by Matt Haig
Barney realized she was no longer looking at him. She was gazing down at the table. At first he thought she was staring at the empty tin of sardines she had just placed there.
But no.
She was staring at the pen pot next to it. The funny-shaped black one with the holes. She leaned forward, took one of the school pens; the ones that said: BLANDFORD HIGH SCHOOL – YOUR CHILD IS OUR WORLD. And then she studied Barney’s face as she tapped the pen against the pot. The pot shaped like a skull.
A cat’s skull, he thought as he began to realize exactly what Miss Whipmire – or rather this cat who had become Miss Whipmire – was truly capable of.
Poor Polly
‘OF COURSE, I had to cut the top of the skull off,’ Miss Whipmire explained thoughtfully, admiring her handiwork. ‘And I painted it, to disguise it. But it works quite well. What do you think?’
‘I … I … I … think you’re a monster.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Barney, I can assure you the former Miss Whipmire had a very nice time in my ageing cat body. I told her lovely stories of Old Siam, and I kept her warm and safe.’ She sighed thoughtfully. ‘Of course, I didn’t give her anything to eat or drink, but then, compared to the rabbit kidney she used to give me, I was doing her a favour really. Oh, poor Polly, though. Fading away like that. It was hard. I do still have this lovely little memento to keep me company.’
She tapped the pot again.
Her mouth twitched at the corners, like a cat’s tail. ‘The trouble is, I do have rather a lot of pens. I get them free. One of the perks of the job. But this old head isn’t very big.’ Her mouth twitched its way into a smile again. ‘I suppose what I’m really saying is that I could do with a new pen pot. Do you understand?’
And, just in case Barney didn’t understand, she tapped the side of her head, then pointed at him. ‘And I think yours would hold a few more. Yes, I might even get some marker pens in there.’
‘You’re mad,’ Barney said as he leaped down and began to walk backwards towards the door. ‘You’re absolutely mad.’
‘No, I’ll tell you what would have been mad,’ she hissed. ‘Staying a cat. Now that would have been crazy. To be a cat, that’s no fun … What I went through at the hands of humans … When I was just little old Caramel, well … And not just with Polly Whipmire, either. Oh no, she was the least of it. You see, Polly had neighbours, and the neighbours had children. The Freemans. Torturers, they were. Once, on bonfire night, they … they—’
She stopped. Closed her eyes tight shut, as though the memory was a piece of sharp glass in her shoe.
‘Well, put it this way. I left the house that night with a tail and came back without one. And, of course, I was relieved when I heard the Freemans were moving abroad, to Thailand – my ancestral homeland, as it happens. But my sadness remained, every time I turned round and saw the space where my tail should have been.
‘Anyway, I could have coped with all that … I could have coped with anything if I had been with …’
She stopped for a second, took a deep breath, and carried on. ‘As I was saying, the day I lost my tail I vowed to get my revenge on them, the humans, all humans, especially children. So I remembered one of those stories I was telling you about, passed down from my ancestors in Old Siam. The story of the cat who became a king. A king who terrorized the humans who had cooked his parents. Well, not many children are scared of kings these days … but a head teacher? That was perfect, especially as I lived with someone who had just become one!’
Barney’s tail rubbed up against the door. He had to get out of the room before Miss Whipmire finished her story (we shall keep calling her Miss Whipmire, by the way, because calling her by her cat name, Caramel, makes you think of a nice, soothing, sweet and sugary sort of taste, which isn’t really appropriate). But how could Barney escape? The door was locked. The window was closed, and too high to reach, anyway. It was hopeless.
Please don’t hurt me.
Miss Whipmire didn’t listen to him. She just stood up and walked out from behind her desk as upright and perfectly postured as a ballet dancer, taking careful steps in Barney’s direction.
‘So I waited until she had a bad day in her new demanding job. I didn’t have to wait long. And I knew what to do. I knew I had to make my life look very, very easy. So I stretched out on the rug by the fire, and eventually it came. The wish. And I thought of what the humans had taken from me and I wished right back, thinking of how I could make everything right again.’
