Come on, cat, I tell myself sternly. Don’t make things worse for the poor girl.
I open my eyes. The freezer lies open, a dark grave. I stand on two hind legs and peer into the depths.
It is empty.
Oooooooeeeee, goes the whine.
Where are you? I whisper. Something is very badly wrong. The whining in my head rises to a scream, and I row and claw my head. I want to run headfirst into a wall, just to make it stop.
‘Hey, cat,’ Lauren says, next to my ear. The screaming rises. Through it I can hear my breath, my heart chopping like an axe on a block.
‘Olivia,’ she says, ‘try not to freak out.’
What in heavens, I say. I’m going insane … Why aren’t you in the freezer?
‘I was never in there,’ she says.
I can feel her, somehow, the warm outline of her, or smell her maybe. Or maybe there’s no word yet invented for the sense I am using. I’m on the very knife-edge of losing my mind.
Lauren? I say. Where are you? What the eff is going on? Why can’t I see you? It feels – and I know this can’t be true, but it’s what it feels like, nevertheless – it feels like you’re inside me.
‘It’s the other way around, Olivia,’ she says. ‘You’re inside me.’ And now a horrible thing happens. My body seems to stutter and shift. Instead of my lovely tail and paws I feel for a moment that there are hungry pink starfish at the end of my limbs. My silky coat is gone, my eyes are small and weak …
What, I say, what … Let me go. None of this is happening. Let me go back into my nice crate …
‘Look at it,’ she says. ‘The thing you call a crate. The truth is right there. But you have to choose to see it.’
I look at the chest freezer, the open lid resting against the wall, the holes punched in the lid for air.
‘I left you a note,’ Lauren says. ‘But what kind of cat can read? What kind of cat can talk?’ The screeching rises again. OOooooeeeeoo.
I’m imagining this, I row. If only that gd noise would stop I could think …
‘One of us is imaginary,’ she says. ‘It’s not me.’
Go away! Stop it! Stop that noise!
‘Olivia,’ she says, ‘look at what you’re doing.’
My paw is outstretched, claws extended. It rakes across the side of the metal freezer, making a scream like terrible suffering. Eeeeeeeoooooeeeee, go my claws, screeching across the metal. The noise was me, all the time. But how can that be?
‘I’ve been trying to get your attention for such a long time,’ Lauren says.
The screeching of claws on steel rises. The world seems to flicker. Instead of my paw there is a hand with long dirty nails, dragging, dragging … eeeeeeeeeeeoooeeee. Claws on metal. Fingernails on metal, a voice whispers and I yow and scream but even that can’t rise above the screeching; it builds until it becomes a physical thing, a wall inside me that breaks with a terrible crack.
I come to with Lauren stroking my back. But somehow, once again, she’s doing it from the inside. I start to cry, little piteous mewlings like a kit.
‘Shhh,’ she says. ‘Let it out quietly, if you can.’
Leave me alone, I say. I curl up tightly. But it feels like she’s wrapped around me.
‘I can’t do that,’ she says. ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ She strokes me again. ‘The first time I tried to run,’ she says, ‘he took my feet. He broke them between two boards with a mallet. The second time I tried, you came out of my mind.
‘I was half way to the door when he took me by the hair. I knew I would rather die than go back into the freezer, so I made up my mind to do that. But instead, something else happened. I went away. I don’t know how. It was like my mind was a deep cave and I was pulled back into it. You walked out of the emptiness, and came to the front. I could see you, feel what you were doing. I could still hear what he was saying. But it was like watching TV. I wasn’t in our body. You were. You purred and sat in his lap and made him calm again. You were made from darkness, to save me.
No, I say. I remember being born. It wasn’t like that.
‘I know the story,’ Lauren says. ‘I can see your memories. Or what you think are your memories. You were in a ditch with your Mamacat …’
Yes, I say, relieved to hear something I recognise.
