Open Cat

 

When I was thirteen, me and my Mom lived in a walk-up apartment in Cleveland. The neighborhood was old and rundown, but the streets were fairly safe and we had good neighbors. Over the few months we lived there, Mom had become close friends with our upstairs neighbor, Ashley. The younger woman was a single mother too, and I think Mom saw her as a younger sister that needed a little help from time to time.

Part of that help was me taking her four-year old, Matthew, for a walk sometimes. I didn’t mind—it was never for too long or far, and as a recent transplant from Akron, I didn’t have much else to do. So we’d walk around the block a few times or take the cut-through over to the park where he could play for a bit while Ashley ran errands, took a nap, or hung out with my mom. He was a good kid—gentle and polite and fun to be around. He didn’t talk a lot for his age, which seemed to worry Ashley more than she’d admit, but Mom always reassured her that he’d start talking more when he had more to say.

One afternoon I was walking with Matt while Ashley was down in the basement doing laundry. Initially I was just going to wander around with him, hovering around the building until she was done. But something was off with him. He seemed quieter than usual. Less quick to smile. I hadn’t seen him in a few days, but I hadn’t heard he was sick or that anything had happened. Still, a trip to the park might perk him up.

Giving his hand a squeeze, I veered off from my planned route around the corner and headed for the cut-through. It was a paved path between two of the buildings, and decorated on both sides by shrubs and small trees, it stood out as conspicuously well-kempt among the decaying brown buildings on either side. Mom said some senior group tended it as a community project, and I remember feeling a strange sense of ambiguous appreciation for the strangers—walking that cool path of green was one of my favorite things about the neighborhood, and I knew Matt liked it too.

Or normally he did. On that day, he began pulling away as soon as we got near the entrance of the cut-through. I looked down at him in surprise. He never did that. Never pulled away or tried to lose your hand. Something had to be wrong. When I saw his face, I realized what it was.

He was terrified.

I crouched down next to him, meeting his wide, brown eyes. “What’s wrong, man? It’s just the cut-through.”

He shook his head emphatically. “No. Open cat. No.”

I blinked. “What?” I looked back down the path. I didn’t see anything unusual, though there were several spots covered by curves in the path and shrubbery. “You saw a cat down there?” I glanced back at him. “Cats won’t hurt you.”

Matt’s lip began to tremble. “No. Open cat.” I could see the panic in his face, but there was also frustration. He wasn’t a dumb kid, and he knew he wasn’t doing a good job explaining whatever it was that had him so scared. I felt like the dumb one. I wanted to make him feel better, but I didn’t know what was wrong.

Still, it was clear he didn’t want to go down the path. Standing up, I gave his hand a squeeze. “Okay. No cut-through. We’ll go around instead.” And that’s what we did. The little boy visibly relaxed as soon as we turned away from the path, and by the time we were at the park, he was almost back to normal.

But only almost. He still seemed preoccupied in a way I didn’t expect from a four-year old, especially one that was normally so happy and carefree. When I carried him back to Ashley, I asked her about it, but she just shrugged. Said he’d been having nightmares the last few nights and was probably just cranky from lack of sleep.

I wanted to accept that and let it go, but the strangeness of it all stuck with me overnight and the following day. Open cat. What did that mean?

Suddenly it hit me and I felt like an idiot. I bet there was a dead cat in the cut-through. Something a dog had torn open or something. If Ashley had taken him through there one day, he might have seen it and gotten freaked out. Maybe if I found it and got rid of it, or checked and saw nothing was there, I could convince him it was okay to use the path again.

I set out after lunch to explore the cut-through. My plan was to look for any sign of something dead or gross, and if I saw anything, I’d get a piece of cardboard or something and scoop it into a dumpster. Maybe not the best burial, but at least we could use the path again.

The cut-through was darker in the afternoon light, the shadows from the trees and bushes melting into the deeper pools of perpetual darkness from the buildings on either side to make a murk that would have been daunting if not for the light coming in at either end of the path and the bright ribbon of concrete cobblestones that wound its way through the middle. Even still, the midpoint of the cut-through was hard to make out at a distance, and it wasn’t until I was several yards down the path that I saw the man’s legs jerking spasmodically from behind a bush.

My first thought was that someone was having a seizure or a heart attack. As I stepped closer, I could make out a worn brown loafer dangling off one of his feet as he continued to thrash on the ground. I thought about going for help then, but it occurred to me that he might be choking or something else I could maybe help him with. So I quickened my pace forward, rounding the corner of the bush before coming to a frozen halt at what I was seeing.

It…it didn’t make sense. It was like he had a fur blanket wrapped around his head and he was fighting with it. His fingers scrabbled against its surface, pulling at tufts of hair feebly as the blanket tightened its..

It moved. The blanket had moved, wrapping itself tighter around the man’s head like a snake coiled around its next meal. I was terrified, my brain drowning in a wash of adrenaline while struggling to make sense of what was happening. I still had an impulse to help, as well as a strong urge to just run away, but somehow the strange horror of it all held me pinned in place. I looked on as the man shuddered and then stilled, the black and grey striped thing that had quieted him now loosening its grip and sliding down onto his chest. I noticed absently that the man’s face was wet with mucus and blood, a thousand tiny pinpricks seeming to burn red in the grey light of the cut-through.

Most of my attention was saved for the thing that was sliding down his legs, its body shifting and cracking as it took on a more definite shape. I saw the underside of that fur for a moment, a ripple of pink and silver flesh lined with row upon row of hooked, yellow teeth. And then the image was gone, replaced with a more solid line of fur-covered flesh and bone—a leg that led down to a delicate almost fully-formed paw.

It only took a few more seconds for the monster to look like any other cat.

