by Gina Rossi
“I think the job’s too big,” I answer. “Where should I put this?”
She hands me three more. “Best place is in the roof, if you can access safely.”
“And then what happens?”
“You bring them back, and we dispose of them.”
“Dispose?”
“We set the mice free in a suitable location, in the wild.”
Do they really do that? I look deep into her kind eyes. She’s not joking. Her receptionist nods, equally serious.
Okay, I believe them. I return to Blue Rocks and start looking for a trapdoor in the ceiling somewhere. I search high and low, literally. Inside and out. Eventually, I give up. I’ll message Lucas and ask him how to get into the roof. I’m having one last look around on the upper floor of the house when, walking along the gallery outside the small room Lucas uses as a bedroom, I open a large, double-door cupboard for no other reason than I’m looking for something I can’t find.
Hello. What’s this? I push the door wide open, right back against the wall. It’s no regular door, being heavy, soundproofed by the looks of it, and well-insulated around the edges. And this is no cupboard. It’s more like a small hallway with—would you know?—a spiral staircase in the corner. I knew there was a way to get to the cupola! I look at the floor at the base of the stairs and, sure enough, there’s a trapdoor that must open up to Lucas’s studio below. How exciting. I feel like I’ve made a significant discovery. You know, if Lucas took these big old doors off and opened this space up to the gallery, what a fabulous feature that would be. I marvel for a moment and then go to the top of the main stairs where I’ve left the mousetraps.
Back in the newly discovered hallway, there’s…ooh, what’s that smell? Something stinks, like it’s seeping in through the walls. Well, it’s musty in here, surely. Whatever, I don’t want that ghastly smell going through the house. There’s a light switch, so I switch it on and close the door, shutting myself in. It’s not claustrophobic, not at all with the light on. I balance the mousetraps in my arms and start up the stairs. Ladders are not my favourite thing—those untrustworthy rungs—and these slat-type stairs, where you can see all the way down to the floor between your feet, are the next worst thing. Come to think, this is a bit silly. I should have left these traps at the bottom and gone up, to see what’s what, first. Too late now because I’m more than halfway. At the top, I pause on the small landing outside a low door, to listen. Nothing. Silence, apart from my crazy heartbeat.
Quite honestly, I’m frightened, but who else is going to do this? Should I have called someone from the sheriff’s office? For goodness sake. Imagine calling out a law enforcement officer to deal with mice—of which you are scared—living, and/or dead. Granted, dead bodies are scary if they’re human. That’s when we call the sheriff, but not for mice.
“Just do it,” I mutter aloud. “Do it and get out.”
Here goes. I turn the knob and looking down—because determined as I am to rid the house of pests, I’d hate to squash an innocent mouse—I push open the door, giddy from climbing in the round, without breathing in the sweet stench of rot and decay. One of those mice must have passed on, because only a dead body could reek like this.
It’s the worst fright I’ve ever had, in my entire life.
I’m looking down, so I don’t see it coming. It crashes onto me, this great stinking, black, dripping thing, screaming, screaming, screaming. I’m screaming too! I leap backwards and crack my head on the low doorframe. Stumbling, fumbling blind, I beat off the horror, fling myself out onto the landing and slam the door. Something crunches and squeals. My hand slips off the knob and I plunge down the stairs—not far at all, because of the tight spiral. If there had been a ladder I would have gone straight to the bottom, on my head.
God! What was that?
Rammed against the curve of the bannister, head in hands, I’m trembling head to toes, like a leaf made of jelly. My legs have given way and, much as I’d like to flee, I can’t. I also can’t sit here forever halfway between bursting into tears and throwing up. I lift my head and look at the door.
Are those fingers pinched in the door? Blackish fingers? A cold shudder pulses through me like the shock of an ice-bucket challenge. The fingers drop to the floor, flutter, and lie still.
Not fingers, but a poor little…
Bat! Crushed by me. Next to him, lies a comrade, very dead, I fear.