‘It never happened,’ Lauren says. ‘The mind is clever. It knows how to tell you something that you can accept, when life gets too hard. If a man who calls you kitten keeps you prisoner – why, your mind might tell you that you are a kitten. It might make up a story about a stormy night and how he saved you. But you weren’t born in the forest. You were born inside me.’
It was real, I say. It must be. My dead little kit sisters, the rain …
‘It’s real in a way,’ she says sadly. ‘There are dead kittens buried in the forest. Ted put them there.’
I think about the earth that clings to Ted’s boots, some nights when he comes in from the woods. The scent of bone on him. I can’t seem to get enough air, even when I open my mouth wide to breathe. Truth has weight. It leaves footprints in your mind. Lauren strokes me and murmurs until the blood stops pounding in my ears.
Why did you pretend to be in the freezer?
‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me,’ she says. ‘I had to find a way to show you that we’re one person.’
Oh, I say, helpless. I’m your psychological issue.
‘Don’t feel bad,’ she says. ‘Things got better after you came. He began to let you out regularly, feed you. You calm him. You’re his pet. You like the freezer. You feel safe in there. And the happier you made him, the kinder he was to both of us. There is no more hot water and vinegar. He sends me to sleep and you come forward.’
I help keep us here, I say. I care for him, I let him stroke us …
‘You made sure we survived,’ Lauren says. Warmth spreads throughout my mind. ‘I’m hugging you. Can you feel it?’
Yes, I say. The feeling is just like being enclosed in loving arms. We sit for a while, holding each other.
In the living room, Ted groans.
‘He’s coming,’ she says. ‘I have to go. I’ll try and come back soon.’
She touches me gently, comforting. ‘You opened the door between us, Olivia. It will be different now.’ And then she is gone.
I used to spend all my time wishing Ted would come home. Now all I want is for him to stay away.
I feel weird because even though it is such an awful situation, I love having Lauren around. She is fun to talk to. We talk or play or just sit together. It is really nice, like having one of the kits in my litter with me again. I suppose that’s what Lauren is. She can make it feel like she’s stroking me or hugging me, though it’s just in our mind. The music stops her from using our body. It’s like being tied up but not gagged, she says, and I shudder at her matter-of-fact tone, because she sounds so young, and no one should know how those things feel.
Tonight we are curled up together on the couch in the dark house. Outside, the trees spread fingers against the moonlight. The cord is a soft black, invisible against the night. Ted is passed out, the stone-dead kind of passed out, upstairs. We whisper to each other.
‘If I still had my feet we could run away,’ Lauren says. ‘Just run.’
Can you see me? I ask. I can’t see you. I wish I could. I want to know what you look like.
Ted has made sure that there are no reflective surfaces in the house.
‘I’m glad you can’t,’ she says. ‘Too much has been done to our body. I feel you, though. You’re warm – it’s nice, like someone is sitting by my side.’
I try not to think about the body, Lauren’s body, that she says we both live in. I kind of only half believe her. I can feel my fur, my whiskers, my tail. How can that not be real?
You know, there’s another one, I say. There are three of us. He’s called Night-time.
‘I think there are more than three,’ she says. ‘I hear them sometimes, when I’m very de
ep down. I try not to. I don’t like it when the little ones cry.’
Deep down?
‘There are other levels. I need to show you all that.’
Fear strokes me, a dark feather. I purr anxiously to make the feeling stop.
‘Don’t you think, Olivia,’ and I can hear the wet catch in her voice, ‘that it would be better if none of us had been born?’
No, I say. I think we’re lucky to have been born. And we’re luckier still to be alive. But I don’t know what being born or being alive means any more. What am I? It seems like everything I knew is wrong. I thought I saw the LORD, once. He spoke to me. Did that happen?
‘There are no gods except Ted’s gods,’ she says. ‘The ones he makes in the forest.’ The cold feather strokes on, up my tail, down my spine.
We won’t let that happen, I say. We are going to get out of here.
‘You keep saying that,’ she snaps. For a moment she sounds like the old Lauren, shrill and unkind. Then she softens again. ‘What will you do when we’re free? I’m going to wear a skirt and pink barrettes in my hair. He never lets me.’
