Andover's Plight

In the middle of the night he was awoken by a familiar sound. The yowling he had heard several times before.

“It can’t be,” he muttered as he sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“It just can’t.”

He looked around his yard, shrouded by an almost impenetrable darkness. His eyes caught a small, dark figure dart past him. It looked like a cat. He lit his lantern and ventured out into the yard.

There were several of them in the confines of the fence. Somehow, someway, they had penetrated his fortress. They had gotten through. Furious, Andover had had enough. He stormed up into his house and grabbed his rifle, loaded it and went back into the yard. He sat the lantern down and waited with the rifle pointed out at the darkness. Soon, another dark figure shot past him. He fired.

“Damn.” He missed.

Another shot past him and he fired, but missed.

Then, as Andover was preparing to fire at another he heard the sound of something stirring in his refuge bin. Slowly, he crept up to it. He put his lantern down at the corner of the house and saw the head of a cat pop up out of a refuge bin and look at him. Andover looked right back, raised his rifle and, without hesitation, fired. The round tore a hole in the bin. The cat screamed, shot out of the refuge and disappeared into the darkness.

Andover shook his head in disbelief. What he saw at that moment could not have been real. For he had seen a cat that was more than three times the size of any cat he had seen before. And its fur, its fur was whiter than snow, whiter than the moon. How could a cat of that size even get into a bin of such constricting diameter? He had to investigate.

Andover walked over to the bin and saw in the lantern’s light fresh blood. It had pooled and soaked into paper and trailed out of the side and had spotted several blades of grass.

He had hit it, but had he killed it?

Andover took the lantern out and combed the property but found no trace of the cat he had shot, any more trails of blood, or any other cats he had seen that night. It was like all evidence leading to their presence had vanished. Disappointed and perplexed, Andover retired to his chamber to catch up on some sleep. When he woke up the following morning, he walked into his bathroom to draw a bath. But when he looked into the mirror, he screamed from fright. The whole right side of his face was caked with dried blood and fur.

White fur.

It was at this time that Andover ran his face under cold water and clawed and scraped the blood and hair off of his face, vomiting in the process. The smell had been far too great for his stomach to keep composure as each putrid layer of blood and hair shaved from his face released an odor of most foul proportions. When he had cleaned off his face and stripped naked to examine the rest of his body for any other such violations, he shot back into his chamber to study his bedding and the immediate vicinity. The pillow on which his head had lay, Andover found, was the only soiled part of the lot. He took it outside and burned it. As he was doing so, he saw his neighbor’s cats clawing and biting around at the wooden steps that lead to the front door of their master’s home. The same cats he swore he had seen last night and shot at, too. He looked over at the refuge that had begun floating around his yard upon the morning breeze.

“They did it again,” he muttered. “They knocked over my bins and made a mess of my yard.”

Andover’s face became red, redder than the blood that had dried upon it the night before. In a stroke of blind anger, he bolted up the stairs and grabbed his rifle and a box of rounds. He loaded it, cocked it and walked towards his fence, holding the rifle up to his eye. He took aim at one of the cats on the stairs and fired. They hissed and scattered at the sound. He unlatched the gate, kicked it open and fired another round. He hit one and it screamed and disappeared into a nearby hole under the house. Others did the same as he turned the rifle to fire upon them. He hit another one square in the jaw and it looked at him, shaking its head. It hissed and scurried under the house. Andover shook his head also, not believing that that shot had not affected the cat. He had clearly hit it. Andover momentarily looked for blood, but found none.

“What the hell just happened?”

Andover shook it off and cocked the rifle again. He walked up to the front door and, instead of knocking, kicked it right in. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Where is she? Where is this hermit, this recluse who has the gall to let her cats breed out of control and take over the neighborhood, maybe even the town?

Where is she?

Andover stood there in the house. And it didn’t take long to realize that it was abandoned. Layers of dust and cobwebs distorted anything previously identifiable. There was a heavy smell of something wet…or musty. An odor he had recently been acquainted with. The windows were pasted with filth and the floorboards were cracked and streaked with a mysterious black ooze.

Curious, Andover bent down to take a closer look. But by the time he realized what it was, a soft hissing sound came to his ears. He was almost frozen in fright, for it didn’t sound friendly, or even human. And it didn’t sound healthy. He withdrew his fingers from the peculiar liquid and held it up to one of the few spears of sunlight that managed to penetrate this hovel. The black ooze was now revealed as red blood. Andover’s eyes widened, his lips quivered and his tongue strained to keep silent. He wiped the blood off on his jeans. His attention focused again on that concerning sound and carried on. He had to know the source. Slowly he ventured forward, led by curiosity, but weighted with fear. He looked down at the blood before his feet. It was thicker now, and darker. It even gave off a pungent odor. Andover ventured forward and reached a corner. He peered around it and stopped. There, in the middle of the room, was an elderly woman with long hair as white as snow and as white as the moon. She was stretched out upon thick blood that was but now trickling out of a hole in her chest. She was lying there naked. The hissing sounds that escaped her now sounded like pleading, whimpering cries for help. Her mouth was open, revealing sharp, thin teeth, and her eyes were wide and slivered, like that of a cat’s.

When Andover saw this he fainted.

Andover woke up hours later in that place, eyes still fixated on the deceased woman in front of him. All he knew was that he had to get out of there. But he couldn’t stand. He could barely move. Had he hit something on the way down? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get back to his side of the fence. The side that was familiar. But now, all he could do was crawl, so he struggled to make it across that room and avoid the blood that was now all around him. And as haste took over, caution was thrown to the wind. And in that second it escaped him, he treaded upon a weak section of floor that gave beneath his feet. Again he fell. This time he landed on cold, wet dirt with sharp, splintered wood following closely behind. Andover covered his head. When his sights rose he saw that he was in the chamber of a tunnel or a cellar of some sorts that had long since surrendered to subterranean elements. Ahead of him were two pockets of light that illuminated this chamber only slightly. But it was enough to realize the horror that surrounded him. Animal bones. Hundreds of them protruded from dead leaves and roots and dirt. Andover wanted to get out of there. Fast. He went for the pocket of light to his right and scurried painfully through it. Eventually, he came upon something of terrible recognition. Above him was broken wood that had seemingly been clawed and eaten away. In front of him was a wall of soil and stone. He was at a dead end. The only way out was up. And so he went. Andover climbed up through the hole and found himself in a pitch-black confinement. He probed and prodded the best he could, feeling soft wood upon his fingers. As he pushed and broke free, a rush of light greeting him on the other side. When his vision cleared, Andover stopped, frozen in horror at the realization of where he was. He was in his house. And there was a tunnel that had led there.

That’s how they’d been getting into his home, his yard and his chamber.

Though this discovery was indeed unnerving, Andover was too exhausted to give it its full appreciation. Still unable to stand, he crawled up into his room and into the connecting bathroom. There, he propped himself up to clean himself off before bed. But as he looked into the mirror above the sink basin, he screamed. For there, in its reflection, looking back at him, was the face of a cat’s.

END