Finding Midnight

by T. Lynne Tolles

  *****

  She finished collecting the other traps around the house and set them in the SUV, and then checked on Sully. Hopefully he hadn’t awakened while she was talking to Ms. Midnight and decided to dismantle more of the couch. When she quietly peeped in the door, she woke him. He blinked his mismatched eyes, clearing them of sleep, and started wagging his tail vigorously. He tried to get up quickly but the fur on the bottom of his feet made it almost impossible for him to get any traction on the hardwood floor. He looked as if running in place for a moment. Finally he made his way to her side, sliding a bit when his momentum caught up with his halt.

  “Would you like to help me in the garden, Sully?” He leaned against her leg amorously, leading her to believe the answer was yes.

  He trotted behind her as she led him with a shovel in tow to the Celtic knot of intertwined crushed stone paths. While he sat watching, she opened one of the burlap sacks of chicken manure she had procured from a local farm, one of Dr. Stuart’s patrons. The garden was in serious need of a good rototilling now that she knew which plants were meant to be in the garden and which were not. The chicken manure would be a great way to get the soil conditioned to host the plants and seedlings it would soon be nurturing.

  She spread a layer of the manure out with a bow rake of metal teeth. Sully watched impatiently, standing and sitting then swatting at the rake as it passed near him. But mostly, his interest was piqued by the smell of the manure.

  When a good layer of manure had been spread, she grabbed a rusty old round pointed shovel she found in the barn, and started to dig. She jumped on the shoulder of the shovel to put her body weight into breaking the hard dirt that had formed from years of neglect and lack of moisture. Sully found this amusing and lay on the crushed gravel path watching her curiously.

  She used the handle as a lever and the ground broke free in large chunks and clumps, which she turned over on top of the manure and broke up with the blade of the shovel into smaller chunks. She had turned over three good-sized chunks when she looked at Sully and said, “Well, little one, are you going to help me?”

  His ears perked up and he quickly got to his feet at her invitation. He sniffed around as if looking for the perfect place to begin. When he was satisfied, he turned facing away from Summer and started to dig in—slow at first, then faster and more vehemently.

  Once she saw he figured out what to do, she turned around to a spot near her last hole when she was pelted by a dirt clod on the back of her thigh. A second later, several more hit the small of her back. She turned to see what it was that was hitting her only to be showered by a rain of fine dirt and manure. Afraid to open her mouth for fear of taking in a mouthful of the flying debris, she stood there stunned by the power and speed with which Sully was digging.

  His claws ripped through the ground effortlessly, shredding it into small clods and fine dirt, which were strewn from his paws through his back legs at Summer. In a matter of seconds he was four feet down and Summer was standing waist deep in a pile of dirt.

  Summer sneezed, causing a cloud of dust and dirt to sprinkle from her hair and face to the pile below. The sneeze caught Sully’s attention and he turned to look at Summer, wagging his whip of a tail. She wiped dirt from her eyes and lips, spitting to get the remnants of dirt that had made its way past her lips into her mouth from the force of Sully’s pitching.

  “Well, now. I certainly hadn’t expected that!” she said as she pulled her legs from the pile of dirt that encased them and pat her clothes free of loose dirt. The pup looked at her as if worried he’d done something wrong, when Summer knelt down to give him a reassuring rub behind the ears.

  “You like to dig, don’t you?” she said, scratching behind the one ear that flopped over lazily to one side. He moaned in content and involuntarily scratched the back of his front leg with his back leg. “Was that fun?” she said, shaking her head and depositing a sprinkling of dirt and small dirt clods on Sully’s muzzle. He shook his head in imitation of her and she giggled.

  “You did good, boy, but maybe we don’t need to go so deep?” she said, chuckling. She pulled the shovel from the earth and started to shovel the pile of dirt into the hole Sully had made. Without missing a beat, Sully started digging in the pile, depositing the dirt in the hole.

  “Good boy, Sully…easy does it, slow down.” He did as instructed and eased the dirt into the hole. When the hole was filled, she walked on it, stomping down the soil and tamping it back into shape. Sully imitated her and stepped in place, lifting his legs higher than needed to emulate her actions. She smiled at him and when they were done she ruffled his ears, exciting him and causing him to lunge at her playfully.

