by Harper Lin
“Is that so?” I said, trying not to tip off Blake as to what I was thinking of doing there.
“Yup. One stray spark or lightning strike here, and almost one hundred years of documented history would be gone with the wind. No one would even know what they lost.”
“Why don’t they put everything in a computer? It takes no time at all to scan these kinds of things,” Min said, obviously adding it to the growing list of possibilities in his head.
“Well, I think you’ll have to talk to Miss Molitor about that.” Riley gave us all a wink and opened an old wooden door that had Administration stenciled in black letters across the frosted glass.
Inside, four gray-haired old women looked up from their desks as if they hadn’t seen anyone under the age of sixty… ever.
“Miss Molitor’s office is back there,” Riley said, pointing toward the back of the room. “Good morning, ladies.”
They all gave him a variety of greetings from spunky to grumbly. Min took the bull by the horns and strolled confidently to the back of the room and rapped firmly on the door Riley had indicated. I followed Min as Blake left with Mr. Riley. I hoped Blake wouldn’t go on snooping. I wanted to find out what was going on with the death and desecration as much as he did, but a selfish part of me wanted to solve the case without anyone else’s help. If Blake had the same idea to snoop in the records, he might find the Thompson records before me. But he’d have to do it the old-fashioned way. If I got my chance, a little witchcraft might help the medicine go down.
“Come!” was the greeting that came from behind the door.
Min pulled the door open and allowed me to enter first. Miss Molitor was a tiny woman who looked over a hundred. Her hair was permed into tight little gray curls. She wore glasses with decorative gold frames and garish pink lipstick that I’d bet was super popular in the fifties, when she was a newlywed or just started working outside the home or something.
Min began speaking instantly and didn’t stop until Madeline Molitor was smiling and patting his hand as she shared the excitement of his plans to help preserve this amazing building. Under any other circumstances, I would have been Min’s cheerleader, but I was distracted by the idea that I could very well be sitting just a couple of feet from the documents that might crack the case wide open. So I showed my support another way, and that was by asking a question.
“As things stand now, Miss Molitor, are people able to come and review these records? Say, if they were writing a report or tracing a family tree?”
“Not likely. The majority of the documents are in rows and rows of metal filing cabinets in the basement. We only manage material from the last three years on the main floor.”
She barely looked at me as she spoke. I could tell she wasn’t very interested in what I was asking. She was much more interested in dealing with Min. Obviously she was from that older generation of women who, if given the choice, preferred to talk business with the man. Well, he was the one with the money, and I was the one trying to snoop, and since I wasn’t going to get very far with Miss Molitor, I began searching for plan B. I found it almost instantly.
Blake came back with Riley. The two of them looked as though they’d had a nice long talk together. From his expression, I was pretty sure Blake didn’t have the same idea of riffling through the records as I did. I let out a sigh over that.
“Well, I’m really grateful for your time, Miss Molitor,” Min said.
“Please, call me Madeline. I hope to hear from you again soon, Mr. Parks. You have some wonderful ideas. I’m not promising anything, but let’s talk again soon,” the old woman said.
Hatching a Plan
Back at the Brew-Ha-Ha, I enjoyed an iced green tea and a turkey sandwich that Bea threw together for me. I told her how we discovered the orphanage and how we paid it a little visit.
“So you spent the morning with Blake.”
I nearly choked. “Gosh, Bea! It wasn’t like that. I didn’t even want him to, but he insisted on tagging along.” I spoke with my mouth full of food, totally ignoring any etiquette in order to set the record straight. “Just because you and Jake are back being all lovey-dovey doesn’t mean the rest of us are interested in catching that bug.”
Bea smiled as a guilty blush rose to her cheeks. I was happy for her. This was how things should be.
“Hey, since you guys are all back on better footing, I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything, sister. You know that.”
I shrugged my shoulders up to my ears and squinted. “Well, maybe you should hear what it is first.”
Bea looked at me with her right eyebrow arching high up on her forehead while she crossed her arms. Just then, Aunt Astrid entered from the back kitchen.
“Aunt Astrid, I’ll need you too.”
She looked a little startled as if she had been deep in thought. We made our way to the cellar to have a private conversation, and I revealed my genius idea.
“You’re talking about breaking and entering,” Bea said calmly. “I don’t know how Jake would be able to help us with that.”
“Actually, it would just be entering. I noticed a window on the first floor without a mesh screen or bars, and as luck would have it, the lock wasn’t in place. All we’d need to do is get up to it and push,” I said proudly, as if I had just recited the capitals of every state. But the looks I got from Bea and Aunt Astrid made it seem as if I had just recited the filthiest limerick ever penned.
“And where is this place located?” Aunt Astrid asked with slow, deliberate words.
I gave the address, and both women threw up their arms.
“Are you kidding?” and “You’ve lost your mind” came out of their mouths at the same time.
“That part of town is a demilitarized zone. Are you serious? Jake has told me about what kinds of things the beat cops over there have had to deal with. To say it isn’t safe is an understatement.” Bea put her hands on her hips. “I can’t tell him anything about this. He’d hit the roof.”
