by Amy Vansant
Figures.
Mariska’s sister, Carolina, stood at the front door looking flustered as Charlotte carried the last of the bags up the tall staircase that led to the front door. The house was built on stilts, with a smaller enclosed area beneath the main level.
“I almost called the cops when you pulled up,” said Carolina, scowling at the bus. “You looked like a lost rock band. I thought you’d come to kill us.”
“Why would a rock band want to kill you?” asked Charlotte.
Carolina rolled her eyes. “They’re all on the drugs. You never know.”
Charlotte smirked at Declan. “They’re all on the drugs,” she whispered.
Declan nodded. “They’re the worst kind.”
“Is that one of those Vipers?” asked Chuck, joining Carolina in the entryway. “I pictured them more sporty-like.”
Mariska hugged Carolina, who grimaced and grew stiff as a board as she submitted to her sister’s affections.
Mariska didn’t seem to notice. “Did you get here okay? Any trouble?”
Carolina’s permanent scowl found another gear. “Why would you stay in a place that you have to drive on the sand to get to? We practically had to buy a camel.” She pointed a finger in the direction of the Jeep they’d rented, her expression implying that it might be an alien life form.
Mariska clucked her tongue. “I told you, we didn’t rent this place. It’s free in exchange for a little handyman work. Isn’t it lovely here? Did you see horses?”
“We saw neighbors. That place over there is full of old people.” She bounced her head in the direction of the house next door.
“What do you mean?” asked Mariska, tilting to see around her sister.
“You know, where they put people when they get old.”
“You mean it’s a nursing home?”
Carolina shrugged. “Let’s just say no one over there is winning the hundred meter dash any time soon.”
Charlotte took a moment to study the neighbor’s house again. Beside the front door she spotted a carved and painted sign that said Elder Care-o-lina.
“It’s called the Elder Care-o-lina. That’s cute,” she said.
Carolina grunted.
Charlotte chuckled and took advantage of the lull in complaining to hug Chuck and Carolina. When she’d finished, she displayed a hand in Declan’s direction.
“Carolina, you remember Declan.”
Carolina nodded and turned her back to him. She took a step back, boxing Declan away as she leaned to whisper into Charlotte’s ear.
“Where’s he sleeping?” she asked.
Chapter Five
Declan threw his bag at the foot of the bed.
“I don’t know. Are you sure it’s okay if we share a room? Carolina didn’t seem very happy about the idea.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “We’re twenty-six years old. Not sixteen.”
“I know but—”
She took his hand. “It’s okay. I already talked to Mariska about it. There are five bedrooms and five couples—if you count Seamus as a couple.”
“I could sleep on a couch.”
“It’s okay, I swear. They know having everyone in this house is more of a hanky-panky deterrent than a welded chastity belt.”
“No kidding. But...wait. Did you just say hanky-panky? I think that is more of a deterrent than anything else.”
Charlotte chuckled. “Seriously, it’s—”
A scream rang out. They froze, staring at each other for a moment, before Charlotte bolted for the door with Declan on her heels.
“That was fast,” she said as they hit the stairs.
“What? You know what it is?”
“No, but I knew something had to happen.”
As they reached the main floor they paused, searching for the others. Seamus sat in a large La-Z-Boy chair watching soccer on television.
“What was that noise?” asked Declan.
Seamus shrugged. “House is infested with banshees. Removing them is on the to-do list.”
“Nice. You hear someone scream and you can’t even get up?”
“That was an oh no scream. Not an I’m dying scream. I know the difference.”
The glass door that led to the back porch slid open and a group reentered. Making a quick headcount, Charlotte found Mariska missing.
“Check up here. I’ll go downstairs,” she said, already jogging down the stairs that led to the lowest level.
“Mariska?”
Charlotte felt she was on the right track. The scream had sounded far away and Mariska-esque.
As Charlotte reached the last step, Mariska’s answer came in the form of an anguished moan.
