James Anderson - The Altar

But that seemed like such a long time ago. Since then her parents had divorced and she’d been living with her Dad in Miami for the last two years. But she’d fallen for a boy in her class and her Dad had sent her back to New England as punishment. Now she’d be staying with Mom in the store. She was afraid it was going to be a long summer. There weren’t any kids her age in this hick town, let alone cute boys.

It wasn’t even lunch time yet and she was already bored. She watched the man with the lost cat take a jug of milk out of the cooler. She felt bad about his cat. It looked really cute in the picture, like it was the kind that purred when you pet it. Maybe she could help and find the cat. That would be good. Anything would be better than staying here and waiting on customers.

“Mom, can I go outside? Maybe I can look for the man’s cat.”

“I don’t think so,” her mother said from her seat behind the cash register.

“But I’m bored. And it’s a nice, sunny day outside.”

“I’d rather you stayed here with me.”

“Can’t I just go for a walk?”

“Maybe later,” he mother said.

Melissa knew what that meant. It meant it was going to be a long, boring summer spent inside the boring store and watching people buy bread and milk and ice. All of her friends in Miami would be outside now at the beach, or swimming in the pool.

“It’s not fair,” she mumbled as she watched the man with the lost cat pay for his bread and milk.

His eyes locked with hers for a moment, and, although he tried to smile, she saw that he looked scared, almost like the way her Mom had looked when her Dad had first left. She didn’t like it when adults looked scared.

“That man must really miss his cat,” she said quietly after he had left.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

But she really would like to help the man find his lost cat. Maybe she’d get a reward. Or at least she’d get to pet the cat. She looked over at her mother and yawned. All the while, the gearbox of her mind was hard at work.

Erik had lost just about all hope of finding Faith when he pulled back into his driveway. He’d left his computer-generated poster everywhere he could think of and, as expected, no one had seen any sign of his cat. He really didn’t think the posters would do any good, but he felt like he should do something. And hanging the posters did keep his mind off of his real fears.

He supposed that Faith had wandered off into the woods in search of mice or birds-and after that, he didn’t want to think of what might have happened. The cat could still be out there, of course. But he didn’t believe that, not for a minute. Most likely, Faith had run into trouble of some sort. It had either become hopelessly lost-after all, she was a city cat-or had fallen victim to a larger predator in the woods. She might have been hit by a car, but he had been keeping an eye out on the side of the road in both directions, and hadn’t seen a dead cat. Or, the other possibility-that some weird cult had gotten hold of her. It was just too unsettling to even consider.

He supposed he’d have to go and find Dovecrest and ask the man to go with him to search for the cat. He couldn’t very well go off into the woods again on his own. The idea chilled him to the bone, even now, in the noontime heat of a summer day. That wasn’t to say that Dovecrest didn’t unnerve him nearly as much. But at least the Indian was a known quantity, while the woods were totally alien. The whole thing was probably a product of his own imagination. He had gotten after Todd for letting his imagination run wild, and now he, a grown man, was doing the same thing.

Slowly, he stepped out of the car, stalling for as long as he could as he walked towards the house. He wasn’t looking forward to coming back home without any news about the cat. Todd and Vickie probably expected him to have found Faith at the plaza, or wandering by the side of the road, and he knew his returning without her would be disappointing.

Moving into the new house had not gone according to plan, he realized. First the incident with Todd, and now the cat. There were plenty of things to be unnerved about, as well. The radio talk show host and his story about the devil worshipper. Dovecrest. Then the lady at the antique store and her story about the graveyard. She had upset him more than he cared to admit.

He would explore that graveyard for himself as soon as he had the chance, and follow up by doing a bit of research of his own. Finding out the real story would put an end to the wild speculations that were whirling about in his mind-speculations that weren’t doing him any good right now. Right now, he had an ominous feeling about that graveyard, without having even seen it. He could almost feel something wrong, now that he knew it was there across from the plaza.

“I’ve been watching too many horror movies,” he mumbled.

Suddenly, a voice called his name, startling him and embarrassing him at the same time.

It was Dovecrest, who had appeared out of nowhere. Erik flushed, wondering if he had heard him talking to himself.

“Sorry to startle you, Mr. Hunter,” the Indian said.

“No…it’s nothing. You just sort of surprised me, that’s all.”

Dovecrest shrugged and Erik almost imagined that the man was telling him he had every reason to be frightened.

“I saw the posters about your missing cat. I think I might have found her.”

“Oh, thank God. My son’s been….”

But he could tell from Dovecrest’s expression that something wasn’t right.

“What’s the matter?”

Dovecrest winced like a doctor about to deliver bad news to a patient, and Erik immediately knew that Faith was dead.

“I think it’s your pet. You’ll have to check it out for yourself. It is difficult for me to tell.”

“What happened?”

Dovecrest shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, and Erik knew he wasn’t telling the truth. “It looked like an animal got ahold of her. Maybe a fox. Sometimes a wolf or even a bear wanders into these woods.”

He held out his hand in a gesture of helplessness.

“Like I said the other night, these woods are dangerous. It might seem like you’re just a few minutes away from the city, but it’s a whole different world out there. Your little boy was lucky. Your cat wasn’t.”

“Where is she?” he asked.

He had no doubt now that the cat was his and he just wanted to get this over with now.

“I’ve got her at my place. I didn’t want your boy to see.”

Erik nodded. “Then let’s go.”

It only took a couple of minutes to walk to Dovecrest’s place, a small log cabin that had existed long before the new road connected it to the rest of civilization. It was probably four rooms, Erik guessed, and a still-standing outhouse suggested that the place had only recently been connected to indoor plumbing, probably when the road was cut through.

The house looked out of place in the neighborhood of green manicured lawns. It stood right in the middle of a wooded area, as if it had been built within the forest. Then Erik realized that this house had stood here long before this new suburbia had intruded into these parts. The place had no driveway; and Dovecrest didn’t seem to need an automobile. Erik guessed that, until the new road and the plaza, the man must have lived out here by himself, a hermit living off the land of the reservation.

Dovecrest led him around to the back of the house to where a modern oak picnic table stood like an anachronism beside this frontier cabin, breaking the illusion that they had traveled back in time to the 1700s. Dovecrest further broke the illusion by opening a green plastic garbage bag and peeling it back to show its grisly contents.