by Apryl Baker
Chapter Thirteen
“This is so NOT a good idea, Mattie Louise Hathaway!” Dan glares at me again. God, he’s been harping at me since I told him where we were going. I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. The lock is simple and I can get it if he’ll just shut up for two seconds.
“You didn’t have to come,” I snarl.
“Did you expect me to just let you go by yourself?” he all but shouts and I wince.
“Keep your voice down.” I sigh and keep a weak hold on my temper. “Look, Officer Dan, I have a juvie record already. If I get caught, no big deal. They’ll write it off as emotional distress due to Sally gone missing. My shrink will testify. If you get caught, you’re a cop. You’ll get into a lot of trouble, so…” I spluttered, “you can leave or wait in the car. But SHUT up.”
“I’m not gonna wait in the car while you break into somebody’s house!”
“Then shut up or we’ll both get caught!” That did it. Blessed silence. Thank God. I seriously am not taking him along on any more B&E adventures. He’s a pansy. Well, he is a cop, so he does have to at least protest, but he does it with such vigor. I swear I can strangle him here and now and die happy. I might feel bad about it later mind you, but not right now.
I hear the lock click and grin. “Haven’t lost my touch after all.” I pocket my handmade jimmy and stand. Dan glowers at me. No high five? Oh, well. I roll my eyes again, softly open the door, hurry Dan inside before closing the door behind us. “Kitchen. Ugh.” It’s so dated; the lime green walls do nothing for the orange-flowered cloth on the breakfast table. The room smells slightly and that’s when I see the flies circling the garbage can. No one has been in to do any kind of cleaning yet. Great.
“Have you ever been in here before?” I ask Dan.
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know! Your mom seems to have known her. I thought maybe she’d dragged you over here or something.”
“Well, I haven’t.”
“Are you always this grumpy?”
“Only when I’m forced into criminal acts by high-strung teenage girls.”
“You are such a pansy.”
“What? I am NOT a pansy just because I’m worried about getting caught and going to jail!”
I shake my head and leave the kitchen. Now I’m in the living room. The furniture here hasn’t been updated since the early seventies. The walls are paneled in a deep brown and the brown carpet has definitely seen better days. There is an old brown leather couch and two chairs in the same leather flanking a coffee table. The old floor model TV is off, but I bet if I turn it on, it’ll be on the game show channel. Old people, I’ve discovered, are notorious for watching their shows. You don’t stand between them and Wheel of Fortune if you know what’s good for you. So says this Voice of Experience.
There is a small door on the right wall; next to the door is a montage of pictures. I open the door and find a bathroom. The walls are pink. Seriously. Pink. The woman needed an interior designer in the worst way. Gag. I shut the door on the pink horror and look around the living room again. There’s a small door on the opposite wall. It blended in so well with the paneling, I hadn’t seen it when I first came in. There’s a deadbolt and it’s locked. Strange. I unlock it and open the door. There were steps going down. Bingo. “The basement.” I tried the light switch and a fuzzy yellow light blared to life at the bottom of the steps.
I glance at Dan. “Are you coming?”
He nods and I start down the steps. It reeks down here of mildew. I’d bet money the old woman has mold growing down here. It is certainly damp enough. The first thing I see is the washer and dryer. A laundry basket full of towels sits on top of the dryer, ready to be put away. For just a second, I feel bad for the old bat. She hadn’t asked to die. She’d planned on coming home and putting away her towels and then probably feeding Oliver.
Speaking of which… “Oliver?”
“Oliver?” Dan whispers. “Who’s Oliver?”
“Oh, so now you whisper when no can hear us,” I glare at him.
“Mattie…”
“Jeeze, it’s her cat.”
“Her cat?”
“Yeah, I saw her at the diner and she was harping at me to let Oliver out of the basement.”
“Wait, you saw Mrs. Roberts? When? She’s been dead for days… oh.”
I chuckle at his strangled voice. “She was at the diner yesterday yelling at me to let Oliver out before he starves. I ignored her, but then remembered when your mom was talking about her at breakfast. I figure what will it hurt me to let her stupid cat out? No reason he has to starve just because she died.”
