Canterbury Tails: Princess
Despite being born into one of the wealthiest families on the East Coast, Ryder Strahan did not live a lifestyle normally associated with spoiled only children of rich, doting parents. He did not own an Italian sports car (or any other car, for that matter). Girls did not vie for his attention, nor did he pursue them. He cared for neither music nor sports. There were no parties, no wild nights out and no lost weekends. His life, by most people's standards, was mind-numbingly boring. And that's just the way he liked it.
He did, however, have a friend. Like a vestigial organ, Dustin Manville was left over from the time Ryder attended school (before the Strahans hired a tutor to homeschool their son). Although they were no longer youngsters banded together to present a united front against the bullies who routinely picked on them, they remained in contact, albeit only by text messages. They hadn't seen each other since Ryder's parents withdrew him from Winton Academy. Dustin, unlike his wealthier friend, stayed in school, graduated with honors and went on to college. He was now working for his father, preparing for the day when he would take over the reins of the family business.
Ryder, on the other hand, did not further his education and had no interest in working for the Strahan publishing empire. Despite being twenty-seven years old, he never had a job. He never delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, shoveled snow, pumped gas or bagged groceries. The recipient of a substantial trust fund left to him by his grandfather, he had all the money he needed. Why should he bother working?
The glowing red digits of the alarm clock on his night table told him it was after nine. (He never set the alarm because there was no reason to wake up at a given time.) After propping up his head with three pillows, he reached for the remote beside the clock and turned on the eighty-six-inch television mounted on the wall opposite his bed. He then reached for his cell phone and sent a message to the kitchen to bring up his breakfast.
Ten minutes later, Ina, the Strahans' middle-aged housekeeper, brought a tray to his room. The morning meal was always the same: two chocolate chip pancakes and a twelve-ounce glass of low-fat milk flavored with Hershey's syrup.
"Here you are, sir," Ina said, placing the tray on the end of the bed. "Can I get you anything else?"
"Nah. That's all."
"Very good, sir."
Like an actor who had given the same performance day in and day out over a fifteen-year run, Ina walked out of the room so that her employer's son could eat. She would return in fifteen minutes, and while he took a bath, she would change his bed linens, vacuum the carpet and dust his furniture. At noon, she would bring him his lunch, and at five, she would bring his dinner. It was a routine that never varied.
"What do you think he does all day cooped up in his room?" Fern, the cook asked as the housekeeper poured herself a cup of coffee.
"I have no idea, and frankly, I don't want to know," Ina replied.
"You don't think he's sick, do you? Maybe that's why he never goes anywhere."
"If he were sick, the Strahans would have doctors come to the house to check on him."
"I don't mean physically sick."
"You think Ryder is crazy?"
"No. I just wonder if he is one of those people who are afraid of leaving their homes."
"I don't think he suffers from agoraphobia," the housekeeper opined. "I think he just lacks a purpose in life."
"Maybe if everybody stopped waiting on him hand and foot, he'd find a purpose," Fern declared. "He should start by coming downstairs to eat his meals instead of having someone carry them up to his room. It's not normal, and it's not healthy."
"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. His parents don't seem to mind. Why should we?"
* * *
After putting on a pair of clean flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt, Ryder sat on his bed, leaning his back against the cushioned headboard. He took his game controller out of the night table's drawer, and as was his custom, he played video games until three in the afternoon. From three to five, he read comic books, and after dinner, he watched TV until he fell asleep. As I said before, his life, by most people's standards, was mind-numbingly boring. But it suited him, and he did not want to change a thing.
He was engrossed in playing Elden Ring when the cell phone signaled an incoming text message. He was not surprised to see that Dustin Manville was the sender. No one besides his parents and former schoolmate ever texted him, and his mother and father were currently in Japan.
There's going to be a comic book convention at the Middlebury Hilton next week, the message read.
So? Ryder texted back.
I think we should both go, Dustin suggested.
I'm not one for going out. You know that.
But Royce Devane is going to be there. Wouldn't you like to meet him and get his autograph? Maybe you can even get your picture taken with him.
