126. Mrs. Shyboy and the Boa Constrictor

Alpin made his intentions good. He ate the yuletide dinners of all the absentees that had ordered them beforehand. He also went through a lot of presents, keeping those he liked. 

On the feast of Stephen he was checking out Owl Wood Manse. All he found there was bits and slices of stale pizza still in their boxes, which were all over the kitchen floor. There were also the remains of Mr. Lonefellow Shyboy’s last breakfast. But those were even more stale. Mummified might describe them better.   

Wandering through the rest of the house in search of better food, be it only a box of leftover Valentine chocolates, Alpin entered the library. One of its walls was decorated with a five foot boa constrictor, fortunately stuffed by a taxidermist and not by itself.

Mr. Blake was losing his patience. He was thinking it would not be the first time he would strike an obnoxious child. He had once dealt a persistently annoying lad who did not let him do his work a felling blow. Perhaps Alpin could be made to talk…

But it was he who almost got hit on the head by a woman armed with a dusty frying pan. 

“I’m Felina Shyboy,” she explained to Mr. Blake once he had unarmed her. “Are you thieves? Please don’t hurt me.”

Felina was a very young and very pretty and very, very frightened woman. She explained that she had been hiding in a closet in the house since her husband, Tyrone Shyboy, had disappeared. Although she was brave enough to go haunt the forest at midnight, she found the manse a very spooky place and hated being there alone. In fact, she was scared of being in there that she didn’t even dare leave the place to go find Ty.

“Where do you think your husband is?” asked Mr. Blake.

“If they had arrested him for doing graffiti he would have phoned me to go bail him out. He often does graff in the subway. So he must have been crushed by an underground train.” Her large blue-green eyes filled with tears. “I tell myself I haven’t heard about any such thing in the news. That makes me feel better.”

Alpin had lowered the five foot boa constrictor from the wall and was toying with it. 

“Do you know where I can find a live one of these? A little bigger, this one is on the small side. I wonder what it would be like to eat a big one. Especially if it has just swallowed a whole donkey. I don’t usually eat meat, but this has to be a bizarre experience.”

And Mr. Blake lost his patience.

                       

“You ate them, didn’t you? Your family and the rest?”

Alpin stared at Mr. Blake indignantly.

“What do you take me for? An ogre? I’ve only just tasted meat for the first time this month. I don’t think it’s that good. I like sweets and clay better.”

Before Mr. Blake could shake Alpin, the unchagedling said, “The truth is I am a bit tired of restaurant food. I long for some of my mum’s homemade cooking. I just might be ready to make her come back.”  

Mr. Blake encouraged Alpin to do that. Alpin said he would love to, but didn’t know how. Mr. Blake said that Alpin could begin by telling him what had happened to all the missing people.