The Scariest Tail (A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 4) (2 page)

“That is a little weird,”
I said.
“But Mrs. Greene is a little weird, so I don’t know if that is a good example.”

“True.”

“It might just be the season.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it.”
Treacle didn’t sound convinced.

I fell asleep with the television on and woke up an hour later to some infomercial about a new way to chop onions. Grabbing the remote, I flipped off the set. Treacle was still in bed next to me, and when I stirred, his purring started as if a switch had been flipped somewhere on his body.

I reached down and scratched his ears.
“Good night, Treacle.”

“Good night, Cath.”

We both slept soundly and didn’t wake up until the sun was on the horizon. After I got up, I let Treacle outside, and off he went in the direction of heaven only knew what. I got dressed in my denim finery and a soft, warm sweater and headed toward the center of town where the Brew-Ha-Ha Café was located.

It only took me about fifteen minutes to get there at a casual stroll. And my odometer was always set to casual stroll. But as I walked, I felt something different in the air, as though nothing was moving but me. There was no breeze. No cars were going down the street, and none of my neighbors were out and about performing their own morning rituals of opening garage doors or picking up newspapers.

I tried to remember if I had
ever
seen that little activity at that time of day. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was definitely
something
in the air that made me feel as though something was wrong.

I knew that sounded like nonsense.

But just wait. It gets better.

T
hat day was
the first of October. The Brew-Ha-Ha Café was decorated for Halloween on the first of October every year it had been open. I expected to see Bea and Aunt Astrid already busy at work in the windows, hanging black streamers with elegant orange-and-yellow baubles on the ends, or arranging the spooky little glass town with its graveyard and haunted mansion.

Instead, I saw a dark café. Even Kevin, our baker, who was always on time if not early, was just pulling in as I unlocked the front door.

“Yikes!” he called to me, waving from his car window. “Don’t know what happened there. I overslept or something.”

“No worries.” I waved back. “Looks like you aren’t the only one. I’ll get the back door for you.” I smiled at him as I stepped inside the front door. Making my way through the café, I hurried to the kitchen, flipped on the two ovens to get them warmed up, and unlocked the back entrance for Kevin.

He was a pleasant guy who really knew his way around a kitchen. Even if he showed up at noon and insisted on wearing a tiara and heels as he worked, it would be near impossible to meet someone who was as gifted in the baking department as he was.

I went back up to the front of the shop and began pulling out the Halloween decorations that were stored in the short hallway leading to our cellar, which we referred to as our secret bunker. There were seven boxes in total. As the coffee began to brew and the ovens began to give off a warm, wonderful smell of bread and pie, I started decorating and wondered where the rest of my family was.

Finally, at about ten minutes to seven, the time we opened, Bea came rushing in.

“My gosh!” she said. “I’m so sorry I’m late! Mom is right behind me!”

“Yeah, right? What the heck, girl?” I teased. “I think you were late once about ten years ago. This kind of insubordination just won’t be tolerated. You can bet it’s going in your permanent file.”

“No, not that!”

We both giggled.

“How’s Jake feeling?” I asked while filling the sugar bowls with packets of sugar and placing cute pumpkin and ghost figurines on the tables.

“I want to tell you, but I’m waiting for Mom. You guys are not going to believe what happened this morning.” She shook her head. “When Blake came by, I thought he and Jake would just head off to work together with Jake feeling more like himself. But I saw there was something wrong… Well, just wait for Mom. I don’t want to have to repeat the whole thing twice.”

I nodded and patted her on the back. “Sure.”

I looked at the door, hoping Aunt Astrid was just a few steps away so Bea could let me in on her big to-do. I’d never had much patience. But my aunt wasn’t in view yet, so I had no choice but to wait.

By the time Aunt Astrid showed up, the place was completely decorated. The morning crowd of coffee drinkers and tea sippers had already filled the dining area and formed a line that kept the front door propped open.

Of course we had a busier-than-normal morning. Any other morning, we would have had a steady stream of customers that would have died down around ten o’clock, when everyone was expected at their jobs. But not that day, not when Bea had some juicy bit of excitement to share. Nope. That was when the entire population of Wonder Falls plus a couple of neighboring cities decided they wanted coffee from the Brew-Ha-Ha. It was one o’clock in the afternoon before the place calmed down.

“And so, why were you late, young lady?” I asked my aunt with my hands on my hips, tapping my foot.

