“If it isn’t the friendly neighborhood witch. How’s it going, Holly? Who is the new guy?”
The way the girl eyed me made me feel filthy. Her hair was stringy and her camouflage-patterned shorts were stained with mud, like maybe she slept outside. She was skinny in a predatory way that suggested addiction or hunger. I did not like how her hand crept toward the small of her back, or the way her dog’s yellow eyes never wavered from my face. I wondered if this was why Holly had brought me along with her, but I sincerely hoped not. Despite the fact that she was a slight, hungry-looking girl, I did not think I could take her. Just a feeling I got. I even started to wish that Sumire would show up. It seemed like invulnerability might become a very desirable commodity in the near future.
“Don’t bother me, Jenny,” Holly said coldly, turning up her nose as we got close. “I’m working.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to get in your way,” the girl named Jenny said, with a crooked grin that suggested that she wanted to do the exact opposite. She leaned against the post with her hands in her hoodie’s front pockets, the wolf-dog next to her emitting a low, sinister growl, so quietly that I couldn’t even hear it until I was too close to have any options.
I prefer to avoid trouble. Nevertheless, business was business. If Holly did not provide me with work I would be in all sorts of difficulty at the end of the month. She had never said as much, but I figured part of why Holly wanted my help was the obvious – a lot of the city was not safe for a woman to walk alone, certainly not after dark – and I am sort of a big guy. If I was not exactly a bodyguard, then I was also sure that Holly had not brought me along for my looks. I reluctantly put myself between them, leaving a narrow space behind me that would allow Holly to continue up the ramp.
“You’re a big one,” Jenny observed coolly, barely coming up to my chest, almost as short as April. “You tryin’ to tell me something by getting up close, son?”
I have found that folding my arms has two distinct advantages – the first being that it makes me look bigger and tougher than I actually am. The second, of course, is that it hides my hands, so if they are shaking, no one can tell. I kept my face blank and stared at a point a little above her shoulder.
“The quiet type, huh? I like that. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? You live in the Estates, don’t you? I saw you on Leng Street with a cute little girl. That was you, right? My name’s Jenny, and this,” she said, nodding at the dog growling next to her, “is Fenrir. You and me, we are neighbors.”
“My name is Preston. What do you mean, ‘neighbors’? You live at the Estates?”
Holly sniffed as she walked, behind me.
“Not damn likely.”
“That’s right,” Jenny said, obviously amused. “They ain’t fond of me there, and I’m not much for other people… usually. The best thing about Kadath is there is lots of empty space.”
I thought about the rows of empty tenements with their terrible jagged window-eyes, and shuddered at the thought of entering one, much less sleeping inside of it.
“They let you move in, huh,” Jenny mused, leaning close, as if she was examining me. “Funny. Must have been that girl with you. ‘Cause you sure don’t look like you belong there, Preston.”
“Don’t talk to her,” Holly advised curtly, already well up the ramp. “Let’s go, Preston.”
“Interesting,” Jenny said, nodding as if she had learned something. “Yeah, run along, Preston. You wouldn’t want to make the witch wait. I get the feeling that we’ll be seeing each other again real soon. C’mon, Fenrir. Something I wanna look into.”
I waited until Jenny Frost turned and walked away, Fenrir skulking along behind her, before I hurried after Holly. I was rattled as if I had been in a serious confrontation, though it had been little more than a casual conversation. I found myself hoping that Jenny was wrong about meeting again, though I did not know exactly why.
Self-preservation? Except I have never had much of a problem with that impulse.
“I’m sorry,” Holly said when I caught up to her. “I should have warned you about Jenny Frost, but she hadn’t been hanging around the building lately. I had begun to hope that she moved on.”
“Yeah. Who was she, anyway? Seems like you don’t think very much of her.”
Holly took my arm again once we had crossed the bridge. I looked back at the red figure in the distance, and got the disturbing sensation that she waved at me, though it was too far to be sure.
“That was Jenny Frost, and I think she is the worst person in the world,” Holly said with absolute conviction. “She wanted to live at the Kadath Estates at one point. Perhaps she still does. We don’t want her around and we don’t talk about her.”
I took the hint.
The walk over the bridge was short, but on the other side it was a whole other world, one several tax brackets up from Kadath. Everything was so clean; I could not imagine how much time they must have invested washing the streets and sidewalks. The effort expended in making even the ground sparkle seemed absurd. Also, there was one other thing…
There were cats everywhere in Ulthar Heights.
I don’t mean that as hyperbole or anything. I have never seen so many felines in one place in my entire life. Not that I hate cats. Something about that many of them wandering about with pompous authority, however, three for every person I saw in the district, felt a little sinister.
