by Brian Harmon
The cat was an endless mystery. He refused to stay locked up in the house. He’d sit in front of the door and cry at the top of his lungs until someone let him out. He’d insist on going out in the morning and typically turned up before bedtime that night, scratching at the door, ready for his dinner and the cozy cat bed Karen bought him. No one had any idea where it was he disappeared to each day or how he was spending his time. And he didn’t always come home at night. Sometimes he’d stay gone for three or four days at a stretch. Like now, for instance. This was the first they’d seen of him in three days.
Isabelle insisted there was something odd about the cat. Not bad, she assured them, just odd. She couldn’t say exactly what it was, but she was convinced that he was special. And if that business with the triangle in Upper Michigan was any indication, Eric was sure she was right about that.
I REALLY DON’T THINK ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED AT HEDGE LAKE WAS A COINCIDENCE, texted Isabelle, responding to his train of thought. AND I DON’T THINK IT’S A COINCIDENCE THAT HE TURNED UP THERE TODAY
Eric didn’t think so, either.
SOMETHING’S UP WITH THAT PLACE
YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL
“What’s she saying?” whispered Karen.
“She says something’s not right.”
“Spooky doesn’t seem concerned.” And he didn’t. He was purring in her arms. His eyes were half-closed.
Eric watched him yawn. A few weeks ago, he watched Spooky stop to preen himself while a pack of monsters tore a man apart only a short distance away. “A lot of things don’t concern that cat.”
He glanced around at the kitchen again. He was ready to move on. The longer he remained, the more convinced he was that Hector’s next letter wasn’t here. But when he stepped out of the kitchen and back into the social hall, he froze. Someone was standing in the gloomy hallway just outside the door on the far side of the room.
He ducked back into the kitchen before the mysterious person could spot him, pushing Karen deeper into the shadows and motioning for her to keep quiet.
She backed away, her eyes wide, her lips pressed closed, still clutching Spooky against her breasts.
The cat still looked bored.
When he looked out again, the person was moving to the left, farther into the building. He couldn’t see who it was. The hallway was too dark. But something about that shadowy silhouette was unsettling, something about the way it moved, he thought.
Or maybe it was just his nerves. His heart was racing. That sick feeling in his gut had grown into something closer to a cramp. Someone was inside the building with them, someone who’d probably heard Karen’s scream a moment ago. They could be calling the police right now.
They had to get out of here.
“Out the door,” he whispered, gesturing at the exit behind them.
“What is it?”
“We’re not alone. We have to go.”
The exit was right there. They were only a few steps from safety. And it wasn’t even locked. He’d already tried it. But as was typical of these kinds of situations, it wasn’t going to be that simple.
Spooky suddenly twisted around and jumped out of Karen’s arms before she could grab him. He even sank his sharp claws into her, wrenching a painful, “Ouch!” from her in spite of her best efforts to remain quiet.
As soon as his paws hit the floor, he darted from the kitchen and across the social hall, as if running after the mysterious, shadowy figure.
Karen took off after him, practically knocking Eric over in the process.
“What are you doing?” he blurted. The words were a little too loud to be a whisper and left his lips in a sort of harsh hiss. He hurried after her, cursing under his breath.
Spooky crossed the social hall in a matter of seconds and disappeared down the hallway.
Karen slowed down when he left her sight and crept the last few feet to the door, where Eric caught up with her. Together, they peered out into the hallway.
Spooky stood looking down the main corridor, toward the lobby. A retreating shadow on the floor revealed that the mystery figure was moving in that direction, away from them.
There was no one else in sight.
“What were you thinking?” he whispered.
“We can’t just leave him!” she whispered back.
Eric wanted to tell her that they could, in fact, leave the silly hairball. No one told him to jump down and run after the scary shadow man. That was his decision. He’d be fine. But he knew her well enough to already be certain that she wasn’t going to let this go.
“Get him!”
He grumbled under his breath and set off down the corridor after the damn cat.
This was stupid. He found Spooky wandering around in a haunted forest surrounding a monster-infested lake. He’d single-handedly attacked a psychotic killer, literally saving Eric’s life and quite possibly the world. The cat was obviously much more of a badass than he was.
He crept forward as he approached the adjoining hallway and peered down it. The dark shape was there, its back to him, making its way slowly down the hall.
The light was a little brighter down there. He still couldn’t make it out clearly, but something was definitely not right about that figure. It looked like a man, but he was now quite sure it wasn’t human. It didn’t precisely walk. Instead, it sort of shuffled. Its proportions were a little wrong, too. Its arms and legs were a little too long, its torso a little too short, its hands and feet a little too big. And it didn’t appear to be wearing any clothes.
Only a few steps in front of Eric, Spooky stood as still as a statue, his yellow eyes fixed on the retreating creature. His hackles were raised.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
Somehow, he managed not to scream, but he gasped a little too loudly before he realized that it was only Karen.
The thing in the hallway stopped. It turned its head to one side, as if listening. If it turned around, it would see them. There was nowhere to hide. They were in plain sight.
