Keep in a Cold, Dark Place

by Michael Stewart

  Limpy shook her head. “Sorry, I . . . it’s harvest time.” As if that explained everything.

  “Two more days.” The librarian’s face drooped a little.

  “I know, Ms. Summerfield. Harvest time. Reaping while we can.”

  “Some seeds need time and water to grow.”

  Limpy didn’t understand, but agreed. When the librarian nodded, wrinkles fletching the corners of her eyes, Limpy hurried to the computer terminal. Since it was so early in the day, she had to wait for the computer to start. While it did, blinking and making buzzes and bleeps, Limpy produced her rubbing.

  Finally, the screen lit and soon she had Google’s translation engine up. Google would guess the language of the words she typed and provide her with the translation into English.

  The rubbing revealed distorted letters already twisted by age and decay, but she managed to enter, “Mantener en un lugar oscuro frío. ¡Guárdense de los Chupacabra!”

  Then she hit: TRANSLATE.

  Her knuckles whitened as she clutched the computer mouse.

  A warning had been inscribed on the box. A grim warning.

  “Keep in a cold, dark place,” she read. “Beware of the Chupacabra!”

  Chapter 17

  Chupacabra. Even though she didn’t know what the word meant, it elicited shudders. Limpy copied it into the search engine, squeezed her eyes shut, and hit enter.

  She skimmed images first. Whatever had hatched from the eggs was nothing known to humans. Not scientifically at least. The chupacabra was a legend. A mythical nightmare.

  Images of the monster ranged from a skinny piglike creature with more teeth than could possibly fit in a mouth, to a bear-sized demon with bat wings and spines running down its back. Nothing came close to her big-eyed, fuzzy Chup. She might have dismissed the whole thing if not for the memory of Ghost’s jaw.

  On she searched, but Limpy didn’t have time to be thorough, only to scan headlines about sightings. Most of the images were drawings or paintings; the only actual photographs of the beast either appeared fake or of what might as well have been mangy old coyotes whose fur had been rubbed away.

  Articles and websites said they were fast. Faster than the human eye. Evidently the legend originated in Puerto Rico.

  She opened the mouth of her backpack and peered inside. Cute, black round eyes stared up at her. “Are you chupacabra?” she asked to more blinking. She shook her head.

  What if they were? What had she unleashed? Was she like Pandora, opening the box to the world’s evils? Still, excitement built in her, too. A legendary creature? On her farm? A thrill washed over her skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.

  She didn’t think that the creatures could be truly evil. Like Limpy herself, Ghost was misunderstood—and Dylan was going to shoot at it like he would a coyote or fox. He would be hunting tonight, hunting the fuzzy pet she’d sworn to protect. But only if Limpy gave him the ammunition. Pets who had called to her. Pets she had freed and who were her responsibility.

  The clock ticked on the wall.

  She had a few more minutes before the start of classes. She hurried into the periodicals area to search through back issues of the paper, searching for any headline that talked about curses, or creatures—anything strange.

  The earliest papers were now stored on microfiche with the originals kept in safe storage. This made for easy scanning. Articles flickered past on a large white screen. Flesherton hadn’t always had the Herald, so the first headlines of the paper were the last ones covering the town’s founding father. Aside from that the pages were filled with business openings, wedding, birth, and death announcements, and sometimes news from overseas like the sinking of the Titanic.

  Turned out that one of the residents had been aboard the ship and drowned. The last wire home had been a mad rant about “goblins in third class.” A warning that had been dismissed as meaning rats.

  Mr. Flesh seemed to have lost his marbles at his end, too. He’d become a recluse. “Mr. Flesh’s home to be sheathed in copper. Fears alien mind rays.” Decades of slow changes to the town followed his death until another headline caught her eye. “Sixteen head of cattle disappear, leaving empty sacks of hide. Ryder family fears supernatural forces.”

  The Ryders had lived on the neighboring farm, now abandoned. It hadn’t any cattle these days, and the land had been let to go fallow. In her mind she recalled the husks of the chickens left behind. Empty sacks of feathers. And what of the pig? Hadn’t Podge visited Burt’s farm?

