TEA WITH THE MIDNIGHT MONSTERS

BLAME THE MICE

Caroline did not sleep.

She'd stay awake. She was a doer when misery struck. While others broke down for long spells, Caroline broke down, then sprang up, into action, sure she could solve and fix and save whatever needed saving. All night long, in the tearoom, she spoke at length to Agent Cruz, about Millie's dreams.

"Thursday?" Cruz asked.

"They started Tuesday, but last night, a witch, a dragon, and a bat told her they were the missing children. In the park."

"In her dream?"

"Yes, in her dream," Caroline said. Wait, she thought. Buried? Was that it? Did Millie say they were trapped underground? What had she said? "You need to get dogs," she said off-handedly, thinking it through. "Out in the park. Right now. Sniffing around. If Millie had a vision -- of the abduction -- maybe the children are in the park. Like she said."

"Mrs. Cumberbatch," Cruz said, jotting notes. "The park is 800 acres."

"So?"

"So, we might need more than a dream, to call out the dogs."

Fine, thought, Caroline. Maybe true. At five in the morning, right before dawn, she decided she needed to meet the parents; all of the parents of the kidnapped kids.

"I want to arrange a meeting," she said, as Ella poured tea and handed out muffins to the Squad. "With all the parents in New York City. Have you done that?"

"No," said Cruz. "Why?"

"We need to find out... see if the other children had terrors. What they have in common. Surely they were targeted. Why, though? What connects them? You said yourself you have no leads. You have no clues. Millie knew this was going to happen. Don't you find that strange, Mr. Cruz? There's no time to waste. I want a meeting here. Today. First thing this morning. I have the space. I have the seats."

"A little short notice to -- "

"No, it's not," she interrupted. "And if you won't do it, I'll do it myself. I'll need a list. Phone numbers, emails, names of the parents of all the missing."

"Fine," said Cruz, lifting his teacup. He paused when Caroline scolded him:

"Now, Mr. Cruz. May I have a list now? Won't you email it to me this second?"

Cruz put his teacup down on its saucer. "Yes," he said, and Caroline slid his laptop to him.

In the next hour, as the sun rose, Caroline called all the parents and woke them up, one-by-one -- right out of sleep. She arranged for a meeting at ten that morning. It was Saturday now, the day of the soccer championship and one day before Halloween...

At dawn, she walked home across the park. She'd been in the tearoom all night long. She needed to clean herself up a bit, before she met the other parents. She could smell her own stress and needed a shower, a pill for a headache, a cup of coffee, or two, or nine...

How strange it was to enter the apartment, still full of boxes, dark and quiet. Only the kitchen windows faced south. The sun didn't grace the north facing rooms until well past two in the afternoon.

Caroline locked the front door. She went down the hall and straight to Pim's room, hoping to somehow find him there.

The door was open. She stepped inside and, of course, the room was empty of her boy. His bed was rumpled, and socks and pajamas and cleats and jerseys lay strewn across the floor... but no Pim.

Instinctively, she began to clean up, but then she stopped. Actually, she thought, she would not touch a thing. Not an item. And she'd leave the door open until Pim was home. He would come home. Safe and sound. She knew it in her heart. She knew this in her heart the same way she knew Ben would not come home. Ben, her husband.

But the children would.

They had to.

Then she went to Millie's room. Pim had left Millie's door shut. He'd been there, remember, to fetch her things the previous morning... and Gus had entered to screw the safety bars into the windows...

When Caroline stepped in, she stopped in her tracks, beholding the bars on the windows -- finally! -- and the tea table Millie had set.

What, oh what, had happened there?

Two of the chairs were tipped to the floor, next to a shattered sugar bowl and sugar. The dozens of cookies and cupcakes and bars, forty-eight, Caroline remembered, were all gone. Eaten away. Only crumbs and bits leftover.

Did she -- did Millie throw them away? The night before? Out the window? She couldn't have eaten it all by herself.

And the teapot, too, was tipped on its side next to a tea stain fanning across the white lace cloth. What a mess. Stunning really. She stepped in closer.

All three teacups were quarter-filled and on the table, sprinkled across it... What did she find?

Red... red... rose petals?

She picked up what looked like a rose petal, petrified. Or was it a guitar pick? So shiny and transparent... Nine, maybe a dozen of these... whatever they were... were scattered amid...

Now what were these little brown nuggets? Raisins? Chips? Chocolate covered nuts? She raised one to her mouth, then paused, and thought better. They were squishy and smelled like poop.

Could they be droppings? Mice or rats? Were they poop? Tiny turds? Strewn across the table and the one upright chair?

Mice would explain the disappeared treats and the awful mess. Surely, Millie had left the treats out, and mice or rats -- no, not rats -- they didn't have rats... mice had discovered Millie's feast.

But the building was free of rats and mice, and roaches, too. Free of spiders and ladybugs even.

And then, last, stretched over the teapot, Caroline found -- what was this?

A green curly wire? Odd again. A three-foot long green curly -- hair? Or was it a wire? Goodness, she thought. Carefully she pinched it and held it up.

Maybe the mice had dragged it in, if they had mice. Which she didn't think they did, but maybe they did... They had to, though, Caroline thought. Millie hadn't made this terrible mess. So it had to have been a couple of mice, unless it had been a couple of...

Monsters?

No.

Millie's terror was only a dream. A prescient dream. A prophetic dream, but...

Still a dream.