Clowders

by Vanessa Morgan

  CLOWDERS

  Vanessa Morgan

  Copyright 2017 Vanessa Morgan

  Cover design by Gilles Vranckx

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to people living or deceased is unintentional. While Clervaux and the other places mentioned in this novel exist, no supernatural or strange occurrences happened there. You will find cats in Clervaux, although not as many.

  To Wim Castermans

  1972-2017 †

  Special thanks to:

  Stephan Jankovic, Anne Billson, Sven Daems, Ever'y Cat

  “Cats know everything. Not like dogs.” - Haruki Murakami

  “The only thing we have to fear is the 'culture of fear' itself.” - Frank Furedi

  “There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.” - Hunter S. Thompson

  About CLOWDERS

  Clervaux, Luxembourg. This secluded, picturesque town in Europe is home to more cats than people. For years, tourists have flocked to this place – also known as “cat haven” - to meet the cats and buy cat-related souvenirs.

  When Aidan, Jess, and their five-year-old daughter, Eleonore, move from America to Clervaux, it seems as if they've arrived in paradise. It soon becomes evident, though, that the inhabitants' adoration of their cats is unhealthy. According to a local legend, each time a cat dies, nine human lives are taken as a punishment. To tourists, these tales are supernatural folklore, created to frighten children on cold winter nights. But for the inhabitants of Clervaux, the danger is horrifyingly real.

  Initially, Aidan and Jess regard this as local superstition, but when Jess runs over a cat after a night on the town, people start dying, one by one, and each time it happens, a clowder of cats can be seen roaming the premises.

  Are they falling victim to the collective paranoia infecting the entire town? Or is something unspeakably evil waiting for them?

  Aidan and Jess’ move to Europe may just have been the worst decision they ever made.

  INTRODUCTION

  Outsiders called Clervaux quaint, but the locals called it something else – cursed. How it came to be known as such had been lost in the memories of those who inhabited nearby towns outside the perimeter of the dense forest, but everyone accepted the curse as being legitimate.

  Through the years, several inhabitants of surrounding towns disappeared, and the story grew that they had stumbled upon Clervaux, never to return.

  Its reputation was solidified in the late 1700s after the appearance of a personal journal page found in the pocket of a rotting corpse. Written in now fading ink, it carefully preserved the terror that struck for the first time so many years ago in Eselborn, one of its closest neighbors.

  “It has been a cold winter in Eselborn this January of 1789, but our stalwart inhabitants hold against the never-ending cold, shortage of food, starving animals and children. Scraping together every last morsel of food, the people congregated in a local church on the evening of the 23rd, hoping to come to a solution to our predicament.

  No one had made it in or out of Eselborn in weeks, the forest roads frozen and impassable by nearly nine feet of snow. One of Eselborn's founders struggled through a snow bank to cut wood one morning in the forest surrounding Clervaux and never returned. His wife and four children waited in vain for him to come back, but three days passed with no sign of him.

  A small search party left the town on the morning of the 27th, knowing they would find his body somewhere between the edge of Clervaux and the depths of the forest before it reached the banks of the river Clerve a scant two miles in the distance. Alas, they found nothing but a single foot.

  The following day, a five-man party set out, armed with traps, firearms, and sticks to hunt down the creature that had attacked him. They, too, did not return. Another search party found their remains battered and bloodied in a small hollow, completely devoid of snow.

  Everyone in Eselborn abandoned the scattered homes and gathered in the town church, hoping to create a united front against whatever was killing anyone who stepped into the depths of the forest. However, it wasn't long before several intrepid souls dared to venture outside once again, knowing that no one would survive without food, water, and what meat they might find.

  This writer ventured into the town of Clervaux only to find that everyone had disappeared.

  That horrible and tragic day, the only living things in the now abandoned town were a multitude of cats that, strangely enough, seemed to be well cared for and fed. We saw no sign of life other than these cats, and shall attempt to go exploring on the morrow to see if we can find where they are from, and who is taking care of them, in the hopes that we may discover what has happened in Clervaux.”

  This page from the journal was the only one that had ever been found, and it was marred with spots of a brownish substance that looked like dried blood. Its contents became part of local history and lore, and no one was ever able to discover what had truly happened. Neighboring communities believed that the cats of Clervaux had something to do with the continuing disappearances and deaths in the area.

  For a long time, the local council had warned travelers and visitors to stay well away from this part of Luxembourg, but since Animal Planet aired a documentary about its large number of cats, the town had become a popular tourist destination.

  The curse, however, remained.

  PROLOGUE

  MAY 2015

  They held the memorial service in the crematorium on the outskirts of Luxembourg City. Camille stared at the coffin sitting in the middle of the commemoration room and at the framed picture of the 17-year-old boy that stood beside it. Perfect arrangements of flowers filled tier after tier behind the altar, much more than she would have thought the place could hold.

