Un-fur-tunate Murders

by Harper Lin

  “I don’t ever want to do that again.” Bea looked up to the ceiling and fanned herself with her hand. “I’m breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. There is a reason people are not supposed to pass through walls. My bathroom was the vomitorium last night.”

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked. My headache was still trying to cling to my brain, with a little ringing in my ears and tingling at the back of my skull, but I could function. In fact, I was looking forward to getting to work and telling my family what Treacle had found out. The big black cat had left early that morning when I opened the kitchen window for a little fresh air. Soon, it would be too cold to let him out all day. He’d have to spend time at the café, as he did every winter around that “most wonderful time of the year.” But it was still fall and only a little cold. I didn’t have to worry about him. I knew after last night he’d be staying close to home.

  “I actually feel really good. So long as I keep the idea of sauerkraut or rice pudding out of my mind.” Bea put her hand to her stomach. “I should be fine.”

  “Sauerkraut. Rice pudding. Got it.” I looked at my aunt, who was smiling proudly. “It was just another walk in the park for you,” I snapped, unable to control my sarcasm, and that seemed to make Aunt Astrid chuckle even more.

  “You girls did great last night, and I know the side effects of passing through solid matter can be debilitating at first, but there is a pleasant side effect that you may not have realized.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Bea.

  “You both admitted to feeling pretty good. Well, lots of bad stuff stays behind on the solid matter as you pass through. Things like caffeine, fluoride, E-coli, tapeworms, and eyelash mites.”

  “Add eyelash mites to the list of things not to say or think of.” Bea grimaced and rubbed her stomach again.

  “If you think about it, you both experienced the benefits of an expensive spa treatment without having to spend a nickel.” Aunt Astrid put her hands on her hips and smiled. Then she scooted behind the counter and began to slice a big chunk of cherry pie.

  “Who is that for?” I murmured.

  “It’s for Tom,” she muttered without turning around. Before I could ask any other questions, the bells over the door jingled, and in stepped a very handsome, very tired-looking Tom Warner. He smiled as he stepped right up to me, kissing me on the cheek. Like the cool cucumber I always am, I blushed and looked down at the floor.

  “Hey, Bea. Aunt Astrid,” he said before raising his fist to his mouth and stifling a yawn. “You wouldn’t happen to have some coffee back there, would you?”

  “Especially for you, Tom.” Bea turned and grabbed a large cup and filled it to the brim. “Just black, if I remember right?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “What’s up? Late night?” I asked, patting his shoulder.

  “Yeah. I was going to see if you wanted to catch a movie tonight or something, but Officer Brookes is having emergency surgery.”

  “Oh dear. Is he a friend of yours? Will he be all right?” Aunt Astrid asked as she turned around with the pie in a to-go container and handed it to Tom.

  “Yeah. Kidney stones. He was told a couple months ago to go in, but you know how some men can be. Stubborn. So now he’s paying the price. But they said he’d pull through just fine. He’ll need a little time off is all.” Tom looked down at the pie and smiled. “This will be my treat before bed. Thanks, Astrid.”

  My aunt nodded and turned, grabbing a stack of receipts and taking her place at her favorite small table for two next to the counter to begin counting.

  “So I might be out of commission for a week or two. You’ll be working when I’m coming home, and I’ll be working when you’re getting ready to go to sleep.”

  I tried to pretend that it didn’t make any difference to me, but I’m a terrible actress.

  “You can always come for your morning coffee. At least then I’ll know you made it through your shift.” I straightened the collar of his uniform shirt.

  “I was hoping you’d say something like that.” He squeezed me tightly around the waist, making me giggle. It was a really gross display. My otherwise tough-girl persona was completely ruined. Again, Tom stifled a yawn and took a sip of the coffee. “I better get going. I’ll stop by tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay.” I smiled, letting him kiss me again on the cheek and leaning into him a little as I felt his strong arm completely encircle my waist. When he left, I felt a little strut in my step and wiggled my hips at my aunt and Bea, who I could feel were staring at me.

  “That poor boy,” Aunt Astrid teased as Bea nodded and went to stand next to her mother.

  “Well, as much as I’d like to listen to you two go on and on about my love life, I am afraid we’ve got to focus on something not so comical.” I let out a deep sigh. “Treacle had some information for me last night.” Bea put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, and they both looked at me as though they were waiting for a bad diagnosis. “We’re dealing with some really sick stuff.”

  I went on to tell them what Treacle had told me. When I got to the part about Enzo escaping, I thought I was going to start crying. This was not the time for mushy sentiment. As much as I hated to do it, I needed to thicken my skin and do it rather quickly, too, because I could feel in my gut what my family was going to say.

  “We need to get out there.” Aunt Astrid clenched her teeth. “We need to get an idea what the whole place looks like and find the heart of the place. Then we need to stop it from beating.”

  “I like the sound of that.” I rubbed my hands together.

  “But, Cath, before you go anywhere, we need to cover up your scent.” My aunt stood from her seat and looked seriously at me. I lifted my arm and sniffed.

  “Do I offend?”

