Unfamiliar Territory, page 10
We came to a halt outside the dilapidated barn. Pushing the odd garden design out of my mind, I turned my attention back to our host.
Taking a key out of his pocket, he unlocked the massive barn door and held it open for us. Grimm sauntered in first, looking relaxed but I could tell he was alert. Mr. Whitman gestured for me to enter. I scanned the area, knowing full well that he could easily lock us in the barn if he wanted to. But that was just how my mind worked. Cats tend to be suspicious in nature. Shaking off the trepidation, I walked inside the musty barn. It smelled of cow dung, mold, and old hay. I suppressed the urge to sneeze.
To my relief, the farmer did not lock us in but followed up the rear leaving the door wide open for a bit of fresh air. He walked over to the milking stall against one wall.
“This is where it happened,” he muttered. “One minute I was getting ready to milk Veronica, and then wham!” He mimed being hit on the back of the head. “I was out for a solid minute. When I come to, the weasel was running out the door. Almost missed him.”
“And he matched the descriptions of the other robberies?” I asked.
Whitman shrugged, and then nodded. “Black hair, like raven’s wings, was really all I could see. But the way he run, gangly-like, he was a youngster.”
“And Veronica is your cow?”
“No, she’s my wife.” Whitman deadpanned to me. He gave me a second of utter confusion, before adding, “Of course she’s my cow! What kind of dumb question is that?”
I ignored that jab. “Is your cow in the barn right now?” She might have been a witness to the scene, and I thought it would be helpful to talk to her.
Whitman stared at me with a quizzical frown forming on his otherwise inscrutable face. “No,” he said slowly, “she ain’t. She’s free roaming this time of day.”
I shrugged, trying not to look like I had a screw loose. “Just trying to get a picture formed, no worries.” Whitman just kept staring, making me a tad nervous.
Grimm also stared at me, but not in the crazy-person way. He really needed to talk, I could tell. I did some quick thinking. “Uh, thank you, Mr. Whitman, for your help. Might I have a moment to look around?”
He said nothing for a beat before shrugging again. “Not sure what else you’ll find. It’s been almost a week. But go for it. I’ll be on the porch. Don’t steal anything.” He turned and lumbered out.
The moment he was out of sight I ran over to a hay bale, hid behind it, and shimmered down. I ran back out to Grimm. “What did you find?” I asked him.
Grimm grimaced. “That human has problems.”
“What? The boy? How can you tell?”
“No, not the boy. The farmer. He smells like he’s two days away from dying.” Grimm half-sneezed to purge the scent from his nostrils.
Cats don’t naturally roll their eyes, but I’ve picked up a few human traits. “Focus!” I yelled. I sniffed the air, my curiosity piqued. While my feline nose was no slouch, I didn’t have Grimm’s gift for smells.
Grimm sniffed the air again. “I caught a scent the moment we got on the path to the barn. It’s stronger in here. Male, young, dirty, green.”
“Green?” I asked.
Grimm did the canine equivalent of a shrug. “Like earth, like living things. Fleurette smells green all the time too. Except when she’s just taken a shower. Then she smells of soap.”
“Okay, not important.” Time was getting short. “Can you track it?”
“Let me see.” Grimm lowered his head and made a beeline for the barn exit. As soon as he was outside, he yelled back, “I’ve got it! I think I can figure out which way he went!”
“Excellent!” I hastily transformed to human and followed Grimm out. He continued down the path but instead of going straight toward the farmhouse, he turned the corner of the mostly dead garden and made a beeline across an overgrown grassy field toward the road. Grasshoppers flew in a mass exodus from his path as he barreled through the yellow grass. He stopped at the road and yipped at me, the unusually high timbre of his bark a sign that the trail was still present. I nodded and made my way to the house again. Stopping short of the porch but within eyesight of Whitman, I did a courtesy head bob.
“Sir, thank you for your time. We are going to try the road for clues. Are there any other roads or stops in this region that we should investigate?”
Henry Whitman scowled and rubbed his scraggly chin in thought.
“If you noticed coming here, there’s a road that connects to this one. There’s an old abandoned school from Chargrove’s heyday out that way. It’s haunted to bits, though, so nobody in their right mind would go there.”
“Haunted?” I asked dubiously.
The old man nodded. “Oh, ‘bout fifty years ago when the prosperity dried up. Those rich folks still kept sending their kids there even as the town started to die. I was a youngster myself then, but my folks weren’t rich, so I stayed on the farm. But then the haunting started and let loose some nasty diseases. Kids and teachers alike started dying, as I recall.” He paused to scratch his grizzled chin again as he squinted at the horizon in thought. “The folks pulled the rest of the kids and everybody else left in a hurry. They didn’t even bother to remove the stuff from the school or lock the doors.”
“How sad,” I commented. Whitman glanced at me as if he had forgotten I was there.
“Sad, nothing,” he responded rather harshly. He gave a loud snort to dislodge something from his throat, then spat to the side away from me. “Somebody messed with things they shouldn’t have. This town’s had a death mark on it long before that. Those hoity-toity school people should have seen the signs sooner.”
