Echoes of Darkness

by Rob Smales

  “Yeah, I guess s—” Billy started, but Dag had already pushed the pet flap open, and begun to work his way through. He lead with one hand, and had his head and shoulders inside the house before something occurred to Billy.

  “Hey.” He crouched beside Dagner’s writhing body, stage-whispering through the opening. “This looks awfully big for a cat flap. Are you sure—”

  “That’s . . . because . . . it’s a dog flap,” Dag said between grunts of effort, pulling his other arm through and twisting to get his hips lined up on the diagonal.

  “She has a dog?” Billy was suddenly assailed by visions of skinny legs kicking spasmodically as Dag screamed, caught halfway through the door and unable to even flee as a rottweiler or a German shepherd ate his face. “Why didn’t you tell me she has a dog?”

  It hit him like a slap that, what with a doggy door, there was no guarantee the dog was even inside the house. It could be—

  He leapt to his feet, spinning in midair to land facing the yard, leather gloved hands ready to fend off a powerful, thrusting muzzle, feet more than ready to try their luck at racing a guard dog to the fence. Dagner said something, but muffled by the door, Billy couldn’t make it out.

  “Whuzzat?”

  There was no answer. He glanced downward—and found Dag’s legs gone, the pet flap swinging out, then in, then out, then still.

  Oh, shit. Did the dog get him?

  He hunkered next to the flap. “Dag?” he whispered. “Buddy? You all right?”

  Nothing. Billy leaned closer. “Dagner?” He stretched forth a finger to poke open the flap, steeling himself to peek in, when, with a sharp click, the door swung suddenly into the house. Billy jerked back so hard he overbalanced from his squat, and his ass thudded onto the mat.

  “No alarm panel,” said Dagner, looking down at him through the open door. “No wires I can see. It wasn’t even locked. Who knew?” With the ski mask covering his head, Billy couldn’t see the grin on his friend’s face, but he sure could hear it in his voice. “If you’re done sitting on your ass, you wanna come give me a hand?”

  Billy scrambled to his feet. “What about the dog?”

  “I just told you.” Dagner stepped back, inviting Billy in. “She don’t have no dog, but she’s got one great big cat around here somewheres. I seen him sittin’ on the windowsill a couple of times, catching some sun. Huge fucker. Now c’mon.”

  They entered a kitchen like Billy had only seen in the movies: huge and spacious, with a big old stove and lots of counter space. Above a stand-alone central butcher-block workstation hung a huge rack, from which dangled, as far as Billy was concerned, every pot and pan known to man. “Jesus Christ,” he said pointing. “That fridge is bigger than my whole fucking apartment . . . oh my God, what is that smell?” The pointing hand clamped across his lower face, pinching his nostrils shut through his mask, and he was glad for the layer of material filtering the air before it got anywhere near his nose. “Is there a body somewhere or something?”

  “Cat box,” said Dagner. He hadn’t reacted to the odor filling the kitchen, but Billy could tell he was mouth breathing. “Or, cat boxes, I guess, unless she’s got the granddaddy of all litter boxes stowed away somewhere. I told you, she’s got like twenty cats in here, and one of ’em’s a doozy.” He looked sideways at Billy as they made their way across the kitchen, deeper into the house. “S’matter, didn’t you never have a cat?”

  “No.” Billy adopted Dag’s mouth-breathing trick. “Don’t like ’em. They kind of creep me out, tell you the truth.”

  “Really?” The grin was back in Dagner’s voice. “Then you’re gonna love this place.”

  They hadn’t even crossed the kitchen before they found the cats—or, more accurately, the cats found them. Four of the little beasts came through the door at a trot, followed by a fifth, smaller cat, all apparently curious about the noise, or maybe expecting the old lady to be back from her food run; Billy didn’t know. The straggler hung back a bit, but the four never hesitated, approaching the strangers without fear, rubbing on and about the men’s shins. Billy tripped, stumbled, then came to a halt, the back of his neck crawling at the smooth, slithery feel of their little bodies against his legs.

  “Aw, Christ, Dag. What do I do?”

