Jacob shook his head. “The first time we had him in our sights there would be a dozen other cats throwing themselves into the line of fire, and a few dozen more clawing up our backsides before we knew it. No, we’ll have to be cleverer than that. We’re going to have to get up close to Dragon with someone he already trusts.”
Richard had been distracted, listening for the vague scratching that moved in and out of his hearing in waves. Then suddenly Jacob’s words registered. “You’re out of your mind.”
“She’s not just a little girl, Richard. There are limits to what you can protect her from.”
“I’m not sending Serena out to face that thing! We’ll find another way! If you were a father yourself, you wouldn’t even suggest it.”
Jacob stared at him, then he opened a hand and shrugged. “Then we look for another way.”
“Fine, then. I’m going to wash this blood off and check on her.” Then, seeing Jacob purse his lips, “Because I don’t want to alarm her. I’m alarmed enough for the both of us, goddammit.”
Richard scrubbed and disinfected his hands vigorously. The skin burned and reddened, then paled amazingly, the surface looking like skate tracks in ice. Maybe she wouldn’t notice, he thought, knowing full well that these days Serena noticed everything. He threw cold water on his face then ran down the hall.
In the corridor outside Serena’s room, two cats stood guard: a tall, thin black, a short stout gray. Wide mouths, slightly goofy expressions. Richard thought immediately of Laurel and Hardy. He forced himself to smile down at them as he started past, putting his hands palm down as if to placate or pat.
The short cat approached him with tail and ears erect: friendly, interested. But as it climbed onto his shoes, its tail suddenly began lashing side to side, the tip twitching, and then the claws came out, and Richard started kicking when the claws entered his pants leg. The cat landed against the cushiony flocked wall and commenced a deep, harsh purring.
Then the tall cat rubbed up against him, its fur electric, and Richard tried to pull away, but could not. It was as if he’d grabbed hold of an electrified fence and his charged muscles would not permit him to let go. But the Hardy cat broke the connection by barreling between them, then lolling playfully on its back to expose its huge belly, looking up with an invitation for Richard to scratch. Richard declined.
The Laurel cat took one swat at Hardy’s belly, opening it in a broadening red line. Hardy looked surprised, and then sprayed the air with fur and phlegm. The emaciated Laurel leapt up into a small open window and crouched there, ready for any retaliation from Hardy. Laurel kept turning its head toward the outside, sniffing at the air, then when it seemed to find a particular direction of interest it opened its mouth and gasped in more air.
Meanwhile Hardy spread itself wide in front of Serena’s door, its eyes mad with fury and pain, obviously determined to bar entrance even with its ropy guts hanging out. Richard would need something more than his feet and his unprotected hands to get through to Serena. He ran back down the corridor to the closet in his own room, groping for the baseball bats and tennis rackets he kept stored there.
And felt fur moving back and forth against his hand.
He stepped back as the closet door eased fully open, the huge white and yellow-streaked creature coming with him as if its fur were glued to his hand. The cat rubbed the side of its head back and forth against his palm, staring up at him with wide, fixed pupils. With an effort of will, Richard pulled his hand away – the fingers tingled. The cat’s zombie stare broke and its mouth suddenly grinned impossibly wide.
Richard ran into the bathroom and washed his hands thoroughly, near delirious with his need to remove the feel of the thing. But the tingling was still there. Another cat appeared outside the bathroom window, its doughy face pressed into the glass until eyes and mouth went loony. Richard opened the back door to the bathroom and made his way down the dimly lit back hall. But from behind each door he passed came a scratching, a sniffing, as if they were tracking him.
A cat passed him from behind, rubbing against the outside of his leg. Richard looked down: the small, multicolored creature trotted ahead, coat changing shade and pattern as the light changed. But the way the cat moved seemed so normal, so innocuous – here and there stopping to snap at a moth, or to lunge clumsily at a moving shadow – Richard tended to think this cat must not yet be part of the others, until the cat glared at him, doubling size with a glance, and Richard recognized this cat as Dragon, Dragon in the eyes and in the teeth, whatever size and shape the cat might take.