  As she waited for the service to begin, Camille looked around her, scanning the location for familiar faces. Because she had met Jörgen at summer camp almost three years ago, most of the people here were from his hometown, Echternach, and thus unknown to her. For these people, neighbors were just as important as family. The psychological wounds inflicted on this community by the boy's passing would take longer to heal than anyone yet realized. It wasn't just the loss of someone they saw and spoke to every day that was hard to bear, but the injustice that a boy so young had been taken away from them without an apparent reason.

  The music swelled. The murmurs and whisperings stopped. Camille prepared herself to bite back the tears that would well up in the next half hour.

  When her mother, who sat on her left side, saw how emotional Camille was, she clasped her hand. She didn't pull it back, but glanced up at her, giving her a faint smile. She was glad her parents had agreed to accompany her for support, even though they hadn't known Jörgen well.

  A spiritual leader delivered a message about how important the young boy had been in this community and how much he would be missed and remembered.

  “Louder! I don't hear you!” a woman in her late eighties on the front row shouted. Everyone looked at her with embarrassment.

  Then Jörgen's two brothers talked for no more than ten minutes each, set to a slideshow that commemorated the loved one. In between each speech, they played songs that had been pertinent to Jörgen's life.

  After the spiritual leader had finished the final message of goodbye, Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky began to play softly, and everyone stood up. It was one of the songs from the soundtrack of Jörgen's favorite movie, Guardians of the Galaxy. “When I die, and they lay me to rest, gonna go to a place that's the best,” Greenbaum sang, while the attendants stepped forward one by one, filing past Jörgen's coffin and briefly touching it to bring their last respects.

&nbs
p; Camille finally let go of the tears that she had been blocking up until now.

  At the post memorial luncheon, everyone from Echternach reminisced about the deceased. Those that came from Clervaux, however, talked about something entirely different: they gossiped to each other that she was back.

  But no one ever dared to speak her name out loud.

  “I'm wondering who's responsible for his death,” Camille heard her father say to her mother.

  Two kids from Camille's hometown - a boy and a girl - were staring at her. They whispered something to each other as if they were divulging a dark secret about her.

  She shuddered.

  Stop it! she thought. You're paranoid!

  She decided to ban the anxious thoughts from her head, but the truth was she had indeed something to hide.

  Jörgen's death hadn't been an unlucky coincidence.

  She knew more victims would follow and that she would be one of them - the curse of having been at the wrong place at the wrong time. She still hoped for penance one way or another, yet she had taken her father's gun out of the bedside table for protection, just to be sure. Deep down, though, she realized she was never going to live to see the summer.

  All of her work of the past two years had been for nothing. She had saved up money through a myriad of student jobs with the intention to rent a cheap Airbnb in Paris the day she turned 18, before finding a job and getting a flat of her own. Jörgen had promised to visit her once in a while because she had told him that once she left, she'd never put another foot in her hometown. She couldn't go on living in fear because that was what Clervaux was all about. Everyone there felt it.

  But those plans had turned to dust, and the danger she had wanted to flee had now overtaken her.

  Worst of all, she couldn't tell anyone about what had happened to Jörgen, because if she gave into this awful fear, she would put her entire town into turmoil.

  Now she finally understood why her father had always cautioned her to never mention to anyone what was going on in Clervaux. “Either you shut up, or you laugh about it and make it seem so grotesque no one even dares to believe,” he had instructed her. “It's easy to trick people into thinking what you want them to.”

  Camille had done exactly the opposite.

  It all started when Jörgen had asked her why she wanted to flee Luxembourg at any cost. “Isn't our friendship important enough for you to stay?” he had said. He hadn't been able to accept the fact she'd be leaving for good, which she had regarded as a compliment because her initial feelings of friendship for him had melted into a crush over the years. How could she not have fallen in love with this boy? Jörgen was the sweetest person she'd ever met, and he had a way of pushing her out of her comfort zone all the while accepting her entirely the way she was. However, she'd never had the courage to tell him out of fear of hurting their friendship, and she suspected he was just as shy as she was. Maybe his strong reaction to her upcoming departure proved he loved her too. In any case, because they shared such a strong bond, she didn't feel like she could lie to him. “Can you keep a secret?” she had asked him after a while.

  So she had told him.

  Of course, he hadn't believed her. Oh, yes, he had heard the story before, but to him, it was nothing more than local superstition. It was weird how Jörgen's hometown was so similar in location and appearance to Clervaux, yet shared such different beliefs and experiences.

  In Jörgen's attempt to prove to Camille there was no reason to leave the country, he had carried out the worst crime anyone could ever commit in Clervaux. “It's for your good,” Jörgen had said. “You'll see. Nothing will happen.”

  When he had left the house half an hour later, Camille knew with absolute certainty she would never have another chance to kiss the boy she loved.

  On his way to the bus stop, Jörgen had been hit by a drunk driver. The crash killed him instantly.

  The news had left Camille blinded by shock for several minutes as if she had received a death sentence that would be carried out within the weeks to come. Then she had felt such an intense fear; it had squeezed her heart together until she'd collapsed.

  Had the accident been a coincidence?

  Maybe.

  Probably not.

  Later, on the radio, the driver had explained he'd had to swerve to avoid hitting a clowder of cats.

  Could that have been a coincidence as well?