  The little man had bent at the waist to scratch his own two assailants about the ears for a moment, before scooping each aside without actually picking them up. “Just nudge ’em with your foot and keep walking.” Then, to Billy’s surprise, Dagner loosed a hearty laugh. “Jesus, Billy! Relax. They’re cats: they ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  Dagner strode confidently into the next room, deftly avoiding the smaller cat—maybe it was still a kitten, Billy thought—that batted at his shoelaces as they went by. Billy awkwardly toed the cats aside, four of them now that Dagner was gone, but they simply surged back, writhing against each other as well as his feet. Eventually, recalling the high-stepping technique he’d seen the old woman employ out front, he followed Dagner in an exaggerated, cartoon-style tiptoe.

  “Wait up, damn it!”

  He caught up with the little housebreaker in the next room, the dining room, according to the central table and surrounding chairs. Dagner DuBois was standing statue-still, arms spread slightly. “And here he is.”

  “Here who is?” Billy said, stepped around Dagner—and then he, too, froze, as his friend’s body no longer obscured what lay atop the dark wood table.

  “What,” he whispered, “the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a cat, stupid,” said Dagner, still not looking at him. “Maybe one of them Maine coon cats, but I dunno. I told you I seen him on the windowsills, through the binocs, but he’s, uh, he’s a lot bigger in person.”

  Big was an understatement, in Billy’s opinion: the thing lying in the center of the dining room table was enormous. Easily four or five times the size of any cat Billy had ever seen. The fluffy orange beast stared at them with wide, golden eyes, head erect and obviously unafraid at being approached by two strangers. But for the bushy tail lazily lashing back and forth, the great feline was perfectly immobile: Billy couldn’t even see it breathing.

  One of the tall, tufted ears twitched, and Billy flinched at the quick movement. His attention drawn to those ears, Billy suddenly realized what the cat reminded him of: a show he’d seen on the Animal Channel, or the Nature Network or something, a year or two back, about bobcats. Part of the show had been a video of a bobcat attacking a fox, and the red-furred canine never stood a chance. Billy had thought it almost funny at the time—a cat finally kicking some ass on a dog—but he didn’t find it funny now.

  No wonder the pet flap’s so big, he thought. Christ, that thing’s bigger than most of the dogs in my neighborhood. If he couldn’t get out through the flap, he might just knock down the whole d—

  The huge cat yawned suddenly, mouth apparently unhinging like a snake’s, and for a moment all Billy could see was a ring of yellow-white teeth, fangs that looked nearly as long as his fingers.

  “Holy shit,” whispered Dagner, followed by a low-sung, “nice kitty.” He edged around the room, trying to pass the table without getting any closer to it. Billy edged after him as the yawn ended and the big cat resumed his stare, though Billy was now aware of the tips of two great fangs poking out to overlap the lower lip slightly, as if they just wouldn’t fit into the huge mouth. Focused on those protruding teeth, he was halfway around the room before a slow movement caught his eye, and he glanced toward one of the chairs surrounding the table.

  It held a cat. They all held cats, he realized, each just as still as the monster lying on the table. White, black, calico; their much smaller heads swiveling to watch the men was the only motion they made, and Billy’s skin prickled beneath their bright, unblinking gazes.

  In the hall beyond the dining room, Billy realized he’d been holding his breath, and little black dots were beginning to invade the edges of his vision. The air rushed out of him in an explosive “Fuuuuuuck!”


  “I know, right?” said Dagner, a little breathless himself. “I almost pissed myself when I saw him lying there.” He adjusted his glasses beneath the mask, then checked his watch. “We don’t got a lot of time. Let’s see if we can’t find Aggie’s bankroll.”

  They moved through the house, checking rooms as they went, looking for likely spots for an old whackbag like Agatha Harper to store a big wad of cash. They searched a desk in what looked to be a den, pulling out all the drawers and dumping them out on the floor. They did the same with the one in the library—Billy found himself awed by the library, he’d only seen that in movies—and the two hall tables, as well as the breakfront by the front door.

  The work might have gone faster if they’d split up, searching two rooms at a time; Billy considered it but never suggested it. He assumed Dagner had rejected the idea for the same reason as Billy: the fucking cats.

