The Suff: Three Days Later

He probably did just want a hug.

Recently, the Chronicler at Work In Progress published a short horror piece, featuring a strange and odious creature of ill-intent. I’d highly recommend giving it a read.

The Suff

Several other writers here on Substack took note and added their own bits and pieces, creating a larger framework of lore and stories around the creature. It’s honestly a real delight to see so many different users inspired and collaborating, and, being inspired myself after reading the story, I decided to give it a whirl. Short-form fiction is not usually my bag, but I’ve always wanted to try more of it, and now seems like as good a time as any to give it a swing and make the inaugural post on this side-substack.

This is a direct follow-up to the Chronicler’s original short that, as the name implies, takes place three days later. Yes, you do have to read his for this one to make sense… but you really should do that anyways. This one’s also a fair bit longer than all the other entries in the Suff Literary Universe, I suppose you could call it, but… I had fun with it. A big thanks to the Chronicler for sharing his work and letting us have fun with it. Be sure to check out his other stuff, while you’re at it. Or maybe I should say… his Suff.

---

“I already told you - I. Don’t. Know.”

Eli Whishaw snickered. “Cripes, Ralph. You think I was born yesterday, or somethin’?”

Across the table, Ralph Laird’s eyes, frantic and wide and incredulous, shifted between Eli and his partner. His mouth opened and closed without words or sound, both hands raised and turned palms up as if begging for a different response. After a moment, the boy’s wits came back to him, and he managed to find a single word - “Wh-what?”

To Eli’s right, Curt shifted in his seat. He could feel the older man side-eyeing him and pretended not to notice.

“Your friends all go into that fun house or whatever to beat up on the Gottlieb girl. They come out. You’re gone. Jackie’s gone. No one sees hide or hair of you the rest of the night until you get home stumbling drunk in the middle of the night. You gotta admit - not a good look.”

Ralph swallowed hard enough that Eli could hear it from the other side of the table. “I - I know that, but - look. You gotta believe me. I didn’t do nothin’, okay? I told you, Jackie blew me off, I got ticked, so I went to get sauced up at the spot me and the fellas hide our juice. Right hand to God, that’s - that’s all I did, honest.”

Eli opened his mouth to reply, when -

“Whishaw.”

Eli closed it just as fast. He redirected his sour stare from Ralph to Curt, who was already matching it with one of his own. The older detective jerked his head towards the door. Eli furrowed his brows, but said nothing. He didn’t intend to get up - not until Curt pushed away from the table with a look that said, Now. Eli’s first impulse was to argue. It was a bad one. Foolish, even. So, he grit his teeth and pushed his chair away from the table as well.

“We’ll be a moment,” Curt said to Ralph in a tone far more soft than what Eli thought he deserved. Even though the kid still looked fit to piss his pants at a moment’s notice, Eli heard the small sigh of relief as the two detectives stood up and left the room. He scarcely waited for the door to close.

“Curt,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re b-”

“He didn’t do it,” said Curt, careful to keep his volume low but his voice firm.

“Oh - you can’t be serious.”

“He didn’t do it,” Curt said again, this time enunciating each word clearly and deliberately. “And no amount of browbeating the poor kid is going to change that.”

Eli bristled beneath his long coat. “You sound awfully sure about that.”

“I am,” Curt said plainly.

“And why’s that, huh?”

“You can hear it in his voice. He’s telling the truth.”

It was all Eli could do not to roll his eyes. “Are you jokin’?” he balked. The older man's stoic expression remained unfazed. “You - you're just gonna ignore the evidence because of how he's talkin’?”

“No,” Curt said. “Not evidence, Whishaw. It's only circumstantial evidence. Nothing hard. We don't have anything that would hold up in court. And, yes - his body language, his tone of voice… it all speaks louder than a set of happenstances. You learn what the truth sounds like when you've been doing this for as long as I have.”

Even though Eli nodded, he wore a dismissive sneer. “Sure, sure. And I’m sure it’s got nothin’ to do with the fact you’d have to explain to his daddy why you put Ralphie boy in the slammer when you play cards this w-”

The wind was knocked out of his lungs before he could finish his thought, squeezed out between the wall against his back and Curt’s forearm pressed against his throat. Eli twitched, but it was about all he could do. The pressure wasn’t enough to stifle his breathing, but it was more than enough to keep him pinned to the wall.

