The Death Catchers

by Jennifer Anne Kogler

  I pulled, pulled, pulled. Finally, I swung my legs up over the ledge. I grabbed the wood board partially covering the window and tugged on it. It didn’t take much force to yank it completely off.

  “Watch out!” I shouted at Bizzy, who was directly below the window. She wheeled over a couple of soda cans as the board clanged to the ground on her left.

  I crouched on the ledge, my body half-in and half-out of the cannery. I caught a whiff of the air—it smelled a little like a porta potty.

  “What do you see?” Bizzy yelled.

  The inside of the cannery looked like a large, empty warehouse, about the size of a baseball field. Slices of white light beamed in from cracks in the bricks. A large gaping hole in the ceiling provided most of the light. Cobwebs as thick as phone wires hung from the rafters. In one corner, there was a hulking metal machine that had a huge cylinder in the middle and large rusted metal arms jutting out. Underneath it, there was a grate that was emitting sewerlike fumes. I moved quickly to cover my nose.

  I jumped down, landing on a pile of empty cans and beer bottles. Cigarette butts littered the floor. My eyes were immediately drawn to a small structure in the far corner. To the left of it was a manhole that was uncovered. I peered down into the hole, but couldn’t see where it ended.

  “Anythin’ of interest?” Bizzy shouted from outside.

  “It looks like there’s a tunnel or something that leads down beneath the cannery.”

  “Don’t go in there!”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” I said.

  “It’s probably just a basement or somethin’. Anythin’ else?”

  “Maybe,” I said, creeping toward the corner, trying to avoid stepping on a nail or glass from a broken bottle.

  Bizzy’s voice drifted into the vacant building and echoed off the walls.

  “Pay particular attention to any signs a’ life. Or anythin’ that might cause an explosion in the future—candles, exposed pipes, remnants of homemade fire.”

  The sound of an aluminum can banging on a brick wall stopped me dead in my tracks. A small squirrel squeaked and darted across the warehouse floor, toward a dark hallway on one side. I took a deep breath.

  When I was within twenty feet of the structure I’d spotted, I could see it was a tent made from wood beams with blankets draped over them. It looked like the blanket forts I made in my bedroom when I was little, with a baseball bat acting as the tent pole. I would crawl in and pretend I was no longer in my bedroom, but braving the elements in some faraway forest.

  There were a couple of empty pizza boxes and some old water-damaged Hot Wheels magazines strewn around the makeshift tent. Pulling back the blanket flap, I found more blankets and a flashlight. I clicked it on and off. It didn’t work.

  Hesitating for a moment, I grabbed one of the magazines, shoving it under my arm. I had no idea what good it might do, but Bizzy had said any detail could be important.

  An animal had chewed the edges of the blankets, and the inside of the tent smelled faintly of mildew. The cannery was probably a haven for rats and all sorts of other vermin.

  Still, there were no candles or any dead-giveaway clues (personally, I was hoping I’d find a piece of paper with the name of the person who’d stayed there written on it). It was hard to tell if someone had been there yesterday or six months ago.

  According to the specter, the cannery was supposed to be Drake’s final resting place. My imagination began to work in fast-forward as bits and pieces of scenes flashed in front of my eyes: Drake in the tent. A red-orange explosion. Drake’s yells echoing off the burning walls. A dark figure running away from the cannery. Billows of smoke. The wail of sirens. Fire trucks and hoses of water. Drake, motionless, his face covered with soot. Drake being carried out on a stretcher in a black body bag.

  Sadness overcame me. I retreated from the tent, shuddering, and made my way toward the machine on the opposite side of the cannery.

  “What else do you see?” Bizzy’s voice echoed.

  “There are some blankets and a flashlight in one corner—someone stayed here, but it looks like it was a couple of months ago,” I said. It was impossible to determine the function of the machine, but there were all kinds of grooves and perforations in the arms. From a distance, it looked like a metallic monster. The shafts of light cast menacing shadows on the machine itself. On one side there was a hallway. I poked my head into it, as glass crunched under my feet. With no visible windows or cracks, the corridor was pitch-black.