  There were cats in every room, at least four, often a half dozen, lying on the floor, on the windowsills, on the furniture. White cats, black cats, tabbies and toms, all calmly twitching tails and wide staring eyes. Not one of the felines ran from the intruders, nor seemed the least bit disconcerted at being approached. Unless physically shooed away, the cats remained where they were, one or two watching calmly from barely a foot away as Billy searched the desk or side table they lay upon.

  “They got to keep staring like that?” Billy finally said, trying to ignore the lambent green eyes observing him from atop a small writing desk; he could feel the gaze on the back of his neck as he bent to paw through the drawer.

  “Yeah.” Dagner was pulling books off a small bookshelf in the corner, quickly riffling pages before tossing each aside. “They do that. It’s kind of a cat thing.”

  “It’s fucking unnerving.” Billy slammed the drawer, hoping to elicit some response from the gray-and-white patterned cat sitting tall atop the desk, tail curving around the front of its primly placed feet; the very tip of that tail twitched, but that was all. “It’s like they never blink.”

  Which was true. As far as Billy could tell, once the eyes were upon them, they never closed or turned away. Even the few he and Dagner had come upon that had looked asleep—and how an animal could sleep with its head held upright rather than resting its chin on its paws was something Billy had wondered anew each time—once the animal opened its unsurprised eyes, they hadn’t closed again, not even to blink the sleep away. They just opened their eyes and stared, like some kind of furry little watching machines.

  “Yeah, they do that too,” said Dag, riffling, and dropping another book. “Don’t try staring back. It won’t do nothing but lose you a staring contest, trust me.”

  Billy wrenched his gaze from the cat’s, glancing guiltily at Dagner’s back as the little man picked up yet another book. He looked around at the six—no, make that seven, he hadn’t seen the one on the windowsill, behind the curtains—cats in this room alone, and another question popped into his head.

  “And I thought you said there were like a dozen cats, maybe fifteen.”

  “I said fifteen, maybe twenty. Why?”

  Billy realized he’d stopped searching and just stood there whining at Dagner, but he couldn’t help it. The room was done, but for Dag’s bookcase, but Billy’d be damned before he’d move on to another room all alone.

  “Because I haven’t been counting or anything, but I’m pretty sure we’ve seen like thirty of the little bastards. Maybe more.”

  Dagner tossed the last book aside and stood straight. “I told you, they’re hard to count: they move around.”

  “I haven’t seen any of ’em moving anywhere since that little greeting party in the kitchen.” Billy followed Dag back out into the hall. “They’re there when we get there, and they don’t move unless—”

  He stopped as Dagner strode into the doorway across the hall and stiffened suddenly. “Son of a bitch,” the little man whispered, then stepped aside with a sweep of his arm, offering Billy the door. “You were saying?”

  Billy looked past his friend, his gaze following the pointing arm, and a single word hissed from between tight lips.

  “Motherfucker.”

  It seemed to be a front parlor, with a pair of breakfronts against the walls to the left and right, each bracketed by sitting chairs, also against the wall. A pair of easy chairs faced each other across a low coffee table in the center of the room, while a long couch sat against the far wall, spanning one of the wide front windows of the house.

  The fluffy orange goliath from the dining room lay along the top of the couch, bathing in the sunlight pouring through the window. Billy squinted against the sudden brightness, but the big cat sat with its huge eyes open wide and fixed, unerringly, on Billy. It looked for all the world like it had lain there all morning, but there was just no way Billy was going to believe there were two such cats in the big old house. If there were two, there could be three, or even more, and Billy denied that thought before it could get a decent toehold. It was that or run from the house right now, clamber up and over the damned spiky fence and let Dagner figure the rest of the thing out for himself.

  Sunlight flashed off the cat’s chest, and Billy caught sight of a shiny disc nestled in the creature’s ruff, like the ID tags that usually hung from dogs’ collars. He tore his gaze from the golden oval to look at the beast’s calm, expressionless face, opening his mouth to suggest they go search another room—and close the door to this one, leaving the huge feline locked inside to enjoy his sunshine—when movement beyond the big, orange head caught his eye. He looked past the cat, through the window . . . and saw the gate at the end of the driveway sliding open, silent at this distance, the sleek bulk of the Rolls Royce Phantom waiting at the widening gap.