British actor Royce Devane gained international fame by playing Lancelot in the movie versions of the Camelot comic series. Ryder preferred Lancelot to all the DC and Marvel superheroes.
Are you sure he's going to be there?
Positive. I got my ticket already. If you want to go, you'd better get one before they sell out.
Ryder sat on his bed for more than an hour with his controller in his hand and his game paused. He couldn't remember the last time he left his house. Hell! It was hard to recall when he last left his bedroom! He was not an agoraphobe, as the cook suggested. There was just no good reason for him to leave the family mansion.
Now, he had a reason.
"Royce Devane!" he exclaimed. "Right here in Massachusetts!"
Having made up his mind to attend the convention, he put down his controller, got out his laptop and went to the promoter's website. Although there were admission tickets left, the hotel was completely booked. It was only after he purchased his three-day, all-inclusive pass that Ryder learned none of the hotels in the area had vacancies.
I'll have to stay in your room, he texted Dustin. Every hotel for miles around is booked up.
Sorry, but I'm staying with three other people at the Holiday Inn, and they only allow four to a room.
I'll see if Airbnb has anything.
If not, there might be an inn nearby that has a room available.
Persistence paid off. Ryder was able to find a room in the small town of Canterbury. It was a forty-minute drive to the Hilton, but it was better than the two-hour commute from his home to the hotel.
Where the hell is Canterbury? he wondered after confirming his reservation. I never even heard of it!
If it weren't for Google, he would not have gotten an answer to his question. Canterbury was so small a town that it didn't appear on most maps.
* * *
Ryder waited in the car as Uber driver Miguel Escobar carried his suitcase into the Canterbury Inn. He took out his phone and sent a text to Dustin, telling him he would arrive at the Hilton in less than an hour. Receiving no immediate reply, he tucked his phone back into his pocket.
"This is it," the driver announced as he pulled into the Hilton's parking lot.
"It's so crowded," Ryder groaned, seeing the throng of young people milling around the entrance.
"Aren't you going inside?" Miguel asked when his passenger made no attempt to exit the vehicle.
"My friend never got back to me. I don't know where to meet him."
"I'm sorry, but I can't stay here. I've got to pick up another fare."
Reluctantly, the passenger got out of the Honda Accord and headed for the front doors. He texted Dustin again: I'm here. Where R U? As he waited for a response that didn't come, he was swept inside by the press of the crowd. Rather than send another text, he decided to call his friend, but there was no answer.
After locating the Hilton's main ballroom and showing his ticket at the door, he received a plastic wristband, a nametag and a program of events. Ten movie and TV stars and eight comic book creators were scheduled to appear over the three-day event. However, Royce Devane wasn't due to arrive until Sunday afternoon.
Ryder took his phone out one more time. There was still no answer to the texts he had sent.
Maybe something happened to Dustin's phone, he theorized. Maybe he misplaced it or broke it.
Still, he sent another message: Call me when you get this. Then he turned the volume up on his phone so that he would hear the ringtone above the noise of the crowd.
Since the first meet and greet would not begin for two more hours, he examined the merchandise on the vendors' tables. In addition to comic books, people were hawking photographs of the stars who would be signing autographs over the next three days. Ryder purchased an eight-by-ten color picture of Royce Devane in his role as Lancelot. Other tables offered Funko Pop! dolls, T-shirts, video games and superhero memorabilia of all kinds. Since he had no interest in buying anything else, he left the crowded ballroom and went in search of a place where he could sit down.
I'm certainly not going to stand up or walk around all day.
He found a nearly empty room with a hundred or so chairs arranged in tight-fitting rows. Although he had no interest in participating in a Q&A with Jules Cordell, the former child star slated to play Robin in the next Batman movie, he took a seat in the back row. After texting and calling Dustin again, he played games on his phone for more than an hour. It was only when he noticed that the phone's battery life was down to fifty percent that he realized he had left his charger at home.
With fifteen minutes to go before the arrival of the Boy Wonder, people began filing into the room. The audience consisted predominantly of adolescents and teenagers, and nearly three-fourths of them were girls who, eager to see the young heartthrob, fought over the front-row seats. Not one of them was disappointed when rather than wearing his Robin costume, Jules Cordell showed up in jeans, an Under Armour T-shirt and a New York Yankees baseball cap.
