20/20 Investigations, Inc. The Wilderness Staircase. Chapter 4.

We had a great restful night and were up early making breakfast before starting our day. I decided we should have a good hearty breakfast, who knows when we might eat again today. We need to try and find out where those other footprints came from. After breakfast we headed back to the library to check things out and…there was no footprints whatever, not even ours. Just a thick layer of dust. Hmm, that explains how people could walk around without leaving evidence behind, but, how do they cover up with all that dust without making noise? Meow, meow.=They ghosts, not make noise. Meow.=Yep, ghosts don’t make noise, just move around and dust blow all over. “Um, how do ghosts create so much wind to move the dust around?”, I ask Mr. Cat. Meow.=Hmm, that good question, not know how, but must do it, ’cause it done.

“Someone did this, but it wasn’t a ghost,” I said, “now we need to look around and see if we can find a hidden passageway here somewhere before… Meow,meow=I know, before we die too. “No, we are not going to die, stop saying that,” I said, “and stop sighing so much.” And I let out a big sigh. Meow?=How come he can sigh and we can’t? Meow,meow=Because he human, humans sigh a lot. Meow.=Hmm, not seem like good excuse. Meow,meow.=I agree. SIGH, from both of them right beside me. “Fine, you can sigh…sometimes,” I said rolling my eyes. Meow,meow!= YAY, they both say together. We looked around that library thoroughly without finding any trace of a door leading to a secret passage. Probably some old hermit living out here and he doesn’t want anyone to disturb his peace and quiet.

I could easily live in a place like this. Meow,meow=Not understand why anyone would want to live in this terrible place. Hmm, glad I didn’t say anything out loud. “Well,” I said, “time to go searching down through the rest of this old place.” Off we go into the “west wing” of the hotel. Most rooms were empty, but some had a few pieces of very old furniture like chairs, tables and wardrobes. There was even some rugs in a few rooms and some old bed frames. But we found nothing that would help us. Not that we really know what we are looking for anyway. We came back to the central part and I noticed something interesting right away. This hotel was supposedly built at the same time, about 300 years ago, but this central part was constructed quite differently. The stones were different sizes here, in the rest of the hotel they were all the same size. And the stones here just looked older, that is, the way they were carved out. They were even a different color, though not much.

Might not mean anything, but it kind of messes up the legend which says the place was made at the same time. We go up to the next level. This must have been where the lady lived. There was a large bedroom, a sitting room, a couple of odd shaped small rooms and a round room, very odd. There was some beautiful old furniture in the bedroom. Apparently someone took a lovely carved chair out of here and was found dead the next morning, stabbed. The couple that owned this place before David and Diane also took something from here and they were also found dead the next morning, also stabbed. Since there was a hundred years between the stabbings it was obviously not done by the same person. But that’s why David and Diane got this place cheap and…”Why didn’t I think of that before?”, I asked the cats. Meow.=Think of what?

“David and Diane got this place cheap because the previous owners had been stabbed after taking some furniture from this hotel,” I said. Meow!=But they tell us they not know of hotel until after buying property. Meow,meow!=That right, then they lie to us. Why they do that? “I don’t know Muffin,” I said, “that part is a bit odd. But they were nervous so maybe they just got things mixed up a bit when they were telling us. And the bad things started happening to them when they decided to keep that furniture the former owners took.” There was a beautiful and very large wardrobe in the bedroom. I opened it and it was full of clothes, some very old, but some were very recent. I checked the back of the wardrobe and when I stepped on a certain spot, the back slid aside, opening a secret passage. “This is it Muffin and Mr. Cat!,” I exclaimed. We went inside, the door quickly closed behind us, and down we went!

To Be Continued.

The picture of Mr. Cat is kindly supplied by his human, Nina.

Previous chapters of this story, and other stories, can be found on my home page under 20/20 Investigations, Inc.

©2020 Steve McLeod.