Magic & Mystery: A Cozy Mystery Sampler

by Sara Bourgeois

  My next stop was the animal shelter. The only place nearby was the county animal control facility. I couldn’t believe how drab and depressing the place was, but I felt better knowing I would save at least one animal from a short life of suffering.

  A grumpy lady behind the counter gave me two forms to fill out, and I wondered if working here for a long time made you jaded. Once the paperwork was complete, I handed it back to her. She let out a little huff and then stood up to lead me back to the cat holding area.

  “I’m the only one here, and the high school girls who come in to help out with the viewings don’t get in until after two thirty. If you find one you want, just come back up to the desk and let me know.” She said and walked away.

  It was hard for me to look at them knowing I would only be able to save one. I figured I’d walk down to the end of the row and see if I could find any kittens, but I only made it halfway down the row of cages when a little orange paw shot out from a cage and grabbed my sleeve.

  “Tut.” The name on the pen read.

  “Like the pharaoh?” I found myself asking the skinny, underfed ginger kitty.

  He meowed at me and then tugged on my sleeve to bring me closer to the cage. I leaned in, and he pressed his head against the bars of the pen. I don’t know why, but I pushed my head against it too. Tut started to purr loudly.

  “I’m going to go get the lady, and I’ll be right back for you buddy.”

  And that was that. I paid the fee, put Tut in the carrier I’d purchased at the pet store, and we went home. As soon as he got out of the carrier, Tut took off to explore the house. That’s when I knew that the notion about cats being completely independent was correct.

  With the cat in the house, I felt better. I was less afraid, and it fortified me for the detective work I felt I had to do. While Tut poked around behind the living room furniture, I decided to use my new-found courage to explore the basement. I couldn’t understand what was going on in my house if I hadn’t been in every part of it.

  I went to the coat closet and found the box of emergency supplies my dad had insisted I keep handy. There was an enormous Maglite flashlight in the bottom, and I smiled because it was both a source of light and a potential weapon.

  Flashlight in hand, I made my way into the pantry. As soon as I looked at the worn wooden door in the floor, my stomach churned, and most of my courage fled. I remembered that there was some liquor stashed in my cabinet from the party the other night. I figured just one swig from the tequila bottle would give me the boost I needed to descend into the dark depths of my house.

  Just like in a cheesy 80’s horror movie, the hinges on the door creaked loudly as I pulled the door open. The staircase was nothing but thin boards held together on either side by more unfinished wood, and it was steep. It didn’t look like much more than a ladder that was set at an angle. Never mind ghosts, I’d be lucky if I made it to the bottom without breaking an ankle or my neck.

  I cautiously made my way down the stairs, but when I reached the bottom, the door slammed shut above me. I scrambled up the steps and tried to get out, but my exit wouldn’t open. There was no lock on the door, so I had no idea why it was stuck. I pushed as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. When my elbows were so strained that it felt like my tendons would pop, I gave in.

  “The only way out is through,” I mumbled to myself and descended the steps.

  The basement floor felt cold under my feet even though I was wearing shoes. I shivered and hugged myself. If I’d prepared a little more, I’d have brought a sweater down into the damp, chilly basement. It was too late for that.

  I shined my flashlight around looking for a way to turn on the lights in the basement. I found a bulb with a chain hanging down, and luckily, it worked. It sparsely illuminated the immediate area, but I noticed with a tinge of horror that every corner of the room was engulfed in a shadow that seemed to have a life of its own.

  Had it not been for the generous gulps of alcohol I’d taken before my trip to the basement, I would have had a panic attack. As it was, I barely held my nerve.

  “Nothing to do but what I came here for,” I whispered to myself.

  There were stacks of boxes and a large, mahogany armoire in front of me. The wardrobe was ominous, and it appeared to be not only from another time period but of a different world as well. Not from another planet, but the piece seemed to have been ripped from a dark castle in an Eastern European country where they still believed that vampires caused crop death.

  I reached out to open it because I wanted to get that portion of my investigation over with as hastily as possible. It just felt like there would be something shocking inside of the cabinet. The doors had little metal handles, and I wrapped my fingers around both of them. Before I could chicken out, I yanked them open and winced against whatever imaginary awful waited inside.

  There was nothing. I breathed a sigh of relief and began going through the boxes. The only problem was that it felt like someone was watching me. It took me a while to go through all of them because I kept flicking on my flashlight and sweeping it around the dark corners of the room.

  The boxes didn’t contain anything earth shaking. For the most part, they housed old cleaning supplied and batteries. Two of the boxes were full of old clothes, and one had a collection of books. I put the book box at the top of the stairs. If I could get out that way, I’d grab it on my way. If I had to get out of here another way, I’d just retrieve them from above. I could reach through the door and grab the box without coming back down here.

  I tried to get out one more time as I placed the box on the top step. The door was still stuck, so I figured it was as good a time as any to start looking for another way out.

  The exterminator had gotten into the other side of the house from down here. Perhaps I could go up there and then get out. I wasn’t sure how I’d relock the door, but I decided to worry about that after I freed myself from what I’d affectionately started to think of as the Overwatch dungeon.