Richard stood his ground, or, more accurately, was afraid of what might happen to him if he ran. But Dragon swiveled his head back around and continued to trot down the corridor as if he hadn’t noticed Richard at all. Richard turned, indecisive, wanting to return to Serena’s front door, but this back hall connected to Serena’s bedroom as well. Could Dragon know this? Without a doubt – he’d pretty much had the run of the place since he’d shown up (except for certain corners, certain stretches of floor and carpet, certain thresholds even Dragon knew better than to cross) – and Dragon was headed in her direction. Richard started after the cat, who seemed completely oblivious to him now.
Dragon kept several yards ahead of him, raising his leg and spraying each door before Richard could get there. The odor accumulated, intensified, and it occurred to Richard this was more than one individual cat’s marking of territory, but a claim being staked for the whole of the Deadfall, a claim for the kingdom of the cats.
To his relief they passed the innocuous-looking rear door of Serena’s quarters. Dragon didn’t even bother to mark it (or did the cat already consider it marked?). Richard didn’t stop in any case, not wanting to alert the cat to Serena’s whereabouts if he didn’t already know. They left the hall, and its worn carpets, for a succession of tiled, empty rooms which Jacob always referred to as “the overflow kitchen.”
Richard heard the first click-clack, and then a string of them, click-click-clack, an overlapping syncopation of hundreds of clicks and clacks, then around the doorway came dozens of Siamese cats trotting across the floor, their claws extended.
Richard moved into the carpeted back hall. And there was Dragon, suddenly blocking his way, sniffing at his palm, then moving his mouth over Richard’s thumb and closing, not too firmly, keeping his teeth back but still holding Richard’s thumb well enough that Richard knew Dragon wouldn’t easily let his prize go.
Dragon’s tongue began caressing the trapped thumb, wrapping around it so tightly he couldn’t possibly pull loose. The cat started moving the tongue slowly back and forth, its rough texture grating away his skin. Finally Dragon uncoiled his tongue and walked away slowly with an air of dismissal. Richard examined his thumb: it was bloody. Layers of skin had been scraped away.
“Dragon!” Serena squealed behind him. Richard turned as she rushed past him, skipping across the floor and landing behind the cat, who still would not turn around. “Oh, Daddy, you found him!”
“No, Serena!” he shouted, as the cat’s eyes became huge and hard, one paw raised, claws gleaming even in the dim light.
“Daddy?” Serena looked back at him, at the same time reaching out a hand to caress her long-lost cat. Richard held his breath. The cat’s ears shot up like rigid cones. Richard started running, reached his hands down to scoop up his daughter or grapple with the cat if required. “Daddy! You’ll scare him again!” Sudden defiance, resentment in her voice.
“Honey, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did! You never liked Dragon! And he’s all I have left!” Serena burst into tears and pulled Dragon to her. Richard tensed, but the cat allowed himself to be held. A low purr filled the room: directionless, and impossibly loud. Even in her upset, Serena must have felt the wrongness of the sound. She held the cat out and away from her, her hands under his front legs. He opened his mouth wide with a loud, snake-like hiss. Serena dropped Dragon, scurried over to her father on her hands and knees, clamped on to
his leg. “Daddeeee.” She began to cry.
The cat stretched himself out to twice his length, fixed his eyes on Richard and Serena, and then lowered his ears halfway, waiting.
Richard tried to ease himself and Serena toward the back hall, at the same time pulling Serena up along his leg from the floor. She held on so tightly he could barely move. But Dragon hissed yet again, even more loudly, more like his namesake than any garden-variety serpent. They stopped. Serena was rigid against him.
The cat flattened his ears completely and began to circle them. The ears twitched back and forth, followed by two quick flicks of the tongue around the lips. Dragon padded over to Serena’s feet and raised his paw. Without thinking, Richard reached down to bat him away.
Dragon’s paw pushed against his hand. He could not believe the strength in the gesture. He could feel the claws coming slowly out of their pads. He jerked his hand away and moved his right shoe between Dragon and his daughter.
The cat clamped his mouth over the toe of the shoe. Serena squealed. Richard struggled to pull his foot away, but the cat was like a lead weight, impossible to budge. Richard felt an enormous strain on his lower leg as he yanked. He almost laughed – such a small cat, and yet it was as if a boulder had rolled onto his shoe. He flashed back to a time just after they got Dragon, and the kitten had attacked, and chewed playfully on his big toe, exposed through a hole in the sock. This was insane.
