by John Saul
That danger was nearby.
And sensing the danger—the presence of the wraithlike creature—every living thing took on a stillness that lay over the night like a cloak so dense that even the light breeze of the autumn night died away.
But even the cloak of silence wasn’t enough to slow the cat as it moved toward its prey, for there was nothing in the night the cat could not hear.
Nothing it could not see.
Nothing it could not sense.
After it had passed, the silence slowly lifted.
Crickets concealed beneath the bark of trees once more rubbed their wing covers together.
Tree frogs in the gardens began to puff out their throats once more.
Birds in their nests and on their perches twittered softly in their sleep.
Even the leaves dying on the trees began to rustle as the breeze in the air came back to life.
Moments later farther down the street, the black wraith slithered silently up a tree, then moved out onto a limb.
Dropped onto a steeply sloping roof.
Crept around to a gable.
Peered through the window.
Saw Jared Woods asleep in his bed.
A moment later, though Jared had left no window open, and locked his bedroom door, the cat named Houdini was inside the room.
In his dream, Jared Woods was once again in the forest near Black Creek Crossing, barely able to contain his laughter as he heard Chad Jackson hooting softly in an almost perfect imitation of an owl.
Perfect enough to send Angel Sullivan veering back across the road to the other side, where Zack Fletcher was waiting to crack twigs again.
As he watched Angel hurry her step and veer first one way and then another to escape the ominous sounds coming out of the darkness, Jared felt the same thrill that always came over him when he saw the frightened look in Seth Baker’s eyes whenever he and Chad were about to subject him to some new humiliation.
Terrifying Angel was even better, because she had no idea what was happening or who was hidden in the darkness.
Now, as she veered away from the fear of Zack’s cracking sticks and started back toward him, he readied himself, his lungs filled with air, his mouth opening.
Just when he was certain she would come no closer, Jared unleashed the scream.
Which lasted only a split second before something slammed into him.
As the scream abruptly died, Jared jerked awake, still feeling the sickening sensation of something having struck him in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him.
For a moment a wave of panic washed over him as he realized he couldn’t breathe, then his diaphragm began to function again and his lungs filled with air.
And then he felt a searing pain in his stomach, as if someone had just plunged a knife into him and was twisting it in his guts. Howling as a second stab slashed at his belly, he tried to reach for the lamp on the table beside his bed, but as a third stab struck him, his whole body went into a spasm and he tumbled from the bed, dragging the bedclothes with him.
Screaming, he thrashed at the sheet and blanket that were tangled around him, but even as he tried to free himself, he knew there was something else in the jumbled mass too.
Something that was twisting and writhing as frantically as he, but not because it wanted to escape.
It was thrashing and twisting and writhing because it wanted to kill him, and as another scream built in his throat, he felt it tear at his belly yet again.
Panic erupted inside Jared as he felt teeth and claws sinking deeper into his flesh.
He was going to die!
He was going to die right now on the floor of his own room.
Now, he could feel his limbs starting to go numb, and a strange kind of darkness—far blacker than the night—was starting to gather around him.
A nightmare!
That was it—he was having a terrible nightmare, and in a moment he would wake up.
But the nightmare went on and on, and the darkness was closing in on him, and he knew that if it finally gathered him in its folds, he would never see again.
Never breathe again.
He rolled over, still flailing to free himself from the tangle of bedding.
Then he heard a voice.
“Jared? Jared—what’s going on in there?”
His father!
The jaws at his throat were suddenly gone, and Jared sucked in a huge gulp of air. He rolled over once more and tried to stand up.
“Jared?” his father called out again.
It was as if his father’s voice had freed him from the bedding, and he pulled himself to the bed table, reached up, and switched on the lamp.
The room filled with light, and a cat—the black cat he’d seen before, weaving around Angel Sullivan’s feet and rubbing against her legs—sprang to its feet. As Jared managed to stand and started toward the door, the cat’s back arched, and it hissed menacingly and tensed as if it were about to leap at him again.
“I’m coming,” Jared called back to his father, but the pain in his torn belly was so bad he could barely get the words out. His eyes never leaving the cat, Jared backed toward the door, reaching behind him and groping for the key. His fingers closed on it, but it wouldn’t turn.
He struggled with it for a moment, terrified that if he turned his back, the cat would strike, but when the key still wouldn’t turn, he knew he had no choice. Spinning around, he twisted at the key frantically, and this time it clicked open. A second later he flung the door open.
“It’s a cat!” he cried. “It tried to kill me!”
Jared’s face was pasty white, and Steve Woods could see the terror in his son’s eyes. But as he scanned the room, he saw no sign of a cat, though the covers were pulled half off the bed, and the rag rug Steve’s grandmother had made for him when he was about Jared’s age was rumpled up the way it used to get when Steve and his friends used it for a wrestling mat. Steve scanned the room once more, then looked again at his son. “A cat? What are you talking about?”
“Over there—” Jared began as he turned to point at the spot where the cat had been crouched. But the cat had vanished.
He looked around the room, searching for the cat.
