The Carriage House

The wind was still gusting, and the sky was dark, with no moon. Tess tried not to pay too close attention to the conditions, refused to think about night creatures on the prowl. At ten o’clock at night in the city, there’d be people on the streets. Four in the morning, she might have more misgivings, but not at ten. Up here, she didn’t know what to expect.

She debated calling the police or pounding on Andrew Thorne’s front door, but decided that would be wimpish. What if it wasn’t the missing pregnant cat?

“It damn well better be,” she muttered, refusing to consider the alternatives to Tippy Tail.

She flicked on the lantern, its light spreading out across the gravel driveway in front of her.

The smell of lilacs, sweet and homey, helped reassure her. Okay, you can do this.

She ducked onto the narrow strip of yard between her house and the lilac hedge. The shaggy grass was up to her calves, conjuring up more of Davey’s warnings about snakes. Tess dismissed them and walked quickly to the bulkhead, its soft, half-rotten wood painted a dull gray. She wondered how the cat could have gotten into the cellar, then spotted a missing pane in a small, two-pane casement window. There you go, she thought. It was just right for a gray cat with a white-tipped tail.

She set her lantern on the ground and pushed at the wooden latch. It broke apart, and she immediately put replacing the bulkhead door on her mental to-do list. Even if she sold the place, potential buyers would want the bare minimums covered.

She grabbed the edge of the bulkhead and lifted. It was heavy, the old wood sodden with years of rain and snow. She could only imagine what her father, Davey and the rest of the guys at Jim’s Place would say if they could see her now.

She propped the bulkhead door open and grabbed her lantern, pointing it down the concrete steps.

Cobwebs. Her stomach muscles tightened. Spiders didn’t scare her, but couldn’t any part of this adventure be easy?

She wondered what she’d have done when she’d heard the noise if she hadn’t known a six-year-old was looking for a missing pregnant cat. Probably gotten a hotel room, she decided, or headed back to Beacon Hill, wine or no wine.

Lantern firmly in hand, Tess made her way down the steep steps, through a gauze of cobwebs. When she came to a six-foot metal door at the bottom, she shone her light on her shirt, pants and arms, just to make sure nothing had crawled off the cobwebs onto her.

Above her, the bulkhead door creaked and moaned in a gust of wind. She had no idea what she’d do if it slammed shut. She didn’t want to think about it.

She pushed open the metal door, and her lantern illuminated a small, finished space under a low ceiling. This wasn’t so bad. There were proper walls, a concrete floor, shelves, wooden crates and a washer and dryer that predated her kitchen appliances. But who would do laundry down here? She would have to take either the trapdoor or the bulkhead to get here, neither of which she would want to negotiate with a basket of dirty clothes.

There was a light switch by the door. Tess flipped it, and one of three fluorescent tubes overhead flickered on. The room, she saw, was dusty and damp, but tidy. She could feel the dust in her throat and wondered about radon. Ike had probably never had the place tested. It could be loaded.

On the other hand, any radon could just seep out the cracks and holes. This was not an airtight modern home. If nothing else, the carriage house “breathed.”

Tess cleared her throat. “Kitty, oh, kitty, where are you?”

Nothing.

“Tippy Tail?”

A moan of a meow sounded from deeper within the cellar. Tess walked over to a dark doorway adjoining the laundry room. She held up the lantern, and swore under her breath when she realized it was a dirt cellar. She could see the outlines of heating ducts, pipes, piles of junk.

“Damn. Come on, cat, don’t you want to let me take you home?”

It was pitch-dark in the dirt cellar, utterly black, with no windows at all. Tess had newfound respect for Davey Ahearn and the forty years he’d spent going in and out of places like this to fix people’s plumbing.

She tilted her lantern, its light striking more cobwebs. “Man, Davey, never mind snakes. I bet you know your spiders.”

But thoughts of him and the way he’d doubted her, what she knew he’d say if he could see her now, rekindled her resolve. She proceeded.

