The Dear in the Park

The Dear in the Park
(Words 2590)

"Are you sure your mother liked me?" Clarabel asked for the fifth time.

Greg spared a second from his concentration on the winding road to smile at her, "Of course she did."  Clarabel expected his usual hand squeeze, but the narrow road, in between canyons of black trees, held his attention.

"But she seemed a little strange all through dinner."

"No, she wasn't.  Just…"

Clarabel noted his hesitancy.  Was it because he was tired from the drive? Or was he ashamed to tell her what his mother really thought?

"Well, I was as nice as I could be.  I complimented all the flower arrangements, and the beautiful paintings in the Great Hall, and that gorgeous chandelier in the Salon.  Was that room called a Salon, or do you just call it a Living Room?  Or do you call it a Receiving Room?"

Clarabel prattled on about every detail of her visit to his family's new home.  Greg's father was a successful painter of woodland scenes and had moved his family to a big house a few miles from town.

"Mother's just a little anxious about Dad.  He's been gone a long time."

"I thought he was on some kind of business trip."

"That's what she told me.  But that was a month ago.  She's says she's sure he'll be back soon."

"You don't think they're considering…er….having problems, do you?"

Clarabel couldn't stop from thinking the "D" word, but at least she didn't blurt it out.  Her best friend, Elly, said Clarabel had diarrhea of the mouth, and always told her to "put a sock in it."  Clarabel didn't understand what socks had to do with bathroom functions, but that was Elly for you.

Thin streamers of mist snaked their way out from the trees and into the road.  Mist was usual in the winter, but this was a sticky July night.

Greg didn't reply, so Clarabel obligingly continued the one-sided conversation.

"My mom said the same thing – "Dad's on a business trip" - when he left us.  Oh, sorry."  Clarabel wished she could pull the words back into her mouth.  "Not that your Dad left her or anything…."

Greg reduced his speed as they descended into the valley.  The mist thickened into a blanket which swaddled the trees.

Clarabel thought it best to change the subject.  "When Dad left he didn't come back for almost three months.  And he didn't even send me a card for my birthday.  Mom said that he was trying out a new way of life.  But I think  -"

"WATCH OUT!" she shrieked, as a deer with a pretentious rack of antlers leapt from the bordering trees and plunged into the road.

Greg stomped on the brakes and his hand went out reflexively, holding Clarabel back in her seat.  The car skidded to a stop.  The deer dove through blinds of mist and galloped across toward the beckoning black woods.  Clarabel's scream went on long after the car had stopped moving.  The tone scaled opera diva heights.

"Clara!" 

The scream stopped. 

The fog floated into the road and caressed the car.

Clara's fear melted as Greg squeezed her hand.  Then he eased up on the brake and slid out from the fog's embrace.  The grey fog swallowed the trees and chewed on the scenery.  Clara knew she was being silly, but something about that stately stag reminded her of Greg's father.  Greg's father wasn't the first man to disappear from the area.  Sometimes, as with her own father, the delinquent men returned with a new, more amenable attitude.  Hmmm…. 

Too much thinking caused Clara's brain to hurt and her vision to blur.  Greg always advised her not to do things that were bad for her, like thinking.

The car was silent as it slowly weaved out of the forest.  Clara stared ahead and willed them to reach the statue.

As the car left the woods, the fog parted in front of them like the curtains of a Broadway show, and the great bronze statue of Diana the Huntress Subduing the Stag was revealed at the entrance to the village.  The statue depicted Goddess Diana, Apollo's sister, who had turned a man into a deer for peeping at her while she was bathing. 

Clara and Greg exhaled in unison, then turned mirthful eyes on each other. Clara giggled.  They had reached the idyllic little hamlet of Dianaville.  The tiny lighted windows of distant cottages made the valley sparkle and glitter with fairy lights.  It was home and it was perfect.

Clara's breath snagged in her throat as Greg turned left from the blacktop onto a dirt track.

"Greg!  What are you doing?  Where are you going?  Why could you possibly want to go - there?" 

"Oh, come on, Clara.  You don't believe those silly stories, do you?"

"Yes I do!  I absolutely do!  Please," she begged, "don't go over to that – that - place!"

But it was too late.  Greg pulled the car up in front of a tall, rickety old house, so unlike all the neat, pretty cottages that adorned all the other streets in the village.  He climbed out and took a package from the back seat.

