Pieces of Hate (22 page)

Suddenly, it was the Discovery Channel. Some National Geographic special. About the behavior of house cats.

He hit the button a few times until he found American Movie Classics. That was what he needed. Some old black and white movie with nothing but froth and fun to take his mind off.

“ — now sit back” the silver-haired host said with a smile, “and enjoy Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People.”

“Son of a bitch!” Clyde shouted, hitting the OFF button.

The house was plunged into deafening silence. He decided that perhaps some music would help. He had a large collection of CDs and he went to pick something appropriate. He was going through them when it came.

We know you know and we can’t let you tell others about us.

He fell away from the CD shelf, grabbing at his head, and his leg hit the corner of the coffee table. He fell on his back, hard, and got up quickly, embarrassed by his clumsiness even though he was alone. When he stood, he was facing the window that looked out on the front yard.

There on the grass sat a puffy grey Manx, staring through the glass . . . directly at him.

We can’t let you live.

He dropped to the floor, holding his head and groaning through his teeth. He clutched his hair, pulling it a little.

Yeah, maybe he did need therapy . . . after all, he was sitting there pulling his own hair like a madman in an old movie. But he didn’t need therapy for this. This was something real!

He thought, It was the fall . . . something about the fall on those steps outside Janna’s . . . landing on the cat . . . the feeling that came afterward . . . something . . . something.

Clyde rolled over on his stomach and began to crawl like a soldier crawling over the jungle floor to avoid flying bullets. He crawled down the hall to the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind him. The only window in there was opaque. He wouldn’t be able to see anything through it . . . and nothing would be able to see him.

He put the toilet lid down and sat on it, buried his face in his hands and began to think frantically.

All those things he’d always thought about cats, ever since he was just a little boy, about cats looking like they were plotting and scheming, like they had something horrible in mind, something secret and evil that no one knew about or even suspected and something that was far more intelligent than the intelligence for which any of those smarmy cat lovers gave them credit . . .

. . . he started to think about that again. He also thought about the fall, about whatever it was that had passed through him, those whispering voices and that . . . thing, that living, throbbing, intelligent thing he’d felt oozing through him . . . and leaving bits and chunks of itself behind.

He sat there for a long time, thinking . . . thinking . . . and then he got up and went to the bedroom. He found the phonebook. He would find a therapist, just like Janna had suggested. He would make an appointment for Monday — even if he had to beg for it — and he would go. Until then, he would stay in the house . . . with all the curtains closed and all the doors and windows locked . . .

“You know, Mr. Trundle, a fear of cats is not uncommon,” Dr. Sharpe said. “In fact, it’s a phobia I’ve dealt with a number of times.”

He was a pleasant-looking, middle-aged man with greying reddish hair, a slight overbite and thick-lensed, wire-rimmed glasses.

“I don’t have a . . . a-a cat phobia,” Clyde said, fidgeting in the chair facing Sharpe’s desk. “I just don’t like them. Never have. But now . . . something’s happened, something that makes me . . . well, every time I see one of the damned things, I . . . I get these . . .”

“You get what, Clyde? Bad feelings? Fear? Anxiety? A shortness of breath, maybe?”

“No, no, it’s worse than that, it’s . . .” After a moment, Clyde explained what had happened on his way out of Janna’s apartment, the feeling he’d gotten when he fell on the cat. “And this feeling I get now, it’s like that! Every time I see a cat, I have these feelings like . . . oh, God, I know this sounds crazy, but it’s like I . . . hear their thoughts . . . moving through me . . . right through my mind . . . these thoughts that aren’t really thoughts but, well . . . more like feelings, but I can . . . understand them.”

Sharpe smiled ever so slightly and spoke softly and deliberately. “I think what you’re feeling, Clyde, is a sense of guilt. You fell on a cat that belonged to someone, that was someone’s pet, a pet someone loved, and now you feel guilty about that. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with — ”

Clyde shot forward and pounded a fist on the desk. “That’s not it! I don’t give a damn about that cat! It’s just one less sneaky cat in the world as far as I’m concerned. But now . . . listen to me, while I was driving over here, I passed a lot of cats on the sidewalks and in yards, you know, like you always do when you drive around? And you know what I heard in my head? What I felt? It was like, like . . . well, you know how when you’re at a party and you’re passing through the crowd and you just catch snatches of conversations, just pieces of sentences, a few words here and there? Well, that’s what it was like. I was just catching bits and pieces now and then, but they were hitting me from every direction and I-I . . . well, a couple of times, I nearly had a wreck! I nearly drove off the damned road!”

“And what were these bits and pieces, Clyde?”

“They were . . . well, I kept feeling . . . in my head, I was getting these . . . oh, for crying out loud, you’re just gonna think it’s crazy, or you’ll come up with some damned explanation for it, or worse, you’ll want to put me on some kind of medication!”

“Please. Tell me.” His voice was gentle and encouraging.

Clyde bowed his head as if he were praying so he wouldn’t have to look at Dr. Sharpe. “I heard . . . or rather, I felt, ‘there’s the one’ and ‘he killed . . .’ and ‘the one who has captured the essence . . .’ and ‘the one who knows too much’ and ‘the human who can sense us’ and . . . well, there were others. My God, there were so many others. But they were all pretty much the same. They knew that I killed that cat. They knew that something inside of that cat . . . it’s essence, or whatever, part of it got caught inside me. And now I can hear them, feel them. Sense them. And they don’t like it. Because there’s something . . . that they . . . don’t want us to know. And they’re afraid I’ll find out and tell.”

Slowly, Clyde lifted his head and looked at the doctor.