  “Not us. But the Rotmirage knows you.” She squinted as if she were playing a life-or-death game of poker. “If it tracked you to the vet’s office, it must be looking for you.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.” I swallowed hard.

  “Mom, I should do this one on my own. Cath shouldn’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for anyone to go to that tainted piece of land, but there’s no way you’re going by yourself.”

  “Cath has to go,” Aunt Astrid solemnly replied. “There will no doubt be animals there, and she’ll need to communicate with them. If you don’t have that, you’ll just be wandering around. I’ll be here, managing your protection spell as well as Cath’s smell.”

  “Nice.” I rolled my eyes.

  “But remember, girls, this is just to collect information. My visions are telling me that we may need to pull out all the stops in order to end this. The Clare roots run very, very deep.”

  It started to sprinkle rain when Bea and I finally headed out toward County Line Road 63, and my windshield wipers were as old as my car. We were a moving violation of some kind, I was sure of it, but there was no time to waste.

  “Wow. You really smell.” Bea inhaled deeply. “I think you should let Mom do this again for your next date with Tom. It’s intoxicating.”

  “Oh, ha, ha.” I gripped the steering wheel. “Funny, because I can’t smell it. What do I smell like?”

  “Like a cross between basil and lavender.”

  “Yikes, you’re right.” I smiled. “That sounds absolutely wonderful.”

  “So what is our plan?” Bea looked straight ahead.

  “I thought you had something in mind. What are you asking me for?” I smirked.

  “That sounds about right.” Bea smiled and took a deep breath.

  We drove around past the spot where Tom had parked the truck when we made our way to Suicide Bridge. We also scooted past the road that led to Archie Jones’s home.

  “There.” Bea pointed to something that was a road in the most basic sense of the word. There was a dusting of gravel that blended into a dirt path wide enough for a small car like mine to maneuver d
own. I turned and instantly felt a weight fall over the car.

  “It’s darker in here,” Bea whispered, as if something might be listening.

  “In more ways than one,” I added. The trees bowed close to each other, weaving their branches together in an arch overhead as if they were working together to block out the light. The foliage was thick with wild brambles that were leggy and sprawling around the bases of the trees. “Without a machete or a flame thrower, we aren’t going to have a chance of sneaking up on anyone at this point. We’ll never get through all that overgrowth.”

  We drove slowly forward and found a small patch that would camouflage my car if I could carefully ease into it. On my left was a ditch about four feet deep. On my right was a patch of sticker bushes with needles over an inch long.

  “This is good,” I said. “I think we’ll be safe here.”

  “Safe if we just stayed in the car. But we have to go out there.” She pointed a delicate finger ahead into the forest. I could see it tremble slightly.

  “Well. It’s now or never.” We both took a deep breath and quietly opened the car doors, careful not to let the rusty hinges squeak too much, and neither of us slammed them closed.

  I listened carefully and could hear the sounds of nature. There weren’t many, but they were there. The agitated squawk of a blue jay. The mad rustle of squirrels. But there was nothing else. No sound of traffic in the distance or a random lawnmower getting one last mowing done before the really cold weather came.

  Bea’s eyes were narrow as she scanned the terrain.

  “I get the feeling we should go that way.” She pointed to what looked like the entrance of a cave until I squinted. It was a massive tunnel of trees clustered unhealthily together, choking each other out, as some were dying of disease and lack of light, while others grew in twisted, unnatural angles.

  Without a word, I nodded. Each step along the sad dirt path sounded like an army of soldiers marching along against the backdrop of a church-quiet forest. Time became abstract, as I thought we had been walking for hours, but we were only on the road for twenty-five minutes. Bea felt the opposite, that we’d only walked for five minutes and had already covered an unnaturally long piece of territory.

  “Anyone around that you can ask for directions?” She looked at me and pointed at the ground randomly.

  I called out telepathically, as if I were calling for a child in kindergarten or first grade to answer me. The words had to be simple and calm, or else they’d just stare at me or run away. Surprisingly, an answer came from high, high up in a majestic oak tree.

  “You aren’t from the bad place.” It was a hawk. It looked down at us over its proud, robust breast and shifted its strong wings, reminding me of the way James Cagney would adjust his jacket when he played a gangster in the movie The Roaring Twenties.

  “No. We’re not. But we’re trying to find it. Can you tell us where it is?”

  The resplendent creature tilted its head one way and then another as it studied us.

  “You mean you can’t feel it?”

  I held my breath and took an internal inventory of my senses. I was too scared to feel anything else. I shook my head.

  The hawk said nothing else telepathically but let out a scratchy cry and dove from the branch it had been perched on. We both watched with wide eyes as it spread its wings and, without flapping them, glided up through the branches and dry leaves without a sound. It headed west, and so did the dirt road that had become little more than a path. So we went west, too.

  There were a few pesky flies that circled our heads before being swatted away. Bea had stumbled slightly when her foot caught on a tree root that had surfaced some time ago. I was listening and shivering as the sweat was freezing under my arms and down the spine of my back.

  “What is that?” I pointed forward.