Barney could hear pupils out on the playing fields getting ready for the first rugby match of the day. For once he wished he could be out there among them. ‘But I was never cruel to any cat,’ Barney miaowed.
‘You are a human, no matter what you look like,’ Miss Whipmire said in a voice as cold as morning frost. ‘And to a human a cat is just a cat, and an ant is just an ant, and a tree is just a tree. So I’m just like you: I judge the cake on a single slice. You are a human boy, and so you deserve punishment, like all the other human boys.’
‘But why me in particular? You’ve always picked on me – why?’
‘Oh, you want a motive, how sweet. How very human. Well, I can give you one if that will make you happy. I remember things. I remember being a young cat and chased by a King Charles spaniel in the park. I remember a vile little freckle-faced boy laughing and not even bothering to call for his dog. There. What about that?’
Barney pictured the scene. ‘But I wasn’t laughing at the cat … I mean, you … I was laughing at Guster, my dog. And I was laughing because I knew he couldn’t catch you. He’s only a little spaniel. He’s never caught a cat in his life. He wasn’t going to hurt …’
But even as he was saying this, in feeble, weak miaows, he was thinking of Guster’s giant face looking down at him this morning, a face that had been ready to kill. He hadn’t looked like such a ‘little spaniel’ then.
‘I’m sorry,’ Barney pleaded.
‘Oh, you will be. Later, when I take you home and get working on my new pen pot …’
Barney could hear footsteps walk by in the corridor outside the door. The familiar clip-clop of the high heels worn by the school secretary, whose name Barney didn’t know.
Help! he called. Help! Help!
He was desperate. But maybe there were other former cats working at the school, ones that weren’t evil. And, anyway, even if there weren’t, maybe people would worry about a miaowing cat behind a shut door. Miss Whipmire certainly seemed to think so.
‘Sssh!’ she said in one of her shout whispers, crouching with her arms out wide in case Barney tried to run. ‘Silence!’
Help! Help!
Her hands reached towards him, her nails as long as claws.
Outside, the footsteps stopped. Not faded. Stopped.
This concerned Miss Whipmire.
And then it came. A gentle knock on the door, no louder than a rat’s head-butt.
Miss Whipmire sighed, furious. ‘Yes?’ Then she placed a finger to her lips, telling Barney to be silent. But Barney knew this might be his last chance.
Help! he miaowed as loud as he possibly could, and it came out as a kind of distressed aghow sound which would be hard for a cat-loving human to ignore.
‘It’s just … I heard what sounded like a cat,’ said the secretary from beyond the closed door.
Miss Whipmire rolled her eyes. Then gave in. She opened the door.
‘No, Daphne, you didn’t hear a cat,’ she snapped. ‘Now, please disappear and do some secretary-ing. Go. Type something.’
Barney didn’t wait another second. The door wasn’t going to be open long, after all. So he ran, or started to run.
But Miss Whipmire must have seen him and, with some of her Siamese cat reflexes still intact, quickly opened the door wider, squashing Barney’s middle against a filing cabinet.
‘I … can’t … breathe,’ Barney gasped.
‘What was that noise?’ asked Daphne, trying to peer inside Miss Wh
ipmire’s office.
‘It’s the heating system,’ Miss Whipmire lied. ‘It’s playing up. Something’s gone wrong with the pipes. I’ve called a man about it. Now, if that’s all …’
‘Yes,’ said Daphne. ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you.’
Barney felt hope disappear. The air arrived back in his lungs with the close of the door. While he was still coughing he felt Miss Whipmire’s long nails dig into the back of his neck and lift him high into the air.
‘Now, have a little look out of the window,’ she told Barney with fake tenderness. ‘It will be the last time you’ll see daylight, I should imagine.’
Barney caught a glimpse of boys playing rugby, and the trees beyond lining the road. Cars swooshing by. Still, white clouds teasing him like a happy dream.
