Ghost Cats of the South

by Randy Russell

  The bed was made. The spiky cat was curled on it, near the foot of a lace coverlet. She meowed once and waited. An antique doll lay on a down-stuffed pillow at the head of the bed. DeeAnna was drawn to it. She didn’t see the little girl lying in bed next to her doll.

  David did. He saw the girl as plain as day. She wore a long white gown that covered her legs and feet. Her hands were crossed on her chest. Her face was yellow and splotched. The splotches looked like leeches to David. They were open sores filled with dried blood. Downward smears of fresh blood were at both corners of her closed mouth. Her lips were blue. The little girl’s eyes were swollen shut. Her hair rested loose around her head in a halo of yellow. It had slipped free from her scalp some time ago.

  DeeAnna walked slowly toward the bed, mesmerized by the doll. She didn’t see the girl at all. As DeeAnna reached for the doll, David saw the little girl’s eyes open. Her eyes were black. Her eyes were empty holes in her stained and swollen face.

  David screamed like ice water had been dumped on him in a hot shower.

  He dropped his flashlight, and it broke. The spiky cat leapt off the bed and rushed out of the small chamber. David felt her dart by him like a blast of cold air.

  DeeAnna screamed when David did. She turned quickly around, shining her flashlight on him. His mouth was open, but he couldn’t speak. He tried to point behind DeeAnna.

  “You scared me!” she yelled at him, having caught her breath.

  DeeAnna turned her flashlight on the doll once more.

  “Let’s go,” David said quietly. His pulse hammered. He drew a deep breath.

  DeeAnna reached for the doll again.

  “Now!” he shouted.

  His voice echoed throughout the cave. He rushed forward and grabbed DeeAnna’s arm. He wanted the flashlight and soon had it, but not before DeeAnna snatched up the doll for her own.

  David kept the flashlight pointed toward the exit. His girlfriend’s free hand in his, he pulled her from the bedside. Struggling not to slip on the wet chamber floors, David and DeeAnna hurried through the caverns. Warm sunlight streamed inside the cave in a horizontal shaft at the opening to the outside world, the opening to the safety of heat.

  David dropped the flashlight and pushed DeeAnna outside ahead of him. She sat on the ice cooler, holding the doll in both hands, studying it.

  “What was that room?” she said. “It looked like a movie set.”

  David Hyatt knew what the room was. He knew exactly. He didn’t know whether or not he should tell DeeAnna.

  “We have to go back, David. We have to take pictures of that.”

  “I’m never going back,” he said.

  “Why, are you afraid of the cat?”

  “The cat’s not real. It was just something … something we saw. The cat’s not real.”

  “Okay, then. If you say so.” She made a face, then laughed.

  The little doll was real, and DeeAnna loved it. She’d never seen a doll this old. DeeAnna named her Sadie. Sadie’s head was wooden and delicately painted. Her face was as new as the day she had been made. She wore a wig of perfectly arranged human hair. Her body was made of cloth, with soft kid leather arms and hands. Her dress was thin muslin embroidered with silk in yellow scrolls and red flowers, the sleeves and hem bordered with ribbon. There wasn’t a worn spot or a tear anywhere.

  DeeAnna thought the doll might date to the War Between the States, that it might have been hidden in the cave by its original owner during Sherman’s March to the Sea.

  Sadie was older than that.

  The day was already hot, of course. It was July in Georgia. David struggled dragging the ice cooler back to the truck. He soaked his shirt through with sweat. Sweat ran down the backs of his legs inside his pants. DeeAnna walked casually behind, carrying her doll in both hands in front of her so she could look at it.

  “Did you do that, David? Did you put Sadie there for me, then make me find her myself? Was that your mother’s covers on the bed? You better go back and get them.”

  “No,” was all he said.

  David heard the spiky cat’s meow and they neared his truck. The cat was following them. DeeAnna didn’t seem to notice.

  “Did you think I was going to get in that bed with you, David Hyatt? For a doll?”

  “No.”

  “You just wanted me to have it, then? As a gift? Was it your grandmother’s, or your great-grandma’s? Is Sadie a member of your family, David?”

