by T Paulin
He waited for her to ask about his day. He wanted to tell her about the trip to the farmhouse, and trying to help the old, blind man, but he was too tired to simply volunteer the information.
Brenda often complained that she had to drag information out of him. By contrast, she never stopped sharing. They could be apart for ten minutes, and she’d come back with eleven minutes’ worth of anecdotes.
Eli enjoyed her chatter, the way he might enjoy a radio station that played his favorite music one third of the time. It was better than silence.
“I talked to Khan,” he said. “He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. The guy believes in ghosts, though, so I don’t know how much help he would be anyway.” He jiggled the bag of catnip in his hand. “Sometimes carbon monoxide makes people imagine things. There might have been one of those big trucks parked in the alley, idling its engine.”
“That could be it,” she said, flicking her gaze over to him via the mirror. “It seemed real last night, but anything can seem real in the middle of the night. Then the sun comes up and you feel pretty foolish.”
She didn’t walk him through her day, but Eli got the feeling Brenda had talked to some of her friends, and they didn’t believe in cat wraiths, so now Brenda didn’t, either.
“So, it was either a big truck in the alley, or the powder on the card.”
Brenda nodded in agreement. “We could send that business card out to a private lab to test for drugs. One of those places that parents send their kids’ hair samples to.”
“We don’t need to do that. We’ll find out tonight.”
She smeared strawberry-scented gloss on her lips. “What do you mean, we? I’m not sleeping here. I’ll crash at a friend’s house.”
“Which friend?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Eli didn’t like the sound of any of this, but perhaps it was for the best he face this thing down alone, like a man.
He pulled open the catnip bag’s zippered plastic closure and took a sniff. The green flakes smelled exactly like the tea they served at Brenda’s favorite vegetarian restaurant.
Brenda finished applying her makeup, and shoved the apparatus back into the overstuffed drawer. She cursed the lack of storage in the bathroom. For a moment, Eli felt guilty about his secret storage, behind the mirror. He opened the bag and sniffed the catnip again. The feeling passed.
Brenda squeezed past him and put on her shoes and jacket by the door.
“What’s the catnip for?” she asked.
“On the off chance it’s something paranormal, this might appease the spirit.” He chuckled. “Stupid, I know, but catnip’s cheap enough.”
“Oh.” The whites around her eyes showed. Despite her big talk, Brenda was scared. “Do you sprinkle the herbs in a circle around the bed, so the ghost can’t get you?”
“That’s a good idea. I was just going to put it in a bowl.”
She put her hand on her hip and shook her head. “Oh, Eli.”
“Fine. I’ll sprinkle it around the bed. You can tell all your friends, and have a big laugh about it.”
She didn’t even smile. “You’ll need to pull the bed away from the wall.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
She bent forward, strapping herself into her tallest shoes. When she righted again, her face was red. Brenda flushed easily, and burned easily, too. Sunscreen weather was coming soon. The seasonal change would add fifteen minutes of prep time to their excursions.
“Have fun dancing,” he said.
She closed the closet door slowly, like she hated to leave.
The hallway felt gloomy. Outside the sun was setting, and night was on its way. Eli flicked on the overhead light.
Brenda stood motionless at the apartment’s front door, gazing up at him. Even in her tallest shoes, she was still so small.
He wondered if she was waiting for him to say something specific—to admit to her that he was scared, and that whatever happened tonight, it would be less scary if he could face it with her.
Her gaze travelled down to the bag of catnip in his hand. Her lips twitched.
Let’s do this together, he wanted someone to say.
She blinked her spiky, sparkling lashes. Be a man, Eli. Be a man and make a catnip circle around the bed while I spend the night at an unspecified friend’s house.
And then she left.
The apartment beyond the hallway rapidly grew darker, as if someone was pushing a slider on a control panel. God, perhaps.
Eli shivered, like he always did when he thought about God.
He walked through the apartment, fastening the chain on the front door, then checking that all the windows were closed and secure. For good measure, he opened all the cupboards and checked for cats that might have climbed the fire escape and snuck in during the day. He found no cats.
He turned on the TV and watched some of his favorite shows. The comedies weren’t very good, but he laughed out loud at the punchlines, hoping they’d get better with some effort.
He wondered how Mr. Quentin was doing right now, and if he’d eaten well. It wasn’t much of a mystery to Eli why the old man insisted on staying in his house rather than move in with family. Humans were stubborn, and irrational. These traits only increased with age.
Eli knew about stubborn old men. His own father had been sixty when he adopted Eli. There was no regular adoption agency that would have placed a toddler with a sixty-year-old single parent, but Eli’s case was no regular adoption.
There had been… anomalies.
For one thing, the young boy had shown no verbal skills when he’d first been picked up, rummaging through garbage bins behind a restaurant.
Not only couldn’t he speak, but he didn’t seem to understand a word in any of the languages they tried. Nothing seemed to be physically wrong with his ears or mouth. The child development experts had one diagnosis, and then another.
To everyone’s surprise, within days, he began to speak. Not just a word here and there, but complete, subject-verb-object sentences. Soon he was speaking at the level of a six-year-old, even though his physical size put him at four.