Curt had volunteered to serve in France when he was already well above the age of most men going overseas. He’d gone through the Meuse-Argonne campaign and come back, when something like twenty five thousand other Americans hadn’t. It was something Eli had trouble remembering, at times. But, now? He remembered. And he was reminded that time and age had little to dull the man’s ability to handle himself.

“Listen here,” Curt growled between clenched teeth. “I’ve been patient with you. More than patient, even, but - so help me God, if you ever - ever - question my integrity again, it’ll be the last day you ever call yourself a detective. Here or anywhere else.” A tense moment of uncomfortable silence followed. “Understand?”

Eli nodded.

Wordlessly, Curt took a step back and dropped his arm from Eli’s chest. The younger man gave a raspy cough as he kneaded the spot where Curt’s arm had pressed the hardest against him. The two exchanged no words - just acrimonious stares.

“Go.” Curt inhaled deeply and gestured to the office door. “I’ll take care of it.”

Eli, still winded, still tense, shook his head.

Curt shook his, too. “No,” he said, his tone leaving no room for ambiguity. “No. Just - let me handle this.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Eli asked.

“Take the rest of the night off,” Curt replied. “Come back tomorrow.”

Eli lingered. Again - protesting felt like the right course of action, but he knew that his partner was not in a mood to have his buttons pressed. And, really, Eli wasn’t in any position to do it, either. He nodded and straightened himself up, gathering his coat and hat from the rack by the door and leaving without saying another word.

---

The town’s fairgrounds were empty, now. Mostly. The only remnants of the Halloween Festival that still remained was bits of debris and detritus that had never made it into trash bags and a few items that the carnies hadn’t cared enough to take with them when they left town. Empty crates with missing planks and nails. A broken chair. A busted tire. A sagging post that still had a string of dead lights dangling from it, swaying limp and sad in a stiff November breeze. All of it was illustrated in the thin, waxy light of the moon, a perfect half of which peered through a gap in the dense, dark clouds strewn about the sky like the large, observant eye of some odious, half-hidden figure.

They carnival had cleared out quick and left the mess for the farmer who actually owned the field to clean up. Convenient - a girl goes missing and, before news can even get out, they’re gone like smoke in the wind. Of course, Eli still thought the Laird boy knew more than he was letting on, but, at the same time, the thought that Jackie le Fay had gotten snatched up by some carnie with ill intentions… it had crossed his mind more than once. They had the traveling carnival’s information from the city organizers. Already sent a letter requesting they come back for questioning, too, but it was anyone’s guess if they’d actually respond or not. And, if anyone on their staff had done anything? Trying to get them to return would be a fool’s errand.

In a way, Eli found himself hoping that Ralph Laird had done something, if only so they could have a culprit and bring the case to a close. Jackie le Fay wasn’t the type of girl who went missing and no one noticed. Worse, her family wasn’t the type that would accept a we don’t know for an answer, either. If the town cops couldn’t tell them what happened with Jackie, he already knew they’d be throwing money at whoever might tell them they could, and it would be a black spot that the department would never shake. Not in his lifetime, at least.

A bitter wind wound across the field, carrying with it the tattered remains of an orange streamer that twisted and danced along the ground. Eli watched it go and wondered why exactly he’d even bothered to come out here. He hadn’t come expecting to find much of anything, evidence or otherwise, though, some small part of him hoped that he might. But, at the same time, he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, even if he tried, and there was no where to go in town; all the eateries had closed hours ago, the watering holes that hadn’t shut down after booze was outlawed weren’t worth a damn, and the ones that still were… well, he technically wasn’t supposed to know about those. So, he did what he always did when he was stumped on a case - he returned to the scene of the crime. He always reasoned that, maybe, if he walked around the same space as the perpetrator of the crime, he’d be struck by sudden epiphany, or see something he hadn’t noticed before, or just gain some sort of esoteric insight into the logic or headspace of the criminal. Did it ever work? No - but it was better to try and fail than to sit in bed and stare at the ceiling until he passed out.

