Cat's Eye

by William W. Johnstone

  The more he thought about it, the better Harry liked it. Of course, he’d screw the Conners bitch anyway—after she gave him the money. Then he’d kill her.

  He laughed out loud.

  It was because of people like Harry Harrison that secret occult societies had such difficulty maintaining low profiles over a period of time.

  One link in the chain was about to break.

  Chapter 19

  The cat sat on the dresser and watched the woman brush her hair. Her lover lay on the rumpled bed, naked, his legs spread wide, his eyes closed, resting after lovemaking. The woman continued to brush her hair with long, careful strokes.

  The cat turned its head at silent movements outside the window. If a cat could smile, this one did. Viciously. Movements outside the other bedroom window turned its head again. Cats of all sizes and colors had gathered silently, clinging to the sill and the screen, their eyes shining with hate and fury, tails swishing back and forth.

  The cat on the dresser blinked once, and the outside cats disappeared.

  “Come on, baby.” The man spoke from the bed. “One more time before your stupid husband gets home. Just look what I got for you.”

  She turned and smiled at what he had. He could recover faster than any man she had ever known—and that was quite a feat on his part considering the number of men she’d known.

  Neither one could hear the silent footfall of dozens of paws striking the carpeted floor of the den, moving to the hall, then toward the bedroom.

  She stood up to move toward the bed just as her cat jumped from his perch on the dresser. The big tom landed on her head, dug into her neck and shoulder with his back claws, and went to work on her face with his front claws. Her screaming froze the man on the bed in open-mouthed shock for a moment. That moment was all it took for his naked body to be covered with yowling, biting, clawing cats. Several went to work on his face while the others began raking at his soft belly and lower groin. Other cats were working at the woman’s ankles and calves, soon bringing her down to the floor.

  The man was jerking and kicking and screaming and flailing his arms as the cats clawed out his eyes, tore off his ears, mangled his privates, and opened his stomach. The cats pulled out his intestines and ran around the room, the guts tailing behind them like thick gray rope.

  The woman had managed to roll under the pretty canopied bed, squashing and crippling several cats during the frantic rolling. It bought her only a few minutes of safety.

  Several cats began eating at her toes and the soles of her bare feet while others slipped under the bed and once more began mangling her face. The man was already unconscious. It was over for the woman in only a few minutes.

  The horde of cats, their fur covered with blood, began exiting silently from the death house. A big female stopped at the front room window and shook her back paw, trying to free a claw from a long strand of small intestine. The gut fell free with a small plop and the cat was gone out through the torn screen.

  The woman moaned once, then the house was still.

  The last cat to leave was the woman’s big tom. He pissed on the carpet in the den to mark his territory and then with a silent leap, was gone.

  The telephone began ringing. It rang ten times and then fell as silent as a stalking cat.

  * * *

  Carl called Dee from a pay phone. “Stay in the house and keep the kids in with you. Turn on the stereo and turn it up loud. Have a party. Don’t even think about coming out to the guest cottage.”

  “If you say so, Carl.”

  “I say so.” He broke the connection and placed another call.

  * * *

  “What’d you think?” Jesse Broward, a reporter from a Richmond paper, asked Sonya Richards, a reporter from a Washington, D.C., paper.

  Both of them were good reporters, both of them young, in their mid-twenties, and both of them on their way up fast in print journalism.

  “You know Millie Smith, Jesse?”

  “Not personally. But I’ve sure heard of her. Why?”

  “She was found dead in her apartment this morning. Attacked and killed by some sort of animal or animals.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure sorry, but . . .” He stopped, cocked his head, and looked at her. “Millie Smith. Sure. She covered the incident over in Ruger County a few years back, right?”

  “That’s right. And that was a big cover-up too.”

  “The twit who did all her leg work . . . what was his name?”

  “Kenny Allen. He was found dead this morning. Killed the same way. I find that very odd, Jesse.”

  “I find it eerie myself. But where’s the connection between that and this?”

  “I don’t know if there is any connection. But something tells me there is. You going to stick around for awhile?”