The forty-minute Q&A could not end quickly enough for Ryder. (Who cared if Jules got to drive the Batmobile?) Once it was over, he tried texting Dustin one last time. Then he called Uber to take him to the Canterbury Inn. Although it was still early, he had had enough of the convention for one day.
* * *
Used to having Ina bring his meals to him on a tray, Ryder was disappointed to learn that the inn did not offer room service and that he had to go down to the dining room to get his lunch. The lack of meal delivery was but one of the things he disliked about the Canterbury Inn. Another was that its cable service was down and he could not watch TV in his room.
What am I going to do all day? he wondered as he plopped down in a chair beside the window.
With no television or video games to entertain him, he gave serious thought to returning home.
It was a mistake coming here. I never should have listened to Dustin.
He took his cell phone out of his pocket and was about to call Uber again when he remembered the eight-by-ten photo of Lancelot he bought from one of the vendors at the convention. He had wanted to have it signed by Royce Devane, but the actor was not due to make an appearance until Sunday afternoon. He would have to wait two whole days to get that autograph.
I bought a three-day ticket, so I suppose I could go home and come back on Sunday morning.
And what about Dustin Manville? Where was he? Would he arrive later in the afternoon?
If he lost his phone, he wouldn't have received my texts or been able to send any to me. He might already be at the convention, somewhere in that mass of humanity. Maybe I should call the Hilton and ask to have him paged. Then ....
Ryder lost his train of thought when he idly glanced out the window. Across the street from the inn was a store called The Canterbury Tails. It was not the unusual spelling of the bookshop's name that caught his attention since he was unfamiliar with Chaucer's fourteenth-century novel, The Canterbury Tales. Rather, it was the sign in the display window which read COMIC BOOK SALE that changed his mind about going home.
Maybe I can buy a bunch of comic books to read today. Then tomorrow I'll go back to the Hilton and hopefully be able to find Dustin.
Making sure he had his wallet on him, which was amply filled with cash and credit cards, he left the inn and walked across the street. The bell above the door jingled when he entered.
"Hello," a young woman with short black locks liberally frosted with electric blue hair color, called from behind the checkout counter. "Welcome to the Canterbury Tails."
Two cats were lying on the counter, a white Persian and a Russian blue.
"Is there something I can help you with?" Jerusha Bromwell, the store's owner, asked.
"The sign says you're having a comic book sale," the customer replied.
"Yes, I am. Just go through that large room on your right. The comic books are in the smaller room in the back."
The larger room was filled with overstuffed bookcases and stacks of books piled on tables and chairs. There seemed to be no logical order to their placement. A volume on British history was sandwiched between a cookbook and a romance novel. Sitting on a biography of Elvis Presley was a Siamese cat, who looked at Ryder with its slightly crossed blue eyes.
"It's a good thing I'm not allergic to cats," he mumbled as he headed toward the back room and passed by an orange tabby who was playing with a catnip-filled toy mouse.
The look on the young man's face, when he saw the thousands of comic books in the smaller room, was similar to one Charlie Bucket, must have had when he entered Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. He could see Action Comics dating back to the Thirties as well as recently published graphic novels. In addition to superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Superman, Captain America and X-Men, there were comics featuring the Peanuts gang, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Archie and the Addams Family. There was even a large selection of horror comics.
As Ryder picked up a November 1954 issue of Tales from the Crypt, a cat ran past him and jumped onto a pile of Garfield comics.
"Another one? How many cats are in this place?"
"That's Princess," Jerusha said, carrying a handful of comic books into the room.
Princess was a tricolored cat. The fur around one eye was black, the hair around the other eye was orange and the snout was white.
"It looks like she couldn't make up her mind what color she wanted to be."
"She's a calico."
Jerusha put the new comics on the pile nearest the cat.
"Is that the latest issue of Camelot?" he asked with surprise. "It's not supposed to come out for another three weeks!"
"I just got a handful of copies in this morning."
"Lancelot du Lac," he read aloud.
