The Scariest Tail (A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 4) (14 page)

A
bout a week had passed
since the incident at the house.

The first few days had been very rough. I had stopped by the house on Butternut about six or seven times a day. Each time, I found a weak spot where those things were working to push their way through back into the outside world. I wore the amulet my mother had worn, to which my aunt had added a little extra power, and I also brought Treacle.

“I hate to punish you for what I did, Tre. But without doing anything, you keep these things scared and away while I fix any breaches.”

“Do you really think hanging out on this beautiful bit of property is punishment?”
Treacle asked.
“Are you kidding? In addition to the scratching and gnawing of those things you’re keeping in there, I can hear the mice in the woods. Want to come with me and find a few?”

“Yeah, sure. Just let me finish checking the place and… oh, those rotten things!”
I looked up and saw they had either chewed or scratched through a piece of the protection spell that was up at the roof.
“I can’t get a break. Do you think there’s a ladder around somewhere?”

“No. But I’ll bet you could climb that trellis
.”

The old, worn slats of the wooden trellis had dried snakes of ivy grown up and down on it, but it looked as though it were my only option.

Muttering to myself, I carefully climbed up the side of the building as Treacle jumped and stepped easily from ledge to ledge, light as a feather and as graceful as, well, as a cat.

I made it to the part that was damaged. Taking my amulet and a few special herbs Bea had given me, I whispered a quick reconstruction spell that sealed the opening and smoothed out the ridges. A few more steps up, and I was on part of the roof. I sat up there, letting my feet dangle over the edge.

“It’s pretty up here,”
I said.

“Yes, but the mice are down there.”

“You can go ahead, Treacle. I’m okay to just sit for a while.”

Without a look back, my feline jumped from the roof to a ledge then to a nearby branch, where he padded his way down in a zigzag fashion from branch to lower branch until he reached the ground.

It didn’t take him long to head off into the woods, gingerly stepping over crunchy fallen leaves and barely making a sound.

Meanwhile, I looked around the area and noted the difference in the air. Whatever was inside the house had grown tired of fighting and was resting at the moment. Those black-eyed children were probably the ones trying to break through the spell since the damage looked a lot like what had been done at our houses. I thought if a giant octopus had been rolling down the streets, we would have heard about it by now.

My body ached, but I felt comfortable, up away from everything. It was better to be alone at the moment so I could get my head on straight and figure out my next step in whatever it was I was going to do.

I looked around while I was on the roof to see if I had missed anything. The repairs required a few different spells, and they had to be stronger and stronger each time. Exerting that kind of energy over and over for a couple of days had made me feel as though I were coming down with the flu. My body ached, my head wouldn’t focus, and every bone screamed just to lie down for a month or two and rest.

But I knew it was my penance.

Aunt Astrid had said, “I’m sorry, Cath. I know you meant well, but what would have happened if we hadn't reached you in time? We had no idea if any of those quick-fix spells would work. Lucky for you, they did.”

“What was I supposed to do? If I hadn’t gotten there, Blake would have been hanging from the rafters by his neck. He had a rope and was crying. Aunt Astrid, I stood by while my mom got pulled under my bed. I didn’t even reach out for her. I was too scared to do anything.” I sniffed back the tears.

“Those festering talons reached out and latched onto her, digging their nails into her skin, pulling her while she screamed for help, all the while leaving a trail of blood along the floor. When all was said and done, that little bit of blood was all that was left of her because I was too scared to reach out a hand.”

“Cath, you were only eleven years old. You couldn’t help if you had wanted to.”

“And then I saw the cats hanging and… never mind.”

“What, honey?” My aunt took my hands in hers.

“You were tending to Bea. She had almost killed herself, thinking she saw Jake in that hole, and when we made our way out of that terrible place, I saw…”

“You saw what?”

“I saw all the cats. They had been tortured and killed, hanging by their necks from the trees. And a man. It was him. Had I let Blake do it, someone or something would have gotten to the cats too, right? That’s what that means.”

My aunt shook her head, looking at me with sad eyes. “Cath, why didn’t you tell me what you saw?”

“You were busy with Bea.”

“No.” She seemed even more mad about this than she did that I’d ruined the ritual. “Do you think I see you as separate from her? That I would choose her well-being over yours because she is my daughter?”

I was ashamed of myself for feeling jealous of my cousin and best friend. I didn’t say it out loud, but I had a feeling the tears in my eyes said it all.

