by Matt Haig
‘I read your message,’ she said, confirming his hope. ‘The one you made out of the crumbs. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re Barney.’
Yes, said Barney, but, of course, reading a message made out of carrot cake didn’t mean his friend could actually understand cat. But just in case, he added: And this is my dad.
Rissa crouched down to get as close to his level as she could. ‘Can you nod your head?’
Barney nodded.
‘And shake it?’
He did so.
She smiled, but her forehead said she was still worried. ‘OK. Nod for yes, shake for no. Got it?’
Barney nodded.
‘I’m going to tell your mum, OK?’
Barney shook his head. It wasn’t OK.
‘Why? Because of that other Barney?’
Barney nodded. So did his dad.
‘Who is that other Barney …? Is he a cat?’
Another nod.
‘Is he dangerous?’
Cats can nod, but can’t shrug their shoulders. She seemed to understand.
Rissa thought. ‘But if he’s even possibly dangerous we’ve got to tell your mum, haven’t we?’
Nod.
‘And she’s not going to understand you, is she?’
Shake. She was right, Barney realized. There probably wasn’t any other way.
So Rissa inhaled, hoping to find courage floating on the cool morning air, then stood up to ring the doorbell.
Barney’s mum answered.
Oh, Elaine, I do miss you sometimes, said Barney’s dad, unheard far below her.
‘Mrs Willow,’ said Rissa. ‘Listen, I have something to tell you.’ She picked up Barney. ‘This is your son.’
But Barney’s mum couldn’t believe this. She really physically couldn’t. You see, the space in your brain for ‘things you are prepared to believe in’ gets smaller as you get older. Each year the area shrinks, like the age rings of a tree trunk in reverse, and Barney’s mum was now forty-three years old, which left her with quite a small circle of believability.
‘I’m sorry, Rissa,’ she said, looking the wrong kind of concerned, ‘but I really think you might need to see a doctor.’
Rissa stayed where she was. ‘Please can I come inside? I think I can prove it.’
Barney’s mum shook her head. ‘Not with the cats, I’m afraid – Guster hates them. But you can come in on your own.’
Rissa kept holding Barney. ‘OK, I’ll do it here … Barney, are you a cat?’
Barney saw Rissa was looking at him, her eyebrows pleading for him to respond. Barney wasn’t concentrating, though. His whiskers were curling, sensing a danger his brain couldn’t translate.
‘Go on, son,’ said his dad, miaowing up from below. ‘Nod your head.’
So Barney did. He nodded.
‘There! Did you see—?’
Rissa stopped, because right behind Barney’s mum she saw Barney. Fake Barney. Maurice – although, of course, Rissa didn’t know that was his name.
‘Hello, Rissa,’ he said a little timidly.
‘Don’t pretend you know me,’ she said, angrier than Barney had ever heard her. ‘Anyway, who are you? And why are you doing this?’ She almost spat the words.
Then Barney realized what his whiskers were trying to tell him:
A car.
A car slowing down.
A car slowing down and parking near the house, the low mumbling vibration of its engine sounding like an ominous purr.
Barney knew that sound, even though he wasn’t a car person. Or a car cat.
He had heard it up close. Really close.
And the noise sent him right back to last night. In the dark, trapped. It was Miss Whipmire’s car.
As Rissa and his mum continued to talk, Barney waited in his best friend’s arms. He kept expecting his head teacher to appear. But she didn’t.
‘Dad,’ he said. ‘I think something’s going on …’
And just at that moment Barney felt a massive jolt as the world spun sideways. Something had knocked Rissa, he realized, just as he saw his own back walking away from him.
‘Hey!’ shouted Rissa.
‘Maurice,’ Barney wailed. ‘Where are you going?’
Then his mum stormed out onto the road. ‘Barney! What on earth are you—?’
She stopped, noticing something. Someone.
‘She’s just seen Miss Whipmire,’ Barney miaowed down to his dad.
‘Miss Whipmire?’
‘Yes. She’s a former cat. A really evil Siamese cat.’
‘Siamese …?’
