Too many…just too many everything.
"I'm inclined not to call her back. She didn't leave a message; maybe it's not important—"
The phone started buzzing again.
"Let's add 'maybe it's not important' to the phrases we never say, with 'what else could go wrong?' and 'it can't get any worse,' okay?" I looked around for wood to knock, salt to throw, or a bomb shelter to hide in.
Jack put Susan on speaker. "Hey, sheriff. What's up?"
"Hi, Susan," I said.
"Shepherd, Tess," Susan said, sounding tired. "This is…weird."
"Oh,there'ssomething different," I groaned. "Weirdness in Dead End."
Dead End was a tiny town in Florida, not too far from Orlando in terms of miles, but a million years away in terms of oddness. If aliens ever came to Earth and landed in Dead End, they'd feel right at home.
"How weird?" Jack asked. "Dead body weird? Alligator in the house weird? Banshee weird?"
Surprisingly enough, these were all things we'd encountered during the year.
"Missing statue weird."
I looked at Jack, puzzled. "What? What statue?"
"The twelve-foot tall statue of Jedediah Shepherd, Jack's great-great however many times great grandfather? The one out in front of City Hall? Has to weigh several hundred pounds when you throw in the four-foot-tall pedestal it stands on?"
"Yeah?"
"It's gone. Vanished. Like it never existed."
"What? When did that happen?" I stared at the phone and then back at Jack. "We just saw it there the other day, right, when we went for ice cream?"
He nodded. "Friday evening."
Susan's sigh came through the phone. "Yeah. Well, I saw it last night, at around eight. Andy saw it at midnight, when he went off shift. Our temporary guy wouldn't notice a statute if it walked up to him and bit him on the butt, so that's no help. And yet, as of nine this morning, when the first report came in, it's gone."
I blinked. "How is that even possible?"
Jack suddenly whipped his head to the left, staring off into the distance, and his eyes hardened. "I think I have an idea."
I followed his gaze and saw an enormous bald eagle, beautiful and majestic, glide across the sunny November sky toward us.
Right toward us.
Really, really, exactly toward us.
"Jack? Is that bird…attacking us?"
"What?" Susan said.
"I'll call you back, Susan," Jack said grimly, ending the call and turning to me. "I'm going to get a shotgun."
"Jack! You can't shoot an eagle! It would be awful! And it's illegal to shoot them, anyway," I said, grabbing his arm.
"Notthisone."
"What?"
