Un-fur-tunate Murders

by Harper Lin

  Wherever he’d been, he was in a hurry to get back. We were getting closer and closer to town, and still he had yet to ease up on the accelerator. The speed limit signs that read forty miles an hour were being passed up at sixty. I prayed no one would pull out in front of me or a random baby stroller would somehow manage to blow into the street.

  A huge sigh of relief came from me when I finally saw the red taillights and the left turn signal go off. He turned into the Wonder Falls Animal Clinic. I brought Treacle here to Dr. Fields for his yearly boosters.

  “What in the world?” I muttered. This was an odd place to be speeding to. I let him pull into the parking lot, drove up another block, made a U-turn, and came back just in time to see the old Clare stomping up to the front door. He yanked it open and disappeared inside as I slowly pulled into the lot. There was an open parking spot next to the truck, but I didn’t think it wise to take such a bold risk. Instead, I found one at the corner of the lot, backed in, and waited.

  I shut the car off and felt the air inside start to get cold almost immediately. It was a chilly, overcast day, and when I took a deep breath of fresh air, I thought it smelled as if rain might be coming.

  Finally, after twenty minutes of waiting, I saw Otto Clare emerge with a scowl on his face. He had no animal with him, thank heavens. But I did see him stuff something into his pocket. Could there be animals at his farm? The idea broke my heart.

  I watched as Otto Clare peeled out of the parking lot, heading in the direction of town. Within seconds, he was completely out of view.

  I got out of my car and, rubbing my cold hands together, made my way to the entrance of the vet’s office. The warm office and the sound of a couple of barking dogs soothed my nerves.

  The receptionist, Bunny McFadden, came waddling up from the back of the office.

  “Hey, Cath.” She waved a pleasant hello. Her figure was full and mostly bosom that supported her double chin. She always wore one of those cute nurses’ tops with puppies or kitties or hearts or “I HEART my vet” on them. I had been seeing her behind the front desk for over five years now. “Is Treacle all right?”

  “Hi, Bunny. Yes, he’s fine. Out snooping around the neighborhood like usual.”

  “He’s up to date on everything, isn’t he?” She quickly plopped down in her receptionist chair and rolled herself backward to the seven-drawer file cabinet behind her. Before I could say anything, she had his file in her hand. “Looks like he’ll need a checkup in another two months. I’ll make sure to send you a reminder. Wonder Falls has got bats, and they carry rabies.”

  She winked at me, wrinkling up her already pug-like nose and waving a manicured hand in my direction.

  “That would be great.”

  “Other than that, he’s good?” She quickly typed something into her computer and stuck the file in a bin marked To Be Filed.

  “Yeah. Just out prowling during the day but indoors most nights.”

  “Don’t you wish you knew what they were up to all day long? If only they could talk.” Bunny smiled cutely again.

  I just smiled back.

  “So what can I do for you?” She finally scooted her chair underneath her desk and looked up at me.

  “That man that just came in here. Can I ask what he wanted?”

  “What man?”

  “The man who just came in. His last name is Clare.” I leaned against the counter, shifting from my right leg to my left. I watched as Bunny shook her head.

  “No one came in here.” She was so sure.

  Just then, Dr. Fields came down the hallway, holding a folder underneath his arm as he wrapped his left index finger with a Band-Aid.

  “Hello, Cath,” he said, looking up then down at his finger then up at me again. He was a pleasant older man with a stocky build and a contagious smile. “Hamsters aren’t always as nice as they pretend to be. Treacle okay?”

  “Yeah.” I scratched my head. “I just saw a neighbor of mine come in and then leave right away, and I was just wondering what he was in for.” I heard the words, and they sounded normal to me, but the look on Dr. Fields’s face as well as Bunny’s face made me feel as if I’d just asked to do a tap dance with my pet potato.

  “He was in this morning?” the doctor asked.

  “Just now.”

  “You are the only one who has come in all morning, Cath.” Dr. Fields smiled politely.

