Whisper in the Dark (4 page)

R
OGER AND
I sat and waited. I thought of how concerned Doc Fox had looked. By the time we got there, Bootsie had gotten much weaker. She’d barely been able to lift her head to lick his shoulder.

“Good girl,” he’d growled. Doc Fox never talks much, and when he does it’s in half sentences. I also don’t know if anyone has ever heard him use the personal pronoun for himself.

“Take a seat,” he’d rumbled, motioning toward his waiting room with his chin. Then he and Bootsie had vanished into the back.

And after that, time, which had been speeding along like a runaway train, slowed to a crawl. The hands on Doc Fox’s old-fashioned clock seemed welded in place. I tried counting under my breath.
One and one thousand, two and one thousand.

I made half an hour pass that way. We were still waiting. I was as fidgety as a squirrel trapped in a cage, but Roger just sat there, calm, his hands in his lap. I like that relaxed quality of his. He almost always seems at ease, comfortable with himself. He isn’t one of those annoying people who talks just to make noise or flails his arms around to get attention. He generally does just what’s right for the occasion. Just then he knew all he could do was wait, so that was what he was doing. He wasn’t even reading one of the tattered old
National Geographic
magazines that were stacked like a messy yellow mountain on the wicker table in the waiting room.

Me, I was rapidly becoming one of those annoying people. I kept standing up, sitting down, looking at the door, at the desk, out the window. I flipped through the one copy of
People
magazine that had infiltrated the table with those
National Geographic
s like a rock star who accidentally stumbled into a retirement party. Famous people, pretty clothes, new houses, hot cars. I tried to read it, but it made me think of movie popcorn, overpriced and mostly air. Nothing could take my
mind off Bootsie or what had been happening…or what might happen next.

“Roger,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, putting his hand on my shoulder.

Then neither of us said anything more. I had a friend close by right now. That made me feel a little less scared.

I thought of calling Aunt Lyssa. Maybe I would hear her real voice this time—not just that recorded message telling me to speak at the sound of the tone. It was almost time for her to be back from her lunch break at the library. I thought, too, of calling Grama Delia. If anyone would understand what was happening, she would. Even though some folks think she’s full of superstitions and old beliefs that mean nothing, I’ve always known different.

The last time I was there a bird had flown in through the open window of her little house. It was a small brown flycatcher. It had darted around, fluttering its wings and chirping. But it hadn’t seemed frantic and it didn’t touch anything before it flew out again. Grama Delia and I had looked at each other.

We had both smiled. She didn’t even have to tell me that we had just experienced a good omen.

A good omen. I looked back up at the clock. Only one more minute had passed. I needed a good omen now as I sat in the waiting room. But I didn’t call Grama Delia. I couldn’t make my fingers press the numbers. I just couldn’t call anyone until I found out how Bootsie was.

At least three full years went by before Doc Fox came out into the waiting room, even though the clock on the wall tried to pretend it had only been forty-five minutes. He was shaking his head.

I stood up, so quickly it made me feel a little dizzy. I just knew he was going to tell me that my Bootsie was dead. It would be just like it was when I was in the hospital and I woke up and they told me….

But Doc Fox thrust out his hand, motioning for me to sit down, be calm. “She’s okay,” he said. “She’ll be fine. I’ll keep her here overnight.” Then he held out both his big paws, palms up.

“Madeline,” he asked, “what?”

I knew what he meant by that single word. What happened to Bootsie? What did that to her?
I shook my head. He nodded his head back at me and growled under his breath. It was like we were two bears, communicating like bears do when they move their heads back and forth to show they are feeling amicable.

“I worked awhile,” he said, “at a zoo. Two tigers had a fight. Had to sedate ’em, stitch them up.” He paused and looked up at one of his degrees on the wall, as if some kind of answer was written there.

I nodded, getting this creepy feeling that I knew where he was going with this.

“Thing is,” he said, “Bootsie’s wounds are like that. Wide, deep, like tiger claws.”

A
S ROGER AND
I walked down the hill toward the center of Old Providence, I wasn’t really sure where I was heading. I’d thought of walking home or maybe down to Aunt Lyssa’s library. There was nothing more we could do at the clinic. Doc Fox had said that he needed to keep Bootsie there overnight and so we might as well go home.

As for what it was that had attacked her, Doc Fox had finally suggested that perhaps someone had a big pet cat, maybe a cougar, that either escaped or was just let go by someone who got tired of caring for it. It had to be some private owner because he’d put in a call to the Roger Williams Park and learned that no dangerous creatures had escaped from there lately—or ever, for that matter. It was illegal, he’d explained, for a private citizen to
own such dangerous predators, but that kind of law has never stopped people who are wealthy and insensitive enough. There’s a big trade smuggling exotic animals and endangered species into this country. South American mountain lions, ocelots, African leopards.

“Strange, though,” he had added, “that this mystery cat wasn’t declawed.”