A second later it was all gone. He was dropped, landing on a cold metal surface next to an old paper file. He looked up and saw Miss Whipmire’s face staring down at him, smiling as if she were doing him a favour. ‘We all end up in the dark sooner or later,’ she said. Then she pushed the drawer of the filing cabinet shut, leaving Barney in the darkest blackness he’d ever known.
Inside the Filing Cabinet
SO, THIS WAS a great start to being twelve. Turning into a cat and getting locked inside his psychotic, post-feline head teacher’s filing cabinet.
‘Let me out!’
Then her voice, as cold and hard as the metal that contained him. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, but really you should thank me. You see, I’m doing what I’m paid to do. I’m educating you. I’m giving a lesson in horror, and teaching you that you should really be careful what you wish for. Oh, and that thing about cats having nine lives, well, that’s a lie. As you’ll find out when I take you home with me.’
‘But my mum! It’s not fair on her. My dad’s already missing. If I go missing too she’ll have nobody.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ said Miss Whipmire. ‘You’re a cat. So even if I set you free – which, by the way, won’t happen – your mum won’t ever know it’s you, will she? And you won’t ever be able to change back because you are too weak.’
‘Wait … I can change back?’ Barney asked.
‘No, imbecile. Did you not hear me?’
‘Yes, I did, but you said I couldn’t change back because I was weak. Which means if I was strong enough, I could—’
‘It doesn’t matter if you live to a hundred (which you won’t, being a cat) – you will NEVER be strong enough.’
Barney had no idea what she was talking about, although he was beginning to sense Miss Whipmire’s motives weren’t solely to do with revenge. ‘But you’re saying there is a way to turn back?’
He could feel her smile, even though he couldn’t see it. ‘Unfortunately for you, that’s very unlikely. You see, the cat who turned into you is going to be happier being you than you ever were. You’ve swapped bodies with a cat who hates humans just as much as me, Barney Willow. There is no return ticket for you.’
Barney wondered if she was lying. Or if there really was no way back to being human.
‘You see,’ continued Miss Whipmire, ‘you’ve missed your opportunity. Because that is what life is. A grand opportunity. And opportunities are like cat flaps. They don’t stay open for ever … But don’t worry too much about it. The dead don’t have regrets.’
Miss Whipmire seemed amused by these words.
Barney had no choice but to stay there, standing on paperclips, with nothing except the darkness and the smell of stationery and the petrifying sound of a cat’s laugh coming from a human mouth.
After that there was silence.
Barney waited and waited, trying to think of a plan.
None came.
Even when he heard Miss Whipmire leave the room for a while, Barney didn’t know what he could do. There was no way he could push open a locked drawer from the inside, and with paws instead of fingers he wouldn’t have much hope trying to pick a lock with paperclips.
So he miaowed, continuously, until he was exhausted, until the darkness made his eyes so heavy he could hardly keep them open. But he kept on miaowing, in a state which was somewhere between napping and awake as he heard, very faintly, his long-lost father’s voice rising from a dream.
It will be all right, it will be all right, it will be all right …
The Heroic Return of the Author
HELLO. ONLY ME. The author again. I’ve been trying to keep out of the way, letting the story get on by itself (you’ve got to let the little darlings go eventually), and it’s been doing all right, I think. Only a couple of little slips, but it’s back on its feet. Anyway, I just thought now was the right time to point out number seven. Remember? From the first chapter? That list I gave you. Well, I thought now would be the time to spell it out.
CROSS-SPECIES TWO-WAY METAMORPHOSIS.
That is to say, the ability a cat has to turn into a human, and to turn that human into the cat they once were. So, for example, Caramel became Miss Whipmire and the original Miss Whipmire became Caramel – and then, erm, a pen pot.
Oh, but wait, you’re thinking. (No, you are, honestly.) If cats could turn into humans they’d say so.
Well, here’s a question. If someone came up to you and said they used to be a cat, would you believe them? Would you say, ‘Oh, that’s nice. You used to be a cat, I used to hate mushrooms, wow, let’s be friends’?