Nothing.
“There was a cat!” he insisted. “It attacked me! Look! Look at my stomach—it almost killed me!”
Steve Woods cocked his head, and a small smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Sounds to me like you had one hell of a nightmare,” he said. He began straightening out the rug with his foot. “I’m not sure I ever had one so bad I was fighting on the floor, but—”
“It wasn’t a nightmare!” Jared cried. “It was a cat!”
His father’s smile faded. “Jared, take a look around. Do you see a cat?”
Again Jared scanned the room, searching for someplace the cat might be hiding. But the closet door was closed, as was the one to the hall.
The window was closed tight as well.
Crouching down, he looked under the bed, and under his desk, and behind the chair, and anyplace else the cat might be hiding.
It had vanished so completely it might as well never have been there at all.
Then, as he rose to his feet again, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on his closet door.
There wasn’t a mark on his stomach, or anywhere else.
It was as if none of it had happened.
But it had.
He knew it had.
And he knew whose cat it was that had attacked him . . .
Chapter 26
HE TERROR ANGEL HAD FELT AS SHE WALKED HOME from the library the night before gave way to anger in the morning sunlight, with the shadows of the forest washed away and Houdini frolicking around her feet, dashing away every now and then to chase a squirrel or a rabbit, but always coming back before more than a minute or two had passed.
How could she have been so stupid last night?
How could she not have figured out that t
he sounds she’d heard weren’t made by some kind of dangerous animal stalking her? In the full light of day, even the memory of the strange hooting she’d heard didn’t sound like an owl, or any other kind of animal. Rather, it sounded like someone trying to sound like an owl, and not even doing a good imitation of one.
Stupid! She’d been stupid, and Zack and his friends would tell everyone else about it all day. She could already picture everyone looking at her in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and hear them giggling and laughing just loud enough to make sure she heard them.
She considered skipping school that day. But ten minutes later, standing across the street from the school and seeing Zack, Chad, and Jared hanging around on the front steps just like they always did, she changed her mind.
Better to just ignore them.
She bent down to say good-bye to Houdini. Instead of nuzzling her hand the way he usually did, he was gazing across the street, his eyes fixed on the three boys on the front steps, his tail twitching.
He knows! Angel thought. He knows what they did!
“It’s okay, Houdini,” she said softly, stroking the cat’s fur. “They’re just stupid boys!” Giving him one last pat, she straightened up, hitched her backpack higher on her shoulders, and started across the street.
Houdini darted in front of her, hissed in the direction of her cousin and his friends, and pressed against her legs as if to keep her from going any farther.
Angel looked at the cat quizzically. “Houdini, I have to go to school! Just go on back to wherever you go every day, and I’ll see you after school!” Stepping around the cat, she continued across the street.
Houdini darted in front of her again. This time, though, he didn’t try to stop her; instead he stalked ahead of her, his head low, his teeth bared.
As she came to the bottom of the steps, he moved halfway up the flight and crouched down. Now the fur on his neck was standing up and his tail was twitching dangerously.
His hiss turned into a low growl.
Angel watched in surprise as Zack and his two friends seemed to shrink away from the cat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Zack Fletcher demanded of her. “You can’t bring your stupid cat to school.” But there was a tremor in his voice that belied the truculence of his words, and both Chad Jackson and Jared Woods appeared just as nervous as Zack sounded.
“He’s not my cat, and I didn’t bring him to school. He just came.”
“Well, make him go away,” Chad Jackson said.
As if understanding Chad’s words perfectly, Houdini took a step toward him, bared his teeth, and hissed angrily.
Chad shrank back against the wall.
“It’s okay,” Angel said, stooping down to soothe the cat. “They’re just not as brave as they were last night.” She looked up at Jared, who hadn’t said a word so far. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Jared’s face flushed, but his eyes never left Houdini, and now he was edging toward the front door of the school. “I—I gotta go find someone,” he mumbled, then slipped through the door before either of his friends could try to stop him.
Zack Fletcher licked his lips nervously and tried once more to sound braver than he was feeling. “You better get him away from here, or I’m gonna tell Mr. Lambert.”
Coincidentally, even as he spoke, the door opened and the principal stepped out. “Tell me what, Zack?” Phil Lambert asked. Seeing Houdini, he smiled and crouched down, extending his hand. “Well, who are you?” he asked. “Aren’t you a pretty kitty?”
Houdini, relaxing, moved toward the principal, sniffed at his extended hand, then slid under it to get a scratch on the back of his neck.
“You better watch out,” Chad Jackson blurted. “He bites.”
Phil Lambert took both of Houdini’s cheeks in his hands and gently shook his head. “Ooh, is the mean kitty going to bite me?” he asked. When he released him, Houdini rolled over onto his back and batted playfully at the principal’s hands, his claws sheathed. After playing with the cat another moment, Phil Lambert straightened up and gave Chad an amused look. “I certainly see what you mean. Never saw a cat as vicious as this one.”