Suddenly Dragon released the shoe, and Richard staggered back against the wall. Serena was screaming. Richard looked down at the front of his shoe: a couple of inches of leather gone, shreds of blue sock pulled out and dangling, blood trickling from the ragged cavity.
Dragon stretched his mouth into a hideous grin and sniffed loudly.
“Daddy, look,” Serena said softly.
Richard lifted his head and looked beyond Dragon, to the doors of a second auxiliary kitchen, and the hall beyond. All of it packed wall to wall with cats. There were breeds he recognized and breeds he did not. Abyssinian, Bobtail, Burmese. An indescribable breed with a yellow-dotted coat and scarlet whiskers. And on the left, pressed against the wall, there was a Cornish Rex (or so he thought – he’d never actually seen one before). An Egyptian Mau, an aged Sphinx. White cats with whiter eyes. Black cats with blacker eyes. A reddish cat with a blue-tipped tail. Two Norwegians. A huge cat, almost hairless, and Richard would have thought it a pig, if not for its teeth and claws. A variety of Orientals. A long narrow cat. A tall crooked cat. A Himalayan, several Persians.
One incredibly large cat with an unlikely amount of muscle was shaking its heavy, bull-like head from side to side, more dog-than cat-like in its movements. Several creatures tumbled out of its ears onto the floor and it lapped them up with a skinny, pale yellow tongue.
But it was the distinctiveness of their eyes that impressed him the most: yellows, hazel-greens, greens, rich oranges, red-tinged whites, the occasional blue. But when Dragon stepped back into the midst of them, creeping in reverse like some grainy silent movie wound back, their eyes all gradually changed, until eventually they took on the silver hues of Dragon’s great, brilliant eyes.
Dragon lifted his head toward Richard and Serena, stretched out his throat, and began to purr. The purring quickly fell through the registers into a soft growl, then, as if testing the muscles and sinews involved, Dragon’s mouth went through a number of contortions, but with no sound resulting.
Dragon’s throat appeared to move differently from a domestic cat’s – there was something vaguely panther-like about it, Richard thought. In the next moment, Dragon began to roar like one of the big cats, a large, full-throated sound. But Richard was sure domestic cats did not have the ability to roar, even to to imitate a roar. Dragon cut off the sound with a sudden smacking of his lips. His tongue shot out briefly, and Richard thought it much too large for his mouth. He watched as Dragon stretched on his front paws. For his size, Dragon’s muscles seemed massive. He arched his back and twisted around, showing them the grandness of his tail: this new tail was almost four times the width of the one he’d come to them with. The enormous tail bobbed forward over Dragon’s head as he pranced in front of his followers. The other cats appeared tense, fixed on him, taking measure of his every gesture. Richard felt as if he and Serena had finally been dismissed, but doubted this was truly the case.
“He’s changed, Daddy. Oh, he’s changed so much.”
“I know, honey. I know. I’m afraid he’s not your little pet anymore. Come on, we have to go now. Just hang on to me, whatever happens.”
They were able to slip out of the room and halfway down the hall toward Serena’s room before seeing Hardy, sprawled dead across the middle of the hall, three tiny black and white kittens tearing away at its insides. Serena started to squeal and Richard clamped a hand across her mouth. Her eyes grew enormous. He moved her into an even narrower connecting hallway, his hand still over her mouth.
They were several yards down this hall (which led, Richard thought, to a door off the front lobby) when he became aware of a tearing sound behind him. He twisted to see a half-dozen cats entering the hall, claws in the wallpaper on each side, tearing their way toward him. He kept Serena ahead of him, moving her along as he picked up the pace.
They pushed through the door at the end of the narrow passage, discovering that it did indeed bring them out into the lobby. Richard locked it; on the other side, the cats began to howl.
“Daddy, what’ll we do?”
He held a finger to his lips and Serena clamped her own hand over her mouth. There was a many-layered popping noise, rising in volume. He couldn’t imagine what it might be. Where was Jacob? He didn’t think much about the fact that he hadn’t seen any of the guests the past few hours – they tended to lie low as a matter of course, more so if anything unusual was going on. And was this unusual? Certainly, even for the Deadfall. But he’d expected to see Jacob in a crisis. This was a crisis, wasn’t it? Under the circumstances, the man’s secretiveness seemed intolerable.