By that he’d meant that most people who purchased a huge feline predator as an illicit pet had the animal’s claws removed when it was little—and not just to save their furniture. You know how it is when your pet kitty cat gets cranky and takes a swipe at you? Imagine a mountain lion doing that! What it meant for the animal was that a life in captivity was its only option for survival. Just last year there’d been a story on TV about a hunter in Maine shooting an animal that turned out to be one of those declawed captive mountain lions someone had let go. The poor creature had been nothing but skin and bones.

Doc Fox had said he’d be letting the police know that there seemed to be a cougar or leopard or something of that sort on the loose. My intuition,
though, wasn’t accepting that. I didn’t know what the real answer was, but I just felt that it was something worse. That’s one problem with intuition. Sometimes it’s as if you’re hearing someone tell you something really important—but they’re speaking in a language you can’t understand.

We were strolling along, but my thoughts were running. I’d tried calling Aunt Lyssa again. No luck. Still just the recording. I’d also decided not to go back to the house. The thought of what had happened there was creeping me out. First the phone calls, then the scratching on the door, and then Bootsie. Just thinking of it made me feel like screaming. Instead I was babbling on about something I’d just seen in that issue of
People
magazine.

“Did you see that picture of her dress? How can anyone live that way. And what kind of car was that?”

Roger just nodded. There was no way to reply to the kind of wacky monologue I was delivering. Even I wasn’t sure what I was talking about. It was like my mouth was on autopilot while my brain was in a crash dive. I felt as if I needed to run away, find a safe place to hide, but instead I kept walking. We
could have headed toward the library, to find Aunt Lyssa, but when we came to the turn, I went the other way. Aunt Lyssa is always so upbeat about everything that at times it drives me crazy. Like just the other day when I was complaining about how greenhouse gasses were causing global warming, she replied that it might be nice to have warmer summers and shorter winters. I wasn’t ready to see her yet, to be reassured that everything was all right. I just needed to talk and keep walking. And that was what I did, thankful that I had Roger there.

Roger is so great. Like the good friend he is, he was sticking by me and not asking questions. He knew, despite the fact that I was talking and laughing like some TV valley girl, that I was anything but carefree right now.

I’d said all that could possibly be said about that issue of the magazine. So now I started talking about the weather, about the summer cross-country meets that were coming up, about stopping off at the next New York System weiner stand because I was feeling starved. But when we did come to that hot dog stand, I couldn’t stop. I was trying to keep my voice calm and light, but I could feel it getting higher
in pitch and almost hysterical.

I think people were turning to look at me as we went down Benefit Street. I’m usually quiet on that street. I really appreciate all those old restored buildings and like to look around at them. If you’re a nut for brick sidewalks and cobblestone alleys, mansard roofs, gables, and wrought-iron railings, Benefit Street is like heaven for you. But I might as well have been walking through the mall for all the attention I paid to the architecture this time. I didn’t even point out the Governor Hopkins House where George Washington slept. Twice.

Finally we reached Market House down by the river, which is always busy. It was the first marketplace of Old Providence. Before that it was the crossroads where the trails met that led from the Pequots in Connecticut and the Wampanoags in Massachusetts. Even before the coming of foreign sailors from across the sea, this had been a meeting place of different nations, each with their own ways and their own histories to tell.

Here, close to the water of the Providence River, with lots of people around, with all that remembered history surrounding me, I felt better. That is kind of
a strange thing to say, I suppose, considering how much of that history is painful to remember if you are an Indian. After all, the coming of the Europeans brought warfare and diseases and laws that took away first our land and then even our tribal status, like in 1880 when the Rhode Island legislature declared our whole tribe extinct. Thinking about it, feeling the melancholy pain of being Indian that Dad and I used to talk about, made me calmer, because it was so familiar. Because I’d felt that way a thousand times before while standing here looking out at our river that leads down into Narragansett Bay.

“Roger,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” he answered.

But before I could say anything, my cell phone rang. It was so unexpected, so much a part of the modern world and not where my gloomy thoughts of doom had been taking me, that it made me laugh.

“It’s for you,” Roger said. It was a dumb thing to say, but the way he said it was so funny that it made me laugh even harder. Somehow I managed to get the phone out. But before answering it, I looked at the Caller ID and then sighed with relief. I knew that number.

“Aunt Lyssa,” I said into the phone.

“Honey.” Just that single word in my aunt’s gentle voice made me feel better. “Maddy, honey, I got your message about Bootsie. Is she all right?”

“Bootsie’s going to be okay. Doc Fox is keeping her overnight,” I said. “Roger’s here with me.”

“That’s good,” Aunt Lyssa said. “You want to bring him home? I’m picking up chicken for dinner.”

I sighed with relief. This was all so normal. I looked over at Roger, who had been leaning close enough to hear my aunt’s side of our conversation. He nodded his head.

“Okay,” I said.

“We’ll talk when I get home,” Aunt Lyssa said in her positive way. “Everything is going to be all right.”

