Catnip (23 page)

He wanted to say something, but the cold
invaded his body once more and he couldn’t stop shaking. She
clutched his body to hers, stroked his hair fondly, and murmured,
“We’ll get through this, and when it’s over and you’ve cured me,
then we can talk about it, okay? I want to be with you, only you,
and no one else. That’s my promise.”

Her voice, soft and low, gave him a measure
of comfort and he kissed her. Warm now under the covers, they
ignored the sounds of the storm and went to sleep wrapped in each
other’s arms.

The next morning Harry awoke dry and
comfortable. He yawned and looked around, but Anastasia wasn’t in
the room. “Hey,” he called out, “where’d you go?”

No answer came, so he took his clothes from
the hook and got dressed. They were still damp, but as he stepped
outside, he figured the summer heat would dry him off soon enough.
He felt slightly sore and achy all over, but overall his mood had
turned a bit more positive. Sleeping together with Anastasia had
been just what he needed.

Outside, the early morning sun shone warmly
and illuminated the area around him, forested and green. He heard
only the buzzing of some insects and the chirping of the morning
birds. A shack stood about a hundred yards away with smoke coming
from a chimney. Perhaps Anastasia was there.

As he started to walk in the direction of the
shack, he caught sight of her. She was on all fours and holding
something red in her hands. Going in for a closer look, he stopped
in his tracks and stared in shock. Anastasia was holding a rabbit
and feeding on it. Apparently she hadn’t heard him come up and he
hastily retreated to the storage shed and sat down on the
blankets.

The changes were happening faster now and it
seemed her animal instincts were starting to dominate her being.
Cats were natural predators and killing the rabbit had simply been
an act of instinct. He couldn’t hold it against her, but at the
same time he felt a sense of being abandoned.

He’d never had a pet, but he’d heard from
other people who did how cats were supposed to act. By turns they
could be loving, kind, and then capricious, changing their
affections in an instant from one person to another.

Did the same hold true for Anastasia? Would
she forget what it was like to be human and seek company with her
own kind? His mind reeled with sadness at the thought of losing her
and he chastised himself for not having come up with a solution
earlier on. He’d had the proper equipment back in New York, and if
only…

“Harry, I’m back.”

Looking up, he saw Anastasia standing in the
doorway. She’d gotten a bit shorter now, her spine curved upward
ever so slightly, and her arms seemed a little shorter and more
bent. Her features also seemed even more feline than the day
before. She smiled at him and then frowned as she noticed something
red on one of her claws—blood. Hastily, she cleaned it off with her
tongue.

He forced himself to smile back at her. She
put her arms out as if to embrace him, and then let out a gasp as a
shadow came up from behind her and something hard and metallic
smashed down on her skull. Her eyes rolled up and she pitched
forward, fell without a sound, and lay still. “Anastasia, no!” he
yelled.

At first he thought it had been Ivan, but the
bear-man wouldn’t have used a weapon. He’d have simply torn through
her. This attacker was a different kind of predator.

“I gotcha!” a voice croaked out.

Harry quickly went over to see if his
girlfriend was still breathing. A bit of blood came from underneath
her hair, but then it seemed to suddenly dry up and stop. He put
his ear to her mouth and her breath came out in slow and regular
exhalations. “Anastasia,” he murmured and stroked her hair. “You’ll
be okay.”

“I knew that thing was the spawn of the
devil,” the voice said. It sounded like a scratchy record being
played backward and Harry knew he’d somehow stumbled yet again into
the mouth of madness.

Getting to his feet, he saw a short,
middle-aged and immensely fat woman wearing a pair of overalls over
a torn blue workman’s shirt and heavy boots stood in his way. She
must have weighed in excess of three hundred and fifty pounds. One
of her meaty hands held a shovel which had Anastasia’s blood on it.
The other held a lethal looking pistol. It was pointed straight at
his heart and he slowly raised his hands above his head. “Who are
you?”

