by Ray Garton
Something has gone very wrong.
He dropped the spoon and it clattered against the bowl, his eyes gaping as he looked around, trying to see if someone in either of the adjoining booths had said that. They were both empty.
Clyde reached up and rubbed his temples, closing his eyes tightly.
The voice had been in his head. Actually, it hadn’t been a voice so much as an inarticulate feeling that had passed through his head like a ghost, dragging those words — or, rather, the essence of those words — along with it.
He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes and sighed, long and slow, deciding he was just upset, just angry and hurt and . . . and maybe Janna was right and he needed some therapy after all.
Dipping the spoon back into the mush, he tried once again, scooping it into his mouth.
How could it have happened?
The mush spewed from his mouth, spattering over the brown table and, for a moment, his eyes crossed, making the entire coffee shop ooze together as if it were melting.
The waitress rushed to his side. “You all right, sir?”
“Juh-just, um, I was — ” He coughed and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“Choking?” she asked, bits of her red lipstick clinging to her large front teeth.
“Yes, yes, that’s all. I’m fine. And, uh, I’m very sorry, really.”
“No problem ’tall, I’ll just get a rag.” She was back in a moment, wiped up the mess, smiled readily and left him alone with his thoughts.
Clyde wasn’t sure he wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
He put a hand to the side of his head. He’d felt no pain, but there had been . . . something. In fact. it was very similar to the brief but shocking feeling he’d had when he’d fallen on that cat outside Janna’s apartment earlier.
But, of course . . . it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that. No, it . . . couldn’t.
He just sat there for a while, listening.
Voices talked quietly. Two men at the coffee counter laughed with one another. Syrupy music played quietly over the P.A. The cash register beeped and chirped. From the kitchen, the sounds of a sizzling grill, pots and pans —
He took if from one of the others . . . killed him dead.
Do you think he knows what he has?
How could he? Impossible, impossible!
Clyde made a “Hhmph!” sound in his throat, clenched his teeth, leaned his head forward and held it tightly between both palms, thinking to himself, That didn’t happen, I just need sleep or a vacation or maybe just a drink or —
He looked up and saw that one of the men at the coffee counter was smoking. Clyde had given it up a couple years ago because of the ulcer, but a cigarette sure sounded good now. On shaky knees, he went to the man and asked, more timidly than he was used to hearing himself speak, “Do you think I could bum a cigarette, sir?”
The older man smiled, a few teeth missing, and said, “Sure. Hell, take a couple.” He also handed over a book of matches.
Clyde thanked him and returned to his booth, immediately lighting up with trembling hands. As he was taking his first drag in a long time, he looked down at the book of matches on the table and saw what was on the front: an advertisement for a revival of the play Cats. He reached down and turned it over.
The cigarette was wonderful, glorious, an alcoholic’s first drink after a decade of tenuous and miserable sobriety, even though it wasn’t his usual brand. He smoked it slowly, wanting it to last, and decided he would go out and buy a pack of Benson and Hedges menthols as soon as he left the coffee shop. Sure, he’d pay for it with a fire in his gut, but he deserved the treat. Hell, after all this, he deserved a lot.
Clyde lifted the cup of tea to his lips and began to sip.
He doesn’t know what it is yet but it scares him. He’s frightened.
He dropped the cup and it shattered. Tea splashed everywhere. Clyde’s head jerked to his left toward the window at the booth, because this time it was much more powerful, as if it were closer, as if someone were shooting it into his ear, that horrible feeling of wordless words and incoherent feelings and there in the window, sitting on the sill, its long tail moving slowly and gracefully back and forth, its body still as stone, was a midnight-black cat staring at him with frigid orange eyes.
Clyde threw himself out of the booth so fast and so clumsily that his arm slid over the table and knocked everything on it to the floor in a sharp clatter of glass and silverware, all the while staring at that black cat in the window, staring as its tail waved this way and that in dream-like slow motion and as Clyde stumbled backward clutching his mushy napkin, his back slamming against the wall right next to the men’s room, mouth open wide, lips pulled back to bare his teeth as if in a silent scream.
