Chapter 11
AFTER WORK, IN THE SECRECY OF MY BEDROOM, I SIT cross-legged on the comforter and dial the customer service number for the UNLV medical center. It’s the only way I can think of to reach Uncle Bill’s work. Maybe he called in sick. Maybe they know something.
I’ve slept in the same twin bed for sixteen years.
Blue sheets, blue pillows, blue paisley bedspread, swirls of light blue and dark blue and somewhere-in-the-middle blue the same color as the crisscross of blue veins on the backs of my hands.
I start to wonder what Veer would think of it, then cut that thought off before it’s finished.
It doesn’t matter. It’s not a good idea.
It’s not that kind of emergency. Can I delude myself into believing it’s not an emergency at all? By the time I’ve tried, and failed, and tried and failed again, the menu has looped back to the beginning.
A second of silence. Then, “Hi, you’ve reached the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Wellness Center. Please leave a message, and we will return your call as soon as we can.”
I open my mouth to leave a message, then hang up instead. What if I’m overreacting? I can’t fuck up Uncle Bill’s job. He needs it. We need it. The wind draws whispering fingers over my window, and, suddenly, I want to cry.
Uncle Bill’s an asshole, always has been, unreliable and sullen and quick with passive aggression disguised as straight talk.
But with my mom’s memory fraying, he’s also the person who remembers me best in the world.
And I’d rather worry about him than the empty freezer, or my weird visions, or my mom’s fantasies of the flayed man.
“Families like ours used to live where the earth was hungriest” was how my mom began the story of the flayed man, or at least, the version I remember best. She told it often enough when I was four and five, syringe in my hand, painfully trial-and-erroring my way into my own veins, but she wasn’t always consistent in her retellings.
“Marshes, swamps, border places where solid ground stops being so solid anymore. He was a priest, or our version of one. He found the children lost in the bogs, the trapped ones, the drowned ones, and brought them back to feed his family.”
This was a noble act, her voice said. He was a good man, once. But it only takes one mistake to doom you forever.
“Eventually, people stopped venturing into the swamp. And his family began to starve. Until one day, he came upon a woman trapped in quicksand. Blinded by hunger, he didn’t hesitate.
He devoured her. And then, only when he had licked his jaws clean of the last drop of her blood, did he realize: it was his own daughter. ”
She said it with a smile. It’s so easy for the universe to turn on us.
“For what he’d done, the flayed god cursed him to wander the swamps forever, unable to return to his human form.
Killing and killing, eating and eating, and still he’s always starving.
He can hear your innermost thoughts, and if you’re naughty, if you’re ungrateful, he’ll be drawn to you.
No matter how fast you run, he’ll find you.
And then, well. He likes the taste of hearts best.”
An ancient priest shrouded in layers of torn flesh, rib cage cracked apart, joints ground down and bent back, every nerve exposed and screaming to feed.
That’s what we’d become too, without blood to keep us under control.
That’s why it’s up to me to do whatever it takes to make sure my mom’s hunger is taken care of, and her with it.
But not yet. Not yet.
I barely realize what I’m doing until the Nokia is in my hand. The T9 keypad makes typing slow and frustrating.
Did uncle Bill ever tell you about this urban legend called the flayed man?
Painstakingly, I add more.
idk if you have it here, it might be a local thing where my grandma is from. I found an email he started about it and thought he might have been writing to you. Btw I’ll drive up tomorrow.
As soon as the phone chimes to indicate the text is sent, I want to take it back. It’s a weird question, and Brian was barely friendly on the phone. What if this is all it takes to change his mind about helping us?
I can’t bring myself to let the Nokia out of my sight as I microwave a dinner of frozen rice and vegetables.
The tiny screen stays dark. I wash my face and brush my teeth, and when I’m done, I’m tempted to start all over again.
Scrub my skin clearer, my teeth shinier.
I pick at an imaginary blemish near my eyebrow.
When your body heals the way ours do, it’s easy to use it to punish yourself.
I used to be worse: picking at my skin, chewing away hangnails.
Digging the opaque ridge of my thumbnail into my forearm, where I could see veins drawing their blue tracks.
I wanted to tear my flesh away until I could pull my arteries free of their predestined routes, until I could snap them between my molars.
Then I’d really have something to be afraid of.
A sensation like a sharp pinch, and I look up to see that I’ve scraped the top layer of skin off where I was poking at the non-blemish. It’s red and raw now, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I wash my face again. No flecks of pink on the white towel. It’s already healed. The Nokia remains blank faced on the counter.
I need to take my mind off waiting for Brian to reply.