  In the archives, more strange happenings popped up and then vanished over the intervening years, as if they truly were supernatural forces.

  The bell rang and Limpy jerked upright to look at the clock. Late.

  “Sorry!” she yelled to Ms. Summerfield as Limpy thundered past and sprinted along the bustling hallway to class.

  Tuesdays started with science class. Limpy skidded into a classroom filled with students huddled at their lab stations. Under their stares Limpy tiptoed to her place, slumped onto her stool and let the knapsack drop to the floor. Something within emitted a sharp squeak.

  “What was that?” Emmanuel asked. He was her lab partner and before him was a glass flask filled with water, a Bunsen burner, his notebook and a pencil.

  “Nothing, the squeak? My shoe.” She stretched her foot down to kick the floor with her rubber-soled shoe. It squeaked against the linoleum. Not the same squeak, but close enough.

  Before Emmanuel could say anything more, the teacher ordered everyone to start the experiment and to go over the steps very carefully.

  “Alkaline metals,” he said, “are unstable when exposed to air and water. Today we’ll witness the reaction of lithium and water. When you’re done, I’ll show you what happens when we use something even more unstable.” He winked. “Potassium!”

  Limpy liked Mr. Nicholson. Bearded and bespectacled, he always made them do the experiment first and let them try to sort out what was happening themselves. He got excited about things like lithium and potassium. It made her feel like a real scientist.

  Everyone sat in silence as he cut a piece of metal from a roll and left it on their desks.

  “This is the lithium. Face shields, everyone.”

  Beneath the counter, something hit Limpy’s foot. “Sorry.”

  “Why?” Emmanuel asked.

  “You kicked me, I was being polite.”

  “I didn’t kick anything.”

  They both ducked their heads beneath the counter. Nothing was there, but the mouth of her backpack gaped. Chup, Tufts and Podge had escaped again.

  “I must have hit the table leg,” she explained, her heart starting to gallop.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Go ahead and begin,” Mr. Nicholson said to the class.

  Other students had already plopped their bits of metal into the large flasks of water. The metal fizzed.

  “What’s the gas produced?” the teacher asked. “What’s happening?”

  The volume of conversation in the class increased. Emmanuel picked up their piece of metal with tongs. As he did, Limpy saw that it looked different from the pieces of lithium the other kids had. Larger, blockier, shiny on the ends and dark on the outside, as if the air had tarnished it.

  “It’s soft,” Emmanuel said, squishing it between the tongs he used.

  Limpy realized it wasn’t the metal that Mr. Nicholson had left on their counter.

  “Wait—” she started, but it was too late. Emmanuel leaned over the beaker and dropped the glob inside.

  Where the other metals fizzed, theirs zipped from one side of the flask to the other and then began to spin. Fast.

  “So cool!” Emmanuel cried.

  He leaned even closer, mesmerized by the frothing metal that suddenly burst into flame.

  “Get back!” Limpy cried and tackled Emmanuel from the stool.

  Whomp!

  Her ears rang and glass pelted her shirt. Everything went silent.

  “Everyone out!�
� Mr. Nicholson called.

  Strong hands hauled Limpy away by her armpits, leaving the chittering laughter behind. Her only thoughts were of the chupacabra. Of sabotaged potato conveyors. And the goblins rumored to have sunk the Titanic.

  Chapter 18

  Principal Dougald grimaced at Limpy and Emmanuel from his giant chair.

  “Neither of you can explain what happened? How you ended up with potassium instead of lithium on your desk.”

  Emmanuel shook his head and then stared at Limpy, who gripped the side of her tiny seat to keep from falling off. She worried about what else Chup and its gang could be up to.

  “Odd happenings are following you, Limphetta, I’m inclined to believe Emmanuel. But you . . .” The same envelope addressed to the scholarship committee was again on the desk. Her chin dug into her chest. “I can’t very well support your scholarship application, now can I?”

  When she failed to respond, Principal Dougald heaved a sigh and dropped the letter into the wastebasket. Limpy’s stomach fell with it.

  “I . . .” Emmanuel began and Limpy glanced over. “It was me, sir.”