  “Yeah, I think so. The boss told me to stay with this one.”

  She laughed as another piece of the chain-sawed pair of teenagers was lifted out of the ground. It looked like an arm. Both reporters lifted their cameras and clicked a couple of times. “You think we can stand all the excitement of a week in Butler, Jesse?”

  * * *

  “Aren’t you going to strip me naked and rape me before you torture me?” Linda taunted Carl as he tied her into a chair in the guest cottage.

  “I wouldn’t stick a sterilized fencepost in you, Linda.”

  She spat at him and tried to bite him. Carl backhanded her, rocking her head to one side. A small trickle of blood leaked from one corner of her mouth.

  “You get your nuts off beating up women, Carl?”

  Carl pulled the curtain back and looked out the window. Father Vincent was just pulling in. Carl stepped out of the cottage and waved him over. He cut his eyes. Dee and Janet and Gary were watching from the A-frame. Carl motioned them back. The curtain closed.

  Carl stepped out to meet the Episcopal priest. He carried a small bag, much like a doctor’s bag. Chuck had a worried look on his face.

  “Carl, I’ve never done anything like this before. My word, man, we only touched on this in school. I’m not even sure I know how!”

  “Oh, you know how, Father. I’ve worked with priests of the Episcopal faith before.”

  “All right, Carl—all right. I know how. But there is an ... order, a chain of command we must go through. This is not something that one takes on himself.”

  “We don’t have time, Chuck. All you can do is what a mule can do.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Try.”

  * * *

  “You’re a goddamn liar!” Bullfrog Stinson told his younger brother.

  “I ain’t neither!” Keith stood his ground. “I know what I saw and I seen Daddy a-lookin’ like somethin’ out of a monster movie. And Momma was dead!”

  “Well, where the hell-far is she?” Bubba demanded.

  “How do I know? I ’spect Daddy toted her off into the woods.”

  “Shit!” Bubba sneered.

  Of all the brothers, Sonny possessed the most sense. Which wasn’t saying a whole lot, but fifty percent of something is better than a hundred percent of nothing. Which is what the other three boys possessed in the way of brains. “Have you called the law?” Sonny asked.

  “Hale, no! I ain’t got no truck with no lawman.”

  Sonny moved toward the phone.

  “Hit don’t work,” Bullfrog informed him. “The phone company cut it off a couple of months ago. After Daddy tore up the last phone whiles he was likkered up.”

  “All right,” Sonny said. “Keith, you show us where you last seen Daddy. We’ll track him. Maybe Momma was kidnapped. We better git some guns.”

  They went to their pickup trucks and fetched their rifles and single-action cowboy pistols and struck out, with Keith in the lead. It wasn’t the most awe-inspiring patrol in the history of Reeves County, but it certainly came close to being the strangest.

  Keith would occasionally sto
p to pick a wildflower and sniff at it. But since over the past fifteen years Keith had stuck all that cocaine up his nose, it was doubtful he could smell much. However, no one really knew why Keith did anything—including Keith.

  Disgusted at his brother’s antics, Sonny finally took the lead. It wasn’t difficult to follow the trail left by Champ. Broken limbs and torn-up bushes clearly marked the way.

  “Looks like a wild animal done come this way,” Bubba observed.

  “I tole you,” Keith said.

  Then the trail ended.

  The brothers looked all around, but the trail had abruptly ceased to be.

  “He backtracked,” Sonny said, after kneeling down and studying the ground. “But he ain’t carryin’ no load. See the difference in the footprints.”

  “He dumped Momma!” Bullfrog said excitedly. “Momma!” he started hollering. “Oowee, Momma! Hit’s your boys, Momma. Is you in there, Momma?”

  “I done tole you and tole you that she’d daid, damnit,” Keith said. “How the hale is she ’pposed to answer ifn she’s daid?”

  A moan sprang from the stillness of the timber along the ridges. Not quite human, but something less than animal.

  “Something’s out yonder,” Bubba said, looking all around him.

