by Stephen Laws
There’s a fence up on the valley wall, a quarter mile from the house. Like so much else on his land, it serves no purpose. Originally the fence contained a section of steep grazing land for sheep, but that was a long time ago—when his flock was viable. Now the grass on the valley side up to the fence has grown lush and deep. Last time he was up there, he could see that the fence wire had separated from one of the posts and was flapping loose in the wind. So it’s remained these past months. But now, with work bag and tools, Drew sets off up the rough path that gradually ascends the valley wall. Even if the fence serves no purpose, he ‘ll fix it today.
The track takes him past the barn.
The thing that killed his wife is in there.
Not for the first time, he wonders why he just doesn’t put a torch to the whole ramshackle building. But then he rehearses what might happen. It’ll burn all right—the wood is dried out and it wouldn’t take much for the whole building to fall apart. And the thing inside will burn—up to a point. But when that barn does finally collapse into a smouldering ruin, the blackened skeleton of the thing inside will still be there—still a terrible reminder. And then he’ll have to set about taking it apart, and removing it piece by piece so it can be taken away.
But this section of his property is visible from the Fell Road down there. What would happen if someone saw the building ablaze? It might be reported. Then people would come. Maybe the police. Maybe.
“Maybe,” he says aloud, “I’m making bloody excuses again?’
It makes no sense to Drew that he’s kept it locked up in the barn ever since that terrible time. Wouldn’t it have been better to try to sell it? Maybe just pay someone to take the damned thing away? Maybe take up the help that had been offered to him from George and Tom and others—just to dismantle it, remove it and take it the hell away? God knows, he could do with the money it might have brought then. But now it’s been left to rust and decay, and he knows that he wouldn’t even get scrap value for it.
Drew pauses when he draws level with the barn. He stands for a long time looking at it, and knows that just having it here—locked up like that—is somehow like brooding over some terrible festering wound in his soul. He knows that the best thing would be to rid himself of it. Finally, he moves to the barn door, puts his hand on the link chain that keeps the barn doors closed. Somehow, it feels like he has placed his hand on a church altar—and he doesn’t like the feeling at all. He dislikes it so much that he drops his work bag, yanks the chain away and then pulls one of the barn doors angrily to one side. The screech of the rusted hinges seems to reverberate from the valley sides, like a murder of angry crows. Dust rises in clouds around his feet, making him choke. When that dust settles in the twilight, he stands and looks at the monster inside.
The beast has not moved since it was dragged in there. But to Drew it somehow seems alive and waiting.
Its headlamps are eyes, its mottled-green cab some kind of hideous head carapace. The deep tread of the huge tyres are still packed with ancient mud and brown-dried grass. The threshing baler in front looks like monstrous jaws and spiked teeth—but he cannot bring himself to look there, in case he sees . . . some trace or reminder. A shuddering sigh wracks his body and, head down, he can still somehow recall the Farming Newsletter that reported on what happened that day. The words have been emblazoned on his mind. They replay in his head as the man and the monster stand silently before each other, dust motes and straw swirling in the air.
The accident occurred on the eastern slope of the Drew property, when the 11-ton combine harvester was parked on sloping ground using the hand-operated parking brake. Mr. and Mrs. Hall were attempting to clear a blockage in the auger on the header—used to move the unthreshed crops to the threshing mechanism. It is believed that the vibration of the engine—still running—affected the parking-brake system, which in turn caused the harvester to swing and turn with the result that Mrs. Hall was drawn into the thresher. Parking brakes on combine harvesters should not be relied on for safety, particularly on slopes, since they are not in use for most of the year. Even though the operating lever appears to be in working order, they can become seized in the off position, or debris in the brake may impede its ability to hold several tons of vehicle. Premature wear or glazing can also occur if the brake is inadvertently left applied; the connecting cable may become stretched, or the ratchet mechanism may be so worn it won’t stay applied. Anyone working with a vehicle parked on a slope should ensure that it is aligned so that it cannot run downhill, and ensure that the engine is switched off . . .