  Principal Dougald’s eyes widened.

  “You?” He leaned forward.

  “I thought it would be funny. I didn’t know it would explode.”

  “What are you—” Limpy gasped, but shut her mouth under the force of Emmanuel’s glare. Why was he doing this?

  “No, Limpy, I won’t let you take the blame for this.” Emmanuel’s eyes went from her to the wastebasket and back. He was taking responsibility so that she could have a chance at the scholarship. Suddenly her heart went from a cold, dull rock to nearly bursting with emotion. He didn’t have to do this. He could be in big trouble.

  “You’re excused, Limphetta,” the principal said. It was a moment before she realized he’d spoken. With his hand again holding the envelope with her reference, he ordered, “Excuse us.”

  She swallowed hard and gave Emmanuel what she hoped was a look of utter apology and gratitude. Then she shut the door behind her.

  Mr. Nicholson let her back into the science lab to retrieve her bag. The mess of the exploding flask had been cleaned and evidently no one had been hurt by the flying glass.

  “Hydrogen,” he said. “The metal reacts with the water to produce hydrogen, which then ignites and can . . . explode.”

  Limpy didn’t say anything, but the muscles in her arms and shoulders tensed at the discovery of the wicked fur balls in the knapsack. Outside the classroom, she stuck her head near the sack and said, “You’re all in such trouble.”

  A plaintive whine was all the response she got. For the rest of the day she banged the knapsack into the corners of walls, table legs, and even left it stuffed in her locker for a class. Emmanuel never returned from the principal’s office.

  On the way home, Limpy left the box of bullets under the Tater Hut’s sacks of potatoes. Without bullets, her fur balls would be safe even if they didn’t deserve to be. Sweat poured down her face as she jogged to the rear of the farmhouse.

  Her father hunched at the front of the tractor, wrench in hand and oil up to his elbows. He’d been at it all day. A mound of potatoes hid the conveyor and Connor added to those piled at the front before heading back to dig more in the fields. Dylan was nowhere to be seen.

  “Sorry,” she said. “No bullets.”

  Her father turned and scowled. “No bullets? What sort of store carries no munitions?”

  Limpy shrugged. “More will be in tomorrow . . . they say,” she said. Another trip for bullets would allow her to see if Emmanuel was okay and to show him whatever pathetic creature she could stitch that night.

  “Dylan!” her pops shouted. From out of the barn strode her other brother. In his hand was something so black it sucked all the light from around it, shrouding itself in shadow.

  “Get over to the General Store and sort something out—Limpy says no bullets.”

  Limpy wrung her fingers together, knuckles cracking. Dylan paled and said, “You know I don’ like leaving the farm, Pa.”

  “It’s no more than a couple miles, just—” his father said before Dylan interrupted.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I only need one bullet. And I have two.” And it was true, he really could shoot the eye out from a sparrow. If he had two bullets left, then anything he caught in his sights was a goner. “Limp can check back ’morrow. Besides, I found this.”

  Then Limpy made out what Dylan held in his hand. His arm shook with the strain of lifting the heavy leg trap. Its black iron teeth could break bone. The traps weren’t legal anymore because of the cruelty of their jaws, but this one could trap a bear. Limpy imagined Ghost crushed between the teeth and shuddered. Ghost didn’t deserve a bullet or to be caught in a trap.

  Her father worked his lips back and forth as he looked from the trap and back into town. “All righty, set the trap,” he said. “Let’s get the bugger—hand me that spanner, Limp.”

  The relief on Dylan’s face confused Limpy. What was he so afraid of? He’d be off the farm as soon as it sold.

  Aren’t you a good little liar, Limphetta, Mother said. Lies don’t free you. They bind you.

  Limpy shuffled closer to the tractor. On the sandy earth were a series of rubber hoses, each of them bitten through. Her father held out his hand and she slapped the tool into it, so that he could tighten the clamps on the new hoses.

  “Mice chewed the hoses?” she asked. But she already knew.

  “No mice have teeth that could do this,” he muttered. “Either Spud’s got to go or Dylan’s got to catch whatever little . . . gremlin’s doing it.”

