A Taste Fur Murder

by Lyle, Dixie

  And what it exposed was death.

  The graveyard didn’t change, yet everything was different. The shadows of the tombstones were black, bottomless pits, while the tombstones themselves were granite hammers poised to smash down at any second. The freshly mowed grass was a sea of slaughtered, rotting life, a thin layer of decomposing scum over dirt made from finely ground corpses. The sky was the white-blue of frozen flesh.

  I saw—I felt—all this in an instant, and I knew why Two-Notch had bolted.

  The thing that emitted that flash was here.

  The light had come from behind me.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I had turned to the right to watch Two-Notch dart away. To my left was another hill, one with a large tomb on its top—one of a horse, I think. The shadow-thing must have been behind it, and stepped out when my back was turned. I had no idea how far away it was.

  Maybe I should have run. But some animals would chase you if you did that, because that action automatically classified you in their brains as prey. And some animals—even large predators—would back down if you confronted them. I had no idea if any of these rules applied to dead animals, or even what kind of animal I’d be facing—but fleeing in blind terror just wasn’t my style. It’s not that I’m brave; I’m just too damn curious.

  So I turned around to see exactly what my bogeyman looked like.

  It was halfway down the hill and as large as I remembered, a huge black bulk at least ten feet high. But this time, I got more than a glimpse; I could see the whole thing, though the intermittent flashes it was giving off made focusing on details difficult.

  It was an elephant.

  But like no elephant I’d ever seen. It was made of pure blackness, its trunk an inky tentacle that lashed from side to side like an enraged python. The flashes were electrical, miniature lightning bolts arcing between the chains that it wore like some kind of riding harness over its head. Chains trailed from its neck, too, one on either side. It had two long tusks, each of them a curving black slash, one shorter than the other. Neither the lightning nor the chains made any sound at all as the black shape lumbered down the hill straight at me.

  Okay. Now I could run.

  I sprinted for the fence, figuring what worked once would work again. That was my first mistake. My second was that I hadn’t put on my jumping-over-graveyard-fences shoes that morning, and doing one impressive, spontaneous leap was really all this pair was good for. I cleared the fence okay, but totally blew the landing—my heel skidded on some leaves, I went sideways and slammed into the ground with my shoulder. Ow.

  Getting back to my first mistake …

  Two-Notch had apparently resided inside an aquarium when she was alive. How she got to the graveyard I didn’t know—from what Eli told me, it seemed prowlers weren’t actually buried here—but once she arrived, she simply fell into old habits. She hadn’t stayed inside the grounds because she had to, she did so because it fit how she saw the world. Other animals clearly didn’t have that restriction, as Ambrose the Orbiting Sea Turtle had demonstrated.

  The shadow elephant hadn’t lived in an aquarium.

  That was good news for fish trying to avoid electrocution, but bad news for Foxtrots that were trying to avoid high-voltage elephants. It stomped right through the fence like it wasn’t there, tendrils of lightning snaking to either side down the iron railings as it passed through them and came to an abrupt halt in front of me. I thought for a second I had misjudged its intentions.

  And then it reared up on its hind legs.

  I knew what was coming. It was going to smash down on me with the full weight of all that blackness, and stomp my soul flat. My body might not be crushed, but it would kill me dead all the same.

  That didn’t happen.

  What did happen was that a streamlined gray blur arced over the fence in the frozen instant the elephant stood upright, and skidded to a stop in front of me. I had an instant to realize it was a greyhound, and then it changed.

  I don’t know what to call the thing it changed into.

  Calling it a dog was like calling a tiger a tabby. It was the size of a bear, massing at least three hundred pounds. Its head was huge, broad and flat like a pit bull’s but much larger, its snout long and heavy, its face jet black. It had pointed ears and a bushy tail like a wolf’s. Its fur was gray-black on top, fading to a tan underneath, and it stood almost four feet high.

  Next to the elephant, it looked puny. It crouched in the shadow of that immense black weight about to fall like a pile driver, and snarled.

  The snarl scared me more than the elephant had. I may have shrieked—just a bit—but I honestly believe that the biggest, meanest, badass on the planet might have done the same. That snarl was … well, let’s just say that if I ever had trouble going to the bathroom, all I had to do has remember that snarl and peeing would get a whole lot easier.

  The elephant paused.

  The dog-thing snarled again. I managed to retain control of my bladder, but movement seemed impossible.