“So you’re in?” I said, grinning slyly.
“I don’t know. Mom?”
Aunt Astrid stared into space for a moment. Then, looking at me with twinkling eyes, she said, “Unfortunately, Cath is right to think we might find the answer there. And even if Blake had put two and two together and seen the importance of those records, he would get them by the book, and that could take days, if not weeks. Who else will get hurt in that amount of time?” She pulled the hem of her dress up as she ascended the cellar stairs back into the Brew-Ha-Ha. “Bea, you’ll stay home. Cath and I will go.”
“Wait. What?” Bea looked a little let down.
Aunt Astrid stopped climbing. “With you and Jake just getting things back on track, you don’t need to steer yourself off a cliff by breaking the law with us. Besides, we’ll need a connection inside the WFPD if we get pinched.”
“You just used the word ‘pinched’ like the short guy in that one mob movie,” I said, looking Aunt Astrid up and down.
“Be at my house at eleven thirty. We’ll leave at midnight,” she said and disappeared up the stairs.
Bea took my hand and looked at me sternly. “Be careful. And if Jake finds out… I’ll deny I knew anything about it.”
I chuckled a little as I squeezed her hand. But inside, my nerves were full of electricity.
* * *
That night, before I left to pick up Aunt Astrid, I had a long talk with Treacle. Actually, Treacle had a long talk with me. It seemed word got around in the feline world, just as it did in the human world.
“That just isn’t a safe place for people to go,” he said.
“I saw that. And I saw what kind of strays you’re dealing with. That doesn’t make me very happy either,” I replied.
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and he sat with his head and neck stretched up tall and his tail whipping back and forth. “It isn’t just that. Those places are everywhere. They have a sickness. Like a rabies. And sometimes you can catch
something.”
“We aren’t going to move there,” I reassured him. “We’re going to get into that building and research the records then hurry up and come home. That’s all.”
The only thing on Treacle that moved was his tail. He was not happy. Finally he stood, stretched, and trotted off toward the open bedroom window. Hopping up on the sill, he turned and looked at me. “Be careful.”
“Yes, you too. Come back home tomorrow, and we’ll have breakfast. Smoked salmon?”
He licked his whiskers but said nothing and was again out into the darkness. I looked at the clock and realized it was time to go. Aunt Astrid would be waiting.
Breaking and Entering
The idea of breaking into a government building and rummaging through some records had been enough to keep me flighty and distracted all day, but when I pulled up to the house, Astrid was asleep on her front porch swing, a pink, floral decorative pillow snugly wrapped in her arms. Waking her up was like poking a grizzly bear with a stick.
“Come on,” I whispered, hoping no insomnia sufferer was watching us. “We’ve got to get moving.”
Finally, after she gave some low grumbles and growls, her eyes flickered open and she smiled. “What are we waiting for?” She walked briskly down the front porch steps to my car and got in.
I hadn’t seen her that excited and animated in quite some time.
We drove to the orphanage in relative silence. I knew Aunt Astrid was mumbling a protection spell over us as we drove, and one of the perks was that every light turned green in our favor. But as the neighborhood began to turn, the sad, frumpy place I had seen in the morning transformed into a sinister maze of streets with jagged shadows and unseen eyes from pitch-black windows.
“Are you all right to do this?” I asked.
“Never better,” she said, smiling.
“This… I don’t get… is this something on your bucket list or something?” I asked. My head went back and forth between the road and Aunt Astrid. “To break a major law, commit a halfway serious offense before you pass into the great beyond? Because I’m starting to think you’re enjoying this a little too much. Usually I’m the one taking unnecessary chances.”
“I can’t help it,” Astrid said. “I find it exhilarating.”
She laughed, and I shook my head. We drove for just a little longer until we came up to Cline Street.
“Well, my stomach is in knots, so let’s get this over with. That’s the building just up ahead. I think we should park a little bit away from the building, but that means if we get into any trouble, we’ll have to run.”
Suddenly, Aunt Astrid’s face became serious. “There’s a protection spell already on that building.” She spoke in a quiet voice as if she didn’t want the building to hear her. “And it isn’t a friendly one.”
I stopped the car about a block away and turned off the ignition. My chest got a lot tighter. Maybe I should have told Blake my idea and waited the couple of weeks for a warrant. “Can we get through it?”
“Yes. It’s been there for a while and is pretty thin and worn. But be prepared for a little nausea. It isn’t a white protection spell.”
Goose bumps rose on my arms, and I shivered. We got out of the car and looked around suspiciously. Cat burglars we were not. Laurel and Hardy… well, maybe.
“The open window is on the southwest side of the building,” I whispered. “Just around that corner.”
As soon as we set foot on the property line, I felt it, a shift in the air that made it smell a little like metal. We stuck to the shadows as we inched our way around the building.
“I didn’t notice this during the day,” I whispered.
“You wouldn’t have. It is a nocturnal spell designed to protect…”
“The building?” I asked nervously.
“The contents of the building.”
“So you think the records might have more information than we first thought?”
“I’m not sure it’s protecting the records at all.”