“It was my fault, Flora,” Drew says aloud. “It was all my fault.”
The combine harvester sits there in all its idiot bulk, grinning at him.
Drew resolves to do something at last about this great metal monster, lunges back to the barn door and drags it closed again. He twists the chain so tightly around the hasps holding the doors together that he grazes his knuckles in the process.
Twilight is deepening when he continues to ascend the rough track, work bag in hand. He wonders why he is coming up here, why he should need to fix the fence. He struggles to cast off the feeling that he is once again undertaking a worthless and meaningless task—aimlessly fixing the unfixable.
And that is when he sees the familiar tracks in the dirt before him.
Drew freezes and looks around. There isn’t a breath of wind, and no tell-tale trace of that scent with which he has become so familiar. He looks back to the barn, then the farmhouse. There’s a stillness that feels uncanny. Nothing moves in the valley, and Drew can’t shake off a feeling of being watched, or of something about to happen. There are no birds in the sky, and nothing makes a sound. He becomes aware of the sound of his own breathing and turns again to look down at the tracks. When he bends to examine them, he recognises the marks immediately, and when he touches them, the mud track is dry, but the track feels fresh.
Panther.
But too big to be panther.
And this is the troubling thing. He’s found these tracks before all over the valley and the Fell, taken plaster casts and studied them back at the farmhouse. They’re panther, no doubt about that—but somehow larger than the textbooks or the published data will allow. He sniffs, trying to draw some evidence of that musk.
Nothing.
The tracks move on up ahead, and Drew follows them. Again, the stride between paw prints indicates a Big Cat at its leisure; and again, the length between strides is that of a large cat, bigger than any panther—but a panther, nonetheless. He glances back at the farmhouse as he follows that track uphill. There’s a clear sight-line from here down to his home, and these tracks must have been made earlier in the day—in clear sunlight. All he had to do was look out of the farmhouse kitchen window, up the valley side, and he would have seen what had made these tracks. Not for the first time, Drew is overwhelmed by a sense of the animal’s confidence; the feeling that this particular beast is utterly at ease with itself, is somehow sure that it can remain aloof and hidden not only from him, but any human eye. Drew also can’t shake off the feeling that this is all somehow a taunt. It’s as if the beast is saying: “I’m here. This is my land. And here I am—in plain view. But you can’t see me—and you ‘ll never find me.”
Drew shakes his head, knowing that this is a crazy thought. The tracks move off the path and into the long grass that leads up to the broken fence. He pauses. These feelings, these thoughts—and now the fact that the tracks almost seem to be leading him to where he’d intended to go.
“Come on, Hall,” he says aloud. “Don ‘t get creeped out!’
He moves on into the long grass. The ground is steeper here leading up to the fence. The grass hisses around his thighs as he reaches the ridge where the fence posts have been embedded, yanks the loose wire aside so that he can get to the post from which it’s become detached. He wonders about the person who erected the fence, a previous owner long forgotten—way back before his time—and drops the tool bag. B
ending to open it, he reaches for a hammer, rummages for the fence nails.
And looks up from where he kneels, straight into a huge and silently snarling mask of terror that completely fills his line of vision.
Glinting eyes, utterly alien, root him to the spot. He sees himself in there, a distorted and pathetically small image. He also sees his coming death and cannot move. The eyes are unblinking, as red lips peel back in a monstrous grimace, slowly revealing the solid and savage reality of yellow fangs that are too big, too real—and in that slow moment, the stench from that gaping maw hits Drew full in the face. They are so close that he could lean forward to kiss it, and its opening jaws could take his head from his shoulders, but now—the voices that Drew hears are from the books he so carefully keeps lined in his study back at the farm (and oh God why isn’t he back down on the farm and not here?)
