The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

  She and Dee were close, for a time. The detective felt sorry for Dee, a young girl with no one. Call me Karen. She told Dee things when she called. Now she just says, ‘We’re working on it.’

  Ted

  I can’t always tell, but this time I’m pretty sure I am about to do something important. I am going to find a friend. I go away more and more, these days. Who will look after Lauren and Olivia if I don’t come back, one day? I’m only one person, and it’s not enough.

  Mommy took me to the forest three times. The last time she sent me back alone. Yes, I still feel her under the dark canopy of leaves. She is in the scatter of light across the forest floor. And yes sometimes she’s in the cupboard under the sink. But really, I have been on my own since that day.

  I tell myself that this is for Lauren and Olivia, and that’s true. But also it’s because I don’t want to be alone any more.

  I pick a time when Lauren isn’t around. If she knew what I was doing – well, that wouldn’t be good. I take the padlock off the cupboard in the living room where I keep the laptop. The screen is a square of ghostly light in the dark room, like a door to the dead.

  Finding a site is easy. There are hundreds of them. But what comes next? I scroll through. Faces race by, eyes and names and ages, little snatches of existence. I think hard about what I need, about what would be best for Lauren. Women are more nurturing than men, they say. So, a woman, I guess. But it has to be a very special woman who will understand our situation. A couple of them seem nice. This one, thirty-eight, likes surfing. Her eyes are chips of blue, as blue as the water behind her, and kind. Her skin is a little weathered by the sun and the sea. Her hair is the colour of butter, her teeth even and white. She has a happy smile. She looks like she cares about other people. The next one is all the colours of the forest. Brown, green, black. Her clothes are beautiful and cling to her. She works in PR. Her lipstick is like a slick of red oil.

  I took the mirrors down some years ago because they upset Lauren. But I don’t need a mirror to know how I look. Her words stung me. Big, fat. My belly is a rubber sack. It hangs like it has been strapped there. I’m getting bigger all the time. I can’t keep track of it. I knock things over, I bounce off doorways. I’m not used to how much space I take up in the world. I don’t go out much so my skin is pale. Lauren has this new habit of pulling my hair out by the handful and there are shiny pale patches of skull among the brown. I don’t keep razors or scissors in the house and my beard spills down over my chest. For some reason it’s a different colour and texture to the hair on my head; red and thick. It looks like a fake beard, like something an actor would wear to play a pirate. My hands and face are covered with scratches, my fingernails bitten to the quick. I haven’t had the courage to look at my toenails in some time. The rest of me – well, I try not to think about that at all. There’s a smell on me these days, like mushrooms, earthy. My body is turning on me.

  I scroll down. Somewhere in here there must be a friend. The women look out from the screen, skin glowing, eyes bright. They have fun interests and perky jokes on their profiles. I try to think of a way to describe myself. Single dad, I type. Loves the outdoors. Obeys the gods in the white trees … No. Who am I kidding?

  Last week I went to the 7-Eleven for more beer. I felt faint so I sat down on the step outside the store, just for a second. Maybe it was old habit. But I was also just tired. I’m always tired. When I opened my eyes, a guy was putting down quarters by my feet. I gave a growl like a bear and he jumped and ran away. I kept the quarters. I can’t imagine being in a room with these women.

  I’m about to shut down the laptop when I hear something stir. The hair on the back of my neck stands up slowly. I don’t close the computer, because I don’t want to be alone in the dark. I have the sensation of eyes moving across my skull. The furniture lies quiet in unfamiliar shadow, in the screen’s faint blue light. I can’t shrug the feeling that it’s watching me.

  I have a twist in my belly. Where am I exactly? I get up quietly to look. The ugly blue rug is there, check. On the mantel the ballerina lies as if dead in the ruins of the music box. So I know where I am. But who else is here?

  ‘Lauren?’ My voice is a whisper. ‘Is that you?’ Silence follows. Stupid, I know she isn’t here. ‘Olivia?’ But no, it wouldn’t be.

  Mommy’s hand is cool on my neck, her voice soft in my ear. You have to move them, she says. Don’t let anyone find out what you are.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ I say to her. Even to myself I sound whiny like Lauren. ‘It makes me scared and sad. Don’t make me.’