  “There’s a hallway,” I said, my voice echoing, “but it’s completely dark.”

  “I think we got enough of an idea,” Bizzy said. “Come on out!”

  I used a rickety crate to hop back onto the ledge of the window and swing my legs to the outside. I hung on the ledge as if I was about to perform a high-bar gymnastics routine, then let go and landed in the weeds with a thud.

  “We may have to work a teensy bit on your breakin’ and enterin’ skills, but not bad for your first time,” Bizzy said, extending her arm.

  “I took this from the tent. I thought we might be able to use it to figure out who stayed here,” I said, thrusting the issue of Hot Wheels into my grandma’s hands.

  Bizzy looked at it for a moment and shoved it in the pouch of her wheelchair. “Interesting. We best get on outta here before someone sees us snoopin’,” she said, glancing around.

  I hooked Bizzy’s wheelchair to my bike once more. This time, already exhausted from my journey into the cannery, I did not look forward to the climb from Ocean Avenue to Beside the Point. We crossed from Mission Avenue to Ocean and I rode up onto the sidewalk as I heard the sound of a car approaching.

  Turning to look, I saw the flashing red lights of a Crabapple patrol car. My head suddenly felt exposed, as I remembered that I was not wearing a helmet.

  The sirens flashed as the horn sounded. I heard “Stop your vehicle” echo from a bullhorn. I hit the bicycle brakes and Bizzy and I jolted to an abrupt halt. Afraid to look back, I heard a car door open and close.

  We were completely busted.

  Brainstorming

  “Let me do the talkin’,” Bizzy said softly.

  I looked up. Sheriff Schmidt was in front of us, whistling while skeptically shaking his head. He wore his cowboy hat, green and yellow uniform, and boots. This time, he was also wearing sunglasses. He smirked.

  “Well, ladies,” he said, taking his time as he examined our bike-wheelchair contraption, “this is a first.”

  “You ain’t never seen a girl and her grandmamma out for a bicycle ride?” Bizzy snarled.

  “Not when the girl in question is towing her grandmother like a rickshaw driver,” Sheriff Schmidt said, raising his voice to match Bizzy’s.

  “Dixie’s in the shop, Sheriff. What else am I s’posed to do?”

  “Where were you two coming from?” the sheriff asked, looking directly at me.

  “I convinced Lizzy to take me out for a spin,” Bizzy said, not altering her tone one bit.

  “That’s funny … because I’ve been tailing you two since you left the cannery. Now why would a girl and her elderly grandma be at a place like that, do ya think?” Sheriff Schmidt said, mocking Bizzy’s accent.

  “I don’t have to put up with your ageist slurs. The cannery’s a Crabapple historical landmark. Sure, we stopped there. S’pose you never seen a grandma explainin’ town history to her granddaughter, neither?”

  Sheriff Schmidt squinted at Bizzy as he removed his hat.

  “You haven’t taken anything from the premises?”

  “Stealin’? From the cannery? Are you plain outta your mind, Sheriff? What would we be stealin’ from there?”

  “These are routine questions,” Sheriff Schmidt said defensively.

  “Aren’t routine questions usually tied to reality?”

  That’s when Sheriff Schmidt got really furious. His left eyebrow crept clear up to the middle of his forehead. He leaned in closer. Then closer. He put his index finger i
nches from Bizzy’s face.

  “Listen, Beatrice. I could arrest you for trespassing if I wanted to. But how’s it gonna look if I lock up a recuperating old lady? I get it. You’re trying to incite me. But I’m not an idiot. People may think you’re harmless, but I know better. There have been several reports of strange noises coming from within the cannery and now I know it’s you,” he said, jabbing his finger in Bizzy’s face. Bizzy’s hard expression remained unchanged. “I’m not going to arrest you … THIS TIME. Instead I’m going to get back into my car and pretend I didn’t see you. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I suggest you not go anywhere near the cannery again. Are we clear?”

