by catt dahman
Now, I knew where scary fairy tales about witches eating children, pigs building houses, and wolves chasing little girls and chowing down on grandmas came from.
Instead of squirrels, rats and mice darted about the detritus of the ground, climbing up and away onto the tree limbs to watch us, twittering and hissing as we walked along. I waved my procured baseball bat at several, making some of them dart away.
Limmerfer took a stance, puffed out his fur, and hissed angrily. When a rat came too close, he batted it with his claws, sending the rodent flying away with its stomach pierced. Limmerfer looked around as if daring another to come near.
“Way to go, Lim,” I said. I petted him on his head.
Danny urged us to be quiet as we approached, “Ahead is the house. Alice, Dana, Pax, and I will go inside.
Annie, you look around the foyer, and stay out of sight. The rest of you stay alert, and yell for us if you see a great army of demons coming or something that looks like an arrest party. We should be able to handle everything inside.”
“I have it,” Virgil said.
Danny opened the big iron door, and we followed him inside the house. The foyer had been decorated with several open coffins, stone statues of Caligula, Nero, and Julius Caesar, an iron maiden, and various devices hanging from the walls. Skulls on pedestals filled the rest of the room.
“She’s a bit of a hoarder,” Danny explained.
“No kidding…weird stuff, too,” I agreed.
I almost yelled as a figure appeared in the doorway. When I realized it was a servant dressed in a fancy suit with tails on the jacket and a silk tie, I nearly relaxed but then made an ‘eeeep’ sound as I saw him in the candlelight.
He had the face of a fish, a catfish, with gills on his neck. There was no nose only a protrusion of his jowls into a flat snout, wide, thin lips surrounded by long, catfish whiskers, and he had no chin. His skin was mottled brown, shaped into scales. There was no forehead or hair, but atop his head was a silly wig powdered and arranged in white curls like those worn long ago by Englishmen. In back, the fake hair was tied into a little ponytail with a silk ribbon in mauve that matched his tie and waistcoat.
His eyes were dull, projecting orbs that tiredly roved over us. He yawned with his great fish mouth, “You must be here to see the Duchess?”
“Of course,” Danny said. We nodded.
“From the Queen to the Duchess, I have an invitation to play croquet.” Danny held up an envelope to show us. A royal seal was stuck to the back.
“Well, doesn’t that sound fun?” I asked.
“Not if you knew them both,” Danny whispered.
We followed the servant, ignoring the brackish scent that wafted behind him, despite the powder we had used. Without the powder, the scent would have almost knocked us out.
Another servant appeared, also dressed in a fancy suit, but his hair ribbon and tie were of soft yellow silk. His curls were powdered white, too, but that’s where the resemblance ended. His head was huge, topped with that white hair, and covered by crumbly looking warts all over his dark green skin. His mouth was a wide maw without lips and ran from side to side. His eyes were large, protruded slightly, and blinked lazily in his frog face.
With no warning, his thin, long tongue popped out and zapped the side of my face and went back inside his mouth, “Oh, there was a bit of dirt. So sorry.”
“You should be. How rude,” I snarled at him.
“An invitation from the Queen to the Duchess to play croquet,” Fish-Boy said.
Frog-Boy nodded his big head, “From the Queen to the Duchess, an invitation for croquet.”
I heard Danny and Pax sigh.
We walked into the dining area where the Duchess held a baby. She glanced up but kept her eyes on the cook.
From where we stood, we could see into the kitchen, as well where Cook prepared a meal in a huge iron pot. Cook tossed in a handful of black pepper that made us all sneeze; she brushed her hands off on her dirty apron.
We all sneezed.
After Fish-Boy handed over the invitation from the Queen, I cleared my throat, “In there on the hearth, that cat…why does he grin that way? I’ve never seen a cat smile.”
“It’s my cat, Cheshire. He always grins that way for he’s always up to mischief,” Duchess said.
I didn’t quite trust the cat and wished Limmerfer had come with us to deal with him if he became unruly.
