Free Bulls Rush In by Elliott James

BULLS RUSH IN
    Once Upon a Time, Samuel Blanco lived in a cave, or at least a small, dark house with all of the curtains drawn. The home was squatting brown and unadorned in a residential neighborhood that was technically lower class but not really; most of Samuel’s neighbors were retirees, young couples, and Latino families who had come to the area because of the furniture and textile factories, and they were still fighting the good fight against entropy. The houses might be old, but their windows were intact, their lawns were mowed, and nothing was rusting in the front yard. In fact, almost all of the homes had flowers planted in front of them instead of FOR SALE signs. It was why the word RETARD painted on Samuel’s driveway was such a shame. Some effort had been made to blast that ugly slur off the pavement with a pressure sprayer, but you could still see the faded outline from thirty feet away.
    It was raining pretty heavily because it was fall, but also because I’d hung around for several days waiting for it to rain heavily, and I’m the one who gets to decide when to start telling this story. Neighborhood watch signs were posted around—there had been a lot of petty vandalism like the example in Samuel’s driveway recently—but I didn’t see any actual signs of neighbors or anyone watching. So, I went up to Samuel Blanco’s house and let myself in.
    *  *  *
    “So you admit to breakin’ and enterin’?” I was being interrogated across a small table in a smaller room by Jim Reedy, a deputy with the Vista  Verde’s a sheriff’s office. Vista Verde was a small mountain town in West Virginia, pronounced Vur-duh Viss-tuh Vur-duh rather than like the Spanish name it was, even though thirty percent of the town residents were from Nicaragua or El Salvador or Mexico. I only mention that because I spent two months picking pumpkins outside the town limits, and Vista Verde’s name was the most interesting thing about the place. Deputy Reedy looked like he was in his late twenties and maybe five foot nine if he stretched. His chest was big, his head was small, and his biceps were the size of baby cantaloupes. He had probably played football for the Vista Verde Whatevers.
    “So, you’re not gonna give me some load of bull about bein’ drunk and the door bein’ unlocked and you thinkin’ it was your house?” He seemed to find my apparent cooperation a little disappointing.
    “No.” I took a sip of my coffee, more to finish it before it cooled down than anything else. Warmth was about the only thing the coffee had going for it.
    “And you do know this is bein’ recorded, right? You heard that part about havin’ a right to an attorney, right?” Deputy Reedy persisted.
    “Right,” I agreed.
    He settled back in his seat, a little nonplussed. “So, why were you there, Mr. Morris?”
    “Because my real name is John Charming,” I told him. “And I’m a monster hunter.”
    *  *  *
    I could smell mold the moment I opened the door. The place was all tan carpeting and patched furniture, and there weren’t a lot of paintings or posters or vases or ceramic figures, no pianos or flowers or pets or any of those little touches that people sprinkle over a house like salt to give it flavor. I took my time looking—Samuel was working a shift at the furniture factory—and I didn’t find many signs of a happy or fulfilled life. There were no pictures of his parents or little Sammy at a birthday party or an obvious love interest, no signs that Samuel had ever had a past at all. To be honest, it looked a lot like the homes I rent when I settle down in one place for a year or two, though I usually have some books lying around.
    Something bad had happened there, but I couldn’t tell how recently or how I knew it, not exactly. All animals can sense bodiless presences, even humans, but most humans are trained from childhood to rationalize such instincts away. The order of knights who raised me had trained me to