Day 5

Chapter 11

Hugo squelched up the walk to his house. Mrs. McGregor was not in her yard, which wasn’t a surprise, since the rain fell in sheets now. Hugo’s warmer coat didn’t do much more for him than the windbreaker had the previous evening. He shivered as he pulled open the door and went inside. He dropped the paper on his reading table, and put the beer in the refrigerator. He went to the back porch and brought in an armload of wood, that he had been fortuanate enough to locate behind the vacant house across the street. He took to wood to the fire place and set a fire. He pulled the classifieds from the newspaper and opened them up. He started to crumple up the first page when he saw a tiny story tucked in at the bottom, below some regular advertisements:
Cougar Killed. A female mountain lion was found dead today in the foothills near Two Rabbit Lake, south east of McLoughlin. Officials could not determine the cause of death.
Hugo sat on his knees in front of the fireplace and read the story again. He turned the paper over hoping to get more information, but the story ended there. It doesn’t even say who the officials are, he thought.
Frustrated he crumpled up the paper and shoved it into the fireplace. He crumpled up the rest of the classifieds, glancing at each page to make sure that nothing else of importance when into the fire. He put carefully stacked the wood, smallest pieces first, then lager ones on top, and lit the fire with a match from a book that he picked up at Astor’s. The damp paper didn’t want to catch, but soon it did. He quickly opened the flue as smoke began to billow up into the room. The dry wood, which had sat out in the back yard of the vacant house for at least a year, crackled to life; the room began to warm.
Hugo stripped off his wet clothes, wrapping the afghan around his waist. He took the clothes into the bathroom and hung them on the shower rod and the towel racks. He grabbed a beer from the fridge, on his way to the bedroom. He located a shirt and a pair of jeans, mostly clean, and put them on. Then he retrieved the paper and headed back to the kitchen, spreading it out on the table. He took too more beers from the refrigerator and put them on the table in front of him. He glanced out the window at the rain. The sky had darkened even further and the rain fell in buckets. The grass will be happy, he thought, not bothering to wonder that the grass didn’t care and wouldn’t grow more than an eighth of an inch in the next six months.
The first page told him nothing about animal mutilations, or satanic cults. It was all water rights this and foreign war that. Inside the first section nothing of interest either. He came to the sports section and took a look at how the local high school fared against their rival. Football was ending, but basketball is just around the corner, he thought. McLoughlin Valley had lost, 27 to 20 in over time. We’ll get ‘em next year, he thought.
In the local news section, he found the story about the deer on the refuge. The details were pretty sketchy, almost like someone didn’t want all the information to get out. Two deer had been killed, both on the edge of the refuge. One, as far as Hugo could tell, was found not too far from Dr. Bonanza’s place. The other had been found by a pair of hikers up a little used trail over on the east side, right up where the refuge turns into National Forest. Hugo thought that he probably knew the trail. He hadn’t been out there for years and years, but as a boy he had explored the refuge with his mother and father, before.
He finished his beer and started in on the next one. The smell of smoke reminded him that he need to check on the fire. He fed it, then closed the flue down to about half. The smell brought memories of campfires under the stars with his parents. They sang songs, ate roasted marshmallows and told stories until they grew tired and turned in for the night. Hugo loved laying in the little, two person tent by himself. His parents shared a larger four person tent. Hugo had insisted on moving out on his eighth birthday. It had been a big move for such a little boy, but Hugo’s dad had the two-man, stashed in the attic and had no trouble letting Hugo sleep by himself. His mother worried, of course, but in the end, he won out.
A portion of one of the stories that his father had told almost came back to Hugo, as he squatted in front of the fire. He remembered his father saying that one of the old men down at the mill had told about some goings on in the distant past. Hugo couldn’t make his brain remember. He searched and wanted the story to involve giant, quick creatures that stalked the night and killed livestock, but he couldn’t convince himself that it wasn’t wishful thinking.
He shook his head, glanced at the clock, still 2:36, and went back to the paper. He read the comics, the only part left. Peanuts made him laugh, but Garfield had lost its humor sometime ago for him.
He opened the third beer and took it back to the living room. He pulled a few books, including his own, off the shelves lining the walls and settled into his reading chair. It set back in the corner by the fireplace, but not facing it. This also, he had inherited from his mother [I’m pretty sure that he inherited something else from his mother]. It creaked when he sat in it, or when ever he shifted his position, but it was oh so comfortable. The brown leather cushions were dried and cracked in places, worn in others, and the finish had come off the arms. The patina, the very attitude of the chair bespoke of constant use and much love. Hugo assumed that his mother’s father had made it, but didn’t know for sure. He would be shocked to later find a tag that said Sears and Roebuck stuck to the bottom of one of the seat slats.
His reading table sat to his right. The red of the mahogany had only grown deeper since he had owned it. The top, about two inches taller than the arm of his chair, had scratches from un-careful hands, and rings from misplaced drinks. It also showed a wear mark where Hugo’s wrist would brush it when he laid down a book, or picked one up. Hugo carefully put his beer on a coaster, one that he had taken from Astor’s, next to the books that he had gathered. He opened the first, then the second. He couldn’t find anything that might help: no brain removal rituals, or tearing off of hind limbs. He became vaguely excited at the mention of scattered entrails, but that had to do with warding off the evil eye in Hungry, and the entrails, it very specifically said, needed to be from a pig that had not yet reached one year old.
He stood up, put another log on the fire and fetched another beer. He sat back down, reaching for another book on the occult, but instead picked up the Tony Hillerman novel. Sheep guts could wait, he thought, and lost himself in the Desert Southwest.


