Festival of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  When David came back from the store she was sitting in her rocking chair in tears, with the drapes half-drawn.

  ‘I can’t find Echo.’

  ‘She has to be someplace,’ he said, picking up cushions and newspapers as if he expected to find her crouching underneath.

  ‘I haven’t seen her all day. She must be so hungry.’

  ‘Maybe she went out to do her business and one of the neighbors picked her up.’

  They knocked on every door on both sides of the street, all wrapped up in their coats and scarves. The world was frigid and silent.

  ‘You haven’t seen a tortoiseshell kitten, have you?’

  Regretful shaking of heads.

  Right at the end of the street, they were answered by an elderly woman with little black darting eyes and a face the color of liverwurst.

  ‘If I hev, den vot?’

  ‘You’ve seen her? She’s only about this big and her name’s Echo.’

  ‘There’s a reward,’ David put in.

  ‘Revord?’

  ‘Fifty dollars to anybody who brings her back safe.’

  ‘I never sin such a kitten.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘She’s of . . . great sentimental value,’ Melanie explained. ‘Great emotional value. She represents – well, she represents my partner and me. Our love for each other. That’s why we have to have her back.’

  ‘A hundred dollars,’ said David.

  ‘Vy you say hundert dollar?’

  ‘Because – if you’ve seen her – if you have her—’

  ‘Vot I say? I tell you I never sin such a kitten. Vot does it matter, fifty dollar, hundert dollar? You tell me I lie?’

  ‘Of course not. I didn’t mean that at all. I just wanted to show you how much we’d appreciate it if you did have her. Which, of course, you don’t.’

  The woman pointed her finger at them. ‘Bad luck to you to sink such a bad sing. Bad luck, bad luck, bad luck.’

  With that, she closed the door and they were left on the porch with snow falling silently on their shoulders.

  ‘Well, she was neighborly,’ said David.

  They searched until eleven o’clock at night, and one by one the houses in the neighborhood blinked into darkness. At last they had to admit that there was no hope of them finding Echo until morning.

  ‘I’ll make some posters,’ said Melanie, lying on her stomach with her nightshirt drawn to her armpits, while David steadily licked her back.

  ‘That’s a great idea . . . we could use one of those pictures that we took of her on the veranda.’

  ‘Oh, I feel so sorry for her, David . . . she’s probably feeling so cold and lost.’

  ‘She’ll come back,’ said David. ‘She’s our love together, isn’t she? That’s what she is. And our love’s going to last for ever.’

  He continued to lick around her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, while she lay on the pillow with tears steadily dripping down the side of her nose. After he had licked the soles of her feet, he came up the bed again and licked her face.

  ‘Salt,’ he said.

  ‘Sorrow,’ she whispered.

  The next morning the sky was as dark as slate and it was snowing again. Melanie designed a poster on her PC and printed out over a hundred copies. Lost, tortoiseshell kitten, only three months old, answers to the name of Echo. Embodies owners’ undying love so substantial reward for finder.

  David went from street to street, tacking the posters on to trees and palings. The streets were almost deserted, except for a few 4x4s silently rolling through the snow, like mysterious hearses.

  He came back just before twelve. Melanie said, ‘The head coach called. He wants you to call him back. He didn’t sound very happy.’

  David held her close and kissed her forehead. His lips were cold and her forehead was warm. ‘It’s not important any more, is it? The world outside.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to call him?’

  ‘Why should I? What does it matter if he’s happy or not? So long as we are. The most important thing is to find Echo.’

  More days went by. The phone rang constantly but unless it was somebody calling about Echo they simply hung up without saying any more and after a while it hardly ever rang at all. The mailman went past every day but they never went to the mailbox to collect their letters.

  One of Melanie’s editors called around in a black beret and a long black fur coat and rang the doorbell for over quarter of an hour, but eventually she went away. David and Melanie lay in each other’s arms, sometimes naked, sometimes half dressed, while the snow continued to fall as if it were never going to stop. They ate well and drank well, but as the days went by their faces took on an unhealthy transparency, as if the loss of Echo had weakened their emotional immune systems, and infected their very souls.

