Chapter 32: The Call to Shady Oaks
The silence after the call was different. Not the empty quiet of sickness, but a thick, buzzing stillness full of unspoken words. Travis lowered the phone to the couch cushion. The ghost of Caroline’s trembling voice seemed to hang in the sunlit air.
Mavis unwrapped his tail from Travis’s ear and slid down to sit on his collarbone, looking up at his face. “Well?”
“She’s scared,” Travis said, his own voice flat. “Her mom is really scared. Simon went to their old house a few times, years back. Always just… showing up. Asking weird questions about property lines, foundation work. Miriam told him to get lost. Said his eyes made her think of a fish on ice.”
“Charming.”
“Caroline says she’s been at Shady Oaks for eight months. Early-stage dementia. Some days are clear, some aren’t. But the notice about the variance hearing in the paper… she saw it. It set her off. Kept saying ‘that cold man’ is coming back, that he’d want more than just the land.” Travis rubbed his eyes. “She asked for me specifically. By address. ‘The young man at 124 Maple.’ She remembers me as the kid who wheeled her garbage bins back up the drive one time after a storm.”
A slow, soft blink from Mavis. “So you made an impression.”
“I guess.” Travis let his head thump back against the couch. The broth sat warm and solid in his stomach, a small victory that now felt minor. “I told Caroline I’d come the day after tomorrow. Gives me… gives us a day to…”
“To not look like a strong breeze would knock you over?” Mavis supplied. He patted Travis’s sternum. “A sensible timeline. You can use it. You will use it.”
The next morning arrived with the smell of rain. Travis woke to the familiar, faint scritching sound of Mavis moving in the wall, followed by the soft rustle of the tiny curtain being pushed aside. A moment later, a small weight settled on the pillow beside his head.
“The breakfast system awaits your participation,” Mavis announced. His fur was slightly damp, smelling of the rainy air from the vent he’d visited. “I’ve pre-selected a less offensive cracker. The ‘multi-seed’ variety. It has grains you can see. Very trustworthy.”
Travis groaned and rolled onto his back. The hollow ache was there, but the sharp, knifing cramps were gone. His body felt weary down to the bone, but not actively hostile. Progress.
The routine was the same, yet different. It had purpose now, a training regimen for a looming confrontation. He sat at the kitchen table. The mug of broth steamed. The multi-seed cracker sat proudly on its plate. Mavis took his post on the mug’s rim, a tiny drill sergeant.
This time, Travis’s hands didn’t tremble.
He drank. Sip by sip. He ate the cracker, segment by segment. Mavis celebrated each milestone with a nuzzle, a pat, a tail-squeeze around his wrist. The comfort was no less potent for being expected. It was the rhythm, the reliable response, that rewired the panic. Food led to safety. Sustenance meant connection.
He kept it all down. A full mug. A whole cracker. It sat inside him like a pledge.
“Right,” Travis said, pushing back from the table. “Work.”
“Work?” Mavis scampered up to his shoulder as Travis stood. “Your brain is made of broth and glue. What work?”
“The kind that pays the mortgage Simon wants to undermine.” Travis walked to his office, a converted sunroom at the side of the house. It was, like the rest of his life, chaotically organized. A massive monitor sat on a standing desk littered with styluses, tablet screens, and crumpled sticky notes. Half-finished logos and website mockups glowed in the dim, rain-gray light. “I’ve been ghosting clients for a week. I need to send some ‘family emergency’ emails, buy some goodwill. And I need to look at the file for the brewery again.”
He woke the computer. The screen blazed to life, illuminating the dust on his keyboard. Mavis took up a position on the monitor’s top bezel, legs dangling, watching the screen like a miniature moviegoer.
Travis’s inbox was a monument to neglect. Seventy-four unread messages. He skimmed the senders, a cold knot forming in his newly-full stomach. Not from anxiety. From anger. These were his clients. His independence. The life he’d built in this house, the life that allowed Mavis to live safely in its walls. All of it was now being circled by a man in a cheap suit who thought he could just take it.