  “She’s home,” he said, with something approaching relief: people, he could deal with. He turned from the parlor, motioning for Dagner to lead the way. “Let’s get to the front door.”

  As Dag turned to go, though, a sudden thought stopped Billy in his tracks. He looked into the room, at the huge cat lying motionless on the couch, then leaned in to grasp the door knob. He gave it a quick jerk, shoving the doorstop out of the way (a ceramic cat, go figure), and swung the door closed, latching it firmly, with a sharp click.

  There, let’s see you sneak around now, you big fucker, he thought, hurrying after Dagner to welcome the crazy cat lady home.

  It wasn’t his fault. It was the damn cats.

  Agatha Harper had entered the house trilling like a character from a Disney flick, singing out “Hey, babies, Mommy’s home!” Then she’d seen the mess left by the search of the table in the front hall, and two masked men coming toward her, but it had already been too late. For everyone.

  Her voice had cut off with a little urk, eyes going comically wide. She’d turned, groping for the door again, but Billy was already there, gripping her thin shoulders in his big hands and spinning her to face him. She’d come around with one hand raised in a claw, and it had only been the thick weave of his ski mask that kept her nails from gouging deep into his face. As it was, her swipe had come to within an inch of hooking a finger into his left eye, and he’d reeled back in surprise.

  That had been a mistake on his part, that backward step. In response to her call, cats were already flowing into the hall in a furry flood. Dagner had been hollering something behind him, a warning about the cats, most likely, but Billy had been too busy with the woman to pay attention. He’d not yet seen the cats crowding in, so was shocked when his back-stepping foot came down on something soft, almost soiled himself at the earsplitting screech that came from the floor, and had stumbled back still further in panic.

  That had been Agatha’s chance, that second stumble: he was too far away to grab her, his weight moving in the wrong direction for a quick dive after her, had she simply spun and fled through the door. But with a scream to rival that of the stepped-on feline, the cat lady had attacked, extended fingers driving for his eyes again. Billy had managed to ward off her first blo
ws, but had been distracted by what he could see of the floor—or couldn’t see of it, now that he was looking. Everywhere, little heads and backs moved, upthrust tails following along like fuzzy, crook-topped sharks’ fins; there didn’t seem to be a square foot of open space to step into.

  And the noise! Every cat announced itself, even as they rubbed up against his shins in that creepily familiar fashion, the chorus of meows rising as more of the damned little things packed into the small hall, and Agatha Harper screamed Don’t you hurt my babies! again and again.

  With the cacophony of wailing cats and screeching woman, nowhere to step as little bodies packed in closer, and Agatha’s long, scarecrow arms moving in a constant, flailing attack, Billy had felt claustrophobic and panicky, and he didn’t know what else to do . . . so he’d popped the old lady one.

  Some part of him had registered that, up close and personal, Agatha Harper looked like a bundle of thin sticks held together with string, and at the last instant he’d pulled his punch, turning his frightened blow into more of a jab than a haymaker. It had been enough, though. Her eyes had gone wonky, and Billy’d been obliged to catch her as she sagged toward the floor; they’d wound up standing like a couple in some old movie poster, Billy leaned over her, one arm beneath her, as Agatha swooned backward, fingers nearly touching the carpet.

  “Way to go, Mike Tyson.” Dagner had beckoned from the doorway, shaking his head. “C’mon, bring her in here.”

  And that was how they’d wound up standing around in the kitchen, waiting for the old woman to come around so she could answer their questions. Billy stood beside Agatha, holding a steak from the fridge to the woman’s eye, as Dagner finished zip-tying her wrists and elbows to the straight-backed wooden chair she sat in.

  “Don’t make ’em too tight,” Billy warned. “We don’t want to cut off her circulation. Old folks have trouble with that anyway, right?”

  “Says the guy who clocked her in the eye,” said Dagner, squinting up from his squat beside the chair. “They have that osteo-whatsis brittle bone thingy, too, and what’s she weigh, about ninety pounds? Christ, you coulda killed her, big guy.”