“So we are breaking into a dead woman’s house so you can help her cat?”
“Pretty much.”
“Where did you learn to pick locks?”
I shoot him a wicked grin. “Haven’t read my rap sheet yet, huh?”
“Mattie, you’re sixteen. What kind of rap sheet can you have?”
“Look it up and then talk to me. Now, where is that danged cat? Here, kitty, kitty.”
“You really are an odd girl, Mattie,” Dan tells me. “You try so hard to come off as a hard-ass, but you are the biggest softie I have ever met.”
“Take that back,” I tell him, appalled. “I am not a softie.”
“Then why are we here looking for a cat?”
“So the old bat will leave me alone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Will you just shut up and look for the cat?” I turn away so he can’t see my cheeks flaming. Most people never, ever see past the walls I put up, but this guy can and it makes me uncomfortable. Jake sees past it a little, but not nearly as much as Dan does. I’m not sure what that means either.
Dan and I explore the entire basement and come up with nada. If that old bat sent me on a wild goose chase, I am so gonna give her a piece of my mind.
“Mattie, are you sure it’s a cat?” Dan asks very quietly.
“What else can it be?”
“Big snake?”
“WHAT?” I turn around to see Dan slowly backing up away from the furnace. He is inching backwards at a snail’s pace. I hate snakes with a passion. When I was eight, I got bit by a black snake and was so sick I thought I was dying. They’ve freaked me out ever since. When Dan finally reaches me, I peek over his shoulder and my eyes widen. OH MY GOD. Uncoiling itself from the furnace is a boa constrictor. Those things are huge, they can get like twenty feet long or something and can swallow you whole. “Holy crap.” Um, this one’s pretty big. I can see its body start to take shape and it has to be at least three feet wide and ten feet long. At least.
“Mattie, you need to back up towards the stairs,” Dan whispers. “I think it’s hungry.”
“Duh, it hasn’t been fed in days,” I whisper back. My feet won’t move, though. Snakes really, really freak me out and this one is pretty much the biggest one I’ve seen.
“Move, Mattie.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I’m scared out of my mind?”
“Right.” He curses softly, grabs my hand and takes off at a run, dragging me behind him. I turn mid yank and try to keep up. My feet work if I’m not looking directly at the mammoth snake. The stairs loom up and I even manage to get up them. Dan slams the door and turns the lock.
Now I understand why there is a deadbolt. We both lean against the door, slightly out of breath.
“Animal control,” Dan tells me. “We are calling animal control right now.”
“Uh, no we are not.” Does he want to get caught? “Are you forgetting that we broke in here? How are you going to explain that one, Officer Dan? Wait until we get out of here, then stop and make an anonymous call at a pay phone.”
He stares at me. “You do this a lot do you?”
I shrug. “I used to.”
He frowns.
Whew. That look means I’d better explain. “When I was still in Jersey, I hooked up with some kids who
taught me some skills. It was either that or starve. The place I was staying decided that we only needed to be fed every couple days. I got stuff for them and I got fed. I know it wasn’t right, that it was stealing, but when you’re eleven and hungry…”
“I’m sorry, Squirt.”
“Don’t be,” I gave him my best and brightest and falsest grin. “I’m fine.”
“You’re always fine, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. Now let’s get out of here, before Oliver decides to come through the door.”
He laughs softly and follows me to the kitchen, but I stop suddenly. There is something odd. The lime green walls are a little hazy now, almost like they’re shimmering. I cock my head and watch. The edges of the walls fade and it looks like I can see what I would call snow. The hazy snow of late winter. It’s eating the wall up and I shiver. Things flicker in the snow, shadows of things I can’t quite see. I take a step forward the snow branches out, creeping to the other wall where the fridge is. I’ve never seen anything like this before. What is it? The closer I get, the more I want to touch it. By the time I am standing a few inches from the wall, my hand is going up, fingers outstretched.