Fighting back a shiver, Eli reached a hand into the interior of his coat and fished out the box of smokes nestled within one of the hidden pockets. With one trembling hand, he stuck one of the cigarettes between his lips while retrieving his lighter with the other. He brought the lighter to the tip of his smoke and struck the flint wheel.

Nothing happened.

With a muttered curse around the cigarette in his mouth, Eli struck the wheel again. And, again - no flame. Not even a spark. The lighter wasn’t working in the way lighters didn’t when they were out of fuel, which meant he was screwed. With another obscenity whispered under his breath, Eli prepared to try the lighter again - just in case - when -

Eli jerked his head to the right. He hadn’t even thought to do so - it just happened as he caught motion in the periphery of his vision. He stared in the direction he’d seen the motion. Or, where he thought he saw the motion. There wasn’t anything he could see that might have caught his eye. He replayed what he’d thought he’d seen in his mind’s eye - the languid twisting and rippling of a piece of fabric, caught in the wind as it blew away.

Could have been another one of those paper streamers, picked up by an errant draft.

Sure - that was it. Probably.

With a sigh, Eli prepared to try to lighter again, and, this time, when he found himself spinning on his heels, he knew what it for. Footsteps - the distinct, unmistakable sound of grass being tread on by careful feet. Training kicked in and Eli’s hand once again reached into his coat. His fingers wrapped around the grip of the M1911 nestled in a leather holster strapped to his hip, but the gun remained undrawn as Eli’s mind registered what his eyes were seeing.

“Christ almighty,” he sighed. “This close.” He withdrew his hand from his side and raised it, pinching forefinger and thumb together. “You were this close to gettin’ a new hole in yer face.”

The girl kept both of her hands raised in a gesture of surrender. She silhouetted by the light of the moon; a small, mousy thing that looked to be hunched beneath her own insubstantial weight, dressed in a long skirt and a thick canvas jacket, with a hat dark, unruly hair and a pair of unflattering specs that looked to be two solid circles of white with the way they caught and reflected the moonlight. Both the hat and the jacket were too large for her sleight frame, and looked like something she stole out of the closet of a male relative for the occasion.

“S-sorry. I… I didn’t mean to spook you.”

Even before he heard her voice, Eli knew who she was. Fanny Gottlieb was pretty hard to mistake for anyone else, and there weren’t many others around that could be mistaken for her, either. Eli had spoken with her yesterday, since she’d been one of the last people to see Jackie le Fay, but, even before then, he knew her from when she worked part time at her father’s grocery store. She was a nice kid. Timid. Quiet. Had a backbone with all the resilience of overcooked pasta. But nice.

“You did a bang up job,” Eli muttered, the adrenaline from the shock still pumping through his system. “The hell are you doin’ out here, anyways? You lookin’ to be the next one who goes missin’?”

Fanny’s bespectacled gaze fell down to her shoes. She shifted uncomfortably on her feet. “Um… y-you, uh - you need a light?” She reached into one of the pockets of the jackets she was wearing. The small metal lighter she pulled out glint as it caught the moonlight. She held it out for Eli to take.

Eli felt as though he should have told the girl to run back home - or take her there himself - but, against his better judgement, accepted the offered lighter. Unlike his, it worked. “You smoke?” he asked around the cigarette, relishing the soft crackle of burning paper as it caught flame.

Fanny shrugged. “Sometimes.”

With the cigarette lit, Eli inhaled. A bit of nicotine was exactly what he needed to get his head right again. He held out Fanny’s lighter for her to take. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “You wanna tell me what you’re doing out here?”

Fanny used fishing out a smoke for herself as a reason to refrain from answering. Her hands shook something fierce as she went about the ritual of lighting it, the flame quivering and quaking as it danced at the end of her lighter. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said in that small, squeaky voice of hers.

“So, what?” Eli asked, taking another drag on his smoke. “You like to… bum around empty fields at the edge of town in the cold when you can’t sleep? That a hobby of yours, or somethin’?”