The experts suddenly had new diagnoses. He was a savant, and for one afternoon, the unnamed boy delighted in this new word, saying things like, “The savant desires ice cream immediately,” and “The savant would like to check into a better hotel.”
Couples practically lined up to adopt him. Even in the Post-Crashdown chaos, there was a waiting list.
One attractive couple took the lead as the most qualified. They were in their late thirties, rosy-cheeked and healthy, with no other children, plus they owned a horse ranch. The dad loved ice cream and the mom wanted to teach Eli to play the piano.
Everything seemed perfect, until the last minute, when an anonymous tip led investigators to a secret chamber under the couple’s house. Subsequently, their ties to a non-traditional religious organization were uncovered. This group believed the unnamed child was the reincarnation of their god, who was not the regular God, but one of those ancient creatures who slumbered under the sea.
The cult’s exact plans for the child were not entirely clear, but the rosy-cheeked couple did possess an alarming number of ceremonial daggers.
When news of the couple’s arrest got out, three bombs were set off throughout the city, and the cult claimed responsibility. Some people said it was a coincidence, just one of the many crazy things that happened Post-Crashdown, but orders and paperwork began moving.
The boy, who was dubbed Eli by that point, was declared a national security threat.
Eli was issued the smallest size of orange prison coveralls—the size designated for little persons—and transferred to a maximum security holding facility at an undisclosed location.
A week later, he woke up in the home of the psychologist he’d bonded with the most—a sixty-year-old man named Joseph Carter. Even though Joseph wasn’t more than a quarter Italian, some people had taken to calling hi
m Giuseppi, and then Geppetto, because he had snowy white hair and looked like the toymaker from the fairy tale about Pinocchio.
Despite the obvious parallels, Eli’s father never once referred to Eli as Pinocchio, not even as a joke.
After he died, Eli regretted that he never made the joke himself, either. Not knowing his own history, Eli did feel a little like a wooden puppet come to life. Making the Pinocchio joke wouldn’t have kept his father alive longer, or made the bitter end easier, but it would have been a fun memory to smile over now.
Joseph Carter never let on how he’d managed to spring Eli from jail and adopt him, but he did sell his house and move the two of them into a run-down apartment building during their first month together.
He didn’t take retirement, but continued to work, so that Eli had college money, as well as money for most of the things teenage boys desire. Eli didn’t get every video game console he wanted, but he did get some. He also went on every school field trip, and he especially loved going to horse ranches—though he avoided the one horse ranch that had been owned by his would-be murderers. The cult members’ house had been demolished, and the underground chamber destroyed, but it was still way, way, way too creepy.
When Eli was about six, Joseph Carter took him to a medical clinic to have a day surgery done on one of his ears. It was nothing major, just one of those common childhood ailments. When he woke up, he was in a different clinic entirely, and there were stitches along his hairline—up above his eyebrow, a world away from his ears.
He eyed everyone with suspicion. There’d been some complications, they told him, and he would need to stay for three days, for observations. The nurses brought him chocolate bars, milkshakes, and cheeseburgers. They let him stay up all night watching movies and eating candy. It was like they weren’t even real nurses.
The stitches were itchy.
The milkshakes were good.
He heard people talking, when they thought he was asleep, about the microchip they’d installed in his head.
He got cake and ice cream for breakfast.
You win some, you lose some.
Chapter Thirteen
Eli watched his regular Friday night TV shows, but he didn’t enjoy them.
As the time drew nearer midnight—Eli’s bedtime as set by Brenda—Eli felt his dread rising.
At eleven-thirty, he went into the bedroom, pulled the bed away from the wall, and sprinkled the catnip around it in a circle. While he was sprinkling the herbs, he was certain his line was perfect, and he felt proud of doing a good job, even on such a ridiculous thing. When it was done, and he stood back, his pride evaporated. Drunken monkeys could have done a better job.
He messed around with the catnip boundary using his hands, but only made it worse.
At the stroke of midnight, he stepped over the wobbly oval and climbed under the covers.
He waited for sleep.
He waited for forty-five minutes.
He promised himself that he would wash the dishes if he was still awake in fifteen minutes.
That didn’t work, even though it usually did.
He climbed out of bed and washed the dishes.
He made himself toast with peanut butter, and washed it down with hot milk, heated in the microwave. Then he tossed a sleeping pill down after the mess.
It was nearly one thirty now. Instead of getting back in bed, he ran himself a hot bath and climbed in. He lined his plastic alien soldiers along the ledges and talked to them about his feelings, just like a crazy person would.
He picked up Brenda’s pink razor and shaved one third of his right thigh—one third vertically.
There was no clock in the bathroom, but he guessed it was past two. He arranged the soldiers across his chest and enacted a leisurely battle.
His head got fuzzy. Green bits of catnip floated on the water all around him.
He slid down and got more comfortable, rocking his head to one side.
Was there even more catnip in the tub?
He closed his eyes and imagined aliens were making their favorite tea—Eli tea, with catnip.
