She cleaned up the mess, the bits of bodies that looked like kindling and wood shavings, the little smears of black blood, the tufts of grey cat fur yanked out by desperately scrabbling claws. Then she found the first aid kit and cleaned Sleet’s wounds, daubing them with pink antiseptic cream.
The cat wasn’t badly hurt, only scratched in a few places with one ear torn as if she had tangled with a good-sized rat, but the wounds turned septic and left her feverish and dopey for a few days. Amy cared for her in that time. She searched online for information and used an old antibiotics prescription of her mother’s to medicate the cat. She brought food and water and set up an improvised litter tray in the wardrobe, cleaning it out by night so her parents wouldn’t notice. She covered up the puffy scratches lacing her hands and arms with long sleeves, fresh scratches laid over old every time she came near Sleet.
Sleet hated Amy at first. When she was too sick to fight she would only shudder at Amy’s touch, her lithe muscles pulled taut like bunches of wires and her eyes blazing with sickness and fear. When she was less ill she would fight, spurning gifts of food and treats to lunge past the offered titbit and sink her teeth into Amy’s hand instead.
“Sweetheart,” her mother said tentatively on that first day. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. We think Sleet probably had a family that she missed very much, and she got out of the garage and ran away to find them…”
“Okay,” Amy said, and blinked away tears when her mother patted her arm sympathetically. Her mother promised they would get her a new kitten soon, and in the bathroom, Amy ran cold water over the deep puncture marks along her arm, bruised purple and yellow.
On the sixth night, one of the fairies came creeping back into her bedroom. Amy woke up in the night to hear a mild crunch like someone snapping a twig. Sleet looked up from the body and growled warningly, eyes glowing an unearthly green like foxfire in the moonlight, then staggered off-balance back to the cupboard where Amy had made a bed for her. The next morning, after Sleet snatched a morsel of chicken from Amy, she grudgingly pushed her head into the hand, just for a moment.
Amy’s mother was surprised to find the hostile grey cat lying on her daughter’s bed a couple of weeks after it went missing. Amy herself was sat at the head of the bed, lost in a book, and for the first time in months, her daughter looked relaxed. Amy’s mother tried to pet the cat and thought better of it when the grey fur rose in a dangerous ripple along the cat’s spine like something long and sinuous moving beneath a lake’s surface.
The first day she went outside, Sleet brought back dead songbirds and left the fat, bright little bodies scattered across the patio, missing their heads. Amy rewarded the cat with praise and pettings and scraps of pungent ham taken from the larder. She rewarded Sleet for the dead baby bunnies too, and the crow found with its feet up in the air and beautiful, black-green feathers chewed up and ruined. They were necessary sacrifices. She needed Sleet to be a hunter, and sometimes, it wasn’t robins and rabbits that Sleet brought back, but twisted humanoid corpses and torn wings scattered like last autumn’s leaves across the kitchen floor. “At least we’ll never need worry about mice,” her mother said resignedly after finding the bloodied squirrel left under the dining room table.
Before, Amy had feared retaliating because it only made the torment worse. Now, she patrolled the house some nights with Sleet alert and wary at her heels, listening out for the small sounds behind the walls, and she did not run from them. Instead, she bought glue traps from the local shops with her pocket money and baited them with ramekins full of sugared cream. When she found fairies trapped there in the morning, she snipped off their heads with her iron scissors. Conker started whuffing happily when he saw her come out to the stables, his eyes mild and content and his dull coat restored to a glossy nut-brown, no longer driven into a sweating frenzy every night by the monsters hiding in his straw.
Amy went on long rides to explore the countryside. Conker ambled along contentedly while Sleet prowled through the woods nearby, sometimes bringing presents of dead mice and birds for Amy’s praise. Amy found the natural caves and tunnels where rings of fungi grew in the bare earth outside the entrances. A contemptuous Sleet prowled straight through the fairy rings, tail swishing as she hissed at the dank air rolling up from inside the hill. At night, Amy slept soundly with Sleet sat at the foot of her bed, as still and watchful as the statues that guarded Egyptian tombs for centuries while dynasties rose and fell around them.