  Early one Thursday morning, before it grew light, David was woken up by Melanie shaking him.

  ‘David! David! It’s freezing!’

  He sat up. She was right. The bedroom was so cold that there were starry ice-crystals on the inside of the windows where their breath had frozen in the night.

  ‘Jesus, the boiler must have broken down.’

  He climbed out of bed while Melanie bundled herself even more tightly in the quilt. He took his blue toweling bathrobe from the back of the chair, shuffled into his slippers, and went shivering along the corridor to the cellar door. Their landlady Mrs Gustaffson had promised to have the boiler serviced before winter set in, but Mrs Gustaffson had a tendency to forget anything which involved spending money.

  David switched on the light and went down the cellar stairs. The cellar was crowded mostly with Mrs Gustaffson’s junk: a broken couch, a treadle sewing-machine, various assorted pieces of timber and tools and picture frames and hosepipes and bits of bicycle. Dried teazles hung from the ceiling beams, as well as oil lamps and butcher hooks.

  The huge, old, oil-fired boiler which stood against the far wall was silent and stone cold. It looked like a Wurlitzer jukebox built out of rusty cast-iron. It couldn’t have run out of oil – Green Bay Heating had filled the tank up only three weeks ago. More likely the burners were clogged, or else the outside temperature had dropped so far that the oil in the pipes had solidified. That would mean going out into the yard with a blowtorch to get it moving again.

  David checked the valves and the stopcocks, and as he was leaning around the back of the boiler he became aware of a sweet, cloying smell. He sniffed, and sniffed again, and leaned around the side of the boiler so that he could look behind it. It was too dark for him to see anything, so he went back upstairs to the kitchen and came back with his flashlight.

  He pointed the beam diagonally downward between the pipes, and saw a few black-and-gray tufts of fur. ‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed, and knelt down on the floor as close to the boiler as he could. He managed to work his right arm in between the body of the boiler and the brick wall, but his forearm was too thick and muscular and he couldn’t reach far enough.

  Back in the bedroom Melanie was still invisibly wrapped up in the quilt and a sickly yellow sunshine was beginning to glitter on the ice crystals on the windows.

  ‘Is it fixed yet?’ she asked him. ‘It’s like an igloo in here.’

  ‘I’m – ah – I’ve found something.’

  When he didn’t say anything else, she drew down the quilt from her face and stared at him. There were tears in his eyes and he was opening and closing his fists.

  ‘You’ve found something? What?’

  ‘It’s Echo.’

  ‘You found Echo! That’s wonderful! Where is she?’

  ‘She’s dead, Mel. She must have gone behind the boiler to keep warm, and gotten trapped or something.’

  ‘Oh, no, say it isn’t true. Please, David, say it isn’t true.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mel.’ David sat down on the edge of the bed and took hold of her hand.

  ‘It was that woman, that woman putting a curse on us! She wished us bad luc
k, didn’t she, and now Echo’s dead, and Echo’s your love, David, all in one bundle.’

  ‘I still love you, Mel. You know that.’

  ‘But I promised to love her as much as I love you. I promised. I swore to you.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

  Melanie sat up. ‘Where is she? Did you bring her upstairs?’

  ‘I can’t get her out. I tried but the gap behind the boiler’s too tight.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to do it.’

  ‘Mel, you don’t have to. I can ask Mr Kasabian to do it. He used to be a vet, remember.’

  ‘Mr Kasabian isn’t here. He went to see his daughter in Sheboygan yesterday. No, David. Echo is mine and I’ll do it.’

  He stood beside her, feeling helpless, while she knelt down beside the boiler and reached into the narrow crevice at the back. At last, with her cheek pressed right against the cold iron casing, she said, ‘Got her . . . I can feel her.’ She tugged, and tugged again, and then she drew her hand out, holding nothing but a small furry leg.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s fallen apart.’ She dropped the leg and quickly stood up, her hand clamped over her mouth, retching. David put his arms around her and said, ‘Leave it, just leave it. I’ll get the handyman to do it.’