  At first I thought maybe we had stumbled onto one of those small complexes run by the electric or gas companies where they run services to some of the more rural houses. It was a flat-topped, sprawling structure that had plywood for several windows, and the southeastern edge that we were looking at had burn marks from a fire that had never been repaired. The black burn marks made it look as if there were jagged teeth, and a window devoid of plywood looked like a black, lifeless eye.

  There was a faded red barn off behind the building that was closed up tight. Behind that looked like hundreds of shucked rows of corn that hadn’t been replanted for at least one farming season.

  “Do you think they live there?” Bea asked.

  “I don’t see anyplace else. My gosh. What a pitiful place to…”

  I know Bea didn’t hear what I had heard. She couldn’t have. She didn’t have the gift to speak to animals. But she did have the ability to sense emotions. I heard their cries, but Bea felt their pain and fear.

  “There are two of them,” I muttered. “And they are in that building.”

  “Cath, I know what you’re thinking, but maybe we should do what Mom said. We know how to get here now. We can come back and pool all our strength. Then we can have a better chance at saving them.”

  My eyes stung with tears. They were crying, and they were just little kittens.

  “I can’t leave them, Bea.” I wiped my eyes, feeling anger take the place of my fear. “I know what your mom said. But I just can’t leave them. They are terrified. It’s like leaving crying babies. Neither of us would do that, either.”

  “No. We wouldn’t.” Bea squared her shoulders.

  There was no need for us to tell each other what we were going to do. It was as if we shared the same brain at times.

  Inching our way closer to the edge of the forest where it cleared around the property, we hunched down and watched. There was no movement. Nothing was alive on the outside of the building except the dandelion weeds and crabgrass. A cold wind was whipping up the dead leaves above us.

  “Is that the driveway?” I asked, pointing to what looked like a gravel track leading into the woods.

  “It looks like it might be. I don’t see anything else that looks like a way to get in and out of this place. Other than the path we took.” Once again sharing our brain, we both looked behind us as if we had forgotten there might be an angry member of the Clare clan who was sneaking up on us or a Rotmirage out for its daily stroll. All we saw were dry, gray trees and sticker bushes.

  “I don’t see their truck. At least one of them is gone,” I added.

  “Maybe both of them.” Bea was hoping I’d agree, but I clicked my tongue.

  “Maybe there are more of them inside. You know, like when you poke an anthill. Only when they think there is trouble do they all swarm out.”

  “What a pleasant thought.” Bea wrinkled her nose.

  “I’m sorry.” I rubbed my chin. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  The kittens’ cries were becoming louder, so I called out to them. Like human children, it sometimes takes a little finesse to get them to calm down. These little ones were no different.

  “Can you hear me?” I called in my mind.

  Suddenly, they both became silent.

  “I’m here to help. My name is Cath. I can hear you fine if you can just say hello.”

  Still nothing.

  “I am not far away,” I said coaxingly. “Can you tell me anything about where you are?”

  “It’s a trick. The bad thing will come again and make us sick,” one childlike voice said.

  “This doesn’t sound like that bad thing,” the other kitten replied.

  “No. I’m not the bad thing. I am here to take you away from it. To take you some place safe. Can you tell me where you are?”

  That was when I heard the saddest sound that ever hit my ears. Somewhere not far from us, there was a small set of paws frantically clawing at a cage.

  “You hear that?” I asked Bea, who nodded. “It’s coming from that part of the house. The burnt part.”

  I took a deep breath and focused.

  “I
’ll go myself.”

  “Cath, that’s too dangerous.”

  “If anything happens to me, you can get help. There is no need for both of us to go.” I was still hunched over as I started to take a couple steps toward the structure in the direction of what looked like a gaping maw.

  The sound of the kittens crying was louder still, and I was sure they were there. Without incident, I made it to the building and peeked inside the black eye that was a window.

  There, in the middle of a burnt-out kitchen, on two folding chairs, were the cages, which held a kitten each. One was the spitting image of Treacle when he was a baby, except this one had gold eyes. They both looked at me, and I could see they hadn’t been fed.

  Without a word, I looked around and saw an old wood crate about six paces away. Without fear, I marched up, grabbed it, and propped it next to the glassless window.

  Hoisting myself, I managed to get my stomach over the sill and pull myself inside. It smelled of mold and smoke. With trembling hands, I went to the first cage and slid the lock open. The tabby inside barely put up a fuss. I reached into get her and could feel her ribs against the palm of my hand.

  “I’m here to help you.” The little creature looked up at me and meowed.

  I went to the other cage. Much like Treacle again, this little black fellow was ready for a fight. His tiny needlelike claws came out, and he hissed as he swiped his thin little paw at me. He gouged me good, but I had been gouged by a cat more than once. I bit my tongue, and before he could get me again, I had him in my hand. He was even thinner than the other one.

  “Shhh.” I nuzzled them against my cheeks. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As I turned to climb back out the window, I nearly screamed as I saw a face there.

  “Bea? I told you to wait.”

  “A truck just pulled up.”

  My eyes widened, and the kittens began to whimper.

  “Here. Take them.” I handed the kittens to Bea through the window. She took the little creatures, and I knew instantly she would bring them comfort with her touch. She stuffed them inside her shirt and cradled them with her arms.