I stretch my thoughts back to Uncle Bill’s email draft. The initials and dates are probably a dead end with no context, but the bit about disappearances might lead somewhere.
I type Mt Charleston disappearances (unconfirmed), just how Uncle Bill wrote it, into Google and hold my breath.
A few local news articles pop up, along with a website detailing cold cases and an Unsolved Mysteries Reddit post. Avalanche a few years ago, missing family on a camping trip, mystery car abandoned near a trailhead. Nothing specific enough to let me be sure of what I’m looking for.
I scroll until my back starts to ache. Then I have another idea. I dig through my work bag until I find the papers I pulled from Uncle Bill’s safe.
A newspaper cutting, the one about the woman who died in a hiking accident, surfaces with a rustle of old paper and the smell of burnt coffee. There’s a faint brownish ring in the upper corner, where Uncle Bill must have set his coffee mug.
A little over a year ago, Martina Revelle, forty-six, went out for the day and never came back.
Her neighbor saw her drive off, said she had no idea where Martina was going but that she often went on long solo hikes.
The first day she didn’t come back, the neighbor figured she was camping.
She called the cops on the second day. There are no friends quoted, and no family, but that could mean anything.
Maybe Martina Revelle was just a normal person who no one liked.
Except Uncle Bill cut out an article about her disappearance and locked it in his safe. That’s not normal.
I pull out my laptop and Google her. “Martina Revelle” returns the online version of the Review-Journal article, and the same info rehashed by the other local news sites.
A follow-up article says her car was found abandoned near Corn Creek, doors flung open, overrun by wildlife.
I keep scrolling, keep clicking through the pages until they devolve into forum threads and those spam sites that copy articles but change every few words until they’re nonsense.
One of the Reddit threads catches my eye.
It’s titled “Weird True Crime Stories—Las Vegas,” which seems kind of flippant, but it’s a true crime subreddit and I don’t really get that stuff.
Half of a comment has caught in the Google search, a mention of Martina’s name and a long paragraph that cuts off midway through, so I open it up and scroll down until I find the full thing.
This happened near the end of my senior year and my friends and I became kind of obsessed with it. We placed bets about whether they’d find her body before graduation. Sorry, morbid.
We heard from my friend’s older brother that there were all these strange details that were never reported online.
I don’t think it was because of her family’s wishes, it seemed like she didn’t have any family around, but if it was, sorry and no disrespect.
Let’s be real though, we all know LVMPD. Way more likely it’s a cover-up lol.
Ok so, a couple days before she disappeared, Martina basically had a psychotic break.
According to this, she went from a reliable CVS cashier and all around pretty regular lady to completely paranoid, not sleeping, screaming at anyone who knocked on the door or came near her.
Someone else in her building posted on Facebook that they heard sounds of crying and glass breaking.
I try both links, one a blog and one a Facebook link, but both return an error. No one sharing information about Martina at the time cares enough now to still keep it public. The post continues:
When they found her car, there was blood all over the driver’s seat. But here’s the weird thing: it wasn’t her blood. Our guess was, if it was a criminal or a murderer the police would have said so, so they must not have known whose it was.
I kinda drifted away from those friends tbh, but I still think about Martina sometimes. She was born the same year as my mom. It’s sad to think that if she hasn’t turned up by now, she probably never will.
I try to swallow, but the movement gets stuck somewhere in my throat. Then I thumb back through my Notes app.
MR and RV both 2017
Martina Revelle disappeared from northern Las Vegas in the spring of 2017. She’s MR. Why keep tabs on her, though?
Maybe she was Uncle Bill’s girlfriend. Not like I know much about his dating life.
Or maybe she was one of us.
The Reddit post is four months old, but when I click through to the writer’s profile, they’re still active on various true crime subreddits. God, there are a lot of unsolved murders in Vegas. Still, that means there’s a chance they’ll respond to a message.
Uncle Bill was looking into these disappearances, so if I can learn more about Martina and figure out who RV is, I might be able to retrace his steps. It’s better than doing nothing and hoping he comes back.
I set up a profile and start typing. Hi there. I’m interested in Martina Revelle too. I saw her car was found near Corn Creek, but do you know exactly where?
I hit send and stretch into bed, phone on the pillow next to me, unable to close my eyes. I don’t realize I’ve fallen asleep until I’m jerked awake again by a demanding whistle. Brian’s texted back.
See you tomorrow.
I haven’t ruined anything. Not yet, at least.
I don’t bother to get up, just shove the Nokia under my pillow and turn over to get as much rest as the day will still allow me. Only when I’m already halfway there, my body grown numb and distant with sleep, do I wonder if there’s a reason he didn’t answer my question.