I felt that way when I put my phone away. Everything was fine. There was nothing to worry about. But as Roger and I walked back up Benefit Street, that good feeling seeped away. And Aunt Lyssa’s reassuring voice was replaced by another one, a voice that whispered fear.

I
FLUFFED UP MY
pillow for the twentieth time. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. We’d eaten dinner with Aunt Lyssa, and then Roger and I had played my new video game which is loosely based on a movie that is loosely based on a character out of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
. We’d gotten bored fast. It was all monsters and explosions and was way over the top. The really scary stuff isn’t like
Star Wars
with werewolves and vampires who look like the Incredible Hulk with fangs and claws. Real horror creeps up on you.

We ended up turning off the PlayStation and just talking about normal stuff like other kids at school and our teachers and running. We’d talked a lot about Bootsie at dinner, how weird it was the way she was hurt. We were no longer worried about
how she was recovering. Dr. Fox had left a message that she was doing great. He was just keeping her for a day or two to make sure she didn’t have an infection or something. Aunt Lyssa acted like everything was all cool, but she must have known I was still freaked out about Bootsie because she was the one who suggested calling Roger’s parents to see if he could sleep over in the spare bedroom. I wondered if he was sleeping now. I sure wasn’t. My mind kept going back, not just to Bootsie getting hurt but to those phone calls. None of it made sense.

Think about something else,
I told myself. So I tried focusing on how safe and secure I was here in my bed, here in my room in this house that had become my home.

Then I began thinking about this house, about how old it is, from its gabled roof on down to its fieldstone foundation. That made me think about the cellar. It’s a real cellar, not one of those neatly sealed basements that can be turned into a rec room or a den with windows that open to the outside like you see in modern houses. Our cellar was dug into the ground, into the old stones of the hills
of Providence. It’s always cool and even a little damp in the cellar, and although it lacks windows, it does have doors, three of them.

Those doors are the first things you see when you come down the creaky wooden stairs. The door to the right of the stairs leads to a small, square root cellar, just about the size of one of the prison cells in
The Count of Monte Cristo
. The door in front opens to the furnace room and the storage bin where the coal used to be shoveled in from outside. The door to the left is the one that is never opened.

That third cellar door is made of thick wood, heavy oak with huge metal hinges. I don’t know why it’s so thick and heavy, strong enough to hold against almost anything that might try to break it down. Maybe it’s just because that was the way some doors were built three centuries ago. A lot stronger than the new door at the top of the creaky cellar stairs.

Had I locked that new door down into the cellar? For some reason the thought of it being unlocked made me feel panicked. No, I’d locked it. I’d done that first, even before latching the windows when we’d taken Bootsie to the vet.

When I was little and just visiting Aunt Lyssa,
not actually living in the house, I would scare myself by thinking about how that third door in the cellar used to lead into the tunnels. It was kept locked to keep people from going in and getting lost or maybe buried in a cave-in, because some of those tunnels have become unstable with all the houses and roads built over them now. Everyone in Providence has heard about the tunnels and the caves. Most people have never seen them. Some think that they are just a myth. But I grew up being told stories about them and I’ve done research in the library, and I know they’re real. Some of the tunnels and caves were used by abolitionists back in the nineteenth century to hide the runaway slaves who were following the Undergound Railroad north. But they weren’t dug then. They are much, much older than that. They’re as ancient as one of those nameless things that HPL imagined lurking in the dark, crawling through those tunnels, pushing its way through our creaky old door, coming up the steps one by one….

I tried to keep from thinking about those caves, dark, secret places where almost anything could live. Of course, that is when I finally did fall asleep.

Except I wasn’t asleep, or at least I didn’t think I was. I just closed my eyes and opened them again. And when I did, I could see myself. I watched myself get up, put on my robe, and go downstairs. I watched my hand reach out to unlock and then open the cellar door. The stairs creaked under my feet, so loud that I was sure everyone in the house—and everything hiding at the bottom of the stairs—could hear.

But it wasn’t just the stairs that I heard. I also heard something else, something calling me. It was a whispering voice, a voice so soft that it might have just been my imagination, if I hadn’t felt it pulling me with a force I couldn’t resist, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Child of Canonchet
, that spidery voice whispered,
come to me. I am here. I am hungry. I am waiting for you….

Stop,
I told myself. But I kept going down into the darkness. For some reason the lights weren’t working. They’d burned out, or we’d had a power failure. I had a flashlight in my hand, though, and I kept playing its beam along the wall. I had to find the fuse box so that I could get the lights back on again.

Then I heard something behind me. I knew that sound. It was the sound of a door, a heavy old door, being slowly opened. I had to turn around, but I couldn’t. I knew what I would see looming over me.

I couldn’t move. But I could speak. And I said something. I didn’t even know that I knew the words in Narragansett until they came out of my mouth.
“Awaun ewo?”
“Who is that?”

“AWAUN EWO?”
I shouted the words again as loud as I could. Then hands grabbed me hard by the shoulders.