  Mommy’s skirts rustle, her perfume fades. She is not gone, though – never that. Maybe she is spending a while in one of the memories that lie around the house, in drifts as deep as snow. Maybe she is curled up in the cupboard beneath the sink, where we keep the gallon jug of vinegar. I hate it when I find her there, grinning in the dark, blue organza floating around her face.

  The fresh can is so cold it almost sticks to my palm. The hiss and crack as it opens is loud, comforting in the silent house. I keep scrolling down, down, through women’s faces but Mommy’s voice is singing through my head and it’s no good. I go to find the shovel. It’s time to go to the glade.

  I’m back. Recording this, in case I forget how I hurt my arm. Sometimes I can’t remember stuff and then I get scared.

  I woke up to a hum. There was something walking on my lips. The morning was filled with clouds of flies, fresh-hatched. It was like a dream but I was awake. Early summer sun shone in the webs of orb spiders stretched between the trees. It made me think of that poem. ‘“Come into my web,” said the spider to the fly.’ You are supposed to sympathise with the fly, I think. But no one likes flies, really.

  My arm was twisted at a bad angle. I think I fell. There was iron on my tongue. I must have bit down hard on it while I was out. I spat out the blood at the foot of a mountain ash. An offering to the birds, who were calling in the trees overhead. Blood for blood. They won’t come to the garden since the murder. Birds tell one another about those things.

  I got back home somehow. It was so good to hear the locks clicking into place. Safety.

  My memory came back slowly. I had been trying to move the gods. They have laid in their resting place for a year or so now. They really shouldn’t stay in one place more than a couple months – after that, they start drawing people to them. So I was on my way to dig them up. But the forest has its own ideas, especially at night. I should have remembered that. The ground shrugged, the roots turned under my feet. Or maybe I was too drunk. Anyway I fell. The last thing I recall is the crunching sound my shoulder made as it met the earth.

  My face is scratched and my arm has black flowers all over it. It won’t straighten. I made a sling out of an old T-shirt. I don’t think it’s broken. Getting hurt makes the body and brain weird, even if you don’t feel the pain. My thoughts are everywhere right now.

  When I went downstairs earlier Olivia couldn’t leave me alone. Curious I guess. She licked my face. She has a real taste for blood, that cat.

  Olivia

  ‘Here, kitten.’ Ted leans in the doorway, black against the light. Something is wrong with the way he’s standing. He kind of falls into the house then turns to lock the door, hands shaking. It takes him a few tries to get all the locks.

  ‘I had a weird one, kitten,’ he says. His arm is bent at the wrong angle. He coughs and a little fleck of blood dances through the air. It lands on the orange carpet and rests, a dark globe.

  ‘Got to sleep,’ he says and goes upstairs.

  I lick the dark spot on the carpet, taking in the faint taste of blood. Oooooeeeeeeeeee, ooooooeee. The whine is back.

  Today when I leap up to my viewing spot, the tabby is already there, sitting on the unkempt verge by the sidewalk. The sight of her makes my heart burn. I purr and bat the glass with a paw. Her coat is all fluffed up with the cold. She looks twice her size. She pays me no mind, sniffs delicately around the oak tree in the f
ront yard, at a patch of ice on the sidewalk. And then, finally, she looks straight at me. Our eyes hold. It’s glorious; I could drown in her. I think she’s waiting for me to break the silence. Of course, now I can’t think of a single thing to say. So she turns away and it’s agony but then it gets worse. That white cat comes strolling along the sidewalk. That big one with the bell on his collar. He speaks to her and tries to rub her cheek with his. I am hissing so hard that I sound like a kettle.

  He’s trying to get his scent on her, but my tabby knows better. Her back goes up into an arch and she retreats delicately out of sight. I could weep with relief, which quickly turns to sadness because she’s gone. Each time the pain is sharp and penny-bright.

  Let me tell you a couple of things about white cats. They are sneaky, they are mean, and they are below average intelligence. I am aware that you are not supposed to say stuff like that, that it is not POLITICALLY CORRECT but it’s gd true and everyone knows.

