Repose

Did somebody plant catnip all around the lake or something?

[A local boy and girl, 6 and 7, are playing in the woods Tuesday evening when the boy literally stumbles over the skeleton.

It's small, and withered, and picked clean. But the bones aren't old, still bright calcium white. The woods hide a great many things. It could have been laying there for years, if not for the new whiteness of it.

Dental records prove it - the skeleton belongs to a man named James Corgan, 26 years old. He was just passing through the area last week, and a few people saw him looking for work at the local shops. He was polite enough. There are no signs of trauma to the skeleton, and samples yield no trace of poison, not that there's much left to test.

Aside from the lack of flesh, there are a few other peculiarities. The shiny skeleton is covered in a fine layer of dust, which, after analysis, turns out to be fine-grained sand that doesn't match the local geological makeup in the least, more akin to the soil of an African desert. Further inspection also yields a number of dead cats, all within twenty feet of the corpse. No doubt they wandered up from the lake, but their toxicology is clean. It's as if they just laid down and died.]

I haven't heard anyone at the facility gossiping about bringing you back, and the guys still look sour. I'm taking that to mean you're still out there.

[Cat C.]

Did you get the job?

[Cris M.]

I think Melody wants to stay with me until she figures out what to do. How would you like to move her?

[Public]

It's actually sort of nice when cats are the town's biggest problem.

So what's this I hear about you refusing to let anybody scrub the B&B of problematic ghosties?