“I hate that he used to WD-40 this every month,” Logan muttered, pulling the last bit down. “You could tell when it was that time of the month for him because he’d go into the store and buy a new can of the shit so he could attack everything in the place.”
It was true, Pops totally had a time of the month, except his involved hinges and stepladders. It came from working on furniture and with tools his whole life, he said, plus the fact that this was an old house, and he’d grown up with things that needed to be lubed so they still worked.
Yeah, as I got older, him saying that sounded dirty, but I remember how the doors used to seize up when I was little before he changed them, so the house was more energy efficient in the winter.
All it’d taken was a knock on the door from the old sheriff, asking if Pops was growing weed in the attic because the new Police helicopter camera had picked up a crazy amount of heat coming through the roof one winter.
They’d gone up so he could prove he wasn’t, and then one of the guys had told him to change out his insulation up there and check the fit of the windows and doors.
After some research, he’d found out he was paying out a lot more money each year on wasted heating than he would if he invested some in the place, so he’d gotten straight onto it and had changed all the doors, window, and the insulation in the attic.
He stuck to servicing the new ones each month because he said it didn’t matter if they were old or new, all hinges and machinery seized up if they weren’t maintained properly.
That meant this particular stepladder was like something out of Final Destination, though. I had a scar somewhere under my hair from where it’d clipped me when I was little, resulting in six stitches. Ironically, it’d happened when Logan and I had stood on a chair to pull the chain, thinking we’d play up here for a while.
Touching the area it’d hit, I snickered, “Good times!”
“You stay down here, and I’ll have a look up there. It might be bats.”
Just the thought had me screwing my face up. “Ew, I don’t want guano in my attic.”
Ever see the movie Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls? Joke all you want about guano bowls, but that ‘shit’ was disgusting. I’d been shat on by a bat when I was eight, and it was something else that I was scarred with for life, along with spiders.
It sounded like the ladder was going to break as Logan climbed up it, but it held firm for him until all I could see was his boots as he looked around the space above us.
“Damn, it smells a bit stronger up here, Bex. I don’t see any bats or shit on the ground, but that doesn’t— Wait, what’s that?” he went silent, leaving me hanging.
“What’s what?”
“Something’s glowing in the corner. Looks like a pair of— Oh, fucking hell. Jesus Christ!” he yelled, the steps jerking under him as he moved suddenly.
A deep growling noise joined his shouting.
“Is it an evil spirit?” I shrieked, lifting my hands to catch him in case he came tumbling down.
In my defense, the noises sounded like something was possessed, so my assumption wasn’t that irrational at that moment.
“Get off me, you furry bastard. What the fuck?”
“Is it a werewolf? I don’t know who to call for that. I don’t think Animal Control will know how to catch it.” I’ll give myself credit for the fact I genuinely did think hard about who would be the people to call about one.
“Call fucking Twilight, Bex,” he snapped, still thrashing around. “Tell them one of their cast members escaped.”
It took all of ten seconds for me to realize he was being sarcastic.
“There’s no need to be an asshole, Richards,” I yelled. “I’m trying to save your sorry ass here, and you’re—” I stopped, waving my hand at his feet. “You’re— What are you doing?”
“Trying to stop this cat from taking my head off. What does it look like?”
“Like your feet are tap-dancing on an old stepladder,” I mumbled to myself. Then I realized what he’d said. “Oh my God, there’s a kitty? Is it cute?”
The sound of something scratching the floorboards up there in the direction away from us sounded as he came quickly back down the steps.
His face and arms matched my house. I shit you not. He was covered in bleeding scratches and tufts of fur, meaning that a Saran wrapped house fit for a slasher totally suited him.
“What the hell?” I breathed, reaching out to carefully pick a chunk of hair off his shoulder. “What did you do to it?”
He’d been examining his arm, but when I asked that, he glared at me. “I didn’t offer it pot roast, Bex. Apparently, that’s a feline offense.”
I was tempted to stuff the hair that was still in my hand in his mouth for his sarcasm, but I held back. Just.
Pretending like I didn’t hear it instead, I pursued possible lines of insult for the cat. “Did you scare it or touch its stuff?”
“It’s stuff?” he asked incredulously. “You’ve got a feral cat living in your attic who lost its shit when I went up there, and you want to know if I pissed it off by touching ‘its stuff?’”
Throwing my arms up in the air and losing the hair in my hand, I snapped, “I don’t fucking know, Logan. I wasn’t up there to witness the exchange between you both. All I’m doing is trying to see if there’s a way to prevent it from happening again. The poor thing must be scared out of its mind.”
Way the wrong thing to say, apparently.
“Scared out of its mind?” he yelled. “It’s a fucking psycho! Why don’t you look at my arms and compare how many wounds I have