  And now, as the post memorial luncheon was over and she followed her parents to the car that would take them back to Clervaux, Camille wondered how many people there suspected that she was the one who had created the circumstances under which Jörgen had died.

  After having traversed the forest by car for almost an hour, Camille looked out over the small town nestled in the narrow valley in front of her. The weather was sunny for May – 26 degrees. Spring was slowly giving way to summer, and the heavy scent of pine lingered in the breeze.

  She squinted at a dozen cats just shy of an azure blue signpost with white arrows that sent hikers down the prettiest trails. There were many more cats than before in the forest around Clervaux, and she made a good guess at what that meant.

  “Dad?” Camille asked. “Can you drop me off at the camping site?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “Just gonna hang around the swimming pool with Stephanie and Zoé, to study,” she lied.

  Why would she study if her life would be ending soon anyway? She felt electricity shiver all over her body by the thought. She just wanted to be with her friends and soak life in for as long as she could, and spending a day poolside with beers wasn't a bad way to do that.

  A rabbit scuttled across the street. As it reached the edge of the forest, it cowered with fear, its nut brown eyes searching for an escape. As Camille followed the animal's gaze, she saw it, squatting in the forest as if she waited for Camille to come back home. When their eyes crossed, the corners of its mouth curled.

  Camille pulled at her mother's arm, but before she had a chance to turn, they had already passed the bend, and the area where it sat was no longer into view.

  Maybe she hadn't seen anyone.

  Maybe it had been an optical illusion.

  The car turned around another corner, and there it was again.

  Camille's eyes filled with fear, and in its reflection, something grotesque smiled back at her.

  “She's here,” Camille said. “She's coming for me.”

  “Who's here, honey?” her mom asked, oblivious to what her daughter was saying.

  Without hesitating, Camille pulled the gun out of her handbag, put it to her mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 1

  The engine of the Volkswagen chugged rhythmically. Aidan loosened his grip on the steering wheel, stretching out each hand in turn, squinting at the view from the windshield. It was Aidan's first day of his new life in Europe, yet he was too tired to feel the excitement as he and his family had been traveling for over 24 hours. They had left home yesterday afternoon to take the plane from Hartford to Dublin. The flight took almost seven hours, and Aidan had spent most of it reading the newspapers.

  He loved to fly. He liked to have a few hours away from people to read or to think, and he enjoyed the lift in his stomach at takeoff and landing.

  When they arrived in Dublin at a quarter past five in the morning, they had to wait another eight hours for a plane that would take them to Luxembourg. They had picked up their rented Volkswagen at the airport, and now they were finally on their way to their new home, Clervaux, a small town in northern Luxembourg with less than two thousand inhabitants.

  The sun shone and Aidan's wife, Jess, had opened the window so she could enjoy the thin autumn sunshine that fell on her face, her natural auburn locks waving gently along with the wind. Jess propped her chin up with her hand, watching the scenery glide by.

  In every direction, pine-covered hillsides rose to unexpected heights. Few roads traversed these hills. O
ccasionally, a small meadow or clearing interrupted the impenetrable growth to provide speckles of sunlight, shattering the canopy of darkness that shrouded most of the forest. The underbrush grew thick and lush, a haven for animals big and small. Though most of the forest's creatures hid from prying eyes, Jess and Aidan had already detected a family of wild boar with their noses buried in the grass and a squirrel bounding up the trunk of a tree.

  Their five-year-old daughter, Eleonore, sat in the rear of the car and had fallen asleep, the seat belt confining her small frame. She was the miniature, almost identical double of her mother, with the same, natural auburn locks and green eyes. Eleonore was prone to car sickness, so it was a relieve she was quiet. The rest of the journey hadn't been smooth for her. She hadn't slept at all on the plane, and the fatigue had made her hungry, nauseous, and ill-tempered.

  But now she was asleep at last. Her Turkish Van cat, Avalon, lay sprawled out over her knees, snoring softly. His fluffy white fur hung loosely over the skin of her legs like a soft blanket.

  Aidan hadn't been sure about taking the cat along to Europe. While the paperwork and vaccinations were much less complicated than they used to be, he'd feared the flight would be fatal due to Avalon's heart condition. But Eleonore was so in love with her cat she had cried and begged and cried some more until Aidan had finally agreed. Despite all expectations, Avalon had taken the trip rather well. Unlike most cats, he hadn't thrown up or wet himself. As long as Eleonore stuck around, he was all right.

  With his eyes staying resolutely on the road, Aidan let his mind drift back over the events of the past few years. Having been a nomad all his life, he had been daydreaming about this move for longer than he wanted to admit. He had left Ireland, his country of origin, as soon as he was old enough to do so. First, with student exchange programs to Barcelona and Berlin, then for work as a veterinarian. With its clean streets and cozy atmosphere, Stockholm had felt like a second home. Prague hadn't been at all what he expected, even though everyone who had ever been there had assured him it was one of Europe's most beautiful cities. In Brussels, he had made the most friends. And in Greece, he had helped the most stray animals and earned the least money in his entire career.