The Very Killer Caterpillar

by Samantha Silver

  “Look, we’ll tell you, but you have to keep it a secret,” the blonde finally said.

  “Of course,” I replied. “Is it some sort of new drug?”

  The guy laughed. “No, it’s way better than that. Black Magic is the name of a guy who has access to a whole bunch of tests. You pay your money, you get answers to all the tests and assignments in a class.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” the Asian girl replied. “But there’s a catch. You’re not ever allowed to get over ninety percent on a test if you’re on the Instagram account.”

  “Oh, so it’s all through Instagram?” I asked, trying to pretend like it was totally normal. It hadn’t even been that long since I’d been in college–about what, seven or eight years now–and already I felt out of touch and old.

  The redhead nodded. “Yeah. You have to call a number, then you tell them your username. They give you theirs, you request to follow. Tests for classes get added one day before the test, then deleted as soon as the test is scheduled to start.”

  “That’s smart,” Cat nodded. “Good way to do it.”

  “Not good enough though, rumor is,” the guy said.

  “Really? Someone reported it?”

  The Asian girl shrugged. “No one knows. And so far, the account has stayed up. But there were rumors that Professor Gordon actually found out the account existed, although no one knows how. We’re a really small campus, everyone knows everyone. I don’t think anyone would have tattled about the account.”

  “Ok,” I said. “But it’s still safe to use?”

  “So far,” the guy said with a wry smile. “I don’t think Professor Gordon ever found out who was behind the account. It was pretty lucky for whoever is running it that he was killed.”

  Yeah, lucky. That was one word for it. Or did someone make their own luck?

  “So, you guys don’t know who’s behind it?”

  “Nope, we just know how to sign up,” the redhead replied. “I can give you the phone number if you’re interested.”

  “Sure,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  The girl scribbled a number on a napkin, and I took it from her and carefully put it in my purse.

  “By the way, if you’re new here, I highly recommend you go to one of Professor Gilmore’s yoga classes.”

  Professor Gilmore. The name was familiar; he was the other professor that was in the running for the dean of faculty job. And one of the main suspects, since Annette Little had an alibi.

  “Oh yeah, why’s that?” Cat asked. The three students looked at each other and giggled.

  “The guy is a bit… eccentric, even for Sapphire Village,” the guy finally explained. “I’m pretty sure no one who goes is actually interested in yoga. He has classes on the front lawn every Wednesday and Friday at seven.”

  “Cool, thanks for the tips, guys,” I told them, and Cat and I got up to leave. We hadn’t done any planning to figure out how to get at the Others, but this was definitely solid progress on the murder case.

  We left the coffee shop–now that we had the information about Black Magic I figured it was best not to invite more questions about our classes that Cat and I couldn’t answer–and started walking down Main Street.

  “Should we grab some pizza before going to yoga?” Cat asked, nodding her head toward Pickles’ Pizza, where Pickles, an Australian Shepherd, was happily sleeping in front of the sign advertising happy hour specials.

  “Sure,” I nodded. After all, was there such a thing as a bad time for pizza? I was pretty sure the answer to that was no.

  At five minutes to seven Cat and I, stuffed with pizza, made our way back to the college campus, where it quickly became obvious we were in the right place. Around twenty people–mainly women—dressed in Lululemon and Under Armour milled around chatting to themselves. Yoga mats and brightly colored water bottles abounded, and I was glad Cat had stopped by her apartment to grab a couple of yoga mats she had hanging around from her “health phase” as she put it.

  We started eyeing people, thinking that there was never a bad time to get information, when all of a sudden Professor Gilmore–I recognized him from the photo on his profile–appeared. His hair was greyer, his beard longer and more unkempt than in the photo. His hair looked like Brian May’s, his blue eyes twinkled, and he wore a simple tie-dyed t-shirt and loose-fitting pants. A pair of round Janis Joplin-type sunglasses sat on his head.

