by Tempe O'Kun
Sarah smiled. “Thanks for inviting us over. It’s good to see you.”
Shane nodded at the otter, then leaned against the wall and started cleaning one finger claw with another.
His sister elbowed him in the ribs. “Say hello.”
He rubbed his side. “We work together. We’ve worn out ‘hello.’”
The rabbit shrugged an apology.
Kylie snickered.
Max, meanwhile, had taken the appearance of the veggie tray to begin conveying other snacks from the kitchen to the living room. The husky hustled back and forth, towering and domestic.
A series of excited thuds clattered on the porch. Muted voices radiated through the door. A heavy hip bumped the wall. An eager chirp rattled the window glass.
Kylie set the plate of vegetables on the dining table and reopened the front door.
There stood a rhinoceros and a bat. Karl had a mini camcorder strapped to his horn. He was dressed in his nicest Strangeville fan t-shirt, the one with cartoon versions of the cast surrounding the obvious lack of an alien ghost dragon.
Meanwhile, Rune held a boom mic in one wing and was fiddling with the device with the other. A green shirt, which lacking sleeves looked like a well-tailored pillowcase. On it’s front, ye olde font spelled out “It’s gonna be dicey!” over a cup spilling polyhedral dice. Over it, she wore a vest with what Kylie considered a very useful number of pockets.
An electronic beep arose. The bat nodded. “Horn-cam is active.”
The rhino’s tiny eyes alighted on the otter and he straightened with a grin. “Hi, Kylie!” A tiny dance in place creaked the boards of her porch. “Can you close the door so we can get a shot of it opening?”
“Oh, okay.” Kylie shut the door, then swung it open again. “Wait, why?”
Karl blinked. A tiny red LED on the device on his horn also blinked.
Already holding the boom mic over Kylie’s head, Rune looked up from double-checking the recorder on her vest. “For Strange Times.”
The rhino waved a thick hand at the ancient house. “You said we could come to Bourn Manor.”
She propped her fists on her hips. “I said you could come to my house.”
“Which is Bourn Manor.” Shane tipped a finger at her. His tail swished with sass.
She stuck her tongue out at the cat, then turned back to the newest guests. “I meant that we should hang out. Like normal friends.”
“We’re friends?” Karl’s tiny ears popped upright.
“We’re normal?” Rune scratched her stomach with one foot.
Carrying a heaping bowl of popcorn shrimp, Max paused parallel to the doorway. “Pretty sure we count as friends.”
The rhino grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.
Juggling the bowl to be cradled against his broad chest, the husky managed to return the gesture.
Kylie emitted a noise that made everyone look at the rusty door hinges. “Just come in. We’ve got movies to watch.”
Karl nodded with excitement, then gingerly took hold of doorknob and closed it. On the other side, he began a very excited introduction about opening the door.
“Are you kids just opening and closing doors?” Laura padded down the stairs. “Is that the new fad?”
The younger otter groaned. “My mother the comedian, ladies and gentlemen.”
Sarah gave her a wave almost identical the one she’d given Kylie.
Shane shrugged. “The evening is way more about doors than I expected.”
The door opened yet again and and this time Karl got past the threshold. “Whoa, cool.” His horned head swung around, camera on his horn capturing it all.
Rune followed him back inside, carrying the boom mic ahead of her like a lantern. The brown-eyed bat gave her a shrug.
Then he noticed who was standing on the stairs. “Oh! Hi, Ms. Bevy! It’s Laura Bevy, creator of Strangeville!”
“Hello…you.” Laura pushed up her glasses. “Quiz time: remind me how we met.”
“We met at Kawaii Con!” The rhino beamed, as if reciting a key moment of his life. “I came up to the table and you signed a bunch of stuff while you were drinking coffee.”
Glancing to her daughter, the older otter lifted her palms. “Story checks out.”
“Mom, this is Karl and Rune and Shane and Sarah.” She pointed to each of them in turn.