‘Yes. And she wants to kill me. She’s evil. I mean, deeply evil.’
Barney noticed his dad was getting further away from him, even though he was standing in the same spot.
No! Barney shouted, realizing Rissa was carrying him out onto the pavement. He shook his head about twenty times in three seconds but Rissa wasn’t looking.
The next thing he knew, he could see her.
Miss Whipmire, Caramel herself, stepping out of her car while telling Maurice, ‘Come to me, my darling boy.’
She spoke softly, tenderly, and then, when she turned to see Rissa and Barney, her face forced itself into a smile.
‘Oh, hello, Risso.’
‘It’s Rissa, actually, miss.’
Miss Whipmire shrugged. ‘A rose by another name would still prick your fingers. And, oh, you’ve found my cat. I’ve been looking for him everywhere.’
‘This isn’t your cat.’
‘What’s going on here?’ This was Barney’s mum, now out on the pavement. ‘Oh, hello again, Miss Whipmire. What are you doing here?’
Miss Whipmire thought for a moment, surveying the street and its old semi-detached houses. A gaggle of schoolgirls in Blandford High uniforms had just appeared round the corner. A cat sat on a brick wall opposite. It was the ginger cat that hung round the school. The one that had chased Rissa and Barney.
Pumpkin.
Rissa recognized him too, because her hand suddenly tightened fearfully around Barney’s middle.
‘Mrs Willow,’ said Miss Whipmire. ‘I would really like to speak with you indoors.’
Barney’s mum looked at who she thought was her son, standing strangely close to his head teacher. ‘Barney? What’s—?’
‘Mum, just go inside. Miss Whipmire wants to talk with you.’
Mum, he’s not your son!
‘OK. I will. But I must say I’m finding this all very odd.’
Don’t listen to him! He’s a cat called Maurice!
‘Mrs Willow,’ said Rissa, ‘don’t do as they say. They might be dangerous.’
Yes! Listen to her!
Barney’s mum gave Rissa another flustered look.
Miss Whipmire smiled. ‘You just stay there, Rissa,’ she said, fast as a mousetrap.
Rissa didn’t know what was best. She looked down at Barney, who was shaking his head.
Follow, he miaowed. Ignore her.
And as he was carried forward he looked down at the doorstep, and all around, but there was nothing but an empty path and uninhabited flower beds. His dad was nowhere to be seen.
Human Things
TWO THINGS HAPPENED very quickly once they were inside the kitchen.
First thing:
Miss Whipmire dug her long unvarnished nails into Rissa’s face while simultaneously yanking Barney from her grip.
Second thing:
Miss Whipmire waggled her thumb in the air as she warned Rissa and Barney’s mum away.
‘It’s incredible,’ she said, her voice making Barney think of bubbling cauldrons full of frogs. ‘Humans have had opposable thumbs for over three million years, and yet hardly any of you know how to do the Fatal Thumb Death Press. The humans of Thailand invented it. Or Old Siam, I should say, home of my ancestors … One touch in the right part of the neck and we’ve a dead cat on our hands. Well, that would be true if this really was a cat.’
Barney stared at the fatal thu
mb. Then at Rissa and his mum, standing on the other side of the kitchen table.
Breakfast was still out.
He saw his mum’s bowl of tasteless diet cardboard flakes (as he always called them), and then another bowl – full of milk but no cereal, with no spoon.
Only two days ago he’d been sitting at this table, eating out of that bowl, believing he had a pretty miserable existence. He’d been stupid.
Yes, school hadn’t been much fun recently. But he had a warm home, full of nice human things, and a mum who loved him and the best best friend who’d ever lived. Life wasn’t ever one ingredient. It was several. And some flavours were bad and some were good, but love was the strongest of all. If you were loved, you had everything. It was the milk that made the cereal of life worth tasting.
Meanwhile, as these near-death thoughts were bursting open in Barney’s brain, Rissa was now staring worriedly over the table. ‘Just let him go.’
Barney could see his mum thinking. Finally the truth had arrived, lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, my goodness! Rissa, you were right, weren’t you?’
‘Afraid so.’
