Countess Nosferatu - C T (mystery books to read .TXT) 📗

   Leroy grabbed the child and pulled him up on the sidewalk.  The bus moved quickly past in a flash of violet light, sucking the air out of Leroy's shoes and clothes. 

     “Don't stand in the bus lane!” Leroy shouted still holding onto the child who certainly could have been killed. The child looked at Leroy with a  blank expressionless face.  “What are you doing?  Where are your parents? What is your name?” Leroy asked.  The child said nothing.“I want you to be more careful!” said Leroy as a flash of violet light reflected off some passing windshield.  Hanging from a piece of yarn, around the child's neck, was what looked like a little wooden single cigar case.  Leroy reached for the case like for an identification tag on a lost pet.  The boy ran off leaving the wooden case on the yarn in Leroy's hand.  When Leroy opened the little case, he found it contained a small lady doll.  He shut the case, and put it in his coat pocket, and continued to make his way to work.

     At work in the office, Leroy placed the wooden case on his desk.  Near the end of the day a co-worker noticed it.  “I didn't know you smoke cigars,” said the co-worker.

    “I don't,” said Leroy.

    “Oh it is empty,” said the co-worker after picking up the box and opening it. “Maybe you collect little boxes.”

     “No,” said Leroy surprised to hear the box was empty.  He checked the box himself.  The doll was gone. He checked in his pocket where maybe it fell out.

     “It is epidemic you know?” asked the co-worker.

     “Sickness?” asked Leroy who had not found the doll in his pocket.  He began to look elsewhere.

     “That little boy with the dogs” said the co-worker.

     “What?” asked Leroy who now stopped looking for the doll.

     “They got him on camera,” said the co-worker flashing the newspaper out from under his arm.  The boy in the newspaper photograph looked exactly like the little boy Leroy had pulled out of the bus lane.

     “People getting mauled to death by lost kids and lost dogs. It is an epidemic of the unloved,” said the co-worker before walking away and leaving the paper on Leroy's desk.

     Leroy was then alone at his desk with the newspaper and the little wooden box.  Leroy felt the uncomfortable stirring of difficult deficiencies and inadequacies from his past which in this, his later life, he had learned to keep still with what some people would call prayer.  He looked at the picture of smiling Mimi, his girlfriend, he had pinned to his desk wall.  Leroy and Mimi were at work in different places in the city.  Somewhere a lawyer was working on Leroy's divorce from a woman Leroy hadn't seen for years and who refused to speak to him.  Leroy forced himself to read the newspaper article about the child.

     According to the article, a woman had been mauled to death yesterday at dusk when the child had appeared with a pack of dogs near a snack stand.  The child was seen leaving the stand with the dogs.  Someone had filmed him with a phone camera.  He was later caught on another camera when he and the dogs entered a hotel lobby.  The dogs or the boy were said to be accompanied by violet lights.  The dogs and the boy had so far eluded capture by the police. 

     Leroy took the newspaper and the wooden box home from work to his apartment .  As the city rotated deeper into darkness, he could not sleep.  On closer examination, under the kitchen lamp, the little wooden case revealed  that it was padded inside and lined with satin.  It contained a tiny satin pillow.  It appeared to be a tiny coffin!  Out of the corner of his eye, Leroy then saw something like a bird flying about in his apartment.   Mimi was  at the door, knocking loudly.

    “It's me,” said Mimi through the door.  "Let me in."

    “What are you doing?” asked Leroy opening the door.

    “What are you doing? You called me remember?" asked Mimi embracing her boyfriend.

    Leroy smiled in the warmth that Mimi always brought up in him.  He had called her and told her that he couldn't sleep.  That of course meant only one thing to Mimi!  “You shouldn't  have come,” said Leroy .

    “What? Don't tell me to leave!” said Mimi.

    “I mean it is not safe to be out and about,” said Leroy.

    “But we are safe aren't we? What is the matter?  Why can't you sleep?” asked Mimi. She went to the refrigerator.  “Did you save me any sweets?” she asked.  “You did!”  There was a fourth of an apple pie in the refrigerator.  “Leroy you have a bird in this place.  I saw it flying when I came in. Must be a lost wild bird."

    “Or a bat,” said Leroy.

    “I  am going to get it out of here with the broom,” said Mimi, taking the broom out from the corner. “Turn off the lamp and open the window wide.”

    Leroy dropped the light switch and shoved the old kitchen window up as far as he could.  Mimi swung at the dark shape that fluttered in the kitchen.  She ran after it into the bathroom.  It returned  and swooped low around the kitchen table before flying out the window.  Together Leroy and Mimi watched it vanish into the city lights which seemed to all glow violet for a few seconds.