It was a dirt floor, silty, cool and a dull brown. The foundation walls were stone. It was like a cave. As she picked her way deeper into the old dirt cellar, Tess could see the outlines of the trapdoor overhead, light from the kitchen angling through the narrow gaps. She made out the ladder hooked to the ceiling. There was no way. No damn way.

A naked, dusty lightbulb was screwed into a socket in the ceiling, and she had to put her hand through thick cobwebs to reach the string. The bulb gave off a dull, yellowed light. She saw a bunch of dead flies caught in a cobweb.

Pipes and heating ducts hung from the low ceiling, and there was a furnace, a pump, piles of cast-off furniture, buckets, old brooms. Nasty.

The cat meowed again, softly.

“You’d better be a cat.” Tess touched the cell phone on her hip, just to reassure herself. “Tippy Tail, don’t you want to call it a night and come on out?”

She had three choices. One, call it a night herself and turn up the volume on her white-noise machine. Two, get help from the neighbors. Three, proceed.

At least she wasn’t worried about coming upon Jedidiah Thorne. If she were a ghost, she’d find a better place to hang out than down here.

She hit her shin on a rusted bucket. “Ouch—damn it.” But she checked herself, keeping her tone cajoling, slightly high-pitched. She didn’t want to scare the cat. “Come on, kitty.” She felt silly. She’d never had a cat, but one ex-boyfriend had talked to his Siamese this way, so it had to work. “Have you had your babies? Couldn’t you find a nice place? I mean, Tippy Tail, this is a dungeon.”

Tess coughed, resisted the urge to spit. Dirt and dust seemed to invade her eyes, her nostrils, her throat. She pulled her shirt up over her mouth and pushed farther into the cellar, away from the lightbulb and laundry room.

It was so damn dark, even with her lantern and the lightbulb.

“The hell with it. Tippy Tail, you are on your own.”

She pulled on the string, and the lightbulb went off.

The cat meowed again, pitifully, and Tess couldn’t abandon her without one more try. The animal was somewhere close, very close. Tess sighed and shone the lantern into a corner piled with old furniture, none of which looked worth saving. There were dining-room chairs, a metal kitchen table, a couple of old nightstands too rickety even for the country look she planned for the carriage house if she kept it. She spotted an iron bed frame that might have possibilities.

Her light hit a pair of golden eyes, and she had to stifle a startled yell. “Well, there you are.”

The cat was out of reach, tucked amidst old rags and junk in the absolute farthest corner of the old cellar. Tess couldn’t tell if the presumed Tippy Tail had had her kittens. She leaned over a nightstand for a better look, trying not to spook the cat with her lantern.

Suddenly the nightstand gave way. Tess lost her balance, her lantern flying out of her hand, her right arm following the crashing nightstand while the rest of her went sprawling in the opposite direction. She jerked her arm free, but her momentum pitched her backward onto the bed frame.

She landed on her back on the dirt floor.

“Oh, gross!”

And painful. She hurt just above her hip where the bed frame had dug in. She pushed it away, scrambling onto her knees and reaching for the lantern. She was disgusted, shuddering at the thought of what she might be kneeling in. Cobwebs, decayed animal droppings.

She got to her feet, ignoring the pain in her hip, and pointed the light back toward the corner. She was breathing hard, beyond repulsed.

The cat was gone. The commotion must have frightened her off.

Tess was in no mood. “Tough, kitty. It didn’t do much for me, either.” She felt her hip. No blood. Probably just bruised. The pain subsided, slowly. “Tippy Tail?”

Her cell phone was missing, too. It must have gone flying at the same time she had. She brought the lantern around, searching for cat and cell phone.

She spotted the phone in the dirt under the bed frame.

But no cat.

She wasn’t about to continue the night without a phone. Ignoring her bruises and scrapes, she lifted the bed frame and reached down into the dirt. “Just don’t think,” she muttered.