``Guess what? We sold the grille!''
Had Hazel O'Hare - one of the inexhaustible brood running O'Hare's Hardware - told Sam that Martians were real; she doubted she could be any more surprised. One look at her classmate-and-bus-buddy's face was all it took to verify the authenticity of that claim. Hazel might be many things, but a convincing liar wasn't one of them.
There was no need to ask what grille she meant, of course. There was only one that came to mind, one image sufficient enough to justify the undisguised awe in Hazel's reverent tones: Polished chrome lid; stainless steel fittings. No wheels but that was hardly surprising; nothing short of a hauler would've moved something of that size. For a long while it seemed likely that the combination-fieldkitchen-and-griller - colloquially shortened to The Abomination by certain worthies of the Homeowner's Association - would be a permanent fixture of O'Hare's Hardware store; the very same that lay on the route Sam took to and from school each day.
``Daddy was thinking we'd never sell it,'' Hazel's hoppity feet drummed an excited tattoo into the seat in front of them, serenely oblivious to the chorus of complaints she was getting. ``Mama really lit into him for stocking it in the first place - we'll never be able to sell it since Springwood isn't a big enough town, she says. Guess she was wrong,''
Privately, Sam had thought Mrs O'Hare had the right of that assessment. It was a consensus shared by more than half the town. For many months it had taken up pride-of-place in the big viewing window of O'Hare Hardware accompanied by large attention catching stickers with slogans such as `Half-Price' and `One-Time-Offer'. Many of the town's male residents - Sam's own father among them - had voiced their irritation with the permanence of this display and how it drew attention from the actual gadgets they stopped by to browse.
``And you'll never guess who we sold it to, it was...''
``OI! Stop kicking my seat, dammit!'' Sam recoiled in an `eep' of surprise at the bristling snout inches from her muzzle. ``Geroff me!''
``Ha - speak of the devil. Got a family reunion planned, Small? Fixin' to throw a party in the graveyard for all the ghoulies and ghosties?''
Sam wanted to bury her face in her paws. Living with who-knows-how-many brothers and sisters could give anybody a mean streak, and Hazel's happened to be a mile long. She definitely didn't fit the quiet bunny stereotype either, easily giving twice as good as she got. Already other kids were turning in their direction, drawn by some uncanny sixth sense to a brewing commotion. Soon, somebody would pipe in, and then -
``Boneyard barbecue tonight, eh? Count me in!''
``Careful, Haze - it might be YOU on the menu. Never know with these preds,''
``Hah! As IF! I'd kick his tiny can anytime and he knows it. Right, Sma - goddammit, the little twerp sucker-scratched me!''
Yep...that. Sam casually ducked a stray lunchbox and resigned herself to tuning out the crescendo chants of `fight-fight-fight' growing in volume from a few seats away. It was going to be a long ride.
---
``You really ought to cut the poor kid a break, Haze.''
Tuesday recess: another day, another sandwich. Today's was acorn, as certain as death and taxes. Sam sighed as she undid the plastic packaging. The slop they served at the counter was worse.
``You kidding me? Twerp's part of Lyle's crew. They've been ragging on Jake for awhile and we need to stick together. `Sides, look at what he's having - jerk deserves all that he gets,''
Sam followed the line of her friend's thumb against her better judgement and nearly lost her lunch. She snapped her attention back to her sandwich immediately, but not quickly enough. Was that...a tentacle? Lifeless staring things floating in jars? She felt her gorge rising in her throat. Just what kind of cub was this anyway?
``Was that a...?''
``Not what you're thinking,'' Hazel wore a disgusted sneer all the same. ``Pickled squid, if you can believe it. Or so Mitch says anyway. I dared him to go up close for a look. Can't imagine how bad it must be to actually live in the same neighbourhood as they do - like an episode from the Addams Family or something,'' her sneer slipped as the hare realized who she was talking to. ``Oops. Sorry,''
Hazel hadn't been entirely wrong about it though. Living across the road from the Smalls actually did feel like being set extras on the Addams Family. They'd actually moved into the old caretaker's lodging overlooking the graveyard and set up shop there. It had been the topic of much adult gossip. Small's father was an undertaker. His mother was a...coronet? Cormorant? No - coroner; whatever that was. Both parents worked with dead bodies. That was all Sam ever cared to know.
``We can't choose our parents,'' also true, but that statement lacked conviction and they both knew it. Small hadn't exactly done much to fit in either. Trouble seemed to follow the cub at the drop of a hat, and he was gaining a reputation for getting into fights he couldn't possibly expect to win. Case in point, the school bus brawls that seemed to happen between him and Hazel like clockwork.
``Kid's scrappy; I'll give him that,'' Hazel had given up all pretense of lunch; her carrot sticks lay untouched on the table forgotten. ``Doesn't quit easy. I wonder when he'll crack,''
The squirrel sighed again. Being Hazel's friend meant putting up with occasional stupidity on a daily basis. ``Just don't land him in the nurse's office again please? That's all I ask,''
``No promises,''
--
Sam rode alone on the bus to school on Wednesday morning.