It was definitely not an issue he already owned.
"Are you all set?" Jerusha asked twenty minutes later when the young man put sixteen comics on the counter and took out his wallet.
"Yes."
After completing the sale, the customer put his Visa card back in his wallet, took his bag and headed for the door. Although he did not look back, he could feel several sets of eyes—both human and feline—staring at him as he exited the shop.
* * *
Once back in his room at the inn, Ryder took off his jeans and put on his flannel pajama pants. He did not immediately open the latest issue of Camelot, however. He would save that for later in the evening. It would be the equivalent of dessert. First, he would read other comic books as the appetizer and main course.
The sun began to set, but it was the growling of his stomach that alerted him to the lateness of the hour. He looked at his watch; it was after six. He reached for his phone on the night table—still no text from Dustin—and ordered a sub sandwich and soda from a nearby pizzeria to be delivered to the inn. It was a clever alternative to room service. Twenty minutes later, the phone in his room rang.
"There's a delivery here for you," Agnes Stowell, the elderly woman who ran the Canterbury Inn, informed him.
"Just send it up. It's already paid for."
There was no "please" or "thank you." As a pampered only child of wealthy parents, he expected the world to do his bidding.
Although he got off the bed to answer the door, he quickly returned to it after Agnes handed him his food. Holding his sandwich in one hand, he held the comic book in the other and continued reading. It was as close to multitasking as Ryder would ever get.
He took the last sip of his Pepsi as he finished the fifth comic, the November 1954 issue of Tales from the Crypt.
"And now, for the pièce de résistance," he said, removing the remaining comics from the brown paper bag.
He looked through the issues but did not see Lancelot du Lac among them. Ten unread comics were on the bed, and the five that he had finished were on the nightstand. He counted them again. There were fifteen in all.
"But I bought sixteen. Where's the other one?"
He looked around the room. It was nowhere to be found. There was only one conclusion he could draw: the crazy cat lady with the black-and-blue hair had gypped him out of a comic book. Without bothering to put his jeans back on, he stormed out of his room and walked across the street to The Canterbury Tails. Although the sign on the door read CLOSED and the lights in the shop were dimmed, he could still see the shopkeeper working at her computer.
Ryder turned the handle of the door but it wouldn't open, so he pounded on the window.
"I'm sorry but the shop is closed," Jerusha said through the glass.
"I want my comic book!" he shouted.
She opened the door.
"I paid for sixteen comic books, but I only got fifteen. You gypped me out of Lancelot du Lac!"
Meow.
The young man looked down and saw Princess, the calico cat, rubbing against Jerusha's leg.
"I don't know what happened to your other comic, but I assure you that I didn't gyp you."
"I want my comic book."
"As I said, the shop is closed now. If you come back tomorrow ...."
"I want it NOW!" Ryder thundered.
Meow.
Jerusha tried to close the door, but Ryder put out his hand and held it open.
"I want my comic book. Go get me another one."
Meow.
"I'll give you one tomorrow."
"I walked all the way over here for the comic. I don't intend to go away empty-handed, nor do I intend to walk back here tomorrow."
Meow.
"Don't make me mad, lady," he warned, giving the cat a threatening look. "You won't like me when I'm mad."
Princess looked up at her owner, her green eyes seeming to communicate a private message to Jerusha's blue ones.
"All right. Wait here just a moment. I'll go get you another one."
The door was shut in the angry young man's face and locked, but the shopkeeper soon returned with another copy of Lancelot du Lac. He grabbed it from her hand, turned his back to her and crossed the street.
Meow.
"No, Princess," Jerusha said, picking up the cat and holding it in her arms. "He's not a very nice man."
* * *
Still upset from his altercation with Jerusha Bromwell, Ryder sat on the bed, closed his eyes and took several deep breaths to calm himself.
"Trying to gyp me out of a comic book!" he exclaimed. "How would she like it if one of her damned cats went missing?"
He briefly considered taking a baseball bat to one or more of her pets, but like most of his malicious intentions, he would never act on it. It was not that he had any compassion for a harmless animal; it was only that killing a cat took too much effort.