I want to eat real fish. (Privately, to myself, I think, I will go and find my tabby love.) What about your family? I ask Lauren. Maybe you can find them.
After a pause she says, ‘I don’t want them to see me like this. It’s better if they keep thinking I’m dead.’
But where will you live?
‘Here, I guess.’ Her voice sounds like it doesn’t matter. ‘I can manage without Ted. I want to be alone.’
Everyone needs someone, Lauren, I say sternly. Even I know that. A person to stroke you and tell you nice things and get annoyed with you sometimes.
‘I have you.’
That’s true, I say, in surprise. I hadn’t thought. I tickle her strongly with my tail and she laughs. Luckily, I am an optimist and I think we’re going to need that.
Lauren sighs, the way she does when she’s about to say something I won’t like. ‘It has to be you,’ she says. ‘When the time comes. You know that, right, Olivia? You have to do it. I can’t use the body.’
Do what? But I know.
She doesn’t answer.
I won’t, I say. I can’t.
‘You have to,’ she says sadly. ‘Or Ted will put us under the ground like the other kittens.’
I think about all those little girls. They must have sung songs too, and had pink barrettes and played games. They must have had families and pets and ideas and they either liked swimming, or didn’t; maybe they were afraid of the dark; maybe they cried when they fell off their bikes. Maybe they were really good at math or art. They would have grown up to do other things – have jobs and dislike apples and get tired of their own children and go on long car rides and read books and paint pictures. Later they would have died in car wrecks or at home with their families or in a distant desert war. But that will never happen, now. They are not even stories with endings, those girls. They are just abandoned under the earth.
I say, I know where he keeps the big knife. He thinks no one knows, but I do.
She holds me tight. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and I feel her breath in my fur.
Suddenly I cannot bear to wait. I’ll do it now, today, I say. Enough.
I leap up onto the counter and stand on my hind legs. I open the cupboard. At first I can’t believe my senses. It’s not here, I say. But it must be. I nose in and search the dusty interior. But the knife is gone.
‘Oh.’ I hear the deep wound of disappointment in her voice and I would do anything to make it better. ‘Don’t worry about it, Olivia.’
I’ll find it, I tell her. I swear, I’ll find it …
She gives a little sound, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. But I feel her tears running hot through the fur on my cheeks.
What can I do to make it better? I whisper to her. I’ll do anything.
She sniffs. ‘You probably can’t,’ she says. ‘You would have to use the hands.’
I’ll try, I whisper even though the thought of it makes me ill.
The cupboard under the stairs is dusty and smells pleasantly of fatty engine oil. There are dusty rugs piled in the corner, a stack of old newspapers, part of a vacuum cleaner, boxes of nails, a beach parasol … My ears are wide and alert, my tail raised with expectation. This is just the kind of place I love. I sniff the delicious trickle of black oil that runs across the floor.
‘Focus, Olivia,’ Lauren says. ‘I hid it under those newspapers.’
I nose into them and I smell something that is not newspaper. Bland, smoother. Plastic.
‘It’s a cassette tape,’ Lauren says. ‘Pick it up. No, that won’t work, use your hands. You don’t really have paws.’ Her frustration rises. ‘You live in my body. We are a girl. Not a cat. You just have to realise that.’
I try to feel my hands. But I can’t. I know the shape of myself. I walk delicately balanced on four velvet paws. My tail is a lash or a question mark, depending on my mood. I have eyes as green as cocktail olives, and I am beautiful …
‘We don’t have time for all this, Olivia,’ Lauren says. ‘Just pick it up in your mouth. You can do that, right?’
Yes! I take the cassette gently in my jaws.
‘Let’s go to the mail slot, OK?’
OK!
On our way past the living room I see something that makes me stop for a second.
‘Is something wrong, Olivia?’ she asks.
Yes, I say. I mean … no.
‘Then hurry up!’
