Tiny Horror

Kurt Hoffmann, the Comptroller for the City of Delavan, didn't believe in ghosts. He believed in the pragmatic reality of heavy spring rains, the steady erosion of tax bases, and the prohibitive cost of structural insurance for buildings that should've been razed forty years ago.

He stood on the fourth floor of the old Bradley Street warehouse. His practical dress shoes crunched through a century of pigeon droppings and calcified sawdust. The soles were thick and sensible, designed for walking the uneven pavement of a town that was always halfway through a budget cycle. His trousers were damp at the cuffs from the rain on the spring streets outside. The Wisconsin spring was a restless, damp weight pressing against the cracked windowpanes. It was a season of mud and transition.

Beside him, Julian Cross, a developer from out of town with teeth too white and a coat too thin for a Lake Geneva wind, gestured at the exposed brick with a manicured hand.

"Lofts, Kurt. High-concept, industrial-chic. We'll preserve the soul of the building while removing its odor," Cross said. He stepped toward the window and looked out at the quiet intersection below. "We've got to bring the youth back from the cities. If we create the right space, the talent will follow. We can turn this downtown into a hub for creators and remote workers who want more than a shoebox in Chicago. It's about growth, Kurt. It's about making sure Delavan doesn't just exist as a memory on a map. We give 'em a reason to stay, and the local economy breathes again."

Cross turned back, his eyes bright with the fever of a new project. "I've got the backers lined up. These are people with deep pockets who believe in the vision. I'm putting my own capital on the line too. This isn't just a pitch. It's a serious investment in the future of this town."

Kurt looked at the soul in question. The floor was a graveyard of the grotesque. P.T. Barnum had used Delavan as winter quarters for his Great Scientific and Musical Theater in the late 1800s. While the famous elephants and acrobats lived in the sunnier paddocks nearby during the warmer months, the other acquisitions were kept here. These were the things that failed to pass the era’s already-lenient decency or reality tests. They were the biological errors and the fabrications that were too unsettling even for a circus. They were crated and forgotten.

A handful of local volunteers were scattered across the aisles. They were a mix of retirees and enthusiasts from the historical society wearing nitrile gloves and surgical masks. They'd spent the last three days picking through the wreckage, trying to catalog what could be salvaged for a potential museum before the cleanup crews arrived.

Kurt glanced down at one of a number of boxes near his feet, packed by the volunteers. On top lay a heavy glass jar filled with yellowed formaldehyde. Inside, the head of a rhesus monkey had been joined to the tail of a large salmon. Kurt leaned closer, squinting through the grime on the glass. The stitching wasn't silk or wire. There was no visible seam where the mammal ended and the fish began. It looked as if the two distinct species had simply transitioned into one another at a cellular level. It was a clinical horror that defied the taxidermist's art.

Kurt felt a prickle of vertigo. It was the sensation of a biological impossibility staring back at him. The laws of nature seemed to have been edited by a clumsy hand. He turned back to Cross. "I've asked the volunteers to finish by Sunday evening. I've got a junk hauler arriving on Monday to start getting rid of everything else."

"Good," Cross said. He looked at the taxidermied nightmares with genuine loathing. "Let's get the rot out."

The tale continues...