Bats, that’s all. I press a wobbly hand to my stressed heart, worried I’ve damaged it. Oh Lord. I find tissues in my pocket, reach out and wrap up the bodies, not actually touching them. Somehow I’d forgotten about the smell, but it’s back, overwhelming, dead bats, live bats, and both their droppings. I get to my feet, legs as dodgy as the Trident 202’s, and stagger down the spiral, clutching the bannister.
Here, at the bottom, are the remnants of the smashed mousetraps I don’t remember dropping. One has fared slightly better than the rest. I slip the dead inside and take them out to the car.
Back at Old Mill Veterinary I hand the box to Dylan and tell her briefly what happened.
“I can see you’ve had a scare,” she says. “You’re quite a lot paler than you were this morning.”
Granted. “Just a little.”
“Ah, the legendary pluck of the Brits.” She grins.
“You had to be there.”
“I bet. Now tell me, how many Chiroptera in that colony?”
What a question, and I presume she means bats! Thousands of course, if not millions. I give it some thought. “Um, twenty. Forty at the most.”
“Good. Not too large.” She hands me a business card. “Call these people to remove them. It’s costly but you’ll have to do it. Eventually their urine and guano will damage the walls and stink out the whole house.”
“I’ll probably wait for Lucas to get back—”
“Don’t. Do it now. That colony will only grow and it could develop into a health hazard. Some bats carry viruses that can be lethal.” She says goodbye, telling me she needs to sort out those poor little bat pups.
I’ve no wish to find out what sort out means in vet-speak. I presume by pups she means babies. I’m not thinking about it. Thanking her, I dash off to fetch Alice from school. Early, I sit in the school car park and call the bat-removal people from the car.
They assure me their method is humane—before I ask—tell me their work with animals is regulated and approved by the nature conservation authority of the state of Maine, and quote me a price, which is not so humane. I can’t spend this much money without agreement from Lucas, so I start typing an email. For some reason, I’m impatient. This message is too long; there’s too much to say. I know, I’ll call him. I might be lucky enough to catch him during downtime.
No luck. I leave a detailed message and ask him to respond ASAP.
That evening, while Alice is having supper, Lucas calls. The line is terrible. He sounds like he’s racing a motorbike through a waterfall, and that’s perhaps why he’s yelling.
All I can make out is “Jeez, Lara!” crackle fade beep “Alice? Alice? Alice?” crackle.
“I can’t hear you, Lucas—”
Crackle crackle “…wrong with her? What?”
What? “Alice is fine. One hundred percent.”
“Alice?” beep fizz clang “…happened?”
“ALICE IS FINE. It’s about bats—”
“Cats? Is it Buster?”
“Lucas! Go somewhere where we can hear each other speak.”
He does. He sounds like he’s going down a mine on metal stairs. I wait, imagining me and Alice, tiny dots on the coast of Maine, joined to Lucas by a thin beam of light—light that shoots way up via a satellite revolving in the sparkling cosmic dust of outer space, and then back down to Lucas, a third tiny dot on his rusty flake of metal in a vast, horrendous sea, on the dark side of the world.
“Okay,” he says, eventually. “What happened?”
It turns out that my message broke up—why am I surprise
d. All Lucas got was Alice, lethal, virus, hazard, dangerous and urgent. Of course he freaked out.
“Honestly, Lucas, would I leave a message about Alice being desperately ill. I would never do that.”
“I know. I know. Sorry, sorry,” crackle zzzzt. “Out here, the mind plays tricks.”
I tell him about the bat situation, and he tells me to go ahead and get them removed and to get the cupola professionally cleaned and painted.
“There were supposed to be windows in that cupola.” He says coo-pohhhh-la, with the emphasis on the middle syllable, and I say coo-polla, like Italians would—I think. It makes me smile.
“Shall I get someone to do that? Put windows in?”
“Why not? That was the plan. I imagined my…” phyrr zzitz “…up in that tower, looking at the glorious view, like a princess, and the secret staircase down to my…” bzzzp bzzpb “It didn’t work.”
No. Well.