  Melanie took three deep breaths, and then she said, ‘No . . . I have to get her out. She’s mine, she’s the love you gave me. It has to be me.’

  She knelt down and slid her hand in behind the boiler again. David looked into her eyes while she struggled to extricate Echo’s body. She kept swallowing with disgust, but she wouldn’t give up. At last, very slowly, she managed to lift the dead kitten up from the floor, so that she could reach over the pipes with her other hand and grasp it by the scruff of its neck.

  Quaking with effort and revulsion, she stood up and cradled the body in her hands. The ripe stench of rotten kitten-flesh was almost unbearable. It was impossible for them to know exactly how long Echo had been trapped, but it must have been more than two weeks, and during that time she had been cooked by the heat of the boiler during the day, and then cooled by night, and then cooked again the following day, until her fur was scorched and bedraggled and her flesh was little more than blackened slime.

  Echo’s head lay in the palm of Melanie’s right hand, staring up at David with eyes as white and blind as the eyes of a boiled codfish, her mouth half-open so that he could see her green glistening tongue.

  ‘We can bury her,’ said David. ‘Look – there’s an old toolbox there. We can use it as a casket. We can bury her in the yard so that she can rest in peace.’

  Melanie shook her head. ‘She’s us, David. We can’t bury her. She’s you and me. She’s all of your love, all wrapped up in one bundle, and all of my love, too, because you and me, we’re the same person, and Echo was us, too.’

  David gently stroked the matted fur on Echo’s upturned stomach. Inside, he heard a sticky, thick, glutinous sound, which came from Echo’s putrescent intestines. ‘You’re right,’ he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘But if we don’t bury her, what are we going to do?’

  They sat facing each other on opposite sides of the scrubbed-pine kitchen table. The kitchen was even colder than the rest of the apartment, because the wind was blowing in through the ventilator hood over the hob. They had both put their duffel coats on, and Melanie was even wearing red woolen mittens.

  ‘This is your love,’ said Melanie. In front of her, on a large blue dinner-plate, lay Echo, resting on her side. ‘If it becomes part of me, then it can never, ever die . . . not as long as I’m alive, anyhow.’

  ‘I love you,’ David whispered. He looked years older, and whiter, almost like his own grandfather.

  With both hands, Melanie grasped the fur around Echo’s throat, and pulled it hard. She had to twist it this way and that, but at last she managed to break the skin apart She inserted two fingers, then four, and wrenched open the kitten’s stomach inch by inch, with a sound like tearing linen. Echo’s ribcage was exposed, with her lungs pale yellow and slimy, and then her intestines, in coils so green that they were luminous.

  David stared at Melanie and he was shivering. The look on Melanie’s face was extraordinary, beatific, St Melanie of the Sacred Consumption. She scooped her mittened hand into Echo’s abdominal cavity and lifted out her stomach and strings of bowel and connective tissue. Then she bent her head forward and crammed them into her mouth. She slowly chewed, her eyes still open, and as she chewed the kitten’s viscera hung down her chin in loops, and the duodenum was still connected to the animal’s body by a thin, trembling web.

  Melanie swallowed, and swallowed again. Then she pulled off one of Echo’s hind legs, and bit into it, tearing off the fur and the flesh with her teeth, and chewing both of them. She did the same with her other leg, even though the thigh meat was so decomposed that it was more like black molasses than flesh, and it made the fur stick around Melanie’s lips like a beard.

  It took her almost an hour to eat Echo’s body, although she gagged when she pushed the cat’s spongy lungs into her mouth, and David had to bring her a glass of water. During all of this time, neither of them spoke, but they never took their eyes off each other. This was a ritual of transubstantiation, in which love had become flesh, and flesh was being devoured so that it could become love again.

  At last, hardly anything remained of Echo but her head, her bones, and a thin bedraggled tail. David reached across the kitchen table and gripped Melanie’s hands.

  ‘I don’t know where we go from here,’ he shivered.