  The elephant lowered itself to the ground. There should have been an earthshaking thump, but there wasn’t. The canine and the pachyderm stared at each other, the elephant’s trunk twitching like a cat’s tail. The elephant seemed more irritated than afraid.

  [Foxtrot,] Tiny’s voice said in my head. [Now would be a good time to run.]

  I scrambled to my feet. “I—I can’t leave you here with—”

  [RUN!]

  I ran.

  I’m not proud of it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it afterward, and even though I knew he was right—I was out of my depth, while he was doing a job he was good at and prepared for—I still felt bad. Whenever I replayed that scene in my head later, it always turned into a fantasy where I whipped a little shadow mouse out of my pocket and said, “Ha! Deal with this, Monster Elephant Lightning Ghost!” And then the mouse went all kung-fu on his giant, wrinkly ass while I laughed evilly.

  But that was just a fantasy. In reality, I ran.

  The graveyard was bordered by a wooded area, a small stand of trees that abruptly ended at a shallow ditch beside a paved road. I cut to the right and kept going, splashing through puddles left by last night’s rain. I hoped nobody on the road noticed the crazy lady running through the ditch.

  I veered back after a few hundred feet, because I could spot the outer wall of the Zoransky estate and knew I was about to come into range of one of Shondra’s cameras. No way was I going to explain this to her. The trees thinned out near the junction where the high stone wall of the estate met the iron fence of the graveyard, and I ducked in there where I couldn’t be seen from the road. I paused when I came to the fence, then steeled myself and climbed over it again.

  I was back in the graveyard.

 

  “AAH! Don’t do that!”

  I looked around wildly. Tango was nowhere in sight. “Where are you?”

 

  I told her which corner of the graveyard I was in. “Listen, Tiny’s in trouble! He was facing off against—”

 

  “But it isn’t restricted to the graveyard! It attacked me on the other side of the fence!”

 

  So I did. I kept close to the hedge, and moved deeper into the graveyard, my heart hammering. I hoped Tiny would be okay. “Hey, how come I can hear you when you’re so far away?”

 

  I realized my hands were shaking. “Breathe, dammit, breathe,” I muttered to myself, and then made myself do
it. “I’m … under control, now. I am.”

 

  “Sure, yeah, got it. Keep talking, okay?”

 

  I didn’t feel safe, though. I wondered if I ever would again, or if I’d wake up screaming from nightmares about huge black thunderclouds chasing me. “What was that thing?”

 

  “That much I figured out. An elephantom, huh? But it was electric!”

 

  I glanced over my shoulder. I could see the main path now ahead of me, and the statue of Piotr, the Russian circus bear. Tango had moved away from the parrot’s grave—she’d climbed on top of the bear’s head. I almost expected her to wave, but that’s not really a cat thing.

  A moment later I was at the gate. I hesitated with it open and looked back. Tango was gone. “Hey, where’d you go?”

 

  I swallowed, then did as I was told.

  I was halfway to the mansion when I realized that—despite what Tango had told me about the graveyard amplifying our thoughts—I hadn’t heard anything from Tiny since I left him.

  * * *

  Thank God there was no one at poolside. I didn’t know if I could face another human being just then, and definitely not one that was flirting with me. I just wanted to find a corner to have quiet breakdown in—no more than three minutes of hysterical crying, tops—and then go back and rescue my friend.

  But since I had absolutely no idea how to do that, I settled for just the quiet-corner part—a bench in the gardens that was mostly hidden from casual view by an enormous rhododendron bush.

  To my own surprise, it turned out I didn’t need the crying after all. My little breakdowns were generally a chance to wallow in self-pity for a bit before throwing myself back into the fray, but it wasn’t self-pity I was feeling. It was worry and guilt and fear.

  And the beginnings of anger.

  At myself, yes. But also at whoever or whatever had thrown me into this mess with no preparation or warning. Okay, a little warning and two qualified helpers, but still—electric elephants? How in the name of Oprah’s Pap Smear was I supposed to deal with things like that?

  I didn’t know. And if I didn’t figure it out soon, somebody else was going to die. Maybe even me.

  That was about as far as I got in my stew of self-recrimination, anxiety, and anger. Tango came trotting around the corner, looking entirely unconcerned, with no sign of Tiny.