  There was no point in arguing. I knew what I saw, but here were two people who had no dog in the race, no pun intended, who were both telling me they had seen no one come in this morning. No one but me.

  “I’m sorry. I must have been seeing things,” I joked nervously. “I could have sworn I saw his truck pull in, but maybe I didn’t,” I lied. I knew what I had seen, and Otto Clare had stomped into the vet’s clinic then, twenty minutes later, stomped out. Twenty minutes! “You know, while I’m here, I may as well schedule Treacle’s next appointment since he’s due.”

  I took the little card from Bunny that read “No Bones About It! It’s time for your checkup” with a picture of a mutt and a calico nuzzling each other on it.

  “We’ll see you in two months,” Bunny chimed, smiling happily.

  “Yeah, great. Thanks, guys, and have a great day.”

  As I was walking out of the office, I rolled my eyes up and saw it. There it was, just staring at me. A security camera. Now it was my turn to smile.

  Trespassing on Otto’s land could be brushed off as a mistake, even with a police officer as my accomplice. But breaking and entering was something different altogether. I wouldn’t be telling Tom about this.

  Atropa Belladonna

  Calmly, I got in my car and drove home, changed into my new sweater, with my brooch and a pair of skinny black jeans that looked better with the loose baggy sweater than with anything else. A little red lipstick was added as a final touch, and I headed over to the café for my shift.

  Now, if I didn’t feel good when I put on my new duds, I certainly did when I stepped into the café, only to see Darla Castellan. The woman was sitting by herself, typing on her cell phone with her long, manicured fingers, making an annoying click-click-click as she messaged and/or tweeted or whatever she was doing. If I had to guess, I would have said it was probably an arsenal of selfies.

  “My gosh, Cath.” Bea clapped her hands together and bounced on her heels. “You look beautiful.”

  “Where did you get that beautiful brooch?” Aunt Astrid asked, standing from her favorite seat, where she was organizing some of the morning receipts. I told her and Bea the whole story about Tom giving it to me yesterday and that I didn’t want to wear it until I found a nice sweater to wear it with. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Darla leaning closer to hear what I was saying. She thought she was so sly.

  “It looks like they were made to go together,” my aunt gushed. “I hope you’ll let me borrow that sometime. I know just the hat it would look perfect on.”

  I smiled but then froze.

  “You don’t mean that blue turban, do you?” Bea spoke before I could. My aunt sometimes went a little overboard with her adventures in accessories. The blue turban she had was one of those “DON’Ts” you see in magazines all the time.

  “Mom, you look like Johnny Carson when you wear that thing.”

  “You’re crazy,” my aunt snapped. “I look like an exotic fortune teller from Transylvania.”

  “Maybe from Portage County across the river,” I teased. Portage County was a sleepy Mayberry kind of town where the most exciting thing in the past year was the induction of a five-hundred-pound sow in the Guinness Book of World Records for most piglets born. Twenty-four.

  “Oh, you think you’re so smart.” My aunt laughed.

  As I laughed, I went behind the counter, grabbed my apron and a slice of pumpkin pie, and took a big bite before telling Bea and Aunt Astrid I had something new to share with them.

  “It’s interesting you say that, because I spent the night looking through Mom’s Libr
e Monstrum, and I narrowed it down to two possible suspects.” Bea pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. There were notes in her impeccable script written on it. “It could be a tertius harpy.”

  “Tertius harpy!” I snapped my fingers. “Why didn’t I think of that? What is it?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Bea teased, knowing full well I had no idea what she was referring to. “Tertius harpies are creatures that tag along with other, more dominant entities and wreak their havoc on the leftovers. They aren’t a huge threat, nor are they particularly bright. But they can cause extreme terror to anyone unfamiliar with or unwilling to believe in the paranormal. They can also cause physical problems like nausea, headache, loss of appetite, and irritable bowel syndrome. If not treated, the symptoms will usually go away on their own.”

  “So if that was just a toady to a greater entity…what is the greater entity?” I asked while grabbing two oatmeal raisin cookies from the cookie container behind the counter.