She had waited at the usual pickup point but boarded on her own when Hazel neglected to show. This happened from time to time, and so Sam hadn't been overly concerned. It would not be the first time her friend showed up cross and blustery in the middle of second period, chivvied to her desk by a harried older sibling or relative.
No Hazel in second period though. Nor did she come during recess, or fourth period or fifth. Her desk sat empty in homeroom, the cafeteria somehow made quieter by her absence. No food fights for the hall monitors to break up that day, and no bus brawls that afternoon either.
Dinner certainly made up for the lull however. Twice she saw police cars trundle down the road to Pleasant Grove. The lights in the caretaker's cottage stayed on throughout the night, casting eerie shadows from the tombstones in the cemetery beyond. There was something unwholesome about that light which made Sam think of wisps and corpse-candles. She spent a restless night, woken at intervals from periods of fitful slumber by the sound of passing cars on their lonely road. Surprising how so many vehicles just happened to have business that brought them past the local graveyard that night; the sound of their exhaust and mufflers so eerily similar to the roar of flames on a certain polished chrome barbecue grille...
She slept rather poorly that night
--
No sign of Hazel on Thursday either, or on Friday for that matter. The homeroom teacher skipped her name, moving from Timmy Napier to Ramona Olson as though the O'Hare girl simply never existed. For all Sam knew, maybe she hadn't - everything had a misty quality to it, like things in a dream.
The only thing providing any semblance of consistency was Travis Small. Without Hazel as ringleader, the various jibes about the barbecue grille had lost a lot of their oomph, but thanks to the reactions of their target and the persistence of preteen cubs yet remained. Grins were traded and paws ready with an enthusiastic shove should the object of their amusement happen by. They seemed to find no shortage of entertainment in how easy it was to spark a response or a fight. Was she the only one who shook at the ready manner he took on all challengers, like a creature possessed? Was she the only one who shrank to see the blood flow when he bit down on Napier's arm - when scarlet speckled the yellow-white of his fangs? Blood in real life flowed sluggish and torpid, nothing like what it was in the cartoons. More like
--the reddish concoction in Small's water bottle; something that looked too thick to be cranberry juice or tea.
Jackal: Latin name Canis Aureus, designation carnivore
Carnivore: meat-eater; predator, hunter of prey.
The nightly processions continue. Sometimes it seems as though cars travel to and from Pleasant Grove from dusk to dawn. The caretaker's light stays on, and this time there are shapes outlined in its glare - figures holding plates and glasses. Apparently somebody at the cemetery is hosting a party, perhaps even using the combination-kitchen-and-grille purchased from O'Hare Hardware. Now if only she can believe her friend Hazel O'Hare is not the main course
Confiding her suspicions to the adults goes about as well as she expects. They do not, can not believe such claims without the burden of proof. Solution - obtain said proof.
In the continuous noise from passing cars on their way to their forbidden feast, nobody notices one squirrel with a camera slip away.
--
The boneyard is unusually packed for this time of the night. A guard posted at the gates waves the line of cars through, ticking arrivals off a checklist one name at a time. She won't be getting in that way.
So it has to be the fence: stout iron railings as thick as a cub's wrist; they pose no problem for a squirrel who's mastered the rope climb at Springwood Elementary's gym. A hop, skip and jump - then she is through; darting from shadow to shadow, skirting the throng, making her slow and steady way to the grille that simply MUST be somewhere in the middle of the festivities, with Hazel's carcass rotating slowly atop it like meat on a spit.
Where is it, though? Where is the grille?
The night is a funhouse of horrors. Tombstones loom out of the darkness, creating an obstacle course around a freshly dug open grave. A closed coffin waits beside it, ready to be lowered into earth. She gives that part of the graveyard a wide berth, making instead for the warmer light and sound of voices. That would be where the party was gathering, where the chef and his barbaric barbecue would be found.
No sign of it so far...perhaps inside the house itself, or below?
Fortune favours her this night, allowing Sam to find an unlatched basement window. Getting in is the easy part, what she has to worry about is getting out. But the sick squishy something that breaks the squirrel's fall chases all such thoughts from her head. The force of her landing causes the cloth drapery over that soft thing to slide, to shift...and then all of a sudden she is face to face with blank, sightless eyes -
Sam screams: loud enough to be heard all the way from the churchyard itself, loud enough to still all sounds of talk and mingling. Loud enough to wake the dead
Claws reach for her, their owners uttering startled exclamations of surprise. Sam is prepared for this. She aims the camera at their shadowy faces; blinds them with the flash before slipping away. Paper plates spill their contents onto the ground in the confusion as piles of pink mush. For some strange reason it smells unusually appetizing. Only the reminder of what it actually is has her turn away.
Brain pate. Hor d'oeuvres ala Hazel. Rabbit ricotta. Hare hotdogs.