Weeks passed in peace. Under Amy’s encouragement, Sleet became an even more fierce and capable hunter. She decimated the local wildlife too, but the fairies were drove back into their dark tunnels, and Amy accepted the tiny shredded bodies of mice and bats as a price worth paying.
Then Conker abruptly went lame. The vet pulled a long glass shard out from his hoof and couldn’t say for sure whether the pony would go sound again. Amy searched the field and found another dozen shards of glass carefully set on end in the soft ground.
“We’ve got to send them a message,” she told Sleet one Saturday morning, and packed a backpack with a tub of iron filings taken from her school’s science room, a bottle of petrol from the garage, a box of matches, clusters of tiny bells meant to hang on charm bracelets, and a packet of salt from the kitchen. She shut Sleet in her bedroom and set out alone to the hill overlooking the village, laying salt just inside every tunnel or cave she found.
With one last look at the bright daylight, Amy crawled into one of the biggest tunnels, leaving a salt trail. She held a torch in her hand, and as she crawled, the beam of light jumped erratically about, showing flashes of earthen walls decorated with trophies the fairies had taken from the village. Some of these were spiteful, petty thefts, like the prized bits of jewellery hung from dangling roots, the doll heads mounted on sticks, the passports and drivers’ licenses shoved into the earthen walls like decorative portraits, the photos long ruined by the damp. Others were nastier. She saw clusters of wires and delicate mechanical pieces that could have come from a car’s engine, mats woven from tangled snarls of human hair in reds, blondes and browns, and the skulls of small pets, hamsters and rabbits and birds snatched from their cages at night.
The tunnel was working downhill, deeper into the ground. It was low enough to scrape Amy’s back as she crawled and the wet fungus smell was thick and almost heady like the smell of brewing beer. The floor was mud beneath her hands now and she had to brace herself and lean backwards on her heels to stop herself sliding downhill. Ahead, Amy saw the tunnel open up into a cave.
She switched off the torch, opened the bag and blindly pushed it ahead of her. By touch, Amy found the iron filings and the petrol. She felt for the edge of the tunnel where it dropped steeply away, then grabbed the petrol bottle and squeezed, the contents spattering out into the open cave.
She had meant to light a match and throw it in, backing hastily up the tunnel with the iron filings and salt and bells for protection as the sleeping fairies burned. But when she leaned out, the damp earth suddenly crumbled beneath her knees and Amy fell into the darkness, landing not far below on a floor strewn with tiny bones. Her bag fell to the ground with a thump besides her, the contents spilling out, and the fairies erupted awake.
There was no light whatsoever this deep underground. Amy only heard the buzzing of their wings and the thin, high shrieks as they launched themselves at her, clawing at her eyes and ripping out her hair. She cried out in pain, rolling into a ball to protect her face, one arm fumbling for the bells and salt and iron. But the cave was covered in layers and layers of scattered animal and fairy bones and she had been turned around by the fall, unable to tell which way she had come in.
Amy pushed herself up to her knees and crawled blindly with her head tucked in and eyes squeezed shut. They were falling on her by the dozen, lashing out at her with claws like thorns and biting with jaws that opened up like a snake’s, so many they were weighing her down. She rolled onto her back to crush them and more dived in f
or her exposed face, chittering with rage. Amy rolled back upright and floundered across the cave floor, sweeping her arms in futile arcs looking for a way out.
Her hand finally closed on something, but it was only the torch. Hoping to make a run for the exit, Amy switched it on. She saw the insides of the cave where she lay, the walls lined thickly with clusters and clusters of fairies in honeycomb-like pods like the inside of a hive, enough fairies to kill her even if it took hours with their small teeth and claws. Momentarily repulsed by the light, they drew back, but a moment later, they were on her again. Amy dropped the torch as she rolled away from them, pulling handfuls of them away from her face, feeling the hard little bodies crushed beneath her.
By the light from the dropped torch, she saw Sleet leap down from the tunnel and land in the thick of it.