Miss Whipmire laughed. ‘Yes. Everything you see, Mrs Willow, is an illusion. For instance, you see a human holding a cat. When in reality it is a cat holding a human.’
Barney saw his mum’s eyes switch to anger, the way they sometimes used to when she had argued with his dad. Only Barney had never seen her look quite this cross.
‘Put down my son, you evil …’ Barney’s mum was going to say ‘woman’, then ‘cat’, but eventually went for ‘thing’.
‘No,’ Miss Whipmire refused. ‘That’s not going to happen. You see, everything is the opposite of normal from now on. So, the cat – that’s me – and her son – that’s my darling Maurice, who is waiting for me in the car – are going to stay together. Yes. We are going to run away and be happy after years of cruel separation.’
‘But wait,’ said Rissa. ‘We weren’t—’
‘Now,’ interrupted Miss Whipmire sharply. ‘You humans can talk all you want but nothing will change a thing. Just like a cat’s miaows never change a thing. So I suggest you listen, just for once, to what this cat has to say.’
Rissa wasn’t to be silenced. ‘But we didn’t separate you two.’
Miss Whipmire viewed her coldly. ‘No, Polly Whipmire did. The real one. But she’s currently busy in her new office job.’
‘What office job?’ asked Rissa, stalling for time.
‘Pen pot …’ Miss Whipmire hissed. And just in case they didn’t understand: ‘She’s dead.’ Now she had even silenced Rissa. ‘Anyhow, she didn’t have children of her own so I needed to find one, grind him down, then get my son to follow him …’
As Barney listened he felt a weird prickling sensation on his skin.
‘At first I told him he should try turning into Gavin Needle,’ Miss Whipmire continued, ‘as that was the boy he lived with. But, although Gavin is quite an unhappy child, he never had the imagination to be anything other than what he is: a bully. And an idiot. So, in my new job, I went to the English teacher, Mr Waffler, and asked him to single out the boys in the school who had the best imaginations. In his sublime do-goody ignorance he gave me a list and I had a look. Barney was on that list, very near the top – even though he had only just joined the school, Mr Waffler had already singled him out as extremely imaginative.
I knew he was the boy who had once laughed when his dog ran after me, and I thought it would be a sweet punishment if I chose him as the human my darling Maurice would follow. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was that I had met his father in a dark alley one night shortly before I transformed. He was a cat. A silver cat. He told me he was really a human, I fought him out of disgust, took his eye. But, anyway, the name lodged in my mind somewhere. Neil Willow. And I knew that weak-minded fathers make weak-minded sons as apples don’t fall far from trees. So I decided Barney was an easy target …’
Barney’s mum was trembling and speechless. It was too much for her to absorb. But Miss Whipmire’s cruel words carried on. ‘All I had to do was make him as miserable as possible and, being a head teacher, that was pretty easy. Then I sent Pumpkin to take a message to my son at the Needles’ house and it was arranged. I knew, sooner or later, it would happen. And, when Barney was in my office staring at my cat calendar, I planted the idea in his brain. To be a cat, I told him, would really be the best thing he could imagine … And now my son and I are human, and no one will come and separate us.’
Barney’s mum was shaking with fear and anger. ‘But I’m a mother too. And that’s my son. What do you need him for? You could just … leave him here. And go. We won’t stop you.’
‘A nice idea,’ said Miss Whipmire, pretending it really was, ‘but I’m going to take him just in case. Oh, and if you contact the police or go to the papers he’ll be gone …’
Barney’s mum was desperate as her son started to be carried away. ‘Please! No!’
Miss Whipmire tutted. ‘I wouldn’t cry too much for him. After all, he obviously wasn’t happy being your son. Or he wouldn’t still be a cat.’
Miss Whipmire walked backwards, holding her thumb up like a weapon, as Barney saw his kitchen, his hallway, his mum, his best friend – his wonderful best friend – slipping away like a dream he didn’t want to end.
The Wind in a Wish’s Sails
GUSTER, UPSTAIRS IN Barney’s bedroom, was confused. The one-eyed cat kept telling him that he was, in fact, the man who used to live here. Neil Willow. Barney’s dad.