Eric stood motionless, holding his breath, his heart pounding.
Karen stood behind him, one hand pressed to her mouth, her wide eyes fixed on the not-quite-human figure in the hallway.
Seconds passed like minutes.
Then the thing continued forward without looking back and Eric somehow managed to release his held breath silently and without letting any foul language escape his lips.
“What. The hell. Is that?” whispered Karen as the thing hobbled on its way. Her face looked pale, as if the blood had drained from her cheeks at the sight of the thing.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Probably something terrifying. Why are you sneaking up on me like that?”
“I wasn’t sneaking. Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“I’ve seen a lot of things like that. But not that. Jesus… You scared the crap out of me.”
“Sorry. Grab Spooky so we can get out of here.”
But Spooky suddenly lost interest in the creature and took off down the hallway straight ahead.
Eric and Karen hurried after him.
There were only a few doors to choose from here. Most of the rooms were illuminated from within by windows, but one was utterly dark. The last one on the left. And it was into this one, of course, that Spooky darted. He didn’t even consider the other choices.
They stopped at the door and shined their cell phone lights into the gloom. This had to be some sort of utility or machine room. There was an electric panel on one wall. There were exposed pipes in the ceiling.
It only made sense, Eric supposed. He never entered the ominous, abandoned building and made his way to a lovely, well-lit sitting room. That, he supposed, would probably defeat the purpose of it being an ominous, abandoned building.
He wondered again why they were bothering. The cat would be fine. It was a cat.
But Karen was already easing through the doorway, determined to rescue the poor, hapless creature.
This was stupid.
“Me first,” he insisted, tugging gently at her arm. Anywhere else, and she might’ve elbowed him for that. She didn’t tolerate him treating her like a helpless girl. She was fully capable of taking care of herself. But this time she let him go ahead of her without protest. In fact, he suspected it was her intention all along to goad him into going first. She knew him as well as he knew her, after all. And she knew that he’d never let her lead the way into a potentially dangerous situation. Just like he knew she wasn’t going to leave without Spooky.
Stupid…
The light switch didn’t work, of course. He checked the electric panel. As he suspected, the main breaker was switched off. He switched it back on and the overhead florescent lights flickered to life.
That didn’t usually happen. A dark and scary room in a dark and scary building usually stayed dark and scary. It was a welcome change of pace for him.
But he suddenly wondered how many other lights might’ve just come on all over the building. Had he just given away their location?
It was too late to worry about it now.
A short set of steps led down in front of them. At the foot of these steps, on the right, was an open doorway.
There was no sign of Spooky.
“You stay here,” he whispered.
“Fuck that!” Karen seized his arm again and held tight.
She didn’t swear often. She said it was uncivilized and childish. And it made those words useless. She said that people who loaded every sentence with curses were cheating themselves of their true power. And she was right. People didn’t realize how potent a well-placed F-bomb was until it flew from the lips of someone you never heard utter it before. And when Karen felt the need to swear, people had a tendency to sit up and take notice. This time, Eric clearly noticed the sharp tinge of panic in her voice.
“Fine,” he sighed.
It was a little harder to go down steps with someone clinging to your left arm, but at least there weren’t many of them to worry about.
Around the corner, the room opened up. A very large and very outdated furnace occupied the middle of the floor. A mass of ductwork spread out from the top of it, crowding the ceiling in a tangle of pipes that made it look like a huge, blocky, mechanical gorgon. A very large, but considerably newer water heater stood by the wall to one side of the furnace. There were water lines, gas lines, electric conduit, meters and plumbing pipes virtually everywhere. To Eric, it looked like the equipment in this room could serve at least half a dozen buildings this size.
There was no sign of Spooky.
“Well this place is terrifying,” said Karen.
Eric didn’t disagree. He gestured to the back corner of the room. “There’s another door back there.”
“Awesome. I was worried this was as scary as it was going to get.”
“It always gets scarier.” Careful not to hit his head on the low-hanging ductwork, he made his way around the furnace to the darkened doorway. “Looks like more steps.”
“An even deeper level of hell. Perfect. What’re we waiting for?”
“That’s the spirit.” He found the light switch. Again, the overhead lights flickered on. These lights were dimmer than the last, but they were bright enough to light the way forward. In a horror movie, the lights wouldn’t work. But in the real world, or at least the weird version of it he’d come to know, the horrors didn’t need such theatrics. Some of the worst scares he’d ever had were in broad daylight. Just because the lights weren’t conveniently out didn’t mean there wasn’t something terrifying waiting for them at the bottom of these stairs.
“I remember when you used to take me on romantic dates. Your standards are seriously slipping. Remember this when you get all surly ’cause I’m not in the mood later.”
“You invited yourself, remember? I told you to stay home where it’s safe.”
Another room awaited them below. It appeared to be a storage room of some sort. Directly ahead of them was a tall, free-standing shelving unit, not unlike the long bookshelves in libraries. The walls on either side were mounted with more shelves, creating two aisles that ran the length of the room.
