Curse of the Six-Fingered Hand

For part 1, read https://veilwinter.com/f/shadows-in-the-darkroom 

After seeing the mysterious six-fingered hand in the bus station depot locker, Amber disappeared for a few days. To get his mind off of things, Danny had been turning in photo after photo of various suspects in the huge cheating ring that Amber - and the administration - had been looking for for two years.

Catching the cheating ring had been something of a mission for them ever since their first year in Varunkirk University. Like all investigations it took time: time they had to juggle with living the college student life. Danny had made a few breakthroughs and had crawled out of his darkroom for something special:

A date.

He may have had the case of a lifetime on his hands, he may have had an exam coming up, he may have even seen evidence for a cold case in a bus terminal locker... But even with all of that, he was determined to go on an ordinary date like any ordinary college student.   

Well perhaps it wasn’t that ordinary a date.

He met Malina outside the science building right when she said she would be there: five o’clock on the dot. She was in a sequined evening gown - violet of course. Danny had had to borrow his dad’s old tuxedo. 

Luckily he fit.

“Malina!” Danny gasped. “Wow!”

The bestial fox did a spin. Not only did her sequins sparkle, reflecting the darkening sky, but her tail followed afterwards like a comet. “What do you think, Danny?”

Danny marveled, overwhelmed. Malina giggled. The plan was to head to what was, kind of, a speakeasy on campus. Malina grabbed his hand and together they went back in through the science building, down into the basement. The basement of the science building was rumored to be a little secretive. The code to get in was a little more secretive than the Fibonnaci sequence as Malina straightened the glasses on her snoot and put in a very long sequence of numbers into a nondescript door on the first floor.

From below came the sounds of laughter and conversation. The basement was long and full of mysterious doors. Eventually Danny could see one final one at the very end, open, and with a human male at the entrance.

“Chad?!” Danny said. What was the linebacker doing down here?

“Malina,” Chad said, nodding.

“He’s with me,” Malina said.

“Hmmm...” Chad said, eyeing Danny up and down. “You sure you want a snoop like him down here?”

Malina stopped. “Of course, Chad,” she said. “We have nothing to hide down here... but if you see him bring out a camera kindly...” she didn’t need to say: Chad simply nodded and opened the door into the dark.

They had entered just in time. There was a stage and a very soft blue light fell over everything as a female human entered the stage in a dress that Danny felt was reminiscent of Malina’s. They both took their seats and he saw Malina’s tail making the familiar sine wave pattern.

“Mercy meee,” she began to croon as the piano, played by another human, slowly tinkled in tune. “Even in the dark, I can seeee...”

Danny sat and ordered a mojito from a young lady that strolled quietly past their table. Malina ordered a glass of burgundy.

“Shadows in the daaaark; Shadows in my dark, dark rooooommmm...”

Her voice was deep and luxurious, and it was almost like she looked directly at Danny as she said it. He knew who she was: the leader of women’s choir. The science folks sure had a lot of sway for a bunch of nerds and geeks. 

For a second in the dim lighting it seemed the singer’s eyes glinted in the dark much like a cats.  Slowly, the singer’s last line dripped out.

“Shadows in the daaaaarrrrkkkkk...”

The claps were loud but respectful. Danny was clapping too but a few things were bothering him. The mojito and his beautiful company, however, had dulled his senses, and the pieces of evidence sank into a nice, velvet darkness.

“How did you like that?” Malina asked.

“Very interesting,” Danny said, a stupid smile on his face.

They had a conversation for a bit until another performer entered the stage, and then another. In the early hours of the morning, he heard “LAST CALL” from somewhere in the dark.

“I had a lovely time, Danny,” Malina said, nuzzling his cheek and giving his ear a gentle lick.

“Me too, Malina,” Danny said, smiling broadly. “I-I hope we can do this again! Maybe something more laid back, like minigolf?”

Malina giggled. “I’d love to,” the fox bestial said.

The pair made their way out of the speakeasy, into the long, mysterious hallway. At the exit of the basement, Malina led him out into the rest of the science building and bid him adieu.

“You can find your way back, can’t you?” She asked.

“Sure, Malina, sure,” Danny said, a little crestfallen that his beautiful friend didn’t accompany him for a little longer. He walked into the dark night, where he swore he could see things leaping in the shadows. Long slender bodies with long tails. How much had he had to drink?

The lyrics from the first song were buzzing in his head, and he found himself singing them.

“Shadows in the daaaark,” he murmured. “Shadows in my dark rooooom... Hey!” He said to himself. “I bet my pictures are developed.”

It was a long way back to his dark room, but he had time. He zig-zagged across the quad and around various dorms to the auditorium. His dark room was located near the stage entrance, where the actors dressed. He fumbled for his keys, but found the staff entrance door unlocked.

“How convenient,” he slurred as he walked up the steps to the backstage. There, at the end of the long hallway - not as long as the secret depths of the Science building, but still - was a light spilling out from a room.

“That’s... weird.”