  “I promise we’ll play, but first let’s get this dirt overturned, okay?” It was apparent that Sully was much quicker and more adept to the challenge than she was at digging, so she opted to follow behind him with the bow rake gathering any rocks she found, piling them in an old lopsided but useable wheelbarrow. In no time at all, they had the entire bed ground up and the fertilizer mixed in well.

  When all the tools were put away and Sully’d had half a bucket of cool, clean water, she pulled out an old tennis ball she found on a shelf in the barn. She tossed it a few yards away. Sully watched the ball intently since she had pulled it from her pocket. He watched it sail through the air, bounce a couple of times and roll a couple of feet before it came to rest next to the trunk of a large scruffy-looking bush. He turned and looked at Summer with his black tongue hanging over the side of his lower canines.

  “Fetch…go get it!” she instructed and he took off like a flash, his tail wagging so hard it seemed to throw his rear end out of balance in his strides. He grabbed the ball in his mouth and mauled it while he looked at Summer.

  “Bring it back, Sully. Bring it to me,” she said, clapping her hands and exciting him more. He seemed to hop in the air with delight and with his tail in the air and his elbows and forelegs on the ground, he seemed to be challenging her to come and get it from him.

  She took a step towards him and he ran leaping through the air and lunging towards her, just out of reach. “So the game is keep away, is it?” she said, bending over with her hands on her knees rocking from one foot to the other. Sully lunged at her then spun in a circle, keeping just out of Summer’s reach. She lunged at him and he shot to his right, running a wide circle around her and stopping in front of her again.

  *****

  The game was afoot—a strange dance of lunges and retreats, chasing and escapes—the game of keep away had Sully’s tail straight up and spinning in a clockwise twirl as Summer giggled and chased him until she ran out of breath. But it was the drumming on the upstairs window of the mansion that stopped the two players dead in their tracks. Ms. Midnight donned a face most unfamiliar to Summer. The old lady seemed to light up with astonishment, as if it would break down the ancient window pane. Just as suddenly as she had appeared, she turned in a tornado of swirling curtains and skirt, disappearing from view into the recess of the room.

  Sully and Summer looked at one another for a brief puzzled moment, and then Sully made a fake lunge to Summer’s right, and then took off to the left, watching her all the while and nearly running into an oncoming, breathless Ms. Midnight. She looked practically giddy as she reached down to rub Sully’s ears.

  “Oh, I’m so relieved, you found Ms. Ash,” she said to Summer.

  “Um. Ms. Ash?” Summer asked, confused.

  “Well, you must have found her if you’ve come to know her pup,” Ms. Midnight said matter-of-factly.

  Summer wasn’t quite sure how to proceed with this strange conversation. She was also stunned at seeing this new side of Ms. Midnight—a pleasant, almost cheerful spirit seemed to have stepped into Ms. Midnight’s body and taken possession of the bitter, antagonistic woman. All Summer could do was shake her head at the woman.

  “You didn’t find Ms. Ash?” Ms. Midnight said, her demeanor suddenly changing to sorrowful. “But…” she sa
id and trailed off.

  Summer reached for Ms. Midnight’s hand. With the sudden change in her emotion, the energy of her elation flooded out of the elderly woman as did her strength and Summer was sure that she was about to fall. Sully must have sensed the same thing as he leaned up against Ms. Midnight, steadying her as Summer cupped her other hand under her elbow. They walked her over to a nearby weathered but solid bench.

  “Who is Ms. Ash?” Summer said breaking the silence of Ms. Midnight’s disambiguation.

  Ms. Midnight lovingly pet the huge head of the hellhound pup that lay upon her knees looking up at her with concern. “Ms. Ash is the mother of this pup,” she said sadly.

  “Oh…” Summer said, now realizing why Ms. Midnight had become so sad.

  “And if he is here with you, then she…she—”

  “Yes. Ms. Midnight, she’s gone. There was nothing I could do for her,” Summer said regretfully.

  “Then you saw her? What happened to her?”