“Ah, excellent.” Interlacing her fingers as much as webbing allowed, she leaned over the stair railing. “Always nice to meet people who will put up with my daughter.”
He bounced in place, clattering every framed photo and knickknack in the surrounding rooms. “Oh wow. I can’t believe we’re in Laura Bevy’s house.”
Laura looked the rhino up and down. Mostly up. “You did realize you were coming to Kylie Bevy’s house, right?”
“Yes! But still—it’s just unbelievable.” He squeezed.
She nodded gently. “I’m impressed you’re impressed.”
Max caught Kylie’s eye from the living room. Amusement perked his ears. At least everybody else was having fun with her embarrassing mother.
Laura looked the group over.”Say, you’re a group of eighteen to twenty-five year olds. How would you like to be a focus group?”
“I think we’re supposed to watch a movie.” The spotted brown rabbit glanced at Kylie.
“We’d probably skew your results.” Rune lowered the mic half a meter so she could talk near it. “Karl already spends most of his disposable income on things you make.”
The middle-aged lutrine laughed.
“Mother, don’t conscript the guests.” Kylie hoisted the heaping veggie tray and paraded it to the living room. “They’re normal people here to have a normal evening.”
“Then I will leave you to your normalcy. Try not to make too much noise after ten. If I’m still awake then, I want it to be the coffee’s fault.” She retreated upstairs.
The guests followed Kylie into the living room. After bonking her boom mic on the ceiling, the brown bat telescoped it back down to a reasonable length and strapped it to her back. The recorder its cord ran to, however, still blinked “recording” over and over on its screen.
“So!” Kylie brandished the remote. “Do you guy want to watch Wraith Street or Unwelcome Geists? Oh! Or Killer App?”
Shane raised a half-hearted paw. “Why would we watch haunted house movies when we’re inside the spookiest haunted house ever?”
Why did everything in this town have to revolve around what was spooky? She waggled the remote at him. “That is not one of the options, Mr. Warren.”
Karl raised a polite finger. “I’m okay with seeing more of the house.”
Bowl cradled in one wing, Rune munched merrily on popcorn shrimp. “I’m also okay with seeing more of the house.”
The otter crossed her arms. “You’ve barely even seen this part of the house.”
“From the outside, it looks like it’s all jumbled.” Sarah wrung her fuzzy hands. “Sort of like a cave system.”
“Only one way to find out.” Shane ambled past her, just so happening to pass her and re-enter the dining room.
The other three guests glanced between each other, daring each other. Then, one by one, they all trailed along after Shane. Sarah padded. Karl brushed against the wall to avoid bumping Kylie. Rune brought the bowl with her.
“Hey!” The lutrine chattered with objection. “Where are you going?”
Turning to his winged friend, the rhino touched thick fingers to his smiling lips. “We’re exploring Bourn Manor.”
“You can’t just explore it!” She flung her arms to either side. “I live here!”
Shane cast her a dry look. “Then you explore it and we’ll go with you.”
Wordless, Max stood by the sofa as all four guests drifted past him. He held a cheese and cracker plate. With a shrug, he set some cheese on a cracker and started eating.
Kylie shook a finger at her boyfriend. “I have enough trouble without you joining in.”
She followed the rest of them out of the civilized area of the house and into the realm old boxes and dusty knickknacks. Just one hallway brought them into the wilderness of her family’s past. “What if they find something weird?”
Still popping shrimp into her mouth, Rune chirped back at her. “I found something weird already.” With one foot, she reached under a small table and tugged free a green paper packet. She held it up to the group for inspection.
Karl zoom in. Literally, by zooming his head, and its horn-cam, toward the find. “An artifact!”
As Kylie got closer, she saw it was a pack of gum. Tiny pine trees adorned the wrapper. Decades had faded the ink. The whole thing bent at a sharp angle, as if the few forgotten sticks of gum had gone brittle and snapped at a clean angle.
“Is this gum…” Ears up, Sarah tilted her head. “…tree flavor?”