My fingertips graze the snowy wall. Screaming goes off in my head and I stumble back, falling to my knees. My stomach heaves from the force of the pain. I can hear Dan shouting at me, but the sound is faint; I can barely breathe past the screaming in my head. Then I look up and all I can see is the snow all around me. The world is covered in it. I try to stand and fall forward instead… and keep falling.
Then land face down on hard concrete. Ouch. That hurt.
I hear a hissing sound and push myself up.
Oliver.
Chapter Fourteen
Fudgepops, fudgepops, fudgepops.
Oliver is slowly winding his way towards me. I don’t know a whole lot about snakes, but the one thing I do know is that Oliver can wrap that body of his around me and crush me to death. I remember that from watching Animal Planet.
I push myself slowly up and wince. Yeah, of course, I banged my head pretty hard when I fell. And think my ankle is throbbing. Great. There’s blood oozing down the side of my face, too. Can snakes smell blood? Or is that sharks? Who cares? Panic is setting in full force. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears.
Calm, down. You’re a tough chickie. You haven’t survived the system just to get eaten by a freaking snake. You’ll be fine. I scoot backwards. I have to get up and run before Oliver can reach me. This is so not good. I’m giving that old woman a piece of my mind when I get out of here! Big time!
My first instinct is to yell for Dan, but if I do that, Oliver there might decide he’s especially hungry for one terrified girl. I’m not sure the snake can actually hear me, but it’s not a chance I’m willing to take. Instead I look around, remembering the layout of the basement I’d just explored. I’m in the back corner, right under the kitchen. The stairs leading up to the main room is two rooms over. I can make a run for it, but my ankle is throbbing. I might have sprained it in the fall. No way am I gonna sit here and be snake food.
So I slowly scoot backwards towards the open door. I know the small bathroom is just outside this room. If I can make it to there, I can close the door on the snake and hopefully Dan will figure out where I am. But if he does, he’ll have to deal with Oliver too. Double fudgepops. Why, oh why, did I even try to help that old coot? I should just have stuck with my policy of ignoring the spooks. My life was a whole lot less complicated before. Stupid ghosts.
Oliver keeps up his slow and steady slithering while I speed up my scooting, afraid to take my eyes off the snake. I might be going in the wrong direction. No help for it, I have to take a peek behind me. Do it quickly. Okay, I’m so close! Only a few more feet.
“Mattie!”
Oh no. Dan is yelling, but the snake doesn’t look overly agitated. It’s still coming at me, mind you, but no faster than before. My hand finally hits what feels like tile instead of the hard concrete of the rest of the floor. Great. I shove myself through the doorway and gratefully slam the door. Safe. I’m safe.
“Mattie!” There is panic in his voice. He sounds closer. The snake. He needs to get back upstairs.
“Dan,” I shout through the door. “I’m okay, don’t come down here. The snake is right outside the bathroom door.”
“How did you get down there?”
Good question. I have no idea. “No clue!” I yell. “Any idea how to get me out of here?”
“Wait for the snake to wander away and make a run for it.’
“Nope, can’t. Think I sprained my ankle.”
“Just sit tight,” he yells at last. “I’ll figure something out.” I can hear him stomping back up the stairs. I have a feeling snakes terrify him as much as they do me. It almost makes me want to chuckle – almost, if not for the ten-foot, god-only-knows-what pound snake sitting right outside the door, waiting for me to come out.
How did I get down here? One minute I was in the kitchen and the next I was on the basement floor just a few feet from Oliver. It has to have been the snowy stuff. As soon as I touched it, pain exploded and then bam! I was here. But that doesn’t make sense. How could that have caused me to fall through the floor? The floor would have to have disappeared in order for me to be able to fall through it – and that didn’t happen. Or did it?
I’m so out of my depth with this spook stuff. All I want is for everything to go back to the way it was. I just want the ghosts to go away, for me to be able to ignore them, and get back to a semi-normal life. I wish I didn’t have this cursed gift. It sucks royally.