  “No.”

  He unlocked and opened the passenger door for DeeAnna. She climbed in with Sadie. He left the door open for her until he had the air conditioning running. Sweat poured from his forehead as he lifted the cooler into the back. He wedged the sleeping bags around it. David started the truck, turned the air conditioner on high, then got out to walk around and close DeeAnna’s door.

  She smiled up at him.

  When David was back in the driver’s seat, he noticed that DeeAnna didn’t look as if she were warm at all. His face was flushed. Hers wasn’t. He was covered in sweat. Her sleeveless cotton blouse was as crisp and fresh as when she’d put it on that morning, not a spot of dampness anywhere. David closed the driver’s door and drove away slowly on the rural lane. DeeAnna left the doll in her lap. She leaned forward and turned the air conditioner down to low, then leaned toward David and kissed him on the cheek.

  Her lips were cold.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I just love her. She’s Sadie now.”

  She rested her hand on his leg. It felt to David as if someone had set a can of cold beer there.

  He watched her carefully as he drove. DeeAnna looked only at her doll. Soon, she turned the air conditioning off altogether.

  Sweat filled David’s eyebrows. He rolled his window down. He was sweating through his shirt again. His back stuck to the seat.

  DeeAnna was singing some sort of soft lullaby to the doll in a high little girl’s voice. David couldn’t make out the words. He noticed DeeAnna’s legs had goose bumps.

  She put her hand on David’s shoulder. It felt like he had been touched with ice.

  “We better go home now,” she said.

  Suddenly, DeeAnna’s teeth were chattering. Her lips were pale. Her cheeks flushed red.

  Ice, he thought. The cat had looked spiky because she was coated with ice.

  “DeeAnna, listen to me,” he said sternly. “Did you touch the cat?”

  “She touched me, Daddy,” DeeAnna said. “She’s my kitty. I hug her when I want to. You gave her to me, Daddy.”

  David braked the pickup truck and brought it to a stop. He hopped out and ran around the front to DeeAnna’s side. It was the doll. He opened her door and grabbed the doll from her and in one move threw it behind him. DeeAnna started crying.

  He closed the door. As they drove away, DeeAnna seemed normal again. She stopped crying. She sat up and rubbed her arms, then her legs. She said that she was very, very cold.

  David turned the heater on full blast. The cab of the truck was an oven. Sweat drenched his face and neck. It was July in Georgia, and he had the heater on. The tops of his hands were wet. The steering wheel was slick under his palms. His clothes were plastered with sweat.

  “I’m freezing,” DeeAnna said. “I’m colder than the dead.”

  Bright sunshine bounced off the hood of the truck. The pavement was hot enough to melt.

  “You’re cold because you have a fever,” he said. “You need to go to bed, DeeAnna. You’ll be warm soon.”

  David looked at her one last time, trying to decide whether to speed up or slow down. A thin glaze of ice coated DeeAnna’s upper lip just under her nose. Her breath had frozen as it exited her mouth. Her nose was red.

  He stopped the Toyota pickup again and hurried around to her side. DeeAnna was bent far forward in the seat. She clutched her sides in both arms, her teeth chattering.

  David pulled her from the truck. He put his arm around her and forced her to walk. She felt like ice.

  DeeA
nna tried to stamp her feet when he told her to, but she couldn’t feel them. Her feet were numb.

  He brought her to the back of the truck, where he opened the tailgate and told her to sit there. David clambered onto the bed liner and opened one of the quilted sleeping bags. He helped DeeAnna into the bag and zipped it up to her chin. Her cheeks and nose were white. It looked like frostbite. Drops of his sweat soaked into the sleeping bag.

  David drove to the hospital.

  The attendants left DeeAnna in the sleeping bag and rushed her inside on a gurney. One of the wheels fluttered. David trotted behind. A nurse inside the door told him to stop and have a seat in the emergency room waiting area.

  Ten minutes later, a doctor came out and told David that DeeAnna was dead.

  “I need to call her folks,” David said, remembering how DeeAnna’s hair had looked when they wheeled her in. Her hair was matted and spiky. It had looked varnished, like the cat’s.

