September 1930
Hilary spent a hot Indian Summer morning a week after Labor Day on the phone with Doug Thompson in the library. “Are you sure?” She asked in shock, her eyes wide. “Jeff bought the house?”
“Yes, Hilary. It took City Hall long enough to find it, but I was able to pull some strings. It’s in his name.” She could hear papers shuffling, voices in the background. More than likely, Doug was calling from his office. “He bought it last July, shortly before the party at the Frick Mansion. Didn’t you say he had a ‘surprise’ for you?”
“He did!” Hilary gasped. “Oh god, he did say something about a surprise…but I never found out what it was, before he went to Europe and married her. He bought this house?”
Doug’s sweet voice was incredibly reassuring. “Yes, it would seem so. You said Troll owned it?”
“He’s lying.” Hilary narrowed her eyes. “I knew a Troll couldn’t own property, and certainly a house like this! It’s about time I had a talk with that pair of walking garden shears!” She looked over her shoulder as slow, methodical tapping on a typewriter could be heard. “I’ll talk to Newspaper, too. I know, it sounds strange, but he’s actually one of the more useful objects around here. I can try to talk to Bear,” she sighed, “but I’m not sure how much he’ll know or remember.”
“Just…be careful.” The line crackled. “Hilary…is Betty there?”
“She’s with Bear. I’ll get her.” Hilary put the receiver on the table, then made her way around stacks of non-speaking newspapers and books to the couches and chairs that flanked the picture window in the back. For once, Betty wasn’t the one at her typewriter. Bear typed slowly, each big claw a slow clack on a key.
“You’re doing really well.” She smiled, reading what he typed. “Well, it’s not a lot. But it’s a start. We’re up to where the princess and her two sisters arrive at the castle, and the bear prince stops the monster prince from sending them away. That,” she added with a grin, “sounds familiar.”
Bear’s grin was surprisingly charming for all the teeth he had. “You say write what you know. I know when you come, I wanted you stay. You and sisters. I not want you go. Master not think when he got mad.”
Betty sighed. “To be honest, he had every right to be angry. He did ask for Hilary, and we did intrude on his home.” She couldn’t help her smile at the memory. “And Maple did call him a movie monster.”
“But it isn’t.” Hilary stepped in. “Betty, Doug Thompson is on the phone. He wants to talk to you. Maybe he’ll take you out to dinner after all this is through.”
Bear narrowed his eyes, showing something like anger for the first time since they arrived, and maybe even a hint of jealousy. “Who Doug? He boyfriend?”
“No, he isn’t. Not really. He’s a friend, Bear. Our family lawyer.” The young woman patted Bear on the shoulder before giving Hilary a look of annoyance. “When I get back, we’ll start the next chapter, when the princess and the bear prince fall in love.”
Hilary couldn’t help her heart clenching when Bear watched Betty dash over to the phone. “She love Doug.” His growls were more deeply sad than angry. “He smart. He good. Bear not smart. Bear not good. Bear not pretty. Not good for Betty. Doug good for Betty.”
“Bear,” she began, kneeling down to look into those dark eyes, “I need to ask you something very important. Do you know a Jeff Singer? Troll said he owns the house, but Doug told me Jeff does. Jeff is my ex-husband. He’s been missing for months, and,” her voice dropped, “I’m worried about him.”
The enormous black ursine creature closed his eyes, trying hard to focus. “Jeff?” He gulped. “Name…house? Troll own house. Master owner. He say so. He say Bear servant, but…” The large black creature scrunched his eyes. “Not servant once. Jeff…owww!” His paw flew to the side of his head as his growl nearly broke her eardrums. When he opened those huge eyes, they were black as tar and emptier than his plate after his fish dinner. “Bear not know. Name is Bear. It…hurts. Darkness hurts…not know Jeff. Troll is Bear’s master. He is house owner.”
“Damn it!” She shook Bear’s shoulder furiously. “Damn those mental blocks! You know something!”
“Hilary!” Betty ran over to them, her own eyes flaring furiously. “What are you doing to him? Bear, are you ok?”
“That…that walking rug knows something!” She shrieked. “Betty, Doug told me Jeff owns this house. It doesn’t belong to Troll, but this…furry moron…says it does!”