After a very long while, Sharpe leaned forward and said, “Tell me, Clyde, do you have enough insurance to cover, say, a brief stay in a hospital?”

“Son of a bitch, I knew it!” Clyde shouted, shooting to his feet and knocking the chair backward. “I just knew this wouldn’t do a damned bit of good and I shouldn’t have — ”

The doctor stood, too, and said, “Please, Mr. Trundle, I think it would do you a lot of good if you would just — ”

“If I’d just let you put me into some fucking nuthouse? Huh? No way. Thank you very much, Doctor, I can go somewhere else and be insulted for a hell of a lot less than this. Send me your bill.” He left and slammed the door.

On the way home, it was the same all over again. They stopped their leisurely strolls and sat on the sidewalks to watch him pass, their heads turning to follow the movement of his car, while others sat on fences and watched sat up from front porch catnaps to see him go by . . .

. . . there he goes . . .

. . . dangerous one, the one who killed . . .

. . . has the essence and knows. .

. . . he’s dangerous, knows too much . . .

. . . have to die, before he tells the others . . .

When he got back inside his house — where all the shades were pulled and curtains drawn — he threw himself onto his bed, screaming into his pillow as he clutched his head between his hands and kicked his feet on the mattress like a child throwing a tantrum.

What were they doing? Why did they want him dead? What were they afraid of? Why did they think he was dangerous? What did they think he would tell others? Didn’t they realize that no one in their right mind would ever believe him?

Running those questions through his head over and over again, trying so hard to answer them but having no success, made him feel no better and cluttered his head with a rush of distracting thoughts so his mind couldn’t pick up anything else . . . because they were out there. They were always out there. Cats in the yard, cats wandering slowly down the sidewalk, crossing the street, sitting in neighbors’ yards or on neighbors’ fences and staring at his house, crouching in trees and huddling beneath shrubbery . . . every single one of them watching his house, keeping track of when he left, when he returned and where he went in between, and somehow communicating all of that information from one to the other . . . silently . . . without so much as a meeeoow.

He sat up on the bed and found that his hands were trembling — no, they were shaking — and his heart was thundering in his chest. He felt a rushing in his head and —

. . . keep track of him . . .

. . . don’t let him do anything dangerous . . .

. . . everyone gather . . .

. . . and watch him . . .

. . . attack if necessary . . .

. . . think of him as prey . . .

— there was a throbbing behind his eyes, as if they were trying to work their way out of the sockets.

Suddenly, Clyde began to think of all the times he’d been clawed and bitten by cats — most recently yesterday, when Cotton hitched up on her hind legs and dragged her claws from his knee down — and he shuddered. And he’d seen what they did with their prey . . . first they’d strike a few blows to injure it, then they’d play with it for a while, bat it around like a cat-toy, prance around it as they knocked it here and there . . . and then, of course . . . lunchtime.

Was that what they would do to him? Was that what they were planning . . . before he could tell anyone? Before anyone would believe him? All of them together? All those cats gathering together to pounce on him at once?

He got up and walked through the house. There were no lights on and with all the windows covered, the rooms were filled with long shadows and dark corners.

What if one of them had gotten inside somehow? Cats had a way of doing that, didn’t they? Squeezing in doors quickly as someone goes in or out? And as for hiding . . . well, they were so quiet and stealthy . . .

He went to the front window and very, very carefully pulled the curtain open just a fraction of an inch.

His breath caught in his throat like ground glass until, after a long moment, he sucked in a dry gasp that sounded like a rake being pulled over sheet metal.

There were at least a dozen cats — cats of all colors and sizes and breeds — directly outside the window, staring at the glass as if they had been waiting for him to look out. Beyond them, there were more on the sidewalk. And beyond them, there were more in the street. None of them moved, not even the usual movements, like a slow swing of a tail, a lick of the paw or a lazy stretch. They just sat calmly, staring at his house . . . at his front window.

At him.

He let the curtain drop, turned around and walked slowly from the window, pacing first the living room, then the whole house, from room to room, up and down the halls as he clenched and unclenched his fists again and again, his shirt beginning to stick to his perspiring body.

“Protection.” he muttered, “I’ve gotta get some kind of protection, something like . . . like a gun, maybe, a gun, but where . . .”

He slowed his pace and thought a moment, silently cursing himself for putting off getting a gun for so long . . . for too long.

But his dad was a gun nut. He had cabinets of them in their house in Burbank. They’d gone on vacation last week — someplace in Florida, the mandatory vacation spot for people over sixty — and they wouldn’t be back for another week at least. And he had a key to their house. ‘Just in case something should ever happen,’ his dad always said every time he reminded Clyde not to lose that key.

He could go over there and get all the guns and ammunition he wanted. It was like a Guns-R-Us, that house. But . . . how could he get out of this house with all those cats gathered in the front yard and on the sidewalk? He could try to go out the back door and hope that none were out there — although he doubted he would be so lucky — but the car was parked in the carport out front, so he would have to face them, anyway.

Another idea struck him and, once again, he rushed for the nearest phonebook. After ruffling through it, he picked up the cordless in the living room and punched in a number.

“Yes, um. I’d like to have a cab sent to my house, please. But if it’s not too much — what? Oh, the address.” He gave his address slowly, his voice quivering a little. Then: “Now, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like the driver to come to the front door when he arrives and ring the bell . . . Uh, yes, I know I could watch for him, but, um, I’m working, see, and I tell you what. Tell the driver there’s triple the tip in it for him, okay. how’s that? . . . good. Thank you.”

He dropped the receiver back into its rack and returned to the front window, parting the curtains a little wider than before. This time, he was smiling as he looked out at the cats.

Not one of them had moved an inch since he’d last seen them.