The waitress rushed toward him blustering, “Mister, just what is wrong with you? Am I gonna have to ask you to leave, or what, now, huh?”
He pointed at the window with the soiled napkin, at the black cat that had not moved an inch . . . that just continued to stare directly at him, straight into his eyes. His lips moved rapidly over his teeth, producing-incoherent blubbering sounds.
The waitress stamped out his smoking cigarette, which was burning its way into the garish orange and gold carpet.
“Mister, you’re just gonna have to pay your bill and go, you hear me?”
Clyde forced himself to calm down, took deep breaths. Closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the cat staring at him —
He’s noticed me . . . sensed me . . . he senses all of us.
— and tried to close his mind to whatever ridiculous, frightening things were happening to it and . . . eventually he mustered a smile for the waitress, fumbled for his wallet and tried hard not to shake as he opened it.
“I-I’m really suh-sorry about all that, I’m . . . well, I’ve . . . I’m on some new medication, see, and sometimes it’s . . . well, that’s not important, is it?” he chuckled.
But she didn’t chuckle with him. And neither did any of the people staring at him from their booths and from the counter. They didn’t even smile.
He pulled out a ten. “Here. For the bill, the mess, and for you. Sorry again.” He started to leave but spotted that cat again in the corner of his eye, still there in the window. He turned to the waitress again. “Is, uh, there another way out of here, by any chance?”
The waitress stared at him as if she’d seen his face on a Post Office wall. “Other end of the restaurant. Past the register.”
“Thanks.”
He left quickly. He didn’t feel like the walk to Sherman Oaks, so he caught the bus — not something he usually did, because he never needed to . . . he just didn’t want to be out and about at the moment — and as soon as he got inside his house, he spun around and locked his door, not knowing why.
It was a Saturday afternoon and he had nothing to do . . . now that he wasn’t going to be spending any time with Janna. He took a beer from the refrigerator — the non-alcoholic kind, thanks to his ulcer, but he’d take a colostomy bag for one really good drink right now — then plopped down on the sofa in front of the television, grabbed the remote and began to flip through the stations, hoping to find something that would take his mind off of . . . whatever.
He had a pretty good-sized house for just one person. Two bedrooms, two baths, a spacious living room decorated by some highly paid skinny guy named Lucien, a yard kept up by a well-paid gardener and a very large picture window through which Clyde could admire his yard as he sat in his living room.
His thumb hit the remote button until he finally found one of the news channels. He left it there. They were talking about Bosnia again, as they had been for so long. He didn’t listen, just looked at the ugly pictures and realized that there were others far worse off than he.
Then the newscaster appeared and said, “Now, with our Pet’s Corner, brought to you by Tender Vittles, here’s Peter Carmen.”
The picture switched to another man, smiling and blond and oh so
well-kept. “For a long time, many have thought there are only two kinds of people in the world: dog lovers and cat lovers. And, for a long time, the dog lovers were in the majority. But that has been changing over the years. Cats have been growing steadily in popularity. But in the past year, that growth has taken a substantial jump. Right now, cats hold a twenty-two percent lead over dogs as the preferred pets among pet owners! That’s right, seventy-two percent of pet owners surveyed prefer cats over dogs. Sounds like an election, I know, but it’s more than that. With the growth of urban areas and the incredible population explosion, cats are easier to take care of because they are more independent and don’t need to be taken for walks through potentially dangerous streets. In fact, cats have actually come to be revered, not unlike the way they were revered by the ancient Egyptians, who actually worshipped them. They are revered now by more people than — ”
Clyde hit the remote so hard, he thought he might have broken it.
Suddenly, it was the Discovery Channel. Some National Geographic special. About the behavior of house cats.
