Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (16 page)

It was blood. A great pool of blood, trickling away, drenching swarms of flies and actually drowning some of the greediest. The fat guy lay in his life's blood, or rather what had once been his life's blood, and his fur was soaked with it. You couldn't see this horrible fact from a distance because his coat had absorbed so much blood that there was only a liquid border left, like a moat round a mighty castle. But now I could see that the blood had risen all the way up the fur of his back. He had deep wounds on his back too, wounds from which jets of blood had spurted not so long ago. When I picked my way round his well-nourished corpse to look at his face I was confronted by the next horror. Both his eyes had been scratched out, so that the jelly of the eyeballs was running down to his muzzle, leaving yellowish tracks in his nostrils. I bent to sniff the wounds. As I did so my nose inadvertently touched his head and it came away from his neck like a ripe fruit, fell to the ground, and left the jagged ends of his windpipe and oesophagus grinning at me like a blood sausage with the end bitten off. That valuable item the conk had obviously been just hanging on by one last half-severed sinew. This pulp of flesh was giving off the smell; in retrospect, I'd subconsciously refused to analyse it because further grim discoveries didn't suit my need for sleep one little bit.

Before I could go stark staring mad with the baffling horror of it all, I turned away and threw up the half-digested remains of the sewer rat I'd eaten on the cobblestones. I then shakily removed myself at once from my close rustic encounter of the first kind and staggered over to the fellow on his back on the barrel. Not that I had any illusions about the state I'd find him in, but only because I saw it as my damn duty to examine these horrors with painful precision, so that I could draw some clever conclusions later. Saffron had assessed my character acutely. I and no one else would solve this brutal case - though God knew how.

However, when I reached the barrel there wasn't a lot left to examine. From a distance, I'd already spotted the inconspicuous swarm of flies over the unfortunate victim, and now I saw what I'd feared. The tabby's head wasn't dangling over the side of the barrel; it lay on the ground behind it like some rejected titbit. I no longer felt particularly anxious to jump up and make a close examination of the full extent of the dreadful injuries. What I'd see would be just the same as in the case of the first corpse. Paws reaching to heaven, the poor creature seemed to be telling me that his soul had just got there, and indeed there was only one good thing about his wretched condition: his sufferings were all over now.

Overcome by grief, I began to weep. In a spirit of rebellion, I called down curses on a nature that could engender such unspeakable horror. The new life I'd intended to begin, only a few hours ago, turned out to be the same old festering tissue as usual, only it came painted green this time. And as usual it hadn't taken long for the first boil to burst. Innocence, in whatever form, was merely a fiction cooked up by total imbeciles or inveterate liars, while evil was the precise mathematical formula accounting for all existence. Evil, in short, was Truth. Our blue-green planet was really a black, barbaric star, sick, pitiless and horribly dangerous; we just didn't notice because we let ourselves be taken in by seductively beautiful mirages.

As tears soaked the fur of my face like the blood soaking through the victims' coats, I staggered on, a wounded but still courageous soldier, to look at the final victim of this senseless fury, the one behind the shed on the right. But turning the corner of the shed I saw that horror can be a matter of quantity as well as quality. The unfortunate victim himself wasn't really responsible for this rise in shock value. With his body rent apart by greedy bites, he was only another version of the grisly sights I'd already seen. Even his torn-off head couldn't horrify me, because it was nowhere around. Presumably the murderer had taken it away as a souvenir, to make himself an ashtray or something similar. What made the tough Inspector's throat constrict with dismay was the view down to the stream flowing so gently by. A ghastly trail of corpses of my own kind, maybe a dozen brothers and sisters in all, led down to the water like a devil-worshipper's abandoned artistic composition. Its macabre final note, as you might say, was the head of a fluffy ginger infant lying on the bank, washed by the gentle waves. They had all been slaughtered in the same way, i.e. with frightful mutilations.

