Hilary and the Beasts, Part 44

December 1930

By the second week of December, everyone was sequestered away in their rooms, either working on gifts or writing or trying to figure out those papers. Hilary was at a loss as to what to give the others. She had little money of her own, and she was neither a story writer like Betty or a songwriter like Maple. By process of elimination, she finally decided to sew pretty handkerchiefs for her sisters, Puppy, and Mrs. Fox and would perform monologues for the males. 

She went into the library to find books of monologues…and was surprised to hear the voices of Jeff and Victor. They played on a Victrola that had been dragged to the couch and chairs in the back of the room by the window. Maple was still bent over the records, barely noticing Eagle gazing out the window at the gray snow squall, brooding. 

The typewriter tapped away slowly at the table. “Eagle?” Bear looked up at the winged creature perching on the back of Maple’s chair. “Do you mind if I put you in story? You Bear smart friend in kitchen. You get to dress up and dance with red-hair princess. You and Bear dance with pretty princesses.” 

He frowned at his unhappy friend, whose glossy mahogany wings sagged as he perched balefully. “Eagle? You good? Eagle sad. Don’t like pretty voices?” He closed his own eyes. “Bear know voices. Bear hear voices before.” 

“Are you all right?” Betty went to Eagle and put an arm around him. “You act this way every time we listen to those records. Tired of them? We have been running them a lot, but Maple says you need to decode them.” 

Hilary frowned at Bear. “How have you been doing with that decoding?”

His eyes remained closed. “Bear tries. He write patterns, but…it hurts. Numbers…letters…they hurt head. She…” His gruff voice broke. “She send black light in head. Hot like lightning. Send black light…Eagle too…Master. Black light in Bear’s head…it hurts!” 

“Is that true?” Betty rubbed Eagle’s wing. “She…I presume Pavla…hurt you all that way?”

Maple finally looked up from the record. “Huh? Pablum? What did that bitch do to you guys? And more to the point, why did she do it? The codes?”

Eagle squawked sadly and nodded as the record concluded. Hilary’s breath caught. “Eagle, how do you have recordings of Victor and Jeff’s voices, anyway?” She turned to Bear. “Bear, do you know?”

“Bear knows.” His big black nose scrunched. “Friends…someone…Sco…friends. Sco…sc…someone’s friends. Friends…codes. Send codes. Sco…someone broke codes.” 

Eagle pushed papers at Bear and squawked slowly, waving his wings as the squall and sleet tapped on the windowpanes. Maple frowned. “He wants to know if you could try these now. He says…” Her voice caught. “He says you don’t have much time. If we can’t get this information to the FBI by the start of next year, she’ll take everyone in the household.” She threw her arms around Eagle, nearly knocking him off his perch. “I don’t want you guys to be pets! You’re friends! You’re practically family now!” Eagle patted her back with his wing.

Betty grabbed his paw. “We can do this together. I’m not the greatest with numbers, but I can get by enough to help you figure it out.”

“Bear try.” She helped him hold the pencil as he looked over the strange phrases. “Bear know.” She guided his hand as he wrote letters shakily under the phrases. “Bear…Sco…know. He know voices. Know…” 

But the more he wrote, the more he sweated. Hilary sat next to him and Betty directed his hand. “Bear,” Hilary repeated softly, “you know the voices on that record. How did you get records with my hus…ex-husband’s and his secretary’s voices? And where are they? Are they in the house somewhere? In Pittsburgh?”

Eagle’s low squawk and soft wing pats on Bear’s back indicated his concern for his friend. Bear closed his eyes, growling. “Bear does know…fr…friends. Knows patterns. Broke patterns for friends. She not like Bear. She…” He gulped. “Hated Bear. Bear dress up Mr. Rabbit as producer. Make her look silly. She got mad.” 

Eagle tried to push the papers at him again, but he pushed them away. “That’s when she put fingers on Bear head. Head…dark light…lightning…it HURT!” When he opened his eyes, they were completely swallowed in black…and pulsing with terror.

He yelled so loudly, Eagle jumped away and Troll ran in. “What’s going on here?” 

Betty rubbed Bear’s head as he whimpered. “I think we’d better break this up for now. Why don’t we all go to the music room? Bear, we can find a song you can play that’ll make your head feel better.”

“Yeah.” Maple gathered the records. “We’ll put this back, Eagle, then work on our Christmas carols with Miss Organ.” 

“Troll,” Hilary turned on him, “I’ve been wondering. You wouldn’t know why you have records with the voices of my ex-husband and his secretary on them? I suspect Pavla has something to do with it. Bear goes into panic mode when I so much as mention her, and I don’t blame him.”

Troll coughed. “I can’t tell you, Hilary. I hate seeing Bear like this, too. He’s…” He coughed again, harder this time. “He is, or was, a good friend. He’s a lot smarter than he…” His cough nearly sent him to the ground. “Then he’s allowed to be.” 