“I told you about cats and hell,” Danny said. He threw up an arm just in time to avoid a carving knife that Cook threw across the kitchen and dining room. It landed in the wall behind the Duchess.
We scooted out of the way as Cook threw more utensils, knives, pots, and pans. The Duchess struggled to hold the screaming baby and knock away items that flew past them, “If you don’t know about the cats, then you don’t know much.”
“I’m new here.”
“We’re all new here,” Pax said, “and that’s too much pepper.” He sneezed again.
A knife almost cut off the baby’s nose.
“Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes, He only does it to annoy, Because he knows it teases," the Duchess sang her poem.
She walked out of the room, spoke in whispers to her Frog-Boy and Fish-Boy, and then seemed to notice the child. We followed her.
She tossed the baby to Dana who barely caught it and told Dana that she could care for it since she was going to play croquet with the Queen. I wondered what we would do with a baby. A child was one thing, but now we had been given a baby in hell.
In another room, Duchess dressed herself in jewels and fancy silk cloth over a dress that was clearly too tight and too sexy for her age and figure.
Danny caught her arm, “You promised me something.”
“I did? I don’t recall….”
She was a nasty looking woman, and I didn’t like her at all.
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Duchess, please. If you don’t give me what you promised, then I will be happy to whisper into certain ears…let’s see…The Board of Artistic Destruction, and you won’t get those statues you ordered of Sterkus Berzerkus, Festus Shittus, and Fatt ButtFuckass.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would.”
They traded threats with stern voices. Pax and I covered our mouths to keep from laughing hysterically at the ridiculous names. Those could not possibly be real, I told myself.
“Fine, Take it. But there will be…well…hell to pay,” Duchess smirked.
“Trust me, I have paid well and will pay still,” Danny said.
Duchess handed over a small velvet bag. As her hand dropped the bag in Danny’s hand, we heard a terrible wailing from another room, and Duchess smiled, “Here is your little trinket. This ensures you will not speak of my statues, yes? Your word, please.”
“My word,” Danny said. He checked the bag and drew out the biggest iolite gemstone I had ever seen. The purple-blue stone was as large as a hen’s egg and cut into so many perfect facets one could get dizzy looking into it. Slipping it back into its bag, he put the gem into his pocket, frowned, and looked confused.
“The items you procured for me were simply lovely. I suppose I did owe you that little trifle. But I owe you not a bit more, and walking into my home unbidden was a grievous, most abominable, rude-as-heck act on your part.”
“You wouldn’t have opened the door and have seen us otherwise, and we couldn’t have gotten the gemstone,” Danny said.
“Exactly. But alas, you have, and as I said, it was a very offensive action, and I repay in kind. Now, I have plans,” she said as she turned and left the room.
Hurrying after her, Dana asked about the baby. What was she to do with it? When would the Duchess be back to care for it? Where should we leave it?
The Duchess waved us away as if she didn’t care. The top of her head was bald with only fluffs of frizzy strands above large, ears that stuck out comically.Her eyes were little, and her nose was large and spread
out across her face. The lower half of her face was enormous, with a tiny knob of a chin and colorless, tiny, thin lips. Little black whiskers sprouted from her white skin. Wrinkles lined her face, and they, along with rolls of fat, filled her neck. She wiggled in her very low cut, strapless dress that accentuated her heavy body and flabby arms, breasts, and back. She shook her backside at us and giggled.
“She’s despicable,” I said.
“Does this baby look like her?” Dana showed us the baby wrapped in a blanket.
It had tiny eyes, and I thought its nose resembled a snout; it grunted. As they watched it, it began to look more and more like a piglet and less like a baby. Dana sat it down when its hands and feet looked like trotters.
We went back to the kitchen to tell Cook where we had left the pig (or baby, depending on one’s view). Blood and globs of fat were all over the kitchen, so we had to watch where we walked. “What a mess.”
Cook glanced at me, “Yes, she is.”
Danny walked over to a cabinet and reached for something. I saw a glint of metal and realized it was his pocket watch.