  “There was some kind of fight between the hell—I mean Ms. Ash—and a demon named Hunter. When I found them Ms. Ash was already gone, but the demon was in bad shape and I stitched him up.”

  “You mean you saved the scourge that killed my beloved Ms. Ash?” Ms. Midnight growled.

  “Um, well, yes. I didn’t know what had happened or that you and Ms. Ash were, well, friends. He said—the demon, that is—that she attacked him and he was just protecting himself.”

  “And you believed a demon? What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of imbecile?”

  “Well, no. I just, well, when we found Sully, he—the demon—said she must have attacked him because he unknowingly got too close to her pup.”

  “Of course she would defend her pup against a nasty thing like a demon. They are unable to tell the truth. Don’t you know anything? And who is this Sully?”

  “Do I know anything about demons? No, not a thing. Sully is what I named him,” Summer said, patting the pup’s head. “Well, Sulphur, really—Sully for short.”

  “Well, for future reference, demons can’t be trusted—ever,” she said, looking lovingly at the hound. “Sulphur—I like it. Ms. Ash would have liked it too.” A tear rolled down Ms. Midnight’s cheek and landed on her chest. “Ms. Ash would have been a good mother to you, Sulphur. She loved you very much.”

  *****

  Summer asked, “So, Ms. Ash was his mother? And your pet?”

  “Don’t be silly, you don’t own a hellhound. They allow you to be part of their life.”

  “But she, Ms. Ash, lived with you?”

  “From time to time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Ms. Ash was a hellhound? I have people looking all over town for a Ms. Ash.”

  “Number one—you didn’t ask, and number two—would you have believed me if I told you she was a hellhound?” Ms. Midnight said, seeming quite lucid. “Or would you have just written me off as some crazy lady?”

  “I might have believed you. I had already found Sulphur by the time you mentioned the missing Ms. Ash, but I admit if you had brought up a hellhound a month ago, I probably would have thought you were a little loopy.” Summer smiled.

  “I suppose it sounds a little strange. Not many have seen all the things I’ve seen in my lifetime and I suppose that’s a good thing. I guess Ms. Ash has been taken by the reaper?” Ms. Midnight asked.

  “That’s what the demon told me would happen, but I didn’t see it.”

  “And you intend on caring for the pup?”

  “Yes. If that’s okay with you?”

  “Of course, but it will not be easy sometimes. Hellhounds are not of this plane,” Ms. Midnight told her.

  “I know, but I couldn’t leave him all alone for the reaper to take him.”

  “It might have been better.”

  “Maybe. The demon said the same thing, but…well, I’m an orphan and so is he,” Summer said as she scratched under Sully’s chin. “I think we were meant for one another. I don’t expect it to be easy. There are so many things I don’t know about hellhounds, but I have a lot of really good friends that will help me raise him.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Ms. Midnight said, suddenly standing. “I just wish we knew where Ms. Ash was—she, at least, would help me get back the rat,” she said rudely.

  Summer and Sully exchanged a look of puzzlement. “But, I thought we just talked about where Ms. Ash was?” Summer said.

  “Don’t you tell me what we did or didn’t discuss. I know exactly what we discussed. You should be out there,” she said, waving her hands furiously towards the front of the mansion and the street beyond, “looking for her. She’d never let the rat out of her sight. She must have hidden him for his own protection. That’s it! You would have known that if you had been looking for her. And tell me, will you be planting my garden sometime this century? Or shall I find another more competent renter to attend my needs?”

  Summer was dumbfounded by the change in Ms. Midnight’s demeanor. It was as if a switch had been flipped and she was suddenly back to the grumpy woman Summer had known. “I, well, I was trying to be thorough in identifying the plants so I could replace them—”

  “Well, get on with it already. I’m not going to live forever you know,” she said as she shuffled to the mansion. When she came to the stairs of the porch, she turned and exclaimed in a shrill voice, “And find that RAT!”

  Chapter 10

  Summer and Sully stared after Ms. Midnight as if standing still might help things soak in and make sense. It did not. Sully and Summer stared blankly at each other until Summer finally laughed. She could think of nothing else to do. The whole experience had been like an out of body event. Sully pounced for the tennis ball nearby and dropped it at her feet.