He took a deep, relaxed breath in.
The breath came back out in bubbles.
His eyes flew open.
Someone was holding him under the water, their bony fingers around his neck.
He fought, thrashing around in the water. This only made a mess, with water and plastic soldiers flying everywhere.
Eli bumped the back of his head hard enough that it momentarily stunned him into going limp.
As soon as he stopped thrashing, the hand released from his throat and he bobbed up.
The cool air hit his face, and he sucked in air with wobbly lungs. The darkness regarded him with what seemed to be curiosity. Eli took a second breath. One red eye seemed to wink at him, and then the darkness flashed up and pulled him under the water.
Eli tried to remember everything Valentine had said about cat wraiths. Unfortunately, she hadn’t said much, except that they didn’t usually kill people.
What had she said?
They followed lonely people home and tried to liven things up.
This dark-toothed, smoky, shape-shifting thing didn’t look like any cat Eli had ever seen, except… were those two pointed ears near the top of its head?
Eli stared up at the points, the view distorted by the bath water. Were those things ears, or horns? Bubbles trailed out of his nostrils.
He remembered something about cats. They often played with their prey, batting around anything from spiders to mice. When the prey stopped moving, the cats either ate it or lost interest and walked away.
Eli still had some oxygen in his lungs, and still had some fight in his body, but he stopped thrashing.
If Kitty wanted to play, Kitty would need to play nice.
Eli went completely limp in the bath water. His knees were up, and he was positioned on his back, with his head and face fully submerged in the warm water.
He held still, until the water was calm. Carefully, Eli peered up through his eyelashes. The dark face with red, glowing eyes stared back at him. Bits of green floated by.
The points at the top of its head twitched. They were definitely ears, not horns.
All at once, the bony hand released his throat. Eli willed himself to hold still, despite his aching lungs crying out for oxygen. Hold on. Hold on. Just a bit longer.
The red eyes above him blinked off and on, as though the dark monster was blinking. Thinking. Plotting.
Hold on.
The scar along his hairline began to itch furiously.
Hold on.
Something poked him in one armpit and then the other. Two bony hands slipped under his arms. With seemingly-effortless ease, the cat wraith scooped him out of the bathtub and gently rested him on his side.
Eli was just barely conscious by now.
The cat wraith tilted up Eli’s chin, pulled open his jaw, and swept two bony fingers through his mouth to check his airway.
Eli coughed and sputtered, then gasped for breath.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut, even as his breathing calmed.
Whatever was in the bathroom with him was still there. He didn’t dare open his eyes, but he felt the presence of the darkness.
He wondered if the sleeping pill he’d taken was helping to keep him calm. And then he wondered if it wasn’t the sleeping pill itself that was making him hallucinate. It was a new brand, after all.
Even with his eyes closed, the whole world seemed distorted now. Everything sounded muted, like he was still under water, or under glass.
The sleeping pills.
Brenda had picked them up recently, enthusiastically saying the brand was “all natural.” He told her arsenic was also “all natural,” and then she’d been snippy the rest of the day. But then she’d been especially eager to serve him a mug of cocoa that night, and he’d wondered if she’d dosed him with the sleeping pill to prove a point, but he didn’t dare ask.
Com
e to think of it, Brenda had made him a cocoa Thursday night, as well. She’d delivered it with that sweet smile of hers. He thought she was just thanking him for doing a good job in the bedroom, but now he wondered.
The bathroom floor’s tiles felt cold under his cheek, and the water evaporating rapidly off his beached body made him shiver. He kept his eyes clenched shut, trying to get rid of the sleeping-pill hallucinations by mental strength alone. He shivered again, and thought about the large, fluffy towel that hung from the towel rod, a few feet from his head. The light shifted, and then the towel was on him—a dry, warm, terry cloth blanket.
Eli drifted in and out of consciousness. The heavy meal plus sleeping pill had really done a number on him.
He’d deal with everything in the morning, he decided. He would send those “all natural” sleeping pills to the nosy-parent lab to have them tested.
The towel was so warm and comfortable.
Face down on the bathroom floor, Eli fell into a deep slumber. He didn’t usually snore, but tonight was a special occasion. He snored so loud and deep, his bones vibrated.
The cat wraith wasn’t sure if it liked Eli’s snoring. It reached into the lukewarm bathwater and pulled the plug to drain the water from the tub. It liked watching the water swirl down the drain. That was good stuff.
Then, for a full four minutes, the cat wraith perched on the closed seat of the toilet, watching the pale human snore.
The snoring was not pleasant to listen to, after all. The cat wraith picked up one of Eli’s toy soldier aliens, lubricated it with its tongue, and lodged the soldier, head-first, into one of Eli’s nostrils.
The force of Eli’s snoring exhale blew the plastic toy out in one gust.
The cat wraith repeated the process until it got bored, which was exactly five times.
Done with Eli, it coalesced into the shape of a kitten and scampered into the bedroom, where it had an intense catnip party, frolicking wildly until it got bored, which took exactly six minutes.
Chapter Fourteen
Eli woke up in his bed, naked.