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Chapter 1:
The Other One
(by John Forth, added on August 2, 2009)
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They blame me. I can see it in their eyes. My wife, the police, the neighbours, all of them. It doesn’t matter that there’s no blood on my hands (although some of them have their suspicions, I can tell), they blame me for neglect, for not being there, for not doing the one single thing I wish I’d been able to do in my life. They blame me for failing. And now I’m left alone in a house heavy with silent accusation. My wife, ruined and incoherent, at her sister’s house on the other side of the city; the police, who’d probed and scoured every inch of the house, gone save the dirty prints of their boots on the carpets. Even the press, camped outside these last few days, seem to have retreated back into their little holes. And so here I sit, still, hands flat on the cold wooden surface of the kitchen table, watching the back door and waiting for the scratching sound that will signify the return of the Other One.
It came without warning one night five weeks or so ago, although looking back I realise that it had been watching us for some time before that. I’d stayed late in the city after work for a drink, bracing myself for the long tube journey back out to the suburbs. My wife was in the kitchen when I got home, finishing off the dinner. Her kiss was friendly, but distracted. She looked tired.
“Baby down?”
My wife nodded. When I looked in to the bedroom Danielle was asleep in her cot, motionless. The wet sound of her breath loud in the dark. Downstairs it was leant a mechanical tang by the baby monitor.
“We’ve had a visitor,” my wife told me over dinner.
I didn’t take my eyes from the television. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. A little orange cat was sniffing around the back door. Poor little thing was all wet. I gave it a saucer of milk and a little bit of that leftover chicken.”
“As long as it doesn’t think it can get a free meal here every day. We can hardly afford the baby, let alone a cat as well.”
“It’s just a bit of chicken, Roy...”
The evening passed quickly, as they tended to in those days. Danielle woke up shortly after eight and took hours to get back down again. Afterwards my wife took my hand and tried to take me to bed, but I had work to do. I’d been sitting in front of the laptop, at the kitchen table, when I heard scratching at the back door.
The rain was still drumming irregular beats on the window, but gentler than it had been. Bloody cat, I’d thought, back for more. The last thing we needed. I turned back to the laptop screen, determined to ignore it, but a minute or so later the scratching came again, determined and incessant. After ten minutes of this, I strode over to the door, intending fully to kick the damn thing across the garden and make sure that it never came back.
It was almost like the cat knew what I was thinking. When I opened the door it jumped back into the garden, centre stage in the pool cast by the security light. It was a feeble looking little thing, skinny and sodden, orange fur hanging damply from its bones. It looked at me with its large eyes and let out a slight, almost inaudible mewl. I was stepping forward to shoo it away when I saw the second cat, poised on the wall just out of the reach of the light.
Even from a distance I could tell that it was a bit of a brute. It was large, and it was still, a massive grey stone perched on the garden wall. I could almost believe that it was some forgotten ornament left by the previous owner of the house if it wasn’t for the the yellow eyes that regarded me with cool malice. It’s brought its friends, I thought. Things just weren’t getting any better. Was it like a honey trap? Send the cute one up first, then bring in the bruisers later? The grey cat didn’t seem interested in food, though. It just sat there on the wall, watching me. At my feet, the orange one made another pathetic sound and then leapt away, disappearing over the wall to the side. I turned my attention back to the beast on the wall.
“And you - you can get lost as well.”
Slowly, as if it took great effort to shift its bulk, the cat moved. First it stood, and then it stretched, its large body elongating as if made of rubber. Its face in particular seemed to change shape, becoming almost vulpine before flattening out again. Then it turned and hopped off the wall and into the garden of the house behind us. I waited for a minute or two, but neither of the cats returned that night.
***
My next encounter with the grey cat came the following weekend. My wife had gone out to a hen night and I was left to look after Danielle. I’d had plans of putting her down early and getting on with some work, but something had been agitating her and she’d been restless and whiny all evening. In the end she didn’t fall asleep until after ten o’clock by which time I was too exhausted to do anything apart from slump in front of the television, irritated that the evening had become such a write-off.