“Cath, you and Bea are so different from each other. But I see you both as my girls. The loves of my life. Don’t you know that?”

I nodded and shrugged. “She was so bad off in that place, though. I didn’t want to act like I couldn’t handle what had happened.”

“And that is one of the beautiful things that sets you two apart.” Taking both my hands in hers, she looked off behind me as she often did when she spoke, looking into the other dimensions and places in time.

“When Bea was a baby, she was so small. No smaller than a normal baby, but she was just always rolled up into a little butterball. And then you came along. Don’t get me wrong. You were a butterball too. In fact, I think it has only been just recently that you’ve slowed down your eating habits since then. But you reached those pudgy hands out to everything. It didn’t matter what it was. You were willing to risk a burn or two on the stove just to find out what someone else’s definition of hot was.”

I looked down in embarrassment. Baby stories were nice for other people, but I found them awkward.

“You don’t like to hear about these things,” my aunt said.

I shrugged.

“Too bad. You’ve been this way since you were born. Different. Independent. Let’s face it. You’re tough. But Cath, don’t ever think you are so tough that you don’t need your family. It may be twenty years before you have to call on us again. But we may need to call on you before then. It’s your strength we needed for that ritual. I can’t say what you did was wrong, running out there to help a man you care for. But it was reckless, and now you need to fix it.”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll make it right.”

“I know you will. And when your bones ache and your head throbs, just remember it’s the price of caring for someone. I should know.”

Bea was a lot more sympathetic. “You know, I would have done the same thing if it were Jake. Not a second thought to anyone or anything else. I'd be getting the same punishment as you, but don’t think for a second I don’t understand.”

“I just couldn’t leave him, knowing what those things do to a person,” I said, almost ashamed. “If only he knew.”

“He does.” Bea rubbed my hands as we sat in her kitchen before walking to work together. “But you and I have grown up with that other world constantly knocking on our windows and doors. He’s grown up thinking it was all make-believe. You can’t expect him to just say, ‘Okay. Witches and monsters and little devil children on a regular basis? Sign me up.’”

I tried to laugh, but it hurt to get it out. “He didn’t even try to talk to me. He sped out of there as if he owed me money or something.”

“Just give it some time, Cath. You know how the universe has a way of bringing everything around the way it should be. Blake is an inquisitive man. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to start asking questions. When he does, Jake won’t be able to answer them. And I just won’t. He’ll have to come to you. He’ll
want
to.”

I
saw
Treacle appear again from the woods. He had a pep in his step, and his head was hanging low. Squinting, I could see why. At the edge of the wooded area, he stopped and sat with a dead mouse in his mouth. Dropping it in front of him, he gave a loud and proud meow.

“For me?”
I asked him from the roof.

“I thought you could use a surprise,”
he said, licking his paw and looking up at me proudly.

Carefully, I climbed down off the roof the way I had come. The house was in good shape, and I wouldn’t have much more of this before my aunt, Bea, and I put the final nail in the coffin. Getting the ritual done would lock those things up for good.

I walked over to Treacle slowly.
“Wow, buddy. That is a big one,”
I praised, picking it up by its tail.

“You’ll eat it for lunch tomorrow?”
he asked happily.

“Of course. Don’t I always
?”

Just because we could speak to each other didn’t mean that Treacle stopped being a cat or stopped doing cat things. This dead mouse was the most precious gift because Treacle had gotten it especially for me.

Just like every parent worth their salt loved the crooked scribble-scrabble artwork their kids gave them over the years as if they had just replicated the Sistine Chapel, I loved Treacle’s gifts too.

And just like parents who told their children about Santa Claus, I would continue to “eat these mice for lunch” when Treacle wasn’t around because it made him happy, and I loved him.

I picked the dead thing up by the tail, holding back the shivers that rippled over my body every time I did this, and we made our way back to our car.

“If it were warmer out, I would have found you a snake.”

“A snake? I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those.”

“They aren’t the greatest, but sometimes you just want something crunchy.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, pal.”

A
few days
had passed since the whole Butternut incident, as it had become known. Things in the town went on as normal.

Halloween was on a deliciously cloudy day that gave the whole town the appearance of an old Bela Lugosi film.

The children were all dressed up as the latest cartoon princess or superhero. And there were always those rebels we loved who made their own costumes. We had a cyborg cowboy, a bag of jelly beans, two pirates, and an old-fashioned ghoul minus all the blood and splatter so many of the kids liked these days.

When they stopped in the café, the kids were treated to hot apple cider and of course a big handful of what seemed like a bottomless pit of candy.