Step. Step. Step. His heavy shoes echoed down the hall as the truth - like the bright light spilling from the room - dawned on him. He walked quickly now and stopped at the room that once was his dark room.

“HOLY SHIT!” He screamed. “HOLY... HOLY SHIT!” He screamed again. Stage lights were set up and turned on, pointed right at his photos. Bending down and ripping out the cords of the lights he picked up a few of his negatives to see that, once removed from the solution, they cracked to black. Weeks of research into the cheating ring... ruined.

Danny slammed into the wall and slowly slid down it, crinkling his dad’s tuxedo as he did so. Danny sighed forlornly, “I guess I should invest in one of those new...” he sneered. “Digital cameras.” 

In a mix of anger and sadness - mixed with a drunken stupor - Danny raged. “I’ll find out who did this!” He yelled into the auditorium. “You’ll be featured on Dateline and Unsolved Mysteries, I swear to God! You can’t stop the power of press gangs! I mean, the press!” 

Amber was not going to be pleased about this. Well, he still had his notes... it would just take longer than expected.

The next morning, there was a thunderstorm in Danny’s mind. He groggily opened his eyes. He had slept wrong on the linoleum floor of his darkroom in a tuxedo, so the thunderstorm was accompanied by an earthquake as he got up.

“Oooohhhh...” he said as he wobbled to his feet. Luckily, class was in the afternoon. 

Wait. That was now.

He picked up as much as he could and headed to the English building, which housed the journalism department and Dr. Sylvester Arleburn, the paper’s sponsor. Danny was always thought of as eccentric, but when he stumbled into class in a dirty tuxedo and red eyes, there was more than a little commotion.

“Good God Danny,” Dr. Arleburn said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes professor,” he mumbled, holding the styrofoam coffe cup.

“Right, well, uh, take a seat: We’re doing the layout for this week’s edition.”

“Amber’s back?” Danny asked.

“Not yet,” Dr. Arleburn said. “And we’ll get to that. In the meantime, what about those pictures you said you had?”

Danny leaned back very far in his chair and let out a groan. One of the other writers, Crystal, walked up to him, her hand held out.

“I don’t have them,” he gurgled. “Darkroom. Destroyed. No pictures.”

Crystal stamped her feet. “What? Without your pictures my story won’t be credible!”

Creak. SLAM. Amber, the bestial meerkat, walked in carrying an overstuffed briefcase in her right paw. “It’ll be fine, Crystal. Just run it as is.”

“But-!”

“Amber!” Danny said, suddenly coming back to life.

“You two,” Dr. Arleburn said, beckoning them to his office. “Let’s chat.”

In Dr. Arleburn’s office Amber opened her briefcase. FLOOMP! Dozens of articles and pictures. Amber nearly dived in as Dr. Arleburn began to protest until she dug out an ancient, browning photograph. She handed it to Danny.

The picture was of a young lady and an older man in Victorian-era dress at the base of a staircase. The young lady had six fingers on her right hand.

“You did it, meerkat!” Danny said.

“What? What?” Dr. Arleburn said. “Are you finally going to tell me where you’ve been? What the mystery’s about?”

“How much time before the edition’s out, Dr. Arleburn?” Amber asked, dodging his question.

“You’ve got a day,” he responded. “Three o’clock tomorrow.”

Amber grabbed Danny’s hand. Suddenly his hangover was gone. “C’mon!”

On the way to Amber’s room, she explained everything. Apparently, she had spent the last two weeks in the Varunkirk library. She went over a few too many details before Danny asked her to slow down.

“They kept her hand, Danny!” Amber said, fumbling in a trunk in her room for something.

“What?” Danny asked. “What about the cheating ring?” 

“Small fry compared to this.” Amber replied as she rummaged through her trunk tossing out a few odds and ends, bags of gummy worms, an Avril Lavigne CD, a sparkly tube dress, and a picture of a younger smaller Amber perched on a male meerkat’s shoulders at the ‘1998 Reach City Airshow’. Finally she pulled out what she sought: a digital camera. She flung it to him. He almost dropped it.

“Uh - thanks. Who is this six-fingered lady anyway?”

“Lady Theodora Varunkirk, the wife of the seventh mayor of Varunkirk. Yeah, the last mayor of the town with the last name Varunkirk. Of the few photos of her, that - ” she pointed at the picture that Danny was still carrying “ - is the only one where she shows her hand. I had to call in a few favors, including one at the Varunkirk museum. I think she was murdered.”

“Murder?!” Danny gasped.

“Yeah, a hundred year old murder, though. This isn’t just a cold case, it’s an ice solid cold case.”

“All right, where’s the next stop?”

“Take a guess, detective.”

“I’d guess the Varunkirk Estate Museum.”

“Right. I figured you’d need that camera if your darkroom’s been compromised, and destroyed. From now on, you keep everything here.”

Danny nodded as Amber grabbed her purse and notebook. “Time to get to work. Don’t worry, we can still look into the cheating ring. But this is big. You ready for an adventure?” 

The meerkat flashed a fangy smile as her ears swiveled back.