Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Her foot kicked something soft that scrabbled away. Not a rug, a sleeping cat.

" Sorry, kitty," she whispered.

Immediately her active imagination painted a room full of mortally insulted cats, schooling in the dark to wash over her until she tripped and fell among them. Then they would swarm her, their barbed tongues preparing the way for hundreds of feral, piranha-like teeth.

In the dark, even pussycats took on a sinister presence, especially if they were unseen.

Some light did penetrate the rooms as her eyes adjusted, but the dim, vaguely recognizable forms she saw only confused her more. Was that the edge of the refrigerator glimpsed through the dining-room archway--or the archway itself?

She tottered into the living room, leaving the safety of the perimeter. Her foot kicked something again, something heavy and inanimate that lay unmoving and didn't roll away when gently prodded. A dead cat?

Temple bent like a blind woman to pat the lump at her feet, not knowing what she would find, what she would touch.

A rag rug rolled into a cat-sized mass. She sighed and pushed it out of her way, starting at a shrill, hollow sound. Oh, an empty tinfoil roaster pan, driven over the hard floor by the moved rug.

Maybe the cats did need more food; maybe that was the inexplicable instinct that had brought her here: a psychic cat chorus chanting for Yummy Tum-tum-tummy.

She edged into what she hoped was the kitchen, her arms nailing ahead of her, although it was her high-heeled feet that were in the most imminent danger of encountering obstacles.

Cats must have eeled away from her in the well-populated dark. She never felt another brush with anything animate or inanimate. When her shoes hit the kitchen's ceramic tiles, her tension eased. Surely a light would work in here, at Commissary Central. Peggy must come over for an evening feeding. She would instantly miss a burned-out light. Now, where was the switch?

Temple cruised the room's perimeter, moving her feet in a soft shuffle now and then accented by the ting of a kicked tinfoil pan. Step, step, step, kick. Step, step, step, kick.

Her first circuit was hard on her shins and revealed no light switch at the expected level. Was the central overhead light operated by a dangling cord? Temple couldn't remember that either. Amazing what you don't look at in an unfamiliar house.

So she shuffled her way to the presumed middle of the room and began swinging her right arm to and fro above her head, trolling for any dangling strings. Of course she could be too short to reach it, and her hand might be missing it by inches.

Frustrated, she edged around the room's perimeter again, checking under cupboards, behind the countertop microwave oven and the breadbox, which both smelled strongly of tuna fish.

Inspired, she clasped the refrigerator, working her way around the predictable bulk for the wall behind it that she remembered. Halfway around the behemoth, she became aware of something that told her it didn't matter if she found a light switch or not, something that chilled her blood.

The refrigerator did not vibrate with a low, throaty hum, although it could be temporarily at the off cycle. Still, every working refrigerator she knew exuded a clammy exterior chill. This one was as warm as hour-old dishwater. Her questioning hand found the handle, slightly sticky with--sniff--halibut halitosis, and cracked the door, her eyes reflexively squinting shut against the expected glare of the interior refrigerator light.

Nothing. When she finished her shuffle at the hoped-for wall behind it and patted her hand up and down in the dark, she was not even mildly exhilarated to finally find a light switch under her fingers. The button stood at attention: up in the "On" position, but no light prevailed. Electrically speaking, the house was dead.

Temple clutched her tote bag to her side for company fully loaded, it was almost that big--and thought. Had the electric company jumped the gun and turned off the service? Had Miss Tyler's bill payments been delayed by her death and her power turned off? What about the cats? When had the power gone out? After Peggy Wilhelm's last feeding, but Temple wasn't sure when Peggy made her nighttime visits. Obviously, before it got as late and dark as this. Peggy would not want to be caught in a deserted house too late. Smart woman.

Well, Temple would just have to feel her way back to the front door and consult with Sister Seraphina next door on what to do now that the house was without power. Or she could feel her way forward in the opposite direction, deeper into the house, where she now heard scuffling sounds that didn't sound like cats. Noises that sounded like feet, moving in the distance.

Sure.

Blandina Tyler was worried about her cats and had come back to take care of them.

Sure.

Temple tried to ignore the anxiety that sent prickles rushing down her arms, the numb disbelief reaching out to paralyze her mind.

She was alone in someone else's deserted house. Someone else, who was dead. Yet she could think of a half-dozen perfectly ordinary explanations for why another person--a concerned individual like herself, a neighbor, a caretaker, a cat lover, a congenitally curious idiot with a suicidal streak--would be in the house.

Perhaps Sister Seraphina had noticed the power failure and come over to investigate.

This theory seemed even more likely when Temple realized that the scuffling sounds were coming from below. Sure, a good old-fashioned Midwest basement! The house was old enough for one. And someone had gone down to check the electrical box because of the power outage.

It would be a bit embarrassing to explain her unannounced presence, but not impossible. She was glib in awkward situations--most of them, anyway. She could talk her way out of anything; what else was a P.R. person if not convincing?

Temple was not convincing herself.

She edged quietly closer to the sounds, down a back hall jammed, she remembered, with brown-paper grocery bags full of newspapers. And support hose.

Hadn't there been a door there, another back door? Or a door to the basement?

Now she heard a voice.

Singing.

Okay. Must be a repairman. Who else would sing in a basement in the dark?

"Heav-y dev-il," came the first lyric.

Singing heavy-metal music?

"Up and up we go, where we stop nobody knows but Jesus."

Temple cocked her head to interpret the singsong voice and the odd words. Jesus? Must be a nun from next door, checking on the house, but what kind of song--psalm?--was that? "Nobody knows but Jesus ..." Familiar. An old spiritual. Nobody knows but Jesus-- Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen! Odd song for a Catholic nun.

Then the song changed, and was even odder for a Catholic nun to sing . . . unless she was an exceedingly odd Catholic nun.

"That old black devil got me in its spell, that old black devil that I know so well."

The voice was closer, but Temple couldn't tell the sex or the age any better. And the last words and melody were so familiar, too, but from another side of the compact disc to the first familiar phrase. Old black magic!

A streak of white magic suddenly outlined the door, edging it in a thin frame of light.

Temple retreated to the refrigerator, rounding its side to seek shelter just in time.

The basement door swung open until it smashed into the paper bags. Bright light bobbled around the back pantry in nervous shafts--a flashlight. A repairman would need a flashlight in a house with no power, she told herself. So would a burglar, herself talked back. Or a killer.

"Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

No, sir, no, sir, only old bags full."

The voice was so near, and it panted between the lines of the old nursery rhyme. Something thumped at the singer's rear.