Fanny’s face disappeared as the flame from her lighter winked out, leaving nothing but the smoldering red of the tip glowing in the darkness. There was a sigh, followed by a cloud of grey, wispy smoke that floated and spiraled through the air. She took one drag, then another, and said nothing. Eli felt his patience begin to fray. But, no sooner had he committed to asking her if she could still talk -

“I… I think I, um… ah… there’s something you should… probably know.”

“Know what?”

Fanny inhaled, the tip of her cigarette glowing bright enough to illuminate her face, if only for a moment. He’d spoken to her yesterday about the incident with Jackie le Fay. Taken her statement. It wasn’t anything useful. Just the same as the other’s; she was there when they went into the mirror maze. Wasn’t when they got out. Had there been more to her story? Something she’d been hesitant to share? Something she hadn’t felt comfortable admitting at the time?

“Fanny, if… if you know something about what happened to Jackie, you need to tell me. Okay?”

Fanny nodded as she took another drag. She was quiet for another long, pensive moment. “That night,” she said. “I… I had a feeling that something bad was gonna happen. Something… something really bad. I could just - I felt it in my gut.” Her nasal voice was as small and quiet as it had ever been, but, pauses aside, Eli had never heard her stutter or sputter so little before. “I was trying to leave when Jackie and her friends caught me. She stayed outside with Ralph Laird, and… and Bobby Dixon, he and the Mason twins forced me into the tent. With the freak show and that… that stupid mirror maze.” She shivered violently, no doubt recalling the events. “I… I got away from them in the maze. I told you - I told you I made it out before they did. And… that’s true. But… but I also told you that I didn’t see Jackie when I did, and…” She gave a long, wavering exhale. Tapped her smoke and let the glowing ashes fall into the grass. “That wasn’t.”

“Why… why didn’t you say anything before?” Eli asked. “I - look, you’re not in trouble, but - why?”

By the wan light of her smoldering smoke, Eli could see Fanny’s lips scrunch against one side of her mouth, then to the other, and back again. The wind picked up. It moaned softly as it rolled across the littered field. The leaves of distant trees shuddered and rustled and sounded like a dozen different voices all engaged in excited but shushed conversation.

“I - I didn’t believe what I saw.” Fanny sniffed. “I… I still don’t believe what I saw.”

Eli took a step closer to the girl, closing some of the distance between them. It took conscious effort to keep his hands bolted by his side to refrain from reaching out and grabbing the her by the shoulders and shaking her until she spit out whatever was stuck in her head. “What? What happened? What did you see?”

“There - there was… something.”

“Something?”

A gale whipped at the back of Eli’s coat. The distant voices of the shuddering tree boughs grew agitated and louder.

“Something not right,” Fanny said.

“What - what is that supposed to mean?” Eli asked, raising his voice to drown out the chatter of leaves coming from the tree line. The dead string of lights lifted off the abandoned pole, raising like a pair of long arms as they caught the wind as the light bulbs stuck to it rattled and clicked.

“I - I came back. Every night. Trying to see if - if I could find it again,” Fanny said. “Because it… it just have to see it again, just - just to prove I’m not crazy.”

The cigarette tumbled from Eli’s lips as he took another step forward and, this time, clasped his hands on Fanny’s shoulder.

“See what?”

“Someone,” Fanny whispered, barely audible over the sounds of wind and leaves and clicking glass bulbs. “Something, covered… covered in black sheets… something with these… horribly short legs and - and grotesquely long arms that just - it didn’t make sense, and - and it - it had Jackie.” Tears gleamed in the moonlight as they rolled down her cheeks. “I couldn’t see more than - it was just a bit. Only a bit, through… through all the laundry, it had been hiding there, in the laundry, but I… I…” She choked back a sob. “I thought I heard it. Or - or maybe it was Jackie, and - and -” Fanny’s mouth opened and froze in a soundless scream at the same time that Eli felt every muscle in her body tense up at once. He opened his mouth, too, but the demand he was prepared to make caught in his throat as he heard it, clear as a gun shot in the sudden silence that followed the stilling of the wind.

“The suffering… the suffering… the suff-”