“You sound like you’re getting a cold.” Hilary took his arm. “I think some chicken soup and discussion should clear that right up.” 

Troll’s eyes widened. “What? But I’m not…”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Fox to send some right up to your room.” She tugged him down the hall. “I think we have a lot to discuss, including that seemingly incurable cough of yours.” Troll just groaned as she stopped Mr. Rabbit in the hall and ordered him to bring chicken soup and hot lemon tea for his Master, who kept coughing every time he needed to discuss something important, before almost literally shoving Troll to his room. 

“Hilary!” Troll growled as she almost literally shoved him into bed. “I’m not sick!”

“Stop sounding like a baby…whatever a baby monster is.” As she tucked him into bed, she stopped to admire the roses carved on the headboard and the heavy blue slime-crusted satin sheets and thick, fluffy pillows. “You know, this looks a lot like the bed in my room. You have exquisite taste, for a…a troll.”

“Thank you.” He pushed the sheets aside. “Hilary, please. I just have a little cough. It’s nothing.”

She smirked and pushed him back under the covers. “That little cough only turns up whenever I try to ask you about the curse, or my ex-husband and his friends, or why Bear and Eagle behave the way they do. Bear’s not an illiterate idiot and Eagle’s not a mute. Something viciously attacked both of them, and I suspect that something is Pavla.”

“No.” Troll’s green skin paled into more of a sickly lime. He coughed so hard, he nearly knocked himself off the bed. “They’re not. Especially Bear.”

She pulled the blankets up to his chin. “Ok, now that you’re tucked in, you can talk. What is going on around here? Why do you have records with my ex-husband and his secretary’s voices on them? Why are you all animals? I know there’s a curse, and that Wicked Witch of Eastern Europe Pavla Nemcova has something to do with it.” 

“You know more than I do.” Troll coughed so hard, he nearly knocked himself off the bed. “I can’t…I can’t talk, Hilary. She won’t….allow it. None of us can. She didn’t want…” He nearly hacked up a lung and reached for a glass of water by his bed. “She didn’t want Eagle to broadcast what he knew. That’s why he has a bird’s tongue. She wants to silence him and keep Bear from figuring out the rest of those codes.”

“Why you?” Hilary pulled herself up on the bed next to him. “Why did she attack you three, and this whole household? What did she want with you? Other than that information.”

“I know you don’t believe it, Hilary, but I’m very influential in theatrical circles.” He didn’t object when she leaned into his chest, clad in a thick cotton shirt crusted with slime. “Pavla does want to work in the US and more specifically, get to Hollywood…but the fact that she was a member of certain…groups…was a major red flag. She latched onto me when she found out about my wealth and the people I knew on one of my trips to Europe.”

Hilary glared at him. “Why didn’t you do something more humane, like, oh, kill her?”

“I didn’t know!” He frowned. “By the time she had her hooks into me, it was too late. Eagle had been doing intel on several of the groups in Europe she was…involved with. We…” He coughed hard again. She handed him a tissue. “Well, I can’t say what groups, or how we knew, but we found out.”

She ran her fingers up his slimy chest. “You’re not telling me what I want to know. I asked you a simple question. How did you get the records with Jeff and Victor’s voices?”

He coughed so hard, Hilary had to grab his arm to keep him from tumbling off the bed again. “I told you…I can’t say! She…won’t let me! And anyway, I don’t know…” another cough, “any Jeff or Victor!”

“You’re lying.” She knew there was only one way she was going to get what she wanted. She climbed onto him, rubbing his shirt to avoid the slime on his skeletal, sunken chest. “Those were the recordings my husband and his secretary made while in Europe and working at KDKA. Why do you have them? You’ve never been in radio.”

“I’ve been to Europe.” He was breathing hard, those beautiful almond eyes locked into hers. “I can’t…Hilary…” His voice was husky. “While you’re on top of me…would you marry me?”

She never got the chance to respond. Mr. Rabbit hurried in, carrying a tray with two bowls of chicken soup, two mugs of tea, and oyster crackers. His big brown eyes widened when he saw Hilary laying on his master, and his mouth dropped open so hard, he nearly dislocated his jaw. 

“Hold that thought.” She patted Troll on the cheek. “We’ll return to this later.”

Troll’s breathing was hard and ragged. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine.” She climbed off the bed. “I’ll talk to you when you’re feeling better.” She nodded to Mr. Rabbit as she passed him, taking her bowl and mug. “I think I’ll eat these downstairs with the others after all. You can tend to your master. He’s feeling rather poorly. He has this terrible cough that comes and goes.” 

Troll growled. “Hilary! You didn’t answer me!”

Hilary stumbled off before he could see how aroused she was. Laying on him like that…it was too close for comfort. It was too familiar. There was a musky scent under the smelly slime. One she knew too well. One she’d tried to banish from her thoughts. She hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where it would be far easier to process her swirling thoughts. Troll watched her the whole time, even as Mr. Rabbit tried to force chicken soup down his gullet.