Free Bound by Jonas Saul

Bound
     
    Kramer Kay stood among shelves upon shelves of glass figurines. Someone was dead. She could feel it, but she couldn’t see them yet. As she walked around the display cases that held a variety of glass statues, the store clerk approached and asked if she needed any help. The store’s lights were bright, the air stale and dry. She turned, licked her lips, and judged the woman to be at least sixty years of age. Her name tag read “Beatrice”.
     
    “I’m just looking,” Kramer responded. Beatrice probably heard that all day.
     
    “Just holler if you need anything.”
     
    Kramer politely nodded and turned away.
     
    Every sort of figure was done up in glass in front of her. Dolphins, wolves, deer, even elephants. She reached out to pick up a glass rabbit and felt someone standing beside her. 
     
    I thought I told the clerk I was just looking.
     
    Kramer glanced to her right where a teenage girl stood, holding a glass deer with its head down in the grazing position. It appeared to Kramer that the girl, roughly eighteen years of age, worked here. Her name tag read, “Kelly”.
     
    “I’ve always liked this one. It was my favorite.”
     
    Kramer caught the use of past tense: was my favorite . Could Kelly be dead, or did she simply have a new favorite? It could be seriously hard for Kramer to tell the difference at times. The dead appeared so real before her.
     
    “Which one is your favorite now?” Kramer asked.
     
    “It’s still this one.”
     
    Odd.
     
    “But I thought you said it ‘ was ’ your favorite?”
     
    “I did.”
     
    The girl reached out and placed the deer in Kramer’s palm. Their eyes locked as the young girl spoke again.
     
    “Help me. I lay where the deer play.”
     
    Her voice sent a shiver through Kramer’s shoulders.
     
    “What did you say?”
     
    “I lay where the deer play. Help me, find me. Let me find peace.”
     
    Kramer blinked and then she was standing alone. Kelly had been there one moment, gone the next.
     
    Kramer turned and looked toward the counter.
     
    “Are you all right ma’am?” Beatrice asked.
     
    “Yes, yes of course.” Kramer approached the counter, the figure of the deer still clutched in her palm. “I’ll take this one,” she said, and handed the figurine to Beatrice.
     
    “Oh my, nice choice. My former clerk, Kelly, just adored this one.”
     
    Kramer’s head shot up at the mention of the girl she was just talking to. “Former clerk? What happened to her?”
     
    “No one knows. She disappeared about a year ago. Not a word since. You must have heard about it. It was all over the news.”
     
    Kramer avoided the news for this particular reason. Too many people screamed for help once she knew about them. She reached in her purse, yanked out a twenty and dropped it on the counter. “You mean that eighteen-year-old girl with long blond hair,” she said, now armed with what Kelly looked like.
     
    “Yes. So you did hear about it. Tragic for the parents,” Beatrice said as she handed back Kramer’s change.
     
    “I could only imagine. A tragedy.”
     
    Kramer gathered her things up and left in a hurry, without saying another word. One question frustrated her to no end: why a riddle?
     
    ‘ I lay where the deer play ’.
     
    What could it mean?
     
    That’s the main problem with earth-bound entities who are stuck; they have access to vast amounts of information, but they forget I don’t.
     
    She exited the mall and headed for her car, knowing she’d have to contact the lead-investigating officer to see what she could find out about Kelly. Her contacts at the police department were pretty good, given that she’d helped them many times in the past on missing persons cases.
     
    Bruce Wellington would help. Mostly because he kept asking her to dinner, but Kramer didn’t date cops. She couldn’t romance the very people she worked with. Wouldn’t work.
     
    From past experience, when someone from the Other Side