Truth be told, it sort of was bottomless since Aunt Astrid and Marshmallow had whispered a copying spell over the first three bags that were poured into our plastic jack-o-lantern bowl. Like the brooms and buckets of water in that Mickey Mouse movie, it just kept filling itself with every handful that was scooped out.

Later that night, the adults came out, asking for bottle caps or burned-out light bulbs for their grown-up scavenger hunts while yelling trick-or-treat as they entered and exited the café.

Bea was dressed in a fifties-style dress with pumps and a plastic hatchet in her head. “I’m June Cleaver,” she would say, smiling like an angel while pointing to the cleaver in her head.

Jake came in wearing a cardigan sweater over a button-down white shirt and tan trousers with the same instrument in his head.

“Let me guess,” I said, shaking my head. “Ward Cleaver.”

“You’re so perceptive, Cath,” he teased. “What’s the matter? Not in the holiday spirit?”

“What are you talking about? I’m wearing my costume.” I was wearing an old pair of faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the word “Boo” written across the front.

“Well, you’re wearing your mask, at least.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of saying that one, Jake?”

“Am I that predictable?”

I nodded, barely cracking a smile. Since Jake was like my brother-in-law, I took his ribbing and kind of enjoyed it. But that night, I just wasn’t in the mood.

He slipped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him. “I don’t like this, Cath. You haven’t been the same since that whole incident at the house. Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I lied. “Sometimes that stuff just takes a lot out of a person. I’ll be right as rain in the next couple of days. I promise.”

“Well, you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Sometimes a big brother can be helpful too, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.” I swallowed hard as I felt Jake’s eyes still studying me as if I were a suspect in a crime.

I looked at a group of little kids that came carefully through the door. Of course, June Cleaver was happy to greet them with her big bowl of candy and gaping head wound. The funny thing was all the kids would leave with smiles and waves after they saw how much candy the crazy lady with the cleaver in her head was giving out.

“What do you hear from Blake? How’s he doing?” I don’t know where those words came from. They spilled out of my mouth as if I had no teeth and had tried to drink water.

“He’s coming around. We’ve had some talks, but until he really asks the hard questions, I can’t push him. He’s got to come around on his own.”

Jake said that Blake had called in sick for the past couple of days. He had gone to talk to him, and I guess things were okay between the two of them. Men were weird that way. They could overlook and even accept the most blatant faults in each other. But Jake did say Blake wouldn't be coming by the house for a while.

By that time, my aunt, who was dressed like a gypsy, had come to join the conversation. “Is he quitting, Jake?” she asked, pouring Jake a to-go cup of coffee. I pretended not to have an interest in their conversation.

“I don’t think so. He’s a great detective, but openings are hard to come by. And he’d also have to start all over again if he decided to leave. Besides, he’s not the kind of guy to leave a job unfinished.” Jake tipped the cup to my aunt and kissed Bea good-bye.

“See you later, Cath. You coming for dinner tonight?”

“Later, Jake. Um, maybe.” I couldn't even eat. I was barely able to finish my second hamburger from Wendy's that I had gotten for breakfast that morning. I quickly turned away from my aunt and cousin as I wiped down the tables.

“Cath, are you okay?” my aunt asked.

I turned to look at her and felt the sting of tears in my eyes. I tried to bite my tongue like I used to in school so I wouldn't cry. But it wasn't working this time. Nodding, I let my hair fall in front of my face, hoping they wouldn't see I was upset.

“Yeah, I'm fine.” It wasn't hard for me to feel their eyes on me. So I slowly turned around, looking everywhere but at their faces and shrugged.

“Give him time, Cath,” Bea said, coming around the counter to hug me. I knew what she was doing. Her empathic abilities allowed her to ease the pain of a broken heart, but I took her hands and held her at bay.

“Keep your strength,” I said, smiling. “I’m not that bad off.”

“You are more important to him than you know,” Bea said. “But a giant octopus coming out of the floor is enough to make even the most solid relationship feel wobbly.”

Just then, my aunt let out a gasp. She was looking at something in front of the store on the sidewalk.

Both Bea and I turned to see Darla, walking and smiling in an expensive fall outfit that made her look as pretty as the trees in their fall hues.

With her was a very dapper-looking Blake Samberg, who was grinning as he looked down, watching his feet take step after step, holding Darla’s arm that was linked like a hook around his elbow.

I swallowed hard, then I took a deep breath and let it out.

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