close to the wall of the structure, walked around to the rear and faced out towards the river. Since it was low tide, she couldnt hear it, but she could see, between her and it, the part of town known as Quicksand.
“What if we dont sink on it?” she asked. “Its been a long time now, perhaps the land has hardened?”
“People die out there,” Anderson said. “They get caught in the current and get taken away. That river is a deathtrap.”
“We dont need to go to the water though,” she said. “Just to where the old district was.”
“Which is closer to the river than we are now,” he noted.
“Yes, but still within sight of this building.”
“Ok, say you go out there, and its solid enough to walk on. Then what? You dont know where the buildings used to be, and even if you found that out, you dont know which is the oldest. And even if you found that out, how the fuck are you going to dig down for it?”
“Quicksand isnt real,” Sophie whispered.
“No no,” Anderson said quickly. “Quicksand is definitely real and you should never come out here, ok? Its dangerous.”
“Were out here now and nothing happened,” Sophie countered.
“Youre with two very experienced police officers,” he continued. “Our job is to keep you safe, and your parents wouldnt like it if we let you put yourself in danger.”
“I dont want to go out there,” she said pointing towards the river. “But something is there, right?”
“No,” Anderson said. “Even if we thought there was, there is no way into those old buildings.”
“What if it isnt a building,” Giles said, snapping her fingers. “The oldest part of town. The very first part of town that was christened,” she grinned at Anderson who suddenly remembered his grade school history lessons and the story of their towns founding.
“The boat,” he muttered.
“The boat,” she repeated. “And I could see that from the back of this warehouse."
Giles stayed with Sophie while Anderson slowly inched his way across what had always been taught to them as soft mud. He was about half way between the two of them and the river itself when he came to the boat. It was the first boat that anchored here, containing the first group of settlers in this part of the country. It had been immediately and permanently fixed into the side of the river and was used as a hub as the settlers built out. Over time it had stopped being useful and became an icon and then a tourist attraction. And then, when the river flooded and that part of town was taken, forgotten.
“Im never going to forgive you for this,” Andersons voice came clearly over the walkie talkie Sophie had made them bring. “Theres a door into the bridge and its closed with a very modern lock and chain. Get the boys down here, the kid was right again.”