A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,14

I bade as I turned the handle, and then the twilight seared into the room like a burning canvas, and we filed out into the blue light that was the mystic dark of gone sun.

*

At dawn, my eyes flashed open. I felt my pupils contract at the sudden onslaught of change.

I sat up on my pallet, casting about a moment as if to bestow what had occurred to me on someone else. But they were all asleep.

Full wakefulness brought sense back to me: I did not need to disturb them. I could handle this well on my own.

It was Wednesday. The day the paper boy came.

I had to warn him about the predatory anomaly on the loose.

I would have to hurry to catch him, though. He was an efficient sort, that Johnny, if only to achieve elusiveness – a valuable trait, but it would not save him from any wardog. It would likely only save him from me; a victory for the shy thing, but it would do him no service to elude this warning. He flitted through his rounds at dawn, while there was light enough to send the wardogs packing, but still a generous cover of mist clinging to the land to sequester him from other mischief – but if there was a beast out there that didn't mind the light, it could find him in the mist. Who was to name its preferred hunting hours, but Johnny would do well to be informed.

I padded quickly through the creaking house, wrapping a shawl around my shoulders. Was I already too late? Johnny was always here and gone, that quickly. Only once had I seen him. Once more I had heard his footsteps chopping away after he disappeared into the mist. But on a regular basis, the only sign of him was the paper left at our doorstep – a crude little stack of curling, torn papers scribbled on with charcoal and tied up with shreds of old string. He wrote it himself, on whatever he could find or the paper we traded for the service.

I pulled open the screen, threw back the lock of the door, and heaved it open into the quiet, cold kiss of early, early morning. Tendrils of fog curled into the house. I waved them aside, like smoke, and stepped out onto the ghostly front step.

No paper yet.

“Johnny?” I whispered fiercely. The whisper melded with the fog; it seemed they were made of the same stuff. I tried with an ounce of voice: “Johnny!” It got a little further this time, but cut off not far from my body.

I waited.

“Johnny, are you there? It's Vant.”

For a moment, nothing.

Then, slowly, a scrawny form materialized through the fog out of the corner of my eye, hugging the edge of the house.

I turned to him. He was a small, secretive fellow, stopping with his features still masked behind mist, but I could see his silhouette. He hugged something to his bony chest.

“Monvay,” he uttered. I could just make out the crude edging of his worn leather coat as the fog shifted, and the breath of his words cleared his face ever so slightly.

I ushered him closer, though I didn't imagine it would do any good. True to form, he just hugged his bundle tighter to his chest, possessively, even though I imagined it was the newspaper he had come to deliver.

“Thank the gods you're in one piece,” I said, relieved that he hadn't run into any light-savvy jaws on his way over.

“Monvay?” he asked, confused.

“There's a wardog abroad,” I advised quietly, seriously. “It got someone yesterday.”

“Yester...day?” he inquired, his voice sounding suddenly even smaller. Perhaps it was just the mist, but I thought he went a bit pale.

“We heard it in the light,” I said. “I didn't know if you would have also.”

“I was elsewhere,” he murmured.

I nodded. “Be warned.”

He nodded in turn. “It'll be in the paper. So others will know.”

“Good.”

He stood there awkwardly for a moment, as if not knowing how to end a conversation, and then abruptly handed me the paper.

“Be careful,” I bade.

“As always, Monvay.” And then as I straightened onto the step, he nodded and turned to go, his coat fanning out ever so slightly at the bottom with the motion, before he disappeared back into the mist.

I hugged the paper to my own chest as I watched him go, concerned, but then drew it away as I realized I might be smearing it.

Wherever Henry had come from, he had been educated