  Summer picked it up and gave it a good throw, making it bounce and disappear around the backside of the cottage. A moment later Sully took off after it and started barking. When she rounded the corner of the cottage, she immediately saw what had Sully’s undivided attention—a very large black and white cat in the house next door, clawing at the window as if he was trying to dig to China. His mouth opened and closed in silent meows, imploring her as he continued pawing the pane of glass. He was on his hind legs making him look even more massive. His pink belly could be seen through tufts of long white fur.

  Sully was frantically barking at the cat and clawing at the rotting fence barring his entry to the neighbor’s yard. Seeing him on his back feet standing against the fence made Summer suddenly realize Sully had grown significantly. She tried to fathom that realization while also trying to calm the inconsolable pup.

  Without any warning, Sully stopped and plopped down to the ground and looked proudly at Summer. She looked over at the window to see only the swaying curtains where the large feline had been a second before. Sully trotted off to a nearby hydrangea bush and withdrew his dirt-covered tennis ball. Summer inspected the claw marks Sully dug into the soft ancient cedar boards. They were nearly the height of her shoulders. She thought to herself, He’s going to be huge!

  She ran her fingers over the gouges, when something on the ground twinkled in the light, catching her attention. She squatted and brushed loose dirt from something black and iridescent. It was bigger than she’d originally thought when she’d plucked it from the compacted dirt. She set it in her palm to examine it more closely.

  In the sun the iridescences glowed brightly in shades of green, purple and indigo blue. The item itself—though it looked black on the ground—actually had a hint of steel blue to it. It was the shape of a plump teardrop but slightly rounded where the point would be. It was the length of an AAA battery, the width of a quarter and about as thick as the cardboard used to package butter sticks. It looked delicate, but it was very solid and strong. Her hand felt warm and kind of tingly while it rested in her palm, but she was sure it was just her imagination. She could only guess it was some kind of mineral like mica that brakes off in thin sheets or maybe obsidian.

  Whatever i
t was, Summer found the item pretty and thought if she drilled a small hole near the top it would make a nice pendant. She stuffed it into her pocket just as Sully ran into her from retrieving his slobbery dirt-encrusted ball. She made one last glance at the window where the large cat had been, before tiring out the pup as best she could with a little more “Keep Away” and “Fetch.”

  *****

  A week or more had passed since Summer had the strange conversation with Ms. Midnight and seen the desperate-to-escape cat in the window. Something about the cat bothered Summer. She couldn’t say why or what, but there had been something in his face that screamed “panic” to her and made her unsettled. She found herself thinking back on the scene several times over the course of the week, but she wasn’t really sure what she should do about it.

  Sully seemed to be growing daily. He had captured the hearts of Dr. Stuart and Tori’s boyfriend Nick. Tori, on the other hand, was more of a cat person, but she liked Sully well enough; she just didn’t like the slobber.

  The item she found by the fence made a great pendant and Tori commissioned Summer to find another for her ASAP. The drilling of the hole, however, was a bit of a fiasco. Whatever mineral or material the item was composed of made for a challenge for the drill. Her first attempt was with an ordinary carbide drill bit used in surgery, but it was no match for the would-be pendant. The bit snapped after only a moment. She knew that carbide could be brittle, but she also didn’t think the pendant would be so hard. In the end she snapped another carbide bit and one diamond-coated carbide, but the diamond-coated carbide made enough of a hole that when she replaced it with a new one, it finished the job. Of course if she had known how much the bits cost, she might not have done the deed. As usual though, Dr. Stuart was a sport about it and complimented her new ‘stylin’ necklace, as he called it.

  Summer had been working part time that week, in hopes of finding Ms. Midnight’s rat, but she really was at a dead end in the matter. She ran the conversation by Dr. Stuart and Tori for their input, but neither had much in the way of ideas for her perplexing assignment. Instead, she focused on getting the garden planted. She and Sully spent hours, prepping, planting, repairing and nurturing it. There were two items she couldn’t order locally and so she had to use an online store to get what she needed per Dr. Stuart’s recommendation. All in all it looked pretty darn good.