Never Thwart a Thespian: Volume 8 (Leigh Koslow Mystery Series) Page 9

  Leigh grinned. Warren had always been far more fastidious than she was, and when he had lived alone in his own apartment, the place was always spotless. Marriage and kids had increased his tolerance for dirt and grime significantly, but the man still had standards. “Maybe the bats will have eaten all the spiders,” she teased.

  He made no response.

  “Here are the bulbs,” Bess announced, returning. “Now, Warren,” she called, “the inspector said that you just lift straight up on the fixture. You should be able to reach the bulb without removing any of the housing. But if anything looks broken — don’t touch it! We’ll need an electrician, then.”

  “Got it,” Warren answered, his voice sounding farther away.

  “I’ll take the bulbs up to him,” Ethan offered, reaching out toward Bess.

  “Nice try.” Leigh grabbed the bulbs herself. “I don’t trust this ceiling, Ethan. One step in the wrong place—”

  “The inspector said the beams were sound,” Bess interrupted. “And there are planks laid out to walk on.”

  Leigh threw her a stern look.

  “But your mother’s probably right,” Bess amended wryly. “Maturity and a healthy respect for danger are what’s required for such a task. Innate athletic ability doesn’t matter much. Or lighter weight.”

  Leigh growled under her breath and stomped up the ladder. She laid the two bulb boxes to the side of the hole and hoisted herself up as Warren had. Then she looked around and froze.

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but her surroundings looked like something out of a horror movie. The kind where expendable guy #1 gets accosted by banshees, electrocuted, and sucked to death by spiders all at the same time.

  The ceiling was relatively high in the middle, tall enough for her to stand, but requiring Warren to stoop a bit. Metal beams shot up to the slanted roof at a variety of angles, while more numerous wooden supports crisscrossed the floor amidst a sea of insulation so filthy and clumped that its surface looked like moon rocks. Extending from the trapdoor where Leigh stood to the gable at the front of the church was a flat area about twelve feet wide, in the middle of which a series of walking planks were laid out like railroad tracks. At the edges of the flat section the floor began to slope, descending steeply to the eaves where it joined the pitch of the roof. The sun had not yet set, and its last dim rays filtered through the window in the opposite gable, casting gloomy shadows throughout and making myriad cobwebs shimmer. The floor was dotted everywhere with discarded plastic sheeting, twisted strands of metal, torn-open bulb boxes, random lengths of unconnected electrical wiring, and cast-off pieces of wood and insulation. And everywhere, everywhere, dust lay so thickly that Leigh feared to move.

  “Charming, isn’t it?” Warren greeted. He was bent over about six feet away from her, surveying the floor with his phone light. Every step he took left a visible footprint on the dusty planks.

  Leigh grumbled under her breath again. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we? Where are the fixtures we’re dealing with?”

  He shone his light over a round metal canister buried in the sloped part of the floor to her left. Two wide planks were conveniently nailed over the beams that led to it. “The two closest to the wall are both burned out,” he explained. “I say we go for those. They’re closer.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Leigh agreed.

  “I’ll crawl down and pull up the fixture,” he proposed. “You stay here and hold the light. When I’m ready you can come down just far enough to hand me the bulb.” Warren walked to the edge of the flat part of the attic, then crouched down. He got to his knees and crawled a few paces out onto the planks toward the light fixture, then leaned out the rest of the way to grasp the metal canister.

  “Watch out for bats,” Leigh said grimly. The more her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the more “dust” she suspected was actually guano. She thought briefly of scanning the rafters above her head, but decided some things were better left unknown. One look at the attic window, which not only let in light through gaping holes around its casing but also had whole panes of glass missing, made clear that Ned’s screen cover on the opposite vent was useless.

  “Can we not talk about that, please?” Warren said worriedly, extracting the light fixture and laying it on its side on a plank.

  “Sorry, but I saw one hanging off one of these very lights last week,” Leigh answered. And no wonder, she thought to herself as she shone the beam onto the fixture. The canister base had large gaps around the bulb mechanism — easy as pie for the little furballs to fly through the broken windows and head straight down. She could only hope that none of them had done so recently.

