by Alan Ryker
“My mom’s gone. I think she must have gone to her house.”
“Good Lord.”
Pete pulled on his sweatpants and socks. “It’s fine. I’ll go get her.”
“This has to stop.”
“It’s fine. I’ll call you from her place.”
Pete was sitting in his truck, putting his keys in the ignition before he realized something: he’d had to unlock the deadbolt on the front door. But his mother didn’t have a key. She couldn’t have locked it again from outside.
He went back inside and checked the little table by the door. Katherine’s keys were still there.
He checked the back door. Also deadbolted.
“Pete? What’s going on?” Katherine asked.
“I’m not sure. Give me a second.”
Was she still in the house?
Pete went into Junior’s room and checked the window. Closed and latched. He walked out to begin a circuit of all the windows when something about the pile of toys and clothes hit him.
Again he returned to Junior’s room. At first glance, under the shock of the situation, Pete had interpreted the room as chaotic. But just like in his mother’s house, there was a method. The mess wasn’t random.
She had piled all of Junior’s things against the two sides of the bed that didn’t sit against the wall.
“Mom?”
Katherine stood in the doorway behind him. “Oh no…”
Pete cleared stuffed animals, action figures, dress shirts and slacks, then dropped to his knees and peered under the bed.
Wide eyes and bared gums met him from inches away, and he fell over backwards.
“Mom! What are you doing?”
Her expression changed from fury to confusion. “Sleeping?”
“Under the bed? Come out here.”
She slid out from beneath the low bed with an eerie grace, then stood. She looked down at the mess. “I thought I dreamed this. It was Victor. He called me down into his hole.”
* * *
Pete got as comfortable as he could on the couch, fluffing his pillow against the armrest and covering himself with an afghan that kept trying to slide off the front. He didn’t know what his mother would try next, but unless she went out a window she couldn’t get out of the house without passing him.
Katherine had been angry. A directionless anger. She worried about the boys and he felt the same, but was more worried about his mother.
They agreed that they’d make an appointment to talk to her doctor about being tested for dementia. Pete hated to admit it, but if she continued behaving this way, they couldn’t handle her. As Katherine had said, she didn’t have the time to watch her continuously. Especially with the phase Teddy was going through.
Pete had thought, but not said, that besides the time, she didn’t have the temperament or desire to. It made him angry. What if this were happening to her mother?
He stopped trying to adjust his pillows and blanket, resigned himself to discomfort and settled in. There wasn’t any point in worrying about it right then.
But the thought of his older brother beckoning his mother to join him...
He knew that she hadn’t meant in his grave, but in the hole where he’d died.
Sleep took a long time to come.
CHAPTER 8
For a while, it was war.
The first hosts were able to take others unaware. Their smell was strange, but unknown, and while it made the other cats wary, it also made them curious.
The infested would fight the strong. Even if they lost to a big male, they sometimes succeeded in infecting him. The skittish, they lured in. They played possum, curling up and “sleeping” until curiosity reeled the feline in for a sniff at their once-familiar, but now strange housemates. They were ambushed, bitten and scratched and held down in the muck. Afterward, they hid in far corners, hissing at all who came near, licking strange wounds and jumping and spinning at the wriggling in their own veins. Eventually, though, they joined the horde.
The final holdouts, most of them older and smarter, banded together in a way that would have been unthinkable only weeks before. Back then, each other cat had been an annoyance at best, a deadly rival at worst. In an overfull house where solitude was impossible, every moment was spent fighting for position.
Now, there was a bright line. There were two distinct factions. But one had joined together by choice, by some strange understanding. The rest, when it was too late, had banded together by necessity.
These few made a strange group, comprised of both the weakest and the strongest. Even before the change, there were some cats that were so small and frightened that they spent every horrible moment of their existences searching out new and better hiding places. They were never tempted by curiosity to examine their aberrant kin. Even when the horde gained enough numbers to corner many, there were some cats that had spent their entire lives eluding the rest. They had a thousand hiding spots, and from each hiding spot they knew dozens of obscure escape routes, slipping through the trash heaps such that catching them was like trying to snatch a minnow from the water.
The strongest also remained. Mothers of a dozen litters whose bodies could go from slinky silk to coiled razor wire in less than an instant. Hulking, savage old males, scarred from a lifetime of battle over more food, more females, and the most precious and limited resource of all, more space. When the rest of the house had been filled by the strange ones, these few gathered in a back bedroom. For the first time in their lives, something worse existed than each other.
The house hummed with a perpetual, throaty growl.
But it was only a matter of time. After they’d tried everything else, the cats outside hurled themselves into the room heedless of their own lives. The strong ripped them to pieces remorselessly and fed on them, as they’d been cut off from their food for days. They avoided the strange blood, the blood that spilled from the veins of their enemies, then rose up and walked around, but it was no use.
