Poor Muffin, she almost fainted and Mr. Cat came running back to her right away. He looked in the library, his eyes got big and wide as he stared at 3 coffins leaning up against one of the bookcases, one big one with my name on it and two small ones with their names. The one with my name was closed. Meow!=We hurry Muffin, get coffin open quick! Meow,meow!=Here stool, we push over to coffin! Meow!=Good idea! They managed to push that heavy stool over to the coffin and Mr. Cat stood on that so he could push harder higher up while Muffin pushed at the lower end. They pushed harder and harder and finally the lid opened and…Meow,meow!=My human! He got blood on chest! Meow!=Pull leg so we can get him out of there! So they each pulled on my pant legs and got me to slide out of the coffin. Mr. Cat sniffed the blood that was on me. Meow.=That not human blood, they try to trick us.

Meow,meow?=Ghosts play tricks? Meow.=Not know, ghosts maybe very tricky. We need to be careful and…HEY, where you go Muffin?! Right then Muffin comes running in with a cup of water that she held tightly with her teeth. She brought it over and dumped it on my face. “What? What happened?”, I sputtered. Meow,meow!=He awake and okay! And she gives me a big hug. I get up and sit on the stool and look at these coffins. Meow.=Ghost try to make us think you dead and put you in coffin, there one for Muffin and me too. “That was no ghost that hit me on the head,” I said. Meow, meow?=How you know not ghost? You see who did it? “No Muffin, I saw no one, but no ghost could hit me hard like that,” I tried to explain, “what would happen if you bit a ghost?” Meow,meow.=Bite go right through ghost, nothing there to bite, probably bite my own tongue.

“Right, so how could a ghost hold something to hit me with?,” I asked. Meow.=Hmm, that good question, must be human people. “Exactly,” I said, “there are other people out here.” Then I looked at the coffins again and the names on them. “David and Diane told us that no one but them knew about us coming here,” I said to the cats. Meow, meow?=That right, so how anyone know our names? “Right Muffin, only David and Diane knew our names,” I said. Meow.=That mean they lie to us and tell someone else, or…they are doing this. “You two are really thinking today,” I said, “that’s what I’m thinking too, but what I don’t understand is, why would David and Diane want to scare us like this when they hired us in the first place? Or did they perhaps talk about us coming here and someone heard them?

“We decided to eat and go to bed early that night and get a fresh start at looking around in the morning. It was getting cool so I decided to get a fire going in that nice large fireplace that was in our bedroom that we decided to use instead of staying out in the main area. We were right next to it anyway. I had an axe so I chopped up the coffins and used them to burn in our fire. That way too the cats felt better about not having to look at them. The fire also lit the room quite nicely for us. I got my air mattress out which was nice to have rather than sleeping on that cold stone floor.

The cats curled up next to me and we all lay there just thinking a bit. There certainly is something going on out here, but what? It is certainly an out of the way kind of place to do anything really. And there is no evidence of people coming in or going out of here. The only trail into this place was the one we used and it was barely noticeable, no one else was using it, that’s for sure. And this place is so dusty it would be easy to tell if anyone was walking around in here. The only footprints were ours…except in the library. It is an old place, perhaps some secret passages are in here. But that still doesn’t tell us how people get here. Soon we were all asleep…

To Be Continued.

Picture of Mr. Cat 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.