“Pine.” Shane swished his tail. “It’s a beaver thing. We had a poster for it at the store once.”
With a disappointed sigh, Rune pirouetted and placed the packet deftly on the table it, between an old lamp and a cigar box with knitted mittens reaching out of it. The table itself now wobbled.
They came to the ballroom. After getting a resigned nod from Kylie, her boyfriend creaked open the heavy doors that sealed it. Kylie flipped on the light. Everybody else made little impressed noises. Rune clicked her tongue, like a camera shutter capturing the moment.
Ornate tin sheets girded the room from the floor to about knee height, allowing it to be flooded with water. It depicted seahorses pulling shell chariots, each crewed by a revel of merrymakers of various species. A dinghy, overflowing with silk flowers and splashed with garish colors, lay pitched in a corner. Classical columns stretched up into the room and connected to nothing. Shorter columns held vases, most with dried flowers still visible. A heap of bunting in the corner had become a nest for something, or several generations of something. And above it all, three massive sea-glass chandeliers loomed, their piece’s irregular colors and shapes worked into glowing tapestries of ocean, beach, and riverside scenes.
And it was crammed, wall to wall, with dusty bric-a-brac.
The rhino tiptoed into the ballroom’s sea of junk, recording it all for posterity and the Internet. Attempting to peek into an umbrella stand, he clinked his horn against bundle of colorful glass buoys hanging from one wall. “Oops.” He checked them for cracks, but found none. “Sorry. I shouldn’t interfere with the site.”
“It’s not a site.” Kylie muttered and waddled after them. “It’s just my house.”
Rune regarded a suit of armor that had been waterproofed with ornate enamel. All the while, her wing fingers continued popping fried shrimp into her muzzle. “You really do have a cool house. Even when I peeked in the windows as a kid, I never imagined it would have this much stuff in it.”
A spike of discomfort sputtered through Kylie, though she couldn’t find a reason to object to looking into a house nobody lived in. Even if she now lived in it.
“Is it okay to look in the boxes?” Sarah tapped on a cardboard box with one polite claw.
“I’m looking in the boxes.” Shane looked in the boxes.
“No!” The otter balled up her webbed fists. Could she really expect nobody to look in all the boxes laying around? She’d been peeking into them for months and never found anything that exotic. “I mean, maybe? Since when are boxes better than movies? And I can’t be held accountable for anything you find.”
Wagging beside her, Max watched the group’s antics. “I can stop them, if you really want.”
“With brawn?” She debated the merits of having her boyfriend toss everyone back into the living room.
“With shame.” The dog continued to eat cheese and crackers.
A heavy sigh slumped her supple frame. “No… That would only make them want to look more. They’d probably just leave for a glass of water and get trapped under a stack of old fishing magazines. At least this way we can keep an eye on all of them.”
The husky nodded, then dislodged an oyster-shucking knife from the wall. He placed it discretely into the nearest vase.
Kylie got the distinct impression this was not the wildest party that had been thrown here.
The feline picked his way through the bric-a-brac to the bar in the far corner. Once there, he recovered several bottles of questionable liquor, which raised the guests spirits.
Her webbed paws pressed to her face. “Seriously, Shane?”
“I didn’t put this here.” He shrugged, a dusty bottle of gin in either hand. “I only found it.”
“It’s bad enough to wander around my house on a walking snack tour.” She waved for him to put the booze back. “We’re not also getting drunk.”
Rolling green eyes, the tabby set both bottles back on the counter and continued invading the privacy of her long-dead relations. He reappeared behind the bar and donned an old apron.
Max leaned into frame of the horn-cam. “The cast of Strangeville does not endorse drinking unknown alcohol you find lying around.”
Karl giggled. “This has been a public service announcement.”
“Isn’t gin made from juniper berries?” Sarah looked up from peeking inside a tin of stained doilies. “Who bought all these tree-flavored things?”
Leaning on the bar, tail flicking with mild amusement, Shane smirked. “Are you sure you’re not a beaver, Kylie?”