That thought causes me to think of my mom. Was that why she started to do drugs? Had she seen the ghosts too? Did shooting up keep them away? Did she try to kill me to protect me from this? These questions I have asked myself for years and as always, I have no answer. I don’t really know why those questions pop up at such random times, but I guess because they are always lurking in the back of my mind.
Sighing, I pull myself up, sit on the toilet and inspect my ankle. I wince. There’s a knot the size of a small baseball already forming and the skin is starting to bruise. Nasty sprain. Well fudgepops. How am I going to explain this to Jake? No way can I hop to the movies now. He’s already jealous of Dan and now when he finds out I spent the morning with him, it could get ugly.
After about twenty minutes of sitting and twiddling my thumbs, I get impatient. No, sitting idly and hoping someone will save me isn’t my style. I have always saved myself and right now isn’t any different. Okay… I hop to the door and crack it open. No sign of Oliver. Is it safe to try a hobble to the stairs? It’s only one room over. I set my foot down and put weight on it. Pain shoots up my leg into my hip. Uh, no. Crap. I ease off the pressure. Definitely a no-go. Pain I don’t do in any way shape or form.
I can still hop, though. I cut my foot going out the window in Jersey when I ran away. I had to hop and hobble to the train station and managed just fine. What is one snake compared to a fifteen-mile walk on a foot that ended up with nine stitches? I can do this. Maybe.
The door makes an awful creaking sound when I open it wider. I do a careful search of the surroundings for the snake, but can’t see him. Maybe he went back to his furnace. I can only hope so, then take one careful hobble and wait. No hissing. Now that I’m outside of the safety of the bathroom, of course, I get nervous. If I fall and can’t get up in time, the snake will wrap around me and it’ll be game over. I swallow, jump another step and listen.
Silence.
So far so good. Another hop, this one bigger than the last. I’m about ten feet from the bathroom door, but at least another ten or fifteen from the door leading into the main room of the basement where the stairs are. Oliver’s furnace is the next room over, to my right. He seems to be staying put. Maybe he found a rat or something to munch on.
Four more jumps and I’m at the door to the main room. Yes. I did it.
The hissing starts and I turn in time to see t
he snake slinking out from under the stairs. Well darn it. So much for that. Now can I make a run for it on one leg? That is the question. No. But I can jump. I turn without another look at the snake and start jumping.
It slithers between my foot and the one I have slightly raised and startles me enough to fall flat on my butt. The snake turns before I can get up, but I try anyway. It’s on me before I can even stand. Its body starts to wind around my legs. I can feel the pressure of it beginning to tighten as more of it winds up my body.
“DAAAAAAAAN!!!” The head, where’s the head? I look for it, trying not to panic any more than I am. The snake will only respond to panic by increasing more pressure. I reach out blindly, trying to find a weapon, but there’s nothing. Why couldn’t I have just stayed in the stupid bathroom? I can see those little beady eyes drawing closer, its tongue flickering in and out of its mouth. Oliver’s mouth opens and I see those awful sharp teeth.
“DAN, DAN, DAN, DAN, DAAAN!”
The upstairs door flies open and there are footsteps pounding down the stairs. Men in brown uniforms are there, harnessing the snake’s head mere inches from my own. It hisses and only tightens its hold on me, truly crushing me. If they don’t get it off soon, I’m going to have broken bones. Then mercifully, the other one starts to unwind the snake and then I’m free.
Dan is there, picking me up and carrying me upstairs. Tears slip free. I can’t help it. I’ve never been more scared in my life. Paramedics are there too, and a few police officers. Dan hands me off to one of the paramedics and runs back downstairs.
They check my leg and then tell me I’ll need to go the hospital to make sure nothing’s broken. Oh, great. It’s not often they get calls to check out crushing injuries due to a snake, they say. Well, it’s not often I’m near enough to a snake for a crushing injury, so we’re even. Plus, they want to make sure I don’t have a concussion. The paramedics load me up on the gurney and start hauling me out when I hear the other police officers start to question Dan as to why we were here in the first place. I can’t let him get in trouble for helping me.