  I remember being born, of course, I have said that. But my real birth happened later. Do you want to know THE LORD? He wants to know you. Haha, just kidding, he probably doesn’t. The LORD is quite choosy, actually. He doesn’t show himself to everyone. When He picks you, wow, do you know about it.

  It was the day I learned my purpose. All cats have one, just like all cats can turn invisible and read minds (we are particularly good at the last one).

  I wasn’t always grateful to Ted for rescuing me. For a while, I really didn’t want to be an indoor cat. After Ted brought me home I was lonely, and I cried a lot. I missed my little kit sisters who had died at my side in the rain. I missed Mamacat, her big grinding purr and warm sides. We barely had a chance to know one another. I understood that they were dead, because I saw it happen, and it left a sadness in me like a heavy stone. But at the same time, I knew that they were not dead. I was convinced that if I could just get outside I could find them.

  I looked and looked for ways to escape, but there weren’t any. A couple of times I just ran straight at the door when it opened. I am not a natural planner. Ted scooped me back up in a friendly sort of way. Then we went to the couch and he stroked me or we played with a piece of yarn, until I stopped rowing and crying. ‘There are bad people who would hurt you or try to take you away from me,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to stay here with me, kitten?’ And I did. So I would forget about it for a while. But the happiness always passed, and then I was mad at myself for giving in to Ted, and sorrow consumed me once more.

  So I had decided that this was the day, it really was. I had it all planned out; but the timing would have to be just right. It all depended on all the teds behaving exactly as they had behaved in the past. I had come to notice that they usually do.

  The thing is, I know a lot about what goes on outside, even if it doesn’t happen in front of my peephole. I can’t see but I can hear and smell. So I know that at a certain time of day, a ted who smells like leather and clean skin goes along the street with his big brouhaha. He usually stops to pet it near our house. I don’t know what they look like as I haven’t actually seen them with my eyes, but judging by the smell the brouhaha is very ugly. The stink of it is like an old sock full of caca. I always hear the brouhaha writhing and whining, the jingle of its tags as it wriggles its butt. Cats’ souls live in their tails and teds keep their selves behind their big wet eyes. But brouhahas keep their deepest feelings in their butts.

  The ted talks to it like it can understand. ‘Hey, Champ. You a good boy? Yes, yes you are, yes you are, oh yes, you big dumb lunk.’ Only, often he doesn’t say lunk. I hear the slopping of the brouhaha’s tongue, smell the love coming out of its skin. This just proves the ted’s point. Brouhahas really are big dumb ahem-ahems. Champ wants nothing more than to kill me. The old knowledge told me, the kind that is in our bodies. Teds don’t have a lot of that knowledge left but cats have tons.

  I waited until I had the timings off by heart. Ted goes to get candy and beer at a certain time each day. As he’s coming up the steps, the brouhaha and the ted are sometimes passing in front of the house. Sometimes the ted says hi, and Ted kind of grunts back.

  Today was the day and my heart was whirring like a hummingbird, but I knew it was going to work, I just knew it.

  At this point, I was not yet very tall. I could still walk right under the couch, and the tips of my ears would not even graze the underside. So I hid myself in the umbrella stand in the hall. What a useless thing! How many umbrellas does Ted think he has? Anyway it is a good place to hide.

  I heard Ted’s footfall, the tinkle and crack of tiny pieces of the world breaking beneath his boot. He had started early, I could tell. This was also good. Ted would be slow. (There is a shuffling rhythm to his walk when he drinks. It is almost like a very simple dance – a square dance, maybe.) I crouched, my tail lashed. The cord stretched out in the air behind me. It was a burnt shade of orange that day, and it crackled like fire in a hearth as I moved.

  I coiled myself to spring. Ted sang something under his breath and the keys clicked in the various locks. I could smell the outside, its earthy glow. I could smell the brouhaha, its breath like old broken eggs. A line of light broke the dark of the hall as the door began to open. I ran for it as hard as my small paws would carry me. My plan was to run for the oak tree in the front yard, and after that, well. I would be free.

