4. A monkey's Uncle

Parking the cruiser out of sight, Mills jogged back to watch the car he’d passed parked at the side of the road. A small bird flew in through the window and moments later the car took off.

“Shit!” he swore, diving into the hedge to peer out through the branches as it turned at the junction opposite. A teenage blonde girl was behind the wheel, “I’ll bet my badge that’s Kayla McKeown.” He sprinted back to the cruiser, fumbling with the key in the ignition. “At this rate she’ll be long gone,” he growled in frustration, smacking the steering wheel with his fist.

He was right, by the time he turned the cruiser the dust cloud thrown up by her car had settled. He‘d lost her. With no other leads, he headed back to the place her car was parked and got out for a look around. “Okay missy, what were you doing here then?”

Scanning the mud at the roadside for footprints, he found just one with the toe pointing toward the forest. He moved forward past the bluebells and daffodils with his eyes on the ground looking for another tell tale of which direction she took. There was nothing. Not even a broken blade of grass.

“Either she grew wings and flew or I’m losing my touch,” he mumbled, not knowing the words he spoke were truth. Scratching his head again, he finally looked up and from the corner of his eye he caught a shimmer, like the wave of heat rising from a bitumen road on a hot day. As he looked at it, it disappeared. Again, he looked away and there it was.

He moved toward the great oak keeping the shimmer in his peripheral vision and the closer he got the better he could make it out. It looked like a door, a perfect tiny door. As soon as he knew what it was, the vision snapped into place.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle…isn’t that too cute.” He reached up to touch it and it swung inward. Shaking his head, fearing he was hallucinating, he rubbed his eyes and fixed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.

Perfectly formed sofa, chairs, coffee table, even miniature cups and plates sat neatly arranged around the hollow in the tree. On closer inspection, he noticed a framed picture on the wall so he squeezed his hand through the narrow gap, nudging the furniture out of the way until he clasped the picture in his hand.

He squinted at it then pulled his second pair of glasses from his pocket and used them like a magnifying glass to zoom in on it. He frowned and stepped back, taking a second, then a third look. Its face had an uncanny resemblance to the girl he saw driving the car, but it had wings and pointy ears.

At that moment his memory chose to remind him of the bird he saw flying inside the car, “That’s it I need a break,” he muttered, “I must be having a breakdown or something.”

His mind raced as he walked back to the cruiser, so preoccupied by his strange thoughts that he didn’t notice the approaching van until it struck him, sending him flying over the bonnet to land in the muddy ditch. Blood poured from the wound on his head.

Three creatures emerged from the back, “Not who we want,” One of them stated. It trotted over to the little tree house and peered inside, “She is gone.” The three got back into the van and it sped off spewing mud over Mill’s prone body.