Eventually, their veins began to twitch, and their tiny minds began to think each others’ thoughts. They’d spent their entire existences knowing nothing but solitary battle and ferocious independence. Now, they knew the peace of giving themselves over to the whole.
It was so much better.
But their blood began to get angry. It drove them to find more living creatures. But there were no more in the nest, and they could find no way out of the nest. Their blood grew more and more desperate. It sent electricity through their brains, compelling them to find ways out. They hurled themselves at windows. Several small ones slipped out the hole the rat had made, but then they couldn’t get back inside.
So when the front door opened and a man stepped through, the cats moved as one. They spilled from their burrows and sat atop the heaps, watching, waiting for the right moment.
But the man was so large, and he was wary of them. They’d close in as he crouched to look more closely at the floors or at some other feature of the nest that he found mystifyingly interesting, but he could sense them. He’d turn to look at them, and they’d freeze. He’d stand and move on to the next room, scrutinizing them as he went.
Finally, he gathered up some of the precious ones, the little red grubs the cats were careful to never trample. The pheromonal screams exploded through their brains, and they knew they had to take him.
But before they could do anything, he was gone, practically running from the house as they converged on him.
The door slammed shut, and once again, they were trapped.
CHAPTER 9
Driving down the county highway, Rebecca fished in her purse for her ringing phone.
“Hello.”
“Rebecca, Dan here.”
Dan was the home inspector she regularly worked with. “Hey, how’s the fishing?”
“They’re biting. You wouldn’t believe the big boy I pulled out of the lake this weekend.”
“Big Bass Dan!” Danny was a good guy, but he had to have the worst nick
name she’d ever heard.
“You know it. But your client, ummm…Mrs. Grish? Let’s talk about that nightmare.”
“Okay, let’s.”
“She’s not going to be happy.”
Rebecca sighed. “She hasn’t been happy. What’s the word?”
“That wreck is going to have to be demolished.”
“For sure?”
“For absolute and total sure. The non-structural damage alone would cost more than what the house is worth to fix. Mold. Rotten drywall. In some places the flooring is so soaked with cat piss that it’s nearly dissolved. That stuff’s like battery acid.
“Structurally, there’s a massive amount of dry rot. Termites have been working on the place for a while, too. And some other kind of crazy little grubs. Bright red. I’ve never seen anything like them before. There’s an infestation, and I’ve got to report it.”
“Oh jeez.”
“Yeah. Oh, and the bathroom…The floor is gone. Mush. The toilet is sitting entirely on its pipe. There are a few places throughout the house that can’t support a person’s weight, so it’s not really possible to even clean the place. Too dangerous. And if it can’t be cleaned, it can’t be repaired even if they wanted to, and I don’t know why they would.”
“Wow.”
“The house is going to have to be razed.”
“That’s the official word?”
“Yep. That’s what I’m telling the county. I’m not saying this, but if your client wants some of that crap, she’d better get it out now, because the place is coming down soon. They don’t take infestation lightly. Not with that worm problem they had a few years back.”
Rebecca had enough dealings with the farming community to remember what Danny was talking about. About four years ago a severe worm problem rendered half the beef in the county unfit for human consumption. Ranchers lost a lot of money as they watched the grass-fed beef they had expected to be served as prime steaks in expensive restaurants in Japan instead get turned into dog food.
“Great. I’m headed over to see Ms. Grish right now.”
“Glad I don’t have your job.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
“No problem. One last thing: the cats. I called Animal Control. I guess they’ll try to gather as many as they can.”
“Why do they always have so many cats?”
“I don’t know, but these ones were special. I’ve seen them go feral before, but these cats freaked me out. I felt like they were stalking me. Anyway, they’re Animal Control’s problem now.”
“Thanks, Danny. Talk to you later.”
“Later.”
Rebecca had been bracing herself already for a combative Anna Grish. This news should make the situation even more volatile. Her nerves rose, but she took a deep breath and calmed them. She found the anxiety switch in her brain and flipped it. If she hadn’t learned how to long ago, she would have gone nuts.
Besides, she knew how to deal with these situations.
* * *
Rebecca perched on the edge of the loveseat, and Anna, Peter and Katherine all sat on the couch. Peter and Katherine looked tired. Anna, on the other hand, looked much better than she had the last time Rebecca had seen her. Younger, even. That was gratifying, though something about the rejuvenation disturbed her.
“So how are things going? How is this situation working out for everyone?”
Katherine pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Peter hesitated then said, “Not too bad.”
Anna just glared.
“Anna, is this situation working well for you?”
“It’s fine. I don’t appreciate being told what to do, but its fine. For now.”
“Has the house been inspected?” Katherine asked. She was apparently ready to get down to business. Rebecca could appreciate that.
