Hairless Harassment

Chapter Eight

I could scarcely keep up as Octo-Cat tore his way through the dense forest. Branches slapped into my chest as I wove my way deeper and deeper. The woods that joined the two properties didn’t run more than fifty feet wide at the most, but with no clear path to guide me through, they felt much deeper and darker than they had by the light of the afternoon.

Even treading carefully, I managed to snag my foot on a knotted root, which sent me careening face forward into the dirt. Of course, I’d needlessly been wearing open-toed dress shoes for the teacup funeral, which made for a particularly painful toe-stubbing experience.

I moaned and rolled over onto my side, clutching my poor injured toes and I searched the darkness for Octo-Cat. He’d probably made it all the way to Harlow manor by now, which meant I was alone in the creepy forest, sporting an injury that would make it difficult to escape quickly should trouble come calling.

An ominous crunch sounded a few yards away as something took slow, deliberate steps toward me over the bed of dried leaves that clung to the forest floor like a thick carpet.

Please don’t be a wolf. Please don’t be a wolf, I begged inwardly. Would wolves be brave enough to come so near a residential area? I had no idea, but the forest that linked our houses stretched far and long throughout the posh neighborhood. It was totally possible that some bigger animals had made their homes nearby and had now spotted me as an easy post-supper snack.

“Hello?” I called into the darkness, because it felt more terrifying to remain silent. Perhaps Officer Bouchard was still standing guard at Harlow Manor and would come running into the forest to rescue me. Hopefully he’d be at least a touch more careful than I had been.

The crunching leaves silenced, leaving me alone with the eerie howl of the wind sweeping through the trees. Well, I was never ever coming out here at night again. Nope, wouldn’t do it, no matter how curious something made me.

And tonight seemed like a really good time to start my “no woods at night” rule, just as soon as I could get out of here.

I shifted onto my back and pulled myself to a seated position. Everything hurt, and I’d definitely be needing another shower. Thankfully, nothing appeared to be broken, so I pressed my already dirty hands deeper into the dirt and pushed myself to a standing position. My injured side had a hard time taking the weight, so I hobbled like a zombie, moving very slowly through the growth.

I’d only made it a few feet when the crunching started up again.

I wanted to run but knew attempting to move faster with my injury would only lead to another wipeout. So, I plodded slowly along with some unknown animal following in close pursuit. I’d reached the halfway point between the senator’s house and mine when I heard Octo-Cat shout, “Oh, if you’re looking for trouble, you’ve found it, all right!”

“Octo-Cat?” I called, turning behind me to search the trees for his tiny striped body. I’d never been so happy to hear his demanding, little voice in all my life.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t him I found standing before me now. Rather, twin pairs of yellow-green eyes blinked into view, moving closer and closer until we were only a few feet away from each other. The white spots on the smaller cat made him easier to pick out, but the large black Sphynx remained mostly shrouded in the shadows, save for those large, glowing eyes.

Octo-Cat broke through the tangled limbs of the forest a few seconds later and looked me up and down. “What happened to you?”

“I fell,” I said flatly, unwilling to take my eyes off our two strange visitors. Although, I supposed these woods belonged to them as much as it did us.

“Did they trip you?” He put himself between me and the other cats and growled, making me feel slightly safer and a lot more loved.

“I don’t think so,” I said, searching the forest floor for the nasty root that had caused my fall but coming up short in the expanding darkness.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past them,” he mumbled.

The larger Sphynx stepped forward and let out a string of deep meows.

“Oh, jeez, not this again,” my cat hissed in response.

“What did he say?” I asked, hobbling over to the nearest tree and extending a hand to rest on its trunk so that I wouldn’t be stuck standing on one foot for this entire exchange.

As much as he’d hated working with the traumatized Yorkie on our last case, he seemed even angrier about having to speak to the Sphynxes. Octo-Cat took a deep breath before translating. “He said, ‘at night the owl sounds in such a way our curiosity compounds.’”

Well, that hadn’t been what I expected. “Um, what?” I asked, shifting my weight to give even more of it to the tree.

“Not what,” Octo-Cat corrected with a heavy sigh. “Who?”

“Huh?” I brought my free hand up to scratch at my head, completely baffled now.

