by Cave, Hugh
Purr of a Cat
She was a forlorn-looking thing, and it was raining, and I had driven so long over that lonely road, without a soul to talk to, that I'd have welcomed the devil himself for company. So I stopped.
"All right, sister," I said. "Jump in."
"Thank you," she said. "I—I'm so cold."
I snapped the heater on. Ordinarily I don't use it when driving alone at night, because it makes me drowsy and I'd be apt to fall asleep at the wheel. But she was shivering, so I leaned across her and thumbed the switch—and suddenly got a good look at the girl.
My breath stuck in my throat. I suddenly forgot all about my assignment to paint pretty pictures of brooks and mountains. One look at this girl was like a shot in the arm, jolting to life the artist in me. The hell with the Nu-Way Calendar Company and its paltry thirty bucks a week! The most beautiful girl in the world was sitting beside me!
I stared at her without apology. A man has a right to stare at such dazzling loveliness. I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her toward me, and soaked up the wonder of her flawless skin, the deep dark glow of her eyes, the warm red invitation of her mouth. "Lord!" I whispered, wonderingly. "Oh, Lord!"
She wasn't scared. Those deep eyes returned my stare without blinking, and she actually smiled a little—or maybe that was my imagination.
"What's your name?" I asked hoarsely. "Who are you?"
"Roseen," she said. "That's my name: Roseen."
"Where do you live?"
"A little way from here, near Endonville, With my father."
"You're going to pose for me!" I cried. "You understand, Roseen? I'm going to paint a picture of you!" I almost let my eagerness run away with discretion. I almost told her how she was going to pose for me, but yanked the words back just in time. That would come later, when I'd had a chance to win her confidence.
With an effort I stopped staring at her and got the car rolling again. But my gaze kept jerking back to her, to her face, to her wet black hair, to the ivory smoothness of her slender throat. And when, presently, she shrugged out of the wet raincoat she'd been wearing, I stared so hard that I damned near ran the car into a highway fence.
She wasn't wearing much under that coat. Just a cotton dress, sort of old-fashioned. It was damp and it clung to her body, revealing the perfect thrust of her full young breasts, the flat line of her stomach, the inviting flow of her legs. Every little nerve in me began to pound.
"Are you going far?" she asked.
"To Endonville," I muttered, after a moment. "I'm supposed to stay there a week or so, painting the beauties of this backwood region."
"You will not like it there," she said. She moved closer to me and I could feel the warmth of her. It was a strange, intoxicating kind of warmth, like too much raw liquor running in my blood. It put wild ideas into my head.
"Why won't I like it there?"
"The hotel is small and dirty," she replied. "Perhaps my father will let you stay with us."
I don't know what it was—maybe just a germ of common sense fighting to crawl through my eagerness and warn me—but for a second I felt a bright, sharp premonition of danger. I wanted to say, "Oh, no, you don't!" and tell her I was wise to what happened to careless guys who accepted her kind of invitation. But I didn't say it.
Instead, 1 whispered, "Swell! That would be swell!"
She slid closer. "I think it would be very nice, too," she said softly—oh, so softly! And then I stopped the car. What the hell—it was so easy, so natural. I just took her into my arms and shaped my lips to hers. I felt her slim little body throbbing under my hands, and her breasts pulsing hard against me. And the low, purring sound that filled the car was not what I thought it was. It wasn't the heater. It came from deep within her—the sound a kitten makes when it is very warm and contented.
It was after midnight when we got to Roseen's house. There hadn't been another house along the road for five miles or more—nothing but deep black woods and stretches of swamp, with the rain pounding down in a wild fury. We stopped now, and I gave the house a leery look. It wasn't too inviting, what I could see of it in the dark. It looked old as the hills. The rain had flooded the yard, and the ancient building appeared to rise out of a boundless swamp.
But there was a light burning in one of the downstairs windows, and that looked good to me after so many miles of forsaken road. And Roseen's hand was warm in mine as she said, "Come! We'll ask my father if you may stay!"