“Why was it here?” I asked.
“I noticed it missing while we were with the Duchess and feared the worst, but it was too late by then. I saw the footman pick it up from the floor when we were in the other room; it was left in the hallway.”
“How did it get there?”
Dana slapped a hand to her face, “I have taken it away from Annie at least ten times and have given it back to Danny.”
“Oh, She pick-pockets?” Pax asked.
“Why was it on the cabinet?”
Danny looked into my eyes with a very sad glance. He turned to the cook and cocked his head, “Supper?”
“Aye.”
All at once, I noticed more things about the room. A boot peeked out from beneath a small table. A bag that Annie carried was half hidden by bowls on the counter. The cook raised her cleaver and snapped it down on a delicate hand sitting on the cutting board. In the pot, a human foot bounced around in the boiling water, alongside a whole onion and a skinny carrot.
With a powerful lunge, I kicked the knife away from Cook’s hand and followed my kick with a rough push that slammed Cook against the cabinets, “How could you?”
“They brought her in. Meats is meats.”
Pax heaved.
The first time I hit her across the throat with the big cleaver, she slid to the ground, grabbing for her neck as slippery blood poured out the wound.
I didn’t mind chopping off fingers and then her wrist as I tried to chop off her head. It takes a lot of work to chop through a neck, and Pax came forward, took the cleaver, and began to work, “Off with your head,” he said.
Dana and Danny used towels to carry the noxious pot out the back door, into the garden, and away from the house.
Poor Annie. I let tears roll down my cheeks as I went to find Frog-Boy and Fish-Boy. At the threat of my machete, I walked them outside and ordered them to dig a hole. Had I not needed their labor, I would have chopped them to little bits.
Pax finished cutting the head cut off the cook and stabbed her with her own carving forks as a last insult; we wanted to use her own tools to hurt her.
Pax and Danny helped dig, so the work digging a grave went fast, and we buried Annie deeply inside the ground. I made the hideous footmen pick armloads of the Duchess’ prized roses and other flowers to cover the grave, leaving stems and bushes barren of posies.
That would teach her.
In glee, I tossed every chemical I found, as well as salt on the flower bushes that were left so they’d never grow beautiful flowers again. We left the cook in the kitchen, along with the blood and mess. Pax and Danny, using the shovels, beat the footmen to red, slimy paste that oozed into the spongy grass.
I took Annie’s bag but nothing else.
Danny did take a few things from the kitchen: some bread, butter, and fruit so we could eat, as well as a pitcher of goat’s milk, and some glasses.
Outside, we told Coral, Virgil, Cassie, Dinah, and Cory the bad news, and we were solemn as we went down the walkway, along the road, and to a small park, which had benches and a table where we could sit and eat.
You would think we wouldn’t be able to eat after that, and it was true that it sickened us, but we also had used a lot of energy and were hungry. I couldn’t have eaten boiled meat, of that I am sure.
After we filled our stomachs, we told them everything, trying to say it in less gory ways so no one would get ill. Dinah wept against Cassie. Taking each of our hands in one of hers, Cassie gave us a heartfelt look and said, “I am so very sorry for the loss of your friend. She was a lovely girl, brave, and kind.”
Chapter Nineteen: Confession Is Good for the Soul
“Danny, what will happen to her soul?” Cory asked. We had all been wondering that same question.
“It will be as if she were never born, and her soul will be reborn in another body so she has a new chance. I know it’s horrible to lose a friend, but she isn’t lost here. She has not had a chance yet to clean her slate, and so she will have a new one.”
“Good,” I said, but I still wept.
Danny told us, “Confession is good for the soul, and she confessed to me weeks ago that she liked stealing my watch. It became a game for us.”
Dana nodded, “I want to tell all of you something.”
I nodded.
“Alice…everyone, I had that pelvic infection from a bad abortion. The man the pregnancy was with gave me a drug in my drink one night and took me to a doctor who practiced medicine in the basement of his home; he was a very bad doctor, and his home wasn’t very clean, I suppose. That was why I became so sick and almost died.”