The torch went out again when Amy grabbed it. She banged it against her hand to try to make it work, cowering uselessly in the corner of the cave. Sleet was yowling, a high singing sound of fury, rolling along the cave floor buried beneath the swarming fairies. Her shrieks and spits and the crunching of small bones bounced back against the rock walls, magnified over and over until it sounded like a hundred cats tearing through a million little monsters.
It seemed like a very long time before the sounds eventually stopped. When Amy eventually managed to get the torch back on, the cave was covered in the bodies of crushed and broken fairies. But, Sleet was gone.
Sleet had probably fallen or been dragged down one of the narrower tunnels leading deeper into the hill. Amy could not fit down them. Scared and scratched and bruised all over, she had waited for Sleet for hours in the dark, calling out to the cat and stretching her arm into the tunnels as far as she could reach. Sleet did not come back.
When she returned home alone, Amy told her parents she’d fallen into one of the caves and Sleet was lost down there too. Her mother cleaned the dozens of scratches and scrapes, suggested tersely to her husband that they start a campaign to fill in the open caves as it was a disgrace and a danger to all, and put some signs up in the village in case anyone saw Sleet.
A week passed. The fairies did not return to torment Amy or Conker, but neither did Sleet come home. Amy cried herself to sleep each night until her parents had begun to rather tire of it.
“That cat loves you,” her mother had said wearily. “You can tell with all those presents she brings you. She’s probably just too busy hunting to come home yet.”
Amy was not optimistic. Though she went out in the woods every day and called Sleet’s name at the entrance of every tunnel and cave she found, she thought the cat had most likely died from her injuries, trapped and alone down in the dark. Sick with misery, she only picked at her dinner the next time they went to The Green Dragon, then left the table and sat outside in the bright sunny gardens, lost in her thoughts.
She thought she was imagining things when she heard the rusty miaow as they were walking back to the car, then she saw Sleet limping down the road towards the pub, dragging something determinedly after herself. Amy ran to meet her cat.
“Is that Sleet?” her father sounded amused. “I told you that cat wasn’t dead, Cathy. She’s too clever by half to get lost in those tunnels.”
“Isn’t that sweet, coming all the way to The Green Dragon just to find Amy?” her mother cooed. “She couldn’t wait to see her again. What’s that she’s got, a rabbit?”
Amy knelt down. Sleet dropped her prize and limped wearily over, pushing her head into Amy’s hand. She smelled strongly of burnt hair and wet earth. Her whiskers were missing on one side, one eye half-closed and weeping, her fur singed black and clotted with dried blood along one flank where something had laid it open. The gouges looked too deep for a fairy’s claws.
“What is that?” Amy’s mother was saying as they approached Amy and her cat. “Oh god, has she got someone’s pet lizard? What is that, Dean, an iguana or something?”
Amy ignored their cries of disgust as she examined the corpse, Sleet purring proudly at her side. The creature was big, bigger than Sleet herself, but it was only young. It may have been reptilian but it had the same juvenile characteristics as a puppy or foal, with enormous round eyes set in a domed skull, delicate limbs with knobby joints, clumsy oversized feet ending in claws. Amy spread out the webbed wings. They looked like the wings of the bats that Sleet sometimes brought home, but they were green and the creature was scaled, not dusted with soft dark fuzz.
“Oh no,” Amy murmured. She looked back at the pub and the sign swinging in the wind. Sleet must have gone very deep into the hill to find this prey.
The ground rumbled beneath them like an earthquake as the hill above the village split open in a shower of dirt and falling trees. The dragon roared as her wings suddenly outstretched to block out the summer sun.
Blaise Torrance was born in northern England and has since moved to Nottingham where she works in mental health services. She has recently returned to writing short fiction, with her first three completed stories due to be published in upcoming anthologies by various small presses in 2012. When not working or writing, Blaise enjoys fencing, baking and gaming, and can be found online at blaise-t.livejournal.com.