Alice climbs on my lap, wanting to talk to her dad. It’s Lara this, Lara that, and the occasional reference to Teacher Pick, and a lot about Buster. Lucas laughs and asks her questions. Seconds before they say goodbye he asks to speak to me.
“Why did you call? You could have emailed all this.”
I hesitate. I could have. “I wanted to hear your voice,” I say, although I don’t really say—it just comes out of my mouth. “We,” is what I had meant to say, “me and Alice,” but I didn’t.
Believe me, Lucas, out here on the wild and desolate coast of Maine, just a little too far out of Lobster Cove to be cosy, the mind also plays tricks. The mind and the heart. If I know one thing Lucas, I know this. I want to be that princess in your tower, your coo-pohhhh-la. I want it to be me.
Amy calls the second Alice falls asleep.
“I had a call from Lucas this minute,” she tells me, “way out in the North Sea.”
A complaint? God, I hope not. “And?”
“We didn’t chat. The line was terrible, but he did manage to ask me a question.”
“Oh?”
“It’s personal information he’s after, and I need your permission to give it. He wants to know if you’re in a relationship.”
Oh. “Why doesn’t he ask me himself?”
“You tell me.”
Obviously, I can’t. I guess he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself if—
“When I interviewed you, Lara, you stated ‘not in a relationship’, but that’s not the kind of information I send to a client. I keep it confidential, for my eyes only.”
My heart’s skippety-hopping while my tummy does figures of eight. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Can I tell him?”
“I can.”
“What! And bust him? No, let me.”
Yes, Amy, sir. “Okay.”
We chat some more, say goodbye and hang up. It’s a clear-sky night in Maine, but my head finds some clouds to shove itself into, and that’s how I go around for the rest of the evening, smiling all over my face.
Chapter Eight
It’s Friday. The bat squad is here, dressed in plastic suits, boots and helmets like there’s a leaking chemical weapon in the house. Alice has tennis after school and I’ve got time on my hands. Time to be out of the house and curious. Besides, after yesterday, I could do with a break. I’ve heard so much about Emerald Lake. People in town refer to it all the time, like you would an attractive landmark. Today’s the day. I’m going to drive up there and see it for myself.
Call me unimaginative, but Emerald Lake is more pewter than precious gem, though the vegetation’s green enough. The forests spread down ravines and gullies to the water’s edge, holding their old secrets. I spot a layby on the narrow shore and park there, but don’t get out of the car. It’s lonely, and very quiet for a city-lover like me, lately resident in the metropolis of Lobster Cove. I sit for ten, fifteen minutes, window open to the sunshine, watching the water, contemplating the sensation of being the only person in the world. I shiver, start the engine and move on, away from the grey water, up the hill, where the ground levels out and the trees stand back from the roadside.
Here’s something. A small house with a sign out front that I recognize:
Agat—Abenaki—Herbaliste—Facialiste
The beautician Cherri Chandler told me about. I slow the car to a stop. I never had time for this kind of stuff in my old life, but right now I do. I’ll stop by and make an appointment. What luxury.
I park the Jeep and walk in below the little sign, squeaking on its hinge, swinging in the breeze. The path to the cabin is no more than rough stones laid in the mud. A few chickens scratch about happily in the garden, such as it is, between clumps of herbs and succulents, mulched with bark, pebbles and broken seashells. I spot beehives to the side of the house, some distance away, in the shelter of a thicket of young pine trees. Clearly, an old tree fell there and young ones are growing where it seeded. I step onto the porch by way of three shallow wooden planks, raised on bricks to make rustic stairs. Baskets of shells, pebbles, broken coloured glass and blown eggs crowd every surface. Objects hang from rusty wire hooks under the porch eaves: dream-catchers, tumbleweeds, birds’ nests, bunches of dried herbs. The front door is wide open to the pitch-dark interior of the house. I ring the iron bell and wait, smelling incense. I wait a long time and am about to ring again when—
“Yes?”
