Empty Ripple and Mad Dog bottles booby trapped Motsie's way to the back door. The scattering of feral kitties was followed by pairs of yellow or green eyes staring at Motsie from the corners and under the beds. The stump of a storm candle stood pegged to the center of the floor, and Motsie plucked it up along with a bottle to light her way to the door. Chicken bones and feathers lay scattered everywhere, and the corridor exhaled mildew, rot and something like burnt rubber through the doorway, but Motsie thought nothing of it. She could still hear bits of the conversation outside the window.
"One of the priests was just burning a wasp nest under the eaves, "Vincent was explaining, probably to reassure Lindsey. He went on while Motsie made her bottle torch that "...the time the place really burned was way longer ago, but they still kept orphans here after that, so there prob'ly weren't any of the dangerous kind of ... y'know...ghosts...." Lindsey was saying somethin ignorant but Motsie let their voices trail off as she made her way to the stairwell and doorway.
Motsie thought the whole story about Crybaby Lane was a slanderous myth started by ignorant Baptists like Lindsey. Ghosts were just the spirits of sinners in Purgatory, mainly Baptists, she was sure, and there were never any Baptists in Galilee. Anybody with one eye and half sense, she thought, would have known that since souls in heaven can't be ghosts, and all these orphans had to be Catholics baptized as babies, so there could be no Catholic orphan ghosts 'weeping and wailing in this vale of tears' on Crybaby Lane.
The the door to the back stairwell groaned like a bobcat's snarl and the stairwell reeked like the men’s room at the Esso. Motsie sincerely hoped the huge lozenges on the steps had been deposited by feral cats and not nasty people, even though Motsie calculated that loads of that particular caliber could only have been pumped out by a pretty good-sized barrel.
A spontaneous about-face led Motsie to a fresh idea that would teach that Lindsey a lesson. Curtains still festooned the front office, so Motsie went in and crawled onto the radiator, unfastening the drapery hooks from the rod, giggling to herself that she'd carry them into the belfry to wear as an angel costume to angelically proclaim something profound against Baptists.
The stairway at the front corner didn’t stink, and Motsie made quick time running up the steps in the dark. Upstairs was so tidy, she'd have easily believed no one had been upstairs since the orphanage closed except for the aroma of Old Spice and the deep laugh of some men, probably hobos or winos down the hall. She edged closer to the chuckling and stopped by the belfry door to make herself into an angel of the Lord before climbing up, wondering what those metal springs were squeaking about and what all that grunting was for. Hobos sure were racket makers, she decided, but at least they were a tidy folk, unless they'd been the ones using the back stairs as a litter box instead of the bathroom right next to them.
She swished her new curtain-wings dramatically, mentally rehearsing the angelic proclamations she might make, and the right curtain knocked over the candle and its Ripple holder with a bouncing clang clang clang that ended in a roll across the floor. The hobos hollered like ladies and bolted down to the farther stairway yelling "Lord have Mercy" and "feets don’t fail me now!" She heard their bare feet slapping on the stairs and their prayerful yelps all the way down Crybaby Lane. The next sound Motsie heard was the Jeep cranking up. The screech of peeling rubber was unmistakeable, and all she saw once she reached a window were the tail lights flicking on a hundred yards away, as Martin, Vincent, and Lindsey all ditched her.
“Oh, holy cow…” Motsie cut loose a string of unrepeatable cuss words she liked to refer to as the "Rosary." She sprinted across the dusty tiles to climb up the belfry and see if she could tell where the Jeep was heading but, as soon as she opened the belfry door, something furry brushed across her feet and, in an unplanned double-take, she conked her face on the edge of the door and saw stars. Her nose started bleeding. Her right angel-wing slid down her arm and flailed around before pouncing down the dim passage to that back stairwell that had smelled like the Esso men’s room.
Had she best leave now and walk home or wait for them to come back, Motsie wondered. The belfry was right there, though, incredibly dark except for three slashes of moonlight slanting across the bricks high above. One sliver of rope and edge of bell flattened themselves into the middle slash like tattoos. The brightest lights in sight from the belfry openings were at Channel 3, two lonely blocks beyond sparkly black-oaks full of fireflies, scratchy claws of ancient fiancées left waiting for centuries with their diamonds and rage. Motsie identified with them already as she watched those yellow-streaked traitors park and hop out of the Jeep to romp and frolic in the fountain without her! Right back down the ladder she shinnied, and grabbed the rope, pulled and pulled so hard that the bell’s swinging weight lifted her off the floor by the rope like a rag-doll. Those chicken livers in the fountain had better the hell hear her ringing this damn bell and get their sorry asses back for her!
Up the ladder she scurried again, deafened by the continued clanging and echoes in the masonry tower, and hung the other angel wing curtain with her nose blood drizzled down it out the belfry opening. When she saw the Jeep pulling off Crybaby Lane onto the bare dirt near the window she'd come in, she rushed down the ladder to run meet them. Sounded like babies crying in that cat poop stairwell when she flew into it with her breath held. Halfway down the first flight, in a pool of moonlight through the window, lay the hugest feral cat Motsie had ever seen, a rabid Carolina panther she was sure, just like the Cottondale High mascot, glaring up at her from the next landing.
She rustled the right hem of her maxi skirt up to draw the KA-BAR from its sheath just for safety, and she slipped on a mammoth plop of scat and slid her heel down the edge of the first step, bouncing on her behind down the rest of the flight right to the cat's fist-sized paws, felt it's whiskers tickle her face and smelled his tuna breath. That didn’t slow her down a bit, though, as she bounced right out of its powerful but clawless embrace and slammed the door between herself and the devil-cat, and then limped full speed into the pair of round headlights. Motsie knocked Vincent off Martin’s lap halfway into the hump over the drive shaft with his head on Lindsey’s thigh, and replaced him on top of Martin.
Motsie was like, “Drive, bitch, get us the hell outa here!”
Vincent was like, “Ow Motsie.you made me spill the bong water on my brand new shirt.”
Lindsey was like, “Aw, Vincent, we’ll get some napkins at the 7-Eleven and you can drive from there.”
Martin was like, “We got spooked by a couple o' haints runnin' out, and then something made the bells chime. I was really worried about you!”
Motsie was like, "Well why the hell y'all ignos leave me behind if ya really thought there were any ghosts?"
Vincent was like, "Well we came back anyway, didn't we?"
Martin was like, "Let's all calm down and go get straight in Bolton's Teardrop."
Lindsey was like, "Motsie, your face is all bloody and you smell like crap. Literally."
Motsie was like, "Well, if you'd just wallowed around the floor with the Beast of Bladenboro, I doubt you'd be at your finest either, Miss Priss. And before we go to Bolton's, Martin, y'all gotta take me to wash in that fountain!"