  “I’m not so sure this was a toady.” Bea looked down at her notes. “Based on your description, this one fit the bill. I thought if the land we are talking about isn’t really there but is a psychic illusion or perhaps a little plot from another dimension, this tertius harpy may just be along for the ride and roams around the small bit of property, scaring anyone who comes by. That is what I was hoping.”

  “But?” Aunt Astrid took a step closer.

  “But then I came across the Rotmirage.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I rolled my eyes.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  “Then you’ll hate this.” Bea leaned in closer to me as Aunt Astrid took a seat on the stool across from us and rested her chin in her palm as she listened. “A Rotmirage is a low-level demon. It can’t come to this dimension by itself. It has to be summoned. Once it is summoned, it remains with whoever called it, doing their bidding.”

  “Demons are greedy things,” Aunt Astrid said. “It wouldn’t do this for free. What does it get in return?”

  “That depends on who summoned it.” Bea folded up her notes and put them back in her pocket. “From what I read, it will accept sanity, physical health, eyesight, certain emotions, animal essence, or the family members of the summoner as payment. It will take a little at a time so the unfortunate soul who called this thing will barely notice any payment has been deducted. They have to squint to read the paper, so what. They keep forgetting what they started to do, no big deal. But as they get what they are asking for, they become more and more addicted to the demon. They don’t want to give up what they’ve got. So they let it sink its talons in further and further until there is no getting out of this thing’s grip.”

  “Do you think the Clares summoned this thing?” I asked, feeling my blood pressure rise at the thought of them using animals to fuel some demon that shouldn’t even be here.

  “Yes. The worst part is they think they control it.” Bea took a deep breath. “It is controlling them. Cath, I don’t know what would have happened had you not cast that protection spell. This is a dirty, low-down demon. The Clares are not much better.”

  “That would explain the suicides at the bridge. The victims may not have been suicidal at all when they walked into the woods.” Aunt Astrid kneaded a paper napkin in her hand. I handed her a cookie, which she accepted and bit into. “But if the Clares requested help from the Rotmirage, it would take its payment from any unsuspecting person within its property line.”

  “Jeez. It sounds like you and I narrowly escaped the Clare farm the other day,” I said to my aunt, who agreed with a mouth full of cookie.

  It seemed as good a time as any, so I told the story of what happened earlier, from my fear on the expressway of being run down by Otto Clare all the way until I walked out of the Wonder Falls Animal Clinic after being told no such man had entered or exited the building.

  “I’m telling you, as sure as I’m standing here, I saw that fellow go in the vet’s office and come out twenty minutes later, stuffing something into his pocket.” I picked up the wedge of pie and took a giant bite, wiping the crumbs and half my lipstick off. “What do you guys think? Are you up for an adventure?”

  It didn’t take much coercing.

  After closing the café for the night, we went down in the bunker and discussed our options.

  “We might just have to break in.” I shrugged as if this were no big deal. “Aunt Astrid, if you could put a time-stop spell on the building, we could go in and out without tripping the alarm. It wouldn’t go off until Bunny and the doc arrived there in the morning.”

  “You’re such a rebel,” Bea said admiringly.

  “We don’t want to do that.” Aunt Astrid pursed her lips. “We go in without disturbing anything, or we don’t go. Now, what I was thinking will require a bit of effort on your parts and may make you very sick for the next couple of days.”

  “Burnout or another kind of sick?”

  “Another kind of sick,” she stated seriously and proceeded to tell us her plan.

  By the time the sun had set, we were sure the animal clinic was closed. The autumn air was turning colder and colder over the past few days, and tonight, I was glad I brought mittens and a scarf, even if they had green-and-yellow stripes and there were tassels on the ends of both. The biggest decision we had to make was who was going to drive, and as usual, it turned out to be me because I drive better than Bea.

  “Oh, you do not,” she whined from the backseat.

  “I do so. You drive like an old lady.”

