Finding Midnight (11 page)

*****

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 it 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.

Sully helped her with the crushed rock
paths. He clawed them up, loosening the compacted material and
bringing up to the top newer looking rock. They tamped it down to
compact it once again, the final results bringing a brighter color
and making it look like it had just been laid. Summer was really
proud of the results and brought Dr. Stuart over for inspection
when she was pretty much done.

He was floored by all that she had done and
how meticulously she had kept to the original garden. Many would
have opted for an easier and faster route to planting, but it was
clear she had put her full effort into appeasing Ms. Midnight’s
demands.

She explained to Dr. Stuart her plans to
expand the garden with some plants he suggested in some outer lying
areas of the square knot, and to incorporate them into the existing
garden. The trick was going to be trying to match the crushed rock.
Dr. Stuart had some suggestion on that topic and was enlivened by
her enthusiasm. She also told him how she was going to implement a
drip system to help with the maintenance.

All the while Summer was giving Dr. Stuart
his tour of the finished garden, Ms. Midnight stood at her post in
the upstairs window scowling at both of them until Dr. Stuart waved
and she stepped back, concealing herself from their sight with the
draperies.

*****

“I see nothing much has changed in your
relationship with Ms. Midnight despite finding Sully and the few
conversations you’ve had with her,” Dr. Stuart said, taking his
gaze off the curtain-clad window and focusing on Summer.

“No, I’m sad to say. And the worst part is I
don’t even know where to start. Everything she says to me is so
cryptic. Aside from that one conversation where we talked about Ms.
Ash where she seemed so…lucid.” Frustrated, Summer plopped down on
the bench.

“You’re doing your best, that’s all you can
do,” Dr. Stuart said, picking up the ball Sully had dropped at his
feet and throwing it towards the graveyard.

“Maybe. But I feel like I’m letting her
down. If I could just understand what she’s talking about.”

“Well, I hate to say it, but it could very
well be all in her head. From what you’ve told me, nothing much
she’s said makes a lot of sense.”

“I don’t know. When she saw Sully she was so
pleasant albeit sad. Ms. Ash was a real thing…not a person, but
definitely a living thing. It just makes me think this rat and
broom she keeps referring to are real things too, but to a person
like me who doesn’t know anything about her or her family, it makes
no sense.”

“So you think the rat could be a person?”
Dr. Stuart asked.

“Or someTHING. It’s definitely not a rat.
You should have seen her face when I showed her the rat I caught. I
thought she was going to jump out of her skin. Someone who reacts
like that to a rat definitely does not have one as a pet.”

He chuckled. “I see your point.”

“No…there’s something I’m missing…something
between the lines.”

“Well, I don’t know any Mr. Rats in town, or
for that matter any families named Broom. Hopefully she’ll relay
more information to you.” He stood.

“Leaving?”

“Yes. I told Missy Rogers I’d stop by and
check on Goldy.”

“Is she molting again?”

“No, I think she’s getting ready to lay an
egg, but you know how Mrs. Rogers gets so nervous if one of her
birds starts behaving strangely.”

“Boy, do I,” Summer admitted.

They both headed for the side gate near the
cottage to run into Tori.

*****

“Maybe I should start holding office
meetings here?” Dr. Stuart suggested.

“No way, doc. I came for some much needed
girl time,” Tori blurted out.

“All righty then. I’ll let you two get to
it.” Dr. Stuart said his goodbyes and patted Sully on the head.

As Dr. Stuart started for his car, it dawned
on Summer she had meant to ask him a question. “Oh, wait…Dr.
Stuart?”

“Yes.”

“I meant to ask you…do you happen to know
who lives in that house?” Summer pointed to the neighboring house
in which she had seen the terrified cat.

Dr. Stuart turned to look at the small,
aging cottage with the faded yellow peeling color, trimmed in
white. “Hmm. It had been a rental for years, but I wasn’t aware of
anyone renting it in ages. Why do you ask? Is someone living
there?”

“I…don’t know, I mean I, we, Sully and I saw
a cat inside clawing at the window pane. He looked terrified, but
then he was gone and I haven’t seen him since. I knocked on the
door, but no one answered and I couldn’t hear the cat crying, but
the whole thing was disturbing. It really bothered me. Should I
break in and see if the cat might have gotten left behind or found
his way into the house by accident and can’t get back out?” Summer
asked.

“Before you do that, let me call Mr.
Henesy’s daughter, Clair. I believe she owns the house now that Mr.
Henesy has died. I’ll see if anyone has rented it. If not, I’ll let
Clair know what we’re going to do, and then I’ll come back with a
crowbar and help you.”

“Thank you, Dr. Stuart. That would make me
feel so much better,” Summer said.

“No problem. I’ll let you know as soon as I
have any info. Bye, girls!” he said as he got into his car.

Tori looped her arm in Summer’s. They turned
for the cottage when Summer patted Tori’s hand, sending her a zap
of electricity they both saw and heard.

“Ow!” Tori said, releasing Summer’s arm.