After her talk with Dr. Stuart, she went home with a few live traps that the doctor kept around for customers who had stray animals around their homes. They could trap the animal then bring it to a shelter or, if hurt, they could bring it in to be checked out by Dr. Stuart. Feeling it was highly unlikely she’d catch Ms. Midnight’s rat outside, she did want to show her she was indeed trying to look for her lost pet.
She set a couple of the traps around the perimeter of the mansion and one on the porch. Later she would knock at the door and see if she could put a couple in the house, but for now she didn’t want to disturb Ms. Midnight.
Within an hour, she had caught a whopper of a brown rat almost the size of a small cat. Not wanting to waste time, but pretty sure the occupant of the trap was not Ms. Midnight’s pet, she grabbed another trap and headed for the front door of the mansion.
She knocked timidly at the door, holding the full trap in one hand, and then reached down for the empty one when she heard Ms. Midnight making her way to the door.
When the door jerked open, she exclaimed, “Ms. Midnight, I caught—”
Ms. Midnight shrieked in horror. “Dear Lord, girl, what is THAT?”
“It’s a rat, Ms. Midnight. I caught it round back near your cellar door. Is this your pet?”
“Get that, that, THING, out of my sight. Why would you show me such a thing? Are you trying to give me a heart attack? And what is that for?” Ms. Midnight pointed at the empty cage. “You don’t plan on torturing me again with such a disgusting prize do you?”
“No! You said you were missing your pet rat, Ms. Midnight. I’ve set up some traps around the perimeter of the house and this one is for the inside. It’s much more likely your pet is still inside the mansion.”
“I most certainly do not have a pet rat. The thought of such of thing!” She shuddered as she said it. “You are not coming in here with that dirty rat cage and you can take that…that…that THING away as well. How disgusting! A pet rat, how absurd! How could someone think I, of all people, would own a rat?” Ms. Midnight was still ranting as she slammed the door—before Summer could get a word in edgewise.
“Well, that didn’t go well,” Summer said, looking at the rat that was pacing the cage, looking for an opening.
She schlepped down the porch stairs and headed for the woods behind the cottage. Summer was sure this would be a good place to release the big brown rat and also it would give her a chance to go to the cottage and see if Sully had awakened from his nap yet.
She let the thankful rat go near a fallen rotted log a few yards into the woods and then she deposited the two empty cages in the back of the dog mobile.
What could Ms. Midnight have meant by a rat, then, if it was not a pet? Was she speaking of gangsters and referring to some bad man? If so, why would she care if a bad man was missing? She figured she would let Ms. Midnight cool off a while and go and talk to her again as Dr. Stuart suggested.
*****
She finished collecting the other traps around the house and set them in the SUV, and then checked on Sully. Hopefully he hadn’t awakened while she was talking to Ms. Midnight and decided to dismantle more of the couch. When she quietly peeped in the door, she woke him. He blinked his mismatched eyes, clearing them of sleep, and started wagging his tail vigorously. He tried to get up quickly but the fur on the bottom of his feet made it almost impossible for him to get any traction on the hardwood floor. He looked as if running in place for a moment. Finally he made his way to her side, sliding a bit when his momentum caught up with his halt.
“Would you like to help me in the garden, Sully?” He leaned against her leg amorously, leading her to believe the answer was yes.
He trotted behind her as she led him with a shovel in tow to the Celtic knot of intertwined crushed stone paths. While he sat watching, she opened one of the burlap sacks of chicken manure she had procured from a local farm, one of Dr. Stuart’s patrons. The garden was in serious need of a good rototilling now that she knew which plants were meant to be in the garden and which were not. The chicken manure would be a great way to get the soil conditioned to host the plants and seedlings it would soon be nurturing.
She spread a layer of the manure out with a bow rake of metal teeth. Sully watched impatiently, standing and sitting then swatting at the rake as it passed near him. But mostly, his interest was piqued by the smell of the manure.
When a good layer of manure had been spread, she grabbed a rusty old round pointed shovel she found in the barn, and started to dig. She jumped on the shoulder of the shovel to put her body weight into breaking the hard dirt that had formed from years of neglect and lack of moisture. Sully found this amusing and lay on the crushed gravel path watching her curiously.
She used the handle as a lever and the ground broke free in large chunks and clumps, which she turned over on top of the manure and broke up with the blade of the shovel into smaller chunks. She had turned over three good-sized chunks when she looked at Sully and said, “Well, little one, are you going to help me?”
His ears perked up and he quickly got to his feet at her invitation. He sniffed around as if looking for the perfect place to begin. When he was satisfied, he turned facing away from Summer and started to dig in—slow at first, then faster and more vehemently.