  I came skidding to a halt in the doorway, drowned in blinding white. I couldn’t see anything at all. The world was a narrow crack of agonising light. I had lived most of my life in the dim of the house, I realised. My eyes couldn’t handle the sun. I rowed and closed them tight. I felt strange freezing air touch my nose. Maybe I could do this with my eyes shut?

  The door was opening wider. The air must have carried my scent out into the world; the big brouhaha exploded into a roar. I smelled the excitement coming from him, the anticipation of death. I heard the manic jingle of tags. I guessed the brouhaha was rearing and springing up the steps. Everything slowed, almost to a stop. In the blinding white fire I felt my death approach.

  This was a terrible plan, I realised. I could never make it to the tree. I couldn’t even open my eyes to see the tree. The brouhaha was close, I smelled his mouth, open like a long dirty cave, his rotten teeth. I felt a burning circle of fire spread around my neck. It was the cord, sizzling with heat. The cord burned and pulled me deep into the safe shadows of the house, as quick as a whiplash. I heard Ted slam the door closed.

  I opened my eyes. I was inside again – safe. Outside, Ted was yelling. The brouhaha keened and whuffed, pressing his face to the bottom of the door. His stink drifted under, it was everywhere. I was horrified at myself. How could I have thought this was a good idea? I felt how tiny I was, each slender bone in my body, the delicacy of all my veins and fur and the beauty of my eyes. How could I have thought to risk all that in a world where a brouhaha could eat me in one bite?

  ‘Hey,’ Ted shouted. ‘Get your dog under control.’ He was angry. You don’t want to mess with Ted when he’s angry.

  The barking and stink receded somewhat. The ted must have pulled his brouhaha away.

  ‘My daughter’s inside,’ Ted said. ‘That really scared her. You ought to be more careful.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the ted said. ‘He just likes to play.’

  ‘Keep him on a leash,’ Ted said.

  The scent of the brouhaha receded, blending with the distant scent of the forest. Then it was gone. Ted came in quickly. The locks went thunk, thunk, thunk. I was so glad to hear them.

  ‘Poor kitten,’ he said. ‘Scary for you.’

  I climbed into Ted’s hands. I felt the fiery cord expand and enclose us in a blazing womb of light.

  ‘That’s why you have to stay indoors,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous out there.’

  I’m sorry, I said to Ted. I didn’t know.

  He couldn’t understand me, of course. I thought it was important to say it anyway. Warmth glowed around us. We were in a ball of warm yellow fire.

 
; It was then that I saw Him. There was a third there with us, at the heart of the flame. He didn’t look like anything I knew. He looked like everything. His face changed each moment. He looked like a yellow-beaked hawk, and then a red maple leaf, then a mosquito. I knew that my face was in there, too, somewhere among the many. I did not want to see it. I understood that would be the final thing. As I draw my last breath He will show Himself, and the face He wears will be mine.

  Your place is here, the LORD said to me. I have saved you for a special purpose. You have to help one another, you and he.

  I understand, I said. It makes perfect sense. Ted does need a lot of help. He is such a mess.

  We have been a good team since then. We keep each other safe. I am pretty hungry now, so I will stop.

  Dee

  The rich man’s eyes are deep and blue. ‘Delilah,’ he says. ‘Good to meet you at last.’ His hair is dazzling white, drawn into a low pony-tail; his loose pants and shirt are linen. His deck sits high in the treetops, encircling the beautiful house, which is made of deep red cedar and glass. It is just the kind of place Dee would like to live. The air smells of sun on living green, mingling with the clean aroma of the lemonade in the jug beside them. Sprigs of mint float on its surface. The ice cubes make beautiful high sounds. His housekeeper brought it without a word the moment they sat down.

  The yellow envelope sits on the table beside the lemonade. A drop of condensation has made its way down the jug’s cold sides, has darkened the corner with moisture. Dee can’t take her eyes off it, can’t think about anything else. What if the contents are damaged?

  ‘It is the only copy that I know of,’ he says peacefully, following her gaze. ‘The man who took it died of a heart attack some years ago. The newspaper is small, local, they don’t keep records. So it may be the only copy in existence.’ He doesn’t move the envelope away from the water, and Dee forces herself not to reach for it.