``Young lady, stop!''
Won't happen. Can't happen. Must find Hazel, honour her memory. Must find...but then paws are catching hold of her shoulders and arms, hoisting Sam up from the ground. ``Hazel!''
``Yeah?'' a ghoulish face swims up to greet her - pale, eyeless, a severed head without a body to follow. She swoons and passes out.
--
``...smelling salts? Give `er a whiff,''
``She your classmate, Haze? She seems to know you,''
Haze! The memory of that severed head is enough to galvanize her limbs into motion, but something is pinning them down, preventing the squirrel from moving.
``Easy, lass - easy! Don't want you hurtin' yourself. Can you sit up?''
She is sitting on something soft; her paws brush against rocket themed sheets. A bedroom then, but not HER bedroom. No, this is a boy's room, if the superhero posters and action figures are any indication. And not just ANY boy's room; if the familiar furry figure glowering at her and muttering about cooties is any indication. Travis looks more pissed off than he's ever been at school, which is saying something. ``Oi! Haze!''
The dreaded chill runs down her spine again as the decapitated head from her nightmares makes its appearance, drifting ever closer, and then -
``Ow! Would it kill you to switch the lights on, Trav? Dammit!''
Sam blinked. Were ghosts supposed to bump into things?
``Says the girl who walks around with a veil on her head...''
Then the lights flare on, and it turns out that its indeed a veil that she's seeing. Hazel's head is still attached firmly to her body, thank-you-very-much. Some combination of the black mourning clothes she's wearing and the paler fur of her head must have created the bodiless illusion in the dark. She tugs the veil from her face and tosses it carelessly at Travis, who lets it fall to the floor in disgust. Both eyes are apparently still intact.
``Hazel? You...aren't dead?''
The hare appears confused. ``No, it's my Great-Uncle Emeric who's.... Wait, you thought I was dead? Why?''
It takes awhile to get the story out. Much to Sam's chagrin, Hazel finds the whole thing appropriately hilarious. ``You thought I was...that Small here...'' she collapsed upon the bed with its rocket sheets, laughing uncontrollably. ``Travis couldn't kill a soggy paper bag!''
``Can too! You take that back!''
``And all those cars, those guests...''
``Our relatives,'' at least Hazel has the decency to look embarrassed about it. ``You know what they say about hares, rabbits and multiplying. That's why the funeral has to last a week, I think we still have a couple of uncles coming here from downstate. Wasn't easy getting everyone in one place, but Small's parents did a pretty good job. They're all mad at you by the way,''
``Mad at...'' the sudden urge to faint once again made itself known.
``Yeah, it was supposed to be a private thing. Well, as private as hare gatherings tend to get anyway. No visitors,'' Hazel shrugged. ``They'll get over it. But in the meantime, dad called your parents. We had to, since you fainted and all...''
``Great,'' not for the first time, she wishes for the earth to open and swallow her up. ``I'm done for,''
--
Grounded: for the foreseeable future. That's about the long and short of it.
First, her mum had made apologies to Travis and Hazel's parents; insisting that Sam do the same. On the bright side, at least she hadn't had to apologize to every single one of Hazel's extended family, or they would have been there till daybreak.
Now with the added benefit of hindsight, the squirrel had to admit that her plan was half-arsed from the start. Of course there had to be some reasonable explanation for all that was going on. Even if there wasn't, going alone to solve the mystery without some kind of backup had been the height of stupidity. It was a good thing that the Smalls hadn't been hosting some carnivore convention after all and had been so understanding about the whole mix up.
Then again...
If this actually was a funeral, and that dead body that sparked off her hysteric fainting fit belonged to Great Uncle Emeric, what was it doing out of its coffin and in the caretaker's basement? There had been a coffin ready to be lowered into the open grave, but why wasn't Uncle Emeric inside it? Why -
Stop. It's this line of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place. Just let it go. We are NOT going through all this again. It's bad enough being grounded without the bloody nightmares.
Flopping back on her own; rocket-less duvet, the squirrel falls asleep.
--
Meanwhile, at Pleasant Grove, 4 a.m -
``That was a close one,''
``You handled yourself wonderfully, amira. They never suspected a thing,''
``Good thing we found the girl when we did, otherwise...I shudder to think!''
``All's well that ends well, my blossom. Now be a dear and get that switch while I shift Emeric...hnng! There we go...''
Several clicks, followed by a rushing whoosh as flames spring to life. The smell of roasting meat fills the basement, drawing drool from four jackal snouts.
``How soon till it's done, Mama?''
``Soon, Lori. Soon - cremation can't be rushed. We'll have the bones and ashes all ready for the O'Hare's to pick up first thing tomorrow...''
`` - well, MOST of them, anyway.''
Muted laughter accompanies this statement; faint cackles that are bourn by the wind to Sam in her sleep - in slumber troubled by dreams of cauldrons, carnivores, and cannibals. ``After all, you know what Grandfather always says...''
`` - waste not, want not!''