Aunt Astrid rolled her eyes. She explained that something, she didn’t know what, was urging her to reinforce the protection spell on all three of our houses.

“I don’t know if I had a dream or a vision in my sleep, but I woke up feeling like there was a slow leak in a tire on my car. Except I don’t have a car.” Bea and I looked at each other. “So, I stepped outside myself for just a moment and…”

“Mom! You know you aren’t supposed to do any astral projection without someone there with you to guide you back if you get lost. Isn’t that what you’ve told Cath and I since we were kids?”

Bea was not joking. If Aunt Astrid projected her consciousness to a dimension or realm outside her physical body, it could have left room for any transient spirit to declare squatter’s rights inside of her. There were certain steps to take that ensured that didn’t happen, and probably the most important was to never do it alone.

“I know. I should practice what I preach. But as you can see, I made it back just fine. And in the few seconds I was out, I saw what looked like a little spiritual wear and tear on the protection spells around our homes.”

Bea folded her arms over her chest and pursed her lips together, letting her mother know she was more than a little disappointed in her reckless behavior.

Aunt Astrid reached out her hand and tenderly rubbed her daughter’s arm. “But as I inspected the damage a bit closer, it no longer looked like old-fashioned wear and tear. It looked like something had been trying to chew its way in.”

“What?” I asked, loud enough that all the patrons in the café looked up at me. “Sorry, folks.” I made a motion that mimicked I was zipping and locking my mouth closed.

“A parasite?” Bea asked.

Aunt Astrid nodded. “A real nasty one too.”

Bea stood at her usual spot behind the counter, close to the register. I was standing in front of the counter, and my aunt was to my left.

“I think you guys better sit down,” Bea said, looking out the glass door to the street. “I have to tell you what Blake told Jake and I this morning over breakfast. I’m afraid we might have more to worry about than that.”

My aunt and I looked at each other then quickly took seats at the counter. We all looked around to see if any patrons needed our immediate assistance and decided whatever refill or warm-up they required could wait.

“When Blake left our house yesterday, he said he was going to go and check up on Mrs. Roy and see if she was able to answer some questions.”

According to Bea, Blake had said he’d begun to feel a weird sense of being watched as he maneuvered his way through the fancy Prestwick neighborhood. But since he’d been in a moving vehicle and dealt with the facts and nothing but the facts, he’d shaken it off. He was not like Jake, who had accepted some exposure to the paranormal world just by being married to Bea. But even Jake was on a strictly need-to-know basis. Blake would never consider that something insidious could be lurking around the next dimensional corner, ready to pounce.

Blake said he kept getting turned around in the dark, trying to follow the winding roads yet ending up back at the same place, feeling as though he had jogged right when he’d meant to jog left, unsure of how he’d managed to drive around in a circle.

Finally, at a speed of about five miles an hour, he had made it to the Roy household. Mrs. Roy had been on the phone when he rang her doorbell. She’d smiled weakly but looked sad, and it was obvious to Blake that she had recently composed herself.

At hearing that, I felt a pang in my own heart for Mrs. Roy. I didn’t know her, but I understood her. It was bad enough having lost a loved one to old age when the family was aware the end was coming. Even if a loved one passed from a disease, the family had a little time, even if it was short, to try and adjust. But having someone ripped away from you… that had to be the worst feeling—helplessness. I swallowed hard and tried to focus on what Bea was saying.

After Mrs. Roy let Blake in, she cried some more into the phone as she talked to her mother. She wore a T-shirt and sweatpants, and had no makeup on. Her eyes were puffy, and the house smelled strongly of coffee.

After a few minutes, she hung up the phone and offered Blake a seat in her kitchen. True to his nature, he told Mrs. Roy he was sorry to bother her but needed a few questions answered, then he would leave her to tend to her business.

Lisa Roy outlined the day as if it were nothing special. John had been fine until she’d left for the store in the early evening.

“I had forgotten eggs, or milk, or butter, or something.” She paused for a second, trying to remember why she had gone to the store, then shook her head. “I can’t remember.”

Blake gently urged her to continue.

“So, when I got home and stepped into the house, John came flying from the kitchen, dashing toward the front door as if he were going to run outside. But when he saw me there, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me.”

Blake said Lisa had looked directly into his eyes as she’d spoken. There was no shiftiness or agitation in her facial expression or voice. He was convinced she was telling him the truth.

“When I looked at him,” she continued, “I saw a man who was terrified out of his mind. John was all pale. His eyes were wide, and he was sweating terribly.”

