Of Cats and Sea Monsters: Cat Daddies Mysteries, #2

Of cats and sea monsters

by:

Wren Cavanagh

Illustrated and designed by agileArt

 Notch’s House Publishing

© 2017, Wren Cavanagh, Notch Publishing House, AgileArt. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the writer.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

Contents

June, Sunday: Sea monsters and a ship from hell.

July, MondayThe missing

TuesdayThe voice in the basement

WednesdayThe dog that saved everyone’s bacon

ThursdayThe body by the river

Friday morningThe cat in the woods

Saturday It all ended in tears, crocodile, tears that is

EpilogueBlood in the water

1935

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Disclaimers

June, Sunday:

Sea monsters and a ship from hell.

Pekkala Pekkie Kobold got up early to photograph the sea monsters that swam in the bay. And it had been hard. Hard getting up at four on a Sunday morning for she loved to sleep late, loved the compelling warmth and comfort of her warm bed, and the surreal crazy dreams that swam in her head.

Hard because it would be cold outside, on the small deck behind her home.

But she had sea monsters to capture with her brand new camera, and that: made it a lot less onerous, a lot more exciting.

Without waking her husband, who wouldn’t so much care about why, she was up and about this early in the day, except that he’d be mad that she’d woken him. But he would want to know just how and when did she get that expensive camera? And why couldn’t he get some of that money?

Her feet landed quietly on the bedroom’s old and cheap carpeted floor, in the dark she gathered her clothes and made her way to the kitchen.

And from their hiding place, in the back of a drawer, behind the large pots and pans, old family hand me downs rarely used now, she grabbed the brand new binoculars and camera.

The sea serpents, or were they mermen?

They would be back in the bay today, she had no doubts.

She had seen them by accident two Sundays back after they had returned from a get together at Mike and Betty.

It had been a good one, they had played card games and enjoyed each other’s company, they shared a dinner that while delicious going down; had left her unable to sleep as her bowels refused to digest it without a fight. Back home she had spent that night awake on the couch and had tossed and turned with irregular dashes for the bathroom, by near morning tired and parched; she had headed to the fridge for a glass of cold water.

The lights had been off and Pekkie had navigated the small kitchen by memory. That had done it: There had been no light coming from her windows to warn the outside world of her nightly wandering. No reflections on the windows to blind her to the sights of the world outside.

And in the bay, she saw them: Two twin mermen, or were they sea monsters?

Sinuous and as large as tiger sharks, but with longer tails that whipped in their wakes while their powerful upper bodies retained a human physiognomy.

They played as happy as otters, at times they came near the marina where they pulled themselves to the deck of boats as seals sometimes do; the two had been in her sight for a good ten minutes before they dove one last time, under water so black it looked almost solid. For days after she forced herself to get up early and keep watch, but they didn’t return until the next Sunday.

Excited for a secret spectacle that had been hers alone, she ordered a good DSLR camera and a respectable set of binoculars from an online shop. She put the purchases on her emergency credit card, the one her husband knew nothing of. And today she was ready.

She’d have proof.

The weather was perfect, the sea was still and the sky clear as she snuck outside laid down on her belly and set up the new camera on the small tripod. The serpentine shapes were fast large shadows that raced under the water.

Breach! Damn it breach! She commanded them in her head.

Good lord...come up for air already! She whispered, and that was when a small boat entered her field of vision. Going on five in the morning, everyone was asleep and this moron was headed for the middle of the bay. What the hell, she thought. Nooo, you jerk! You’ll scare them away.

She looked at the water and saw that the shadows that had raced under the water had vanished into the depth of the bay.

Pekkie gasped in anger and disgust, she had been so excited about the possibilities of this morning, now nothing went according to plans. Her face fell and her lips curled in contempt at the new arrival. Just...Dang you. She growled through clenched teeth and focused the camera on the boat.

The man on the deck had grabbed a large and unwieldy parcel and struggled to drag it to the gunwale, as he was about to drop it over the side the parcel jerked to life. Arms flailed, and a head, a head for God’s sake! Pekkie’s jaw fell in disbelief, as two men fought on the deck of the boat.

Their struggle was brief and ended when one of them was pushed overboard and sunk like a bag of bricks. The remaining boatman waited for his victim to surface. He, for what sane and sensible woman would be out this early in the morning, out to drown God knows who in the bay?

Pekkie was sure it was a statistical impossibility. Then again, what sane and sensible woman would be out this early in the morning to take pictures of sea monsters.