“Several Big Cat attacks on humans, both in captivity and in the wild, have been stopped when the victim fought back. There are no known instances in which an attack was stopped when the victim feigned death.”
A noise begins deep within that still-gaping maw—so deep that it might be coming from underground. It begins slowly, the stench increasing—full on in Drew’s face—a sound and a rumbling vibration, like some nightmare train on its way. As it comes, Drew is aware that there is blood on his knuckles, from the chain across the barn door. The grumbling, shuddering growl has the power of eons, the ever-increasing promise of a death more savage and violent than a mind could withstand. The growl becomes a roaring, and the very vibration of it is shaking Drew’s body.
“Avoid rapid movements, running, loud, excited talk.”
But Drew cannot move, cannot breathe, as the sound and the smell overpower and consume his body. He can only kneel before that savage widening mask that fills the sky; can only watch the string of saliva that stretches and trembles from one of those monstrous upper canines. The pink and white of that gigantic tongue, the depth of that cavernous mouth, are obscene and fearful beyond sense.
“Look for sticks, rocks or other weapons. Pick them up, use an aggressive posture.”
Terror has overcome Drew, and he waits for death as that roar finally erupts from the chasm of the beast. The blast and the stench is from Hell, and Drew’s eyes are shut as he waits for those gigantic yellow canines to fasten around his head. He wonders if he will scream as the beast begins shaking and tugging his flailing body into the long grass, ripping his body apart. He knows that the pain will go on and on forever and that he will have lost his mind before he loses his life.
“In the event of an attack, in an unavoidable situation, you need all the threatening display you can muster. The showing of teeth, grinning—which humans translate as a smile—can look like an act of aggression to a Big Cat. Aggressive shouts or other loud sounds also may be helpful when . . .”
Drew screams then—knowing that his scream will be strangled and suffocated by those slavering jaws. He cannot move, he cannot fight back, but he puts everything he has into that last act of terror and acceptance of what is to come. As his lungs empty and the scream fills the valley, he waits for death.
But death does not come.
Drew’s breath has been completely vented, and as he chokes, he falls across his tool bag—now at last able to throw up his arms over his head in a hopeless attempt to ward off the inevitable attack.
The stench has gone.
Gasping for breath, letting out the terror, Drew sees that the Big Cat is no longer there.
He staggers to his feet, grabbing the tool bag and scattering the contents at his feet as he yanks out the heavy-duty chisel and holds it out before him. Has his scream covered the sound of its departure?
Was it there at all?
Is he losing his mind?
No—there is the massive flattened depression in the grass where the Big Cat was hiding, and upon which Drew had stumbled. There is a broken passage through the long grass that marks the direction the panther—or whatever it was—took off. Or did it? Is it still here, is it—behind him?
Drew spins around, holding out the chisel. Twilight has deepened to early evening and the long shadows have spread over the valley. There is no sign of the creature, and that’s when Drew begins running back to the rough track. He halts there, spinning, with tortured lungs and hammering heart. He has to stay calm. Another voice from one of his faraway books is telling him that he must not act like prey. If he runs, if he panics and the beast is still nearby—then it will come after him and bring him down.
Still with the chisel held out, Drew begins his descent of the rough track toward the farmhouse; now past the long grass and out into the open. He walks backwards now, keeping his attention fixed on the inward boundary of the long grass by the fence. He sees the monster—because surely this thing is a monster, not a panther or any other Big Cat—in his mind’s eye, as it suddenly bursts from the long grass and begins its killing run. He sees the black, sleek body close to the ground, coming fast and powerful and hideous. This cat has been playing with a mouse.
The barn appears at Drew’s left as he moves.
There is another monster in there.
And that is when Drew stops, breathing hard, sweat streaming from his body making his shirt stick to his back.
The monster in the barn—and the beast waiting for him in the long grass.
Something happens to him, then. Something about the terror he has just experienced; something about the horror of what happened to Flora; something about the long lonely days, weeks and months; the failing farm and all his attempts turning to ashes, and now . . . and now . . .