He began to type. His replies were short, apologetic, professional. He invoked a vague ‘personal health issue,’ promised revised timelines, offered small discounts for the inconvenience. It was transactional damage control. With each sent email, he felt a sliver of control return. This was his territory. He knew how to navigate this.
Then he opened the file for ‘Hop Forge Brewing.’ Simon Vale’s project. The variance request was a dry PDF of legalese, but Travis the designer looked past it to the proposed site plans, the architectural renders. It was a bland, boxy structure of glass and corrugated steel, meant to look ‘industrial-chic.’ It would utterly dominate the lots behind him, looming over his backyard where the old oak tree stood.
“It’s ugly,” Mavis observed from his perch.
“It’s profitable,” Travis muttered. He zoomed in on the landscaping plan. The proposed ‘beer garden’ would require the removal of a natural berm that, according to the old plat maps Travis had dug up, might technically be on the very edge of his own deeded property line. It was the kind of muddy, unmarked grey area developers loved to exploit. If the variance went through, the boundary would be decided by a surveyor Vale hired. Travis would have to spend thousands to fight it.
A headache began to pulse behind his eyes. This was the chessboard. He was playing a game where the rules were written by people like Simon, and his best move so far had been to get sick and hide in his house.
He needed better pieces.
He minimized the brewery file and opened a new document. At the top, he typed: Shady Oaks - Questions for Miriam.
“Making a list?” Mavis asked.
“I don’t trust my brain not to fog up,” Travis said. He typed bullet points.
- Simon’s visits. What did he ask, exactly?
- Did he ever take pictures? Measurements?
- Did he threaten you?
- What do you mean ‘he’d want more than the land’?
- Who was your lawyer for the original sale?
The list looked pitiful. The answers, if Miriam could even give them, would be fragments. Stories filtered through fear and failing memory.
He stared at the screen. The rain tapped a steady, lonely rhythm against the window. Mavis dropped from the monitor, using Travis’s sleeve as a slide, and landed softly on the desk. He walked over and put a tiny hand on Travis’s moving mouse hand.
“You’re thinking in straight lines,” Mavis said. “Lawyers. Surveys. Dates. That’s his game. You’ll lose.”
“So what’s my game?”
Mavis’s whiskers twitched. “The story. You said it yourself. The man gives people a ‘feeling.’ A cold fish feeling. Miriam has that feeling. You have that feeling. That’s not a legal argument. It’s a human one.” He tapped a claw on the desk. “At the hearing, you can’t just say ‘the setbacks are inappropriate.’ You have to make the board see him. Really see him. You need to make them feel the creep of it. The way he just… shows up.”
Travis looked from Mavis’s earnest face to the bleak, dry language of the variance application on his screen. The mouse in his hand felt suddenly, overwhelmingly cold. He understood. The facts were a shield. But the story, the visceral, unsettling pattern of the man’s behavior, that could be a weapon.
“I need to record it,” Travis said, the idea forming as he spoke. “When I talk to Miriam. If she says something concrete, something that paints the picture. With her daughter there. It’s not just my word then.”
Mavis nodded, a sharp, decisive motion. “Yes. That’s it. You gather the feeling. You bottle it.”
The headache didn’t fade, but it changed. It was no longer the pressure of helplessness. It was the focus of a difficult task. He saved his list. He opened his music app and put on a low, instrumental playlist to drown out the rain and the circling thoughts. Then he opened a client’s logo project that was three days overdue and got to work.
For two hours, he lost himself in curves and vectors and color palettes. The world shrank to the glow of the screen and the occasional, soft commentary from Mavis. His body, fueled by broth and cracker, held steady. His hands moved with their old, certain rhythm.
It was a fragile peace, but it was peace. He was working. He was planning. He was, for now, upright.
Later, as dusk bled into the room, Travis saved his work and shut down the computer. The rain had softened to a drizzle. He stood, his joints stiff, and stretched. Mavis was already on his shoulder, tail loosely coiled around his neck like a living scarf.
