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Ricky watched the tail lights of his friend’s car vanish around a misty bend in the two-lane highway, leaving behind a true country dark and a pillowed silence, thick and suffocating.
He took a moment to listen hard for any sign of movement along the old road, for oncoming traffic, for any other sounds at all. When there were none, he clicked on his small flashlight, shouldered his knapsack, and turned to face the long, wooded driveway ahead of him.
No neighbors. No security cameras. Not even a NO TRESPASSING sign.
Ricky was nearly delirious with the ease of this. It was almost unfair.
Still, he kept sharp, not quite trusting his own good fortune as he walked quickly down the overgrown gravel lane, sweeping the flashlight back and forth to avoid tripping over the deep tire-ruts in the old road.
Remembering the layout of the driveway from the satellite map he had seen online, he was still surprised when the house appeared in front of him, tucked deeply into the trees. It was a modest old rambler, shingled roof frosted thickly with moss and tufts of adventurous grass. The yard was overgrown, but signs of effort were present: healthy potted plants, birdfeeders filled, trimmed hedgerow leading up to the house’s front door. But except for a smattering of ancient solar-powered lawn lights winking ineffectually against the night, the house was completely unlit. The windows were dark, curtains pulled tightly closed, no smoke rising from the chimney.
Ricky checked his phone. Just after midnight. The old lady should be fast asleep. Ginny Schumacher was a woman of habit, it was said. Generous, open-hearted, compassionate, a woman who feeds wildlife and always has a kind word for everyone…and her every move was like clockwork.
Boy, I sure hope so, Ricky thought.
At the rise where the driveway curved around the house, Ricky swept his flashlight and startled when the beam of light landed on a hunched shape in his path.
It was a raccoon, well-fed and well-furred, standing in the middle of the lane, one front foot raised mid-stride like someone had captured the thing in bronze. Its eyes flashed from its dark mask in the flashlight beam, but otherwise, it did not move.
Ricky sighed out a relieved laugh.
“Shit,” he whispered. “You scared me.”
He had never been this close to a real raccoon, before. He remembered seeing them walking single-file along the fence behind his apartment building growing up on their way to the complex’s dumpsters, but that was about it.
Trash panda. Little nimble fingers, dark robber’s mask. Nocturnal thief.
“Yeah, you get it,” Ricky muttered. “You and me, we’re alike. Keep this to yourself, got it? You get yours, I get mine, right?”
The attempt at humor was lost on the raccoon, who slowly lowered its front foot and backed up into itself, raising its spine just a fraction, ringed tail curling.
Locked in the creature’s gaze, Ricky felt a shiver run down his spine.
It was a portent that he was not quite savvy enough to catch. If he was a more imaginative person, if he had been more deeply versed in the tongues of wild things, he might have seen this animal as a gatekeeper, a last guardian whose riddle he must answer to move forward on his quest.
Turn back, or go forward, but you take the consequence upon yourself.
But Ricky was not able to decipher the oracle’s message. Instead, he simply felt the raccoon’s stare like a bolt to his conscience, and felt the need to explain. To say it out loud.
“She doesn’t need it,” he said. “But I do. That’s all.”
The raccoon’s whiskers twitched, its hand-like front feet tucking further into the fluff of its chest. The eyes never left Ricky’s.
But the spell broke, as spells do. The attempt to lighten his own mood by observing the raccoon had passed swiftly, and Ricky’s anxiety got the better of him. Besides, what if the thing had rabies?
“Okay, whatever. Move,” he said, feinting forward as if he was going to chase the creature. It darted away into the dark.
The way before him was open, once more.
Ricky walked up the driveway and rounded the house. As soon as he reached the backyard, he swept his flashlight around to illuminate a back porch covered in a dozen empty cat bowls, frost-stiffened hoses curled into piles on the overgrown grass, an old garden thick with the skeletons of the summer’s sunflowers and tomatoes, and a large tarp-covered woodpile leaning against a detached garage.
There she is, Ricky thought, his heart pounding.
Such a nondescript old cinder-block garage, almost a shed, but Ricky knew what treasure lay inside: a 1957 cherry-red Chevy Bel Air, four-door with a white hardtop.
The vintage beauty had once belonged to Ginny Schumacher’s late husband, his inheritance from an elderly aunt back in the 70s. Emmett Schumacher had kept the car immaculate ever since the day it fell into his possession, and after he passed, his widow had taken up the mantle.
Every soul in town knew it was early November when Ginny Schumacher—dressed in her pearls and lemon-yellow Sunday best—made her annual pilgrimage to Damascus Auto Repair, that cherry-red Chevy bright on the autumn gray streets, to get the car checked, maintained, and detailed. Then, she would drive it back home, tuck it away in the garage, and let it sit entombed through the winter.