Drew screams again—his voice carrying over the valley. But this time he is not screaming with fear, he is screaming with rage and defiance. He runs forward, kicking up dust in the early evening air, and jabbing the chisel toward the long grass, defying whatever is there to come out, challenging it to make its stalk and killing run. It may as well kill him, after all. But while it’s killing him, he’ll use this bloody chisel—and he’ll use it well.
He’ll make that beast—and all the other beasts that have been eating him since Flora died—suffer, and suffer badly.
But the beast does not come.
The grass is still. There is no wind.
Only the dying echo of Drew’s defiance.
He turns his back on the long grass and walks down the track to the farm.
Present Day
“You said that you saw one,” said Cath. “Face to face.”
Drew turned to look at her.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
Drew looked across at Dietersen, who folded his arms extravagantly and again feigned deep interest. Drew shuffled uneasily, leaned back against the desk and said: “It was . . .”
He cleared his throat again, and Cath could see that Drew’s eyes were focused on some strange inner place.
“ . . . definitely a panther. No doubt about it.”
“Yes.” Dietersen smiled. “But how do you know?”
“Because I saw it. Up on my farm, on the valley side. I was very close.”
Cath could feel the animosity building between the men, struggled to think of a question, but before she could think of anything, Faye’s voice—a little too loud—came from the back of the hall.
“Tell us about panthers, Drew. Tell us what you know about them. Their behaviour, stuff like that.”
Cath turned to look at her, saw the steel in her face and that familiar ‘look’ that Rynne had teased her about just recently. Cath put her arm around Rynne’s shoulders and hugged her close as Drew began to talk again on a subject with which he was obviously well acquainted, and wondered what had been going on behind his eyes.
THIRTEEN
Rynne thought of the cat in the play group yard while the man was talking. She didn’t know what a panther was, but she supposed when they kept talking about ‘big cats’ that it meant something like ‘bad cat’—and since she knew kittens were
little cats, then a grown-up cat must be a big cat, and probably nasty like the one that had scratched Bianca. Not all big cats were nasty, though—so this was all confusing; but in her mind, she was quite sure that the play group cat had paid Bianca back because her mother had been horrible.
Rynne was aware of something else, too; some kind of grown-up something that was going on in the community room while the man was giving his talk. It had to do with that other man, the one with the wavy hair and all the rings on his fingers. When her mum looked at him, sitting there like the cat that’d stolen the cream (that was something that Faye sometimes said), Rynne could feel her body go tense sitting next to her. And it was just the same thing with Faye sitting on the other side. The man doing the talking had also seemed stiff or something whenever the man spoke up. She didn’t like the wavy-hair man.
The Big Cat talk was finished, which was good because Rynne’s attention had wandered, and she was getting tired. Her mum seemed to have been very interested in the Big Cat man’s talk, though; and had asked lots of questions. Everybody clapped lots, and now people were coming up to Mum on their way out and asking for autographs, further proof of how famous she was; and if Mum was famous then that must surely make her famous, too. As Mum smiled and signed, Rynne realised that the play group cat wasn’t a bad cat after all. It was just paying back people for being jealous of other people who were famous. Or something. Faye began fussing her, fastening up her coat collar, even though it wasn’t even cold outside. And now Mum was talking to that fair-haired man who had wanted an interview and Mum was saying, “Okay then, tomorrow morning before you catch your train,” and Faye was smiling and saying “At last,” and then promising to pick the man up from the pub so that she could drive him to their cottage for this interview thing. Rynne looked for the wavy hair, ring man—but he was gone in the bustle of people leaving the room, and now Mum was saying, “Sorry, excuse me,” and pushing through the people to where the Big Cat man was talking to the two friends who had brought him in. Mum seemed really interested in the Big Cat man and now they were talking and smiling at each other, and when she looked at Faye there was a really funny look on her face. Just like she was really, really glad about something.