Lisa told Blake that John had kept repeating, “They said they needed to use the phone.” He’d said it over and over as he searched the house.

“Who?” Lisa asked while she took off her jacket and hung her purse on the peg across from the door. “Who needed to use the phone?”

“The two kids,” John said. “The two kids I let in the house. They just said they needed to use the phone.”

Lisa suddenly became very afraid. For some crazy reason, John had let two people in the house to use the phone. He was a trial attorney who did work with the public defender’s office. He was no stranger to the seedier elements of life, and he knew better than to let strangers into the house.

Blake asked her if she had seen the people John had let in and if she could give him a description, but she shook her head. Lisa insisted she never saw the people or kids John had claimed he let in the house. She said John had taken both of her hands in his, and she had felt them trembling.

“Their eyes. Their eyes were completely black,” John had said.

Both Aunt Astrid and I sat back when we heard that, as if we had both been given a jolt of electricity.

“Contact lenses.” Lisa had insisted as she tried to calm her husband down. She looked at Blake, shaking her head and repeating how she knew it all sounded crazy and that it probably didn’t even mean anything. If there were any people in the house and they did have black eyes, Lisa was convinced they were teenagers or young adults getting into the Halloween spirit or rebelling against their parents and society at large by being creepy.

Blake asked her where John had said the kids went, but Lisa gave him a very strange answer. She said John didn’t know. According to John, they’d shown up at the door. He’d let them in. They scared the hell out of him, and just as he was about to run out of the house, Lisa had come home and the kids were gone. Vanished.

Of course, Blake asked if she had searched the house, and she said she had. She grabbed a carving knife from the cutlery block in the kitchen, and with her husband, John, begging her to just leave with him, she searched every room. They went down into the basement and checked every corner, even places they both knew no human could fit. They even checked the attic that could only be accessed by a ladder that pulled down from the ceiling and made enough noise to wake the dead in the cemetery ten miles away.

Lisa continued, saying John had insisted there were two pale-faced children who came to the door and asked to use the phone. He said he had let them in even though something inside him had screamed at him to slam the door shut. And after the kids were in the house and the door was shut behind them, they had looked at John with black, bottomless eyes.

“Oh dear,” Aunt Astrid said. “That is very weird.”

Bea nodded and covered her heart with her left hand. She felt a great deal of sadness and confusion about the situation, but not just from Jake. A good deal of Lisa’s emotional trauma had rubbed off on Blake. When he’d come over to Bea’s house that morning, he had a negative residue on him and didn’t even know it.

“But it gets worse,” Bea said.

Lisa had gone on to say that John had been acting strangely the whole night. Even after they’d checked the whole house, he couldn’t seem to wind down. He’d paced as if he were a caged tiger and kept mumbling to himself, acting like someone who was in a huge hurry to leave but couldn’t find his keys. In bed, he’d tossed and turned the entire night, insisting all the lights in the lower part of the house stayed on just in case they had to get down the stairs quickly. More than once when his eyelids had gotten too heavy to fight, he’d dozed for a couple minutes then sat bolt upright, looking around frantically and whimpering as though he were a child who had woken up to find his nightlight had gone out.

Finally, after neither of them had slept much, the sun began to lighten the sky. John got out of bed and began walking the floors. Lisa couldn’t sleep with him in that kind of state, so she got up and made coffee. She suggested they both take a personal day and told John to relax and take a hot shower. She told him to stay in his pajamas and forget what had happened the night before.

“He wouldn’t relax,” Lisa said. She insisted he had tried, but he kept looking over his shoulder as if someone were sneaking up on him. He kept dropping things, bumping into things, and tripping over his own feet. It was as though his whole equilibrium had been thrown off.

At three o’clock in the morning, he had gone upstairs without saying a word to Lisa. The next thing she knew, she heard a huge crash and ran upstairs to find that the window to the master bedroom had been broken out. There was blood on the broken shards of glass that were still in the window frame.

It hadn’t crossed her mind that John had jumped out. She just wondered what the heck had happened to the window? Who had thrown something through the window? Why was there blood? But as she called for John, she realized the house had become eerily quiet.

Hearing that sent a shiver up my spine as I recalled how quiet it had been that morning on my way to the café.

Stepping to the edge of the window, Lisa had peered out and seen John’s body lying face down with shards of glass and broken pieces of wood from the frame all around him.

She ran downstairs, tore open the front door, pulled her cell phone from her pocket, and dialed 9-1-1.