  “Okay, Mario Andretti. If I were you, I’d pull this bucket of bolts around the back so any traffic going by won’t notice us.”

  “Good call.” I turned down the side street, and even though there wasn’t an official road behind the veterinary office, there was a large dirt patch that was hard and hidden by a couple of bushes.

  There was a wire fence at the back of the clinic where an auto dealership had taken up a good bit of land for rows and rows of good deals on new and used cars.

  “Maybe I should park down there?” I pointed. “No one would notice another car.”

  “No, but they might notice a clunker next to all those shiny deals. It would stick out more than it does here,” Bea thought out loud. She did have a point.

  Finally, we all looked at each other and decided to get started.

  First we checked to make sure there were no lights on other than the emergency lights on the inside. No one was burning the midnight oil.

  “Okay. It looks deserted. I’m ready. You ready?” I looked at Bea.

  “I’m ready. Mom?”

  Aunt Astrid stood next to the rear exit door. Planting her feet firmly about a foot apart, she withdrew from her pocket three berries of atropa belladonna. They were poisonous.

  “You girls understand what to do?” she asked us for the sixth time since we left the café.

  We both nodded. Although it was my nature to make sarcastic and inappropriate remarks, I followed my well-mannered cousin’s lead and kept my mouth shut.

  “Put the berry under your tongue.” She handed one to Bea and one to me. “Join hands.” I took hold of Bea’s hand with one hand and Aunt Astrid’s with the other.

  “Don’t let go until I say so.”

  My aunt began her incantation. I hadn’t heard this one before. The words were unfamiliar, and I wasn’t even sure if she was speaking English. They began to blend together in a muffled way, as if I were listening to a couple arguing in the room next door.

  The next thing to go was my vision. It didn’t go exactly, but things began to slow down and speed up. We were treading as if we were underwater, yet the trees and bushes were furiously whipping around us as though a tornado had touched down.

  Before I could ask anything, I felt my aunt’s grip tighten around my hand as she pulled Bea and me toward the door. Closer and closer we came to it, until I blinked and my aunt was gone except for her arms. They were sticking
out of the metal exit door, holding on to Bea and me. I tightened my grip, and I felt her pull again and watched as my hands disappeared into the door. I couldn’t see them, and I could only feel the strange sensation of cold metal against my skin, around my skin, even inside my skin.

  I looked at Bea, whose eyes were wide, showing how scared she was. I gripped her hand tighter and squeezed my eyes shut as one final yank pulled us through. It was like doing a belly flop. A hard yet pliable surface hit me, then I passed into it, feeling it all around me. My breath was held tightly in my chest. I didn’t dare open my eyes. Had I been with anyone else, I would have freaked out and screamed, letting the metal or wood or whatever it was seep into my mouth and fill my eyes. But I concentrated on the hands I was holding. I had grown up holding these hands. I could tell Bea’s hands from a million others. They were soft yet firm. Like how I’d assume an artist’s hands would feel from molding clay or maneuvering a paintbrush. Aunt Astrid’s were bonier. They were hard from mixing potions and burning sage and handling heavy books.

  But as soon as I calmed down, a fresh wave of fear washed over me until I heard her.

  “You’re okay, Cath. Open your eyes.”

  It couldn’t be.

  “Mom?” I cried out, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid of where I had passed into.

  “It’s your aunt, honey. Open your eyes. You’re okay.”

  My eyes fluttered open, and I realized I was flat on my back inside a dark room. Bea was to my left, holding a small trash can up to her face as she vomited. I didn’t feel nauseous. But my head was pounding to beat the band.

  “Did we just pass through that door?”

  “Yes.” Aunt Astrid helped me sit up, and my head swam. She put her hand underneath my chin and ordered me to spit. I spit out the berry. It left a bitter taste in my mouth. “Bea, honey? You all right?”

  “Right as rain, Mom.” She hurled pitifully. “Just need a minute.”

  I rubbed my head.

  “I don’t need to know how you did that,” I grumbled. “I don’t ever want to do it again.”