    “Maybe it was a bat,” said Mimi .

    "I don't know," said Leroy.

    Mimi ate the apple pie sitting on Leroy's bed .  “Did you shut the window because you are afraid it will come back?” asked Mimi.  Leroy nodded his sleepy head before he laid it on a pillow.

    “Did you hear about the kid and the wild dogs that killed a woman for a pretzel?” asked Leroy.

    “Yeah,” said Mimi looking sad.

    “I saw that boy at the bus stop this morning without the dogs,” said Leroy.

    “Did you hear the evening news?” asked Mimi, walking to the kitchen sink with the pie plate.

    “No,” said Leroy.

    “They've got that boy in the hospital now,” said Mimi.  "Does that mean you can sleep now?"

    “How did they get him?” asked Leroy.

    “He walked the dogs into a hospital. Only the dogs  got out. The doctors grabbed the boy and did a scan of his brain. They said it's the size of a nectarine. His brain is the size of a nectarine,” said Mimi.  "So awful. And he is covered with bug bites. Fleas the doctors think."

    “Oh I forgot !” said Leroy sitting up.

    “Forgot what?!” asked Mimi. "What did you forget? We are going to get married. We are going to the judge soon as we can.  We are going to the church.  We want to get married!  We are not forgetting about it!"

    Leroy laughed. "I know. I forgot to feed Van Heisling!” said Leroy.

    “Who is he? And why is he hungry?” asked Mimi.

    “Van Helsing is the neighbors Persian cat,” said Leroy leaving the bed.  “The neighbors went on  vacation.  I said I would feed their cat.”

    “Better do it then,” said Mimi.

    “He is a nice big cat.  You will like him,” said Leroy.

    Van Helsing lived across the hall from Leroy with a young couple who had just recently adopted him from the shelter.  Leroy let himself in with the key the neighbors had given him as Mimi watched. As soon as Leroy opened the neighbor's door, the big white Persian cat ran out into the hall and into Leroy's apartment.  “He ran into your place.  He wants to hang out with us,” said Mimi."Maybe he is lonely."

    “Close the door and make sure he stays in there!” said Leroy.

    "Sweet kitty," said Mimi closing herself and the cat into Leroy's apartment.  Leroy  walked into his neighbors apartment as something fluttered in the hallway.  He filled the cat dishes with food and water and carried them into his own apartment.  Then he left again and returned with a litter box after locking the neighbors door.  “We are going to keep him in here tonight,” said Leroy to Mimi.  “We'll get him back over there in the morning." The cat was now sitting on the table under the kitchen lamp next to the small wooden case. "I'm too tired to chase him around tonight."

    “Now I lay me down to sleep,” said Mimi.

    “I pray the Good Lord our souls to keep,” said Leroy.

    “Safe from big and little frights,” said Mimi.

    “We thank you, God, for the love of Christ,” said Leroy.

    “What is  in my hair?!” asked Mimi, pulling at her hair.

    “What is it?” asked Leroy.

    “I don't know!” said Mimi pulling the tiny woman with dark wings out of her hair.  The tiny woman squirmed in her hands and then escaped her grasp and flew through the kitchen light.

    “The bird!” said Leroy.  “Did you open the window again? Did it bite you?”

    “No,” said Mimi.  "No I don't think I am bitten."

    “I think we better kill it this time, whatever it is,” said Leroy . The tiny woman flew into the dark bathroom as the howls from a pack of dogs rose up from the street below.

    "Look at the lights again," said Mimi.  From the kitchen window, Leroy and Mimi could not see the dogs but they could see the traffic lights on the corner change from violet to violet .  And every street light they could see was twinkling violet! Above the howls of the dogs, they then heard a louder feline yowl and feline scream and a thumping in the dark bathroom.

    “Van Helsing!” said Leroy, turning on the bathroom light.  The bulb flashed from violet to white then revealed the cat standing  in the bathtub with a tiny dark winged woman moving slightly in his mouth.  The cat growled and bit down harder on what Leroy had thought was a doll. The cat, Van Helsing, jumped out of the bathtub and onto the kitchen table.  The cat dropped the now still little woman onto the newspaper near the little coffin.  The howling of the dogs on the street below stopped . “Turn on the disposal,” said Leroy to Mimi as he took the doll to the kitchen sink. The disposal chopped the doll into bits that were washed by the faucet water down the pipes into the city sewer. The dogs howls were gone and the stop lights again glowed red, green, yellow. The street lights were again white.