“You did good today,” Mavis said, his voice quiet by Travis’s ear.
“I ate a cracker and answered some emails,” Travis replied, but there was no bitterness in it.
“You built a wall,” Mavis corrected. “One cracker-brick at a time.”
Travis walked to the living room window and looked out at his damp, darkening backyard. The old oak was a massive, black silhouette against the twilight. Somewhere beyond the fence line, in Simon Vale’s imagination, a bland box of a brewery already stood, its shadow falling over this very spot.
He didn’t feel hungry. He felt, for the first time in a week, genuinely, cleanly angry.
“Tomorrow,” he said, the word a vow in the quiet room.
“Tomorrow,” Mavis echoed, his tiny head leaning against Travis’s jaw.
“Tomorrow,” Mavis echoed, his tiny head leaning against Travis’s jaw.
The word hung between them, a promise that felt both necessary and terrifying. The simmering anger that had fueled Travis through the afternoon began to cool into a cold, hard dread in his gut. He stared out at the dark yard until the oak tree was just a deeper blackness against the night.
“I should try to sleep,” Travis said, though the idea felt absurd.
“You should,” Mavis agreed, not moving from his shoulder. “Your brain needs to file away all those angry little thoughts. It needs the cabinet space.”
Travis’s body, however, had other plans. The familiar, wired exhaustion returned as soon as he moved from the window. His mind raced with a montage of Caroline’s trembling voice, architectural renders, and Simon Vale’s hypothetical fish-eyes. He brushed his teeth, changed into soft pants, and sat on the edge of his bed. Sleep was a distant country.
He just stared at the wall, at the framed hole beside his headboard.
“It’s not working,” he muttered.
“Observationally correct,” Mavis said from the nightstand. He’d been arranging a piece of lint into a tiny bed. “Your shoulders are up by your ears. Your breathing is all wrong. It’s like watching a statue have a panic attack.”
Travis rubbed his face hard. “I can’t shut it off. My skin feels like it’s buzzing.”
Mavis was silent for a long moment. Then his tail gave a decisive thwap against the wood. “Okay. We’re doing the thing.”
Travis knew what he meant. A faint, warm flush crept up his neck, unrelated to anxiety. It was a specific, private surrender. “Mavis, you don’t have to–”
“I absolutely do,” Mavis interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You’re a knot. I’m untying you. It’s basic maintenance.” He scurried down the nightstand leg and across the floor. “Get the straps. Please.”
The request, polite and direct, cut through the clutter in Travis’s head. He stood, his movements automatic, and went to his dresser. In the bottom drawer, under a stack of sweaters, was a small bundle of soft, wide nylon straps. They were simple, strong, and sewn by his own hands years ago. Each end had a sturdy buckle.
He carried them back to the bed. The framed hole in the wall, usually just a passage for Mavis, awaited. Two screw-in hooks, embedded firmly in the studs on either side of the opening, gleamed dully in the lamplight.
Travis didn’t speak. He sat on the bed facing the wall, his back to the room. He looped one strap around his left wrist, buckled it snug but not tight, and attached the carabiner clasp to the left hook. He repeated the process with his right wrist. The action was ritualistic. The gentle pressure of the straps was an immediate, physical relief—a boundary his racing thoughts could not cross.
His arms were held slightly apart, framing the dark opening into Mavis’s world. He was anchored. Exposed. A offering to the tiny, meticulous creature who knew him best.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay.”
Mavis didn’t need further invitation. He climbed the bedspread with quiet purpose, his claws making minute snags in the fabric. He stepped onto Travis’s bare shoulder, a warm, slight weight. He didn’t rush. He walked the tense line of Travis’s trapezius muscle, then hopped lightly down onto the straining tendon of his forearm.
“Hello, tension,” Mavis whispered, his voice all business. “You are not welcome here.”
Then he began.