Chapter 12

Hugo awoke with a start. He thought that he had heard something outside, in the back. He carefully stood. He set the book down on the table. He glanced at the clock: 2:36. Outside darkness had fallen, but Hugo didn’t think that it had gotten very late. He carefully padded to the kitchen and looked out the window. He could see lights on in the neighbor’s kitchen. He saw the mother and preparing dinner. He didn’t know their names and only thought of them as the Backyard Neighbors. The rain had slowed, but not stopped completely.
Hugo jumped as someone knocked at the front door with a Crack, Crack, Crack.
He hurried to the door, picking up a broom as he flipped on the kitchen light. As he neared the door, he slowed and came to the window from the side. He could see curly hair, just peaking over the bottom edge of the small, beveled glass window. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned on the porch light. Nothing happened. He turned on the entry light and swung the door open. There stood Mrs. McGregor.
“Hello, Mrs. McGregor,” he said. She held a gray and white striped cat, who appeared to not really want to be held at the moment. Its fur was wet.
“Are you doing some sweeping?” she said, indicating the broom.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I suppose that I was.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes, well, sorry about the light,” he said, indicating the porch light. “…Say, is that a cat?” he asked.
“Of course it’s a cat. Don’t be daft.”
“It doesn’t really seem to want to be held.”
The cat squirmed, but Mrs. McGregor hardly noticed. She had held cats before, obviously. “I came to see if it was yours,” she said pushing the cat toward Hugo.
Hugo looked into its eyes. The cat seemed to be asking for help, though rather sullenly. “No,” Hugo said. “That isn’t my cat.”
“Hrumph. I thought that you had a cat that looked like this.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. McGregor. I don’t have a cat.”
She looked past Hugo into his house, searching for a clue, trying to catch him in a lie.
“Would you like to come in,” he asked.
She shook her head, pulled the cat to her chest and turned to go.
“Wait,” he said.
She turned back.
“Do you know something about those deer that were killed out on the refuge?” Hugo asked.
She looked at him. The cat looked at him. “I’ll tell you about that later,” she said. She turned and before Hugo could say anything more, she had reached the gate, swung through it and crossed the street.
Hugo shut the door, perplexed. He slowly walked back to the kitchen. He counted up the dead animals: two on the refuge, one at Olaf’s, one at Dr. Bonanza’s. Four. No wait, five if you count the cougar. He was unsure about the cougar, but decided to include it anyway. The ODFG would count it: all you had to do was call it in.
Hugo opened another beer and found his watch on his bedside stand: a quarter after seven. Maybe I’ll go down to Astor’s, he thought, and see what is happening down there. Maybe Bonanza has something more to report. He found a new pair of socks, and a dry jacket. On a hunch he looked in the closet in his bedroom and found an umbrella. He smiled to himself imagining how dry he would stay on his walk, this evening.


Chapter 13

The rain had stopped. Even the breeze had died. He took his time walking down to Astor’s, breathing in the fresh autumn air. The leaves were wet, and so his sock became soaked, but he didn’t mind. The stars peeked out in the east, just over the foothills.