Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

“Julius, dear? Are you awake, or—?” The familiar, resolutely cheerful voice came to him out of the mist, and he tried to attach a name to it, Alissa? or, no, Miranda?— which?

There was talk (sometimes in his very hearing) that, one day, some degree of his vision might be restored. But Julius Muir scarcely heard, or cared. He lived for those days when, waking from a doze, he would feel a certain furry, warm weight lowered into his lap—“Julius, dear, someone very special has come to visit!”—soft, yet surprisingly heavy; heated, yet not disagreeably so; initially a bit restless (as a cat must circle fussily about, trying to determine the ideal position before she settles herself down), yet within a few minutes quite wonderfully relaxed, kneading her claws gently against his limbs and purring as she drifted into a companionable sleep. He would have liked to see, beyond the shimmering watery whiteness of his vision, her particular whiteness; certainly he would have liked to feel once again the softness, the astonishing silkiness, of that fur. But he could hear the deep-throated melodic purring. He could feel, to a degree, her warmly pulsing weight, the wonder of her mysterious livingness against his—for which he was infinitely grateful.

“My love!”

Jack Ketchum is the author of eleven novels, four of which have recently been filmed: The Lost , The Girl Next Door , Red , and Offspring . His short story “The Box” won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award and “Gone” won again in 2000. In 2003 he won two Stokers: best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for “Closing Time.” His stories are collected in The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard , Peaceable Kingdom , Sleep Disorder (with Edward Lee) and Closing Time and Other Stories . Old Flames was cited by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly as one of the ten best books of 2008.

Ketchum’s novels are often graphically violent. His stories are usually less visceral but no less powerful. Ketchum fittingly says that “…where I can dependably get all warm and fuzzy myself is when it comes to animals. Hence, the novel Red and stories like ‘Returns.’ Harm an animal in one of my stories and you’re going straight to hell, brother.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re what?”

“I said I’m here.”

“Aw, don’t start with me. Don’t get started.”

Jill’s lying on the stained expensive sofa with the TV on in front of her tuned to some game show, a bottle of Jim Beam on the floor and a glass in her hand. She doesn’t see me but Zoey does. Zoey’s curled up on the opposite side of the couch waiting for her morning feeding and the sun’s been up four hours now, it’s ten o’clock and she’s used to her Friskies at eight.

I always had a feeling cats saw things that people didn’t. Now I know.

She’s looking at me with a kind of imploring interest. Eyes wide, black nose twitching. I know she expects something of me. I’m trying to give it to her.

“You’re supposed to feed her for godsakes. The litter box needs changing.”

“What? Who?”

“The cat. Zoey. Food. Water. The litter box. Remember?”

She fills the glass again. Jill’s been doing this all night and all morning, with occasional short naps. It was bad while I was alive but since the cab cut me down four days ago on 72nd and Broadway it’s gotten immeasurably worse. Maybe in her way she misses me. I only just returned last night from god knows where knowing there was something I had to do or try to do and maybe this is it. Snap her out of it.

“Jesus! Lemme the hell alone . You’re in my goddamn head. Get outa my goddamn head! ”

She shouts this loud enough for the neighbors to hear. The neighbors are at work. She isn’t. So nobody pounds the walls. Zoey just looks at her, then back at me. I’m standing at the entrance to the kitchen. I know that’s where I am but I can’t see myself at all. I gesture with my hands but no hands appear in front of me. I look in the hall mirror and there’s nobody there. It seems that only my seven-year-old cat can see me.

When I arrived she was in the bedroom asleep on the bed. She jumped off and trotted over with her black-and-white tail raised, the white tip curled at the end. You can always tell a cat’s happy by the tail-language. She was purring. She tried to nuzzle me with the side of her jaw where the scent-glands are, trying to mark me as her own, to confirm me in the way cats do, the way she’s done thousands of times before but something wasn’t right. She looked up at me puzzled. I leaned down to scratch her ears but of course I couldn’t and that seemed to puzzle her more. She tried marking me with her haunches. No go.

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. My chest felt full of lead.

“Come on, Jill. Get up! You need to feed her. Shower. Make a pot of coffee. Whatever it takes.”

“This is fuckin’ crazy,” she says.

She gets up though. Looks at the clock on the mantle. Stalks off on wobbly legs toward the bathroom. And then I can hear the water running for the shower. I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to watch her. I don’t want to see her naked anymore and haven’t for a long while. She was an actress once. Summer stock and the occasional commercial. Nothing major. But god, she was beautiful. Then we married and soon social drinking turned to solo drinking and then drinking all day long and her body slid fast into too much weight here, too little there. Pockets of self-abuse. I don’t know why I stayed. I’d lost my first wife to cancer. Maybe I just couldn’t bear to lose another.

Maybe I’m just loyal.

I don’t know.

I hear the water turn off and a while later she walks back into the living room in her white terry robe, her hair wrapped in a pink towel. She glances at the clock. Reaches down to the table for a cigarette. Lights it and pulls on it furiously. She’s still wobbly but less so. She’s scowling. Zoey’s watching her carefully. When she gets like this, half-drunk and half-straight, she’s dangerous. I know.

“You still here?

“Yes.”

She laughs. It’s not a nice laugh.

“Sure you are.”

“I am.”

“Bullshit. You fuckin’ drove me crazy while you were alive. Fuckin’ driving me crazy now you’re dead.”

“I’m here to help you, Jill. You and Zoey.”

She looks around the room like finally she believes that maybe, maybe I really am here and not some voice in her head. Like she’s trying to locate me, pin down the source of me. All she has to do, really, is to look at Zoey, who’s staring straight at me.

But she’s squinting in a way I’ve seen before. A way I don’t like.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about Zoey,” she says.

I’m about to ask her what she means by that when the doorbell rings. She stubs out the cigarette, walks over to the door and opens it. There’s a man in the hall I’ve never seen before. A small man, shy and sensitive looking, mid-thirties and balding, in a dark blue windbreaker. His posture says he’s uncomfortable.

“Mrs. Hunt?”

“Un-huh. Come on in,” she says. “She’s right over there.”

The man stoops and picks up something off the floor and I see what it is.

A cat-carrier. Plastic with a grated metal front. Just like ours. The man steps inside.