That’s what broke the spell for me. I just got mad as hell for that poor little dog. He’d trusted me, and I’d gotten him into this.
I was lying on my left arm, so I reached over with my right and gathered Mac in, stroking him. Boy, talk about a change! He stopped shaking and went rigid. My touch brought that dog out of it, and I got a little flash of insight: It was the dog, the dog and man working as a team, that brought humanity out of the caves and killed off the tigers and the bears. Mac may have just been a little rat terrier, but once he realized I was there with him, he was ready to kill bears just like his ancestors.
Suddenly, he jumped, making a strange noise that sounded for all the world like a Great Dane or even a wolf, clambering over my side and launching himself toward my desk. I twisted around just in time to see him hit the cat as it was turning to go.
The room exploded as though it had ten dogs and cats in it. Mac and the calico wrapped up together and hit the wall, bouncing to the floor in a clinch, and I could tell immediately that Mac was out for the kill. His barks were as high-pitched as screams. On top of that, he was growling like nothing his size is supposed to sound like as the two animals, wrapped together in a writhing, spitting mass, blasted from the floor up the side of my bed and over me, yowling and scratching and screaming, the cat and dog hair flying around in clouds. I’d gotten the lamp on above my bed and I scrunched up against the headboard, trying to get out of the way of the teeth and claws. In a twinkling, they’d fallen off the other side of the bed, and I could hear Mac’s teeth snapping together. He was in a rage, fired in part by the fact that he’d been badly frightened. I know enough about dogs to guess that part of his motivation was his thinking he had to save me.
I had that big H&R break-over .22 revolver out from under my pillow and I was jumping around, trying to get off a shot that might hit the cat without hurting Mac. I guess I was shouting, too. I was afraid he’d be maimed or even killed, and it would be my fault.
Managing somehow to pull away from Mac, the big cat, looking very much chewed, jumped atop my desk. “Got you, you bastard,” I thought, and I was just about to pump a round or two into her when she somehow just wasn’t there any more and a woman’s voice shouted,
“MAC! STOP THAT! STOP IT!”
As God is my witness, John, it came from behind that desk. And then – a face rose up. Or maybe just the impression of a face, if that makes any sense at all. It was an old woman’s face, and it was agitated, staring daggers at Mac – and then at me.
Everything happened in a flash then. Mac, who was just about to leap, froze dead in his tracks. I was so startled I dropped the pistol. The face shimmered and was gone, and I thought I heard the cat’s body bump on the floor outside my door, which would’ve meant it had gone through the transom again. Grabbing up my gun, I bolted out into the hall, Mac at my heels.
The cat was nowhere to be seen. There was a little fur on the hallway carpet. That was it.
Mac and I looked at each other. He whined softly, once. Then there was a thumping on the stairs, and Ma Stean appeared. As soon as she saw me, her eyes widened and I realized I was in my BVDs.
“Sorry, Miz Stean,” I said, trying to cover up my private area with my hands, momentarily forgetting I was holding a gun.
“What in the blue blazes–?”
Backing toward the door, I said quickly, “I’ll explain everything. Just let me get some clothes on.”
“I seen men in their underwear before,” she said. “I mean how come you’re all bloody? And you’ve got a gun out?”
“Sorry,” I said again, throwing my pistol onto the bed. Then I looked down. When MacWhirtle had launched himself from my thigh, his claws had dug deep enough to draw blood, which now oozed out of my leg in several places.
I got myself to the bathroom, wet down a washcloth, and stuck it up against the scratches to stanch the blood. Through the door, I explained to Ma what had happened. What seemed to disturb her most was the sight of my .22 pistol. In a few moments, I heard a couple of other voices, Dave’s and Mr. Clark’s, asking her what was going on. I was sure playing hell with the sleep patterns of her boarders, and I worried that she might be mad enough about the gun and everything else to suggest I find other lodging. But she didn’t make any threats and seemed to understand well enough why I’d been racing through the hall with a loaded pistol. So did the other two, although I thought I heard Mr. Clark grumble something about the Old West and Dave kept asking if I was sure I was ok.