Her father—she introduced him as Feicher Davis—got up off a shabby old divan and stood scowling at me. He was a big man, heavy-boned with an abundance of flesh, though not remarkably tall. His eyes were small and black, and set deep in fat, and he had thick gray hair that grew almost as long as a woman's.
"You name's what?" he said. His voice had the breathlessness of a whisper, but it was a whisper you could have heard a long way off.
"Blake," I told him. "Frank Blake."
"He wants to paint my picture, father," Roseen said, smiling.
The old man stared at me a while, then shrugged and sat down again. "He can stay if you want him to," he said. The girl's hand touched mine, and she led me to the door. When I looked back, Felcher Davis was still sitting there, just sitting, like a fat, bloated gnome in the yellow light of an oil-lamp that needed cleaning.
"You must be tired," Roseen whispered. "Come!"
That was a hell of an old house! What little furniture it contained was about ready to disintegrate; the carpets were so threadbare you could see the floor through them. But I wasn't interested in the house. Not with Roseen beside me, showing me my room, telling me softly that her room was right next to it along the hall—with a connecting door.
"It is locked," she smiled, "on my side, Mr. Blake. You see?" She steered my hand to the knob and I tried it, and it was locked. "But maybe it will not be always locked," she whispered. "Especially if I am sure my father is not listening . . . ." She melted into my arms and tipped her lovely head back, with her eyes shut and her red lips parted for a kiss. When she slipped out of my room a little while later, I didn't think the connecting door would be locked for long.
I pulled my pajamas out of my suitcase and got into them, wishing the room were a little less gloomy. It smelled of dust and age and disuse. There was no curtain at the window, and the glass rattled every time a gust of rain struck it. The wall-paper was damp and stained, and the bed was a prodigious old four-poster that could have handled three of me without any crowding.
Anyhow, I went to bed and tried to sleep. The rain beat against the house, and the wind howled. I heard a door slam shut downstairs. Curiosity pulled me out of bed, to the window, and I saw Roseen's father prowling out to the road. I wondered where he was going this time of night.
Just for the hell of it, I tried the connecting door, but it was still locked. So I crawled back into bed.
I was over-tired, I guess, or else very emotionally worked up. Anyway, I was a long time getting to sleep, and then I did some dreaming. I rode a galloping nightmare.
In this nightmare I was stark naked and wandering down a long, dark hall. Not just an ordinary hail, but a black tunnel that had no ending and was filled with a strange assortment of sounds—and shapes. Some of the shapes were cats. White cats. They walked along with me, rubbing against my legs. One of them leaped to my shoulders and purred softly against the curve of my neck—a pleasant sensation, warm and thrilling that did something to the temperature of my blood.
I heard a lot of whispering, a lot of feline sounds that were disturbingly human. There was no end to the tunnel. I just kept on walking, on and on, until the eeriness of the place took hold of me and I was terrified. Then I ran. I ran away from the cats. I kicked at them and screamed at them, got hold of the one on my neck and flung it against the tunnel wall.
I ran until I woke up, and when that happened I wasn't in bed any more, but in the middle of the room, throwing my arms around like a madman. I was naked, and drenched with sweat, and th
e echoes of my screams still lived in the darkness around me.
I was afraid of the dark. I fished a match out of my trousers and lit the lamp on the old-fashioned bureau, then sat on the bed until my body stopped shaking. There was a queer, throbbing sensation in my neck, where I carry a strawberry birth-mark about the size of a quarter. I got out my shaving mirror and looked at the mark. It seemed redder.
But then common sense won out. I called myself a damned fool, went back to bed and slept like a babe. When I woke up, my watch read nine-thirty and the room was full of sunlight.
I got dressed and went downstairs, and found everything laid out for my breakfast—scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, a pot of marmalade. The food was only luke-warm, and there was a note propped against the salt-shaker.
"Father and I must go to work," it said. "Please make yourself at home. I shall look forward with great longing to your company this evening." It was signed, "Roseen."
Queer people, but generous!