The three dogs sat at the far side of the small, lower-level room, their faces glistening, tongues flicking. Their shiny muzzles said, I may have eaten something I shouldn’t have. But their expressions said, I don’t know what happened. This woman just went crazy. I’m sure it’s nothing we did.
Mariska stood staring at the dogs, her hands outstretched, aghast. At her feet lay the Thanksgiving turkey, packaging torn open, carcass mangled.
Charlotte’s gaze bounced back and forth between the mutilated turkey and the greasy-faced dogs.
Ah.
“What happened?” asked Charlotte, for no other reason than to break the silence. She didn’t need to be a detective to piece together this puzzle.
“I put the cooler on the table. On the table,” said Mariska. Her upturned palm gestured toward the cooler as if it were a freshly turned letter on Wheel of Fortune.
The cooler now lay on the ground. The table where it had allegedly once perched was too tall for Abby to have leapt on it. Turbo’s legs were as long as a human thumb and Izzy would need a forklift to get off the ground, so they were cleared as suspects.
Charlotte’s attention moved to the table’s untucked, matching chair.
Ah ha.
“Was that chair pulled out when you got here?” she asked.
Mariska glanced at it. “I guess. I haven’t touched anything.”
Puzzle solved. Abby was a food Houdini. She’d pushed out the chair, jumped on it, and then continued to the tabletop. Pushing the cooler off the table popped off the lid. Then she, Izzy and Turbo had an early Thanksgiving.
Abby had once used the same trick at home, though that time, Charlotte had caught her standing on the kitchen table, licking the last of a stick of butter.
“What are we going to do now?” moaned Mariska.
“We’ll get another turkey. We have two weeks before Thanksgiving.”
“It’s not summer. This place is a ghost town. They won’t have turkeys as nice as this. And the storm—”
Charlotte patted Mariska on the shoulder. “We’ll figure something out. Let me get this.” She knelt to tackle the mess.
Mariska sighed, heading for the stairs. “Fine. I’m too heartbroken. It would hurt my knees to kneel down there anyway. I’d probably never get back up.” She glared at the dogs, her scowl possibly capable of melting a path through the snow, all the way to the nearest turkey store.
The dogs licked their chops, oblivious to her disdain.
Charlotte found a box of trash bags and rolled the turkey into one as the dogs watched.
“You’re bad dogs. You’re lucky you didn’t get to the bones—you could have choked to death.”
She glanced at her slobbery audience, unable to discern if they were contrite or agitated at the loss of the turkey.
Her money was on the latter.
Charlotte found paper towels and did her best to wipe the dogs’ faces. By the time she finished Izzy and Turbo, Abby was already sliding her cheek along an old sofa, cleaning her jowls against the cushions.
“No! Bad!” Charlotte said, lunging to stop her.
Abby ran up the stairs and Turbo scooted behind her, slowing only long enough to tackle the stairs themselves. Her stubby legs made each stair an individual hurdle.
One, two, jump! One, two, jump
!
Izzy labored up last, looking as if she’d like to kill the person who invented stairs.
Charlotte hefted the trash bag over her shoulder like Turkey Santa, and followed in the footsteps of the dogs.
Declan waited for her at the top of the stairs.
“I heard,” he said.
She handed him the roll of paper towels. “Find my little witch and wipe her mouth, if you would. She’s trying to wipe it on the furniture.”
“Are they going to be all right?”
Charlotte sighed. “Mariska takes things like this hard at first but—”
“I meant Abby and the dogs.”
“Oh. Yes. They didn’t get to the bones, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they were sick at some point. That is, if Mariska lets them live that long.”
Charlotte hauled the turkey into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” asked Mariska.
“It’s still in pretty good shape. I didn’t know if you wanted to keep it—”
“We can’t cook a turkey the dogs have been chewing. Bob, take that from her. It’s over twenty pounds.”
Charlotte passed the trash-bag-wrapped bird to Bob as if it were a fat baby.
