And Crawling Things Lurk

The blackness next to the carriage shed stirred. A shape only a bit lighter in shades of gray rose up out of the dark and stepped away from the overhanging foliage, stood in the middle of the alley, and looked about. Rather than going back out to the street, Sofia turned the other way and walked farther into the darkness of the narrow way.

Light from the poles out front couldn’t make it past the obstructions of houses and trees enough to illuminate the alley, but pools of reflected light from house windows revealed possibilities. She peered into each one as she passed, assessing, evaluating, considering.

Half way to the next street, she stopped to consider a house with access through a propped-open gate. The yard beyond, between her and the back of the house, was open except for a small bicycle lying on its side near the back door. She walked under the triple strands of a clothesline where half a dozen items still hung, long-since dried in the air of late spring. Next to a kitchen towel hung a checkered shirt and a denim jumper the size a small child would wear.

She turned toward the left side of the house and stepped around the corner. The first window, above a window box filled with growing, kitchen herbs, sprayed harsh, yellow light across the side yard that included a long driveway to a detached garage, making it impassable for her. She went back around the corner to the other side of the house. The first window there showed a bedroom, faintly lit by a dim lamp and occupied by a teenage boy wearing earphones. He pored over a book at a small desk littered by papers, books and a variety of items she didn’t recognize. It had potential, but she moved away from the house and over near the side fence where she walked past beyond the reach of the lamp.

Barely tall enough to see over the windowsill, she approached the window of the next room. It was another bedroom but was dark and unoccupied.

The last window on that side before she reached the front yard, and where the street light out front shed enough light to make her anxious, revealed an unlighted room with a dresser, a large toy chest, and a small bed. Decals on the wall showed a preference for smiling fishes, gamboling seahorses, unlikely crustaceans, and little-girl mermaids. Unmoving on the bed beneath a sheet and a single blanket curled a small figure. Just enough light got in from the hallway beyond the door ajar only an inch or two, and it turned the halo of tresses splayed on the pillow to honey-gold.

Sofia’s hands rose to the sill of the over-under hung, wood-framed window. The lower sash was raised to its full height as an invitation to the sweet smell of the coming summer. Below it gaped an opening over two feet on a side, with nothing between her and the still form on the bed but a screen of fabric mesh in a wooden frame hinged at the top. A hook in the center of the bottom piece rested in an eye screwed into the sill. But it was only a screen.

She pushed a finger through the mesh near the bottom with a sound no louder than a sigh and eased the hook from the eye. Her finger still through the hole pulled the screen toward her, slowly, ever so slowly to ease it out past squeak points, and still the form on the bed made no stir.

Sofia leaned forward, ducked beneath the screen and hooked her small and delicate hands over the sill. As slow and silent as spilled honey oozing over a table’s edge, she pulled herself up and over the sill, ever watchful for any change in the gentle lifting and lowering of the blanket with the child’s night breathing. When her upper body was far enough over the sill that she began to tilt, she clamped her hand onto the side of the window frame, and she once again crept through the opening.

The form on the bed shifted, the dreamer perhaps happily frolicking about the bank above the pool in which a best friend twitched a finned tail, and she giggled. Sofia froze, holding herself as immobile as a stalking tarantula until the potential of the dreamer awakening had diminished. A sigh, a whimper of disappointment, another giggle of merriment, and the dream settled back into its own depths.

With strength improbable in such an aged body, Sofia’s intrusion recommenced. Holding her now off-balanced body unmoving solely with the strength of one hand, she released the other one and let it inch toward the floor. All the while, her head tilted back at an impossible angle as she watched the bed and its sleeping occupant, waiting, waiting for Sofia’s loving kiss. Her hand was inches from the floor and reaching for purchase on the carpet pile before releasing the other when –.

A low, rumbling growl echoed about the room.

Be-Be always slept on the floor on the far side of Kelly’s bed, between the bed and the door, a family dog all the way. Just a pup with the challenge to grow into the huge feet he shuffled across the floor a year after the Anderson family brought baby Kelly home from the hospital, the two had grown together, sharing wobbly first steps and mistakes beyond the paper’s edge. However, in the ensuing six years, Kelly’s growth had been modest compared to her playmate. Be-Be was no longer an overlarge-pawed, lumbering puppy, but an in-his-prime, seventy-five-pound mass of muscular pit-bull. And, he took his responsibility of protecting his pack-mate very seriously. With Be-Be at her bedside, the girl could hardly have been safer.