I hugged her, “Dana, surely that wouldn’t get you bad marks on your tally board. Danny, how is that fair? She was drugged. She didn’t agree to it.”
Danny nodded, “It’s true she didn’t agree, and she doesn’t have marks for that.”
“I have bad marks because the man was my professor, and he was married, and I knew it. I made a terrible choice in that matter. I regret it for so many reasons….” Dana confessed.
“Will this clean her slate, Danny?”
“If we succeed, yes. If not, she must try something else if she has a chance. I hope she cleans it, really,” Danny said.
I squeezed Dana’s hand.
Coral spoke, “I used drugs when I was playing football. I didn’t plan to use them, but steroids were all around, and then…worse: when I was high, I hit my wife until she ran away to keep me from hurting her. I also was in a few driving accidents that hurt people badly and were covered up by people who handle those kinds of things. I regretted it when I got sober and ruined my knee and was a wash-up.”
“Oh, Coral.” Cassie patted his hand.
“That’s why I don’t drink at all, and I make sure homeless are fed. But I need to clear my slate.”
“Annie was a thief, a kleptomaniac,” I said.
“I coveted. I was a mean, petty, jealous man who only wanted to get ahead. I had a friend who was the same way, and one day, his house burned to the ground. I stood and watched it blaze from the sidewalk. He was upset and furious about what he had lost: his BMW, his expensive suits, his beautiful furniture, and I was jolted like lightning had hit me,” Pax told us.
“Why?” Coral asked.
“Because his wife and son were in the house. I was there to comfort him but wasn’t going to once he said that. It made me sick, but I realized that I had acted the same way, as if stuff mattered so much. I sold everything I had and headed out across the United States, taking only what I could carry and taking my dog, Katie. I gave everything away.”
“Wow, I never knew, Paxton,” I said softly, amazed that my friends had such traumatic events in their pasts, “Cory?”
“Hmmm?”
“What about you? What all are you making up for?”
“Why ask me? I’m along for the fun. I don’t have terrible
secrets,” he said.
I wondered what he didn’t want to tell us. I also wondered why he didn’t share since everyone else had talked.
Cassie hugged me and promised I could fulfill this mission and would do a great job. Her faith in me helped.
“We have a place to sleep tonight, but it’s a bit of a bother. A man said we could stay there, and we can, but a few squatters always like to take over and stay there as well. Once we arrive, we will see if we can charm them and get them to leave or share.”
“We could just chop them to bits,” I said, waving my machete.
“We could, but remember they’d regenerate and rat us out, I fear. We’ll do better to get along with them if we possibly can. Let’s hurry. We’re in dinosaur territory, and they come out at night. I prefer to avoid them,” Danny said, walking faster.
Chapter Twenty: Insane Institution:
I saw a sign as we went into the large building, Insane Institution. I asked Danny why we were going to this place, and he said this was where he had been speaking of and this would provide a place to sleep for the night.
“And why are the squatters here?”
Virgil laughed, “They’ve never left, really.”
They introduced us to Ed March-Hare and Stan Hatter, both humans, as far as I could tell, but at this point, I wasn’t sure about much and still felt Annie’s loss deeply. I was cranky as we sat down at a table, and Danny motioned for the pair to pour us some hot tea.
“Drink the wine instead,” Ed March-Hare told us.
“Is there wine?” Danny asked.
“No.”
“Then why did you offer it?”
March-Hare glared, “I didn’t. I simply suggested it. You sat down uninvited, and I offered wine that isn’t.”
“No matter,” Danny went on, “we’re staying here the night. I hope we don’t bother you too much.”
“Oh no, not here. We’re here,” Stan Hatter frowned hatefully.
“You can’t stay. It would be like saying you’ll stay if you’re happy is the same as saying that you are happy if you stay.You won’t be happy either way. And you can’t stay,” March-Hare said, confusing everyone.