“We can’t keep that turkey carcass in here. It’ll stink to high heaven,” said Darla.
Mariska agreed. “Take it to the can.”
Bob scowled and pointed as Abby and Turbo came running into the room, Declan chasing behind them. Izzy had already planted herself for a nap.
“They’re the ones that did it. Why do I have to suffer?” asked Bob.
Charlotte held out her hands. “Give it back. I’ll take it out to the trash and take them with me. They can run around and get their barf out of the way.”
Bob passed the turkey to her. “If you insist.”
Charlotte spotted a large jacket and a pair of old boots near the back door. She set down the turkey long enough to slip into them and then walked onto the second story porch, holding open the door for the non-napping dogs. Abby streaked outside and ran down the stairs, Turbo behind her hopping one step at a time.
Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.
Charlotte remained on the porch a minute longer, resting the mangled turkey on the banister, her face turned to the rising wind. From her perch she could see the gray, churning sea. It reminded her of a ruined painter’s palette—as if a bright turquoise had encroached on a blob of black acrylic and ended up an achromatic splotch of blah. The sky was as gloomy as the deep. Only the frothy white breakers scrambling toward the shore gave the scene any punch.
Charlotte cocked her head, considering those incoming streaks of white. The water seemed closer than she remembered it being when they arrived.
She shrugged. It must be high tide.
Hefting the turkey once more, she headed down the porch stairs. A gust of frigid air flipped away the hood of her jacket and wormed its way into her ears. In the yard, the dogs sniffed and jogged from one spot to the next, unconcerned about her achy ears or the weight of the turkey they’d sampled.
Emboldened by Charlotte’s presence, Abby mounted the dunes, streaking toward the beach.
“Stay close!” she screamed at the retreating nub of beige tail.
Abby looped and returned, as happy to be running one direction as the other, as long as it meant running through the sprinkling snow. A thin sheet of the icy fluff had collected on the sand.
Charlotte shivered.
This temperature shouldn’t even be possible.
Snow was pretty, for a novelty, but months of cold wouldn’t be something that held any interest for her. The Florida weather had thinned her blood.
Hugging the building beneath the second story porch, Charlotte clomped along in her oversized boots. Finding no trashcans, she stood, bag in one hand, her other fist balled against her hip.
Where do North Carolina people keep their trashcans?
She heard an angry coughing noise and looked up to see a squirrel balanced on a wire that led to the house. It barked at the dogs and then scampered to the roof. Abby ignored it, jumping in the air to catch flakes while Turbo ripped back and forth through the collecting snow. The light dusting was like a blizzard for the stubby-legged pee wee.
At the end of the yard, past the temporarily insane terrier and rapidly disappearing mini dach, Charlotte spotted a trashcan laying on its side where it had rolled against a wooden-picket dune fence.
There it is.
Tromping to the can, she righted it. It felt heavier than she’d expected. Lifting the lid, she saw a trash bag nestled at the bottom.
The renters before them must have put their final bag inside before leaving.
Leaning in, she gave the loosely-tied top of the half-filled bag a yank, thinking it would be nice to slip the turkey inside of it. It would be added protection toward keeping the smell of the rotting meat from attracting animals.
Old habits born of a much warmer climate.
She tugged, but the bag stuck fast.
What is this? Some kind of joke trash that can’t be moved?
She jerked the bag again only to have the top rip away.
Whoops.
She stood staring at the chunk of plastic in her hand, puzzling at the previous tenant’s obstinate trash. She spotted something at the bottom of the bin glistening in the dim sunlight, and her Florida-brain made a tremendous leap outside its comfort zone.
Ice.
That’s what held the bag in place.
She reasoned that water in the trashcan had frozen to the bag, pinning it to the floor of the bin. Maybe the garbage collectors had tried to take it and failed. Her conclusion that the previous renters were lazy, no-good, non-trash-putter-outers might have been premature.