  “Namaste, everyone,” he said to us, bowing to the group with his hands clasped together. Everyone immediately stopped talking, their eyes moving to the small man in front of us–he couldn’t have been taller than five foot seven inches. “We are here to celebrate the blessing we have been given of another day on this wonderful planet, and to find our own personal peace and enlightenment through the ancient practice of yoga.”

  Cat glanced at me and raised her eyebrows. This guy both looked and sounded like he came straight here from Woodstock.

  “But first, I would like to take a moment to remember and celebrate the life of a colleague: a man who fought for science, a man who fought for what he believed in, and a man whose knowledge of evolutionary biology was second to none. While his soul has departed the earth, he lives on in our hearts. Rest in Power, Alexander Gordon.”

  Gilmore put a hand on his chest and closed his eyes for a moment. No one else knew what to do; a few people mumbled “rest in peace” and even “Amen” but for the most part we all stood around awkwardly for fifteen seconds or so until Gilmore looked back up.

  “Let us dedicate tonight’s practice to Professor Gordon. Please, spread yourselves along on the grass. Carve yourself out some space in practice, in the same way as you must carve out your own space in this chaotic world of ours. Let us begin with a simple Om, to focus our energy, and to become a more powerful force in the universe by coming together.”

  Everyone spread out a little bit. Cat and I made our way toward the edge of the group and spread out our yoga mats. Despite having grown up in Miami, I had never actually done yoga before. I had always been the type to trip over my own two feet, and I had the flexibility of a hippo, so I had never actually considered trying yoga out of fear–both of embarrassing myself, and of breaking every bone in my body somehow.

  “The Om is the sound of the creation of the universe. Let us create our own universe of enlightenment and understanding, whatever those words may mean to you personally, by beginning our practice with an Om. Bring your hands together like mine, take a deep breath through the chest, and let us begin.”

  Everyone was now standing in the center of their yoga mats. Their hands were pressed, palms together, against their chests, and most had their eyes closed. I hurried to match their position, feeling both a little bit silly and also kind of cool. After all, this was really yoga! I could do this, and drink smoothies, and pretend that I was a healthy person who lived an active lifestyle instead of someone who had just eaten half a medium ham and pineapple pizza for dinner.

  I closed my eyes and joined the throng of people as a low “Om,” sound began to grow. It was an interesting phenomenon: the sound started low, and then grew louder, and I somehow felt a little more peaceful as it went on, before everyone finally stopped after about ten seconds. Everyone was silent now; the only noise was that of a couple robins chirping in the trees above.

  “We will start by going into a downward facing dog,” Professor Gilmore continued. I followed everyone’s cues as they stepped back toward the end of their mats and lay their hands down on the ground. I resisted the urge to let out a groan as my hamstrings protested against the stretch, and I crept up the mat with my hands to make it easier.

  This wasn’t so bad, after all, I thought. Until my body rebelled by letting out a small fart.

  My face went beet red as the sound seemed to reverberate across the entire campus. Of course, realistically it was tiny, and only Cat heard it; I could tell she was snickering next to me.

  “Shut up,” I muttere
d to her.

  “Shh, you’re ruining my chi,” she replied.

  “That’s a completely different thing.”

  “Yoga is whatever you want it to be,” she replied as Gilmore told us all to move into a pose called Warrior One. I looked over at Cat jealously as she effortlessly slipped into a lunge, reaching her hands high above her like she did this every day.

  I moved into the lunge pose myself without too much trouble–although my quads weren’t happy about it–but as soon as I tried raising my hands above my head at the same time, I stumbled and fell over. Embarrassed, I got up, but luckily no one seemed to really be paying me any attention, except a smug looking girl with ‘Elizabeth Ross’ monogrammed on her yoga mat who smirked at me. I got back into the pose, ignoring her, this time managing to hold it while staying upright, and silently cursed the fact that I was going to have to do this for another hour or so.