Well, I hung around. If she had to work days, then I'd paint her picture in the evenings. I thought about it a lot—how I'd paint her. If I could get her to pose for me against the drab, musty background of my room, her white young body glowing with life against those deathlike shadows . . . what a picture! I thought about it a lot. Would she consent to bare her body to a stranger?
I went up to my room, set up an easel and went to work on the background. Then I got restless. That old house was too still, too empty. I was jittery again, and went prowling around to reassure myself there was nothing to be afraid of.
It had no right to be still standing, that house. Its timbers were rotten; there were gaps in the walls and floors through which rats and other crawly things probably roamed at will. I tried to open some of the windows, and couldn't. When I looked closer to find out why I couldn't, I found they were nailed shut.
About eight o'clock it got dark.
I was sprawled out on a couch in the kitchen, tired and half asleep—though why I should have been tired after doing nothing all day, I don't know—when all at once I sensed something beside me. I hadn't heard anything come in, but something was there. I opened my eyes, and at that moment a low voice whispered my name, and a pair of eager red lips closed over my own. Roseen!
What a greeting! What a way to come home! There she was on her knees beside the couch, with her arms curled around my neck and those hot red lips of hers scalding my mouth with a kiss that sent fever-flashes through me.
She must have come home from work and changed, because she wasn't wearing any ordinary house-dress or work-dress; the gown she wore belonged on some Southern Belle of a century ago—when they bravely showed the world forty-nine percent of their beautiful breasts, and you wondered how in hell they kept the dress from slipping down to reveal all the rest of them.
Did I say Roseen was beautiful? In that gown she was more. She almost wasn't real.
I held her off at arm's length for a moment and studied her, stared at the smooth white shape of her bare shoulders, at the soft, throbbing swells of her exquisite bosom. I bent closer and touched my lips to her skin, in a gesture as old as the gown she wore. And I knew then that I was going to get that gown off her, that I was going to see her in the nude and paint her in the nude and - anyway, I knew it. Nothing was going to stop me.
"Where's your father?" I said, trying to be casual.
"He won't be home until late," she declared, smiling. And added, with her mouth close to mine and her dark eyes looking up into a part of me that no woman's eyes had ever discovered before: "Very late, my beloved."
Well, hell, it was easy. She knew she was beautiful. She was proud of her beauty. She wanted me to paint her.
We went upstairs and I showed her what I'd already done—the dark, shadowy background, the faint suggestion of an old oil-lamp burning off-stage in a corner. I explained where and how I wanted her to stand. She said softly, "It will be lovely. Very lovely." The old-fashioned gown rustled on the floor, and there she stood, and for a second I had to shut my eyes.
I'm no amateur, you understand. I've really studied art, and I've done some pictures, mostly nudes, that have been highly praised by the critics. I know what the human body looks like, both male and female. I know the names of the bones and muscles in it; I know the textbook names for breasts and shoulders and hips and legs. But I forgot all those things, looking at Roseen. She was just—woman.
All woman, and so stunningly beautiful she stopped the beating of your heart and caused your breath to lump up, strangling you. God, what perfection! Pale shoulders curving into arms that were made for an eternal caress. Full, flawless breasts with a hint of arrogance to them, as though they were proud of their exquisite loveliness and recklessly willing to accept any challenge. Long, glowing legs that flowed like milk into the most feminine of hips....
I stepped forward to pose her, and knew I was going to have trouble. Because she was made for love, and I wanted to paint her; I really wanted to paint her, to get that wondrous beauty down on canvas for others to marvel at and thrill to. It was a fever in me, along with other desires that threatened to burn every living thing inside the taut, trembling shell of my body.
When I touched her, I almost lost my head. She was so warm, so alive, so—so eager. But, by God, I posed her and went back to my brushes, and got to work. I worked maybe an hour, and it was torture. Every time I lifted my eyes to look at her, my control threatened to explode. But I stuck to it. The picture began to take shape. I'm a fast worker, once the mood is on me, and I got things done.
Then she sighed a little and came toward me. She put her head against my shoulder and closed her eyes. "I—I am so tired, so sleepy, my beloved," she whispered. "We will rest a while now.. . please?"