He sighed again. “Remember how I told you I don’t like their kind? This is why. It’s not because they look funny. It’s because they talk funny. Everything they say comes out as a riddle. It’s why they’re called Sphynx cats. Get it now?”

“You mean like the mythical creature that guarded the secrets of the gods?” I found it both crazy and fascinating that an old story I barely remembered actually had bearing on our modern world.

“Oh, it wasn’t as selfless as that,” Octo-Cat spoke as if he’d personally known the Sphinx of ancient Greek mythology. “It was a nasty demon, tormenting everyone just because it could.” He spat toward our two hairless visitors and raised the hairs on his back menacingly.

“Wow,” I said, hardly above a whisper.

Octo-Cat turned back toward me, somehow even more agitated than before. “So now you can see why I wasn’t too keen to go chatting these guys up. The big one is Jillianne, by the way, and the little one is Jacques.”

“I know you’re a little uncomfortable right now,” I said placatingly. It didn’t escape me that each of the three cats had four good, strong legs, and I only had one. Despite his frustration, at least Octo-Cat had stayed by my side. “But we could really use their help,” I continued. “Could you please just tell them that I’m their new neighbor and that I’m thrilled to meet them?”

“You know the ancient Sphinx enjoyed killing people, too?” Octo-Cat licked his paw while talking, perhaps because he didn’t like sitting in the dirty forest, or perhaps to show off that he had fur while our two conversants did not.

After a little back and forth, he informed me, “They say, and I quote, ‘Whether written on note or banner or mat, this is our greeting, to human from cat.’”

“Ha, they’re saying welcome!” I cried, having far more fun now than my poor, long-suffering cat. “How do they come up with those so fast? They must be geniuses.”

Octo-Cat growled. Once again, it seemed, our definitions differed. “I don’t have to sit here and take this, you know. If you want my help, you’ll refrain from encouraging their unwieldy behavior.”

I thought he’d said they always talked like this, but correcting him now would just send him scampering off toward home, and I still had so much more I needed to find out from our two hairless wonders. “Can you ask them if they know who killed their owner, please?” I said instead.

Octo-Cat kept his eyes firmly on mine, a challenge. “This is getting old real fast, so I suggest you think over each question carefully, because I am definitely not doing this all night,” he warned.

“Fine, fine,” I groused. “Now, tell me, what did they say?”

He pressed his ears back against his skull and shook his head. “Yeah, you’re enjoying this way too much, but I’m telling you right now, we are not adopting them.”

I was just about to yell at Octo-Cat again, when he delivered the next riddle in a bored monotone. “What we say to confirm, even if it makes one squirm.”

“Yes!” I shouted gleefully. “That means yes, right? They know!” This case really could be open and shut, seeing as we had two key witnesses right here and more than happy to talk to us.

Octo-Cat let out a dreadful groan, then turned tail and disappeared between the tree branches.

“Hey, wait!” I cried, slowly attempting to follow after him. I hoped the Sphynxes would follow, too. I was dying to ask them the next question. It would be the only one we needed to find the murderer—oddly my question would be the same as the answer to their first riddle: Who? As in, who killed the senator? How was Octo-Cat not getting this?

“They know who killed the senator,” I shouted after him. “Now you just have to ask one more question and we’ll have solved this one in record time!”

I couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he really just run off and abandoned me? And here I was starting to think he cared. Well, two could play the punishment game, and I suspected I’d have a much easier time annoying him than he had bugging me.

“Oh, Octo-Cat!” I called in one last ditch attempt to lure him in with kindness. “Where are you?”

Nothing. Even the wind had stopped howling through the trees.

Well, this was just great. He’d run off and left me injured and alone in a scary forest. Unless…

I turned around to search for the Sphynxes behind me, but instead bumped into a large, barrel-shaped chest. A human chest.

I didn’t even bother to look at his face as I twisted around and made an attempt to run. Hurt foot or not, I needed to get back to the relative safety of my house. Needed to get out of these twisted woods now. My very life might just depend on it.

I’d only made it a single step, when he grabbed my arms and pulled me back into his chest.

“Hey, what are you—?” I yelled as I struggled to get away.

He brought one sweaty hand up and clamped it over my mouth before I could finish my cry for help.

Well, this was it. This was how I died—not on the stairs but lost in the woods just a couple dozen feet away from my new palatial home.

This was not turning out to be a very good moving day.

Not at all.