  “Did she fall in water?” the doctor asked.

  David Hyatt shook his head.

  “She died of hypothermia,” the doctor said. “Were you kids fooling around with a bathtub full of ice?”

  “I think she had a fever,” David said.

  But he wasn’t thinking about DeeAnna. He was thinking about the inner chamber in the caverns where a little girl with yellow hair had been quarantined long ago, before the War Between the States. It must have been a fever. A contagion. Her family had brought her bed in for her. They probably lit the room with candles. They must have brought her food and water. After all, they left the girl with her pet cat and her doll. It would have been summer. The limestone caverns would have been a cool respite from the cruel heat of Georgia in the summertime. The little girl was loved.

  That night many years later on a country road in Decatur County, Georgia, a few people in cars might have noticed a pair of cat’s eyes reflected in the headlights, a pair of glowing eyes moving along the roadside. They likely didn’t see the antique doll in the spiky cat’s mouth as she hurried through the stifling heat of July to return a cherished companion to its proper place within the cool limestone walls of a chamber far back in an uncharted area of Climax Caverns.

  The faithful cat, still unprepared to say goodbye to her charge, was doing everything she possibly could in the afterlife to keep the little girl cool and content.

  SYLVA, NORTH CAROLINA

  Cat Cookies

  All the kids in the mountain town of Sylva, North Carolina, knew the best place to go on Halloween. Wearing their costumes, they rode their bicycles from Main up Walnut or Spring, across Jackson to the Camden shortcut, then to winding Ridgeway Drive. They left before dark. Some years, it looked like a regular parade. Some years, it looked like a race.

  Small children on the backs of bicycles or riding on the handlebars held on tightly to their masks, their fairy princess wands, their construction-paper witches’ hats. They clutched orange plastic jack-o’-lanterns and decorated brown paper sacks to their chests.

  They were going to Laura Peasy’s place. Even when it rained on Halloween, they rode their bikes to Laura Peasy’s first. The children stopped at many other houses for trick or treat before the evening was through. But not until they were on their way back from Laura Peasy’s. Every fourth-grader knew you went to the best place first, before the treats ran out.

  No kid in Sylva wanted to arrive at Laura Peasy’s house on Halloween once she had turned out the lights and left nothing but a few leftover apples on the porch steps. No one wanted to be at Laura Peasy’s any other night, for that matter, after the lights were out. Her yard was full of cats, and the cats were scary in the dark.

  Some adults in Sylva dressed up in costumes for Halloween. Laura didn’t need to. She was a witch, and real witches dressed the way everyone else did. It’s been that way forever in the Smoky Mountains.

  Sylva is a picturesque county seat of about 2,500 people. The charming railroad town is nestled in a small valley among the rising, lush green hills of the Smoky Mountains. Elevations in heavily forested Jackson County rise dramatically from Sylva’s 2,050 feet to lofty perches at 6,450 feet. The Nantahala National Forest covers more than 28,000 acres of the county. The Jackson County Courthouse, with its large clock tower under a green copper dome, stands atop a hill at the west end of Main Street in Sylva, overlooking the small downtown of brick storefronts and shops and the railroad along Mill Street.

  Almost everyone in Sylva knew the number of steps up the hill to the courthouse. So did Laura Peasy. She counted them when she registered at the courthouse for citizenship. And she counted them going down again.

  Laura’s older sister, Olivia, fell in love with an American soldier stationed in England during World War II. They married. Laura moved with Olivia and her new husband to Sylva at the end of the war. The young soldier was a stonemason. The first job he undertook upon his return from war was to build a stone cottage in a small mountain cove off the ridge road overlooking his western North Carolina hometown.

  The stone house of Laura and the newlyweds had five rooms, including the bathroom. It had nine windows, two doors, and a stone fireplace. The fireplace was special. The soldier used his best stones and cleverly configured the letter V in the outside stonework just above the roofline. The V was for Victory. He laid it out in smooth stones and painted them white.

