Shirley Murphy: The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

Lee’s battered watch said twelve-thirty, but he couldn’t sleep. Still shivering, he dug the paperback western out from under his pillow and tried to read. He got through barely two pages before the print on the page began to blur, his eyes watering not from want of sleep but from the unnatural cold that shivered him, and from the harsh overhead lights that, even through the murky air, glared straight down into his face. He was idly turning the pages, trying to stay interested in the cheap pulp western and wishing he had another Hershey’s bar—he’d eaten the last three—when a whisper from the corridor brought him up startled, a voice as faint as a shifting breeze.

“Fontana. Lee Fontana.”

Easing up on one elbow, he looked out through the bars. He scanned the cells across the way, tier upon tier, but saw no one looking out at him, no one awake. Not a soul stirred, the prone bodies seemed as still as the products of a waxworks, or as if they floated in a chill suspension of time.

“Lee . . . Lee Fontana.” A whisper closer than those far cells, and as insidious as a rattler’s buzz. He couldn’t tell the direction, it seemed to come from all around him, from the ceiling, from inside the cell itself, and through the concrete walls on either side of him. Whatever thoughts slid into Lee’s mind at that instant, he pushed away, whatever images arose he didn’t want to consider. But then suddenly the prisoners’ snores began again, the coughs, the twang of flat metal bedsprings as some sleeper relieved his tensions or rolled over. Maybe he’d imagined the whisper he’d thought he heard, had imagined that seeming pause in time, as well. Reaching for his book again, he stretched out flat, pulled the blanket up, shivering, trying to get warm and to read and not look around him, to pay attention to nothing beyond the cheap novel. He was turning the page when the shadows in his cell shifted so violently that he jerked upright, staring around him.

“Fontana. Lee Fontana.”

No one was there beyond the bars. But a shadow lay across his blanket, the stark shadow of a tall man cutting across the dark stripes that were cast by the iron bars. He squinted, but still the corridor was empty, unbroken by any figure. No one stood peering in at him, no one to account for the dark shape cast boldly across his blanketed legs. But a heavy malaise pressed at him, weakening him so he had to ease back, to lie supine, watching the dark imprint, watching the empty space beyond the bars, the empty corridor. He remained as still as if he faced a coiled rattler, as if the faintest shift of his body would trigger a flash of attack.

Frozen, slowly he made himself look up through the bars at the harsh lights, hoping that when he looked back, the man-shadow would be gone. The acid glow of the overheads blinded him, he stared until his eyes watered and then looked down again, mopping tears with a corner of his blanket, hoping the specter would have vanished. His vision swam with red afterimages, and only after some moments could he make out the shadow still cast solidly across his bed.

But now, as well, he could see a faint darkness suspended beyond the bars, a gray smear as ephemeral as smoke drifting and moving in the corridor, hovering with a life of its own, some terrifying form of life that was watching him—but how could that thin and shifting smear cast the harsh black man-shadow that cut so starkly across his bed?

Silently he slid his hand under the pillow reaching for the sharpened metal rod he kept there. Whatever threw the shadow, whether he could see it clearly or not, maybe it could feel the thrust of a blade. His fingers touched the cold steel, but when he tried to grip the homemade knife his hand wouldn’t move, it was frozen in place. He tried to swing off the bunk but he couldn’t shift his legs, his body was immobilized, he could no more move than could a slab of stone dropped onto the sagging bunk. When he tried to shout for the guard, his voice was locked to silence within his constricted lungs.

And what would he have told the guard? That he saw a phantom, that he heard a voice out of nowhere? That he couldn’t move, that he was as silenced and locked in place as a sparrow he’d seen once, in dead winter, frozen upright to a telegraph wire. Phlegm began to build in his throat, phlegm from the emphysema, triggered by fear, mucus that would soon cause a spasm of choking that must bring him up off the bunk spitting, or would drown him. He began to sweat. He’d soon have to move or he would strangle. What the hell was this, what was going on? He wasn’t going to die here frozen like that sparrow, die on a prison bunk drowning in his own spit, unable even to turn his head and clear his mouth. Fear filled him and rage until, angry and straining, he was at last able to turn enough to cough onto his sheet. But still he couldn’t rise.

Hell, this wasn’t happening, he was Lee Fontana, he could still hit a pigeon at fifty yards with a forty-five, could still see a train scuttling across the horizon small as a black ant, see it way to hell before the rails started to hum at its approach, could still jump a steam train and stop it cold—if there’d been any more steam trains. He had, in his prime, stricken men with his own brand of terror, there’d been a time when he had only to stare at a train engineer and because he was Lee Fontana the man would lay down his rifle and pull the engine to a halt. He had sent strong men cowering from him, left them rigid with fear. He didn’t like it when that kind of terror hit him instead.

Sweating and straining, he was at last able to slip off the bunk, down to the cold concrete floor. Clutching the prison-made knife, he rose up, stood in the center of the empty cell facing the shadow—a naked, ludicrous figure wielding the knife as he glowered at the empty bars. A tall, flat-bellied old man, his tender white flesh tanned to leather only from his neck up and from his elbows down, where he rolled his shirtsleeves. Leathery brown hands marked by sixty years of rope burns and wire cuts, his face hard, wind-beaten, most of the rest of him pale and vulnerable.

When he approached the shadow, it thinned the way smoke thins when one walks into it but the chill deepened, and the instant he touched the cold metal bars, he faced not the corridor and the tiers of caged men, he faced a vast and empty space reeling away and soft laughter echoed inside his head, a sound that seemed to fill the world. “You think you’re something, old man. You’re no more than a speck of dust, you’re already a moldering corpse or nearly so. Dead soon enough, and no one to give a damn. You’re a worn-out has-been without the cojones anymore to pull another job.” And the creature’s laugh echoed coldly, deep into Lee’s bones.

“Get out!” Lee spat at the emptiness. “Whatever you are, get out! Get the hell out of my space.” Turning his back on whatever this was—and he knew too well what it was—he went back to bed, pulled the blanket up. He didn’t look again at the shadow but he felt it watching him, felt the ongoing intensity of its interest.

This wasn’t the first time he’d seen the shadow and felt its chill. The first time was long ago when he was only a boy. He was thinking back to that time when suddenly the prison cat appeared, lying on the shelf inside his cell, its yellow eyes on him, its yellow tail twitching as it looked him over. Leaning up, he reached to stroke it but the yellow tom leaped past his hand to the bunk, heavy and solid. It rubbed against him, its fur felt rough under his stroking, its purring loud as the tomcat settled down beside him, warm and yawning—and when Lee looked back at the bars, the figure had vanished. Across his blanket the spaces between the straight black lines were empty.