The Shape of a Cage
John M. Whalen
The Beast Man awakened. It was cold, and even though half his body was covered in fur, he shivered. His misshapen teeth, more wolf-like than human, chattered and clicked from the frigid temperature. Day was coming. He curled up in a ball at the bottom of his cage, trying to warm himself. They’d rolled the cage out of the small tent where he was put on exhibition during the afternoon and evening, and set it out on the midway. The cage smelt of straw and urine, and excrement. They hadn’t taken the honey bucket out yet. They would do that before the crowds arrived. They’d take the bucket and give him some food; usually bread and some sort of greenish gruel that tasted like spoiled peas. They would throw buckets of water in through the bars to clear out the stench. They’d throw water on him too. It wouldn’t do to have the customers think they weren’t treating one of the carnival’s main attractions humanely. He might be a horrid beast, a vicious monster, but even a creature like that deserved to be cleaned and fed.
“Hey!” a voice yelled, “Wake up!” He felt the stick in the small of his back. The Beast Man rolled over. His savage eyes fell on the short squat figure of a man standing outside the cage. He wore a blue Naval Office’s jacket, a visored cap, white trousers, and he held a stick in one hand with a whip in the other. A pistol was holstered on his hip. It was Captain Carlson.
“Did you hear me?” he yelled. “I said wake up.” He jabbed the beast man several more times with the stick. The hairy creature got to his feet slowly. He stood over six feet tall, with powerful looking shoulders and arms, a deep chest and broad back. He wore a ragged set of overalls over red long johns. Massive amounts of chest hair bulged out of the overalls, and the back of his hands and the top of his bare feet were covered in thick black hair. Hair covered his neck and parts of his face. He snarled at the man, and swiped at the stick with a clawed hand. A growl rumbled up from his chest and he threw himself against the bars and reached through them for Carlson.
“That’s the way,” Carlson said. He jabbed at him some more with the stick. “That’s more like it. The Beast Man. That’s what they pay to see. A savage freak, something out of a nightmare! When the gates open, Beast Man, I want them to see you at your best.”
The creature growled more savagely than before and lunged, reaching as far as he could through the bars for the throat of the man who tormented him, making the cage rock on its wheels. Carlson jumped back and uncoiled the whip. It cracked loud and hard and the Beast Man shrank back, holding his arm, crying out in pain.
“Good!” Carlson said. “That’s what I want. A real performance.” A thin man with a beard walked up to him carrying a fresh honey bucket and a bowl full of gruel. Carlson coiled up the whip and slung it over his shoulder. “Go ahead, Haney,” he told the bear
ded man. “Open it up and give him his breakfast.” He pulled the pistol from the holster and pointed it at the Beast Man. “Get in the corner, away from the door,” he shouted. The monster stood where he was. Carlson fired a shot and a bullet tore through the roof of the cage. The Beast Man backed away. “Into the corner,” Carson yelled and cocked the hammer. The creature moved further back. A door in the opposite wall of the cage opened. Haney reached in.
“You keep that gun on him,” he told Carlson. He put the pot and bowl down and pulled a hunk of bread out of his pocket and set it down. He picked up the old pot and pulled it out. The door slammed shut and Carlson holstered the revolver.
“Enjoy your breakfast,” he said, “Eat up. You’ve got people to entertain!” He grinned smugly, and walked away.
The beast man watched him walk down past the tents, and concession stands and climb up the steps of a large yellow wagon that had the words “Captain Carlson’s Carnival of the Fantastic,” written on the side in big red letters. There was a double-masted schooner painted on it.
Daylight was growing brighter. The carnival folk were about, getting ready for the day’s work. The Beast Man saw the fat lady, the midgets, the lizard boy coming out of their tents on their way to the main chow tent, where most of the carnival attractions ate. He was not allowed to eat there. He was too wild to be set free among the others. Captain Carson told him he needed to be broken first. He needed to see the necessity of “fitting in” before he’d be allowed any kind of personal freedom.
He looked down at the green slop in the bowl Haney had left. Went over to it and knelt down and picked it up. He raised it to his nose and his stomach turned over. He wanted to throw it out through the bars. It wasn’t fit for human consumption. But he knew he needed to down it. He needed the nourishment, meager and disgusting as it was. He needed to keep his strength. Someday he would break out and he would kill Captain Carlson. He would need to stay as strong as possible until then.
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 35