“I don’t know!” Bear’s growls rose, nearly breaking her ear drums. “Jeff…it hurts! It hurts! The darkness hurts! Can’t say name!”
“He’s not a moron, Hilary!” Betty snarled furiously. “He doesn’t know! Leave him the hell alone!”
“Fine,” Hilary grabbed Newspaper from the coffee table. “Maybe he’ll tell me something useful.”
“Miss Hilary?” Newspaper squawked in his own voice as she threw him on a table by the phone. Bear’s great heaving sobs and Betty’s gentle reassurances echoed on the other side of the library. “What’s going on? What got Bear upset?”
“Everything gets that big furry baby upset!” Hilary growled almost as loud as Bear. “Newspaper, who owns this house? My family’s lawyer found out Jeff does, but Troll keeps saying he owns it. Monsters don’t own houses!”
Newspaper actually managed to sing like Eddie Cantor. “You’d be surprised, Miss Hilary. Don’t take what you’re seeing at face value. Maybe what you want is closer than you think.”
She glared at the dapper photo on the front page. “Could you not speak in riddles?”
Now his singing sounded more like the strident tones of Al Jolson. “He’s your Sonny Boy, Miss Hilary, your Jeff. He owns the house, but he doesn’t. His second wife wants the house, everything he owns.”
Hilary made a face. “Sounds like a piece of work, but it would help if I knew who she was.”
Newspaper’s voice became his own. “I can’t…tell you that, Miss Hilary. I can’t say who she was. It’s…well, it’s for everyone’s safety. I can’t say who his first wife was, either. You’ll have to ask him, and even he might not be able to tell you.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him, all right!” Hilary looked down at Newspaper and gave him a quick pat. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” She glared at where the bear snuffles and sobs were coming from. “Which is more than can be said for other creatures around here.”
She wasn’t going to ask how he managed Clara Bow’s Brooklyn accent. “Don’t be too hard on Bear, Miss Hilary. He had it rougher n’ the resta’ us.”
“I’ll let Betty deal with that giant teddy bear.” She glared at Newspaper. “Where’s Troll?”
“He’s in his rooms upstairs.” Newspaper’s actual voice trembled. “Miss Hilary, please don’t bother him there. He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s in his rooms…”
Hilary glared so hard at the little man in the photo, he tried to duck under the headline article on the front page. “I don’t care. I’m going to get to the bottom of this, whether he likes it or not!” She stormed out to the sound of Newspaper’s multi-character sputters and Bear’s noisy sobs.
She nearly ran over Mr. Cat on her way out of the library. “Mr. Cat,” she gave him a look, “I don’t suppose you know where Troll’s rooms are? It’s of the utmost importance that I speak to him now.”
“Upstairs, last door on your right.” Mr. Cat just kept sweeping. “But you won’t get through to him there. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
“Oh, I’m going to disturb him, all right!” Hilary grumbled loudly. “I’m going to give him a piece of my mind and shove it down that skinny throat of his sideways! That grotesque leftover from a bad horror film will be wearing those horns around his neck when I’m through with him! Or have I said too much?”
Mr. Cat finally looked up from his broom as Hilary pushed past him. “But he said he didn’t want to be disturbed!”
To her frustration, he wasn’t there when she arrived. The main room was dark as pitch…but from what she could see, they were a shambles. “Well, he’s not the neatest monster in the universe,” she muttered as she stepped over pieces of broken crockery. Mirrors were shattered, laying in dull fragments on the expensive Oriental rugs. The only crockery that was still upright was one vase of perfect scarlet and coral roses. Heavy blue brocade curtains were drawn tightly around the wide windows, blocking as much light as possible. If the furniture wasn’t broken, it was crusted with a thin layer of greenish slime, dried and the slimier more recent variety.
“Mrs. Fox ought to come in here with a broom and a dust rag,” she muttered as she stepped around bits and pieces of what used to be a perfectly respectable chair. “Or better yet, she should hand them to him. He might be less likely to pitch fits if he had to clean up after them.”
She grabbed the nearest rag and started swiping it around dust and cobwebs. “Really,” she sneezed, “this place is a disaster area.” She picked up pieces of glass on his dresser surrounding what had once been perfectly good black lacquer frames. Most of the photos had been shredded to such small bits, she couldn’t make out what they’d once been. The posters on the walls were all for recent shows; all had heavy claw marks in them. Even the costumes in the closet hung in shreds on their hangers.
