James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

I don’t think I was going much faster than 50 km per hour. Maybe even 30. But in the split second it should have taken to pass the animal, it moved.

I saw it. A quick leap, perfectly timed as if the cat had chosen its own death – but animals can’t do that – and it stood right in front of me on the road.

I braked with everything I had. The wheels jammed, screeching over the cobblestones. There was a ‘thump’ that made me queasy. Then: silence.

‘Oh God,’ I whispered to the dashboard. ‘Oh shit.’

My hands were trembling when I switched off the ignition. They were shaking when I opened the door. The warning sound began to beep, but I left the lights on while I let my feet drop onto the deck of the tossing ship the road seemed to have turned into.

I stumbled to the front of my car and knelt down beside the cat. The short ears with a piece missing, the tattered fur and the half-­black, half-­white whiskers. Mouth open – was the lower jaw shorter than the upper? Blood was streaming out, and the head had been scraped by the pavement. And that was the good scenario because it could also have a skull fracture. Its paw lay at an odd angle, definitely broken. And still more blood, which looked brown rather than red in the glow of the headlights.

Its eyes were open, but those weren’t damaged. The pupils were enormous and hardly left room for the yellow-­green reflection around them. And then it looked at me. Bleeding and dying, the cat looked at me.

Was there reproach? They say animals can’t feel human emotions, but if elephants can mourn and dolphins can love, why couldn’t a cat blame you for what you’ve done?

‘Stupid cat. Why didn’t you just stay put?’ I whispered. I brought my trembling finger to its head and petted carefully between its ears. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Blood stuck to my fingers and while I tried to think of where to wipe it off, I noticed the thin yellow collar around the animal’s neck. The little silver address tag.

Of course. The accident hadn’t only affected the cat that was now lying here dying in the street. Somewhere there was an owner, maybe a whole family, who would be devastated by the loss of this animal. My fault.

But I’ve never walked away from my responsibilities. Not even now, with a stranger’s voice in my head and glass splinters from an attic window at my feet.

I reached for the collar to remove the tag. I must have been hurting the cat because it suddenly lashed out and drove sharp claws deep into my wrist.

‘Shit!’

Lightning fast I pulled my hand back. The cat had stuck its nails deep in my skin and thick drops of blood dripped down and mixed with the even thicker cat blood. Just what I needed, I thought. I brought my wrist to my mouth and sucked. It was just what I deserved.

Just pick it up, very carefully, and don’t look at the nauseating spots left behind on the road. There was a grocery box in the trunk of my car and I put the cat in it, after which I set it next to me on the passenger seat. I wished I could talk to it because it must be suffering horrible pain. Fortunately it didn’t scratch me again.

It lived on Appelstraat. Number 79.

How do you do that kind of thing? What do you say when you ring someone’s doorbell with their housemate dying in a cardboard box? And you’re the one responsible?

The garden path that would bring me to the front door of number 79 seemed endless. It was a rather small detached house that screamed ‘overdue maintenance’. Roof shingles that had slid into the gutter, chipping paint on the window frames, a break in the glass of a skylight high above, a wild confusion of bushes in the garden. A bramble caught its thorns in my jacket as if it wanted to prevent me from reaching the front door. And then there was the cat, motionless in its little cardboard box, looking at me with those reflecting eyes. The deep scratch on my wrist throbbed and ached as only cat scratches can.

What was I going to say in one minute,

fifty seconds,

thirty seconds,

ten . . . ?

‘ Good evening. I’m terribly sorry, but . . . ’

It was not a good evening, and it was about to get much worse.

‘ Hello. I realize this comes as a shock, but I accidentally . . . ’

What good would ‘accidentally’ do them?

‘ Your cat suddenly jumped in front of my car and I didn’t have time to brake. I . . . ’

That sounded as though I was blaming the cat.

When I had finally reached the end of the path and put my finger on the doorbell, my brain was nearly bursting with possible apologies and tears that I kept holding back in my weary head.

And then the door opened, and I suddenly realized there was an even worse possible scenario than the one about the inconsolable toddler who’d lost her dearest pet: that of a lonely old granny who had no one else but the cat, which she loved like a child.

And I had killed that child.

So when I saw the thin, gray tufts of hair on the skull of the woman who opened the door, the wrinkles like crinkled paper, the liver spots on her forehead, one of those synthetic beige skirts that no one under eighty dares to wear anymore, and the walker with which she had patiently made her way to the door, I could hardly get a word out. I began to sniffle helplessly and held the box out towards her. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

That was the moment when the woman should have broken out crying herself, or gotten angry. The moment when she should have chased me off with her cane or had a heart attack from the shock. But none of that happened.

She took the box from me calmly and looked inside with a kind of absent curiosity.

That was the moment when I really should have known that something wasn’t right. And I don’t mean because of the accident or the dying animal in the box. Something was off. But I was tired and shaken up and didn’t notice it.

She bent over the box, shaking her head, and stuck her hand inside. ‘What have you been up to, Dante? What on earth got into that silly cat head of yours!’

I sniffled. ‘I’m so terribly sorry, ma’am. I couldn’t avoid him and I hit him with my car. I’m well insured, we can call the vet. I want to take care of everything.’

She looked up. ‘Aw, what a nice girl you are. He does that sometimes, you know? He just takes off and does stupid things. I’m always telling him: don’t do that, be careful now, but he is so stubborn.’

She turned her attention back to the animal in the box. ‘Shame on you, Dante! Now look what you’ve done. You’ve made this nice girl cry. Shame, shame, shame.’

I tried again. ‘Shall we drive together to a vet’s office? I’ll gladly pay.’

But the woman shook her head resolutely. Maybe she wasn’t as fragile as I had initially thought. ‘Not necessary, dearie, not necessary. He’s a tough one, my Dante.’ A sharp look at me. ‘But you look a little peaked. I bet you’d like a cup of tea. For the fright.’

I didn’t want any tea. What I wanted was to go home and take a bath and forget all of this had happened. But how could I tell her no?

‘I never hear from my children, you see? And Dante here isn’t very talkative either. A nice cup of tea would do us both good,’ she went on.

I hesitated. My sense of guilt was huge, but so was my headache. And I wanted to say no, I wanted . . .

‘It’s just the two of us, my husband and I, you see. And Dante of course. Oh, and I mustn’t forget Frits. That’s our canary, but he doesn’t really sing anymore. Too old, I think. Just like my husband. He’s ninety-­four. He’s not so well anymore. We used to play little games, he and I. We would play Halma or Parcheesi on Sunday evenings. It’s the Parkinson’s. He knocks all the little pieces over. That’s how it goes, he can’t help it of course, but still . . .’