He hit the button a few times until he found American Movie Classics. That was what he needed. Some old black and white movie with nothing but froth and fun to take his mind off.
“ — now sit back” the silver-haired host said with a smile, “and enjoy Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.”
“Son of a bitch!” Clyde shouted, hitting the OFF button.
The house was plunged into deafening silence. He decided that perhaps some music would help. He had a large collection of CDs and he went to pick something appropriate. He was going through them when it came.
We know you know and we can’t let you tell others about us.
He fell away from the CD shelf, grabbing at his head, and his leg hit the corner of the coffee table. He fell on his back, hard, and got up quickly, embarrassed by his clumsiness even though he was alone. When he stood, he was facing the window that looked out on the front yard.
There on the grass sat a puffy grey Manx, staring through the glass . . . directly at him.
We can’t let you live.
He dropped to the floor, holding his head and groaning through his teeth. He clutched his hair, pulling it a little.
Yeah, maybe he did need therapy . . . after all, he was sitting there pulling his own hair like a madman in an old movie. But he didn’t need therapy for this. This was something real!
He thought, It was the fall . . . something about the fall on those steps outside Janna’s . . . landing on the cat . . . the feeling that came afterward . . . something . . . something.
Clyde rolled over on his stomach and began to crawl like a soldier crawling over the jungle floor to avoid flying bullets. He crawled down the hall to the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind him. The only window in there was opaque. He wouldn’t be able to see anything through it . . . and nothing would be able to see him.
He put the toilet lid down and sat on it, buried his face in his hands and began to think frantically.
All those things he’d always thought about cats, ever since he was just a little boy, about cats looking like they were plotting and scheming, like they had something horrible in mind, something secret and evil that no one knew about or even suspected and something that was far more intelligent than the intelligence for which any of those smarmy cat lovers gave them credit . . .
. . . he started to think about that again. He also thought about the fall, about whatever it was that had passed through him, those whispering voices and that . . . thing, that living, throbbing, intelligent thing he’d felt oozing through him . . . and leaving bits and chunks of itself behind.
He sat there for a long time, thinking . . . thinking . . . and then he got up and went to the bedroom. He found the phonebook. He would find a therapist, just like Janna had suggested. He would make an appointment for Monday — even if he had to beg for it — and he would go. Until then, he would stay in the house . . . with all the curtains closed and all the doors and windows locked . . .
“You know, Mr. Trundle, a fear of cats is not uncommon,” Dr. Sharpe said. “In fact, it’s a phobia I’ve dealt with a number of times.”
He was a pleasant-looking, middle-aged man with greying reddish hair, a slight overbite and thick-lensed, wire-rimmed glasses.
“I don’t have a . . . a-a cat phobia,” Clyde said, fidgeting in the chair facing Sharpe’s desk. “I just don’t like them. Never have. But now . . . something’s happened, something that makes me . . . well, every time I see one of the damned things, I . . . I get these . . .”
“You get what, Clyde? Bad feelings? Fear? Anxiety? A shortness of breath, maybe?”
“No, no, it’s worse than that, it’s . . .” After a moment, Clyde explained what had happened on his way out of Janna’s apartment, the feeling he’d gotten when he fell on the cat. “And this feeling I get now, it’s like that! Every time I see a cat, I have these feelings like . . . oh, God, I know this sounds crazy, but it’s like I . . . hear their thoughts . . . moving through me . . . right through my mind . . . these thoughts that aren’t really thoughts but, well . . . more like feelings, but I can . . . understand them.”