Only one photo was even mildly intact, and even that had been savagely slashed. It had once been a photo of man and a woman, the stage they stood on barely intact behind the vicious claw rips. The woman…she had been so badly shredded, she couldn’t tell who she was, only that the man had his arm around her. The man…most of him had been clawed, too. She could only make out his almond-shaped eyes and a bit of dark curl. Even what little was there was so familiar. She knew those eyes, that picture. Something stirred in her, the last time she and Jeff appeared onstage together…she knew this photo.
She had just picked up the photo and was about to lift the torn piece underneath the eyes to see more of him when a ferocious roar shook every remaining piece of glass in the room. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Troll slumped in the doorway, his eyes burning red-hot, slime flying as he flung his bony arms out. “Don’t you have any sense of privacy at all?”
Hilary Booth was never intimidated by anyone, least of all a leftover from a bad horror film. “Where did you get this photo?” She waved its remains in his pockmarked face.
“It’s mine.” He circled her, snarling, foam dripping. “It's very special to me.”
She sent that glare right back to him. “How did you get it?”
“I’ve had it.” He grabbed the picture out of her hand. “You didn’t answer me. What are you doing here? The rules of this household explicitly state that no one is allowed in these rooms except for me. That includes you, Miss Booth.”
Her own dark eyes held equal rage. “What are you doing in this house? My lawyer found out from City Hall that my ex-husband owns it. Yet you claim it belongs to you. Either there’s false claims at City Hall, or you’re lying through your canines.”
“I’m not lying!” His roar sent almost every remaining piece of glass nearby on the floor. Even the vase of roses almost toppled. “I don’t know what you heard, but this is MY house. I bought it for…someone. Someone special. Though right now, I’m wondering why I did.”
She got right in his sickly green face that was both too large and thin for his body, like someone flattened every feature possible. “Where’s my Jeffrey? Where is he? He bought this house. He’s missing. Something doesn’t add up here! What did you do with him?”
“I DID NOTHING!” The violent roar shook the entire house from chandelier to tile floors. “You’re the one who’s so caught up in her own damn hurt feelings, she can’t see the truth!”
Her glare was pure ice. “What truth? That this house should have been my husband’s…ex-husband’s…and he’s vanished into thin air? That you’re a lousy housekeeper, by the way? That you’re so busy throwing things around, so obsessed with what’s going on overseas and those papers Eagle’s living with, you can’t see what’s going on in your own backyard?” She slapped him as hard as she could, not caring how much slime ended up on her just-painted fingernails. “You are nothing but a spoiled, selfish, cold-hearted monster!”
He grabbed her wrist hard just as Hilary’s sisters, Bear, and Eagle rushed in. “I could say the same about you, Miss Booth.”
Betty frowned. “What’s going on here? Everyone heard you screaming half-way across the house! They’re all scared to death!”
“Master?” Bear’s deep huff trembled. “Are you good? You angry? What happen?” Eagle threw in his own concerned squawk, waving a wing at the photo in Troll’s claws.
“Yeah.” Maple nodded at his wing. “He says he’s worried. I am, too. We heard ya yellin’ in his rooms. Ya shook the record player so hard, it scratched the one we were workin’ on!”
Troll turned those burning eyes on the shaking bear and concerned eagle. “Eagle, go back to your rooms and see what you can do with those recordings. Bear, stop shaking like a fat leaf and help Mrs. Fox with dinner.”
“But…” Bear’s voice shook as he looked at Betty. Eagle let out a small squawk and put a wing on Maple.
“NOW!” Troll snarled. “That’s an order from your Master!”
Hilary sniffed at him. “Spoken like a true dictator. Come, ladies.” She pushed her sisters out the door before they could protest. “We’ll have dinner in my room tonight. I wouldn’t eat with this…this monster for all the mansions in all the cities in every part of the world!”
She swore as she shoved the girls down the hall, the house shook with the roars of a furious, frustrated troll…mixed with the snuffling sobs of a heartbroken bear and the shrieks of an angry, confused bald eagle.
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