Scryer's Gulch

That's right, Annabelle, John, Misi, Mamzelle and the gang are moving to Wednesday updates to make room for Intimate History updates every Monday and Friday! The History starts September 6th, 2010, and the Gulch returns September 8th. Mark your calendars, tell your friends!

When John returned to his own back parlor, Rabbit was gone, off to make a final round before bed; Mrs Smith dozed in her chair, her darning still in her lap; and Jamie fidgeted anxiously on the hearth rug with his soldiers. John woke Mrs Smith with a gentle, "Now, Minnie, it's past your bedtime, go on up, I'm home now."

Once alone, Jamie and his father avoided looking at one another, John preferring the flicker of the lamp flame, Jamie the pile of deceased tin men he stirred with one finger. "I hear," John began, "that you picked up something maybe you shouldn't have, son."

"Like what?" said Jamie, giving him a brief sideways glance.

"Like a nugget of hermetauxite."

"Well, now, Runnels, out on a night like this!" said Mayor Prake, rising from his chair. "Is there cause for alarm? Amelia, fill the kettle please, perhaps the Sheriff might like some tea. Perhaps a wee bit of bourbon in the cup?" he added in an undertone.

Amelia lugged the kettle in, put it on the stove, and took her reluctant leave. "I'm not sleepy!" she insisted as her mother shooed her up the stairs.

Once they were alone, John settled back in his chair, a comfortable shot of bourbon in his tea. "No cause for immediate alarm, Anatole, though things are stranger than usual in this town. To begin with, I believe Georgie is innocent. You should let him go back to school."

"Innocent!" exclaimed Prake. "Why, his own brother believes he did it! You amaze me. What did Miss Duniway say to convince you?"

John held open the jailhouse door for her, and laughed in spite of himself. "That ghost knows what's good for him. Coffee, Miss Duniway?"

"I wouldn't," said Aloysius.

"Put a cork in it, spook."

"I think I shall follow his advice, Sheriff. Too much coffee is overly stimulating to the nerves," said Annabelle.

John offered her a seat and started to take his own, then changed his mind, pulled it out from behind his desk, and sat down. "I shouldn't think you have much in the way of nerves no matter how much coffee you drink, ma'am."

Annabelle sat up straighter. Her eyes flicked up to his own, and held him in a piercing cornflower glare; he met it, with outward calm and an inward shiver. "I do wish you'd say what you mean, sir," she said. "You have been suspicious of me almost from the day I arrived. You wonder about my income, you wonder about my character, you hint at this and that. It is past time I took offense. What is it about me you find so dubious?"

As it came to pass, Simon did not get over to the Runnels house that night. He stood outside for a fair piece looking up at the door, but couldn't bring himself to walk up the steps, knock, and hand over Miss Duniway's ethergram; revealing someone's private correspondence went against everything he believed in as an ethergraph engineer.

Mamzelle had a time of it under Charity's orders the next day.

She scrubbed the floors, beat all the rugs, bathed Charity's disgusting little pug dog, shined the copper weathervane atop the gingerbread-encrusted turret, mucked out the stables, and blacked every boot in the house as well as the stoves--all in her best silk dress, now tattered and stained. Blacking smudges covered her face, not all of them self-inflicted, and shoeprints stood out on her dress where the occasional kick had landed.

"Too bad about about the dress. It was so flattering on you, too. I bet you never affront me again!" smirked Charity as the housekeeper fidgeted behind her.

"Oh, no, madame, I wouldn't dream of eet!" said Mamzelle, face downcast; her eyes reflected a dangerous ruby color in the wooden floor she'd polished to a perfect finish; neither human noticed.

The full moon crept over the town, slipping silver through the bars of the jail where John held Rabbit through his transformation; it glinted faint on Georgie Prake's tears as he sat in the darkened window he'd occupied almost continually since his disgrace; and it shone white on a woman's bare skin. The moon lit the woman only briefly. Her coloring dappled, and she blended into the surrounding shadows. Mamzelle prided herself on her camouflaging, especially chained as she was to the form of a human woman.

From the front window of the Hotel LeFay, Anthony Bonham watched Miss Duniway and John Runnels exchange pleasantries. He knew the look on the man's face; Miss Duniway had fallen afoul of the Sheriff's crime-fighting instincts. What could he suspect the schoolteacher of, besides being beautiful, and that was no suspicion. Outwardly, Tony eyed her dispassionately. But within him, he formulated plans. A young woman, all alone in a town like this--she was bound to be lonely. He could use that.

John rushed to his brother's side, whipping off the bandanna around his neck. To Annabelle's astonishment, he stuffed it in the deputy's mouth and guided the gagged and sobbing man gently to the floor. "It hurts, Miss Duniway, and he screams a lot," said John. "I'm here, Rab, I won't let go, I promise!"

"'M srry!" whimpered Rabbit around the bandanna.

"Not your fault!" said John.

"What's happening, Sheriff Runnels?" demanded Annabelle. "Should I be going for the doctor?"

The door of Simon's ethergraph office banged open, and a breathless Georgie stampeded in. "Simon! Can I hide here?"

"What have you done now? Close the door, madcap!"

The door banged shut. "Nothin--well, they think I've done somethin, but I haven't, I swear I haven't!"

Annabelle felt the same tingle at her wrist the next day when Georgie and Jamie entered the schoolroom together. Jamie's grim face and Georgie's flushed one told her the boys had been arguing.

When it came time for the children to go home to lunch, she asked Georgie to stay behind. "I don't know anything about it!" he blurted as soon as the other children were gone.

"Don't know anything about what, Georgie?" she said, narrowing her eyes.

"The school, miss. That's why you wanted to talk to me, weren't it?"

"'Wasn't it,' Georgie, and no, that's not why I wanted to talk to you. But as long as we're on the subject, what is it about the school that you don't know?"

While Misi stood on the windowsill at Hopewell's worrying about Annabelle, she herself was still visiting students. She'd met Jamie Runnels and the Prake twins, and the two children of L.L. Lockson, publisher of the Voice of the Gulch. Now she walked back up the boardwalk toward the great mansion on the hill to acquaint herself with Lily Bonham.

Just past Prake's Hardware, her detector bracelet buzzed and pricked at her wrist. She returned to the store, masking her excitement as she pretended to windowshop; the sensation faded. She strolled back up the street until the pricking became nearly unbearable: it came from the ethergraph office.

While Annabelle waited a day for the schoolhouse repairs, the best use of her time would be to visit her students in their homes, get a sense of them. That’s what a real schoolteacher would do, she decided the next morning, and it gave her a chance to scan for the anomalies she’d been sent to investigate without raising suspicion.

“What exactly are we looking for, anyway?” said Misi from a perch atop the wardrobe. “You might have said,” he added sulkily.

Annabelle looked up at the demon cat as she buttoned up her bodice. “Daniel asked me to wait as long as possible before telling anyone anything, including you.”

“Who’s Daniel?”