I was in the living room watching an old action film on television, listening to the metallic breath of my child through the baby monitor, when I heard a noise from the window. The curtains were drawn, only the faintest glow from the street lamps visible through the heavy material. Something had struck the glass gently, a soft padding shaking it in its frame. Leaves blown off the trees which lined the avenue, I figured, and turned my attention drowsily back to the movie. Then it came again, harder and more insistent, supported by a plaintive feline cry.
My wife had mentioned the orange cat in passing (although she just looked baffled when I mentioned the other one). She’d fed it a couple of times again since she’d first encountered it, despite my disapproval. So I guessed before I pulled the curtains back what was responsible. Sure enough, there sat the orange cat, fur ruffled by the heavy wind, gazing through the glass at me. “Get lost,” I said to it, rapping at the glass. Its only response was to place one paw against the pane. It watched me carefully for a moment before sensing the hostility I felt to it and leaping off through the garden. Annoyed at the distraction, I went back to the movie. But after maybe twenty minutes I heard movement in the bushes outside and something brushing against the window.
Swearing to myself, I stamped over to the window, intending to throw it open, drag the cat in and wring its neck. I pulled the curtain aside so sharply that it almost came off its hooks. There was no orange cat, but the other one was there, its forepaws up against the glass. Its body was contorted, twisted and long, rising up like a serpent. Its face was almost level with my own, and for a second its enraged features merged with my own reflection. I saw the black disease around its gums, anger in its eyes. The claws unsheathed themselves from its paws.
In my alarm I staggered back from the window, letting the curtain fall back again. It took a few moments before my heart settled and my anger returned. When I tugged the curtain back again, it was more tentatively. But this time there was nothing to worry about. The cat was gone. There was no sign of it anywhere in the street.
My wife crawled into bed around two-thirty, an evening’s worth of alcohol on her breath.
“Your damn cats came back tonight,” I said to her through the darkness. “You need to stop encouraging them.”
“Cats?”
“Your little orange friend and the other one.”
“What other one?”
***
I kept an eye out for the other cat in the following days, checking the windows and gardens of our street, hoping that I could find out who it belonged to. I don’t know what I intended to do if I found out - storm up to their front door and demand they get the fucker put down, I suppose. It was clearly bad tempered and maybe dangerous. The animal was nowhere to be seen, although I fancied that I saw the small orange cat hiding in the hedges a couple of times, ducking away when it saw me.
It returned a week ago (or thereabouts; I can barely remember what day it is right now). The baby had woken up in the middle of the night and began screaming so hard that it almost felt like the house was shaking. Somehow it was my turn again to tend to her, but the usual ministrations had failed to quiet her down. I had changed her, fed her, winded her, spoke to her and even sang, but still she wailed. At around four-thirty she’d gone down - only two hours before I had to be back up and on my way to work again. I stalked the house in a foul mood, not seeing any sense in going back to bed. For an age I stood in the hallway, looking at the living room which sat in the half-light like an abandoned set. Eventually a cold breeze distracted me and I followed it through to the kitchen. One of the small windows above the sink was open. My wife must have forgotten to close if after dinner; I made a note to talk to her about that in the morning. I was closing the window when I spotted a thin trail of dirt across the work surface. I ran a finger though it - damp and fresh earth. It ran to the edge of the surface and recommenced on the linoleum, out of the door and into the hall where it disappeared in to the carpet. In the hall I looked for the source, but the trail didn’t seem to recommence anywhere. I was almost at the stairs when I heard the sound in the living room.
The clearest way to describe it is as a choking hiss, a low stuttering sound. It stopped after a few seconds. I stood in the doorway, listening for it again, scanning the gloom. Then it came again, from the direction of the television. I started to cross over towards it when I realised how stupid I was being and went, instead, for the light switch.
