Cards I pulled this time: “interview” and “person with lots and lots of cats.” Certainly this would be a comedy too, I thought to myself when I initially pulled the cards.
Well, apparently not. Some imaginary cats were harmed in the making of this story, so you may be upset if you read further.
The town in question is a sleepy Southern municipality, small and quiet, a town that rarely sees anything more dramatic than the occasional robbery. There are only 8 police officers employed by the town, so in the interest of the privacy of all involved, the exact location will not be named.
The individual that I’m talking to today is a man in his late 40s, easily towering over everyone in the diner at 6’4 and 246 pounds. He (almost stereotypically) wears an enviously thick mustache, and settles into the bench. After we make some small talk through the meal, I settle my recorder (with permission) on the table between us and prepare to take notes on my tablet.
“So, what can you tell me about what occurred on March 29th of last year,” I begin.
“Getting right into it, huh?” He chuckles nervously and shifts in his seat, and begins. “It was a slow day – they’re mostly slow days here – and we got a call from a young woman asking that we perform a wellness check on her mother. Apparently her mother lived alone and the daughter was from out of state. She hadn’t heard from the lady in a week at that point, and was getting worried. Didn’t know the neighbors, so called us. So my partner and I went down to check on her.
“No one answered the door, and a curious neighbor wandered by to see what we were up to as we circled the house to look through the windows. When we asked her about the lady that lived there, she said that no one ever saw her. Was a bit of a recluse. Owned a lot of cats. Always had her cat supplies delivered by some pet website. Even when we were there, the boxes were piled on the porch – all with the blue logo for the pet site.
“We asked the neighbor how long she had left the boxes there, and the neighbor shrugged. Said it wasn’t unusual for her to leave boxes out on the porch for days, sometimes weeks at a time. They never saw her retrieve them – it was like she waited until no one was around to sneak out for her stuff. Even while we walked around the house, we could hear the cats, could see some sitting in the windows, meowing. Could practically smell them, even from outside.” He pauses for a moment to pull a face at the memory of the stench.
“Partner and I argued on what to do for a bit. Since the daughter hadn’t heard from her, and no one had seen her, and owing to the boxes, we could claim exigent circumstances to force our way in, to make sure she was all right. I’m not a big fan of cats, didn’t want to go in, especially since we could already smell it. Inside had to be worse. I was reluctant, so we tried calling the daughter to get an okay to enter the property, but couldn’t reach her. But since calls to the local hospital had already been made before we got to the property, my partner was getting annoyed at my hemming and hawing. He went to prepare to break the door open, when the neighbor suggested we try opening it first. It wasn’t even locked.” He chuckles again.
“So the neighbor stayed through the entire thing?”
“She was curious, I think, and we weren’t expecting danger. So yeah, we let her stay.” He shrugs, then continues. “The smell hit us with a blast of warm air. It was a rainy March day, so it was fairly cool outside, the weather had been jumping between spring like and winter like the past week. That day was more winter like. So the heat inside the house was easy to feel, and it was possible a lot of people had turned their heaters on that day. Several cats rushed out and took off running, and I remember my partner cussing, but we weren’t there for the cats so I told him to focus. We went inside, calling out the woman’s name. Jacques. ‘Mrs. Jacques, are you here? This is the police. Your daughter sent us because she’s worried. If you can talk, please answer us.’
“Nothing. All we could hear was the cats – cats hissing, and scratching things, and meowing. The pattering of paws across the floor. The smell was awful – like piss and shit. The carpet squelched when I stepped on it. I remember my partner taking his first step in and lifting his foot with a look of disgust on his face and going, ‘You fucking kidding me?’ I already wanted a shower, but we had a job to do.
“It was dark inside, and the lights weren’t working when I tried to flip the switch. I turned on my flashlight, shone it around the living room – it was a mess, but none of the mess looked like it was hiding a woman. We walked back into the kitchen, also a mess, still no sign of the occupant. Made our way down a hallway.
“And that’s where it got kind of weird. That hallway stretched. It wasn’t endless, but it felt like it was a lot longer than the house had looked from the outside. My partner and I walked down the hall, opening each door we came to and checking inside. A bathroom that was clear. A couple of bedrooms that were clear. And then that weirdly long stretch of hallway down to a last door.”
“Where was the neighbor at that point?”
“Julie. I remember she said her name was Julie, and I… learned it after. She had made a face at the stench and stayed on the porch, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she watched us walk into the house. Seemed like the anxious sort, kind of pretty, but young. Maybe closer to my partner’s age.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes taking on a distant look for a moment.
When he doesn’t speak for a bit, I ask, “What happened next?”
Coming back to the present, he continues his story. “We walked down the hall, reached the door about the same time something was scratching on the other side. Called for Mrs. Jacques again while opening the door. The other side was… it wasn’t quite a room.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He hesitates. “It looked like a jungle. It could have been a room. Maybe Jacques was just really into house plants, and had filled the room up with broad leafy things. Scratching at the door frame was another cat. But it looked strange. Bigger than a normal cat. Its features a little… off. Like that stupid cat from Alice in Wonderland, with the large smile. This fucker was all smiles.” He shudders for a moment. “Even my partner, he said, ‘What the fuck kinda cat is that?’