“I’m Granny Tillman,” the woman answered. She
had a pronounced twang in her voice and nodded with almost every
word she uttered. Her eyes were two tiny black holes lost in folds
of flesh, and she smiled at him, a smile with more than a few teeth
missing, either due to gum disease or lack of proper care. After
seeing that the remaining teeth were green, Harry decided to go
with both possibilities.

However, this wasn’t the time to contemplate
dentistry and the problems of gingivitis. “What do you want?” he
asked.

The smile switched off and a look which could
only be described as craziness crept in, craziness and pure malice,
crept in. “You’re on my property and this abomination is an affront
to my eyes,” she answered. “If you want to live then you’ll tell me
who you are and you’ll do it right quick!”

Tillman reached down and grabbed Anastasia by
the scruff of her neck. In a surprisingly quick move, she hefted
the limp body, slung it over her shoulder and motioned with her
pistol to Harry to walk in front. “Move it, young man. I’ve got a
busy day ahead of me.”

They marched him down the hill to her shack
and she prodded him with her pistol when he faltered. The day had
turned out hot and sweat streamed down his face as he trod along.
Just his luck, not a soul in sight, and why couldn’t someone come
out to pick apples or take in the scenery? Tillman whistled an
off-key tune as they went along. Finally, after ten minutes, she
told him to halt. “My place is just up ahead.”

From the outside, it looked like a shoddily
built lean-to with irregularly shaped windows papered from the
inside, warped wood, and a chimney with smoke curling out of its
top. For a second, he had the impression a strong breeze would
knock it down, but Tillman grabbed the door, wrenched it open, and
the walls didn’t shake. It was a lot more solid than he initially
thought. She motioned him inside, and once there, she
unceremoniously dumped Anastasia’s body into the corner. “Sit
down,” Tillman ordered.

As he sat beside Anastasia, he reached out
slowly to touch her neck and check her pulse. It came back steady
and strong. A smell hung in the air, his nose registered it as
being noxious, and he turned his attention to the small
wood-burning stove. There was a pot on top with something bubbling
in it. It was the cause of the stink. For a second he thought of
asking Tillman what she liked to eat and then figured she’d say
“Granny’s vittles,” so he decided not to ask.

The rest of the room’s contents consisted of
a crudely fashioned sofa, bed, and a table in the center with an
oil lamp on it. What kind of person was this Tillman?

His answer came when he saw what lay above a
fireplace in the far right corner. Paper covered the windows, but
some light shone faintly through and made out a very large wooden
cross which sat above the fireplace mantel. There were a number of
small crosses all over the place, but what got him most were the
stuffed animals and bloody animal skins on the table and the smell
of blood in the air. It was a musky, pungent smell of death and it
made his stomach turn. Something had to be very, very wrong here,
and he now knew this person was more than a little dangerous.

Tillman put the shovel down, but maintained
her grip on the pistol. “Young man, you’d better start explainin’
who you are and what that is.” She pointed to the limp form of
Anastasia. “You’ll do it now or the Lord will wreak havoc upon you
and it will be of a most hurtful kind.”

Oh, great, I had to run into a religious nut,
he thought. He just hoped she wasn’t the
shoot-first-and-never-ask-questions type…then again, after seeing
the glint of madness in her eyes, he knew she’d blow his head off
if he came out with anything other than what she wanted to hear.
The fact that she
only
wanted to hear herself speak meant he
was screwed big time.

“My name’s Harry Goldman,” he began. “The
girl’s name…”

“That’s a girl?” the woman interrupted, her
eyes flinty. “She is an abomination and an affront to the
Lord.”

More God talk and Harry knew there’d be no
reasoning with this person even though he had to try. “Ma’am, she
was a girl—once. Someone experimented on her and made her this way.
I’m trying to help her change back.”

The woman considered his words, and then
pulled a chair over to her position. It groaned when she sat down
on it. “Your name is Goldman?” she asked and then leaned forward to
study his face. “I never heard of you before. I know most of the
people up here, and while I don’t keep company with them or share
their views on religion, I know who they are. They are all godless
heathens if you ask me, but at least they give me my privacy and
that’s something I respect.”