  There was nothing left to do but make my way over to the other side of the basement so I could attempt to find the door that led into the second apartment. In the center of the room was the area where the furnace, water heater, and some other mechanical looking stuff sat. There was also a narrow space that looked like it might have reached the other side of the room.

  I had to turn my Maglite on again because there was no light once I was under the other apartment. I’d figured that the music shop man would use the basement for storage too, but there was nothing down there.

  What was surprising was the steps and door. There was a full staircase with a railing that ended at a regular door. I could have sworn the exterminator said this side of the basement had the same setup as mine, but there wasn’t any time to dwell on that.

  I don’t know how to explain what I felt other than to say that once I’d crossed over, the feeling of being watched was closer. Whereas under my apartment, it felt like something watched me from the dark corners, now it seemed like it was right behind me.

  At the top of the steps, I held my breath and turned the doorknob. It occurred to me that I didn’t know if I should be relieved that I was getting out of the basement or terrified of going into the unoccupied apartment.

  At first, the only thing remotely interesting about the other apartment was the sparseness. I figured the place would be stuffed to the gills with boxes and equipment, but there was very little there. Everything was also covered in a thick layer of dust that told me no one had touched anything stored there for a very long time.

  I was about to start looking for a way out when I heard a clicking sound upstairs. It wasn’t unlike noise of insect pincers snapping together, and it unnerved me, to say the least. If there was one thing I hated, it was bugs.

  The sound grew louder and then multiplied. From the noise of one clicking little insect to two, and then a few, and then it sounded like sounded like hundreds of them were spilling from the walls above me. But, h
ow could I hear that? I made my way to a window when the sound changed from the clicking of beetles to the scuffing and scurrying of cockroaches. It seemed as if thousands of them were scuttling down the hall toward the stairs.

  I heard what sounded like them cascading over the stairs as their exoskeletons dropped like drying leaves onto the risers of the staircase. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to throw the window open and run, but instead, I turned around. It’s cliché, but it was like a train wreck. My body wouldn’t obey my mind, and I looked even though tears were now running down my face and soaking the top of my shirt.

  Roaches would have been better. An older man was standing at the top of the stairs looking at me. At first, I thought it might have been the man who rented this side of the house. Maybe he was upstairs moving boxes around, and that’s what I’d heard.

  “Oh, hello. Excuse me. I’m so sorry. I’m Samantha, and I live next door. I got locked in the basement, and I came up here hoping to find a way out.” I blathered on nervously.

  It was only when I shut up that I comprehended something wasn’t right about the man who’d now taken a couple of steps down toward me. The first thing that struck me was that it wasn’t really a man. The person moving toward me was a woman with a short haircut. She wore trousers and a button-down shirt that I’d always associated with male clothing.

  None of that was particularly remarkable compared to the way she looked aside from her clothes. Her skin was drawn and tan. No, not tan like from the sun. It was tanned as in preserved. Her lips were drawn into a sinister smile that was too wide for her face, and it gave her teeth a skeletal appearance.

  The woman’s mouth opened and closed in a biting motion, and what emanated from her was a growling sound that made tiny hairs on my arms stand on end.

  I was frozen. I didn’t know how to get out of the house other than to open the window behind me, but I didn’t want to turn around and put my back to the thing on the stairs.

  My eyes darted around looking for a way to get out while putting a lot of distance between myself and the woman. Down the hall and straight ahead of me was a back door. The room would have been the mirror side of my kitchen except that this half of the house had no kitchen.

  I made up my mind in a split second and sprinted for the back door. I could hear the thing pounding down the steps and then pursuing me through the hall. I wanted to throw myself through the door, but I had to stop and unlock the deadbolt. I could hear her behind me in the kitchen, and I knew I wouldn’t get the door open before she reached me. I could almost feel her as she reached out to grab my hair. Her fingertips grazed a few of the strands.

  And then I was out the door. I ran through the backyard halfway to the alley before I turned back to see if she was behind me. There was no one there.

  I knew I had to call Becky for two reasons. I needed her to come over and lock up the other side of the house because I couldn’t latch the deadbolt from the outside, and I wanted to know more about the woman who’d lived in my apartment before me.

  I thought that if I could find out who she was, maybe I could talk to her about the house. I needed to know if she’d ever seen or heard anything like what I’d been experiencing in the apartment, but I’d forgotten the name of the retirement facility where Becky said she’d moved to before I rented the place.

  Tut meowed at me when I walked through the back door of my apartment. I figured he wanted some food, but he’d have to wait a minute. I had a call to make and some manual labor to do as well.

  I went over to the basement door in the pantry to investigate why it wouldn’t open, and I needed to retrieve the box I’d left at the top of the steps. I couldn’t see any reason why the door hadn’t opened for me, so I reached down to pull the handle.

  It popped right open, but I wasn’t sure if the thing I’d seen was down there. So, I grabbed the box and then slammed it shut again. I used a broom wedged against the wall as a temporary way to keep it from opening while I searched for a hammer and nails.