I opened my mouth wide to express both grief and hatred; I was going to strike up a bloodcurdling yowl fit to make the entire universe tremble. But then I suddenly felt something in the immediate vicinity, something like a breath from a strange other world. I turned swiftly, just in time to see the vast shadow of some creature passing along the dirty side wall of the farmhouse. A huge, a massive creature, moving on four sturdy feet, its head as large as an elephant's and nodding up and down. Of course the shadow effect magnified size, making the monster seemed mightier than it really was. In theory, therefore, I might have felt reassured next moment if I had seen the original face to face. But before I got that far I saw something else: the monster's forepaw was sticking out from behind the shed, and that small section of the creature was enough to freeze both the blood in my veins and my brain itself. It was a thumping great paw if ever I saw one; it might have been made for killing. Despite the dim light, I could see that its fur was tawny. It had dark spots, and the paw itself was armed with claws the size of crowbars and sharp as knives. Its circumference was that of a strong human arm, and it had the flexibility of a perfect killing machine. It must be a fugitive from a laboratory, or a new evolutionary species which had appeared in order to wipe out my kind by means of mass murder - in my present precarious situation I really couldn't think of any more intelligent explanation.

This seemed the worst moment imaginable for explanations, since I hardly felt anxious to make the acquaintance of the owner of the vast paw. So I retreated hastily behind the wooden wall before the stranger could come into view. Then I crept down the slope and past all the corpses as quietly as possible, swam the stream and raced for the wooded rise on the other side.

When I reached the trees at last, out of breath and in no state to continue my flight at such headlong speed, I finally looked around me. From up here, the farm in the valley looked just as peaceful as it had from the other side before I climbed down. Three dilapidated buildings, a farmyard, a stream winding picturesquely by: a deceptive idyll, but it's easy to be wise after the event. The only difference this time was the absence of the sunset that had bathed the valley in warm and flattering hues. Now the sky was clothed in dark blue, the first stars were twinkling, and there was a picture-book moon. I had no good reason to feel safe; the monster might have picked up my scent and be telling itself as it stalked quietly uphill that it had room for one more mouthful.

I went on, further and further into the forest, which now looked like a labyrinthine crypt. Those mysterious rustling, cracking, fluttering and howling noises the mere idea of which had driven me towards what I supposed to be the safety of human protection now received me like a diabolical symphony. I was a helpless prisoner in this perverse world of sound. I realised that my pace was becoming slower and feebler the whole time. By now I was rather like a drunk who remembers only outside the pub door that he's put back eight vodkas as well as those ten beers. I felt utterly exhausted, deathly tired, and I had no reserves to call on. In short, my fuel tank was empty. My paws stumbled over branches and slipped on the leaves more and more often. My usually keen eyes could only just make out a vague pattern of tangled plants and trees in front of the starry sky and the silent moon. Finally I came upon a rocky cliff that rose sharply and extended so far that I could hardly go around it. I finally collapsed at its foot, and lay there motionless. I felt indifferent to everything. So let them all send me to a better world: the Black Knight, the monster with the gigantic paw, the hunters with their high-tech rifles. If there was nothing on the other side but the bliss of eternal slumber, that was OK by me. Life was no big deal anyway. I closed my eyes and dropped off to sleep instantly ...

...
Until, as if woken by a distant explosion, I opened my eyes again and looked up at the cliff in suspense. The moon had now travelled some way from left to right, so I'd spent a couple of hours in the land of Nod, although my sleep had been dreamless, heavy and unrefreshing. The Black Knight was sitting on his mastiff on top of the cliff, glaring down at me with glowing phosphorescent eyes. He was utterly motionless, and the moonlight made him look like a medieval engraving. All he needed was a spear and shield held erect. So I'd had a dream to poison my first refreshing sleep after all, a dream of the worst kind. Any moment now the ghostly horror would climb down and tear my head off. Oh, what a lovely dream - and so unpredictable too. But Crazy Hugo and his equally crazy dog didn't come down the cliff. They just stood there like an equestrian statue, utterly motionless, staring. Their shaggy fur, matted by rain and storm, blew in the wind, and there was something derelict about their attitude, as if committing all those murders had made them outcasts, condemned to wander in the wilderness for ever and a day. I'd never seen anything like it before. The worst part was the rider's magically glowing eyes. Because they weren't clouded by the pestilential breath of this lonely demon, but by something more like crankiness, eccentricity, as if they were the eyes of a comical owl.