MacWhirtle had stayed outside the bathroom door, and I suspect his rough-looking state helped convince them I was telling the truth. It didn’t hurt that they all knew I’d had trouble with that cat before.
So, the excitement died down and everyone went back to bed, including me – and MacWhirtle, who stuck to me like glue the rest of the night.
But John, while I told them about the cat and its fight with MacWhirtle, I didn’t tell them anything about the old lady’s voice that stopped the deadly struggle at its height. And I damn sure didn’t tell ‘em that when I looked toward the source of the voice, I can swear that the person I saw was that hideous old Mrs. Davis, Patricia’s grandmother. And then she was gone. And the cat was, too.
I still don’t know what all this means, but I’ve got an idea what I’m going to do about it. I’ll tell you next letter.
Your pal,
Robert
May 30, 1939
Tuesday night
Dear John,
I have been doing my research. This burg has a pretty good public library, and I snatched away several hours of my interview time on Monday in order to see what I could find on magic and the occult. The library’s books aren’t as detailed as what I have back home, but they told me most of what I needed to know to start fitting those jigsaw pieces together.
I have to admit to a bit of worry after I mailed you my last. So it means a lot to me to have you say again in your latest that I could tell you anything and you’d still not think I was losing my mind. I needed that reassurance, even though I know I’m not going crazy. Thank God you know it, too.
I’ve been thinking about that night in the sleet storm when we were driving back to St. Paul and I stopped and made you drive the car because of my crummy night vision. You didn’t want to, but I insisted, and after about five miles with you at the wheel we ran into that big Negro voodoo man, standing right in the middle of the road. I would’ve run right into him. But you stopped, and even though we didn’t know what to do next we let him in and he started talking about the blood of a chicken and how we were good witches from the north and kissed both our hands when we let him off down the road, under a bridge where he could stay dry. Remember?
Hell yes, of course you do. And that time in Minneapolis when we went looking for back issues of pulps in junk stores and I took you straight over to a box, pulled it down, and started taking books out – Spicy Detectives, Flying Carpets, Weird Tales. You knew I’d never been in that place before.
And at the Ironside Theatre in Hallock, that night they were giving away the shotgun between features, and I told you I was going to win it before the first movie even started. You remember what happened. Mr. Ironside reached in, drew out a ticket stub – and I’ve got that old Remington double-barrel 12-gauge with me right now, although it’s not quite in the same shape as it was.
At first I said maybe it was a sixth sense, where I just got feelings about stuff that turned out to be true, but then you told me, no, it’s beyond that, beyond just intuition. It’s a seventh sense, you said. Now, I find myself thinking about what you told me, that I see certain things clearly – that it is more than just a hunch. Remember all of those experiments we did trying to prove it? We just about wore out that pack of playing cards. But you remember the results as well as I do. All we found out was that we couldn’t predict when it would come on, but when it did it was something real and concrete.
This is real, John, even though I don’t know all the details yet. The
se stories about witches, the three separate meetings with the cat, this feeling I can’t shake – it’s all coalescing into something tangible and very, very big. I’m traveling from the sixth to the seventh sense now, and I don’t know what’s in store or how long the journey will be, but I am now convinced some crazy woman is changing herself into a cat or somehow projecting herself into a cat and going through my reports. She’s got to be crazy because I’ve caught her three times and Mac the Killer Rat Dog ate her ass up the last time, Friday night, and if things had been just a little different I’d have blasted her to Hell myself.
I say she’s crazy because I know she’s coming back. Why? Because I know.
I couldn’t guess the reason. All I’ve got is copies of a bunch of yarns from senile old poots talking about stuff that happened a hundred years ago. I’ve gone over all the stories I’ve sent to Washington so far and nothing’s caught my eye. I’ve thought about sending you my carbons but I decided not to. If they somehow got lost in the mail I would be screwed because they’re all I’ve got, with the originals all going to main office. I know I could try and make double carbons of every one so I could send copies to you, but it makes my fingers sore and half the time parts are so light you have to guess what the words are. So I’ll save that for the ones I really think you need to see.