The shelves were mostly empty. A handful of boxes were scattered throughout the room. A few five-gallon buckets. Abandoned junk, perhaps. Or maybe simply stuff that had no practical use outside of a rec center. He had no idea.
“Spooky?” whispered Karen.
“Please don’t call the cat before we’ve made sure there’re no monsters in the room.”
“If there was a monster in the room, why would Spooky have even come down here?”
“He’s Spooky. It’s not an ironic name. The cat’s freaking spooky. He might like monsters for all we know.”
But when he reached the bottom of the steps, he saw no monsters. Nor was there any sign of Spooky. The back wall was blank concrete. A small, sturdy-looking table occupied the only open space.
“Where’d he go?”
Eric had no answer for her. There was nowhere else to go but back the way they came. There weren’t even any windows. It was as if the cat had vanished into thin air.
To be certain, he walked the length of the room, circling the center shelves and peering under the table. He even checked the few boxes that sat on the shelves to make sure the cat hadn’t crawled inside one for some strange reason, but none of them were even open.
No Spooky.
Nowhere Spooky could’ve gone.
He must’ve evaded them in the last room. Maybe he was hiding behind the water heater or circled around the opposite side of the furnace. He could be at the far end of the building by now for all they knew.
But why did he even come in here?
Eric stopped and looked around again.
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, agreed Isabelle.
That certainly seemed to be true. Before today, his life had turned weird four times. Each of those four times, he’d stumbled blindly along, with no clue of what was going on, of what he was meant to do, of why he was even there. And yet each time he’d ended up precisely where he needed to be, precisely when he needed to be there. He was like a puppet, dangling from invisible strings, only pretending to do all that he did of his own free will.
He and Isabelle had shared a few long discussions over the subject. Neither of them could say for sure that it was fate or divine intervention, but they definitely agreed that there did seem to be some greater force at work.
So why was he here now? Why did Spooky lead them here of all places?
He aimed his cell phone light at the shelves again, at the walls behind the shelves, at the ceiling and the floor. The weird had a strange way of leading him to whatever he needed at any given time. And right now he needed the next piece of Hector’s story.
He circled the entire room again, but there was nothing that resembled the sort of place a twelve-year-old boy might have stashed a handwritten letter so that it wouldn’t be found for fifty-four years.
THAT WAS WEIRD
Eric stopped and stared at the screen. “What?”
FOR JUST A SECOND THERE, I FELT SOMETHING
“What kind of something?”
I’M NOT SURE. SOMETHING ODD
He raised an eyebrow. “Odd” wasn’t very helpful. Everything was “odd.” She was talking to him from the other side of the world, texting his phone from her very brain.
“What’s she saying?” asked Karen.
IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN. THERE WAS NOTHING. THEN THERE WAS SOMETHING. THEN THERE WAS NOTHING AGAIN
“What does it mean?”
“What does what mean?” said Karen. “I hate when you two do this! You know it drives me crazy!”
I DON’T KNOW. BUT WHATEVER IT WAS I FELT…
“Yes?”
IT WAS VAST
Vast? What the hell did that mean?
LIKE I SAID, I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT. BUT I THINK YOU NEED TO HURRY UP AND GET OUT OF THERE
He nodded. That sounded like
a very good idea. He turned and walked back to the stairs, where Karen was waiting. “Isabelle says we should go soon.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“We don’t know. My battery’s almost dead.”
“Probably because you’re walking around with the light on.”
“How do I turn it off?”
She took it out of his hand and showed him how to turn it off. “It’s not quantum mechanics.”
He took the phone back and tried to repeat what she did, but he couldn’t get the same menu to pop up. “Let’s go back upstairs.”
She nodded and gestured for him to lead the way.
On his way up the stairs, he fumbled with the phone. Swipe up from the bottom… Some kind of invisible, ninjas-only menu, apparently… After several tries, it finally worked. He turned the light on and then off again. He was never going to remember that.
He walked through the doorway at the top of the steps and was making his way around the oversized furnace when the mysterious creature from the hallway shuffled around the corner and into the room, blocking their way out.
Chapter Eight
Eric grabbed Karen’s arm and quickly ducked behind the furnace, out of sight of the creature. He pressed a finger to his lips, urging her to be quiet, but he could see by the frightened look in her eyes that she’d seen the creature too.
“Don’t move,” he mouthed.
She nodded. It was a quick, hard gesture. Down and up again. Her lips were pressed together so tightly they’d turned white. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look so freaked out.
But this was what they got for nosing around too long, he supposed. They knew the thing was roaming the hallways. It was only a matter of time before it wandered back this way. It was probably attracted by the lights they’d turned on.
Slowly, he stood up and peered out between the ductwork. It was walking toward them, but slowly, mindlessly. It moved like those old horror movie zombies, slow and stiff, which was an eerie thing to see even with the lights on. But nothing about it suggested that it knew they were here. If it’d seen them, he was sure it’d be moving more purposefully. Its feet barely left the floor. Its arms dangled at its sides, its shoulders were slumped, its head drooped, as if the miserable creature were depressed.