  The sheriff was nearly quaking with anger by the end of his speech. He lowered his hand and stared at Bizzy. Bizzy pursed her lips. Her jaw jutted out and for a moment I thought she might take a swing at the sheriff. Instead, she nodded her head once, slightly.

  Sheriff Schmidt put on his hat and stormed back to his squad car. When he’d cleared the area, I looked at Bizzy, expecting her to say something.

  “That man sure is unpleasant.” It was as if the whole incident amused her. “And I don’t think he’s playin’ with a full deck. He cudda dragged us down to the station on account a’ you not wearing a helmet and me endangerin’ you with this makeshift rickyshaw. But he couldn’t think a’ that. Had to make up some dang theory about us stealin’ from the cannery.”

  “But we did steal from the cannery …,” I said, waving the Hot Wheels magazine in front of us.

  “We only collected some trash. He was actin’ like it was somethin’ much bigger that he was concerned about. Tell you one thing, we know someone’s been hangin’ ’round the cannery.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You better step on it,” Bizzy said, making a mushlike movement with her hands. She gave me a smile that urged me on. I straightened up and pushed off the ground with my heels. Before long, we were chugging up the hill toward the house.

  When I got home, I ran upstairs, telling Bizzy I had to use the bathroom. My face was flushed from the strain of the bike ride home. Bizzy said she would wait for me downstairs—anxious to reveal the next step of her plan.

  To be completely honest, Mrs. Tweedy, I was concerned about Bizzy. At first, she’d wowed me with her supreme confidence in all things death-specter related, but I was visibly shaken after Sheriff Schmidt’s sidewalk warning.

  The sheriff had treated Bizzy as if she was a bad person—as if he was sure she was hiding something. Did he know something I didn’t?

  I turned on the faucet and splashed water on my face.

  My confusion morphed into anger at Sheriff Schmidt. He’d made me doubt Bizzy, but she was only trying to do what she could to stop Drake’s death. To accomplish that, I realized, she was going to need my help without me second-guessing her.

  I thundered down the stairs and hallway into Bizzy’s room. She was in her wheelchair with the Crabapple yearbook in her lap.

  “What I can’t figure,” Bizzy said, without looking up as she studied my notes in the back of the yearbook, “is what’s gonna be the cause of the cannery burnin’ up. Unless someone torches it on purpose.”

  “What do you mean?” I sunk down on Bizzy’s bed. For the first time since I’d entered her room, I faced the photo-covered wall opposite her bed.

  “Holy …,” I said, trailing off. The duct-taped wall of photos had been peeled away completely, resting in a roll in the corner. Behind the rolled-up mural of pictures and notes was an erasable white wall with Bizzy’s writing all over it. In the corner where the wall of photos had once begun, I noticed a strip of Velcro. It must have held the pictures in place and allowed Bizzy to roll them back whenever she pleased.

  “It ain’t permanent marker or anythin’—I just like to sketch out ideas and such,” Bizzy said matter-of-factly.

  “It’s a brainstorm,” I said, scanning a few of the interconnected phrases. In almost every language arts class, we’d had to brainstorm before we wrote. You called it prewriting, Mrs. Tweedy. No offense, but whatever it’s called, I don’t like it.

  This brainstorm was different.

  On one side, there was a numbered list printed in large purple letters with a box drawn around it:

  Accidental Causes of Death

  1. Motor vehicle crashes

  2. Falls

  3. Poisoning (solids/liquids)

  4. Drowning

  5. Fires and burns

  6. Suffocation

  7. Firearms

  8. Poisoning by gases

  9. Medical and surgical complications

  10. Misadventures and machinery

  Next to the numbered list, more malevolent causes of death had been scribbled in—like murder and various diseases.

  Bizzy saw me studying the list.

  “Helps me visualize so I don’t overlook anythin’,” Bizzy said. “Almost fifteen thousand people in the US die from accidental falls a year. Only thing that trumps it is, a’ course, auto accidents. A car’s nothin’ more than a two-ton killin’ machine.”

  Bewildered, I nodded my head.

  “You’d probably also be fascinated to know that plenty more people die after an earthquake due to structural uncertainties and explosions from gas leaks than from the quake itself.”