"Greg!  Greg!" she called as he walked away.  There was no way she was going up to that horrible house.  Clara wondered what she would do if Greg went in and never came out?

Clara caught up to him as he rang the bell.  She hissed, "Don't ring the bell – someone might answer it!"  And sure enough, true to her prediction, the door creaked open to reveal a plump, middle-aged lady. 

The lady beamed and beckoned as she said, "How lovely!  Please come in and say hello."  Clara stuck her hand in Greg's and hid behind him as they walked into the house.  "Fythia!  Daria!  You can't imagine who it is!"  The woman ushered Greg into the living room; Clara wilted, moving her lips slightly as she recited childhood prayers to herself. 

"Why, Myrtle!  Can my eyes be deceiving me?  It's Greg Rein and little Clarabel Welsh." 

The lady returned to her place on the couch next to her two sisters.  She replied to Fythia, "Yes it is.  How could we be so lucky to have all these visitors in one night?"

Clara couldn't stop herself from glancing around the 'den of evil.'  Hmmm… she thought.  Actually, it looks rather plain.  But as her eyes finished circling the room, they landed on an impossible sight.

"Elly!"  Her best friend was sitting in a deep armchair, with a plate of cookies on her lap. 

Elly replied through a half-chewed cookie, "Hey, Clara!" like it was the most normal thing in the world to be in the Witches' House.

The three sisters giggled from the sofa.

Greg leaned forward and placed his package on the coffee table, next to a TV Guide.  Clara thought the TV Guide was obviously a decoy, and probably hid reams of satanic rituals behind its innocent cover.

"My mother asked me to bring you this.  And she told me to ask you to "Hurry, please," and that she's sure he's sorry."  Greg shrugged a little shrug that said don't-ask-me-I'm-just-the-messenger.

The three sisters stopped giggling.

"It seems we have quite a bit to do tonight."

"Yes, quite a bit."

"Best to start right away, don't you think?"

"Yes, indeed, right away."

They stood up with alacrity, and left the room.

Clara hopped to her best friend's side.  "Elly, what are you doing here?"

"I'm sorta having a female problem," Elly said as she put down the cookies, and looked at Greg with suspicion.  He walked over to the other side of the room to study a collection of tea cozies.

"What sort of a female problem?"

"I don't know exactly.  I feel all weird.  Sometimes I want to howl at the moon.  And today I almost ate Mrs. Applebee's cat!"

Clara tried her mother's tried-and-true: "That's just teenage hormones.  It'll pass." 

"I don't think so.  Get a load of this!"  Elly jumped up, hid behind the wing-back chair and pulled her pants down.  Greg myopically scrutinized the tea cozies.  Clara peered at a surprising appendage.

Elly had a tail!  It was sort of cute, once you got over the tail-on-a-human part.  It was about a foot and a half long, all bushy like a dog's tail.  Clara stared in wonder and observed, "Ooohhh!  I guess that shouldn't be there."

"Too right.  I'm hoping the ladies can take care of it for me.  And the other thing."  Elly leaned forward and pulled her upper lip off her teeth to reveal rather large fangs.

Clara was in a quandary to decide what words of wisdom she should impart.  Clearly, the teenage hormone thing wasn't going to work.  This might be serious.

Just then, the three sisters came bustling back into the room.

"We're ready for you now."

"Better hurry, the moon's almost up."

"Yes, yes.  Come along all of you," one sister clucked as she escorted all of them out the kitchen door and into the back yard.

Inside an area lighted by flaming torches, a large circle of cracked geodes formed a ring.

"Now, Elly, take off your jacket and stand in the center."  The first sister pointed to the ring.  She muttered to her sister, "No sense ruining a nice jacket."

Elly did as she was told, and Greg and Clara moved out of the way, next to the wood pile.  Two sisters took their places on the outside of the ring, the third sister stepped up to Greg and said, "Don't worry, dear.  We'll take care of your mother's request soon enough.  Your father will be home lickety-split!  But this problem is a bit more urgent."  Then she, too, took her place around the ring.

The ladies began their invocation, weaving wild words and wicked warbles into the air.  They sang, they danced – it was a regular floor show from where Clara was standing. 

Suddenly, it grew dark! 

Well, not really, Clara admitted to herself, as it was already night.  But maybe it grew a teensy bit more dark.

With all the gyrating and carrying on, Clara almost missed the transformation of Elly.  Her best friend was growing ears!  And fur!  As Elly collapsed onto all fours, Clara almost collapsed in a faint, except this was much too exciting to miss!

