bladder-straining excitement.
I had always thought of Roger Stanwyk as a decent man who had lent his
talents to the Wyvern research for the noblest of reasons, in the name
of scientific progress and the advancement of medicine, much as my
mother had done. His only sin was the same one Mom committed, hubris.
Out of pride in his undeniable intelligence, out of misplaced trust in
the power of science to resolve all problems and explain all things, he
had unwittingly become one of the architects of doomsday.
That was what I’d always thought. Now I wasn’t so sure of his good
intentions. As Leland Delacroix’s tape had revealed, Stanwyk was
involved in both my mother’s work and the Mystery Train. He was a darker
figure than he had seemed previously.
All of us two-legged specimens dodged from shrub to tree across the
Stanwyks’ elaborately landscaped domain, hoping no one would be looking
out a window. We reached the next fence before we realized that
Mungojerrie wasn’t with us.
Panicked, we doubled back, searching among the neatly trimmed shrubs and
hedges, whispering his name, which isn’t easy to whisper with a straight
face, and we found him near the Stanwyks’ porch. He was a ghostly gray
shape on the black lawn.
We squatted around our diminutive team leader, and Roosevelt switched
his brain to the Weird Channel to find out what the cat was thinking.
“He wants to go inside, ” Roosevelt whispered.
“Why? ” I asked.
Roosevelt murmured, “Something’s wrong here.”
“What? ” Sasha asked.
“Death lives here, ” Roosevelt interpreted.
“He keeps the yard nice, ” Bobby said.
“Doogie’s waiting, ” Sasha reminded the cat.
Roosevelt said, “Mungojerrie says people in the house need help.”
“How can he tell? ” I asked, immediately knew the answer, and found
myself repeating it with Sasha and Bobby in a whispered chorus, “Cats
know things.” I was tempted to snatch up the cat, tuck him under my arm,
and run away from here with him as if he were a football. He had fangs
and claws, of course, and might object. More to the point, we needed to
have his willing cooperation in the search ahead of us. He might be
disinclined to cooperate if I treated him like a piece of sporting
goods, even if I had no intention of drop-kicking him to Wyvern.
Forced to take a closer look at the Victorian house, I realized the
place had a Twilight Zone quality. On the upper floor, windows revealed
rooms brightened only by the flickering light of television screens, an
unmistakable pulsing radiance. Downstairs, the two rooms at the back of
the house probably kitchen and dining room were lit by the orange, draft
shaken flames of candles or oil lamps.
Our Tonto-with-a-tail sprang to his feet and sprinted to the house.
went boldly up the steps and disappeared into the shadows of the back
porch.
Maybe Mr. Mungojerrie, phenomenal feline, has a well-honed sense of
civic responsibility. Maybe his moral compass is so exquisitely
magnetized that he cannot turn away from those in need. I suspected,
however, that his compelling motivation was the well-known curiosity of
his species, which so frequently leads to their demise.
The four of us remained squatting in a semicircle for a moment, until
Bobby said, “Am I wrong to think this sucks? ” An informal poll showed a
hundred percent agreement with the it sucks point of view.
Reluctantly, stealthily, we followed Mungojerrie onto the back porch,
where he was scratching persistently at the door.
Through the four glass panes in the door, we had a clear view of a
kitchen so Victorian in its detail and bric-a-brac that I would not have
been surprised to see Charles Dickens, William Gladstone, and Jack the
Ripper having tea. The room was lit by an oil lamp on the oval table, as
though someone within were my brother in XP.
Sasha took the initiative and knocked.
No one answered.
Mungojerrie continued to scratch at the door.
“We get the point, ” Bobby told him.
Sasha tried the knob, which turned.
Hoping to be thwarted by a dead bolt, we were dismayed to learn that the
door was unlocked. It swung open a few inches.