The room still seemed artificial, even in the light, so it was a few moments before I placed the oddity perched on the back of the couch on which I had been sitting the last time I had seen the other one. It was the grey cat, of course, still and hunched and watching my every movement. Its jaw dropped open and quivered slightly, and that strange chattering sound followed. Blindly I reached out for the first thing that came to hand, intending to throw it at the cat. My hands were closing around an African statue we’d brought back from safari the previous year when another sound crackled through the room.
It was just the baby monitor, Danielle gargling in her sleep. But I swear that the cat turned its head towards the sound and its yellow eyes widened with an almost human interest. Lazily, it licked its lips.
Roaring, I threw the statue at the cat. With a speed belied by its bulk, it leapt from the back of the couch and sprinted for the doorway. I chased it to the hallway, running past the splinters of the wooden statue. The cat was against the front door, its back arched and teeth bared. I stepped forward, and then...
And then...
I’m not sure what happened. All I can think is that I must have opened the door and kicked the cat away. But when I think back all I can remember was the eyes of the cat, almost seeming to glow, and the walls of the hall around me growing indistinct. Whatever happened, I must have collapsed on the couch afterwards as I woke up surrounded by what was left of the statue. The door was closed and chained, the trail of mud across the kitchen the only evidence that the events of the early morning had happened.
***
We argued viciously about the broken statue in the morning. My wife accused me of always hating it, which had been true. I still didn’t know why she’d bought so many ugly relics during that trip. It didn’t help that I couldn’t come up with a decent explanation for how the statue came to be broken. Telling her about the other one seemed wrong, somehow. Whenever I’d mentioned it in the past she’d been dismissive, talked about how friendly the orange cat had been. She’d never seen the other one. My reluctance to tell her what had happened fuelled the row further, and we were still going at it even as I left for work. Throughout my journey I was gripped with a silent fury; I achieved nothing that day.
Over those next few days I stayed late at work as often as I could, and always stopped for a drink or two before heading home. The atmosphere in the house was heavy and black. Couldn’t she see that I had nothing to apologise for? If anything I had been trying to protect her and the fucking baby. I stayed up late each night, hoping that the grey cat would show its face. I would break its back and hold it up in front of her. “See,” I would say. “This is the thing I was trying to get out of the house when I broke your precious statue - this ugly, bitter, scarred old thing.” Did she really want a creature like that in the house?
Those days were long; dark in the morning and black when I left the office. The tube journey back and forth back and forth was interminable, cramped and hot. My shirt was against my back like a second skin, my suit rumpled and twisted around my body. The people stood too close to me, and more than once I saw sly eyes turned my way. A massive sikh man watched me from the opposite seat, hands fumbling at a small ornate urn which he held between massive ringed fingers; a feral looking teenage girl, hair tangled, clothes artfully turn stood so close I could smell alcohol emanating from her pores; on my way home from the station one night a homeless man whom I’d ignored earlier followed me to the end of my street - I could feel his gaze on me all the way home.
In the eyes of each I saw the other one, watching, plotting, planning its next move.
***
It came again a few days ago, in its old form. My wife was out, I don’t know where. She’d been dressed to the nines when I arrived home, coat and shoes on already. “Are you sober enough to watch the baby?” she said. “Good, because I’m going out.”
Danielle went down easily that night, but I still couldn’t concentrate on my work. The laptop screen was a blank white glow on which the shapes behind my eyes crawled. The wind taunted me with screams and whistles on the other side of the window. Angry with myself, I took great clumps of my hair in my hands and tugged hard, willing myself to concentrate. Then the wind died, and all was still. For a moment it felt like I might accomplish something that night.
The front door clicked almost silently.