He started with Travis’s hands, where the stress gathered in clenched fists. Tiny, insistent fingers pried open Travis’s grip, one digit at a time. Mavis dug into the meat of the palm, finding the tight bundles of nerves and coaxing them loose with circular motions that were more precise than any human touch could ever be.
A low groan escaped Travis’s lips. His head lolled forward.
“That’s the sound I like,” Mavis murmured, moving up to the wrist, tracing the delicate bones. “The sound of a thought unclenching.”
It wasn’t just a massage. It was a systematic dismantling. Mavis worked up the forearms, his touch alternating between firm, deep-pressure circles and sudden, skittering, tickling strokes that made the muscles jump and then, inevitably, release. Every flinch, every involuntary twitch, was met with relentless focus. Mavis sought out every point of resistance, every locked-up cluster of fear about tomorrow, about the hearing, about Miriam’s frightened eyes, and he tickled it until it surrendered.
Travis’s breath grew ragged, then deepened. He was sweating slightly. The sensations were overwhelming, a cascade of minute tortures that transformed, meltingly, into pure, shivering relief. Mavis would find a knot near his elbow, worry at it with his thumbs, then dance his fingertips over the sensitive skin in the crook of his arm until Travis gasped and jerked against the straps, a helpless, broken laugh escaping him.
“There you go,” Mavis cooed, climbing onto Travis’s bicep. “Let it out. That one felt like ‘property line disputes.’ Am I warm?”
Travis could only nod, a strangled sound in his throat. Mavis’s accuracy was unnerving.
He moved to Travis’s shoulders, the epicenter of the storm. Here, Mavis became a climber, using his tail for balance as he walked the tightrope of Travis’s collarbone. He dug his heels into the rock-hard deltoids, his small body leaning all its weight into the frozen tissue. The pain was bright, searing. Travis grunted, his back arching.
“I know,” Mavis soothed, not relenting. “It’s deep. It’s been there a while.” He changed tactics, skittering his claws lightly through the short hairs on the back of Travis’s neck.
Travis yelped, a full-body shudder running through him. The jolt of sensation short-circuited something. A dam broke. The tension didn’t just ease; it fled. His body went slack in the straps, held up only by the sturdy buckles and hooks. He was liquid. Boneless.
Mavis worked for a while longer, gentle now, smoothing the pliant muscles. Finally, he stopped. He sat on the nape of Travis’s neck, catching his own breath. Travis’s head hung forward, his breathing slow and even. The buzzing was gone. The montage had stopped. His mind was a quiet, dark pool.
“Used up?” Mavis asked softly.
“Thoroughly,” Travis slurred, the word thick in his mouth.
With clumsy, heavy fingers, Travis fumbled with the buckles on his wrists. The straps fell away. He swayed as he stood, his legs feeling like damp clay. He shuffled the three steps from the wall to the bed and collapsed face-first into the pillows. The cool cotton against his cheek was a sublime pleasure. He was asleep in seconds, a deep, obliterating dive.
Mavis watched him for a moment, ensuring the steady rise and fall of his back. Then he turned to the straps, coiled now on the bed. He dragged each one, with considerable effort, back to the dresser drawer, ensuring everything was returned to its proper, discreet place. He did a quick cleanup of the room, nudging a discarded sock toward the hamper with his head.
Satisfied, he climbed the bedsheet mountain. He burrowed under the covers, finding his familiar spot in the hollow of Travis’s throat. He curled there, his tail draped over Travis’s sternum, listening to the strong, slow heartbeat. The human was empty, replenished. Ready for tomorrow.
For now, they both slept.
For now, they both slept.
The deep, dreamless void held Travis securely. There were no churning visions of county hearings or fish-eyed men. No phantom cramps twisted his gut. There was only dark, velvet stillness, and the faint, rhythmic sound of Mavis’s breathing against his neck. The moon crossed the sky. The house settled into its creaking, overnight bones. He did not stir.
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A MONTH, TRAVIS SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT, ONLY WAKING TO THE SUN SHINING AGAINST HIS EYELIDS.