Once she saw he figured out what to do, she turned around to a spot near her last hole when she was pelted by a dirt clod on the back of her thigh. A second later, several more hit the small of her back. She turned to see what it was that was hitting her only to be showered by a rain of fine dirt and manure. Afraid to open her mouth for fear of taking in a mouthful of the flying debris, she stood there stunned by the power and speed with which Sully was digging.
His claws ripped through the ground effortlessly, shredding it into small clods and fine dirt, which were strewn from his paws through his back legs at Summer. In a matter of seconds he was four feet down and Summer was standing waist deep in a pile of dirt.
Summer sneezed, causing a cloud of dust and dirt to sprinkle from her hair and face to the pile below. The sneeze caught Sully’s attention and he turned to look at Summer, wagging his whip of a tail. She wiped dirt from her eyes and lips, spitting to get the remnants of dirt that had made its way past her lips into her mouth from the force of Sully’s pitching.
“Well, now. I certainly hadn’t expected that!” she said as she pulled her legs from the pile of dirt that encased them and pat her clothes free of loose dirt. The pup looked at her as if worried he’d done something wrong, when Summer knelt down to give him a reassuring rub behind the ears.
“You like to dig, don’t you?” she said, scratching behind the one ear that flopped over lazily to one side. He moaned in content and involuntarily scratched the back of his front leg with his back leg. “Was that fun?” she said, shaking her head and depositing a sprinkling of dirt and small dirt clods on Sully’s muzzle. He shook his head in imitation of her and she giggled.
“You did good, boy, but maybe we don’t need to go so deep?” she said, chuckling. She pulled the shovel from the earth and started to shovel the pile of dirt into the hole Sully had made. Without missing a beat, Sully started digging in the pile, depositing the dirt in the hole.
“Good boy, Sully…easy does it, slow down.” He did as instructed and eased the dirt into the hole. When the hole was filled, she walked on it, stomping down the soil and tamping it back into shape. Sully imitated her and stepped in place, lifting his legs higher than needed to emulate her actions. She smiled at him and when they were done she ruffled his ears, exciting him and causing him to lunge at her playfully.
“I promise we’ll play, but first let’s get this dirt overturned, okay?” It was apparent that Sully was much quicker and more adept to the challenge than she was at digging, so she opted to follow behind him with the bow rake gathering any rocks she found, piling them in an old lopsided but useable wheelbarrow. In no time at all, they had the entire bed ground up and the fertilizer mixed in well.
When all the tools were put away and Sully’d had half a bucket of cool, clean water, she pulled out an old tennis ball she found on a shelf in the barn. She tossed it a few yards away. Sully watched the ball intently since she had pulled it from her pocket. He watched it sail through the air, bounce a couple of times and roll a couple of feet before it came to rest next to the trunk of a large scruffy-looking bush. He turned and looked at Summer with his black tongue hanging over the side of his lower canines.
“Fetch…go get it!” she instructed and he took off like a flash, his tail wagging so hard it seemed to throw his rear end out of balance in his strides. He grabbed the ball in his mouth and mauled it while he looked at Summer.
“Bring it back, Sully. Bring it to me,” she said, clapping her hands and exciting him more. He seemed to hop in the air with delight and with his tail in the air and his elbows and forelegs on the ground, he seemed to be challenging her to come and get it from him.
She took a step towards him and he ran leaping through the air and lunging towards her, just out of reach. “So the game is keep away, is it?” she said, bending over with her hands on her knees rocking from one foot to the other. Sully lunged at her then spun in a circle, keeping just out of Summer’s reach. She lunged at him and he shot to his right, running a wide circle around her and stopping in front of her again.
*****
The game was afoot—a strange dance of lunges and retreats, chasing and escapes—the game of keep away had Sully’s tail straight up and spinning in a clockwise twirl as Summer giggled and chased him until she ran out of breath. But it was the drumming on the upstairs window of the mansion that stopped the two players dead in their tracks. Ms. Midnight donned a face most unfamiliar to Summer. The old lady seemed to light up with astonishment, as if it would break down the ancient window pane. Just as suddenly as she had appeared, she turned in a tornado of swirling curtains and skirt, disappearing from view into the recess of the room.
Sully and Summer looked at one another for a brief puzzled moment, and then Sully made a fake lunge to Summer’s right, and then took off to the left, watching her all the while and nearly running into an oncoming, breathless Ms. Midnight. She looked practically giddy as she reached down to rub Sully’s ears.
“Oh, I’m so relieved, you found Ms. Ash,” she said to Summer.
“Um. Ms. Ash?” Summer asked, confused.
“Well, you must have found her if you’ve come to know her pup,” Ms. Midnight said matter-of-factly.
Summer wasn’t quite sure how to proceed with this strange conversation. She was also stunned at seeing this new side of Ms. Midnight—a pleasant, almost cheerful spirit seemed to have stepped into Ms. Midnight’s body and taken possession of the bitter, antagonistic woman. All Summer could do was shake her head at the woman.
