Albert yelled for help, yelled at the cat. The cat dug its claws deeper. Albert still had a volume of the encyclopedia in his right hand—the “S” book. He slammed it down on his own head.
The cat was gone. The book knocked Albert silly.
And now the cat was clear across the room, sitting calmly atop the librarian’s desk.
It was impossible. Nothing moved that fast. Nothing.
Albert drew a shaky breath and began backing toward the door to the street.
Without any movement that Albert’s eyes could detect, the cat went from the desk to the back of Albert’s neck. It was on him like a mad thing, clawing, scratching, tearing, hissing.
Again, Albert swung the heavy book and again the blow landed on his own flesh because now the cat was perched atop a stack, peering down at Albert, mocking him with cool, green-eyed contempt.
It was going to attack him again.
Instinct made Albert swing the book up to protect his face.
He felt the book jump violently in his hands.
The cat’s face, distorted by rage, was an inch from Albert’s own face.
But the book was still in place.
And the cat was in the book.
No, through the book.
Albert stared in shock as the cat’s eyes darkened and its animal soul fled.
He dropped the encyclopedia on the floor.
The book, the heavy blue leather-bound volume, bisected the cat just behind the front paws. It was as if someone had cut the cat in half and sewed it in two pieces to the book. The back of the cat stuck out from the back cover.
Albert was panting as much from terror as exertion. The thing on the floor, that thing wasn’t possible. The way the cat had moved, not possible.
“Nightmare. You’re having a nightmare,” he told himself.
But if it was a dream it was a dream with a lot of the texture of reality. Surely he wouldn’t dream the smell of mildew. Surely he wouldn’t dream the way the cat’s bladder and bowels emptied messily in death.
Albert remembered seeing the librarian’s large shoulder bag at her desk. With shaking hands he emptied the contents out onto the desk: lipstick, wallet, compact, a cell phone all scattered.
He picked up the encyclopedia. It was heavy. The weight of the cat added to the book had to be twenty pounds. And the cat-in-the-book was bulky, too big to fit easily into the bag.
But he had to show this to someone. This was an impossible thing. Impossible. Except that it was real. Albert needed someone else to tell him that it was real, someone to confirm that he wasn’t dreaming or crazy.
Not Caine. Sam? He would be at the firehouse, but this wasn’t a Sam thing, it was an Astrid thing. Two minutes later he was on Astrid’s well-lit stoop.
Astrid opened her door cautiously and only after checking the peephole.
“Albert? It’s the middle of the…oh, my God, what happened to your face?”
“I could use some Band-Aids,” Albert said. He’d forgotten what he must look like. He’d forgotten the pain. “Yeah. I could use some help. But that’s not why I came here.”
“Then…”
“Astrid. I need…” His words failed him, then. Now safe in Astrid’s entryway, the fear took hold and for a minute he just could not form a word or make a sound.
Astrid drew him inside and closed the door.
“I need…,” he began again, and again couldn’t say more. In a strangled voice he said, “Just look.”
He dumped the cat and the book onto the Oriental rug.
Astrid went completely still.
“It was so fast. It attacked me. I couldn’t even see it move. It was like it was in one place, right? And then it was on me. I mean, it didn’t jump, Astrid. It just…appeared.”
Astrid knelt to push gingerly at the book. She tried to make the book fall open, but the body of the cat went through each page and held them together. Not like the cat had made a hole: like the cat had fused together with the paper.
“What is it, Astrid?” Albert pleaded.
She said nothing, just stared. Albert could all but see the wheels turning in her brain. But she gave him no answer, and Albert accepted after a while that no answer would be forthcoming. No explanation was possible for a thing that could not be.
But she had seen the thing, the impossible thing. He wasn’t crazy.
After what felt like a very long time Astrid whispered, “Come on, Albert, let’s do something with those scratches.”
Lana lay in the dark in the cabin listening to the mysterious sounds of the desert outside. Something made a soft, slithery sound like a hand stroking silk. Something else emitted rapid percussive bursts, a tiny insect drummer who slowed after a few seconds and lost his way and fell silent before starting all over again.
The windmill squeaked infuriatingly. Never for long, never in any kind of pattern. There was no real breeze, just whispers that turned the weathered wooden blades a quarter turn…squeak…or a half turn…squeak, squeak…or barely nudged them to produce a sound like the shrill peep of a baby bird.
Against all that was the reassuring snore from Patrick. He would snore and stop and snore again and every now and then give up a low yipping sound that Lana found endearing.
Lana’s body was well. Her injuries were all miraculously healed. She had washed away the caked-on blood. She had water and food and shelter.
But Lana’s brain was an engine revved to breakneck speed. It turned over and over, swirling through memories of pain, memories of terror, flashes of her grandfather’s empty seat, the tumble down the slope, the buzzards, the lion.