"Why bother taking revenge on that weirdo?" he asked himself. "She's not worth all the trouble. Besides, I got my comic book. That's the main thing."
After propping up the pillows, he stretched out on the bed and opened the first page of Lancelot du Lac.
Although the Camelot comic series was often criticized for being a knockoff of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, many young readers preferred it to the original. With its preponderance of magical creatures and warring kingdoms, Camelot fans regarded it as a cross between The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Differing from most Arthurian works, Lancelot, not King Arthur, was the main hero. It is Lancelot, aided by the Lady of the Lake, who fights for right while an aging King Arthur remains behind castle walls, playing the benevolent father figure.
The story in the latest issue begins with Lancelot, Gawain, Percival and Tristan searching for a band of renegade trolls that are raiding the kingdom's forges in search of swords. There was only one use for such arms. The trolls would no doubt use their stolen weapons to wage war against the dwarves, their mortal enemies. The Knights of the Round Table needed to put a stop to the explosive situation before it got out of hand.
Minus the front and back covers and all the advertising, the comic consisted of twenty-two pages of story. Ryder did not rush through them, eager to see how the plot developed and the conflict was solved. Instead, he deliberately took his time, slowly reading each speech balloon to savor them. He was down to the final three pages when his phone rang.
"It's about time!" he cried when he answered the phone, assuming it was Dustin who called. "I've been trying to reach you all day!"
When he realized it was a telemarketer and not his friend, he swore like the proverbial sailor and hung up.
He went back to his comic book. The four knights were cornered in an underground cave, threatened by more than a dozen sword-wielding trolls. As usual, Ryder tried to predict the outcome. Either the Lady of the Lake would cast a magic spell or the heroes would be rescued by dwarves who, like the cavalry in old Western movies, would arrive just in the nick of time.
He was wrong on both counts.
When he turned the page, the trolls attacked. Gawain, Percival and Tristan manage to fight their way out of the cave, but Lancelot, after being run through with a sword, is knocked to his knees and beheaded by the troll general.
"No!" the reader screamed and threw the comic to the floor in a fit of rage. "They can't kill off Lancelot!"
Meow.
His eyes went to the window. Princess was sitting on the sill, looking in at him.
"Scat! Go away!"
The cat leaped from the windowsill to the branch of a nearby chestnut tree and disappeared.
"Damned cat!" Ryder yelled and picked up the comic book from the floor. "Maybe the Lady of the Lake will bring him back."
He reopened the book to the last page. What he saw terrified him. The hero knight's head was once again firmly attached to his body, but the face was not that of Lancelot. It was Dustin Manville's. And he had not been stabbed by a sword; he had been shot with a gun.
Memories that had been submerged for years, played out in his mind in the form of a comic strip. He and his friend had an argument over, of all things, who would buy a rare issue of Green Lantern at a comic book store. Although Dustin saw it first, his overprivileged friend demanded he hand it over. The verbal disagreement escalated on the way home. When the two teenagers arrived at the Strahan mansion, the angry young man got the gun out of his father's study and shot his friend in the head.
Dustin never went to college and never worked for his father's company. All these years, the text messages they had exchanged had been a figment of his killer's imagination.
Meow.
Princess had returned to the windowsill, but Ryder paid her no mind. He was remembering how his parents had called on someone to relocate Dustin's body and make it appear as though he had been killed during a drug deal gone wrong. Although suspicion never fell on their son, the Strahans took him out of school, hired a tutor and encouraged the boy to remain in the house and stay out of trouble.
For fifteen years, he followed their advice, becoming lazier with each day that passed until he no longer wanted to leave his bedroom.
"I should have listened to them," he thought sadly, as the comic book slipped from his hand. "I never should have left the house."
Meow.
Ryder stared into Princess's green eyes. He saw in them an invitation. It was a way to forget, to lock those painful memories back in the box where they had been kept hidden for a decade and a half.
He crossed the room and opened the window.
The last thing he saw before he leaped to his death was Jerusha Bromwell and Princess staring at him from behind the display window of The Canterbury Tails.
I'll bet you can't guess who Salem's favorite comic book hero is!
