Midnyte Madness (Part Two Chapter 10)

The mother of all fears courtesy of Midnyte; is Apple’s life on the chopping block?

Previously Larissa, who was a few steps behind her daughter, also turned and looked in the direction of what Apple was staring at. Then Larissa understood. Mother and daughter saw the only possible way the cat could have managed to get inside the room.

“WHY do you need a carpenter for?”

As usual, Doreen spoke with that grating sardonic tone. She was speaking to Apple who was outside the store counter. The old woman was inside the shop, seated on a monobloc chair that faced the counter while a manicurist cleaned her toenails.

The manicurist was seated on a footstool, her back facing the store counter. Apple could not see the manicurist’s face.

“It’s nothing major,” Apple said in reply to Doreen. “We just wanted a broken window in the bathroom to be fixed, even temporarily, with a panel of plywood maybe or whatever the carpenter thinks will do for the time being.”

“It does sound to me as a major repair.”

Apple ignored the sarcasm in Doreen’s tone. She could not understand how or why the neighbor was persistent in being unpleasant.

“We also want the decorative hollow blocks covered, those are on top of the wall separating the downstairs room from the living and dining rooms.”

“Downstairs room?” Doreen asked with a snide. “You mean, your Aunt Ermina’s clinic?”

Apple refused to acknowledge Doreen’s calling the room as clinic in a sarcastic tone. Instead, she repeated her request for a recommendation to any carpenter in the neighborhood.

“Any carpenter nearby that I could call on for assistance?”

Doreen shook her head. “No carpenter lives nearby. There was one previously. He used to be the gravedigger, too. Your aunt knew him. In fact, he worked for her, but he moved to the province long ago.”

The manicurist corrected Doreen. “The gravedigger was not a proper carpenter. He was just a handyman that Ermina hired in fixing stuff in her house.”

“Well,” said Doreen to Apple, “I guess you don’t really need a qualified carpenter for the job you have in mind. A handyman will do. Perhaps my nephew can even do that.”

Apple didn’t react. She could not imagine Jack being able to do the repairs which she and her mother wanted done.

Doreen added, “Just don’t expect good workmanship. You must know he’s only good at playing computer games, the nerd!” The last sentence dripped with thick contempt.

Apple thought along the same line, about Jack being more of a nerd than a handyman. But she thought it wasn’t a shortcoming or a character flaw.

Doreen spoke again, her eyes boring Apple with an inquisitor’s eye.

“Why do you want those decorative hollow blocks covered? Can’t see why you’d be bothered by those.”

“The diamond-shaped holes in the blocks enable a cat to get in and out of the room, and then through the broken window in the toilet.”

The manicurist stopped what she was doing and turned her head to look at Apple.

“What cat?” the manicurist asked, curiosity and alarm in her eyes. “A black cat?”

Apple recognized the sudden unease that crept in the manicurist’s expression. She nodded.

Doreen commented, her sparse brows arched, “I didn’t know that, that beast is still alive. It must have more than nine lives!”

“That’s Ermina’s cat, Midnyte,” the manicurist said.

“You know the cat?” Apple was disconcerted. She focused on the manicurist for the first time. “I mean, you’ve seen the black cat then?” She looked at both women, one after the other, as the question was directed to them both.

Doreen, with a malevolent grin, pointed at the manicurist and said to Apple, “Marla here sure knows all about that cat.”

Apple was shaken. Was this the Marla that her Aunt Ermina wrote about in The Diary?

The manicurist turned to look at Doreen. Apple did not see the kind of look the manicurist threw at Wrinkly Face’s way, but the latter laughed in her usual vexing manner.

“Stop giving me your shush look, Marla,” Doreen said to her manicurist. “She,” meaning Apple, “is bound to know all there is to know about her aunt sooner or later.”

Doreen turned to Apple. “You see, Marla used to be your aunt’s assistant until she realized it was more profitable to be Ermina’s agent in her business — OUCH!”

“That wasn’t my cuticle you nipped, Marla. That’s my skin! Look, it’s bleeding!”

If her fear and worry weren’t serious enough, Apple would have chuckled. She was sure it was no accident, the manicurist nipping the skin instead of just the cuticle. She was also sure that Wrinkly Face’s big toe would be plumper and weeping of pus by tomorrow.

Jack was summoned by his aunt from his bedroom-computer room. Apple then arranged with Jack to come round the house later to try to fix what needed fixing. She also asked the manicurist to do her nails after she, Marla, had finished servicing Jack’s aunt.

The latter taunted Apple about her having a manicure and pedicure. “Did you use to have your nails done when you were in the boonies? Or you’re just feeling rich now?”

Jack, who was about to return upstairs, stopped in his tracks. He was dismayed when he heard what his aunt just said to Apple.

But Apple ignored the taunt, and said, “I’m going for a walk-in interview this weekend at McDonald’s in Monumento. It might help me get hired as food server if I have clean, polished nails.”

Doreen just grunted, obviously refusing to believe.

“And, yes, I used to have my nails done — for free, actually. A cousin did my nails before, she’s also a university student like me. She did part-time job as manicurist. We boarded together in a dormitory in Malaybalay. It is a city, by the way, not quite the boonies as you said.”

Apple saw the glint of impish glee in Jack’s eyes. He was obviously pleased that Apple would not let his aunt make a doormat of her.

She caught him winking at her, but she did not have time to wink back. She turned back to return to their house, her mind swirling with so many questions to ask the manicurist.

The latter had mentioned that she was aware when the black cat was first brought into Ermina’s house. She also insinuated that she knew all about Ermina’s woe and tribulation caused by the cat.

Apple thought that for the price of home-service manicure and pedicure, she would be able to pick Marla’s brain.

There were several passages in the old diary, especially the latter half, which conveyed that the mother of all fears had been put into her Aunt Ermina’s black heart by Midnyte.

There were also a few pages missing, obviously deliberately torn. Apple thought that those missing entries could explain Ermina’s fear and revulsion of the black cat.

Through Marla, Apple wanted to make sure that she was correct in what she was thinking.

It might save someone’s life — whose, Apple did not really know.

But, it could be hers…

(to be continued)

Thank you very much for reading!

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