The neighborhood itself was substantially different from our own, and I wondered why, given that nothing more than a pitiful stream separated the two areas. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the general air of prosperity – fresh paint on the buildings, a lively babble of various languages from the crowds pressed into the shops and parks, a steady flow of traffic and rhythm of commerce. By comparison, I felt dirty, out-of-place, and eager to leave, nervous as if someone officious might stop me and ask for my papers.
“There, there, Preston,” Holly said, patting my arm affectionately. “You are with me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Cats on the street watched as we walked, heads moving in eerie unison. It was more than creepy. The experience was flat-out terrifying. It was all that I could do to hold on to Holly’s arm as if I was the one tottering around on ridiculous heels. I hoped the cats could not sense my obvious fear, and wished that they would blink more often.
“Hey,” I whispered, not entirely sure why I was whispering. “Holly, is there something… odd about the cats around here?”
“Not really,” Holly said, pausing to think about it. “Nothing that strange. Well… you can say that they are particularly talkative.”
“What?” I did a quick double-check to see if she was smiling or joking, but she appeared completely serious, maybe even bored.
“They talk, but that’s not so unusual,” Holly said, glancing at me pityingly, as if I were a dullard. “I suppose the cats in Ulthar are better organized than most, more open with their intentions. Perhaps more likely to answer a direct question. In general, though, all cats want the same things.”
“I see,” I said, warming to the realization that I was walking in a weird cat-filled neighborhood, arm in arm with a crazy cat lady. “And what is it that the cats want?”
“That is a matter of perspective, I suppose,” Holly mused. “Either a sort of benign supervision of the human race, or a total subjugation of the same, depending on whether you are a cat person or not. I don’t think it matters much to them either way. They humored us for millennia, but we have been judged altogether too dangerous to make our own decisions. The takeover has been going on for decades, so subtly that you probably haven’t even noticed.”
“Wow,” I said, dazzled. “You are so full of shit, Holly. And I mean that as a compliment. I thought I was full of shit, but you take it to an entirely different level.”
Holly persisted, warming to her topic as we walked.
“Did you know the feline DNA is distinct from every other form of life of the planet? That they have
no genetic predecessors?”
“That can’t be true,” I said, not entirely certain. “What about, like… I don’t know, weasels or something?”
“They came here from another world, one irreparably damaged by years of war with terrible formless things from the stars. The crossing to our world… diminished them, in certain ways. Limited their abilities. Forced them to take an indirect path to power. Nonetheless, they have vast influence. Do you know how many major world leaders own cats?”
“No…”
“All of them. Most of them have two or three. The Oval Office has an official cat, Preston.”
“I give up already. Are you fucking with me, or what?”
Holly raised one plucked eyebrow and smiled, leading me through the crowds toward some obscure destination.
“You are through the looking glass, Preston.”
It would take more than I could muster to put a dent in that smile.
“Sometimes I suspect that you are picking on me.”
Further into Ulthar Heights things got shabby and tight, which made me feel a little better. The buildings were older and more rundown and the alleys narrower. On every flat surface there was a cat. Lounging, laying in patches of sunlight, sleeping… and watching, without any attempt at disassembly, every move we made.
We walked through a series of ramshackle street markets; wooden stalls selling incense, exotic carvings, and strange rocks found in the hillsides; populated by toothless, wizened people whose sex and race was impossible to determine. We wound through alleys that were cold, only a sliver of daylight directly above us between the high buildings, crowded with fire escapes, satellite dishes and occasional gothic flourishes. It should have been cheerful in comparison to our usual locale, but it struck me as oppressive. Ulthar was a place of order, reasonable people who lived safe lives under the protection and dominion of something that they chose not to acknowledge, and it raised the hackles on the back of my neck.
Maybe it reminded me too much of where I came from.
Holly pulled me along a bewildering sequence of side streets; crowded with hawkers and filled with foot traffic, or as desolate as Leng Street. I started to feel nauseous, all the color and motion and foreign incense weighing in on my head like a sandbag. No matter where we went, felines sat in rows and in crowds, perched high or slinking through the shadows. Staring at us, motionless as statues.
We finally stopped in the narrowest and darkest alley in the maze. It reeked of stale water, rotting organic matter, and years of neglect. On a throne of reclaimed garbage and decaying food at the end of the alley, there was an enormous cat, the remains of a tattered tail waiving slowly, watching us with a baleful glare out of one remaining eye. His fur was probably white, underneath the dirt and scars, and he licked his paws with a quiet assurance that was unlike anything I had ever seen in animal.
Holly nudged me with her elbow.
“Preston,” she hissed, “the basket.”
I mumbled something and handed it over. Holly smiled and approached the great old tom with something that looked like reverence, the covered basket held out in front of her in obvious act of appeasement.
“From the Unknown Kadath Estates as tribute to the cats of Ulthar for their continued protection and support. Without your beneficence, we would surely fall prey to Nyarlathotep, to He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, The King in Yellow and the King-of-Nails, the nightmare of the Great Old Ones and their terrible servants. We are grateful for your protection, Snowball, Lord of Ulthar, and…”
“Hold on. Did you say ‘Snowball’?”