He paused again, pursing his lips. “No matter now. Could very well be that the school is exactly where a young criminal might go. It’d seem like a safe place if you didn’t know the history. ‘Course, he could also be long gone by now too. Go on back the way you came, missy, and take the left fork instead of the right. Ain’t nothing else but that school out there, but if you stay on the road, it eventually loops back to town.”
I gave more thanks for this information and trotted to my wagon. Time was of the essence in cases like these. Plus, if I was being honest with myself, I wanted to put some distance between myself and this creepy farm with its presumably dying man.
Grimm stayed on foot, his nose to the ground as I followed with the wagon. Sure enough, his remarkable sense of smell led us to the left fork in the road, just as Whitman had predicted. Once off the wider road we had been following, this branch became a bit more swallowed up by the surrounding woods. The oldest trees here were perhaps seventy years old, with plenty of space in between for saplings to try to grow. Being late summer, the shade of the bigger trees felt nice. The sun peeked out pleasantly between the leaves.
It was clear that no one ventured this way very often. Once we had traveled into the seclusion of the forest, I pulled Humbert over to the shoulder and hopped down. I got a bucket of water and some carrots from the back of the wagon for the old horse. It had been a long day, and he needed a break. Once he had consumed his refreshments, I turned into my true self.
“Humbert, Grimm and I are going to scout ahead. Are you okay to stay here for a while?”
“Delighted as always, Mistress,” he replied, ever stoic.
Grimm snuffled the ground. “It’s getting stronger,” he said.
Heart pounding with anticipation, I urged Grimm to continue his search, keeping hot on his heels as he made his way down the lane.
Presently we found the old school. It was a relic of a bygone era: three stories tall, square, complete with a cupola at the front and a wide stone stairway to the grand—if shabby—double doors that marked the entrance. Many tall windows faced the front of the building, and the whole thing was covered in a red brick façade. Where once a large yard surrounded the outside of the building, now there was a mess of tall blooming grass, brambles, and saplings that encroached upon the crumbling building. It would have been a stunning piece of architecture back in its day, but now it was just a sad ghost of itself. Many of the tall windows had been broken, and some of the bricks were tumbled down.
We paused at the start of the stone stairs, surveying the school.
“Do you think it’s really haunted?” I asked Grimm, trying to sound nonchalant. I had filled him in on what Whitman had told me while we walked toward the school together.
His nose twitched in the air. “I don’t know. Could be, but then again, sometimes humans are prone to mass hysteria. What if it was just a bad illness and not something supernatural?”
“True. Can you smell ghosts?”
Grimm glanced at me with humor in his yellow eyes. “No.” He pointed his nose back toward the building. “But I can smell our bounty.”
“So, he is here?”
Grimm began sniffing the ground, turning in circles. “At least up until recently. I do smell activity closer to the door but it’s stronger over … this way.” He turned and padded off to the right and continued behind the school. I followed.
Grimm stopped once he got to the edge of the woods, where the saplings gave way to older trees. I could discern a small path leading deeper into the wilderness. Grimm began to follow the path.
I stayed put, turning my attention back to the dilapidated school. “Why don’t you go on ahead? I’d like to stay and check out the building for clues.”
He grunted. “Fine by me. This trail is fresh, by the way. I’ll follow it and let you know where it takes me. I’ll meet you back at the school.” He ambled away, still following his nose.
I once again approached the double front doors, which, as Whitman had said, were not locked. I couldn’t budge the heavy doors in cat form, however. Sighing, I shimmered up. I had to admit that my human form had some perks, opposable thumbs being one of the biggest. I grasped the tarnished handle and pushed, easing myself into the dark hallway.
I’m not going to lie; it was spooky in there. I could almost hear the echoes of children long gone, either now old or, most likely, dead by this time. Whitman’s story did not help, either, as I imagined the ghosts of the deceased children trailing the halls for eternity. Perhaps they were waiting for unsuspecting people to enter their school, upon which they would grasp the victims in a cold embrace, chanting, “Come be our new play mate, for ever and ever…” I shivered theatrically.
I collected my wits with a stern internal talking to and surveyed my surroundings. I stood in what must have been the foyer. Directly in front of me sat a grand staircase to the second floor, complete with a dusty and dingy carpet runner. To the left of the staircase was what I assumed to be the office. A small sitting area and a fireplace stood to the right of the stairs. Flanking me on both sides were dark hallways.
Decisions, decisions. Which way to go first? At random, I chose the right-hand corridor and cautiously began walking. It was a spacious hallway at least, with faded green paint above wainscoting on either side. Glancing at the first few doors I came across, I established that I had found a classroom wing.
The hallway turned a corner, and I continued to follow it. After a couple more classrooms I came across side-by-side bathrooms, one for boys and another for girls. There was one last doorway at the very end of the hall. Another classroom, from the looks of it.
The door to this classroom was open, unlike all the other doors I had passed. My innate kitty curiosity began to pester me. I quietly crept up and peeked in.