Ricky had worked at the Damascus Auto Repair for the last five years, and it still never ceased to amaze him when Ginny Schumacher pulled in every November. But the more he got to know Ginny—sweet old thing, not a tremor of suspicion in her sweet old head—the more he realized just how easy it would be to make the immaculate Chevy disappear.
Ginny Schumacher was ninety-two and had lived in the area ever since her childhood. To her, it was still a small town. She treated every soul in Damascus like she would treat her own kids, Ricky included. She didn’t even lock her front door, let alone the door of the garage. No cameras, no motion-sensor lights, no security system, no close neighbors to check on her, and she went to bed early and slept like the dead.
It felt unfair, really. The old lady didn’t need the car. She wouldn’t sell it. She didn’t even joy-ride around in it. It was useless to her.
But Ricky could really use that money.
He even knew a friend who could drop him off at the head of the driveway, make the whole thing easy. In the end, the hardest part was finding someone to shift the car once Ricky drove it away from the old lady’s property. And that had actually been easier than he thought, too. He knew a guy who knew a guy who could get the car off-island, no sweat. For a price, of course, but who cares?
There were thousands of dollars, beating like a chrome-bright, cherry-red, tell-tale heart in that old garage.
Ricky shouldered his knapsack again, containing his tools for hot-wiring the car. As he passed the back porch, he startled another raccoon, poised over a cat bowl, licking its lips, but he ignored it.
At the door of the garage, Ricky quickly and quietly turned the latch to pull the articulated door up and open. But before he could do so, he heard a noise in the woodpile at the side of the garage, on the left. A loud scrabbling, scrambling noise, and a thick, perturbed grunting.
Ricky paused, waited. It was all he needed if some damn raccoons managed to wake the old woman before he could even get inside the garage.
But the sound receded and there was no sign of movement inside the house, so Ricky turned the handle and lifted the door. It slid surprisingly easily up, revealing the dark space within and a car-shaped void, covered in thick, brown canvas.
With a flourish, Ricky pulled aside the canvas, and even in the gloom, the old Chevy bloomed crimson-red like a stain of spilled wine, and the chrome glinted starlike under the lunar glow of the white hardtop.
“Damn,” Ricky said, involuntarily. Day or night, it was the prettiest old car he had ever seen, and even prettier with the promise of reward hanging in the air.
He stepped forward reverently and pulled the handle to open the driver’s side door. As he imagined it would be, it was unlocked.
“Bless you, Ginny Schumacher, you trusting old bat,” he murmured. But before he could climb in, he felt the distinct sensation of being watched, and he whipped around to see several pairs of glowing eyes watching him from around the corner of the garage door.
From the woodpile came that sound, again, grunting. Shuffling. Sniffing. Thick and heavy. Did raccoons make a noise like that?
Ricky feinted at the raccoons again, like he had with the first one, but none of them flinched. He tried again, flashing the flashlight at them, but they only stared, as though filled with unnatural confidence.
We are only the messengers, their eyes seemed to say.
Giving up, Ricky turned back to the Chevy.
Where there had been only empty darkness, there was now a face, inches from Ricky’s own. It was long-dead Emmett Schumacher, white-crowned and pale-eyed, his ghostly gaze fierce with a phantom’s rage.
After all, he had kept the Chevy immaculate for decades, and he wasn’t about to stop, now, death be damned.
The flashlight traced an arc up and overhead as Ricky tumbled backward against the wall of the garage and down to the concrete floor, too terrified to scream.
A sound—like the groaning of a thousand mournful breaths, sliding up in a horrible crescendo and tapering shrill with glee—filled the garage from its source in the woodpile.
In a moment they were upon him, all dark masks and nimble fingers.
*******
The next morning, Ginny Schumacher rose with the sun, as was her routine.
She was like clockwork, you see.
Still in her pajamas, over coffee in her mother’s antique china, she peered out her back window, and not a single thing was amiss. The garage door was closed tight, the cherry-red Chevy safely tucked away, within.
Later, in her slippers and her thickest robe, she slipped out the back door and filled and refilled the bowls on the back porch with cat food in the frost-covered morning, cooing to the masked faces—and whatever else—watching her curiously and gratefully from the woodpile.
The old woman was good to them, and they were good to her.
If she noticed that they didn’t seem as hungry as usual, this morning, of this she made no comment.
END
Author’s Note:
This story was the jumping-off point for a free workshop I put together about Motivation and Theme in short fiction. You can read that analysis here!
I love raccoons but NOT ANYMORE!
This was great. I haven't read a lot of fiction yet on Substack, but this encourages me to read more - epsecially yours. I really enjoyed the way the tension built up after the introduction of the first racoon and how our sympathy is divided.