It was too early for my wife to be home. The hallway was empty. The door was locked. On my return to the kitchen I saw some shadow move on the other side of the back door’s frosted pane. It was there. I opened the door and looked out into the back garden. Dozens of shapes crowded around the pool of light, moving closer - just foliage. I stepped out and looked into the black, willing the grey cat to move so that I could reach out and seize it. Something shifted by one corner of the fence, under a hanging of thick and jagged hedge. I moved closer, crouching down. A flash of eyes glanced out at me. Then a hard slam, like a shot. I twisted around to see that the back door had swung closed. Swearing, I stamped back across the garden. The door was locked fast, the bolt snapping as soon as the door hit its frame. I slammed my hand against it, hard. The front door - it would be locked too. If I had to kick it in it would cost a packet to get fixed. Rage building, I turned back to the garden, intending to catch the cat and show it just how frustrated I was. Then, from the window above the kitchen, I heard the coughing sounds of Danielle starting to cry.
What would my wife say if she came home to find me locked out while our child cried? It would make our earlier row seem like a petty skirmish. Danielle’s cries became louder, shrill and desperate. She needed me, and I wasn’t there. Bracing myself against the frame, I drove a shoulder into the door, but it refused to give. Again - but nothing. The baby was screaming then and I started to realise that it wasn’t a feed-me scream, or a change-me scream, but something else. I saw then what the other one was trying to do, and thrust myself back towards the door again and again. The screams from above were becoming more broken, mixed with thick gurgles and halting breaths. One more time and the door caved in, sending me stumbling in to the kitchen. I reeled from wall to wall, ran along the hall. My palms were pressed hard against the side. A black trail of scum was threaded along the centre of the carpet. The high-pitched screams grew louder as I ascended the stairs and, then, as I reached the top landing, they stopped. A sick feeling rose up in my stomach, burning my throat. I was slowing as I reached the door to the bedroom, knowing already that I was too late.
I prefer not to think of what I saw there; of the blankets damp and heavy, of the black spray across the carpet. I could not actually see Danielle, that came later. The other one was there, of course, as I’d expected. Its fur was dark and matted, grin clogged with meat and tissue. There was triumph in its yellow eyes, and a taunt too. It knew that there had never been any way for me to stop it. Eyes still on me, it arched its back and stood tall, stretching. Like before its body seemed to extend, raising up higher than any other cat I had ever seen. Then, for a moment, I saw something else, something behind the shape that the other one had taken. It rose up, limbs longer than even those of the cat, long face extending impossibly as its jaw hung low, almost to the floor. Aspects of it - arms, legs, I couldn’t tell which - radiated out on all sides, touching the walls on either side. And in the centre of it all, those same yellow eyes, smirking, mocking me, knowing that I was defeated and reflecting that knowledge back to me. That I would have to live knowing that it had beaten me was triumph enough.
***
Or was it? The following moments are lost to me now; my next memories are of my wife shaking my shoulders, screaming in my face, her eyes red like blisters. The following days present themselves to me now as moments only. A fox, or wild dog, the police had surmised and I had made no move to correct them. I saw the accusation of neglect from each one of them. “You let it in,” they were saying. “You didn’t save her.”
“You wanted this to happen.”
***
The orange cat came around a little while ago. It appeared at the kitchen window and gazed sorrowfully at me, head on one side. I opened the window and presented it with a small saucer of milk. Briefly, it looked in and and sniffed at the saucer. Then with a final glance towards me, it withdrew and leapt back down into the garden. I didn’t see where it went.
It’s past two in the morning now. I haven’t moved for hours. I realise now that this isn’t over, that the creature’s appetite was too big for just a single tiny morsel. I thought I heard it earlier, moving outside, through the bushes. I hear something now, a tiny, almost gentle scratching near the foot of the back door. In a second I’ll go and answer it. I don’t know what I’ll see when I open the door. It might be nothing, leaves blown down from the trees brushing against the wood. Perhaps I’ll open the door and see the small orange cat, returned having changed its mind about the saucer of milk I offered it earlier. More likely I’ll open the door and stare out into the dark bushes on the outskirts of the light. More likely I’ll see the cruel eyes of the other one staring back at me. |
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