“If you’ve been watching television…”

She waved her hand at the mention of the
word, as if it were some kind of annoying pest. “I don’t watch none
of that there television. I don’t have one and I don’t want one.
When I lived in West Virginia—I come from the old country—my folks
didn’t have it, my late husband didn’t have it, and I don’t want
it. The devil is in that infernal machine. Most machines are
infernal.”

Old country…dislike of machines…godless
heathens…Harry felt he’d really lucked out on finding this
kook—not. He wanted to say something in his defense, but Tillman
slapped him on the side of his head to get his attention and
indicated his bag with a meaty index finger. “What’s in there?”

“It’s my computer.”

She snorted, a heavy, wet sound, and stared
straight at him, her gaze unwavering. “It figures you’d be carryin’
another infernal tool of Satan with you. I can tell you’re from the
city, the way you speak and all. The devil seduces your mind with
computers and television. Those shows put strange ideas in your
head. Then to make sure, Satan sends his minions to do his work for
him. Cats are what he sends most of the time.”

She nodded to herself a number of times as if
convinced of the surety and righteousness of her words, and pointed
a pudgy but thick hand at Anastasia. “That thing is a cat, isn’t
it?”

Harry couldn’t believe people like this
actually existed, but here was proof right in front of him. He
tried reasoning with her. “No, ma’am, she’s a girl.” He stopped,
momentarily frustrated by having to deal with someone so dense and
started to get up in an attempt to be friendly. “Look, have you
ever heard of a man named Nurmelev? He might have been the
one…”

His forward motion stopped when Tillman
cocked the pistol in his direction and he abruptly sat down again.
This woman’s face had
shoot-to-obliterate
written all over
it. “If you’re talking about that there Russian man, that
furriner
,” she said, and Harry realized she meant
foreigner,
“then yeah, I’ve heard of him. I’m fifty-seven
years old, been up here for the last fifteen years and I know the
people ‘round these parts. Met him once and I can’t say I care for
his company.”

“What kind of company do you care for?” Harry
asked.

Tillman got up and waddled over to stand less
than six inches away from him. “My own, and that’s good enough for
me.”

She shoved the barrel of the pistol under his
chin, pushed his head up, and cocked the hammer. In spite of his
proximity to death, he felt no fear, only rage. “Now I’m gonna ask
you again, what are you doing with that she-cat and give me the
truth!”

After he slowly put his hands up, she pulled
the pistol back a few inches and clicked the safety on, and he
breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “I told you before, my name is
Harry Goldman. I’m a researcher.”

Tillman considered what he’d said and
laughed. “You’re researching what? You look like a high school
kid.”

“I
am
a high school kid,” he
countered. He was supremely tired of the BS he had to wade through
in order to make people understand. “I’m special schooled, all
right? I research transgenics. That’s the science of using animal
DNA in a human to cure disease.”

Her eyes widened between the mention of the
words “animal” and “human”, and then narrowed as she caught the
full meaning. “So you’re trying to change what God intended,” she
stated. “Now I have heard it all. I don’t know what you’re up to,
but this is a sin.”

Tillman’s words made him stop to consider
things in a broader context and he realized she was a lot sharper
than she let on. In the back of his mind, he remembered his
father’s warning, but in this situation the notion of playing God
would probably be lost on this person. He lowered one arm and
pointed at the skins on the table. “You’re stuffing animals. That
seems pretty sick to me.”

“That’s my job,” she said and the smile came
back to her fleshy face. “My pappy trained me as a taxidermist.
That’s what I did back home in West Virginia and after my husband
Bert died, I decided to ask God to find me another place to
live.”

Harry said nothing, but he wondered what kind
of man her husband had been and then figured it was useless to even
think about it.

Tillman went over to the table where she
gently stroked the skins with one hand while keeping her weapon
trained squarely on his chest. “I prayed and prayed for guidance
and finally God spoke to me and said I should go to these here
parts. I set up this shack and live off the land. Don’t think I’m a
sponge like one of them freeloaders who’s on welfare all the time,
no sir! I pay my fair share of taxes, kill what I need and send out
my orders to my loyal customers.”