Holly hushed me with an icy glare. The cat barely noticed. His focus on the paper-wrapped fish was total. The stub of his tail waved frantically, his coat shining in the alley’s half-light where it was not scarred.
“…and the protection of your servant, Lovecraft, the guardian of The Kadath Estates. Please accept our tribute, Lord of Ulthar, the district where no man may kill a cat, and continue to look after us.”
Holly opened the package to reveal the fish that we had purchased. The cat shook himself off and slowly descended his pile of garbage, as majestic as anything I have ever seen walking on refuse. I really did not mean to speak, but this was better than a hundred dollars worth of premium, sushi-quality fish that Holly was feeding to a stray cat. Sometimes my tongue works faster than my brain.
“Okay, this is in-fucking-sane, Holly.”
Oh, the glare she gave me. Instant, total regret. I shrank back as far as was humanly possible in the confines of the alley. The cat looked as if he was laughing at me, then he started to eat, daintily cleaning his paws between each bite.
***
Holly had me walk her as far as the train station, then she slipped me some cash and disappeared into the crowd of commuters and students. I got the feeling that she was eager to get rid of me after my perfectly natural reaction to watching her feed an immaculate, line-caught tuna belly to a mangy stray.
No, check that. I was being unfair. Holly was the boss, which meant that she made the decisions. I was the one at fault for interfering in her affairs, mad though they might be. Especially when she was my best chance at making rent this month. I scuffed the sidewalk with my sneakers in a pointless display of immaturity. According to my last check-in with April, she and Sumire were having dinner together and then watching television, so I was not needed until after dark. Sumire had all but suggested that I spend the night, as well as all future nights, elsewhere. April was too involved in whatever they were doing to miss me. It was the longest leash I had been on in months, so I should have felt good. I was still too raw over my screw-up in Ulthar to enjoy it, though. I wandered downtown aimlessly, seeing nothing in the store windows but the reflections of the street lamps, hoping for something gaudy to catch my eye and serve as April’s mandatory gift.
Then, peaking out of the shadows, almost next to me, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face, one that appeared rather startled to see me.
“Hey, big guy,” Jenny Frost said conversationally, half in the dark of an alley, her hands hidden behind her, her whole demeanor nervous. “Where’s the witch?”
“You mean Holly? I don’t know. She cut me loose.”
“Well, that’s good,” Jenny said sincerely, with obvious relief.
“Where’s your dog?”
“Fenrir? Found himself a bitch too stupid to know better, I guess. He will show back up when he is finished. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment…”
Jenny disappeared into the alley. There was a crackling sound accompanied with a bright flash, which I immediately recognized as some form of shock prod, followed by something that sounded terribly like a muffled and abbreviated scream. I turned away and tried not to look very hard at any of the passersby, all of whom seemed oblivious to what was happening, both loudly and nearby. I couldn’t understand why no one seemed to notice. The last few thuds had a sort of crunching finality to them, like a dog breaking a bone to get at the marrow.
Jenny appeared a moment later, slightly abashed and clearly relieved.
“Sorry about that. But, man, am I glad you don’t have that witch with you. She has this tendency to… well, never mind. Here, let me make it up to you. I just happen to have gotten paid. You eat yet?”
“Ah, well…”
“Good. I know a place. C’mon.”
Jenny turned away and before she shoved them in her front pockets, I could see the blood on her scratched and bruised hands. I followed her anyway, and the faces of the people that passed me this evening seemed particularly anonymous and faceless. The crowd parted to allow Jenny passage the way flesh flinches from a knife. In her company everything looked worse, blackened and trivial. The world, I found myself thinking, was diminished by her presence.
“You a vegetarian?”
“What?”
Jenny stopped, turned around and repeated herself slowly and loudly, as if she was speaking to a child or a tourist.
“Are you a vegetarian?” Jenny
demanded, poking me in the chest. “As in, do you eat meat?”
“No. I mean yes. I eat meat. Why do you care?”
“Had a friend, once,” she said, shrugging. “She was. Whatever. Was just trying to be considerate.”
I caught up with her halfway down the block.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing her shoulder to make her stop. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you, Preston,” Jenny snapped, shrugging free of my grip easily. “You want dinner or what?”
“Sure.”
I was frustrated in my attempts to keep pace with Jenny, despite the stride difference between me and the diminutive girl in the red hood. People seemed to sense Jenny for what she was, and avoided her on some instinctual level. I fell behind her again, thinking that the whole world was probably like that for Jenny Frost – at a fearful distance, only interacting with her when she initiated contact. Otherwise, she would simply pass through like a shadow darting across a window, primal fear keeping her apart.
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 10