My brother and I were fed easily enough. My grandfather carted
us down cellar, opened the furnace door and we roasted hot dogs over the
coals while conjecturing cheerfully about what might be lurking in the
dark coal bin, behind the boxes of earth where the dahlia roots were buried
for winter.
The cat was another matter. After futilely calling, my grandfather
shoved an opened tin of Puss N' Boots under a kitchen chair.
"The cat must have got out. If he shows up he can eat." He preferred
looking after his tomato plants. He always knew where to find them.
"Maybe something eat kitty," piped up Todd.
The expression on my grandfather's face became, as my grandmother
would've said, "sour as pig swill."
"What would do that, here?"
"Don't know...something," said my brother, giving the final word
a certain alarming twist.
My grandfather did not lack imagination. In later years, after
he'd cleared the pigs and rabbits out of the barn and had some spare time
in the evening, he'd often don his spectacles and launch himself into a
book of flying instructions which, while not as current as they had been
during the bi-plane era, were every bit as adventuresome.
No, what he was against was the febrile wool gathering that during
his boyhood had been a prime cause of tuberculosis in obscure romantic
poets. When he saw Todd threatened he nipped it quick as he'd pick a cut
worm off a cabbage.
"My razor strap will something you," is how he put it.
Todd chose not to pursue his theory. The razor strap wasn't as
mind bendingly awful as what might be lurking in the coal bin, but it stung
worse.
"Kitty just out," he agreed.
I suppose I was somewhat responsible for my brother's flights
of imagination. Being five years older I felt I should take some part in
his education. I decided to teach him useful words. A selection of everyday
items would be laid out on the table in front of us.
"Scissors," I'd explain, pointing. "Apple ... orange ... banana
... bandanna (I was a tough taskmaster) ... amorphous horror."
Todd cast a bewildered look at the empty air I pointed toward.
"Can't see."
"Exactly," I said, giving the word a certain alarming twist.
My grandfather marched us upstairs early. The unfamiliar bed was
high. More than high enough for something to have slithered underneath.
But before we could check, the light was switched off and the room plunged
into darkness.
As with all children, we spent our last moments of wakefulness
waiting for sudden shrieks, eerie glows, disembodied voices and things
that dropped off the ceiling smack into the middle of your bed. I generally
slept with the covers pulled up over my head, snorkeling air through one
partially exposed nostril, fingers clutched at the bed sheet in case something
tried to pull it off.
In the strange dark of my grandparent's spare room our sensations
were heightened. For awhile we listened for telltale scratching from beneath
the bed. It struck me that this was a good time for a favorite diversion
- recounting recent nightmares.
It's been a long time since I've had a nightmare worth remembering.
My dreams have grown gray and mundane. But when I was younger my nights
were filled with killer robots, werewolves and skull littered plains stretching
endlessly into the distance beyond my closet door. This evening I plunged
into the "barn dream."
"It was dark," I began. "When I climbed the stairs I suddenly
felt another presence. Something waiting. Something indescribably horrible.
Waiting for me...behind the boxes piled in the corner."
Todd's face floated in the dark before me like a gibbous moon.
His eyes were round with fear. It took few words to call forth that consciousness
of inexplicable horror shared by the young and submerged later in life
beneath the paltry annoyances of reality.
When I paused the room filled with a terrible quiet. There was
a sudden rush of breath from my brother's side and then, from somewhere
all too near, there came a distinct, hideously loud THUMP.
When he spoke, Todd's voice was heavy with resignation. "There
it is."
"And it isn't the cat."
For a few seconds we both contemplated this mind numbing truth
in mute terror. Then my brother regained his voice.
"A morpus horror!" he cried. We both started shrieking.
My grandfather came upstairs and cleared the air with his razor
strap. Next morning the cat was nowhere to be seen, but the cat food had
been eaten.
I'm glad I didn't see what ate it.
©1997 Eric Mayer
Are Erik Max Francis' two cats in the kitchen? (Or are they out also?) |