  Sonny looked at him. “No kidding,’ he said sarcastically. “Let’s split up and search.”

  A roar cut the stillness.

  “That’s your ass!” Bullfrog said. “I vote we stay together.”

  “Yeah,” Bubba agreed. “You ’member what the Grand Dragon said at the las’ cross-burnin’. Them pro-found words about strength in numbers.”

  Keith turned and came face to face with what had been his father. It took a couple of seconds for his brain to fully register the awfulness before him. His father had slipped up on them as silent as a cat. If what Keith had seen the night before had been bad, it was ten times worse in the daylight.

  Some sort of greenish yellow slime was hanging in stinking thin ropes from his father’s mouth. The man’s lower jaw was all swollen up and jutting out, like some sort of monster. The eyes were all wild and red-looking, and it looked like his daddy’s beard had spread all over his body. Champ stuck out one clawed hand to grab his youngest son, and that was enough for Keith.

  Keith let out a scream that shook the leaves and rattled any dead branches, and then took off in a dead run. After a very quick look at the cause of the scream, Bullfrog, Sonny, and Bubba vacated the area, right behind their brother.

  Champ roared, but did not pursue. Sometime during the dark of night, he had understood that his was a higher purpose, and that his time for action had not yet arrived. But it would be very soon.

  He turned around and looked at the bloody and mangled and eaten-on thing that had been following him for hours. He grunted and moved on, what was left of his wife lurching along behind him, the head on her broken neck lolling and flopping to one side. Huge chunks of flesh were missing from her legs . . . thanks to Champ’s appetite hours before. She held her arms straight out in front of her, the fingers constantly moving like small snakes. The two of them vanished into the woods.

  * * *

  Harry carefully, with trembling fingers, laid out a line and rolled up a dollar bill, sticking one end of the small cylinder up one nostril. He snorted up the line and shuddered in delight. He felt like a new man; nothing could stop him now. He was a giant.

  He checked his .357. Loaded up full. He loaded a snub-nosed .38 and stuck that in his back pocket. He’d have to be careful with Jim; the old boy was wily as a fox. Harry shook a few hits of speed into his shaky hand and swallowed them. Not as good as snow, but they’d help. He stepped out of his room. First to kill Jim Hunt, then Carl Garrett. Then he’d take his pleasure with Dee Conners and come away a rich man.

  Harry had it all worked out in his mind.

  * * *

  The last of the coven members had been bonded out of the Reeves County jail. They’d left smiling smugly.

  Ralph Geason squatted on the dusty floor of the high school basement and slowly ate a live rat. The naked, snakelike tail of the rodent hung out of his mouth, flapping wildly as Ralph crunched the head and broke the backbone of the rat, finally swallowing it nearly whole. He picked a few hairs out of his mouth and belched. He felt better, even though he was still hungry. He would appease his appetites with the coming of night and the arrival of the young people—he was sure of that. He touched his throbbing erection and grinned savagely.

  The doctors at the now-crowded laboratory looked at the hideous things that were strapped to the tables. They did not have the vaguest idea what to do with them.

  Sheriff Rodale sat in his living room and drank whiskey straight from the bottle. He thought he might be losing his mind. His wife would occasionally look in on him and think how wonderful her life would be if he would just drop dead.

  Mayor Purdy sat on his front porch and wondered what was going to become of his town.

  Chief of Police Max Bancroft tried—without giving away what was really taking place in town—to convince his wife to go visit her sister for a week or two. She told him she wasn’t leaving until or unless he leveled with her about what was happening in Reeves County.

  Val Malone and Nick Jamison toked on a joint and listened as Nick’s mother screwed several of the younger coven members on the floor of the den. For her age, Val thought, the woman could really move her ass.

  And Josh Taft stood with his mouth hanging open, looking at the farmer he personally had killed only hours before.

  The man was standing in the door, staring and grinning at Josh.

  A scratching, purring sound seemed to fill the farmhouse. And with the strange sounds, a heavy sulfuric odor came to his nostrils, so powerful it was almost overwhelming.