I jump. Turning, I see, right there, on the porch, somehow without a sound to herald her arrival, Agat, I presume. She’s brown, wiry, and white-haired. Smooth-skinned, it has to be said. She’s wearing a denim ankle length shift dress and clogs. Clogs that would have scrunched up the stony mud of the path, so God knows where she’s beamed herself in from. Her pale blue eyes stay on my face, challenging me to ask a question. I do.
“Hello,” I say. “Are you Agat?”
“Where you from?”
“Lobster Cove. Cherri told me about you, said you offered facial treatments.”
“You the new girl for Blue Rocks?”
“I’m Lara Fairmont. I work for Lucas Dalton.” I offer my hand, but she doesn’t reciprocate.
She spits to the left and makes a funny little circle sign in mid-air with both forefingers. “You touch that man?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You touch him? His skin, his hand? You kiss him?”
“I…well…yes, I have touched him.” I shook his hand after all, and kissed him goodbye, urged by Lara. I touch my cheek like I’ve been stung there.
She puts her hands behind her back. “Ah, he kiss you. Go away. I don’t touch you!”
“Excuse me?”
“Go. Away.” She leans toward me, eyes flickering.
I drop my hand. “But—”
She brings her hands to the front of her body, presses them to her heart, and then raises a forefinger above her head like she’s checking wind direction. “That man evil, evil, evil. He think nobody know, but I do. I know. I am Abenaki, a child of the Dawn Land. My ancestors are warriors, so I am not afraid. You, you must fear Dzeedzeebonda. All girls want to catch him, catch the handsome, rich man, capture his loose hair and braid it. They want, they want to wear his ring, but that ring will go to Alombegwinosis like the first one. Her ring went to Alombegwinosis.” She holds her stomach. “They must fear him. You must fear him.”
I stare at her. I have absolutely no idea what she is talking about. “Are you Agat?” I try again, smiling.
She lowers her hand and walks across the porch, putting herself between me and the open door. “Kisosen bring the sun and see everything by daylight. But even when he fold his wings and bring the night, he see. He saw him, he saw that evil man that dark night.”
Right. Time to go. “Thank you,” I say with the most polite expression I can manage. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
She follows me to the car. “That man touch you already. He leave blackness on you. Blackness in your heart.”
I drive away, not much caring that I’ve left her covered in dust, my bl
ack heart thumping, shaky hands sweaty on the wheel. A mile or so along the road I pass one of those signs: Maine—the way life should be.
Really?
****
There’s no infant class at Alice’s school on Fridays, so there’s a good chance I’ll catch Cherri at home around lunchtime. I know where she lives—along the road to Grant’s Lake—because Alice points out her house each time we drive past. Besides, she said I could approach her for help. Anytime, honey, were her exact words. I slow down on the approach her front gate—feeling like the sheriff in his cruiser—and bingo there she is, peering into her post box.
I park on the roadside, get out of the car and lock it. We exchange pleasantries, and I explain why I’ve come. “I have questions about Lucas,” I tell her.
Cherri looks at me, scarlet lips pursed. “If I don’t tell you you’re gonna go to the public records’ office, the library, all those kinds of places and try to dig up the truth, ain’t you? You’re that kinda woman.”
I nod.
Does it matter, though? I’m here to do a job. To look after Alice until Lucas gets home, and then to go home myself. Do I really need to know what shifts in the shadows of Lucas’s life? Am I curious—is that all? Am I afraid? As long as Lucas doesn’t murder me, and if he’s not here, he can’t do that, can he? What’s this all about? I can’t put my finger on the exact reason why I have to know, but I do. I must know, and I will. This is as good a place to start as any.
Cherri tips her head toward the house. “Let’s go and sit in the garden out back.”
Using the excuse that I have to be gone in ten minutes to pick up Alice from tennis, I refuse all offers of tea, mint or otherwise, relishing the safe warmth of Cherri’s garden, billowing with crimson roses and peonies, purple petunias and sky-blue lupines. There’s a marijuana plant, happy as Larry, flourishing between the mint bushes.
We sit on a wooden bench in the sun, and Cherri asks me what’s up. I tell her about my visit to Emerald Lake and how I came across Agat’s house, her less than friendly welcome and her weird ramblings.