  ‘But we’ve done it. We’re really one person. We can go anyplace we like. We can do anything we want.’

  ‘I’m frightened of us.’

  ‘You don’t have to be. Nothing can touch us now.’

  David lowered his head, still gripping her fingers very tight. ‘I’d better . . . I’d better call the handyman.’

  ‘Not yet. Let’s go back to bed first.’

  ‘I’m cold, Melanie. I never felt so cold in my life. Even when we were playing in Chicago and the temperature was minus thirteen.’

  ‘I’ll warm you up.’

  He stood up, but as he turned around Melanie suddenly let out a terrible cackling retch. She pressed her hand over her mouth, but her shoulders hunched in an agonizing terrible spasm and she vomited all over the table – skin, fur, bones and slippery lumps of rotten flesh. David held her close, but she couldn’t stop herself from regurgitating everything that she had crammed down her throat.

  She sat back, white-faced, sweating, sobbing.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I tried to keep it down. I tried so hard. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Please, David, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.’

  David kissed her hair and licked the perspiration from her forehead and sucked the sour saliva from her lips. ‘It doesn’t matter, Mel. You’re right . . . we can do anything. We’re one, that’s all that counts. Look.’

  He picked up a handful of fur and intestine from the table and pushed it into his mouth. He swallowed it, and picked up another handful, and swallowed that, too.

  ‘You know what this tastes like? This tastes like we’re going to taste, when we die.’

  They lay in each other’s arms all day and all night, buried in the quilt. The temperature dropped and dropped like a stone down a well. By mid-afternoon the following day, David had started to shake uncontrollably, and as it grew dark he began to moan and sweat and thrash from side to side.

  ‘David . . . I should call the doctor.’

  ‘Anything we want – anything—’

  ‘I could call Jim Pulaski, he could help.’

  David suddenly sat up rigid. ‘We’re one! We’re one! Don’t let them take the offensive! Don’t let them get past the fifty-yard line! We’re one!’

  She woke a few minutes after midnight and he was silent and still and cold as the air around them. The sheets were freezing, too, and when she lifted the quilt she discovered that his bowels
and his bladder had opened and soaked the mattress. She kissed him and stroked his hair and whispered his name again and again, but she knew that he was gone. When morning came she cleaned him all over in the way that they had always cleaned each other, with her tongue, and then she laid him on the quilt naked with his eyes wide open and his arms outspread. She thought that she had never seen any man look so perfect.

  It was midwinter, of course, one of the coldest winters since 1965, and Mr Kasabian’s sense of smell wasn’t the most acute. But when he returned home on Friday morning he was immediately struck not only by the chill but by the thick, sour smell in the hallway. He knocked on David and Melanie’s door and called out, ‘Melanie? David? You there?’

  There was no answer, so he knocked again. ‘Melanie? David? Are you OK?’

  He was worried now. Both of their automobiles were still in the driveway, covered with snow, and there were no footprints on their veranda, so they must be home. He tried to force open the door with his shoulder, but it was far too solidly-built and his shoulder was far too bony.

  In the end he went upstairs and called Mrs Gustaffson.

  ‘I think something bad has happened to Melanie and David.’

  ‘Bad like what? I have to be in Manitowoc in an hour.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Gustaffson. But I think it’s something very, very bad.’

  Mrs Gustaffson arrived twenty minutes later, in her old black Buick. She was a large woman with colorless eyes and wiry gray hair and a double chin that wobbled whenever she shook her head, which was often. Mrs Gustaffson didn’t like to say ‘yes’ to anything.

  She let herself in. Mr Kasabian was sitting on the stairs with a maroon shawl around his shoulders.

  ‘Why is it so cold in here?’ she demanded. ‘And what in God’s name is that smell?’

  ‘That’s why I call you. I knock and I knock and I shout out, but nobody don’t answer.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what’s going on, shall we?’ said Mrs Gustaffson. She took out her keys, sorted through them until she found the key to David and Melanie’s apartment. When she unlocked the door, however, she found that it was wedged from the other side, and she couldn’t open it more than two or three inches.