The light was a gentle pressure, warm and insistent. He blinked, confusion soft and fuzzy at the edges. He was on his stomach, face half-buried in the pillow. His body felt… used. Sore in a good way, like after honest work. But his mind was clear. Quiet. He took a slow inventory. No screaming anxiety. No roiling nausea. Just the pleasant ache of deep rest in his muscles.
He carefully lifted his head up and looked down where his throat had rested against the pillow.
Mavis was asleep in the divot.
The tiny form was curled tight, a perfect comma of brown fur fitted into the impression Travis’s own body had made. His silky tail was wrapped around himself, his ears relaxed and flat. He looked profoundly, peacefully small. A kept promise.
A wave of feeling, vast and silent, rose in Travis’s chest. It threatened to crack him open. He leaned down slowly, so slowly, and softly pressed his lips against the little guy’s back. The fur was impossibly soft, warm from shared sleep. He held the contact for a long, breathless moment.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mavis,” he whispered, his voice gravelly with sleep, barely audible for a human, but crystal clear for Mavis who pressed his back against the soft lips. “I love you beyond any words.”
Mavis didn’t open his eyes. A deep, purring vibration started in his small frame, resonating through Travis’s mouth. He stretched one minute arm, his claws flexing gently against the pillowcase, pushing back into the kiss. It was an answer. An acceptance. An I-know.
Travis pulled back, resting his head back down, nose almost touching Mavis. He watched the tiny ribs expand and contract with breath. The sun warmed the back of his neck. For several minutes, there was only this: the quiet, the light, the proof of survival.
Mavis’s nose twitched. Then one dark eye slitted open. It focused on Travis, blinked once. “You’re hovering,” he rasped, his voice thick with sleep. “It’s rude. And your breath is morning-ish.”
Travis laughed, a real, unforced sound that felt strange in his throat. “Sorry.”
“You’re not.” Mavis uncurled, stretching his back in a long, dramatic arc. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with tiny fists. He scrutinized Travis’s face. “Huh. You look… assembled. Mostly. The cracks are glued, at least.”
“I feel glued,” Travis admitted, rolling onto his back. The ceiling was familiar, comforting. “I slept. The whole night.”
“I am aware. I was on duty. You snore like a distant freight train. It’s rhythmic.” Mavis scampered up to sit on his chest. “So. Today is a day for things. Many, many small things. Starting with the liquid breakfast pact. I’ve been dreaming about multi-seed crackers. They have character.”
The routine felt lighter. Travis moved through the kitchen with a clarity that had been missing for weeks. He heated the broth without staring blankly at the pot. He placed the cracker on the plate with deliberate ceremony, earning an approving nod from his tiny foreman on the table’s edge.
He ate. He drank. It was easier. The ghost of the habit they’d built—the nuzzle for each successful swallow—was still there, but Mavis’s praise was now verbal, teasing. “Look at you, champion of hydration.” “That cracker never stood a chance.” The food settled without protest. It was just fuel. Good fuel.
After, Travis showered. The hot water washed away the last clinging remnants of sickbed sweat and anxiety. He dressed in clean, dark jeans and a grey henley, clothes that felt like armor. He looked in the mirror. The man staring back was thinner, shadows under his eyes, but his gaze was direct. Present.
“You look like a person who might leave the house,” Mavis called from the bedroom. He was perched on the headboard, packing a minuscule leather satchel—a doll’s accessory he’d claimed years ago. He tucked a length of strong thread and a folded piece of tinfoil inside. “Just saying.”
“I am leaving the house,” Travis said, walking back in. He grabbed his phone, his wallet, his keys. The jingle of metal was a decisive sound. “We’re going to the grocery store.”
Mavis froze, one hand on his satchel clasp. “The… the cavern of overlit fluorescence and towering, unstable shelves?”
“The very one. We need real food. Broth is a foundation, not a future.” Travis opened his top dresser drawer and pulled out a soft, dark beanie. He stretched the cuff wide. “Ready for transport?”