  When the class finally ended, we were supposed to be feeling cleansed and relaxed, if all those things I’d read about yoga were true. I definitely felt the opposite of that. Every muscle in my body hurt. I could feel muscles in places I didn’t think even had muscles.

  “You know, you’re going to have to get up off there if you want to go talk to Professor Gilmore before he leaves,” I heard Cat say. I couldn’t see her; I was lying face down on my yoga mat.

  “I can’t get up. You’re going to have to go do it yourself. I live here now.”

  “That’s going to get mighty uncomfortable when it starts to snow.”

  “Hypothermia is probably less painful than this.”

  I could practically feel Cat rolling her eyes above me. “You did one hour of light exercise. You’re not dead. Get up.”

  “I can’t move.”

  “I’ll start kicking you in a minute. Don’t think I’m not going to.”

  I groaned as I forced myself to get up off the ground. Every muscle in my body was on fire. “Fine, but you have to get my mat, I don’t think I can bend over that far anymore.”

  “Have you ever done anything that counts as exercise before in your life?” Cat asked as she casually bent over and picked it up like she hadn’t just spent an hour being tortured.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time lying on beaches, that’s kind of like yoga,” I replied.

  Cat laughed. “That’s like, the opposite of exercise. My God. You need to come here more,” she said as we made our way toward Professor Gilmore, who had wrapped up his yoga mat and was casually staring into the trees, watching the birds.

  “Excuse me, Professor?” Cat asked, startling Professor Gilmore. He looked at us and smiled.

  “Yes, what can I do for you ladies tonight?”

  “We were just wondering some things about Professor Gordon,” Cat continued.

  “Ah, yes. It is natural to want to discuss a death. Please, sit,” he motioned toward the grass. “We will let mother earth keep us cool and grounded. She not only offers us important teachings, but also provides us with a better environment for thought than man-made constructions.”

  I grimaced as I looked at the ground. It had never seemed so far away, and I knew it was going to hurt as I tried to sit down on it. Cat shot me a glare, as if knowing I wanted to complain about this, and I sighed, half sitting, half falling onto the ground with an inelegant thud.

  Hey, at least the sitting position meant I could relax my muscles! Cat and Professor Gilmore lithely slipped down onto the ground with cat-like grace, and I silently cursed them for being so much more graceful and elegant than I was.

  “Now, tell me what is on your minds. It is good for the soul to be open about these sorts of things.”

  “Well, I was thinking about our spot in the universe and how small and ignorant we are. I mean, I knew Professor Gordon. I took some of his classes a few years ago when he still taught. And yet, here he was, a few hundred feet away from me, dying, and I had no idea. I was just going about my day, like any other, without knowing that the light of someone I knew was being extinguished, and I don’t know how to deal with that,” Cat said. I had to hand it to her; she was good at this. Way better than me. I was just sitting here wondering how much it was going to hurt when I had to stand back up again.

  Professor Gilmore nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. My body was traveling through the forest that entire day, absorbing the energy of the earth, while my brain pondered some important questions in solitude. I happened to come across a patch of conium maculatum, more commonly known as Hemlock, right around the time when the poison would have taken the life of my dear friend, Professor Gordon.”

  My eyebrows rose slightly. Professor Gilmore was admitting that he had spent the day wandering through the forest. He continued talking. “While we do not know of the death immediately, it does impact us all the same once we learn of it. We must learn from our grief, and accept that our bodies were not made to connect so closely to the mind of another that we know instantly when they leave us. It is completely normal that you went about your daily life, as I did with mine, and neither one of us were the wiser for a few hours after dear Alexander’s death.”

  “Do you know who could have killed him?” I asked. I wanted to know what Professor Gilmore replied. He simply shrugged in reply.

  “Do I know? No, I do not. Quite frankly, I do not want to believe anyone in this community would be willing to take the life of another, especially that of one so dear to my heart, but I have spent many winters on this planet now, and I am not so naïve. However, I do not know who might have wanted him dead.”