Chad’s face turned scarlet, and Angel saw his eyes darting around to see how many people were witnessing the principal making fun of him. Then, like Jared before him, he disappeared into the school. Zack followed before the door had even swung closed again.
When they were gone, Mr. Lambert turned back to Angel. “Were they giving you a problem?” he asked.
Angel shook her head.
Phil Lambert tilted his head, as if he knew there was something Angel wasn’t telling him. “If they were, you can tell me, you know. It won’t go any further, but if anyone’s harassing you, I need to know about it.”
“I’m okay,” Angel said, but couldn’t quite bring herself to look the principal in the eye as she uttered the not-quite-truth that wasn’t quite a lie.
“Okay,” Mr. Lambert sighed. “But if you want to talk to me, you know where my office is, don’t you?” As Angel nodded, the principal’s gaze shifted to Houdini. “He’s yours?”
Angel shook her head, again deciding to tell not quite all of the truth. “I guess he’s a stray. I think he lives out by our house somewhere, and he just sort of started following me around.”
“Does he have a collar?”
Again Angel shook her head.
Lambert frowned. “Maybe we should call the pound—”
But Angel didn’t let him finish. “Don’t do that,” she cried. “He didn’t do anything—he’s a really nice cat!”
“Chad and his friends don’t seem to think so,” the principal observed. “Why would they be afraid of him?”
Because he knows what they did, Angel thought. But she said nothing aloud and only shrugged in response to the principal’s question.
“All right,” Mr. Lambert sighed. “Tell you what—I’ll pretend I never saw the cat today. But Chad’s right about one thing—you can’t bring it to school, and if it keeps following you here, I’ll have to call the pound. Okay?”
Angel nodded, and when the principal had gone back into the building, she crouched down to stroke Houdini’s fur. “You have to go somewhere else,” she said softly. “If you stay here—”
But Houdini, again responding as if he understood what she was saying, took off before she’d finished, bounding down the steps and dashing out into the street. Only when he was on the other side did he stop, turn around, sit down under the huge oak tree that stood opposite the school, and wrap his tail around his feet.
Angel looked at him for a few seconds, waved once, then turned away to begin the day at school.
“I hate that cat,” Chad Jackson said as he stood with his back to his locker, talking to Zack and Jared while he waited for Seth Baker to show up. “Did you see? It was all set to come at me! Jeez! It coulda killed me!”
“It did try to kill me,” Zack Fletcher said. “It must have followed me back from the Crossing last night.”
Chad’s pulse quickened and he forgot all about Seth Baker. “What do you mean, it tried to kill you?”
“I mean, it jumped me. I was almost home, and suddenly it just came at me!”
“Where?” Chad asked.
Zack’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, where?”
“Like, where’d it go at you?”
“My face,” Zack blurted out, remembering only after he’d spoken the words that there wasn’t a mark on him anywhere. “I just barely fought him off before he got me.” He looked quizzically at Chad, who had a strange look in his eyes, as if he was frightened. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“It—It came after me too,” Chad stammered. “At least, I think it did.” His eyes flicked from Zack to Jared, both of whom were now staring at him. “I mean—well, I think it came after me.”
Zack’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, you think it came after you? Did it or didn’t it?”
“I—I think
it did,” Chad stammered. “It felt like it slashed at my face. I mean, I thought it was gonna rip my eyes out. But when I looked in the mirror . . .” His voice trailed off.
“There wasn’t anything, right?” Zack said, his voice hollow.
Chad shook his head. “It was like it hadn’t happened at all. Except I know it did.”
“That’s what happened to me too,” Jared Woods said, his voice trembling. Both Chad and Zack turned to look at him. “I thought it was a dream.” Slowly, still uncertain whether it had happened, he told his friends what he thought the cat had done to him last night. “But it couldn’t have been in my room,” he finished. “I mean, it was all locked up, and when my dad came in to see what was wrong—” He cut himself short an instant too late.
“Your dad?” Zack echoed. “You screamed so loud your dad came in?”
“I was asleep!” Jared said. “I mean—”
“So what’s the big deal?” Chad asked, glaring at Zack. “So what if he screamed? The only reason my folks didn’t hear me was the freakin’ cat had me by the throat.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Zack said. “I mean, could the cat have gotten out of your room when your dad came in?”
Jared shook his head. “The lights were on, and I was right by the door, and so was my dad. It was like it was there one second, and then it was just gone.”
The three boys looked at each other for a long moment.
“What are we gonna do?” Jared asked.
“It’s simple,” Zack said. “She says it’s not her cat, so she won’t care if something happens to it, right? So let’s find out if it’s her cat or not.”
“You got it?” Zack asked as Jared began working the combination to his locker, which was just two down from Zack’s own. When Jared nodded, Zack signaled to Chad Jackson, who slammed the door of his own locker and sauntered over to lounge against the wall across from Zack and Jared. The lunch bell had rung five minutes ago, and on any other day the three of them would have already been inside the cafeteria, first in line. But today they’d taken their time, hanging around in front of their lockers, waiting for the corridor to empty.