  Limpy swallowed hard. Spud was nowhere in sight. Near the henhouse Dylan wrestled to set the bear trap without losing a limb.

  Fwit fwoo went the tractor as it rumbled to life. Her father clapped and then rubbed his hands together.

  “What are you waiting for, Limps, the taters won’t grade themselves,” her father called.

  The conveyor started to turn and shake the baby potatoes through the mesh. The sun beat down, the sweat had yet to dry from her face. She knew what had chewed the hoses, but she wondered if it still looked fuzzy like Chup, or like the spiny demon from the internet. Still, Ghost deserved a chance. Ghost had had no mother, no one to love it. A bitten toe. A chewed hose. Ghost didn’t deserve to be shot. No more than Limpy deserved to be blamed for her mother’s death.

  With Ghost to protect, her art to finish, and a teddy bear version of the creature to stitch, it would be a long, long night.

  Chapter 19

  Dylan slipped the rifle across his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at Limpy as if aiming for her.

  Limpy wanted to say something, maybe even to show them Chup, but it was nowhere to be found. Chup, Podge and Tufts had run off while she graded potatoes. And who would believe her without proof?

  “Fire at anything,” her father said. Dylan grunted before pushing out into the twilight. The sun stole below the rocky hillocks framing the edge of the farm where the land turned to woods of spindly pine trees.

  Limpy wanted to follow Dylan, but dishes piled high in the sink. She knew her place. Father settled in beside the fire, can of soda in hand and smiling as he muttered to Connor about whether coyote or fox pelt made better hats or slippers. The sack of his wife listened from the music room.

  “That boy can hit a sparrow in the eye,” he said to Connor and then sighed. “What am I doing jabbering at you for, might as well be talking to Elsabeth.” And then the sounds of his musings were covered by Limpy’s scrubbing of pans.

  She worked quickly, scraping and scouring even though the hot water burned fingers sore from the day’s grading and stitching. She hadn’t seen Chup, Tufts or Podge since school. Truth be told, with images from the internet intruding throughout the day, she might have been a little afraid to.

  With the dishes left to dry, Limpy told her father she wanted to get a head start on tomorrow’s bag stitching.

  “That’s my lass,
” he said. His hands cupped his head as if trying to get a feel for how a fur hat would sit on it. Connor slumped on the couch, penitent before his mom.

  Spud pawed at the door to be let out.

  “Too dangerous for you, Spud,” Limpy whispered as she eased the door open a crack and shoed the cat back into the kitchen before he could dash into the yard.

  Out in the cool evening, she rubbed her arms. Clouds blanketed the moon. The night had darkened. Limpy peered across the potato fields, searching for her brother. The henhouse was a hundred yards away. The nearest place to hide was the barn, but sometimes when keeping a watch on the chickens Dylan preferred the rocky hills. Without the moon it was impossible to know where he was, and he made no sound. She dared not try to cross the potato fields for fear of being shot. A spit of rain fell on her face, so she turned and headed for the barn.

  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by the time she reached the barn door, but inside the darkness was nearly total. She held a flashlight and she desperately wanted to turn it on, but knew she should wait, knew that it was her best defence against her brother should she need it. Above, floorboards creaked. Something skittered over a rafter, and she clutched the cool steel flashlight even tighter.

  “Dylan?” she whispered. “Dyl?”

  “Don’t you even think about stitching sacks right at this hour,” he replied from high above. “Scare away the coyotes.”

  He’d be in the top loft, his rifle barrel stuck out a small door near the rooftop. She sighed and wondered if her relief was due to finding his hiding spot or at knowing she wasn’t alone in the darkness.

  With the flashlight in her pocket, she gripped the ladder and began to climb up. The smell of pigeon grew pungent. The ladder was worn smooth with age and with the many boots and hands that had scraped the rungs. On the second floor she paused to gather herself. Several moldering bales of hay were shoved to the side to make way for pallets of empty potato bags, rolls of stitching twine and fuel drums for the tractor. Another narrow ladder climbed higher still. Above, Dylan’s boots poked out beyond the platform of the small loft.