I remember very little after that. But I do remember turning to pick up her gown, which lay where she had dropped it an hour ago. I remember the light, languid touch of her fingers as she caught my arm and drew me back. I remember standing there, staring down at her, at the red smile on her parted lips, the trembling of her upraised hands, the pale, smooth wonder of her body.
The lamp sputtered and went out, but hell, I'd have blown it out anyway.
I was a sick man when I woke up. Weak. It was broad daylight and there was a sound of rain at the window. I swung my feet out of bed and sat up, and the room began swimming. It was like a terrific hangover, only worse. My head ached, there was no strength in me, and that burning sensation was in my neck again, only worse.
I groped for my watch and couldn't believe my eyes. Eleven o'clock! I'd slept fourteen hours—or had I slept? Where was Roseen?
I got up and knocked on the connecting door, opened it and walked into her room. I hadn't been in her room before, and it surprised me. The curtain was drawn at the window. The place smelled dusty and dead as though it hadn't been touched by a breath of fresh air in years. I went slowly over to the bed, and saw that it hadn't been slept in. It didn't look as though it had been slept in ever. I pulled the covers back and they were so old, so yellow, so brittle, that they fell apart in my hands.
I replaced them and hid the damage. Something told me it would be safer that way. Roseen had lovingly whispered a promise to pay me a visit in my room, but I hadn't been invited to cross that threshold into hers. There might be a difference.
I went downstairs, and as before, my breakfast was laid out in the kitchen. The note this time was shorter. "Darling," it read, "I shall not live until I am with you again tonight." I wondered if the old man had read it, and if so, what he thought about it.
After eating, I felt better and went upstairs to work on the picture again. I worked until mid-afternoon, fighting off a weakness that was at times almost overpowering. I finished the background.
It occurred to me then that I ought to build a crate for the picture; otherwise, when I left here, it might be banged up in the car on those bad roads. I went through the kitchen and down a flight of decayed steps into the cellar, in search of tools and some wood
. Right away I began to feel uneasy.
There was an odor in that cellar. I tried to tell myself it came from the damp dirt floor, but it was not that kind of odor. I poked around, getting uneasier by the minute. It was a gloomy hole, filled with refuse, the remains of discarded furniture. There were two small windows, high up against the ceiling, covered with cobwebs.
Something lived down here. The odor was a dead giveaway. An animal of some sort, or several of them . . . I suddenly remembered the cats that had pursued me in my nightmare. Maybe that hadn't been a dream, after all. But if there were cats in the house, why hadn't I seen them upstairs?
I searched the cellar thoroughly, but if there were cats in it—or any other breed of animals—I couldn't find a trace of them. Just that stifling smell. When my jitters began to get the best of me, I went back upstairs. An hour or so later it began to rain, and I had to light some lamps.
I was in the parlor when Roseen came, and as before I didn't hear a sound until she was suddenly there before me. She wore her Southern Belle dress again. I got up off the divan and put my hands on her shoulders, stared at her and said softly, "You make less noise than anyone I've ever known. How do you get around? Do you float?"
Her red lips laughed at me, and she put an end to my questioning by kissing me. That was answer enough! With her gorgeous body pressed against mine, and my arms around her, I lost all interest in quiz programs. After a while I drew her to the divan.
"Tonight," I said, "we'll finish the picture." The mere thought of having her pose for me again brought out the sweat in me and put a blow-torch in my blood-stream. Her slim, white body against the musty shadows of that upstairs room . . . her mouth smiling at me . . . her warm eyes mocking me as I posed her...
Tonight, with the rain beating against the windows, I would get something more than art into my picture. I'd get mood. It would be a picture to drive men crazy. It would make me famous. And yet, even though the artist in me was wild with eagerness, something else in me whispered an eerie warning. This house, the odor in the cellar, the decayed bedroom next to mine . . . it all added up to a mystery that grew more sinister every moment. Who was this girl Roseen? Why did she and her father live in such a place? Where did they go in the daytime?