I swallowed hard. Finally, I saw the right window. With just a little elbow grease, it slid right up. Cigarette butts littered the sill and the ground outside the window. Someone was obviously too set in their ways to adhere to the strict no-smoking policies implemented in every government building.
I gave Aunt Astrid a boost, and she shimmied into the open window with such grace that if I didn’t know her, I would have thought she had been doing it her whole life. She helped pull me up.
As I had predicted, the office was creepy and scary in the darkness. It was just an office with desks and files and not a whole lot more, yet I got the feeling that weird things roamed the halls at night.
“Where are the records?” she asked.
“Miss Molitor said they were in the basement.”
“Let’s go.” Aunt Astrid pulled a small LED flashlight from her pocket. It cut through the darkness and illuminated millions of little dust particles swirling in the air.
We exited the office and tiptoed down the hallway, checking each door until we found one at the very end of the corridor that read STAIRS. With a deep breath, I pulled the door open. It squeaked terribly, echoing throughout the building.
“Hasn’t been opened in a while, I guess,” I said, trying to calm my nerves.
Aunt Astrid gasped. Her flashlight shined on nothing other than stairs, but she obviously felt something.
“Let’s hurry,” she said, making her way down the stairs one step at a time, carefully holding on to the railing.
At the bottom, there were two more doors. One read Boiler Room. The other said nothing. We entered the nameless door.
I barely noticed Aunt Astrid had been mumbling almost the entire time we came down the stairs. Finally I looked at her face in the eerie glow of the flashlight and saw her sorting through the layers of the past to hopefully zero in on what we were looking for.
“There.” She pointed at an olive green filing cabinet with at least an inch of dust on top of it.
I walked up to it and pointed at the top drawer. She shook her head. The second drawer was also a no. Finally, Aunt Astrid indicated the bottom drawer. I sat on the dirty floor, yanked open the drawer with a metallic clink, clank zzshronk.
There it was. The file stood out as if it had been waiting for us to find it.
Thompson Family: 1808 – 2009
The file was thick with birth certificates and death certificates for dozens of obscure branches stretching out from their family tree. Names that were familiar in town but faces I just couldn’t remember. One thing jumped out at me so suddenly, I felt as if I had been slapped.
“We have to get going,” Aunt Astrid hissed urgently.
“I don’t believe this.” My mind couldn’t focus. I was shaking and felt a chill run up my spine.
“Cath!” Her voice sounded scared. “We’ve got to go! Now!”
“Should I take the file?” I was tripping over my thoughts and didn’t know what to do. It was like one of those dreams where I was struggling to run but my legs just wouldn’t move.
“No! Put it back! Put everything back! We need to get out of this building now!”
Finally my head clicked, and I heard her loud and clear. Stuffing the folder back where it belonged, I shut the drawer and jumped to my feet. Just then, we froze. We heard noises. I quickly tiptoed next to my aunt and held her hand. We stood there for what felt like an eternity. I watched her face as she sorted through the dimensions of the future and past and everything else in between. Her grip became tighter until I wasn’t sure if it was our present where we were hearing noises or something in another dimension trying to bust its way through to this one. It seemed to be all around us and even, I shuddered to think it, inside us, echoing in our heads.
“Let’s go!” I pulled Aunt Astrid toward the stairs.
I thought I might have to help her get up the stairs, but to my surprise and relief, she shot up them like a bullet. We burst through the wooden door into the da
rk hallway and pressed our backs against the cold concrete wall. Both of us held our breath.
Something was pursuing us. Something big and diabolical was rattling the foundation of the building.
“It was down there with us,” Aunt Astrid said in a terrified whisper. “I think it’s coming up the stairs.”
Reluctantly, I pressed my ear against the wood door. As sure as the stars were in the sky that night, I heard the footsteps. I heard the breathing. I heard the growling.
This time it was Aunt Astrid who grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the office. Once inside it, we quickly shut the door and ran to the window that, thankfully, was still open.
While Aunt Astrid backed her way out onto the safety of the pavement, I felt my body shake with fear. This had to be how the men floating around the sunken USS Indianapolis felt while being rescued as sharks continued to attack them from below.
I wouldn’t turn around. I wouldn’t look at the office door for fear of what I might see. But I knew whatever it was had crawled up from the basement. It had moved up the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, and now it was making its way down the hall.
“Hurry,” I urged my aunt. “Please.”
She nodded and grunted as she swung her second leg over the sill and hopped down. Looking around quickly, she saw nothing and waved to me. “Come on, Cath. Hurry.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. But against my better judgment, against my gut instinct, against my own will, I turned and looked at the wooden door with Administration stenciled across it.
A ghoulish face, distorted by the glass, grinned a sadistic grin at me as its red eyes burned into mine.
I dove out the window, slamming it shut behind me, and onto the hard pavement, where I scraped up my palms and tore a nice size hole in my favorite black jeans.
“Are you all right?” Aunt Astrid asked as she yanked me to my feet and pulled me toward the car. Had I broken a leg, she would have continued to drag me away from that place, all the while soothing and encouraging as she was doing. “It’s okay. We’re all right now. The car is just up ahead. Come on, honey. Let’s keep going.”