But at least he wasn’t barking any more. He was listening. And the more he listened, the more things started to make sense.
For instance, it had been most peculiar to see that black and white cat in Barney’s bed. Even more peculiar, hours before that, to watch Barney climb in through the window of the downstairs toilet and stay there until morning. Why had he been, in the middle of the night, somewhere else? Unless he had been someone else. Someone who didn’t live here in the first place.
‘Guster, I’m telling you the truth.’
And Guster knew it, as sure as the eye that stared at him was green. ‘Oh, the fool I’ve been. Such a blot upon my pride!’
Then they heard the commotion downstairs. Barney being carried into the hallway, his mum and Rissa begging Miss Whipmire to let him stay.
‘We have to stop her!’ said Guster. ‘In the name of the king, we have to do something!’
So Guster charged hastily out of the room and down the stairs, just in time to catch Miss Whipmire opening the door.
He caught Barney’s eye. ‘I’m sorry, my liege.’ Then he sank his teeth into Miss Whipmire’s leg as hard as he could.
‘Get off mee–owwww!’
But Guster wouldn’t let go, not with Barney cheering him on from over Miss Whipmire’s shoulder. And soon Rissa and Barney’s mum were there too, grabbing her arm and straining to keep her thumb away from Barney’s neck. Miss Whipmire called to Pumpkin on the other side of the pavement, who beckoned with his tail to Lyka further up the street, who beckoned with her tail to the other swipers hiding in doorways and behind bins.
‘Now!’
Barney’s dad ran out of the front door into the street, where fifty curtains were twitching all at the same time as the residents of Dullard Street wondered why so many cats had suddenly appeared as if from nowhere.
Barney’s dad stood right in the middle of the road, and in the scariest cat voice he could manage he declared:
‘I am the Terrorcat! If any of you feeble felines step one paw closer I will unleash terror! Big … terror! So stay where you are!’
The cats, about twenty of them, did as he said.
Not a paw forward, not a paw back.
Then Maurice got out of the car to help his mum.
‘Here, Barney,’ said Sheila, Mocha’s owner, the nice but nosy lady who lived at number 33. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m not Barney,’ he said, and started running
to help his mum.
Meanwhile, amid all this mayhem, as Guster kept biting, as Rissa and his mum kept pulling, the real Barney was closing his eyes.
I am not a cat.
I am Barney Willow.
And being Barney Willow is OK. More than OK. It’s good.
Miss Whipmire is just a bitter, spiteful cat with a grudge …
Gavin Needle is just a stupid, frightened bully who cuddles donkeys …
Mum and Dad aren’t together but that’s not my fault …
I am lucky to have them.
I am lucky to have Rissa.
And, OK, I am not good at rugby.
I’m quite short and freckly and go to a horrible school, but I know the truth deep inside.
I am lucky to be me.
And I always was.
I just didn’t realize it.
‘Stay in the car!’ Miss Whipmire’s scream broke into Barney’s thoughts. She was shouting at her son. ‘I can handle this! Stay in the car! Don’t get close to him! You’re too weak! Don’t let him make eye contact!’
Barney turned, saw the face that should be his, then gazed into his own human eyes.
‘Maurice,’ Barney said, ‘if you change back, it will be OK. You won’t have to return to the Needles. You could live with us. Guster would understand. I promise.’
‘I would indeed!’ confirmed Guster with a quick yap before chomping again on Miss Whipmire’s leg.
Barney thought. ‘Or if you really wanted to live with your mum, you could. No one would stop you.’
This in particular almost made Miss Whipmire combust with fury. ‘Don’t listen to them. You stay being a human. We’ll be humans together. To be a cat is to be nothing! As a human you could live seven times as long, buy your own food in supermarkets, and never be separated from me! The humans have the best of this world … not the cats! And humans are all vile and ungrateful things, so they’ve got no right to everything they have.’
Maurice thought. He’d never been the brightest of cats, but strong thoughts can shine lights in even the dimmest of brains sometimes.
And this was the thought Maurice was thinking: