“You came!” the mastiff said, as we slipped beneath low-hanging branches, and into the snow-free area of fallen needles sheltered by a triumvirate of old pines. The trees both protected and concealed us; I approved of the mastiff’s thinking.
“Said I would,” I told him in his own language, dropping the chickadee. Dot placed a quick paw on it before it could escape. It fluttered pitiably; I crouched beside it and increased the strength of my purr.
“Yes,” the mastiff went on. He sounded confused. “But you’re a cat.”
“I’m here, too.” Libby poked his head into the shelter—just his head. He was clearly shivering from head to toe, though whether with cold or with fear, that was difficult to tell. Certainly the great tan-and-black mastiff, with his drool-flecked jowls and potent stench of sickness and terror, was a heart-stopping sight on such a night. Or anytime, really.
“Please! Get it off,” the mastiff begged, limping forward. I winced, for the leg was even worse than before, gnawed up and down by the dog’s teeth, and bleeding great, steaming drops into the snow. When I focused to See That Which Cannot Be Seen, I could not restrain a hiss: the creature was twice the size of before. Again it rolled its loathsome, triple-pupiled eyes at me, and the razor-toothed sucker on its back rippled in warning. This time, however, I’d come prepared.
“Present the bird,” I told Dot.
“I know how to do it,” she grumbled, but pawed the panting chickadee toward the creature anyway. The bird quivered, beak opening and closing. One fragile leg was bent quite wrong. My tail twitched at the sight, for I am not the sort of cat to toy with my prey. I prefer to dispatch them at once, with a swift bite to the head, or a neck-snapping shake for bigger animals. But in this case it was necessary, and the little bird would soon take its well-deserved rest in the cosmic Lair—as Tilly had so recently. As, eventually, would we all.
Dot began the incantation, growling forth the words of the spell. I underlaid the incantations with a hearty, rib-shaking purr. Libby, bless him, crept fully into our evergreen cave and began to caterwaul over the top, as only a prowling tom can. Out of the corner of my eye I registered a light turning on in the house behind us. We would have to be swift.
The shadowy parasite on the dog’s leg visibly dimmed. It quivered and suckled faster, and the mastiff groaned in agony. Yet as the combined chant went on, the creature’s outline grew blurred and vague, before it disappeared altogether. Even with our best vision, we cats could not actually observe the creature’s transference; we sensed it passing by as a stench, a shock, a lingering sensation of cold.
The monster had vanished from the poor dog’s leg—but the chickadee was filled with new, dark life. It thrashed furiously beneath Dot’s steady paw, clacking its beak with a murderous rage never demonstrated by a chickadee before.
Dot did not delay. Her teeth met swiftly over the bird’s head, and then she shook it for good measure—once, twice, thrice. The little body hung limp, having at last found peace.
With a grimace, Dot dropped it. “Don’t eat it,” she warned the mastiff, in her own attempt at the canine speech. She was rather better at it than me.
“What did you do?” the dog asked. He licked his leg tenderly, but his eyes were on the tiny puff of feathers in the snow.
Though I groaned internally, I did my best to translate the ceremony into dog. “It was not all here,” I explained. “Some of it was somewhere else. Some other place. So you could not bite it.”
“But it was biting me!”
“Yes, it hardly seems fair, does it?” Libby pondered.
“We brought it here, to this world,” I plodded on. “Made it go inside the chickadee. The chickadee was between places anyway. Then, we killed the chickadee.” I yawned, exhausted by my language efforts. “So the monster went.”
“But don’t eat it,” repeated Dot.
“I mean,” I prevaricated, “maybe it’s ok, but…”
“Not worth the risk,” said Dot flatly.
“No, certainly not.” The mastiff paid good attention to his leg for a moment or two. I eased past him and peered out at the graveyard across the street. The sun had set properly now, and the blue light of twilight was fading into the rosy gray of a snowy winter sky—though it wasn’t snowing yet. It might not be dark enough for the spy mission I’d intended.
“You know a lot about this thing,” the mastiff said thoughtfully, after a lengthy interval of licking. “Does this happen often? I’ve never heard about it before.”
“Oh, all the time,” said Libby airily. “But usually to humans.” He sniffed, and then promptly sneezed, having evidently gotten a snoot-full of pine. “They’re so thick, too,” he went on. “We tell them as much, and they ignore us. We even bring them sacrifices for the ceremony, and they screech at us about the ‘dirty half-dead mouse’ and being ‘such cruel creatures.’”
“What’d he say?” the mastiff asked Dot—Libby had babbled in feline.
“Humans are stupid,” said Dot, dismissing the entire species with a flick of her tail. “And usually, they’re the victims.”
“So why me?” the mastiff asked, in a plaintive tone that seemed odd from such a ferocious-looking beast. “Why now?”
“Because,” I told him, “something is very, very wrong.”
“There are monsters in the sewers,” he said, his ears drooping even further than usual, and his tail creeping under his belly. “One pulled Billy down in. And something killed the big boss—that was Mo—in our own yard. He heard something, and went out through the dog door, and never came back.” The mastiff whimpered at the memory. “We still don’t know what got him.”
“Many things come to Kingsport right now,” I said.
“We think the ghouls are to blame,” put in Libby. “They’re up to some devilry with their allies the night-gaunts. We’ve come here to spy on them and see what they’re doing.”
“The ghouls?” The mastiff had doubtless grasped little of Libby’s speech—but ‘ghouls’ was something he understood. “But the ghouls have left.”
“They’re gone?” I asked. I peered through the evergreens again, and squinted to See That Which Cannot Be Seen. Sure enough, I didn’t see any ghouls…but then again, I couldn’t see much of anything at this distance.
“All the dogs have been talking about it,” said the mastiff. I heard him move behind me, and then he was standing over me. This made me nervous, but I quelled my fear and did my best to ignore him. After all, there was a good tail-length of clearance between my back and his belly. When his head poked through the branches above mine, we must have made quite a sight, if there had been anybody to see.
“Your friends?” I asked. “You are friends with the ghouls?”
The mastiff snarled, a bubbling, nasty sound. I dug my claws into the earth, to prevent myself from bolting. “No,” he disavowed at once. “They’re no friends to the humans, or to us. But they’re easy to smell. I can always tell when some ghoul has been sniffing around our yard; all dogs can. We can’t see them, but we can scent them.”
“And they’re gone?” I pressed.
“We thought they were gathering in force. The word traveled up and down Walnut St. that the ghouls were on the move. Every dog was on the alert. They take human children, you know.”
“I know,” I said, thinking of my baby, with his yellow hair always needing to be groomed, and his squawks of delight when I allowed him a go at my tail.
“Then some dogs at the edge of town got news to us. They said that the ghouls were leaving en masse. That was yesterday.”
My belly went cold, and it wasn’t because of the wind. All the ghouls, gone? There had been ghouls on Burying Hill since the first body was laid! And then, what of my dreamlands vision? Had the temple spirits failed me—or worse, betrayed me?
I shook my head to banish such pesky thoughts, and resumed studying the graveyard. At this angle, and with all the trees in the way, I could not even spot its usual ghostly denizens, let alone
the ghouls.
“I’ll take a look,” I announced.
“I’ll come with you,” said the mastiff at once.
I looked up at him in surprise, though from where I stood I mostly saw the thick, furry folds on the underside of his neck, and the spiked black collar that hung loosely just above his shoulders. Ah, dogs. Loyal creatures indeed—apparently, even to cats.
“Don’t,” I advised. “You smell like blood. They’ll all come quick.” I could see the mastiff’s ears droop in disappointment. “But you wait here,” I went on. “If the ghouls attack, then I can run back, and you can bite them. Ok?” Thwap, thwap went the mighty tail against the thick branches of the pines.
“You’re not going,” said Dot.
My ears flattened, and my eyes slitted. “Says who?”
“Me,” said Dot.
“Oh? And who made you a god?”
“Nobody,” Dot admitted. “But you are as fat as two cats—”
“It’s not fat, it’s fur! Damn it, Dot, you know that!”
“And a dark tabby to boot,” Dot continued unperturbed. “Let the snow-colored cat go first.” Stealthily she slipped from our evergreen hideout, and slunk across the slushy street, which was brightly and unfortunately lit by the rose-gray winter sky.
“Snow-colored. Hmph,” I said, watching her go. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
“I notice you’re not following,” said Libby, with an air of mischief.
“I didn’t say she was wrong,” I told him. “I said she was hyperbolic.”
“Hyper what? What is hyper?” asked the mastiff, obviously not following our rapid exchange.
“She’s a dirty liar,” I explained to the dog.
“She is?” he asked, evidently confused.
I’d momentarily lost sight of Dot, but then her head peeked around from behind a parked car. I accepted the implicit summons, and skittered rapidly across the street, belly low, aiming for the nearest car.
Dot, by contrast, ambled over casually. “It’s empty,” she said. “The dog was right. The ghouls have left.”
I crouched at the top of the hill and surveyed the graveyard for myself. As I did, it began to snow again—huge, delicate flakes of wonder. Peering through the gathering snowstorm, I looked for That Which Cannot Be Seen. Ghostly figures drifted, walking through trees that had grown since their time, weeping and raging over misfortunes now quite lost to history. As they glided upon their parallel track to the realm of the living, I caught something Dot had missed:
I saw the albino ghoul loping up a distant hillside, heading toward the bare-branched wood.
It was my vision, just as I’d seen it in the divining pool at the temple. Everything was correct—the snow, the sky, the stone cross, and the single, distant ghoul in retreat. The spirits had not failed me after all. They had, indeed, granted me a moment of precious foresight.
So what the hell did it mean?
In truth, I was more puzzled than ever. The ghouls were allied with the night-gaunts in the distant dreamlands of their origin; they should have been responsible for bringing them here, into the material world. Yet I was watching a ghoul, evidently among the last, abandon its ancestral home…while the night-gaunts, and all the rest of the creatures bedeviling Kingsport, remained. Not to mention the slips in time, the queer glimpses of alternate realities, etcetera, etcetera.
What did it all mean? Why had the spirits shown me this scene, of all things?
“So what does this mean?” Libby chimed in plaintively from behind me. “If the ghouls are gone? The night-gaunts are still here. There are seventeen around my house, Dot. Seventeen!”
The distant ghoul entered the wood, disappearing from my gaze, just as I blinked in revelation. Oh, bless the spirits of the blasted temple, hidden among the marshes! Bless the dark viewing pool and its forbidden glimpses into the future! I would return with offerings piled as high as my head, and bow low before their generous wisdom for all my lives.
“I’ve got it,” I said aloud. I sat up, careless of who or what might see me now. “Seventeen night-gaunts, Dot. Seventeen!”
“So I’ve heard,” grumbled Dot. “What does it mean?”
That was the third iteration of the question, and at last I had an answer. “Listen. There was one night-gaunt upon my house the first time. Then there were three, upon the second occasion. What was the difference?”
“I don’t know…” said Dot slowly. “You ran in and didn’t come back out, and they flew off, so we watched for a while and then went away.”
“Morwen was practicing again, Dot,” I revealed triumphantly. “She was chanting in the attic. They were attracted to the magic!”
Dot’s dark eyes widened in a rare show of shock. “So…at Libby’s house…”
“Seventeen night-gaunts!”
“But Mark and Clarence don’t…” Libby began, confused. But with quick feline comprehension, he soon grasped our meaning. “Oh. The guests.”
“Yes!” My tail quivered with excitement. “Who’s staying there now, Libby?”
“There’s been two men there for a while,” said Libby. “Neil and Rob. They’re photographers. But Spice, they’ve been there since November, way before this started.”
“So?” Dot pressed swiftly. “A few weeks of scoping out the area and doing research before the campaign begins. That’s how I would do it.”
“And photographers would have an excuse to poke around out-of-the-way places,” I mused. “To carry big bags full of equipment, and do odd things in dark alleys and shadowed groves.” I searched my memory. “Can you remember what they were up to two nights ago?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Libby. He sounded miffed. “They were out late. Didn’t get back to the house until almost dawn.”
“Aha!” I exclaimed. My pupils dilated in excitement, and the snow glittered almost painfully bright. “I knew someone was up to some magic that night! I could feel it in my whiskers!”
“But why?” Libby wanted to know. “Why would they do something like this? They seem so ordinary. And at Christmas, too!”
Ah, Christmas! There was something to that, something I hadn’t yet considered. Tilly and I had spoken of the ancient midwinter rites that kept our world safe, contained, and upon its own track—rites that had now, sadly, gone to rack and ruin. But there were other ways to bend the ancient power of Yuletide…
“And,” Libby went on, in his new role as devil’s advocate, “what if they aren’t the ones causing all this? What if they’re just practitioners trying to protect themselves?”
“Then they can give us a few tips,” I stated firmly. “Stars know we could use them.”
A long-drawn whine was carried to our ears by the whistling wind. The mastiff was growing impatient.
“The solstice will happen in just a few days,” I said. “My guess is that, for better or worse, this will all come to a head then. Meanwhile, I suggest we follow these photographers and see what they’re about.”
“It won’t be easy,” Dot said skeptically. “Even with four of us. Assuming we’re including Cinnamon.”
“That depends,” I said. “Did she join the King’s court?”
“The what now?”
“Court, dear,” Libby said with a purr.
“I heard what she said!” Dot’s tail lashed indignantly. “I meant nobody told me a damn thing about any King’s court.”
“Apparently he’s found a farm south from here where a goodly number of cats could hide,” I told her. “We’ve been invited. Sort of.”
“What good will leaving do?”
“He claims that everything’s normal outside of town. Whatever is happening to Kingsport is only happening to Kingsport. So he says,” I reiterated, unwilling to place much trust in the King’s assertions.
Dot huffed, ears flattening. Her tail twisted and swept across the snow. “That jerk. He never said anything to me.”
“Do we want to go?” asked Libby, his own ears
swept back with anxiety. “Just for a day or two? If you’re right about it peaking at the solstice, we could come back afterwards.”
“What are you, a dog?” Dot demanded angrily. “We’re not a pack. Do what you want.”
I considered it. And as I did, another long, anxious whine from across the street stirred in me a sense of shame. I’d grown almost dog-like in this lifetime, I really had. My devotion to Morwen and her child—soon, children—was hardly properly feline.
Yet I remembered slipping into my baby’s room late at night, for the very first time. I’d leapt into the tiny newborn’s crib to examine him; seeing his hair was mussed, I’d proceeded to settle down beside him, and lick those few thin, yellow strands into place. He’d seized my belly fur with a shockingly strong grip, and buried his face against my stomach, just like any kitten nuzzling for milk. Since that moment, my whole heart had been carried in those little, sticky fingers.
Even if I abandoned Morwen and Her Husband to their fate, could I leave my baby to face what was coming alone?
I shook off the snow that had accumulated upon my shaggy fur. We needed to leave at once, or we’d face a difficult slog home through the drifts. I looked over my shoulder, at the hill where I’d glimpsed the albino ghoul, but the entire area was now obscured by falling flakes. The graveyard was silent, emptier now than it had been in hundreds of years.
“The ghouls all left,” I said. “For the first time since the first grave was dug, there are no ghouls in Kingsport. Something very, very bad is going to happen—or at least they think it’s going to happen. And I think,” I went on, looking back and forth from Dot to Libby, “that if we leave, there might not be a Kingsport to come back to.”
Long silence enveloped the three of us, as did the steadily drifting snow, which was now beginning to obscure the yellow glow of the streetlamps.
The Dark Yule Page 10