The lutrine scoffed. “How about I bit you and you tell me if they feel like beaver teeth, wise guy?”
The cat shook his head, though his nose was already drifting over an opened bottle of dark bitters.
Rune tottered back over to Kylie and offered access to the somewhat-depleted bowl of popcorn shrimp.
Unwilling to let her pride turn away fresh popcorn shrimp, Kylie snagged a handful of them and began consoling herself with their crispy goodness.
“You get these at Pinchy’s?” The bat smiled as she straightened one of the elastic bands holding on her glasses.
She nodded, happy to talk to someone her own height for once. Being short was a pain in the neck. “Yeah.”
The bat continued to snack. “Good stuff.”
She’d bought them mostly for herself, but she was pleased at least some part of having guests over had gone more smoothly than expected. “Are shrimp a bat thing?”
Rune shrugged her wings. “Insectivore.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Kylie nodded. “Bugs are just land shrimp.”
The bat nodded.
As they watched, the trio discovered old bedsheets, half of a boombox, and an unopened novelty cast-your-own-anchor kit. Warmth clung to the room. With the doors usually shut, the air conditioning hadn’t reached in here.
Kylie found herself not super upset that movie night wasn’t featuring any movies. A little upset, still, but nobody had found evidence of a murder. Or a monster skull. Actually, a monster skull might be okay, in the long term.
Shifting under the boom mic strapped to her back, the bat turned to her. “I don’t think we’ve ever actually been introduced. I’m Rune.” She extended a wing.
The otter shook it, unsure which of them had brought the crumbs to the handshake. “I’m Kylie.”
“Yeah, I know.” The slender mammal gave her a gleaming-white, dorky grin. “I do a podcast on you.”
A chitter of amusement rattled from the lutrine’s muzzle. “Right.”
“Thanks again for letting us see the place, even if it wasn’t what you planned. Karl’s been talking about it for days. It’s a local landmark.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.” Kylie watched as her friends and boyfriend waded out into the ballroom until they were waist-deep in boxes. “Surprised nobody snuck in.”
Shaking her head, Rune hooked a wing thumb at the evening light seeping in at the far end o
f the ballroom. “The windows were all locked.”
“You walked around checking my windows?” Kylie took another handful of breaded shrimp.
Her wing fingers wiggled. “Flew.”
The otter crossed her arms. “Still.”
“I was eleven. It was a dare.” Her voice went sing-song around a bite of shrimp. “It was that or let my friends fall off the third story trying to get in.”
“Fair point.” With a nod, the lutrine smirked at a realization. “I suppose it’s my fault you couldn’t get in until now.”
The bat’s ears rose. The mauve-striped elastic bands around them stretched, tilting her glasses back a few degrees. “Oh?”
“After raising me, Mom got pretty good about locking things.” She jerked a webbed thumb toward the same large windows at the ballroom’s far end. Rain pattered against the panes.
Rune brushed some crumbs of shrimp breading from her rusty throat fluff. “You spent a lot of time climbing in windows?”
“No, but baby-me tried to fall out of a few.” Shrugging, Kylie tossed another shrimp into her muzzle.
The brown bat blinked, as if that was a really normal statement for someone to make and she expected more. Then she nodded. “I’m happy you didn’t. The show has been super good for Karl.”
“Good how?”
“Lots of ways, I guess. He leveled up!” She squeaked a snicker. “Made some new friends. Learned tech stuff for the podcast. Had people listen to him for the first time.”
“You didn’t listen to him before?”
“Well, yeah. But bats listen to everybody.” Her ears wiggled. Those glasses moved again.
Kylie decided the bat was pretty cool. Even if she had to share the shrimp with her. She’d have to get twice as much shrimp next time she had a bunch of lunatics over to rummage through her house.
“Can we find someplace to wash up? I’ve got grease on my wings now and I don’t want to touch all your family heirlooms like this.”
“You could just not touch them at all.”
“Wouldn’t be much of an investigation.”