Sharpe smiled ever so slightly and spoke softly and deliberately. “I think what you’re feeling, Clyde, is a sense of guilt. You fell on a cat that belonged to someone, that was someone’s pet, a pet someone loved, and now you feel guilty about that. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with — ”
Clyde shot forward and pounded a fist on the desk. “That’s not it! I don’t give a damn about that cat! It’s just one less sneaky cat in the world as far as I’m concerned. But now . . . listen to me, while I was driving over here, I passed a lot of cats on the sidewalks and in yards, you know, like you always do when you drive around? And you know what I heard in my head? What I felt? It was like, like . . . well, you know how when you’re at a party and you’re passing through the crowd and you just catch snatches of conversations, just pieces of sentences, a few words here and there? Well, that’s what it was like. I was just catching bits and pieces now and then, but they were hitting me from every direction and I-I . . . well, a couple of times, I nearly had a wreck! I nearly drove off the damned road!”
“And what were these bits and pieces, Clyde?”
“They were . . . well, I kept feeling . . . in my head, I was getting these . . . oh, for crying out loud, you’re just gonna think it’s crazy, or you’ll come up with some damned explanation for it, or worse, you’ll want to put me on some kind of medication!”
“Please. Tell me.” His voice was gentle and encouraging.
Clyde bowed his head as if he were praying so he wouldn’t have to look at Dr. Sharpe. “I heard . . . or rather, I felt, ‘there’s the one’ and ‘he killed . . .’ and ‘the one who has captured the essence . . .’ and ‘the one who knows too much’ and ‘the human who can sense us’ and . . . well, there were others. My God, there were so many others. But they were all pretty much the same. They knew that I killed that cat. They knew that something inside of that cat . . . it’s essence, or whatever, part of it got caught inside me. And now I can hear them, feel them. Sense them. And they don’t like it. Because there’s something . . . that they . . . don’t want us to know. And they’re afraid I’ll find out and tell.”
Slowly, Clyde lifted his head and looked at the doctor.
After a very long while, Sharpe leaned forward and said, “Tell me, Clyde, do you have enough insurance to cover, say, a brief stay in a hospital?”
“Son of a bitch, I knew it!” Clyde shouted, shooting to his feet and knocking the chair backward. “I just knew this wouldn’t do a damned bit of good and I shouldn’t have — ”
The doctor stood, too, and said, “Please, Mr. Trundle, I think it would do you a lot of good if you would just — ”
“If I’d just let you put me into some fucking nuthouse? Huh? No way. Thank you very much, Doctor, I can go somewhere else and be insulted for a hell of a lot less than this
. Send me your bill.” He left and slammed the door.
On the way home, it was the same all over again. They stopped their leisurely strolls and sat on the sidewalks to watch him pass, their heads turning to follow the movement of his car, while others sat on fences and watched sat up from front porch catnaps to see him go by . . .
. . . there he goes . . .
. . . dangerous one, the one who killed . . .
. . . has the essence and knows. .
. . . he’s dangerous, knows too much . . .
. . . have to die, before he tells the others . . .
When he got back inside his house — where all the shades were pulled and curtains drawn — he threw himself onto his bed, screaming into his pillow as he clutched his head between his hands and kicked his feet on the mattress like a child throwing a tantrum.
What were they doing? Why did they want him dead? What were they afraid of? Why did they think he was dangerous? What did they think he would tell others? Didn’t they realize that no one in their right mind would ever believe him?
Running those questions through his head over and over again, trying so hard to answer them but having no success, made him feel no better and cluttered his head with a rush of distracting thoughts so his mind couldn’t pick up anything else . . . because they were out there. They were always out there. Cats in the yard, cats wandering slowly down the sidewalk, crossing the street, sitting in neighbors’ yards or on neighbors’ fences and staring at his house, crouching in trees and huddling beneath shrubbery . . . every single one of them watching his house, keeping track of when he left, when he returned and where he went in between, and somehow communicating all of that information from one to the other . . . silently . . . without so much as a meeeoow.
He sat up on the bed and found that his hands were trembling — no, they were shaking — and his heart was thundering in his chest. He felt a rushing in his head and —
. . . keep track of him . . .
. . . don’t let him do anything dangerous . . .
. . . everyone gather . . .