  “What about the person in charge of the cheating ring?” Cat asked.

  “I did not know there was a cheating ring happening in this school. Ah, well, I should not be surprised. Most of the students here are at the age where they will make mistakes in their lives. I believe sometimes we punish them too strongly for them. It is possible, but I know nothing about that.”

  “Are you going to get the job of Dean of the Faculty now that Professor Gordon is gone?” Cat asked, and Professor Gilmore gave her a small smile.

  “That is not something that I know. The universe will decide in which manner I can best serve the human race. If that is as a Dean, then so be it. But if I am to maintain my role as a professor, directly teaching the next generation about the beauty of this natural world, then I am very content with that role as well.”

  “Thanks, Professor,” I said, stifling a groan as I slowly stood up off the ground. Cat, to her credit, gave me a hand and hoisted me up as she casually stood up off the ground.

  “You are very welcome. You are young, and yet experiencing death already. It will get easier for your souls. I promise. I suggest meditation in the meantime,” he said, making no move to get up. I suspected that was what Professor Gilmore was about to do himself. Cat and I made our way back to the car in silence, both of us thinking about what we’d learned today.

  Chapter 10

  “Well, I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it,” I said as we got into the car.

  “He hasn’t got an alibi,” Cat replied.

  “No, but I mean, he also doesn’t really seem to be the type. He didn’t care if he got the job or not, and honestly, I can’t see him taking a life. I bet you he’s a vegan.”

  Cat laughed. “That’s true. For the record I do agree with you, I was mostly just playing devil’s advocate. If he doesn’t care about the job, then there goes any reason he had to kill a guy he was apparently friends with.”

  “Exactly,” I sighed. “So now we’ve eliminated both teachers in contention for that job. Professor Gilmore probably apologizes to plants he steps on accidentally, and Professor Little was in the city when the caterpillar was planted in Gordon’s room. Besides, the witness told Chase it was a male, so it couldn’t have been her.”

  “So now we’re back to the Black Magic cheating ring,” Cat nodded. “It wouldn’t surprise me that someone willing to circumvent the rules about cheating would also be willing to circumvent the law about not murderi
ng people.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “First thing tomorrow I’m going to call that number and try to get into the account. We’ll see what happens.”

  “Good plan,” Cat told me. She looked out at the darkening sky. “I think I’ll stay at your place tonight until we’ve put our plan into place.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Peaches’ stuff is still everywhere in the guest room, but you’re welcome to it, obviously.”

  “Peaches is the neat one of the two of us, that’ll be fine,” Cat replied with a smile. “We can start on the joining spell as soon as we get home, though.”

  Ten minutes later we were both sitting in the living room of my apartment above the bookstore. Both Aunt Francine’s ghost and Archibald had been nowhere to be found, although Muffin was meowing loudly at the door, complaining that his dinner hadn’t been promptly served at his convenience.

  “So, what was this spell you mentioned in the car?” I asked Cat.

  “I think this is the best way for us to communicate when we’re not together. I’ve heard about this spell, but to be honest, I’m not one hundred percent sure I can pull it off.”

  “Well that sounds ominous. What does it do?”

  “Basically, it should let us communicate with one another with our minds. So instead of having to text each other, we can just pass a thought to the other person telepathically. So if the Others come after one of us, that person can mentally tell the other, who can then come and we can both cast spells against them, and hopefully that will scare them off for a while.”

  “And maybe we’ll even be able to figure out who or what they are,” I nodded. “That sounds good. It sounds complex though.”

  “It is, it’s advanced magic. To be honest, I think you might be better at casting it than me.”

  “No way,” I shook my head.

  “I think so,” Cat said. “After all, you’re naturally a much more gifted witch than either Peaches or I. That much was obvious the first day we did those spells with Grandma Cee.”