I nose the mail flap open. The metal is heavy and cold on my delicate velvet nose. The outside world smells of dawn frost. White light hits my eyes.
‘Toss the cassette out into the street,’ Lauren says. ‘As far as you can.’
I jerk my head and throw the cassette. I can’t see anything, but I hear it bounce.
‘It went into the bushes,’ Lauren whispers. I hear the dismay in her voice.
Sorry, I say. Sorry.
‘It was supposed to land on the sidewalk so someone could find it,’ Lauren says. She starts to cry. ‘How will anyone find it there? You wasted our chance.’
I feel terrible, Lauren, I say. I really do!
‘You aren’t trying,’ she says. ‘You don’t want us to get out. You like it here, being his prisoner.’
No! I say, agonised. I don’t, I want to help! It was an accident!
‘You have to take this seriously,’ she says. ‘Our lives depend on it, Olivia. You can’t go on pretending you don’t have hands. You have to use them …’
I know, I say. For the knife. I’ll practise. I won’t mess up again. I nose her and rub my head against her where I feel her in my mind. You rest now, I tell her. I’ll watch. We curl up on the burry orange rug and I purr. I feel her beside me, inside me. She gives a deep sigh and I feel her slip gently down and away into the peaceful dark. My tail is filled with worry. Lauren never likes to talk about after, when we’re free. I have a bad feeling she doesn’t care about being free. Worse – that she doesn’t want to be alive. But I will help her. I will keep us safe.
She has enough to deal with, so I didn’t mention it, but the weirdest thing just happened. As I walked to the front door just now, with the tape in my mouth, I glanced into the living room. And I swear that for a moment, this rug had changed from orange to blue.
Dee
Dee sits by the window looking out at the dark. She strokes the clawless tabby with a gentle hand and wishes she still smoked. ‘Pretty pebble,’ she whispers to herself. The cat looks up at her sharply. It’s late, Ted’s windows are all dark. But Dee fears sleep. The red birds will come flying into her head, with you-know-what in their beaks. Or it will be the other dream, where she sees her mother and father walking hand in hand across a desert under a blanket of stars, still looking, still calling their younger daughter’s name. Her memories cannot be kept at bay. They are nested inside one another. Like one of those Russian dolls, she thinks.
It’s getting h
arder and harder, the long waiting, the endless watching. Sometimes she wants to scream. Sometimes she wants to get a crowbar, go over there and break down the door – and finish it. Other times like now she just wants to get in her car and drive. Why does it fall to her, this terrible task? But this is how it is. Dee owes it to Lulu, and to all the others. She has seen the newspaper articles, blurry columns lit by the dirty glow of microfiche. Children go to that lake and don’t come back. Seven or eight, at least, over the years. Children without families or anyone to care. That’s why there hasn’t been much notice taken. Recently there have been no more disappearances. None since Lulu, in fact – and there might be a reason for that. Maybe he learned it was better to keep a child than risk taking them, over and over.
The sun is rising through milky cloud over the trees. Pink touches the sky in the east, like a finger.
Something stirs the air at the front of Ted’s house. A rectangular object hurtles out of the mail slot and sails through the air. It makes a crack as it bounces off two steps, then falls silently into the rhododendron bushes that spring up about the steps, glossy and green. The mail slot opens again with a faint creak.
Every one of Dee’s senses is alight. She starts for the door. Her heart is so loud in her ears that she can’t hear anything else. She forces herself to breathe deeply. Her hand is on her door handle, turning it, when she hears the familiar thunk, thunk, thunk of the locks.
Dee freezes for a moment. Then she goes to the window. Ted comes out onto the front steps. He looks slightly neater than usual. He seems to have combed his beard.
As Ted goes down the steps he glances to his left, stops and bends to pick something out of the glossy green leaves. Everything stops inside Dee. Too late. Whatever it was, he has found it.
Ted stands up. He has a little pinecone in his hand. He turns it this way and that, looking at it closely in the morning light.
The Last House on Needless Street Page 19