The thing sat in the middle of the path, staring up at me with a chilly look that was rimed with hunger and a certain cruel curiosity. As though it was just waiting until I stepped a bit closer or it got tired of playing with its next meal.

I ran.

I ran out of the cut-through, back to the apartment and my room, and I didn’t come out until Mom knocked on my door for dinner. She asked me if anything was wrong, but I just lied and said I was tired. There was nothing honest I could say she would believe, and I still wasn’t sure what I believed myself. All I knew for sure was that I was never going down that path again.

The next month we moved back to Virginia where my grandparents were from. I saw Ashley and Matt a few times before we left, but never for long. Ashley had started dating someone new and Matt still seemed quiet and withdrawn, but I told myself he’d just grow out of it. As for me, I eventually convinced myself that the thing in the cut-through had just been part of some messed up dream I had one summer afternoon. I’d been nervous about finding a dead cat and my stupid brain had done the rest. Simple. And if I never completely believed it, that was okay. I believed it enough.

At least until last month.

Because last month I was in Seattle. It was a business trip in a dreary city where I didn’t know anyone, and by the last day I just wanted to eat a good meal and then sit at the airport until my red-eye was ready for departure. I picked a restaurant that served lunch late and had a good-looking menu online. When I got to the place, it was nice, but it was also almost empty, with only a handful of tables occupied in the large main room where I was led to a table by the window. I was about to sit down when a voice called out from across the restaurant.

“Tony? Is that you?”

I looked around, disoriented at being recognized in a city I’d never been to before. It only took a second to find the table that was looking at me—a couple in their forties and a sullen-looking teenage boy were all staring. The woman was…it was Ashley.

I felt my stomach twist uncomfortably as I raised my hand and walked over. “Hey! Is that you, Ashley?”

She smiled, her eyes bright as she nodded with a laugh. “It’s me, it’s me. What are the odds, huh?” She patted the boy on the back. “Matt, you remember Tony, don’t you? He used to babysit you sometimes.” I’d already known it was him, but when he glanced at me again, the haunted look in his eyes caught the breath in my chest—for a moment I was thirteen again, standing at the mouth of the cut-through, holding the hand of a little boy who was scared out of his mind.

In the restaurant he just nodded and lowered his eyes again as I gave a startled laugh that sounded sharp and false in my ears. “Yeah, good old Matt. My best friend when we lived in Cleveland. It’s…um, so do you guys live…” My voice died as my wandering gaze fell on the man at the table. I had been so focused on Ashley and Matt that I’d barely paid him any attention.

“And this is my husband Jeffery. I think we started dating while you still lived downstairs, but I don’t know if you ever got to meet him.”

The man smiled at his wife. “No, we probably got close, but never got to really meet.” He looked at me. “Or do you remember things differently?”

I gulped in air while recoiling a step. Even after all the intervening years I recognized him from the dark terror of that day in the cut-through. I suddenly felt the urge to vomit as I took another step back.

“Uh, I…I don’t feel well. Good to see you. Sorry, I have to go.”

I turned on my heel without waiting for a response, my breath coming in short hitches as I wandered toward the bathroom I’d spotted on the way in. I felt less queasy the farther I was away from their table, but I still felt like I might pass out at any moment. Entering the bathroom, I realized I needed to pee suddenly and urgently. Moving to one of the two floor-length urinals on the wall, I let out a trembling sigh as I began to void my bladder.

How was any of this happening? Was I going crazy, or…

I felt a flash of white pain as my face slammed into the wall in front of me. Someone…no, not someone, him…was behind me, pressing me hard against the urinal wall as I began to squeal in pain and fear. He didn’t say anything, just pressed me to the point of crushing while he ignored my attempts to push or fight back. Ground me against the tile and ceramic until I thought my ribs would break while filling my nose with a spiky, spicy smell and my ears with a broken, rumbling from deep in his throat.

And then he was gone.

I blocked the door to the bathroom and lay in the floor shaking and crying for several minutes until I felt safe to stand again. I had to get out of there. Get away and get to the airport. He didn’t know where I lived, I could get away and never see him or any of them again.

I rushed through the lobby of the restaurant at a near run, hitting the door with enough force that it let out a protest as I stumbled out onto the street. I had no plan, but I needed to be away from there. If there was a cab…yeah, there was one just down…

Ashley and Matt were standing in front of the man as the cab pulled to a stop at the curb. His hand was on her neck in a way that might have been affectionate if the grip didn’t look so tight. Matt was standing off to himself slightly, his shoulders hunched and his body tense as the man reached between them to open the cab door. As though he sensed me, Matt turned and looked back in my direction.

There was a moment when our eyes connected and he told me what I needed to know. None of it had been imagined. All of it was real. And maybe I had escaped it, but he hadn’t. His mother hadn’t. Whatever Hell had been in that alleyway, he was peering up at me from its deepest depths. In that moment, I felt righteous anger. They were good people. I should have helped them when I was younger—warned them at least. But maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could still…

The man was staring at me now. Staring with that same hungry look as the cat in the cut-through. Come closer, the look said. I’ll be hungry again soon.

I lowered my gaze and turned away. And as I hailed down another taxi, I told myself there was nothing I could do. No help I could offer. And it was a crazy thing anyway, wasn’t it? Likely just nerves or stress or some kind of weird dream I was just remembering like it was real life, when everyone knew things like that didn’t happen in real life, did they?

The piss on my pants had dried by the time I reached the airport. My flight wasn’t for a few hours yet, but that was all right. Being around these bright lights and all these people, it made me feel better. More connected and closer to the real world.

And far away from the shadowy places where a certain cat might cross my path.

 

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