Minutes passed, and then the murderer decided he had waited long enough, turned the rudder and sailed for the opposite shore.

Her hands shook with nervous energy and excitement as she zoomed in on her target, at least she could try and get a few shots of the intruder, give them to the police; she tightened the zoom as far as she could and brought herself under control, it still wasn’t enough to get any good details.

She couldn’t make out the face of the pilot or the name on the boat but took several shots anyway, maybe she could still figure out who the boat belonged to with some image processing program on the internet.

As blood buzzed in her veins and her heart beat with the rhythm of drummer on speed Pekkie clicked away at her target. When a large weight dropped on her back and almost shoved her nose into the planks, she stifled a fearful yelp and chocked out a guttural Ghaaaakk. Sounding much like a cat about to spit out a hairball.

Terrified she rolled over, arms raised for protection but her assailant effortlessly jumped to her side. Macaroni! Jerk!

The sturdy, dark mackerel tabby head butted her chin and a purr rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest, and he began to rub his head along her jaw and chin.

Oh Macaroni, yeah, yeah alright. I love you too. She sat back on the deck of the houseboat and inspected her camera. Okay, at least now I know I need a better zoom lens. She thought of this extra purchase and hoped to get the extra hours at work to pay for it. The idea of having a large balance, on her one emergency credit card, made her want to vomit.

I have to call the cops, oh God I gotta call the cops! But would they believe her? She grabbed the camera and pointed it to where the loser of the fight had sunk; dark waters swirled and churned, something was happening there.

She started to shoot as fast as she could, barely knowing how to work the complicated DSLR.

The man had come back up and fought to stay afloat, Pekkie choked off a scream as she saw the silhouette of a face, desperate and gasping for breath came up on her camera’s screen, thin arms shot up out of the water, and hands like claws grasped for a purchase out of the thin air.

I gotta get help, get the dinghy, get… she thought wildly. She never even got to get up.

It all lasted less than a minute as the powerful twins breached the surface and fell on the helpless victim; they took him beneath the waves one final time.

Sea monsters then.

And while she hadn’t seen clearly any of them, they all had seen her, as the flash on the camera betrayed her presence in the dark.

† † †

A peculiar timepiece, an old pocket watch, sank well over thirty phantoms deep, when it hit bottom it almost disappeared into the silt, sand, and algae beneath. It was peculiar, insomuch as that once it had been soaked in its owner’s blood it had begun to run backward. And with each second that it beat, time revolved on itself, an event that would go unnoticed in the Cove until it was too late.

It didn’t go unnoticed by the Captain, whose black ship was moored a world and a century away, far back in farthest of hell’s ports.

A strong and tall man, of a dark and corrupted beauty, in his cabin returned startled to awareness. He screamed with joy and anger for he had hoped and waited for this to happen for what felt like centuries. Because in hell, time piles on, each minute a lifetime wished unlived. He left his quarters in a fury, in darkness headed to the deck. As he went he saw the bare ghosts of his crew, who, with each passing second grew in substance. Soon he’d be free to return, and he’d to take hell back with him.

On the ship’s deck, in that black and yellow, sulfurous night he walked to port and looked below. In the shipyards, demons and blasted souls loaded the vessels and kept the port working. The Ourang Medan, the Octavius, the Joyta, The Carroll Deering, the Marie Celeste and more, so many more beautiful and haunted vessels. Farther off he saw the Japanese I-12 & the German UB-65 and the UB-001.

Soon it’d be his ship that’d be leaving port and he smiled with anticipation.

Warglory, I’m coming back. He whispered. Coming back to take you with me, and destroy all you hold dear.

July, Monday

The missing

It looked like the beginning of a blessed morning in Urchin Cove. July had returned like an old lover to shower the unique, old coastal town with the gifts of sunshine, heat, verdant trees, and colorful flowers. And early though it was the day already warm in this town where visitors were welcome, but rarely encouraged to stay. In the Cove the restaurants were outstanding, the architecture ranged from the classic to the experimental. The galleries and tourist shops were better than the ones usually found in tourist towns. And in the schools, the children were smarter and better looking. It was a small town that hadn’t felt the bite of true poverty or experienced a disaster for over a century. Its population, usually steady at the ten thousand mark, had recently begun to inch upward and creating some anxiety in the established residents: For it definitely was a sign of change, and they weren’t too comfortable about welcoming it. Deep down, they were all too worried that there wouldn’t be enough for everyone to go around if people kept coming in.

It was also a town in denial. For at its fringes some of its residents were painful poor, some children left home hurt and went back home