The movement of air from the window carried Sofia’s scent into the room, an odor so foreign and disturbing to Be-Be that he instantly arose from deep slumber. Then, rather than making his stand beside the bed and issuing warning barks at the intruder while alerting the family, the atrocious odor had so stoked Be-Be’s fury that he attacked.

Using only her one hand still clasping the window frame, Sofia jerked her body back up and, in an instant, back out the window.

The screen’s frame had yet to slam against the house when Be-Be hit the mesh. The screen started to swing open with the impact, but his speed was such that it couldn’t move fast enough, so he went through it like it was no more than wispy flaps of gauze. Only then did it slap back against the window frame.

Down the hall in the family room, Kelly’s mom and dad were startled by the slapping bang from their daughter’s room, followed by a quick series of snarling growls and ending with a single, coarse, drawn-out canine scream suddenly cut short. Within seconds they were in Kelly’s room, cradling her in their arms and staring at the unlatched window screen with its mesh ripped from top to bottom. Kelly’s dad dashed over and looked out the window into the side yard where the ceiling light from the room added to the street light left little concealed. He pushed the screen frame open far enough to stick his head out. He looked left and right, but he saw no one, not even Be-Be.

Within four minutes of the time Monica Anderson reported to the police dispatcher that an attempt had just been made to break into her daughter’s bedroom, the patrol car assigned to that side of town was parked out front. However, by that time, Jerry Anderson and his sixteen-year-old son, armed with baseball bats and flashlights, were well into searching the yard, the window, the sill, and both the inside and the outside walls; and then the yards on both sides and half of the alley. If the intruder had left any signs of passage as fragile as footprints impressed in the lawn and planting beds or fingerprints on or around the window, they were trampled, smeared and examined into oblivion. Other than a foul, unfamiliar odor hanging in the still air, there was no sign of who or what might have drawn Be-Be out.

The responding officers expanded the original search to include all the yards on their side of the alley, the rest of the alley, and then the yards on the other side of the alley. There was nothing of note other than a faint whiff of that same foul odor at a couple of places in the alley. Of Be-Be there was no sign. They took down as much information as they needed to make a report of a prowler and suspicious circumstances for the day shift to follow up on, then, making promises to maintain frequent patrols back through the neighborhood, departed. Assuming Be-Be would return on his own, the Andersons went to bed with Kelly snuggled between them.

In the morning, Don Evans went to the Anderson house as soon as he hit the street. While conducting a daylight search of the yard and alley, he came upon the enclosed space next to the carriage shed a few doors down and stuck his head under the overhanging foliage. The stench there was still so strong it hammered into his sinuses with the force of a broken ammonia capsule jammed into a nostril. He gagged and jerked back into the clear air. Using his baton to spread the leafy branches for a better look without having to go back in, he peered about for what he was sure must be a dead animal, and not a fresh kill, either. But it didn’t really smell like that, either. In fact, he couldn’t say just what it did smell like. It was eye-watering acrid, gut-emptying foul rotten, and flashed into mind his days in Bosnia and a maze of cave tunnels he encountered there while chasing insurgents.

“Jesus Christ, Don,” said a voice from behind him. “When’s the last time you took a shower?”

Don glanced over his shoulder at Gary De Leon, the small department’s sole detective, only, he reminded himself, it was Inspector De Leon. Shortly after the young, good-looking officer had transferred from one of the Southern California towns satellite to Los Angeles, he was promoted to the position left vacant when old detective Sol Kilgore retired – promoted over Don and a couple of other older, more experienced officers on the department. His background of coming out of an LAPD police academy-trained department gave him ample standing to then convince the star-struck chief that the title of Inspector would lend more prestige to the position than just plain old Detective or Investigator.

“Yeah, funny,” Don muttered, turning back to the bower and its stifling aura. “You ever smell anything like this?”

“Not since chemistry class. And that fits right in with a probability that just sort of jumps right out at you. Most likely our prowler was nothing but a college kid or two wanting to anoint a neighborhood with their latest lab experiment. I’m surprised they were able to outrun the dog, though. Must have been shocked as hell to see him come busting through the window like that.”