As I was simply dreaming these things, however, I didn't need to waste thought on such inconsistencies. My eyes closed again, and I lulled myself back to sleep by reminding myself that it was all self-deception, as mentioned above. I also derived comfort from the words of my beloved Schopenhauer, who said: 'The world is a place of punishment, very like a prison, and one of the evils of a prison is the company you encounter there.' So there was really no call to feel surprise!

CHAPTER 5

W
hen I woke up, the Black Knight had dissolved into thin air, thus providing insubstantial corroboration of my dream theory. It was still the middle of the night, though, and the cliff lay there before my paws like a stranded whale. A physical check on myself confirmed that I hadn't been either hugged to death by a monster or turned into a perforated bedside rug by a hunter while I slept. Thank God for that! I felt refreshed and capable of clear thought again, at least to some extent. But along with my mental powers, my awareness of the forest's eerie background noises also returned, and so, consequently, did my fear. Here in the pitch dark, it was like the shadow of a bat spreading its wings very slowly. The horrors I'd seen at dusk the previous evening involuntarily forced themselves on my mind's eye. That empty farmyard, the decapitated, mutilated bodies of my brothers and sisters, the trail of corpses leading down to the stream - the murderous paw! No, I mustn't let these dreadful memories surface, not now. Most of all, I mustn't waste time in lengthy analysis of what had happened. OK, so my kind have no natural enemies, but I couldn't be absolutely sure that a bear strolling by with a rumbling stomach would have passed its A Level in zoology. So I decided on making a determined exploration of this twilight maze, hoping I'd eventually find my way to the Promised Land of tinned food accurately stamped with the sell-by date. Amen!

An owl hooted a mocking accompaniment to my clumsy attempts at rock-climbing, very likely because, from its high vantage point, it could see that the Black Knight hadn't gone away after all, but was waiting eagerly for me on the other side of the cliff with a napkin tucked into his neck. When I reached the top, however, breathless and panting, I was confronted by a surprise of an entirely different nature. Behind the army of spruce trees I saw the windows of a gingerbread house bathed in silvery moonlight. They shone enticingly. The house was on two storeys, built in the style of a log cabin. The owner might well have done some of the building himself; no construction outfit would have lavished such loving care on the romantic details. But what eccentric recluse could be living in the middle of the forest, so far from all mod cons?

Although my yearning for the peace and quiet of human company was temporarily in abeyance, I just couldn't bring myself to steer completely clear of this Hansel and Gretel house. Curiosity raised its head again, as so often when I was about to get into trouble. Half skidding, half galloping, I hurried down from the cliff, firmly intending to do no more than take a quick look at the house from outside. At first I'd seen only outlines and shifting shadows; these shapes began to take on more distinct form. Whereas all I'd registered from the top of the cliff was the fairy-tale look of the place, some odd details now emerged. The first thing I saw on the forecourt of the house - an area of trodden earth from which the trees had been cleared - was a satellite dish. This dish had the diameter of a pub umbrella and was anchored to a metal socket sunk into the ground. Strangely enough, it was painted in camouflage colours, like a military vehicle. Plain lettering on the dish said: ark. I saw a paddock behind it containing about ten sheep, recently shorn, their fleeces just beginning to grow again. As if to complete the idyllic picture there was one black sheep among them. I felt there was an element of déjà vu about this sheep's proud bearing, but I couldn't quite place it. At the same time I heard the now familiar babbling of the brook close by. It seemed to be accompanying me everywhere, like a rubbernecking native watching me.

As I was so close to the house now, of course I felt I had to venture a glance through the windows. Just in time, however, I noticed a treacherous detail: there were two large halogen floodlights mounted on the veranda roof and linked to metal boxes with glowing red diodes. They were monitors to detect movement, no doubt about it: if anyone approached they would bathe the intruder in floods of bright light. Rather an expensive security system for a cottage in the forest. I had no alternative but to skirt the house at a suitable distance until I found a gap in the movement detectors' range. That was easier said than done, because I found that the battery of monitors formed an almost complete circle. It looked impossible to get in without setting off the alarm. The only place not overlooked by these inconspicuous spies was an angular projection where the back of the building met the left-hand long side. The imaginary corridor to the house at this point was extremely narrow, but if I was careful to move in a perfectly straight line there might be a chance of fooling the system.