  “All right, I’m ready,” Warren declared, both speaking and moving a little more quickly. “Hand me one of those.”

  Leigh unwrapped a bulb and crawled toward him with it. He traded her the old one, then screwed in the new with surprising efficiency. Within seconds, the fixture was back in place. Clearly, the man had no wish to prolong their adventure.

  “Why don’t I start on the other one?” Leigh suggested as he began the trek backwards. Why should the man do all the dirty work? After all, she was lighter than he was. Furthermore, her balance was better.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Warren insisted. “I’m already filthy.”

  “So am I,” Leigh retorted, setting down the phone light. “This way we’ll get done faster.” She moved to the opposite side of the flat area, then began crawling carefully down the slope on the other set of planks. After a moment, Warren reached the phone and held the light for her.

  She could hear him exhale heavily. “I hate bats,” he muttered.

  Leigh grinned to herself as she reached the fixture and balanced herself to heave it up. “Wuss!”

  “You didn’t marry me because I was macho,” he defended. “Have we not established this?”

  “Allison would tell you that they’re cute,” Leigh said as she pulled. “And beneficial to the ecosystem. Of course, she’s not the one cleaning up the—”

  Her words broke off as a flurry of flapping darkness and flying drops of liquid exploded into her face. In one motion she cried out, dropped the fixture, and flung herself backward out of the way.

  “Leigh!” Warren’s call of distress reached her ears just as she realized, with a sickening rush, that she was no longer on the planks. She had landed on her back across the bare beams, with the bulk of her flailing body now lying halfway between them… where there was nothing to hold her up but insulation and drywall.

  “Get on the beams!” Warren shouted, moving towards her.

  Leigh came to her senses quickly and tried to scramble back toward the planks. The wooden struts of the roof were only a few feet above her head, and she reached up to steady herself by grabbing the nearest one, noticing in the instant before her hand made contact that its surface seemed oddly lumpy. She touched it, and the lumps came alive.

  The next four seconds consisted of sheer, screaming chaos, which Leigh not-so-proudly met with pure, unadulterated panic. The very air around her seemed to explode — filled to choking thickness with flapping, furry wings. She had no idea where she was or what she doing. She knew only that, at the end of those four seconds, she found herself all the way at the bottom of the slope in the eaves, face down in a pile of extra insulation and refuse. Warren seemed to have a hold on her ankle and there suddenly appeared to be at least a chance that, if she ceased panicking, she could still survive.

  “Stay still a minute,” Warren said, attempting to sound calm even as his own voice wavered. “Don’t try to move yet. Just catch your breath.”

  Leigh’s eyes were closed, but her mind still reeled from the flapping. Flapping, flapping, and more flapping. The bats weren’t just on the light fixture she had pulled up. They were everywhere. And she was pretty sure the first one had peed on her. “I’m all right,” she assured, her eyes still closed.

  “You’re not going to fall,” Warren assured. “I’v
e got you. I can pull you over diagonally till you get back to the planks. Okay?”

  “Sounds great,” she squeaked. “Just let me open my eyes first.”

  She rotated her head just enough to get her face out of the insulation and opened one eye. The bats were still flapping. A half-dozen of them, at least, hovered around the vent Ned had covered with screen wire. There had been many more of them before, dozens at least, most of which must have found their way out through the broken window already. But the few who remained seemed determined to exit through the blocked vent, and they were plenty agitated. She watched as one of them gave up suddenly and swooped down through the open trapdoor instead. “There’s another one!” she heard Mathias shout from a distance.

  Fabulous. How many others had flown downstairs?

  “Are you ready?” Warren asked.

  “Just a second,” Leigh answered. “Let me get my hands underneath me.” Her nose itched. And no wonder, since she’d just done a faceplant in fiberglass. She could only hope it wasn’t asbestos. She pulled up a hand and shoved the loose chunk of insulation in front of her away to the side.

