As I climb my front steps I notice that they’re bare. The wind has blown them clear of leaves and such. That won’t do. If people come up to the house I need to hear it. What I do is, I crush a couple of Christmas ornaments and sprinkle them over the steps. This produces a crisp high tinkle that gives me plenty of warningof approaching visitors. It’s not dangerous. People wear shoes. I mean, I know I went out in my bare feet the other day but most people don’t. That’s just a fact.
As I’m scattering the broken shards of fibreglass I catch movement at the corner of my eye. I turn to look, hoping I’m wrong. But I’m not. The newspaper is gone from one of the downstairs windows in the abandoned house next door. As I watch, a pale hand pulls more yellowing newsprint away, leaving the window unlidded like a dark deep eye. The sash is pushed up and a business-like hand dumps a panful of dust out of the window. Then there comes the sound of vigorous sweeping.
I go into my house and lock the front door behind me. I put my eye to the peephole that faces east, towards the vacant house. Overgrown timothy grass nods against the glass, but I still have a good enough view. I watch as a white truck pulls up. It saysEZ Movingin orange letters on the side. A woman comes out the front door, lopes down the steps in easy strides and unhooks the gate at the back of the truck. She has a fixed look around her mouth. It makes her seem older than she probably is. She doesn’t look like she sleeps much. A man in a brown uniform gets out of the driver’s side of the truck. Together they begin to unload. Boxes, lamps, a toaster. An easy chair. Not much stuff.
The woman looks towards me, where I lie in wait. Her eyes seem to pierce through the screen of timothy into the dark room where I sit. I duck even though there is no way she can see me. This is very bad. People have eyes to look and ears to listen, and women look and listen more carefully than men.
I am so upset I have to go to the kitchen and make bullshots. I’m sad to say I didn’t invent these. You can probably find the recipe but I’ve made some little changes of my own so I’ll record this.
After a long hunt I find the machine under the bed. I kicked it there by accident I guess.
Recipe for Bannerman’s bullshots. Boil up a little beef bouillon and season it with pepper and Tabasco. You can add a teaspoon of mustard. I like to add celery salt too. Then put in a shot of bourbon. Or two, maybe. You are supposed to add lemon juice but people who like lemon juice are the same kind of people who love salad. I won’t have it in the house.
I have three before I feel any better. I follow it up with my pill, and before I know it I’m nodding pleasantly. Like Mommy used to say, if you have pain you take medicine. If you have a cut you get stitches. Everyone knows that.
Mommy used to tell me the story of the ankou, the god with many faces who lives in the graveyards of her home. It’s so frightening to have more than one face. How can you know who you really are? When I was little I sometimes thought I saw the ankou in my room at night, hanging in the dark; an old man with a long knife, the blade reflected in his eyes. Then he was a horned stag, sharp prongs anointed with blood. Then a gazing owl, still as stone. He was my monster. I can’t even remember exactly what Mommy told me about him – or which parts my mind added in the night. The thought of him still makes me tremble. But these days I have Olivia. When I stroke her fur or even just hear her little annoyed scufflings around the house, I remember that I am safe and the ankou is far away.
As I drift, the bug man’s words go round and round in my head like ticker tape.It can be lonely, keeping secrets.It’s weird because in one way I am very lonely, and in another I’ve got more company than I can handle.
I am almost asleep when the doorbell cuts through the air like a jackhammer.
Olivia
The gd doorbell is ringing, and Ted won’t get up. He always sleeps late after he has been to the woods. I can hear him snoring like a snare drum. There it goes again.BRRRRRRRRRR.No, not like a snare drum. More like a saw or a nail gun to the head. Come on, the ted with opposable thumbs has to wake up and answer the doorbell. I can’t, can I? I’m a cat. I mean, what the eff.
I race upstairs and walk on his face until he wakes up. He groans with the effort of dragging clothes onto his body. I tread the outline of his warm body in the sheets, as his steps retreat like thunderclaps down the stairs. There go the locks,thunk,thunk,thunk. He opens the door. Another voice says something pleading. I think it’s a female ted. I wait confidently. Ted will tell this other ted where to go! He hates people ringing the doorbell. After all, other teds are dangerous. He has told me often enough.
But instead, to my horror, he lets the other ted in. The door closes and the thunder comes. The whole house shakes. The carpet slides under me. I amrowing and scrabbling for clawholds. The timbers in the roof groan and scream, the walls judder. The fabric of everything threatens to spring apart.
Slowly the world settles. But I can’t move from my place under the bed. I am frozen with horror, heart pounding. The new stinkof her fills the house, fills my nostrils. It’s like burning and black pepper. This ted is making me feel too much – who or what is she?
Below, the teds are talking like nothing’s wrong. I think they’re in the kitchen. I don’t want to listen to them, of course I don’t, but I can’t help hearing. This lady ted is going to live next door. Then she says something about putting a cat in a washing machine. Oh my lord. She’s a gd psycho, like on the TV.
Ted’s voice takes on a strange note. It is – interest? Happiness? Awful, anyway. What if he asks her back? What if this starts happening all the time? The conversation seems to go on for ever and I think,Wow he should just ask her to move in here, the way he’s going on.At long, long last their voices move into the hall again. He shows her out.
As the lady ted leaves, she says, ‘If you ever need help with anything,’ and something about a broken arm that I don’t really understand.
Finally he closes the door behind her.
Wow. That was not right. Bad, bad, bad. The whining reaches a pitch which makes me feel like my head will explode. That was a violation of all the trust between us – what do we have if we don’t have trust? What if that lady ted is a murderer? What if she decides to come back? unacceptable.
Ted comes upstairs and the bed creaks companionably above my head. Back to his nap, of course. He calls for me but I am completely upset and I run out of the bedroom. Obviously he has no feelings because a few minutes later he is snoring again.
I pace the living room. The peepholes peer crazily at me, like eyes. Nothing feels safe. I knead the nice rug but even that can’t comfort me like usual. I am so upset that even my eyes aren’t working properly. Everything looks the wrong colour, the walls look green, the rug blue.
He has to be taught a lesson. Breaking stuff isn’t enough, this time.
I leap crazily from the counter, aiming for the refrigerator door. Eventually I hook the handle with a paw and it swings open. I give a littleprrpof satisfaction. Cold billows out. In this weather it will soon melt all over the floor. The beer will get warm. The milk and meat will spoil. Good. Look at my bowl! Empty! Let him see how it feels.
I feel better after that. When I go back in the living room I am relieved to see that my eyes are back to normal. I am able to curl up on the orange rug and have a little nap which to be honest I gd deserve, after all I’ve been through.
Dee
Something gives under her feet with a crack. There are bright shards among the leaves and dirt that cover the steps. It’s as if a whole box of Christmas tree ornaments has shattered everywhere. It adds a hectic edge of unreality.
Dee wonders if she’ll know, right away, when she sees him. Surely the truth will come off his flesh like a scent.
She rings the doorbell thirty or forty times. She sees movement at the window but there’s no answer, and she wonders if she should leave. Part of her sags with relief at the thought. But she doesn’t think she can put herself through all this again.Get it done, Dee Dee.Her father’s voice in her head. Their grim credo during that long half-year when it was just them, alone.Get through it, get it done; no matter how unpleasant, however hard your heart pounds in the night, whatever dreams may come.Get it done.She straightens her spine a little, and that moment she hears a shuffling within the house. A small high noise – a cat, maybe? Then heavier sounds, a large body making impressions on stairs, walls, boards.