  Josh laughed out loud.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Carey demanded. “That smell’s about to make me puke!”

  “Get used to it,” Josh told him. “We’re all going to be smelling it for a long, long time.”

  “What’d you mean?” Fox asked. “What is it?”

  “Home.”

  “Home! What’d you talkin’ about, boy? My home’s over in Cumberland County.”

  “Not anymore it isn’t,” Josh corrected.

  “Oh, yeah?” Fox said belligerently. “Well, where is it, then?”

  “Hell.”

  Chapter 20

  As soon as the men stepped into the room, the timber around them opened up in song and chant. Carl took a cassette tape out of his pocket and stuck it in the small stereo unit next to the TV. He punched the play button and religious music filled the room.

  Linda visibly winced at the sound of Christian faith. “That’s the worst shit I ever heard in my life!” she screamed out.

  Carl turned up the volume until the music drowned out the singing and chanting from the woods.

  “You son of a bitch!” Linda shouted. “You’ll die long and hard for this.”

  Carl ignored that. “Names of everyone in the covens, Linda.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Carl opened Father Vincent’s small leather bag and picked out a cross. He held it against the young woman’s head. She screamed as the cross touched her. The odor of burning human skin sprang forth. The flesh on Linda’s forehead bubbled under the power of God.

  “Names, Linda.”

  She spouted names and dates and plans and then tried to bite his hand. Carl jerked back just in time.

  The cross removed from her forehead, Linda fought the handcuffs until her wrists were raw and bloody. “I’ll tell you no more!” she screamed.

  “Pray, Father,” Carl told the Episcopal priest.

  Chuck began praying for strength, for guidance, for help in order to combat the evil that was overtaking Reeves County.

  Linda’s wailing all but drowned out the quiet prayers. She began screaming words at them, in a language that neither could understand. Her stomach and chest began heaving, as if somet
hing inside her was struggling to break free.

  “My God!” Chuck said. “What’s happening to her?”

  A clawed scaly hand suddenly tore out of the woman’s stomach as a wild wail of agony broke from her lips.

  Blood and pus and corruption sprayed from Linda’s mouth. Carl and the priest jumped back just in time to avoid the stinking spray.

  Another clawed hand punched through the woman’s stomach. Dripping blood, the hand opened and closed, flexing its newfound life.

  “Get out of here!” Carl yelled, shoving the priest toward the open door. “Move, Chuck. Get out of here.”

  A roaring began from deep inside the mangled body of Linda Crowley, breaking out of her bloody and pus-covered lips. Dee and Janet and Gary had disobeyed instructions and were standing outside the open door, watching.

  Carl shoved the priest out the door and fumbled in his pocket for a lighter. He sparked the lighter into flame and touched the fire to drapes. “Get a can of gasoline,” he yelled to Chuck. “Move, man—hurry!”

  Blood, red mixed with a strange greenish yellow, poured out of Linda’s jerking and pain-filled body as a hideous head protruded from the woman’s chest. Her ribs cracked and tore through flesh as the monster within her fought free of her body. The mouth opened and closed, the jaws snapping, exposing long fangs that could rip off an arm.

  Carl was vaguely aware of a clicking sound just outside the open door. He cut his eyes for just a moment and saw Dee there, her face pale, bravely taking pictures of the horror birthing within the guest cottage.

  With one last violent shriek of pain, Linda slumped forward in the chair as the devil within her leaped forward, exiting its earth mother’s body.

  Sticking the lighter in his pocket, Carl jerked the 9-mm from his belt and began firing at the creature, the slugs ripping into the birth-slick and scaly, slimy body, tearing great holes as they slammed out the back of the devil-child. The creature howled in pain and fell back, kicking and yowling on the floor. Carl backed out the open door, the 9-mm barking and jumping in his hand just as the priest ran up, carrying a large can of gasoline.

  “Douse that thing!” Carl yelled. “Throw the gas on it, Chuck. Douse the carpet with gas.”