  Six inches from her nose lay a human skull.

  She scrabbled backward on hands and knees like a madwoman.

  “Slow down!” Warren advised, “You’ll put a foot through the floor!”

  Leigh was back on the planks. Her breath heaved. Above her head, bats still flew. She watched as one found the broken window and swooped off into the dusk. A second followed.

  Maybe she was wrong. She could be wrong, couldn’t she?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Warren insisted, urging her ahead of him.

  “Do you have the light?” she squeaked, not moving.

  He placed his phone in her hand. “Now can we get moving? I may appear calm to you, but appearances can be deceiving. You just took a good ten years off my life, and I’d already lost six to the bats. Let’s go.”

  Leigh crawled up the planks and moved out of the way just enough to let him get back to the flat part of the attic, too. But then she stopped. She raised one unsteady arm and shone the light on the area of the eaves where she had rolled. The pile of spare chunks of insulation, loose plastic, and other trash that had gathered in that particular spot looked like no more than a random accident of gravity. But it could also have been placed there to cover something. Something about six feet long.

  She moved the beam of light to where her own head had rested.

  The enchiladas threatened a reappearance.

  Leigh clicked off the light and shuddered.

  Warren paused halfway to the trapdoor and looked back at her. “Why aren’t you coming? You aren’t seriously still worried about the stage lights!” He crawled toward her; he couldn’t raise himself any higher without putting his head in the bats’ traffic lane. “Look, I’ll shine my phone app on the actors all night if I have to, but these bulbs are going to have to wait until this attic is officially rabies free.” His voice turned suddenly sober. “You didn’t get bit, did you?”

  Leigh shook her head. As far as she knew, none of the bats had actually touched her, despite the startling proximity of their beating wings to her face. She wanted to explain that to her obviously worried husband, but her voice wasn’t working.

  The gruesome image in the eaves was burning itself into her brain.

  What she had seen was real. The plastic skeleton in the basement trunk might have fooled her for a moment, but Halloween props didn’t usually wear striped polyester sport shirts. And their bones were still connected. And they didn’t tend to be hidden in places where they might never be found.

  “Leigh,” Warren said heavily, putting an arm around her shoulders. “What is it? What were you shining the light on just now?”

  The answer was on the tip of her tongue, but for the life of her, she couldn’t speak it.

  Andrew J. Marconi.

  Chapter 8

  Leigh stood at the bottom of the ladder. Warren closed the trapdoor behind them, descended the ladder himself, and turned to look at her. “You aren’t in shock, are you?” he asked with concern.

  Here, in the relative normalcy of the adequately lighted, reasonably tidy corridor, her voice at last returned to her. “No,” she managed. “I’ll be fine. I just need to catch my breath.”

  His brown eyes studied her. He did not seem convinced. “Well, I hope you’re not in shock,” he replied. “Because I’d like to reserve that right for myself, thank you very much.”

  She returned a weak smile. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit. It’s going to get worse before it—” She broke off abruptly as a large bat careened wildly down the corridor, narrowly shot past them, then disappeared into the room where Bess had found the bulbs. They both realized, in that moment, that the noises that previously hadn’t registered in their shell-shocked brains were not coming from a nearby television, nor from a crowd out on the street. The boyish shouting, girlish shrieking, pounding footsteps, banging doors, and inexplicable strains of a soprano aria were echoing up the stairway from the building below their feet.

  “Bats,” Warren said simply.

  Leigh nodded.

  They hurried down the steps to find Ethan and Mathias sprinting toward them from the annex with a burlap bag and a broom. Warren stretched out a hand to stop them, and a few paces behind came Allison, breathing heavily, her small face bright red with agitation. “Leave those bats alone!” she ordered. “You’re going to hurt them!”

  Her brother turned. “We’re not going to hurt them, Allie!” he insisted. “We’re just going to help them get back outside!”

  Allison stomped her foot. “You will too hurt them, and they don’t need your help!” she raged.