  “Tango! Where’s—”

 

  And sure enough, a second later Tiny limped into sight. He was wearing his golden retriever form again, but he looked … odd. A little lopsided somehow, like a drawing where the artist hadn’t gotten the perspective quite right. I squinted at him, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was wrong. “Tiny! Are you okay?”

  His mental voice sounded exhausted, like a man panting after a long run. [I’m fine, Foxtrot. Just … a little drained. Excuse me.] He flopped down at my feet and put his chin on the ground.

  I jumped off my seat and knelt down beside him. “What happened? Are you hurt? What was that thing?”

 

  [Let me answer your questions. First: We fought. Second: I am wounded, but not seriously. Third: It was an elephant.]

  I did my best not to roll my eyes. “I know it was an elephant! But that’s like saying King Kong was an ape! This elephant was spitting lightning and made out of blackness so black it was like—like something really, really black!”

  [Was she always this eloquent when she got upset?]

 

  “I haven’t done that since I was six. And don’t change the subject.”

  [You know as much as I do. It’s a hostile spirit, obviously. The darkness is a manifestation of its rage. The lightning … I don’t know. Perhaps that’s how it died.]

  “You said you were injured. How badly? What can I do to help?”

  [You can’t. I just need some time to rest, that’s all.]

  It had never even occurred to me that Tiny could be hurt; he was already dead, after all. I put my hand down to give him a comforting stroke on the head—

  And felt my fingers sink into his skull like it was made of soft mud.

  “AAH!” I yanked my hand away, horrified. Tiny stared up at me with reproachful dog eyes, and Tango sighed.

  “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

  [Hush. You didn’t hurt me. This is what happens when an ectoplasmic entity like myself is injured: It becomes harder to hold ourselves together. I require time to meditate, which will allow me to regain my former cohesion. A smaller form will make this easier; therefore, I am going to shift into one now.]

  He shrank, his shape condensing, his shaggy fur getting shorter while his floppy ears got longer and pointier. His color changed from a burnished orange to white. Within a minute I was looking at a tiny, pale Chihuahua with enormous brown eyes and whiskers like a mouse. He stared up at me solemnly, and those tears I thought were gone threatened to come back. “Oh. You’re so…”

  [Don’t say it, please. Now—can you find a place to hide me? A drawer will do.]

  “Yes, sure. Just a second.”

  I glanced around, then spotted a paper sack of potting soil the gardener had left out. I dumped it in the bushes, then put it on the ground and held the mouth open. Tiny ducked inside, and I picked it up and curled the lip over a few times to close it. “You okay in there?”

  [Fine.]

 

  I marched briskly into the house with the bag under my arm, up the staircase and straight to my office. I found a filing drawer that was mostly empty, and gently took Tiny out of his improvised carrier and put him inside. “I’ll look in on you later, okay?”

  [Thank you.] He put his head down and appeared to fall asleep.

  I went back outside, where Tango was waiting for me by the rhododendron bush. I sat back down. She jumped up and sat beside me.

 

  And that was when I started to cry.

  I felt Tango climb onto my lap. She lay there quietly, and I stroked her soft, warm fur. After a moment she began to purr.

  It helped, but I still felt terrible. “I … I don’t know if I can do this.”

 

  “What?”

 

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I sniffled. “I must have.”

 

  “I don’t remember.”

 

  I didn’t say anything.

 

  “He missed.”

  .>

  “No. I knocked out two of his teeth. Man, did I get in trouble for that.”

 

  “I’d seen him play baseball. He had a lousy arm.”

 

  I sighed. “This isn’t a bully throwing rocks, Tango. This is big and scary and supernatural. I can’t exactly challenge a ghost elephant to a duel.”

 

  I considered that. Maybe she was right; one bad encounter didn’t make the thing my archnemesis. It was probably just lost and in pain and half wild—not evil. “You know, you’re right. I guess I’m just a little shook up, is all. Too much going on, and all of it weird.”

 

  I pulled a tissue from my pocket and blew my nose. “I did, didn’t I? I was a real geek girl. I didn’t think you noticed, though.”

 

  I stroked her head, rubbing my thumb and forefinger in those two little spots in front of her ears; she responded like she always had, closing her eyes and ratcheting her purr up to a rumble.

  “I missed you, too, kitty. It broke my heart when you died, you know? I cried for days.”

 

  “Oh, shush, you silly cat,” I sniffled. “Can’t you tell the difference between good tears and bad ones?”