“I was never any good at golf.”
Detective Murray lit a cigarette and folded his leg over his knee.
“It’s funny—you’d think, in my line of work, we do a lot of observation, analysis—cop stuff. Golf would come easy to us. There’s lots of contours and angles. There’s a ton of stuff to analyze, but I—never, ever, could find the damn hole.”
Dennis’ shoulders slumped over his rotund frame. He slicked back his comb-over and lifted his hands, not knowing how to respond.
Detective Murray reached into his bag and pulled out a notebook, he placed the cigarette in his mouth and flipped to the first page. “So, Dennis, how long have you been the manager here?”
“This is my eighteenth year.”
Dennis’s eyes drooped toward his desk, littered with the carnage of paperwork. Dust floated in a prism of light that trickled in through the blinds. The oscillating fan purred behind Dennis’s desk as the wall clock ticked to the next hour. “Shit? Eighteen years. You must know this place inside-and-out—fuck I’ve only been a cop for nine.”
Dennis released a single chuckle and tapped his fingertips on the mountain of papers.
Detective Murray patted the cigarette in the ashtray and picked his teeth with his pen. “I’ve been jogging this around in my head for the last few days, and I just can’t understand how someone of your experience could be so helpless in this investigation?”
“I gave you what I had.” Dennis’s voice was monotone and tired.
“What? Some scratchy recording, which, by the way, is probably illegal—”
“It’s so we can advertise—”
“Advertise? You record people in their carts? To advertise?”
“Yes. We know when to send out the drink cart, how people want their food done—”
Detective Murray snatched the tape recorder off Dennis’s desk. He opened the cassette deck and examined the description, Cart 24 – June 17th.
“Are you guys really that desperate here? I mean, you don’t really see many courses going out of business these days, right?” Detective Murray placed the tape recorder in his bag.
Dennis shrugged. “We do what we got to do to stay afloat.”
Detective Murray scrunched his face and shook his head. He scribbled something in his notebook. “Not a single person saw the two men disappear?”
Dennis shook his head.
“Not a goddamn person!”
“I told you already. Roger Stocum, eighty-nine years old, he was setting up tee and saw the commotion.”
“Well, problem is Dennis, this Roger guy is older than dirt, and can’t remember a fucking thing!”
Dennis tilted his head to the side and exhaled.
“And to think, ah heck, maybe Roger had a cell phone. Maybe for a second, he’d pull it out, check his emails, I don’t know, maybe take a goddamn video! But no, the fucking dinosaur’s got a Jitterbug.”
“Detective, was this—” he swallowed, “was this a kidnapping? Are we going to find some bodies somewhere? I can’t—”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Dennis.” Detective Murray leaned forward in his seat. The sun was beginning to set. Dennis’s office remained dark despite the evening rays filtering through.
Detective Murray slammed his book down on the table. “I ain’t Sherlock. There’s not going to be no great deduction here. I’m a cop. I’m a cop that got a promotion. You know, most of our cases clear when some schmuck from the boonies comes out and gives us dirt. Without that, I’d be unemployed! As far as I know they just vanished!”
Dennis wept. He rubbed his swollen face. Tears dropped on the papers beneath him, blurring the typing, and rendering it purple. Detective Murray threw the satchel on his shoulder and arose from his seat. He squinted through the sun, examining the sign next to the tee box. “That’s where Roger saw it?”
Dennis sobbed over his question.
“Dennis! Is that the tee box for the eighteenth?”
Dennis rolled back in his seat and nodded.
Detective Murray approached the window and leaned on its sill. “Which cart did Roger drive that day?”
“Fourteen, I think.” Dennis wiped his nose.
Detective Murray shoved the door open and rustled onto the patio. He strode between carts counting the numbers as he peered into each. He recognized the scratched fourteen sticker plastered to the front of a cart in the line. He approached the cart and sat inside. The cart was empty except for the scorecard still clipped to the wheel. He turned the key and crept towards the tee box on the eighteenth green.
The fairway slumped to a vast opening. Its vermilion shades transitioned to obscurities toward the putting green. The green was protected by two slug-like bunkers. Detective Murray pulled out his tape recorder and listened to the final moments of the two golfers again. Screams and swearing filled the void of white noise. A commotion intercepted the vagueness at the end, like a wave crashing—it was no help.
Detective Murray rested the radio on the dashboard and picked up the scorecard. He read aloud, “Endwell Greens. four courses, restaurant—”
He sighed and placed the card in his lap. On the seventeenth hole, the groundskeepers mowed the fairway. The seventeenth hole hugged the eighteenth putting green and swooped westward toward the back nine. The mower groaned in the distance, flickering occasional shadows in Detective Murray’s direction.
Detective Murray picked up the scorecard again. “Eagle on ten, not bad Roger. For an old man, you can certainly play.”
He flipped the card around and narrowed his focus on the corner of the card. Written in scratchy all-capital letters, it read:
THE BUNKER
THE SAND
ITS ARMS
IT DEVOURED THEM
Detective Murray’s blood pulsed in his stomach. His fingers trembled. The card caught the wind like a sail and sallied forward. He reached out to catch it and saw the groundskeeper, now pulling towards the bunker. Detective Murray screamed out. “Hey! No! Wait!”
As the moaning of the mower dissipated, an arm stretched out from the bunker, grabbed the driver, and hurled him into the air. The man landed along the side of the fairway with the bunker’s appendage still attached. It dragged him swiftly into its sandy bowels, leaving only a trail of mud and a putter of smoke.
Detective Murray stumbled from the cart and sprinted to the bunker. The sands swirled before him and bellowed in horrific tones. Steam rose from the belly of the sand. Protruding globs, like hungry tentacles extended upward. The detective backed away, toward the clubhouse.
The sun had nearly set when Dennis overheard the screams from the eighteenth hole.
#
Snow collected on the windows as Detectives Pearson and Smalls shuffled through the filing cabinet at the fourth precinct. Detective Pearson flipped through the contents of a manila envelope. “Smalls, that case Murray was on when he died—did that ever close?”
Smalls peered over Pearson’s shoulders at the incident report. “After his funeral, the case went cold. The family of that landscaper tried to sue the department, trying to stick his death on Murray. They never found the other two guys. The manager was apparently there for both incidents but was ruled ‘mentally unfit’ for trial”
Pearson turned the page. “Endwell Greens. They closed it down after that—damn shame, it was a great course. Always lost my stuff there though, right at the end. Them bunkers on the eighteenth! I swear they just got hungry!”
Smalls laughed. “Yep! Beware of the sand monster!”
Pearson chuckled and stuck the folder in the shredder.
END
by 
His published work and visual art can be found here: https://michaeldioguardisciencefiction.tumblr.com/.
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