I’ve studied them all, though, especially the ones with witches, and my time in the library just reinforced my decision to do what I hinted I was going to do in my last letter. It involves that Remington double-barrel I won all those years ago at the picture show – the only weapon besides the H&R revolver I brought with me to Arkansas (although Ma Stean doesn’t exactly know I have it here in my closet).
Maybe you remember: a silver bullet is the only thing that can kill a were-animal. I remembered, and I made sure I was right, or as right as you can be about something like this, by doing my research. A couple of the old books mentioned crucifixes, an image of the Madonna, or holy water. I didn’t have any of those things, but I did have a couple of firearms, so that made my decision for me.
From the library, I walked back to Ma Stean’s, wrapped up my shotgun in an old shirt, and drove it over to Pete’s in the sidecar of the big Indian, hidden from curious eyes. It wasn’t busy at Pete’s and he grinned a hello as I came into the station office with my bundle, watched as I opened it to reveal the Remington.
“You plannin’ on holdin’ me up?” he asked, still grinning, his dark eyes going from me to the shotgun.
“Only if you don’t cooperate,” I said. “I need to cut this baby down. You got anything I can use?”
He nodded. “Yeh.” Disappearing into the back, he came back presently with a heavy-duty hacksaw. “This oughta do it.”
I took it out to the back bay and went to work, clamping the barrel in a vise and starting out a foot from the end. Pete followed me out and watched as I started sawing.
“You sure are screwin’ up a good shotgun,” he observed.
“Yeah, and I’m going to screw up a big calico cat even more.”
“A cat? What th’ hell for?”
I kept sawing away as I talked. “You’ll think I’m nuts,” I said, wishing I hadn’t mentioned anything about the cat.
“Try me,” he said.
I looked back at him. The smile was gone.
It was my turn to clam up and think before I said anything else. I’d told him a few stories about the crap you and I used to get into back in Hallock, but I hadn’t really broached the subject of magic or the supernatural, and certainly not anything about the seventh sense.
I sawed silently until a good inch of metal clunked to the floor of the bay and I took a file to the rough spots left at the end of the barrel, still not looking at Pete. Finally, I thought, what the hell?
“All right,” I told him, looking up. “I’m after a were-cat.”
He’d just fired up a Spud cigarette. Now, he took it out of his mouth. Maybe I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t.
“What the hell is that?” he asked slowly. “And why the hell do you think you have to kill it?”
Before I knew it, I was telling him the whole story. I didn’t think he was buying any of it at first. Like I wrote you earlier, he looks like my Uncle Chuck, with a hooked nose and droopy eyelids, and that kind of face can be hard to read. But as I talked, I guess he could see I wasn’t making it up, because, “I vas dere, Charley!”
“So,” I concluded, “the next time she comes back, I’m going to blast her. I’ve had it.”
He knocked a long ash off his fag and shook his head.
“What you’re gonna do is blast holes in Miz Stean’s walls, maybe kill a cat, and get your dumb Yankee ass thrown in jail,” he said. Although he didn’t raise his voice, it was clear to me that he didn’t approve.
“Look,” I began. “You haven’t been scared shitless by this thing. I have. I’m just defending myself.”
Reaching into the front pocket of my uniform, I pulled out about a dollar’s worth of dimes. There was an anvil on the work bench and a ball-peen hammer nearby. Sprinkling four or five dimes on top of the anvil, I started in hammering them as flat as I could get them.
“Got any tin snips?” I asked.
“Sure.” He reached into a drawer beside the bench and handed them over.
I began cutting away at the dimes. The snips were sharp, so it was fast work. Pete watched, saying nothing, until I’d finished.