  I moved to the other side of the uncovered section of wall. It was blank except for two words and a few numbers written at the top in purple marker: “Jodi Sanchez” and yesterday’s date—the date I’d seen my first death-specter. There were dozens of purple smudges on that half of the wall, evidence of many names and facts that had been written and erased.

  “Be a doll and get a wet cloth to wipe the wall.”

  “When did you write Jodi up there?”

  “As soon as you had your first specter. In fact, I was staring at it when I realized you might try to look for her right then and there. When you weren’t in the livin’ room, I knew that’s where you’d gone. So I got there as fast as I could.”

  I had to hand it to Bizzy … her system may have seemed unorthodox, but her instincts were pretty impressive.

  She picked up a small red book from her lap and handed it to me. I opened it. All the pages were blank.

  “What’s this?”

  “A notebook. I want you to write down every single thing you learn about Drake. We’ll chart everythin’ here eventually.” She handed me a marker.

  I stood on my tiptoes and wrote Drake’s name on the top of the wall, then a dash, then December 15. I stepped back and Bizzy grabbed the marker from my hand and wheeled herself to the wall. About halfway up, she wrote “The Cannery” in large letters and “Who’s living there?” beneath it. The marker squeaked as she moved it against the wall. “Connection to Drake?” she wrote, then wheeled backward so that she was next to me.

  We both stared at the wall. I turned to Bizzy, who looked lost in her own thoughts.

  “Hmmm,” she said aloud.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  “I’m thinkin’ we need a whole lot of information if we’re gonna solve this before our deadline,” she said. Her choice of words forced me to think about what would happen if we failed—if Drake actually, well … if he actually ended up all alone, in that warehouse, crying out for help.

  “Sweet Pea, are you cryin’?”

  I put my open palms over my face. I could feel the hot tears streaming from my eyes. I was embarrassed, but once the tears started falling, I was incapable of stopping them. I was getting to know Drake. Drake was nice. As far as I could tell, he was perfect. I thought about how close Jodi had come to fulfilling the death-specter. It scared the living daylights out of me. Drake didn’t deserve what fate had planned for him.

  “What is it?” Bizzy questioned, pushing her chair back so that she could get a better look at me.

  “What if all this doesn’t work?” I asked.

  “All what doesn’t work?”

  “What if we fail and Drake
dies?”

  “Come now! What’s brought all this on? We ain’t gonna fail!”

  “It seems like all Emily Dickinson writes about is dying … she was obsessed with it and sad and it’s probably because once she found out about us, she couldn’t make sense of any of it or get over how quickly a life can disappear.”

  Even now, I don’t know what possessed me to blurt out my theories about the cause of Emily Dickinson’s depression. But ever since I’d bought the volume of her poems at Mickey’s bookstore, I’d become fixated on her, staying up late into the night reading her poems. I think I was secretly hoping that I’d find a way to escape my fate as a Death Catcher. Instead, I found grim depictions like “Because I could not stop for Death, / He kindly stopped for me; / The carriage held but just ourselves / And Immortality.” The idea of riding anywhere in a carriage with death made me want to vomit.

  “You just ain’t been readin’ the right ones of Emily’s poems,” Bizzy said, interrupting my thoughts. “If I can stop one heart from breakin’, / I shall not live in vain; / If I can ease one life the achin’, / Or cool one pain, / Or help one fainting robin / Unto his nest again, / I shall not live in vain.”

  “You’ve read Emily Dickinson?”

  “A’ course I have, Sweet Pea. Your great-great-great-grandmother saved her life and Emily, who was smart as a whip, caught wind of our talents. Emily became your great-great-great-grandmother’s confidante. And in return, Emily was like our own poet laureate—I think it changed the way she thought ’bout the world. Since then, every Death Catcher has known ’bout Emily. I had to find out for myself what all the fuss was over.”

  I can’t exactly explain it, but the revelation made me feel closer to Bizzy. She, too, had also looked up Emily Dickinson, hoping to unlock some of the mysteries of the Death Catchers.