The sisters' maniacal machinations culminated in shrieks of fear, as Elly, the wolf, threw back her head and howled, then bared her great big teeth!  The sisters scurried together for a quick counsel.  Clara couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could tell by the anxious gesticulations that this was an unexpected development. 

Elly the Wolf suddenly sprang out of the circle. The sisters squeaked and ran one on top of the other in a mad dash for the house.  The kitchen door banged shut and the lock clicked shut with finality. 

Then they were alone.  Clara, Greg, and the dangerous, slavering werewolf.  Clara looked at Greg.  Greg looked at Clara.  The wolf looked for steak sauce.

As its paws flew over the ground in a beeline for the shocked couple, Greg turned to the wood pile and picked up a shiny new axe.  Clara didn't know what to do.  How could she let her Greg kill her best friend, even if she was a wild wolf?  The axe gleamed over Greg's head as the wolf leapt into the air!

"STOP!"  A clarion voice rang out.  Everything in Dianaville froze.  Literally.  The wolf froze mid-leap, the axe froze mid-slice, and Clara's mouth hung open mid-scream as if she was catching bugs in it.  It was as if someone had pushed a giant "pause" button.

From the edge of the forest strode Park Ranger Diana Hunt.  Clara recognized her immediately, of course.  She was Elly's aunt and had taken Elly in when she was an orphan. 

Clara was quite puzzled as to why she couldn't move.  She couldn't even greet Elly's aunt.  What bad manners!  She hoped Aunt Diana would forgive her; and that not too many bugs were investigating her tonsils.

Park Ranger Diana Hunt walked slowly up to the stationary wolf.  Clara could see tears on her cheeks.  Clara felt sorry for her.  It must be hard to see your niece all furry and slobbery like that.

"My poor, poor darling.  It was all too much for you.  I shouldn't have tried to change you.  But you were so little, so cute, just a cub, and all alone.  I wanted you to join my perfect little town.  I thought that you'd be happy.  I loved you so much.

"Now I see I was wrong.  I was selfish to create you just because I was lonely."

The Park Ranger hung her head in sadness.  Clara would've hung hers in sympathy if she could have moved.

"It's time to set you all free."  Her voice rose.

"BE WHAT YOU TRULY ARE!"

In the blink of an eye, Park Ranger Hunt disappeared, Elly the Wolf loped off to the nearby forest, and Clara found she actually could blink an eye.  And move around again.  She turned to Greg in time to see him dash off toward Main Street.  She leapt after him, hopping to keep up.

The first cottage on Main Street belonged to Dr. Barns and his wife.  Clara saw two old owls fly out the kitchen window.  Peculiar, she thought.  She didn't know the Barns' kept owls.  As she followed in Greg's wake, she saw all manner of oddities.

A beaver shuffled out of Mr. Lodge's carpentry workshop.  An entire family of downy white ducks quacked and carried on as they waddled out the pet door of the Gosling residence.  The family's pet cat scampered out of the way, then licked a paw and feigned disinterest.

In the center of town, a large disgruntled bear burst out through the screen door of the General Store.  His muzzle was covered in powdered donut sugar and he held a box of Oreos in his teeth.  Clara knew how much the owner of the store, grumpy old Mr. Brown, loved cookies.  He was going to be mad when he found out a nasty old bear had taken them.

The streets of the town were filled with furry and feathered woodland creatures.  Clara wriggled her nose in mirth and thought how very Disney everything had become.  The only thing about the scene which was not charming, occurred when Greg and Clara got to Tiny's Drug store.  Clara knew that the pharmacist, the town's lawyer and their wives played bridge under the front awning every night.  But who could have imagined that two evil looking snakes would get up on that very porch and summarily eat two cowering field mice.  It was quite upsetting and Clara scampered back to the safety of Deer Park.

As dawn blushed the sky, Clara noticed three magpies fly out the chimney of the Witches' House.  She curled up in the lee of the great protecting statue of Diana the Huntress, and fell asleep.


* * *

Several weeks later, a small brown rabbit nibbled on some dandelions at the base of Diana's statue.  The statue had become overgrown because there was no one to take care of it, cut back the weeds, or shine the bronze.

All across the grasses grazed fat, happy deer.  One deer nosed his way over to the rabbit and dropped some weeds in her path.

Oh, thought Clara, that Greg!  He's such a dear!"