“Yes, it has. I just got a call about it. I’m sorry, Anna, but your house has been deemed uninhabitable. But don’t worry. I’m here to help you find a permanent solution. So let’s discuss—”
“Wait. Hold on. Are you telling me that you’re going to try to keep me from going back to my home?” Many people in Anna’s situation yelled or blustered, but she spoke calmly. Rebecca didn’t take her restraint as a good sign. Sometimes it showed compliance, but that’s not what Rebecca saw when she looked into Anna’s cold eyes.
Sometimes, when a person didn’t put up an argument, it meant that they didn’t consider you worthy of a fight. Rebecca thought that Anna probably saw her as a presumptuous child. And people of Anna’s generation didn’t argue with children.
“Not me, specifically, but the county. The inspector told me that even if the house were worth fixing, that the structural damage that’s occurred makes a cleanup impossible. Someone could get hurt or killed. Without being able to clean first, it will be impossible to perform repairs. But there are likely better solutions, anyway. We could talk about you staying here permanently.” Rebecca could practically feel Katherine’s eyes boring into her. Between her and Anna, she felt like she was catching hell from all angles.
It was such a delight helping people.
“But there are also some very nice senior living communities nearby, several that have private apartments with kitchens. That would let you have your privacy, but you’d also have…”
Rebecca stopped talking as Anna stood, left the room and shut the door to Junior’s bedroom behind her.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “My father built that house. She’s lived there for the past fifty years.”
“I understand. I’m not taking it personally. When you’re accustomed to making your own decisions, it’s hard when someone steps in telling you what to do.”
Peter nodded. “So what’s going to happen to the house? No cleanup?”
“The inspector told me that it’s probably going to be demolished.”
Peter looked away and shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“From one very valid perspective, it’s upsetting, I know,” Rebecca said. “But think about it this way: it’s a fresh start, an automatic do-over. Of course, your mother is definitely going to require counseling to prevent her from returning to her old ways. From a therapy standpoint, this isn’t an ideal situation. It’s best to give the person some control over relinquishing their possessions. When it’s all just yanked away, the response is usually to try to replace them immediately. She’s going to have a lot of anxiety, and it’s going to manifest itself in negative ways. She may lash out at you.”
Katherine snorted.
Rebecca said, “She has been already, I take it.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Katherine said.
“What if we put a trailer on the property? We could probably scrape together the money for a single-wide.”
“Well, that’s an option. It may not be the best one, though. If she does well in therapy, yeah, I could see it. But she needs a mental health evaluation before we can even consider letting her live on her own again.”
“She won’t pass one,” Katherine said.
“Katherine…”
Peter got very tense, and gave his wife a strange look. One that Anna thought was an attempt to simultaneously order and beg her not to speak.
“I’m sorry, but it has to be said. Sure, I’d like her out of my house. We could put her in a singlewide and forget about her—”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying,” Peter said, obviously hurt.
“I know. You just want to make her happy. But that might not be the right thing to do. She hasn’t shown for a single second that she believes any of this is her fault or her problem. She’ll go right back to living the way she was, and I can’t stand by and watch that. Look at her. She’s healthy. That house was killing her. She looks ten years younger, and moves better than she did when I first met her.”
“It’s true,” Peter said.
“But she’s not all there mentally.” Katherine turned to Rebecca. “She’s been wan
dering off. Then we found her hiding in a pile of my son’s belongings. She needs constant supervision, not a secluded trailer.”
Peter looked away and shook his head, obviously a little upset at his wife airing the family laundry. Rebecca was pleasantly surprised by Katherine’s attitude, but disturbed by her description of Anna’s behavior.
“She’s tried to go back to her house?”
“Yes, but then she acted like she didn’t know she was doing it, like she was sleepwalking, almost. I think it must be dementia.”
Rebecca nodded. “It could be. But then again, it could just be the stress of separation anxiety. It can be very intense. She might just need some therapy and the right medication. But thank you for being honest with me.” Rebecca turned an ever-so-slightly disapproving gaze on Peter, figuring that was the most he could handle just then. “Peter, I know you want to make your mother happy, and I know that you don’t want her to be angry with you, but if we don’t share important information, the right decision won’t be made and ultimately, your mother will suffer.”
Peter nodded but didn’t reply.
Rebecca took out her phone and flipped through her contact list. “Now, regarding testing for dementia, Anna should see her usual physician and get a referral. But she’ll also need to talk to a psychologist.” Rebecca wrote down a name and phone number. “Here’s the contact information for one who specializes in hoarders. I’ve sent her a lot of tough customers over the years, and she hasn’t failed me yet. Make an appointment to see her. After the evaluations, we’ll be in a much better position to move forward.”
At the door, Rebecca put a hand on Peter’s arm. “I know this is tough, but in the long run, your mom will thank you.”
That was often true, and you had to make an enabler like Peter believe it. The promise of his mother’s approval would act like a lantern in the dark, faint, but enough to motivate him to continue down the long road ahead.
The possibility that Rebecca didn’t bring up was the one where Anna resented her son’s interference for the rest of her life.