“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a bed now, and I’ll pick up a phone today.”
“But it won’t be connected right away. Maybe you’d better stay with us until—”
“Bev, I’m fine. I’ve got tons of stuff to do, and I don’t feel sick at all, really.”
Beverly looked doubtful. “You’re so isolated out here—”
“Okay,” Sarah said hastily, feeling the morning slipping away from her. “If anything happens, if I get sick or have a bad dream, I’ll come to you to make it better. You’d better go now, or you’ll be late for class.” She got out of the car as she was speaking, and closed the door firmly.
Beverly hesitated, as if she still had more advice to give, or another promise she wanted to extract, but finally she mimed a kiss and drove away.
Sarah turned towards the house and stopped short in surprise at the sight of a cat on the back steps. It was a nice-looking animal, a sleek calico, body curved gracefully as it washed one white paw. Sarah smiled at the picture it made: cat on wooden steps. It looked very much at home. She wondered if it planned to stay. She had never had a pet before. She continued to watch it as she approached the house, but it was utterly self-absorbed and did not look up from its grooming.
At the foot of the steps Sarah stopped again, and her breath caught in her throat with surprise. A small body lay on the ground a few inches from the bottom step: a dead rat. The fur at the throat was matted with dried blood, and the small, nasty teeth were revealed in a final snarl.
She let out her breath in a long, slow sigh. It was dead. No more knockings within the walls, or beneath the bathtub; no more mocking scurrying sounds. She looked from the tiny corpse to the cat. “Good work!” she said, pleased. “Maybe I should keep you around, if you’re looking for a new home.”
At the sound of her voice, the cat finally stopped washing and turned its head to look at her.
Sarah went cold as she met that steady, malevolent gaze. Those hard, yellow eyes. She knew them. She remembered the rat’s glowing eyes, and how they had locked with hers.
The cat leaped down from the step and stalked towards Sarah, tail switching back and forth. Sarah jumped back.
“Miaou?”
A plaintive cat-sound. It looked up at her with bright, inscrutable eyes. A cat’s eyes. Yellow was a common color for cat’s eyes.
Sarah managed a shaky laugh. She was being silly, letting her dream affect her so. She knew it was only a cat.
“Good cat,” she said, looking down at the animal. She couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it. “You killed that nasty old rat, didn’t you? Now, how did you know that’s just what I’d like? If you’re looking for a job as rat-catcher, you’ve got it. But probably you already have a home—you look well-fed to me.” As she spoke, she climbed the steps and fumbled with her keys, very aware that the cat was watching her intently. But, then, cats often stared. She knew that.
As she opened the door, the cat was suddenly right beside her, slipping inside the porch with rapid skill.
“Hey,” Sarah said. “I didn’t invite you in! If you want to stay in the cellar and catch rats, that’s fine, but I don’t need a house cat, thank you very much.”
She looked down, and the animal looked up, and their eyes met. Golden, burning—they are like flames, Sarah thought. She broke the gaze by turning her head aside. She was breathing rapidly. I must not look, she thought. I must not let it trap me. Those flames will burn into my mind and consume me.
Her own thoughts appalled her. Was it the return of the fever? Was she crazy, to imagine some horrible connection between this cat and the demonic rat of her nightmare? No matter how she argued with herself, she could not reason away the visceral fear she felt, the fear that strung her nerves taut and made her keep her eyes averted. It was crazy, but she could not shake her conviction that the cat—standing very still now, head cocked to one side to gaze unblinkingly up at her—was dangerous.
Moving slowly and carefully, Sarah opened the door to the kitchen and slipped inside. The cat did not move, as if it understood any attempt would be foiled. Sarah had left the back door open, and she hoped the cat would soon leave the porch.
Inside, Sarah leaned against the solid kitchen door, feeling weak. Her sudden perspiration dried on her skin, and she shivered, chilled. Dazed, hardly knowing if she were awake or dreaming, Sarah wandered back to the living room and slumped onto the couch.
It was just a cat, she told herself. Cats often had yellow eyes. It was just the likeness of those eyes to the eyes of the rat in her dream which had disturbed her, stirring up scenes she didn’t want to relive. Her own explanation did not convince her.
A low moaning interrupted her thoughts. Skin prickling, Sarah turned towards the front window. Through it she could see the cat, crouched on the porch railing on a level with the window, glaring balefully in at her.
Sarah stared back, waiting for it to move. But nothing happened. The cat went on moaning and staring. Its eyes seemed to expand, and she thought, distractedly, of the story of the tin soldier and the dog with eyes as big as saucers.
She must not look into them; it wasn’t safe.
Making a great effort, Sarah managed to turn away from the window. She dropped back against the couch, breathing hard, feeling dizzy, as if she had done something far more strenuous than simply turn her head.
The cat had killed the rat, she thought.
But the rat wasn’t dead.
The rat—or something which had been inside the rat—lived on, now within the cat. Sarah had seen it staring out of those golden eyes. She knew, beyond possibility of doubt, because she had felt it clawing at the edges of her mind.
She remembered, now, what she had blocked out of her memory.
After the suffocation, after the drowning, after the pain, the rat had leaped at her in the darkness. Throwing her hands up to protect her face, Sarah had encountered two other hands which had seized her and thrown her to the floor. Someone or something—she had thought, in what little time she had to think, that it was a giant rat with human hands—had ridden astride her, legs in a painful vise around her hips, hands throttling her neck. Blood-red light had blazed before her eyes, but Sarah had not passed out. She had managed to pull the hands away, and wrestled to keep them away although she could not dislodge her assailant entirely. It was like wrestling with her own shadow: the attacker made no sound, and seemed to match her exactly in size and strength. Despite the sensation of the legs and hands which gripped her, Sarah could not feel any head or body. Perhaps her attacker had no body? Perhaps her attacker existed only in her mind, and she was wearing herself out by fighting herself?
At that thought, because she was exhausted already, Sarah stopped fighting abruptly and let herself go limp.
Her attacker vanished.
And then all Sarah’s fears and exhaustion had been extinguished by a feeling of bliss.
It was a feeling she had experienced before, although not often, when she was with Brian, just after making love. A sense of being enhanced, of being joined. A dream of swimming slowly through a vast, sentient ocean. Not knowing or caring where her body ended and Brian’s began, because they were both the same.
Sarah knew she was not alone, and she was glad. It was wonderful not to be alone. She could feel another presence close to her—more than close. It was with her, a part of her, beneath her skin.
At first, it was wonderful. A kind of ecstasy.
Then Sarah realized that she was standing, without any memory of having done so. And she was walking across the room, feeling her legs move without willing them to. Sarah’s hand, without Sarah’s will, turned on the light, and then she could see. She felt as if she had been detached from her body and was floating slightly above and to the right of it. She watched herself walk through the rooms of the house and knew she was only a passenger—a passenger who could not even feel the seats, or the motions of travel. Only an observer.