“We walked further into the room, having to push the plants out of our way. I remember hearing crickets, like the room was infested with them. I was starting to get spooked. There was no way this house had this much space. I remember tripping on a vine and falling into the dirt – it was dirt, actual fucking ground. It was like we weren’t in a house at all. I remember scratching my fingers through it, hoping to feel a floor underneath, and as I was standing I was telling my partner maybe we should leave, but I was cut off by the growling.”
“Growling?”
“Yeah. It was low at first, a weird sort of screechy growl. Like a mountain lion or jaguar. I was on my feet pretty fast, had a hand on my gun, I was fucking spooked. The jungle… the room… wherever we were, it was dark and hot, humid. It was like suddenly I was noticing all these shiny lights amongst the plants. I realized I saw some blink. They were eyes. Hundreds of eyes, watching us. My partner and I stood dumbfounded for a moment, then looked at each other, then back at the jungle. And then we booked it.
“We got back to the door and tried to slam it behind us, but it didn’t latch proper and instead bounced back open. We didn’t care, we just wanted out. Julie was at the end of the hall, practically standing on tiptoes to avoid stepping fully on the carpet, looking at us with wide eyes as we barreled right at her. She lost her balance and fell right on her ass, making an audible squish on the carpet. I remember her going ‘ewwww!’ really long and drawn out, it would have been funny if I wasn’t scared shitless.
“I didn’t really stop, I stepped out into the fresh air outside, really wanting the stench out of my nose and to be separate from the house. I think my partner stopped to help her up though. I didn’t think much of it until I heard the screaming.”
I pause for a moment. “The… screaming?”
He nods, very solemnly. “Julie… and my partner. And the cats. Like everything in the house went crazy at once. I turned to see what was happening, and there was something there, in the doorway. It was cat-like… and big… but not like a big cat. No, something more strangely hulking, misshapen. A shadow of whispers and hisses and angry yowling, and blinking eyes. I pulled my gun and started firing into the doorway at it.”
He looks down at the table, his expression sad, full of shame. “In my wild firing, I struck both Julie Dodgson and my partner, Jim Barnes, as they were attempting to exit the house. I shot her twice, and him about three times. I called for an ambulance, and pulled them both away from the house, where the cats were all still screaming and meowing. I began first aid as immediately as possible. It didn’t help. They both died before paramedics arrived.”
I nod sympathetically. “And then you were relieved of duty.”
“Forced into an early retirement of sorts. The courts are still sorting out whether to charge me with murder or manslaughter since there was no discernable reason for me to use my firearm during a wellness check, but I’m out on bail for the moment, granted that I don’t leave the county. Mrs. Jacques was never seen, and everyone that entered the house afterward described it different from how my partner and I saw it. Just a normal two bedroom, one bathroom home, an absolute wreck, but no third room full of plants, no fucking jungle. Place was packed with cats though, lady must’ve been a cat hoarder – upwards of 60 or so was the final count. I adopted one of the healthier kittens that was eventually put forward, for my daughter. She loves cats. They needed a good home after all that shit.” He takes a sip of his sweet tea, still avoiding eye contact.
I pause a moment, waiting to see if he mentions anything else, before saying, “The house burned down recently. They think someone set the fire on purpose.”
He shrugs. “Place was probably scheduled to be demolished anyway. No way anyone was ever getting it clean enough to live in again.”
“It was, actually. Scheduled to be demolished. So it would have been destroyed sooner or later. The daughter didn’t even try to claim the house or anything in it when her mom never turned up.”
“See? Who cares if it got scorched then. No other property was damaged.” He must read something in my expression, because he looks suddenly annoyed. “Look, it wasn’t me. I’ve already got enough on my plate with a potential murder charge, they might just decide I’m cuckoo for cocoa puffs based on the report I filed. Why would I stack arson on top of all of that? But whoever did burn it down didn’t do anything bad. There was something wrong about that place, something evil inside of it. Maybe the other neighbors were just as aware of it. Maybe someone didn’t want any of that shit leaking out or coming through.”
“Yes, of course you wouldn’t want to get into any more trouble.” I pay for the meals, and finish up. He’s agitated and I don’t want to get into a more heated confrontation with someone that is out on bail for having killed two innocent individuals, whether it was in a lapse of sanity or a tragic accident. As I’m saying goodbye, I ask how the kitten is doing.
“Full of life, literally climbs up the walls. Daughter loves it.” He shrugs as if to say its not his cup of tea.
“You don’t suppose anything about that house got out through the rescued cats, do you?” The question is out before I really think it through. He gives me an odd, thoughtful look, but just shrugs and mumbles that they’re just cats.
I feel like I’ve just sat down to a pointless interview. I was hoping that he would let something slip or tell a different story than what appeared in his official report, but he’s stayed true to all of it, down to the last detail. If he suffered a delusion of some sort, he’s been very committed to it. I visit the site where the house stood. While I’m poking about the ruins, I noticed that there’s a white circle just outside of the rubble, disturbed by time and weather but still mostly visible. I scratch at some where it runs over the concrete path that once led to the small house on Cherry street, lift it to my mouth and lick it briefly – salt. Before someone burned the house, they circled it in salt, like they were trying to make sure the evil stayed in.
As mentioned, it’s not a very large town. As I’m walking back to the diner where I left my vehicle parked, I hear screaming. Curious, I loop into the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex to see the man that I had just spoken to stomping across the parking lot towards the dumpster. A teenage girl is following him, screaming at him and cussing him out, tears streaming down her face.
I watch in shock as he callously tosses the limp body of a cat into the trash.
mehryment 