Free Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales by Mark O'Donnell

Fleck had mistaken him for an intruder and shot him in the shoulder. Supposedly the incident was long forgotten, but at this moment Bitty wondered.
    “Lazlo!” she breathed, as if to demonstrate she knew who he was.
    “City man take my boxes,” he said choppily. “I need boxes for debris. I must police area.”
    “Did Mister Packaday take your boxes, Lazlo?” Betty surmised. “Were they
hat
boxes, Lazlo?”
    Doctor Salvage came back downstairs, his hair tousled and his lab coat wrinkled. “I’m afraid lung cancer has claimed your Mister Packaday,” he announced impassively. “I think you’d all better come with me down to the airtight vault in the cellar.”
    “But what about the hatboxes?” Anodyne gurgled plaintively. “And— Oh!” A new horror swept over her like a forward stranger in a crowded elevator. “Bitty! The lights have gone out!”
    Bitty quickly surveyed the room. “You’re right! Luckily, it’s two in the afternoon!”
    “Just one second there!” barked Doctor Salvage with uncharacteristic emphasis. He had spied Lazlo sneaking up the stairs to Mister Packaday’s room. “Where are you going?”
    Lazlo turned, the lone feather in his headband drooping guiltily. “I need boxes—in case I have leaves to rake.”
    “There are no leaves in this wasteland,” the doctorshot back. He turned to Bitty. “Wait here, I’ll go with him. I don’t trust his mixed allegiances. Those bare feet suggest social discontent!”
    He followed Lazlo out of sight up the not-so-brightly-lit-as-before staircase. The air tingled like an application of iodine.
    “Bitty, this is Goosebump Central!” murmured Anodyne, nervously lighting a cigarette from the pack the late writer had left behind in his confusion.
    “No, Anodyne, don’t despair!” Bitty cried. “I’ll call the sheriff’s office from the pay phone by the waste site.” She drew a coin from her pocket and stared at it in disbelief.
    “Oh no! What’s wrong?” Anodyne babbled, puffing smoke like a toaster nearing short-circuit.
    “My dime has been
bent
,” announced Bitty. “Making it useless in pay phone slots.”
    Upstairs, the sound of a scuffle made the antler chandeliers in the vestibule shake. Bitty reviewed the evidence.
    “Anodyne, how could Aunt Addle have gotten herself so covered with cat hair in the old cavern?”
    Doctor Salvage reappeared at the head of the stairs, as obsessed as a locomotive, and steamed down to the girls with the hatboxes in his arms. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Lazlo seems to have succumbed to a rare case of fur balls in humans. His blood was more mixed than we knew.”
    “Hurry, let’s see what’s in those boxes!” shouted Anodyne, stubbing out her cigarette. The doctor glared at her disapprovingly.
    “Wait a second, it occurs to me that Aunt Addlehad a threatening phone call last night,” recalled Bitty suddenly.
    Anodyne pulled the lid off one of the hatboxes and stared inside, at first with bewilderment, and then dismay. “Not more kittens! The ranch is overrun as it is, and there aren’t mice enough for the ones we already have.”
    “Yes,” Doctor Salvage said ominously. “Your Midnight has been a very, very careless animal, hasn’t she?”
    “Well, I—” Anodyne’s blank face seemed perfectly to complement the benighted mewing that rose from the open hatbox.
    “You don’t even know who the father is, do you?” he continued, his voice as smooth and contained as a medicinal caplet.
    Meanwhile, Bitty was absorbed in her real-life mental math. “Whoever it was must have been hysterical, because Aunt Addle got worked up herself. It was something about cycles of fornication, of profane and bestial horror, a rite of blood and rebirth.”
    “Bitty!” Anodyne called faintly, but powerful fingers on her throat prevented her from disrupting Bitty’s concentration.
    “Could Aunt Addle have taken Pilsener Packaday into her confidence? Where is Midnight,