“You didn’t find Ms. Ash?” Ms. Midnight said, her demeanor suddenly changing to sorrowful. “But…” she said and trailed off.
Summer reached for Ms. Midnight’s hand. With the sudden change in her emotion, the energy of her elation flooded out of the elderly woman as did her strength and Summer was sure that she was about to fall. Sully must have sensed the same thing as he leaned up against Ms. Midnight, steadying her as Summer cupped her other hand under her elbow. They walked her over to a nearby weathered but solid bench.
“Who is Ms. Ash?” Summer said breaking the silence of Ms. Midnight’s disambiguation.
Ms. Midnight lovingly pet the huge head of the hellhound pup that lay upon her knees looking up at her with concern. “Ms. Ash is the mother of this pup,” she said sadly.
“Oh…” Summer said, now realizing why Ms. Midnight had become so sad.
“And if he is here with you, then she…she—”
“Yes. Ms. Midnight, she’s gone. There was nothing I could do for her,” Summer said regretfully.
“Then you saw her? What happened to her?”
“There was some kind of fight between the hell—I mean Ms. Ash—and a demon named Hunter. When I found them Ms. Ash was already gone, but the demon was in bad shape and I stitched him up.”
“You mean you saved the scourge that killed my beloved Ms. Ash?” Ms. Midnight growled.
“Um, well, yes. I didn’t know what had happened or that you and Ms. Ash were, well, friends. He said—the demon, that is—that she attacked him and he was just protecting himself.”
“And you believed a demon? What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of imbecile?”
“Well, no. I just, well, when we found Sully, he—the demon—said she must have attacked him because he unknowingly got too close to her pup.”
“Of course she would defend her pup against a nasty thing like a demon. They are unable to tell the truth. Don’t you know anything? And who is this Sully?”
“Do I know anything about demons? No, not a thing. Sully is what I named him,” Summer said, patting the pup’s head. “Well, Sulphur, really—Sully for short.”
“Well, for future reference, demons can’t be trusted—ever,” she said, looking lovingly at the hound. “Sulphur—I like it. Ms. Ash would have liked it too.” A tear rolled down Ms. Midnight’s cheek and landed on her chest. “Ms. Ash would have been a good mother to you, Sulphur. She loved you very much.”
*****
Summer asked, “So, Ms. Ash was his mother? And your pet?”
“Don’t be silly, you don’t own a hellhound. They allow you to be part of their life.”
“But she, Ms. Ash, lived with you?”
“From time to time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Ms. Ash was a hellhound? I have people looking all over town for a Ms. Ash.”
“Number one—you didn’t ask, and number two—would you have believed me if I told you she was a hellhound?” Ms. Midnight said, seeming quite lucid. “Or would you have just written me off as some crazy lady?”
“I might have believed you. I had already found Sulphur by the time you mentioned the missing Ms. Ash, but I admit if you had brought up a hellhound a month ago, I probably would have thought you were a little loopy.” Summer smiled.
“I suppose it sounds a little strange. Not many have seen all the things I’ve seen in my lifetime and I suppose that’s a good thing. I guess Ms. Ash has been taken by the reaper?” Ms. Midnight asked.
“That’s what the demon told me would happen, but I didn’t see it.”
“And you intend on caring for the pup?”
“Yes. If that’s okay with you?”
“Of course, but it will not be easy sometimes. Hellhounds are not of this plane,” Ms. Midnight told her.
“I know, but I couldn’t leave him all alone for the reaper to take him.”
“It might have been better.”
“Maybe. The demon said the same thing, but…well, I’m an orphan and so is he,” Summer said as she scratched under Sully’s chin. “I think we were meant for one another. I don’t expect it to be easy. There are so many things I don’t know about hellhounds, but I have a lot of really good friends that will help me raise him.”
“Then it’s settled,” Ms. Midnight said, suddenly standing. “I just wish we knew where Ms. Ash was—she, at least, would help me get back the rat,” she said rudely.
Summer and Sully exchanged a look of puzzlement. “But, I thought we just talked about where Ms. Ash was?” Summer said.
“Don’t you tell me what we did or didn’t discuss. I know exactly what we discussed. You should be out there,” she said, waving her hands furiously towards the front of the mansion and the street beyond, “looking for her. She’d never let the rat out of her sight. She must have hidden him for his own protection. That’s it! You would have known that if you had been looking for her. And tell me, will you be planting my garden sometime this century? Or shall I find another more competent renter to attend my needs?”
Summer was dumbfounded by the change in Ms. Midnight’s demeanor. It was as if a switch had been flipped and she was suddenly back to the grumpy woman Summer had known. “I, well, I was trying to be thorough in identifying the plants so I could replace them—”
“Well, get on with it already. I’m not going to live forever you know,” she said as she shuffled to the mansion. When she came to the stairs of the porch, she turned and exclaimed in a shrill voice, “And find that RAT!”