Моника Шонесси - The Black Cats

“Help me,” someone said.

I froze near the kitchen staircase, frightened by the request.

“Oh, won’t somebody help me.” The weak but familiar plea arose from the wall to my right. My tail switched side to side. Someone had placed bricks over the recess near the stairs, entombing my pal between the layers. Damnation. The new masonry resembled the old, and in my haste this morning, I’d failed to notice the damp mortar.

“Don’t worry, Midnight!” I yowled. “I have found you!”

Midnight’s Tale

“I WILL FREE YOU,” I said to Midnight. “But for kitty’s sake, how did you become trapped behind this wall? Masonry is not the swiftest of endeavors.”

“I had no choice,” he said.

I moved closer to hear him and caught another whiff of the stench. At least it was not Midnight’s rotting flesh I smelled. “Speak louder,” I told him.

Midnight raised his voice. “When you left last night, Mr. Arnold became enraged. He took the anger he had for you and turned it on Tabitha. He tossed dishes, turned over chairs. And then…and then he grabbed Tabitha by the neck again. I was convinced he would kill her on the spot. Then someone knocked on the door and interrupted him.”

“Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Please continue.”

“Mr. Arnold blew like the north wind when Mr. Fitzgerald arrived. As soon as he spied the axe the other man had brought, though, he put on a good face and invited him into the parlor. I couldn’t believe the civility! They talked about trees and grudges and burying the hatchet . You’d have taken them for a couple of nannies strolling through Rittenhouse Square! At the end of everything, Mr. Fitzgerald said I’m sorry and handed the axe to Mr. Arnold. I’m sure you can guess this sealed our fate. Once the tall, bony gent left, Mr. Arnold turned to his wife with a look I never want to see on another human being as long as I live, a look of gleeful hatred. She fled through the kitchen and into the cellar, and I, of course, followed. The lock did not catch in time. I still don’t know why she chose to hide instead escaping to the street.”

“Humans do not think when they are afraid,” I offered.

“Mr. Arnold crashed through the door and down the steps. With a cruel laugh, he swung the axe, catching Tabitha in the head.”

“Goodness gracious. Another murder. This one should land him in the penitentiary.”

“Mr. Arnold must have been planning it all the while.”

“Indeed,” I said. “I found his masonry supplies at the start of our adventure, but I could not have guessed their purpose.”

“The fiend shoved her body in the alcove, and when he turned his back to prepare the mortar, I crept in behind Tabitha. There I hid for the duration.”

“Whatever for?”

“She is my companion!” he wailed. “Would you leave your Eddy?”

“No. Not even in death,” I said. “I will save you, Midnight. Let me return to my humans, and—”

“Don’t abandon me again, Cattarina!” he cried. “It’s very dark in here. And my perch is…uncertain.”

My heart beat a little faster. “Do not be frightened,” I said. “Take comfort in the words of Meowléiere. ‘The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it’.”

“Do not quote at a time like this!” he screeched.

“Sorry,” I said. “The burden of verbosity is heavy. There are moments when—”

“Cattarina Poe!”

“Yes, yes, of course.” I took a deep breath and let out a scathing caterwaul that echoed throughout the chamber. I gave another and another until the doors at the street opened.

A shaft of sunlight filled the cellar. I dashed to the opening, expecting to find Eddy. The misshapen face of Abner Arnold loomed above me.

The Specter of Memory

ABNER ARNOLD REACHED FOR me and missed. I longed to slip through the portal and into the crowd above, but he blocked the entrance. So I repeated Mrs. Arnold’s mistake and looked for a hiding place in the interior. Poor woman, had she been a cat, she might’ve evaded her husband, for I found one straight away. I bounded up the kitchen staircase, careened off the top step, and sprang to a wooden beam, coming to rest in the space above the floor reserved for bats. Mr. Arnold had just entered the cellar when Eddy charged down the street entrance steps, followed by Sissy, Muddy, the constable, Mr. Fitzgerald, and the cadre of watchmen. The remainder must have taken their leave in the interim, for they did not appear next.

“Unhand my Cattarina, sir! Do not touch a single whisker!” Eddy said to Mr. Arnold. “Or you will feel my fists upon your head!”

Fear prevented me from leaping into Eddy’s arms. If I did, would the cobbler turn his fury on my companion, as he had on his own wife? Midnight’s cautionary tale chilled me, and I did not wish a similar version to play out here and now. My haunting performance had rendered Mr. Arnold insane. If the memory fog lifted and he recognized me as the same apparition from before, unpleasant would not begin to describe the outcome.

I walked along the joist and sat above the group. I convinced myself the situation called for strategy and patience, two things a huntress like me had in great supply. Moreover, now that Eddy and Sissy—two of the most capable humans in existence—had arrived, the wall puzzle would soon be solved, Midnight would be freed, and Constable Harkness would apprehend Mr. Arnold. I likened these machinations to the guts of Muddy’s mantle clock, and they must not be disturbed. Or eaten. I wondered sometimes how the old woman tolerated me. Slowly, very slowly, I lifted my tail and withdrew it from sight, laying it next to me on the wooden beam.

“Your cat?” Mr. Arnold said. “She’s Satan’s cat. And she’s here somewhere. I’ll find her yet.”

Eddy grabbed the man’s lapels, but Mr. Fitzgerald intervened, wresting my companion away. “Let the law handle him, Poe,” he said. “He’s finished.”

Sissy coughed into her handkerchief. “What is that smell?”

“It’s quicklime,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I’d know it anywhere. Mr. Arnold bought a bag from me a week ago.”

“More lies,” Mr. Arnold said. He wiped sweat from the back of his enflamed neck.

A large cloth sack wedged between the joists by the stairs drew my attention. With perfect balance, I walked toward the item along the narrow beam. The bag contained the dry, gritty material I’d seen the masons mix at the new home site on Green Street. I glanced at Mr. Arnold’s head below. The tufts of burned hair formed a forest of stumps on his scalp.

“Enough talk,” Constable Harkness said. “Abner Arnold, now that we are in your house, do I have your permission to search it?”

“Go right ahead,” he said. The cobbler ascended the steps and flung open the kitchen door. “You will find nothing.” I shifted into shadow, certain he’d see me from this height. To my relief, he resumed his spot without incident.

Constable Harkness dispatched all but a single watchman to the ground floor of the cottage, commanding the enforcers to inspect every room for Mrs. Arnold . Human olfactory senses did not rival a cat’s or everyone in the room would have realized the woman lay beyond the brickwork and not upstairs. The constable posted his remaining man, a fellow he called Johnson, at the staircase near the street and stayed to converse in topics of which I had no interest.

Dust settled through the cracks, sifting us with debris as the Watchmen pounded above. Mr. Arnold withdrew and sat on the stairs, his head between his hands. Meanwhile, Eddy searched for me in the damp, dark corners, calling, “Catters…here, Catters.” As I expected, he paused at the newly bricked recess and studied the mortar. He tugged the top of his hair, lost in thought. I settled onto my perch and tried to influence him from a distance. Eddy did his best thinking under my gaze.