“Mind if I ask why you cut up them perfectly good dimes? You know you can’t spend ‘em now.”
“Sure,” I returned. “I’m gonna load ‘em in a couple of shotgun shells.”
“So they’ll be...” he paused.
“Yeah. Silver bullets.”
Man, did I get a reaction! “NO!” he shouted. Moving faster than I’d ever seen him, he swept his hand across the top of the anvil, scattering the cut-up dimes across the work table and onto the floor.
“Pete,” I said, shocked. “What the hell... ?”
His eyes weren’t drooping any more. They were wild and flashing. Grabbing me by the shoulders, he almost shouted, “No, no, you can’t do it. You can’t do it. You can’t kill an old lady who hasn’t harmed you.”
“Pete, what–”
“She’s just protectin’ the others, man. You can’t kill her.” He was so upset that I couldn’t follow what he was saying, but he held onto me and kept after it. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but it scared me to see him this way.
“All right,” I kept saying, because it was all I knew to say. “All right. I’m just bullshitting you, Pete. I won’t kill that cat. I won’t. Honest.”
He stopped raving then, staring at me like a disturbed animal.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m just blowing. I’m not going to shoot that cat. You’re right. I’d just mess up Ma Stean’s walls, or maybe blow my own foot off.”
Gradually, he let go of my shoulders. His face still close to mine, he said, “You sure you ain’t gonna shoot her?”
“I’m not. I just want her to leave me and Mac alone. Three times now she’s come into my room. I don’t know what it is she’s looking for, but I’d be glad to give it to her if she’d just stay the hell away.”
“You mean that?”
John, I still didn’t know what was going on. I was communicating on pure instinct. Maybe something more.
“Sure,” I said. “I just want to be able to get some sleep. That’s all.”
In a second, he was back to his old self. He’d dropped his Spud on the floor, and he bent down to pick it up.
“Damn it,” he said. “Got grease on it. Shit.”
He pulled the pack out of his shirt pocket and shook out another, lighting it thoughtfully with a Zippo, not looking at me. He took his time, and I knew he was thinking again.
“Tell you what,” he said finally. “You give me a chance, I think I can – I may be able to help. I mean, well, I think I know what all this is about.”
It was my tur
n to be incredulous. “You mean with that cat? That were-cat or whatever the hell it is?”
“Yeah.” He took a deep drag. “Look, go on down to Foreman’s Drug and have a Coke. Give me thirty minutes and then go back to Miz Stean’s. If you get tied up there, don’t worry about getting back here this evening. I’ll manage without you.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I don’t know–”
“No,” he interrupted, “you don’t. But you’ll know more after tonight.”
I didn’t know what else to do but sweep up the silver, say thanks, and leave, rattled as I was. And I know this is turning into a magnum opus, but I have to tell you what happened next.
I hiked off down to Foreman’s feeling pretty strange. Pete’s reaction had been one of real and touching concern for – who? Or what? – a cat? A were-cat? Pete was the only real pal I had in town and the way all the evidence pointed, he was somehow in league with a pussycat who could read and who’d been scaring hell out of me and Mac. This is starting to sound like a cartoon horror story told by Leon Schlesinger or Walt Disney. I tell you, I was feeling like you did in the Sophia incident. Hell, you remember. Soofeeyah, that little black-haired, deep-eyed, huge-bazoomed frail you had such a crush on. I didn’t know her, but I did the old “mind-reading” trick on her from afar and told you she liked you and she wanted something from you I couldn’t quite figure out. You went for broke and asked her, and when she told you it got us as close to a fight as we’d ever gotten. What she wanted, as you well remember, was an introduction to me.
You didn’t believe me – you probably still don’t – but I really didn’t have any idea that was what she wanted from you.
I have to grin even now, thinking about it, but that is also what’s happening with Pete and me. I never picked up on Pete knowing anything about the cat. I’d never said anything to him about it before last Monday. It came right out of the blue, just like Soofeeyah’s crush on me.
Seventh Sense Page 6
