Now it was Xander’s turn to be surprised. “No way!” he said. “How could you possibly figure that out, Zee?”
“Elementary, my dear Holmes,” Xena said with a grin. “Mr. Tuttle wrote a book about the Beast.” She pointed at the shelf where dozens of identical paperbacks leaned against each other forlornly. The spine on all of them read The Beast: Blackslope’s Monster. Under it in larger letters was the name H. Tuttle.
“Good detective work!” Then the man’s face fell. “My book is self-published, and it isn’t selling too well. But the truth should be known, even if people round here want to pretend it never happened. They’re afraid. Afraid to believe there might really be a Beast.”
“So what do you think actually happened back then?” Xena asked.
“Well.” Mr. Tuttle sat back and made a
steeple with his fingers. “Here’s the real story. It’s all in the book, of course, but I’ll summarize for you.
“The last time the Beast appeared was in the early nineteen hundreds. The two people most involved were James and Adeline, the coachman and cook up at the manor. James was a great brute of a man—they say he could knock down a draft horse with one blow of his fist. And he had a jealous, evil temper, especially when it came to his wife.
“Adeline seemed quiet and meek, but James always swore that her mother had been a witch and that Adeline had learned spells and potions from her. If James ever raised a hand to her or their children, the next day he’d be clutching his stomach in agony, or all covered with spots, or shivering with a fever.”
“You mean Adeline fed him poison!” Xena exclaimed.
Mr. Tuttle blinked at her. “No one ever caught her at it, but James said she did. Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Where was I? Oh, yes.
“Well, apparently one morning Adeline came to work in the great house, pale and trembling. She said James had put a curse on her. She didn’t say what kind of curse, but she was
clearly terrified. ‘I am doomed,’ she kept saying, and no one could tell her any different. And that very night the Beast made its first attack. A farmer near the manor found one of his sheep torn apart, as if by a ravenous monster.”
“Ugh.” Xander shuddered.
“The night after that, a young man coming home late from the pub was chased by a gigantic shaggy creature that he swore had foot-long claws and fangs. The next night, another farmer’s chicken coop was destroyed and the chickens scattered. Each incident was nearer to the manor. Step-by-step, the Beast was making its way to its victim. And then it appeared outside James and Adeline’s window—they lived in a room built onto the back of the stables. Two days later …” Mr. Tuttle paused dramatically. “Adeline vanished. And she was never seen again.”
“Sherlock’s notes didn’t say anything about a curse,” Xena said.
Mr. Tuttle sniffed. “Perhaps the great detective wasn’t as great as all that. Perhaps he didn’t know about the curse. After all, he never solved the case.”
Xena was stung at the insult to her ancestor. “Anyway, I thought Adeline was supposed to be
the witch, not James. How would James know how to put a curse on her?”
Mr. Tuttle leaned forward. “Now that’s an interesting question. Of course, there’s no way to be sure. But I have a theory. There was a circus in town that summer. Circuses always have fortune-tellers and people like that. They camped on the grounds of the manor, in fact. I believe James found someone there to help him with the curse.”
“Hmmm.” Xena wasn’t convinced.
“Scoff if you like,” Mr. Tuttle said. “But if you’re wise, you’ll take care. Because the Beast is back!”