Mavis eyed the beanie, then Travis’s determined face. A slow grin spread across his features. “A field trip. An incursion into the land of giants.” He scurried down the bedspread, up Travis’s leg, and leaped neatly into the stretched fabric. He wiggled into a comfortable spot just above Travis’s temple, the beanie covering him like a snug cave. His voice was muffled but clear. “I shall be your silent advisor. And maybe your thief of a single, superior grape.”
The outside air hit Travis’s face as he opened the front door. It was cool, damp from last night’s rain, and smelled of wet earth and distant woodsmoke. He stopped on the porch, breathing it in. The world felt vast, overwhelmingly vast after his confinement. His heart thumped once, a hard, warning knock against his ribs.
A tiny pressure, a pat against his scalp through the fabric. “Forward,” Mavis murmured.
Travis went forward.
The drive was short. The supermarket parking lot was a sea of asphalt. Travis parked far from the entrance, needing the walk. He adjusted the beanie. “You good?”
“Cozy. Observing. The velocity is alarming but acceptable.”
Inside, the store was a temple of overwhelming normalcy. Muzak drifted from hidden speakers. Cart wheels squeaked. A child wailed three aisles over. Travis grabbed a cart, its metal cold in his grip. He felt exposed, a specimen under the humming fluorescent lights.
“Pilot to ground crew,” Mavis’s whisper came from above his ear. “You are holding the cart like it might attack. Relax your knuckles. Breathe. First objective: the perimeter. Produce.”
Travis navigated to the fruits and vegetables. The colors were violently bright. He picked up a handful of grapes, examining the bunch.
“Not those,” Mavis hissed. “Left. The darker ones. They look less waxy.”
Travis swapped bunches. He bagged them. A small victory. He got apples. Bananas. He moved to the dairy section, selecting eggs, butter, a block of cheddar.
“Now the difficult bit,” Mavis said, his voice tight. “The gauntlet.”
The center aisles. Packaged foods. The sights and smells were a minefield. The cloying sweetness of cereals, the salty, oily scent of chips. Travis’s stomach, so calm moments before, gave a tentative, unhappy lurch. His pace slowed. He stared at a wall of soup cans, his vision blurring.
“Don’t look at the wall. Look at one can.” Mavis’s instruction was a lifeline. “The simple one. Chicken and rice. It’s just… salty water with soft grains. You can manage salty water.”
Travis took a can. He put it in the cart. One. Then another. He grabbed plain oatmeal. Pasta. A jar of marinara. Each item was a conscious choice, a negotiation between need and fear. Sweat prickled on his back under his shirt.
In the snack aisle, a woman reached past him for a bag of pretzels, her perfume a cloud of synthetic flowers. Travis flinched, the cart rattling.
“Steady,” Mavis whispered, a urgent pressure on his scalp. “You’re just a guy buying groceries. Boring. Unremarkable. Breathe the pretzel air, don’t taste it.”
At the checkout, the beeping scanner was an assault. Travis focused on the teenager bagging his items, on the simple mechanical act of sliding his card. The pin pad beeped. Approved.
Back in the car, he sat behind the wheel, gripping it. His hands were shaking again. The journey had exhausted a different kind of reserve.
“You did it,” Mavis said, climbing out of the beanie to sit on the passenger seat headrest. He was staring at Travis with fierce pride. “You navigated a hostile environment and secured supplies. That was a raid. A successful one.”
“It felt like a war,” Travis breathed.
“All the best supply runs do.” Mavis looked at the bags in the back. “Now, we go home. We put it all away. We have a single, triumphant grape. And then…” His whiskers twitched. “We make the call to Caroline. We confirm our visit for tomorrow. We take the next step.”
Travis started the car. The engine’s rumble was a familiar vibration. He looked at his house, waiting for him at the end of the street. It wasn’t just a refuge anymore. It was a base of operations. He had food. He had a plan. He had a tiny, furry general on his headrest.
He had momentum.