I doubt it.
You would say, ‘No, you didn’t used to be a cat because that’s impossible. You are obviously a little bit mad and I think I’d better go home now. Bye-bye.’
You might not actually say it out loud. You look too nice and polite for that. But that’s what you’d be thinking.
So, cats who are now humans and have mentioned it haven’t been believed. And those who don’t mention it haven’t been asked. And as for those humans who have turned into cats, well, they often tell people about it but no one’s listening. It’s just one lonely miaow after another.
OK, that’s me done. I’m out of here. I’m dropping the story back off at school and letting it fend for itself. Go on, story, off you go.
Be good.
History
RISSA FAIRWEATHER LIKED HISTORY.
It wasn’t her favourite subject. Her favourite subject was science. Well, not all science. Just the stuff about what makes stars glimmer and the stuff which tells you that every time you look up at the night sky you are looking at the past, at stars that have actually existed since before the dinosaurs, before history itself.
But history was interesting too. As interesting as art and music, her other favourites. And the Vikings, whom Mr Crust was talking about today, were particularly good fun – with their long-boats and axes and outdoor toilets and bloody violence.
But today she wasn’t paying any attention. Instead she just kept thinking about the empty chair next to her and the same recurring questions. Why had Barney run off like that? And why hadn’t he said a word when she’d walked up the street with him?
Maybe he was sad about his dad. She remembered when Barney had found out his dad had gone missing. He had been quiet for weeks then. Far quieter than when his parents had got divorced, because there were so many uncertainties. Had his dad run away? Been kidnapped? Died in a ditch where no one could find him?
These were questions which could probably grow and grow inside a boy’s head until they stopped words altogether. And Barney, in those last few months at primary school, had been very quiet indeed.
Rissa wasn’t at all convinced that Barney was over it, even now.
‘Rissa, am I boring you?’
For a moment Rissa stopped thinking about Barney’s possible troubles and looked up to see Mr Crust’s wrinkled face staring straight at her.
‘No, sir,’ she said.
‘Good, well, perhaps you’d like to tell us about runestones, then?’
‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering—’
The class giggled but Rissa didn’t care.
> Rissa’s mum always said: ‘No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your consent.’ Which meant that you can’t control what people said about you, but you can control how you feel about what they said. Oh, and if Rissa was ever really stressed, she followed her dad’s advice and spoke the magic calming word under her breath.
Marmalade.
And Rissa had repeated all this to Barney, many times, but she knew he wasn’t like her. She could always feel his shame whenever Gavin called him ‘Weeping Willow’, after the time he found Barney wiping away a tear on his missing dad’s birthday.
But Rissa knew she had a lot to be thankful for, and that helped. She knew that however tough the day turned out to be, she would go home to her parents and they would cheer her up by singing songs (her dad was very good at playing the acoustic guitar) and, on clear nights, talk about the constellations that were seen through her telescope. Or, failing that, they would eat home-made chilli bean burgers and hand-cut chips, followed by one of her mum’s delicious carrot cakes made with a dollop of her special ingredient – marmalade.
That was all you needed to be happy.
Food. Music. A clear night sky and a telescope.
Plus love.
Lots and lots of love.
Meanwhile Mr Crust was still talking:
‘… Runestones are usually stones that were put into the ground by Vikings to remember important battles or men who had died. They have mainly been found in Scandinavia, but there have been some located in the British Isles, such as Northumbria and the Isle of Man. And a picture of the battles or dead men would be engraved onto the stone. But sometimes these “runic inscriptions”, as they are called, would be a picture of an animal. Horses were commonly depicted as they often died in battles with their owners. But there were other animals too. There are, for instance, a surprising number of runestones dedicated to cats. And you might think this is sweet, but the strange thing is that, although cats were sometimes kept by Vikings to kill rodents, they weren’t really pets. So it remains a complete mystery to historians and archaeologists …’