There’d be no moving the bag now, not with the top torn off and no warmth in sight. She dropped the ripped plastic back into the can and was about to drop the turkey on top, when something in the torn bag caught her eye.
Funny. That looks just like a—
Leaning closer to inspect, the object appeared even more like—
No.
She struggled in her borrowed, oversized coat to find her phone. When she did, she turned on the built-in flashlight and shone it into the can.
Yep.
That’s a human finger.
Chapter Six
“It can’t be real,” said Carolina, squinting at the finger that sat on a plate in the center of the large kitchen table.
Charlotte had fished a piece of paper from the trash, using it to grab the finger and tote it inside. Abby had followed after her, jumping to sniff the digit, probably hoping to get a taste.
Ghoul dog.
After studying her discovery, Declan and Seamus went outside to sift through the rest of the trash in the leftover bag. Bob and Chuck opted to watch them from the warmth of the house, glasses of bourbon in hand.
“It’s probably a leftover Halloween toy,” said Mariska.
Chuck wandered over with a fork in his hand and poked the finger with a prong. The skin dimpled and remained that way as he removed pressure. “It’s so gray.”
“Zombie stuff is pretty hip now. Maybe it’s part of a zombie costume,” offered Charlotte.
“Maybe you should taste it,” suggested Bob.
All eyes turned to him and he lofted an upturned palm. “What? Tasting it would take the guesswork out of it. Am I wrong?”
“You know what a finger tastes like?” asked Mariska.
He shrugged. “I know what my finger tastes like, and it isn’t plastic. We could tell if it was a toy or actual meat.”
“You’re disgusting,” said Carolina.
“You know what I can’t stop thinking about,” said Darla, tilting her head as Chuck poked the finger with his fork a second time. “The next person to rent this place who uses that fork to eat off that plate.”
Carolina grunted. “You people are sickos.”
Charlotte chuckled. “I didn’t think about that when I grabbed the plate. I had t
o put it on something. Slapping it on the table didn’t seem right.”
Mariska stood. “All the same, let’s agree to keep that plate and fork in a separate place for the remainder of our trip.”
“Agreed,” chimed the others.
“But you’re still going to put it back in the cabinet for the next guy when we leave?” asked Charlotte.
Mariska nodded. “I’m not going to be charged for losing a plate.”
A frigid breeze whipped through the house as Declan and Seamus returned from outside.
“Cold out there?” asked Bob. He held up his tumbler of bourbon and Chuck clinked his own glass against it in toast.
“It’s freezing,” said Declan.
Bob finished the little he had left and pointed at the bottle of Woodford Reserve. “Hit me.”
“Beat the stuffing out of me,” said Seamus, grabbing a glass from the cabinet and slapping it on the counter near Chuck’s.
Declan rubbed his upper arms and bounced in place. “I didn’t even know it could get that cold.”
“I had the same thought,” said Charlotte.
Carolina rolled her eyes. “Bunch of babies. It’s thirty-two degrees out there. That’s balmy in Michigan.”
None of the Floridians had brought temperature-appropriate clothing. For their foraging expedition, Seamus had claimed Chuck’s coat and Declan had squeezed into Carolina’s. His hands were red, dangling from the violet sleeves.
“Didja find anythin’?” asked Darla.
“Nothin’ that shouldn’t be there,” said Seamus, removing Chuck’s jacket. He noticed the spare jacket on the line of pegs by the door and looked at Declan. “Why didn’t you wear this one?”
Declan scowled. “I didn’t see that one.”
“Admit it. You just wanted to wear the pretty purple one,” said Seamus.
“You got me.” Declan hung Carolina’s jacket beside the others.
“We should call the police,” said Mariska.
Seamus shook his head. “Storm would make getting here difficult. Anyway, if we do, we’ll have cops crawling all over the place, keeping us from getting anything done. It can wait.”
Carolina’s eyes bugged. “It can wait? How am I supposed to live in a murder house?”