The room was positioned so that upon entrance, the teacher would have stood off to the left of the door in front of the chalkboard and the students would have sat to the right. A wall of windows faced me from my position in the doorway. The teacher’s stately and solid desk took up the far left-hand corner. At the very back of the room there was a long table filled with beakers and test tubes. There was a human skeleton, hanging out, quite literally, in the corner by the chalkboard. I hoped it was a replica and not the real thing.
Even with my limited knowledge of human schools, the whole setup screamed “science class" to me.
The desks were shoved into the room haphazardly. I crept forward slowly to investigate; while the majority were completely covered in dust, there were clean spots on certain surfaces in the shapes of finger smudges and handprints. Someone had definitely touched these recently.
I glanced toward the windows, noting the line of cabinets underneath them. Plant pots perched on top—some empty, some filled with dirt, and some containing the remains of dead plants. And, at the far end of the cabinets, a whole cluster of plants—bright green, happy, and healthy—flourished in their pots.
Intrigued, I approached this collection of plants. My time with Fleurette had helped me get to know my botanical species a little better. I could see that some of these pots held lettuce and spinach, and others contained tomatoes and berry bushes, which bore delicious and robust fruits upon them. I touched a lettuce, marveling at the healthy coloration of the leaf. Thriving plants were not what I had expected to find in an abandoned school. How did they get here?
A noise from behind the teacher’s desk had me stiffen and turn. If I were my normal self my fur would be standing on edge. Trying to be brave and not think about ghost children, I inched toward the sound. My arms broke out in goosebumps. I could hear breathing from the corner of the room.
“Hello?” I ventured meekly.
Something shot out from behind the desk and ran cheetah-fast past the chalkboard and out the door. That something was child-sized, and definitely corporeal, because it had rattled the skeleton as it ran past.
I froze for just a moment, stunned.
“Furballs!” I muttered to myself as my body unlocked and gave chase. I stopped at the doorway, peering into the darkness of the hallway. I made it just in time to see a door closing with the telltale squeak of unused hinges. Bingo.
I took my time walking the hallway, treading softly. My instincts told me the figure had most likely gone into the girl’s bathroom, and sure enough I could hear labored breathing from within the lavatory once I reached it. I waited a heartbeat.
“Hello?” I tried again from outside the bathroom, hoping that this was the only way in and out of the room. “I’m not going to hurt you; I just want to talk. My name’s Cressida.” Silence. The labored breathing had ceased. “I’m going to come in now,” I continued in the friendliest, most non-threatening voice I could muster. I placed my hand on the door and gave it a small push.
The door squeaked but gave way easily enough. I peeked in, my senses on alert. Natural light filtered in through large, frosted windows on the far wall from me, a few cracked and one with a sizable hole in the corner. They showed off a grimy yet elegant lavatory done up in shades of white and mint green. This bathroom must have been at the height of modernity at the time of its creation. A row of wash sinks lined the wall immediately to my left. Stalls lined the opposite, with a very small alcove directly to my right. I almost didn’t see the girl because the door initially blocked my view.
She was hunkered down in the corner, knees drawn up to her chest with her arms hugging her whole body. I let myself in so she could get a good look at me. I wanted to appear harmless. This girl obviously was. I was bad at guessing the ages of humans because I age so differently, but I would have put her at around twelve years of age. She wore simple clothes, layers of shirts, a smock, and leggings, all of it filthy. Her hair was chestnut colored and long, and were it not for the naturally sleek nature of it I’m sure rats could have moved in in a fortnight. Her face was rounded with a petite nose, and she was covered in grimy smudges. The dirtiness of her countenance made her hazel eyes stand out, shining with fear.
She stiffened as I entered. I held up my hands. “No, no,” I soothed, “it’s okay. I want to make sure you are all right. Can I help you?”
She didn’t move at first, but as I inched toward her, she seemed to lose a little of her fear. I held out my hand to her. She stared at it in apprehension, and then reached out to grasp it. Standing, she was just a few inches shorter than me. She said nothing, but still stared with wide eyes.
“Hello,” I tried in a friendlier tone. “I’m Cressida.”
“What are you doing here?” the girl asked. Her voice seemed fearless, a direct contrast to her body language. Honestly, the question threw me off guard.
“I…” Verbally stumbling, I thought frantically. Honesty seemed to be the best policy. But maybe I should focus on getting her out of here instead of having an odd conversation in the bathroom. What was the best route? I realized I didn’t have any experience with kids.
I began to slowly turn her toward the door.
“As I said, I’m Cressida. I’m investigating a criminal in these parts and his last known whereabouts were near this school. So, I was checking out the building. I didn’t expect to run across a girl like you.”
The girl had been amiable about moving as I spoke, but now she put the brakes on and spun on me. “Criminal?” she asked, cautious again.
I tried again to usher her toward the door. She was not budging, and she was in front of me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned the criminal. Clearly, she was afraid of any potentially dangerous activity. Perhaps she had even already had a run-in with him.
“Yes,” I explained. “Have you seen someone around here? Black hair, young? Are you in trouble?”
She stared at me with a stony expression. Ever so slowly the blank face turned to one of pure rage. My skin prickled. Obviously, I had said the wrong thing. I frantically thought over possible damage control options.