  “Your sister’s right,” Warren interjected, relieving the disappointed boys of the bag and broom. “Leave the bats alone. They’ll find their own way outside. Nobody needs to get bit.”

  Allison’s small shoulders slumped with relief. “They won’t bite unless they’re cornered, Dad,” she informed, her color subsiding a bit. “And less than 1% carry rabies. They’re really just misunderstood. Did you know that—”

  Bess burst into the hallway. “Done!” she proclaimed, breathing nearly as heavily as Allison. “I’ve got every door propped open and every window raised that I could raise. There’s a nice breeze coming in and I’ve seen at least three fly out already.” She turned an appraising look on Leigh and Warren. “Are you two all right?”

  “We’ll survive, I think,” Warren answered. “Where’s Lenna?”

  “Incoming!” Mathias shouted as another brown shape winged its way through the hall. They ducked in unison and the bat flapped over their heads and off toward the staircase.

  A high soprano note shrilled through the air. The noise seemed to be coming from the other side of a door near Leigh, and she quickly stepped over and opened it. There, in the back of a small, otherwise empty closet, Lenna huddled under the protective arm of Camille. “Aunt Leigh!” Lenna shrieked, looking up at her with frightened eyes. “Are they gone yet?”

  “Not quite,” Leigh answered honestly. Her gaze turned to Camille, who stopped singing just long enough to smile at her pleasantly.

  “Verdi,” the woman said with a wink, as if the one word explained all.

  Leigh heard Ethan shout behind her, and her peripheral vision caught another pair of beating wings moving along the hallway behind her.

  “Ooh!” Lenna whined, “Shut the door, Aunt Leigh! Shut the door! But she did not wait for Leigh to shut the door — Lenna reached forward herself, grabbed the knob, jerked the door forcefully from her aunt’s grasp, and slammed it back upon the two of them.

  Camille started singing again.

  “We all need to get out of here,” Warren said sensibly. “There’ll be no practice tonight.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Bess said with disappointment. “I’ll text the cast. Though some of them are probably already on their way.”

  Leigh felt sudd
enly sick. The fact that it took her a moment to realize why, she could only credit to the increasingly mushy neurons in her forty-something brain.

  Or maybe she really was in shock.

  “Warren,” she said calmly, “Can you take the Pack home? I’ll follow you later.”

  He looked at her suspiciously. She felt a stab of guilt at delaying his education, but someone had to get the Pack out of here, and Bess, unfortunately, would need to be present when the police arrived. “Please?” she begged, her eyes heavy with meaning. I can’t talk in front of the Pack, but I’ll fill you in later. I promise.

  Warren’s eyes narrowed back at her, but with a gruff exhale, he relented. You’d better. “Are you a hundred percent sure you didn’t get scratched or bitten?” he asked again. “Maybe we should take you to urgent care and get you checked out.”

  “I’m positive,” Leigh assured. “None of them touched me.”

  “Bats don’t fly into things accidentally, Dad,” Allison informed calmly. “They have amazing precision in the air — if they didn’t they’d never be able to catch moving insects.”

  Warren cleared his throat. “I’m sure.” With one last, skeptical look at Leigh, he withdrew his car keys from his pocket. “Let’s get out of here, guys.” He opened the door to the closet. “Come on, Lenna,” he soothed. “I’ll take you home.”

  Lenna burst from the interior of the closet and attached herself to her uncle’s waist like a suction cup. “Can we run?” she whimpered.

  Warren cast a look at Camille, who seemed content to stay where she was. “Il trovatore?” he asked.

  Camille’s pretty face beamed. “Stride la vampa,” she answered.

  Warren nodded in approval. “Carry on.”

  Camille smiled at him, closed the door on herself, and complied.

  Bess let out a frustrated groan.

  As soon as Leigh was certain that Warren, the Pack, and Camille were all safely out of the building — the last being accomplished only after Bess insisted she had seen a bat flying into the closet — Leigh herded her aunt into the relative safety of the high-ceilinged sanctuary and sat her down in a folding chair.