  I knew I had nothing in the house, but I figured it was worth a shot to check the garage. It was important that no one opened that door again. Much to my dismay, there was nothing of use in the garage. I only had one choice.

  “Hello, John. I need your help.” I said when John answered the phone.

  My next call was to Becky while I waited for John to show up with wood and tools. I needed the name of the retirement home that the former tenant had moved to.

  “Hey, Samantha. What’s up?” She said briskly into the phone, and I could tell she didn’t have much time to talk.

  “I got locked in the basement, and I had to go out through the other side of the house. I need you to come lock the other apartment. Do you have a key?”

  “I don’t, but I can call the man who rents the other side. Can you keep an eye on the place until he comes to lock it up?” She asked.

  “Sure. Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Go ahead, Samantha. But, make it quick. I’ve got a listing appointment in fifteen minutes.”

  Chapter Seven

  Becky told me the name of the retirement home the former tenant had moved to was called Crestview. She said it was in a town a few miles away called Norman. Becky also told me that the old tenant's name was Janice Lockheed and that she’d been moved to Crestview Home after a stroke. As far as Becky knew, the home was close to Janice’s family.

  John arrived shortly after I got off the phone with Becky, so I’d have to wait a bit to go online and get directions to Crestview. He had wood planks, a hammer, and big nails. The only problem is that John wouldn’t seal the basement hatch without more details about what had happened. At first, I wasn’t sure how much I should tell him. Part of me thought that I might have been experiencing some sort of psychiatric breakdown.

  If I was having a mental break, there was no way I’d be able to start my new job. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my nursing license if I was diagnosed with a delusional disorder.

  He just stood there staring at me with a look of expectation on his face. I’m not sure why I was hesitant to share anything with John, but it suddenly felt like there was a distance between us. It was as if I couldn’t connect with him the way I had in the past. I needed a drink.

  John didn’t say anything as I retrieved a bottle of bourbon from my cabinet, but I could see the disdain on his face. He was here to help me, but he judged me too. If I hadn’t needed his help with the basement door, I would have thrown him out.

  Instead, I poured myself two fingers of the whiskey and drank them down. As the tingly heat from the booze spread from my throat to my chest, I relaxed. John sat down at the table across from me, and I could see that his expression had softened.

  My intention was to tell him that I’d gotten locked down in the basement and was spooked by my own imagination in the other side of the house. The bourbon had loosened my tongue enough that the entire story came spilling out. I didn’t realize it until I was done talking, but at some point during my story, John had taken my hand.

  When I was done speaking, he nodded his head, got up, and began working without a word. I wasn’t sure if he believed me, or if he just wanted to help me because I was in distress.

  I decided to take the help gratefully, and while he pounded away with the hammer, I got my laptop out and searched for Crestview in Norman. What I found sent a chill down my spine.

  It took me a moment to decide if I was fascinated or horrified by the information I’d found. Crestview wasn’t a retirement or nursing home. It was a cemetery. Janice hadn’t moved out to be closer to family, she’d died.

  Was the terrifying apparition I’d seen in the other side of the house the ghost of Janice Lockheed? Perhaps she was trying to scare me away from what she considered her home. At the time, it made sense.

  “Hey, Sam. I’m done. Do you want to take a look?” John startled me when he walked up behind me.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” I said and stood up.r />
  “Sorry, I bet you’re on edge after your ordeal.” Something in his voice told me he didn’t really believe my story.

  Without really thinking about it, I walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the bottle of bourbon. After pouring myself another glass, I turned back to John.

  “Please don’t patronize me,” I said spitefully.

  “I wasn’t, Sammy.” He said apologetically. “You have to admit that it’s a hard story to believe.”

  “Why?” I hissed. “Because I lie to you so often. Because I’ve given you so many reasons to doubt me.”

  I had no idea why I was so angry with him. The story was incredulous. If the roles had been reversed, I would have recommended that John be evaluated by a mental health professional.

  “Sammy, please calm down.” John pleaded, but I felt my stomach clench with an irrational rage.

  “Did you really just tell me to calm down?”

  “Baby, please calm down,” John whispered.

  “Baby? Don’t call me baby. I am not your baby. We are not going there right now. Just because we hang out doesn’t mean we’re together.” There was so much venom in my voice that even I was surprised, but I kept going. “You don’t get to call me pet names. In fact, I think you need to leave.”

  “You’re right. I do need to leave. This is absolute bull crap, Samantha. You only ever call me when you need something, and do I even get a thank you? No. I get yelled at. Call somebody else next time you need to use someone.” He snapped.

  “I will.”

  John’s shoulders fell in defeat, and he looked utterly stricken. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I didn’t mean that. You can always call me. I hope you know that.”

  “Get out!” I screamed at him because as much as I wanted to, something wouldn’t let me forgive him.

  Chapter Eight

  I drank two more shots of whiskey, and then decided I didn’t want to be alone. The only person I could think of to call was Cameron. He said that he’d come pick me up right away. I told him we could just hang out at my house, but he’d said that it was better if we went somewhere a little more public. I had no idea why he felt that way, but I figured I’d rather ask him in person.