Shirley Murphy - The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

“Mae had dreams,” Lee said, “the same as Sammie. Not often, but she would dream of the future. She didn’t talk much about them except to me, they upset our mother. And Pa would pitch a fit. Mae wasn’t very old when she quit telling Pa what she saw, telling him what would happen.”

Morgan handed the picture back, treating it with care. “Where is Mae now?”

Lee shook his head. “I didn’t keep in touch, I lost track. I tried to find them in North Carolina, in a town where I thought they might be, but my letters were sent back. Someone wrote on one, ‘Try Canada,’ but they didn’t say where, in Canada. I had an older brother, and two sisters older than Mae, I knew they’d take care of her.

“I heard from our neighbor when Pa died, there was a saloon where he knew to get in touch. It took a couple months before I rode that way. He said Ma and the kids had moved to North Carolina, that’s when I tried to write to them. He wasn’t certain about the address. I never heard from them, but I wouldn’t have, I was always on the move.” He knew he could have tried harder. He was ashamed about that. Well, hell, he was so caught up in his own life. All that young wildness, always another train to test him, another woman’s smile to entice him.

“I was fourteen when we moved to Arizona. Two years later I went off on my own. I took the best two cow horses we had and I know Pa wasn’t happy about that.” He didn’t know what made him talk so much. Maybe the fact of Mae’s and Sammie’s strange likeness made him ramble on, drew him to confide in Morgan.

I T WAS LONGafter supper and lights out, as Lee lay coughing and sleepless, when the tomcat joined him as he liked to do—as if he was tucking his wards in for the night. Landing hard on Lee’s bed, this time the cat was fully visible in the overhead lights. Quickly Lee rose up from the covers, effectively hiding Misto, and turned to scan the cells across the way.

No one seemed to be looking back. He guessed the cat would know. Misto pricked his ears as a train thundered, its small earthquake deafening the cellblock. The ghost cat seemed quite to like the noise and hustle, the excitement. When the train had faded, he sat watching Lee again, alert and waiting.

Lee said, “That child is the spittin’ image of Mae. You’re the spirit, you know these things. You tell me what that’s about.”

Misto lashed his tail but said nothing.

“Talk to me.” Lee scratched the cat’s ragged ears.

“I can’t know everything. But I can tell you this. You are meant to be together, you and Morgan and Sammie. A path is taking shape, just as certain as the route of that train. A path that you and I have followed, just as the devil follows.”

Lee looked up again along the tiers of cells. Still no one was looking or seemed to be listening.

“He not only wants your soul,” Misto said, “he would take Sammie if he could. There is something in the child that he can’t touch, but still she is part of his plan.”

Misto licked his paw. “The child is strong. Her deepest nature is to resist him, so deep an instinct that often she is hardly aware of him. She will help you, just as I will—as best a child and a small ghost can help, can try to save your scrawny neck.”

17

T HE FULL MOONwas hidden by clouds, the Morningside neighborhood cast in shadow except where an occasional porch light had been left to burn past midnight. No light illuminated Anne Chesserson’s large Tudor house as Brad Falon approached, his footsteps silent passing broad gardens and luxurious homes. He had sat in his car for some time parked on the hill several doors away, had seen the lights come on in the Chesserson woman’s second-floor bedroom, had seen her come to the window, close it, and pull the shutters across as if the night air had turned too cold. No light reflected from the basement suite where Becky and Sammie were staying. He had watched the house at different hours of the day and night until he felt sure of the layout and the sleeping arrangements. This morning he had surveyed from the backyard, dressed in gray pants and shirt like those worn by the local meter readers.

Now, with the house dark, he headed down the sloping lawn between the Chesserson house and its plantation-style neighbor, descending a cover of pine straw between manicured rhododendron and azalea bushes. In his pocket he carried a roll of masking tape, a glass cutter, a rubber mallet, and a crowbar. His left eye was swollen and black where Becky had hit him, in the parking lot. Even after three days his throat was still torn and bruised where she’d bitten him, the vicious bitch. He’d known, when he attacked her at her car, that she’d fight. He hadn’t thought she’d bite like a wild animal.

Heading for the wide French doors that opened to the spacious downstairs, he stood in the dark garden listening, looking around him. Had something moved in the shadows, had he heard some small, stealthy sound? He waited, puzzled. Something had alerted him, made him uneasy. He waited for some time; when nothing more bothered him he moved on up the three steps to look in through the wide glass panels. The rooms within were dark, the drapes partly open as if Becky might have pulled them back after she turned out the lights. Silently he tried the handle. Of course the door was locked. Fishing the tape from his pocket he tore off four short lengths, stuck them to the glass to form a small square that, when cut and removed, would leave an opening big enough to put his hand through.

When again he felt uneasy he turned to survey the garden. The clouds were shifting, the exposed moon sending more light. He wasn’t armed, wasn’t carrying the new S&W automatic, he didn’t need it to take care of Becky Blake. If something happened to screw him up, he didn’t want to be caught armed. Though of course he wasn’t in possession of the .38 that had killed the bank guard, that gun was where no one would find it.

When the wary feeling subsided he applied the glass cutter in four quick, precise strokes, then used the rubber mallet. One small, sure tap neatly loosened the glass square. He removed it. Nothing stirred now behind him. Within the rooms, all was still. He had seen, this morning, that this door led into a sitting area. Beyond was the sleeping wing, one corner of a bed visible. Beside the bed, the carpeted floor was covered with a sheet spread out to full size and scattered with the child’s drawing books. Reaching through, quietly he turned the knob of the lock. He was easing the door open when the kid screamed. The piercing ululation sent his heart racing, it went on and on, driving him off the terrace into the bushes.

As he crouched among the foliage, his dark clothes blended with the shadows. Had the girl heard that smallest tap when his hammer hit the glass? Or heard the lock turning? Inside, a faint light came on. From this angle he could see most of the bedroom. Sammie sat up rigid in bed, still screaming, her shrill voice jangling his nerves. He watched Becky slip out of her own bed into the child’s and take the girl in her arms. For one moment, as they clung together, Becky’s back was to him, her shoulder blocking Sammie’s view. Quickly he slipped from the bushes, slid the door open enough to enter, silently closed it and eased behind the couch out of sight.

S OMEONE ’ S THERE ,” S AMMIEsaid softly. “In the other room.”

“It was the dream, it was in the dream,” Becky said, hugging her.

“No. Not this time.”

With the small lamp switched on, Becky looked through to the sitting room, as much as she could see from the bed. No one was there. Thin moonlight slanted in, but picked out only the couch and two chairs. She could see no darker shadow at the French doors as if someone stood looking in. “It was a dream,” she said again, holding Sammie close.