  For years, locals referred to the stone cottage as “Victory House,” but it’s not called that by many anymore. The white paint washed off the stones after the soldier died. He was buried in the front yard of the cottage, at his own request, under an arch of carefully cut stones he took from the ridge next to the house. He’d created similar arched monuments and headstones for Olivia and Laura as well.

  “You can see me from the front porch when my day comes,” he told his wife. “And I can see you.”

  During the early years following the war, Laura became the cook of the household. She was afraid of snakes and preferred staying indoors. The mountains around Sylva had more snakes than all of the British Isles combined, she was sure. With maybe India thrown in. She’d seen one the first day she moved there. She saw another in the creek. There were snakes by the wellhouse. They were everywhere.

  Laura became an excellent baker using the wood-burning oven, which she believed was more uniformly hot than electric ones. The bread and rolls, the cakes and pies, the cookies she placed in the iron oven baked evenly from all sides at once. Baked goods, especially breads, were best cooked in that manner.

  People traveling the ridge road while Laura was baking became hungry without quite knowing why. The smell of her baked goods filled the mountain air, hung close to the ground with the fog, circled the trees, drifted in fingers of subtle aroma across the road. The fingers tickled your nose, and your stomach, too.

  Animals smelled something cooking. The neighbors’ braying hounds kept the bears away. But stray cats looking for a handout were clever enough, or hungry enough, to slip by a few roaming dogs and find their way to Laura’s house. Laura adopted any cat that came along. Cats, she knew, kept the snakes away.

  When Olivia’s husband fell and crippled his back, Olivia took care of him. She also chopped firewood, maintained the garden and the small orchard, and did the laundry. Laura began to take her baked goods to town. She learned to drive the farm truck, the one with the missing passenger-side door. Before she drove the truck in the morning, Laura put one of the cats into the cab to search for snakes. Laura poked under the seats with a long stick. When she got the truck started, the cat trotted back to the stone porch, its job done for the day, at least until it had a mouse to catch.

  Laura bartered freshly baked loaves of bread at the two grocery stores for eggs and milk, flour and sugar. She sold cinnamon rolls, honey buns, fruit pies, and specialty cakes to the restaurants and the hotel for cash money. Her eagerly sought breads sold out the day she brought them in, usually before noon. Cheese bread was one of the favorites. No one was certain how she made it work. The homema
de bread tasted so lightly of cheese that you had to have another piece to be sure. She baked a cucumber bread, too. It sold out next.

  Still, it was her rose-and-orange bread that made Laura famous. She baked the bread one year as a Christmas treat, just to see if she could. Laura soon found she was making it year-round, as it quickly became the most desired bread in town. It sold for fifty cents more a loaf than the others. The bread baked reddish pink in the middle and was tinted toward orange at the outside edges.

  The recipe was Laura’s own. She got the idea from a cat that lived on her porch, an adopted stray. It was a light orange cat with a pink nose that looked exactly, Laura thought, like a rose. She wanted to make a bread those pastel colors exactly. Laura managed it with a mortar and pestle, a bit of orange zest in one dough, a quarter-drop of rose oil from the pharmacy in the other. And one rose petal for each loaf, like a nose for a cat.

  The bread tasted of orange and so faintly of rose that a single bite held in your mouth was said to taste exactly like a slice of summer. Some said it tasted like a kiss. No wedding reception in Sylva or anywhere else in Jackson County was considered complete without a tray of cut slices of Laura Peasy’s rose-and-orange bread. The secret was to make two separate doughs and fashion them in a bread pan just so. Of course, the oven had to be hot or the doughs would blend and come out tan.

  Laura bought baking pans at the hardware store and sold small loaves of bread individually to railway passengers in Sylva. They let her on the train at one end of town and dropped her off at the other. The trainmen loved her bread as much as anyone.

  She baked in that wood stove every morning, afternoon, and night. Even when she drove into town, a patch of fog riding in the passenger seat thanks to the missing door, the stove was kept hot.

  When Olivia died, Laura had her older sister buried in her proper place. Laura didn’t like looking at the three monuments, especially the one made for her. She allowed the arched stonework to become overgrown with rhododendron and thorny vines.