The popping noise was growing louder. And there was a bass ripple cascading from above. Then he realized what was happening, turned his head while pulling Serena to him, foolishly clinging to some thin thread of an idea that he might shield her from this.
At the top of the left-hand staircase a wave of electrified cats appeared, followed a beat later by a wave of cats on the right, both floods descending toward the wide landing at the top of the lobby where they would join and overflow the Deadfall’s great central stair. Their claws were out as they ran, making the popping noise as they snagged and pulled the carpet threads, sending dust and bits of material flying, a gray cloud of it drifting to the red-tiled lobby floor. Many of them eeyowed in pain, or anger, or excitement – Richard imagined claws snagging and snapping, but there was no apparent impairment to their descent.
The registration desk was just a few feet away. “Stay here,” he whispered, and the wide-eyed fear that spread through her face almost made him stop, almost made him want to wrap his arms around her and wait for whatever happened.
He tore himself away and hurried behind the desk, slid open a small drawer and retrieved the loaded pistol there. He eased back to Serena’s side. The cats had almost reached the bottom of the stairs. Serena stared at the gun, looking even more frightened. “Daddy.”
“Just come with me.” He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her with him toward the front door. Several cats bounded ahead of the crowd, immediately targeting Serena. Richard pointed the gun in their direction and fired. One of the cats tumbled amid a general shrieking. Richard was surprised at how loud the gun sounded in the high-ceilinged lobby; he’d never shot a gun before.
The great mass of cats still on the staircase sat motionless, heads butting forward, peering. Then, one by one, they stretched themselves – there was a final chorus of popping as they freed their claws, shreds of carpet flying like flowers under a mower. Then one by one they grinned and began to move from the stairs. Richard threw away the
gun and ran toward the front door, dragging Serena along by one arm, eeyowing her own gritty pain.
They squeezed through the door just ahead of a rainbow-colored tide erasing the lobby. Richard slammed the massive door on a chorus of baby screams, looked down and saw bits of bloody fur and paw sliced off by the smooth steel edge of the door jamb. On the other side of the door was more popping – heavier, softer – as the cats broke their bodies against the carved wood panels.
Serena clung to him and shook uncontrollably. He slipped his finger under her chin and tilted her face up. Only a couple of scratches across her cheeks, nothing serious, but her eyes looked dazed, her forehead white. “Honey, it’s okay. They’re locked on the other side of the door.”
She jerked herself away and shook her head wildly. “It’s never okay!” she screamed, spit flying off her lips. “Not in this place! It’s made not to be okay!” Her body twisted – she seemed barely able to stand. She made a staggering turn and started down the front steps. “Sometimes, Dad,” she threw back over her shoulder, “you’re an idiot!”
“Serena! Stay with me!” He went after her, stumbling over something on the porch. With a flash of anger, he kicked it, saw soft, bloody flesh flying. He focused on her back, turning gray as she raced ahead of him over the dark lawn. “Serena, we have to stay together!” as he stepped into another lump of flesh. And another. What the hell? Blood slimed his shoes. He could barely contain his fury at her. He couldn’t believe what she’d just said to him – it wasn’t like her – and now she was putting herself into even more danger. She’d been like this since the cat came, more and more unpredictable.
She’d stopped a few yards ahead, was looking around, down at the lawn. Again his shoes went into something soft, with a soft crunching sound. He stopped himself, made himself see more clearly, stared at the hundreds of small lumps littering the Deadfall lawn.
Hundreds of mice, the heads gone, chewed from the bodies. Dozens of birds, opened throat to tail feathers like overripe pods. A dozen or so squirrels, their heads gone as well, bodies stretched and rigid, and flattened like road kill (and when before had he ever seen a dead squirrel that wasn’t road kill?). An eviscerated mole. A mound of skunk. A helping of miscellaneous, unidentifiable flesh: well-chewed, and regurgitated. And a couple of small dogs, their dog days past, the attempt to remove their heads not quite successful, so that the flesh of their necks was mostly gone, but the bone remained, and Richard marveled at how snake-like those neck bones appeared, so that in death the dogs had become dragons, transforming into mythical creatures.
Deadfall Hotel Page 12