Don shook his head. “But you’d think there would have been screams or shouts heard. The only thing the Andersons heard after the screen slammed was what they said sounded like the dog growling and then making one long but cut off howl. And, you’d think there would be something left behind. A torn shirt shred from where Be-Be got hold of one of ’em, or a dropped bottle of their concoction – something. There’s not even a sign of a struggle. It’s like they just caught the dog as he came through the window and carried him away.”

“I’m thinking they did just that. You know how college kids can come up with some pretty weird plans. They might have planned all along in luring the dog out just so they could take him away. Part of the joke, you know. We’re liable to find him walking down the highway ten miles out where they dumped him. I just hope we don’t find him hanging from a telephone pole, somewhere.”

Don shook his head, a slow, hesitant movement that almost stopped at each end of the swing before reaffirming the puzzlement. “I don’t think so, not unless it was the entire offensive line of the football team. We’re talking about a very protective pit bull – and not a small one either. I’d almost rather tangle with a mountain lion.”

“And, that’s my other theory. There are mountain lions in the hills and woods around here, aren’t there? They don’t come near town, normally, but I’ve heard it has happened. The dog spotted a cat going past the window, and away he went. Just another dog chasing a cat.”

“And how do you explain this stink?”

“Simple. It’s not related to what happened.”

“But Anderson said he smelled it at the window last night. The officers, too. It’s in their report.”

De Leon shrugged and smiled like he was a teacher explaining basic math to a young second grader who just couldn’t get it. “It blew in on the breeze from right here, otherwise unrelated to the incident at the window.”

Don started to present another argument that was so glaring, it should have been obvious even to the reluctant detective who seemed to be grasping at any excuse to cut short any further work on the case: If there was even the slightest chance a prowler had tried to enter a little girl’s bedroom last night, it was imperative that it be fully investigated, which would mean lots of interviews around the neighborhood, lots of record checking, other departments in the area to be contacted, and timely follow-up on any leads developed.

That meant work for him, lots of it, since De Leon was the department’s only detective. But, if he couldn’t solve the mystery and at least identify, if not arrest, the creep, he would have an unsolved case on his record. And Don knew he wouldn’t want that. It was no secret in the department that in De Leon’s eyes, and in the eyes of the chief, too, unfortunately, he was Super-cop with a great future in law enforcement.

If Don were to point out these commonly known details about the Inspector to the Inspector, who brooked no interference from the lowly patrol division, he would go straight to the chief. De Leon was going to talk his way out of having to make a real case out of this, period. Still, Don couldn’t resist throwing another obstacle at Super-cop, just to see how good he was at dodging hurled tomatoes and pirouetting away without a stain.

“How do you explain the screen being torn open from the outside at the bottom, below the bigger rip where Be-Be went through, right there near the latch-hook where someone reached through and unhooked it? It was unhooked, you know?”

“Oh, Don, it wasn’t unhooked. It was just never hooked. The parents didn’t want to admit they had forgotten to make sure it was secure, that’s all. And that little tear was already there.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. It looks fresh to me. Missus Anderson says it wasn’t old. She says the screen was intact and latched.”

“Like I said, she just doesn’t want to admit it. That tear wouldn’t change appearance for days, maybe weeks. Come on, Don. Secure the scene. Go back on patrol. Let this one go. There’s nothing to it. Just a prank. Or, nature. It could have been a mountain lion.”

Yep, you dodged that one. If you can’t explain it, just deny it. “Or a little green man from a flying saucer,” Don mumbled as De Leon walked out to his car parked across the alley entrance.

Super-cop stopped and turned. “What’s that, Don? You say something?”

“Nope. Just clearing my throat. Bad stink around here.”

De Leon glared at him for a moment, but the double entendre, if it was one, was subtle. He’d have a hard time proving anything in the way of insubordination, and Don knew that he knew it. He smiled and waved at the young detective, then walked back through the yard to the front of the house where his patrol car was parked.

He stopped at the window and looked again at the torn screen. The hole at the bottom was definitely pushed inward from the outside. When he leaned closer, he could just detect a trace of that same, foul odor, like a smear was left on the screen by whatever had pushed through it. Inspector Super-cop might kiss it off as a college prank or prowling cougar, but Don wasn’t buying it. Cedar City had a prowler, maybe a child-stealing prowler, and he wasn’t about to let the file be closed out.