Cat Out of Hell (13 page)

So I’m not very clever, and – I have to tell you this, Alec – I’m not very brave. I would never have been as brave as you, creeping around in that library after dark. But it’s the Wiggy Brain problem I think you should be wary of most. I was so embarrassed reading my notes about how I imagined Jo and the dog had been taken by aliens. I really did search the area for signs of scorched grass!

Anyway, that’s all in the past. I need to know what’s happening now. Please let me know. This is torture.

Email from Wiggy to Alec

Sent:
Monday, January 19, 10:36 PM

Subject:
Alec, where are you?

Alec! For God’s sake, I’m going to pieces here. I don’t know what to think. Please let me know what has happened. I haven’t heard from you for
two days
. I’ve never met you but
I am your friend
. Wigs

Email from Alec to Wiggy

Sent:
Tuesday, January 20, 6:03 AM

Subject:
None

Attachment:
PDF entitled Seeward

Dear Wiggy,

I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your emails. I’m sorry if I caused you any distress. The thing is, Winterton is dead. I know. I can’t believe it either, but it’s true, he’s dead. And I don’t want to be melodramatic, but I think this might be the last time you hear from me, so I want you to stop being weak about all this, because we don’t have the luxury. I know no one believes in this stuff, Wiggy. Of course they don’t. I wouldn’t believe in it either. And I know you’ve made errors of judgment that make you doubt yourself. But Winterton is dead and Jo is dead, and my own dear Mary is dead – and if I’m next, I have to know that you’re not going to delete all this material and take a pill to help you forget it!

Sorry to be harsh. I haven’t slept much in the last 72 hours. The only positive thing is that I do have the pamphlet, and I’ve attached a scan for you to see. Also the dog is safe, thank God. I’m touched that you care about him. But other news is not so good. I had a call on my mobile yesterday morning from someone who said he was Tony Bellingham – his name meant nothing to me but he explained he was that neighbour who
called on me after Christmas at home, the one whose surname I’d never taken any interest in. He said there had been a breakin at my house and I needed to go there at once. It was a “bit of a mess,” he said. He was with the police. I said I couldn’t go; they demanded to know why not. I said I was with a friend at the hospital, who was in a critical condition. I said I would go later, but I shan’t. The last thing I want to do is go home. For one thing, he said it was a mess. And it was really neat when I left it, after all that sodding methodical unpacking.

And then, when I got to the hospital, there were police in the ward, and they told me what had happened. In the night, Winterton had died – but nothing to do with his injuries or his blood loss; he died of suffocation, and they were saying it was murder. They said Winterton, under sedation, wouldn’t have had much strength to push off his attacker, but the mystery was, how did the attacker get in? I have to tell you, Wiggy: I behaved so
calmly
; I pretended to be concerned but not devastated; shocked, but not alarmed. Much as I wanted to break down on the spot and say, “I know that evil cats did this! Death and damnation to those evil cats!” I had to pretend that I was as astounded as everyone else that such downright badness existed in the world. So I said pathetic things like “Why?” and “Poor fellow” and “Who would do such a thing?” I let them give me a cup of sweet tea from a machine, and then I hung around, sitting in the corridor, as if too shocked to go home – when all I really wanted was to hang around long enough to find out what had happened.

From what I could piece together, Winterton’s room was on the ground floor. A window had been left partly open, but it was much too high off the ground for anyone (other than a large, muscular cat
with powers
, of course) to reach from outside, so they were ruling out anyone climbing in to commit the deed. But it was still murder, the nurse told me. At
around 4 a.m., she had been sitting at the nursing station when she heard the alarm from Winterton’s heart monitor; she rushed in to find him blue in the face. All over the pillow – and all over Winterton – were weird black hairs, like animal fur. Whoever suffocated Winterton, she said, must have used a black fur jacket or coat to smother him as he slept.

Poor man. How he must have wished – how I wish on his behalf – that on that fateful day on the Acropolis, he had just finished his drawing of fallen masonry and then packed up his schoolboy satchel, and gone to meet his parents for the long voyage home – without a cat in a basket. But he had read about cats like Roger. “I’ve read about cats like you.” And that was his downfall. I remember Roger saying to you that he suffered for his own hubris on the Acropolis that day; but so did Winterton, in the end.

I enclose a PDF of the Seeward pamphlet. I haven’t had time to read it closely yet, but a lot of it looks so disappointingly lame and predictable –
All hail Beelzebub, king of cats!
– that I nearly wept when I first opened it. To think Mary and Winterton died for
this
? Talk about the banality of evil. If Seeward was responsible for writing this – well, I’m sorry to swear, but he must have been a wanker.
“And from out the flames of Hell cometh the Great Cat of All Cats, hail unto the Cat of Cats”
– it goes on and on like that, for pages. But I shan’t give up. The main thing that caught my eye was on page seven: the list of Grand Cat Masters, starting with Sir Isaac Newton in 1691. There are about a dozen names altogether, including John Seeward, of course. And as you will see, Seeward names his successor, as well, which is very interesting.

I didn’t tell you how it went on Saturday night, but I expect you can guess. When I opened the emergency exit at 6 p.m., I found Winterton on the ground, already bleeding from the
neck and head, screaming and thrashing about with a dark shape on top of him. The sound of the claxon alarm when I opened the door made the Captain shoot off – but I saw him, Wiggy; I saw the Captain’s huge yellow eyes watching us in the dark of that dingy courtyard. Mike the security guard appeared with startling speed – in fact, I think my plan of slipping the stolen book to Winterton would never have worked. We’d have been caught in the act. Mike got me to call for the ambulance while he administered first aid. He was so horrified by what had happened – and of course he knew all about the cat that had somehow got into the library on a former occasion – that he couldn’t have been less interested in my pathetic rehearsed excuses about falling asleep after tea in the afternoon, stumbling to the wrong door, etc. In a way, the Captain helped me get the pamphlet out of the library, by creating an extremely dramatic diversion.

Wiggy, I’m thinking of moving to a different B & B – it’s not just to get away from the landlady’s killer air-freshener (although that would be quite sufficient reason, believe me); I just think it’s sensible not to stay in any one place for too long. I’ll send the address when I can. Would you please study the pamphlet? I must be missing something important. But for the time being, I am going in search of the last Grand Cat Master named on the list, because from what little I can deduce from the mumbo-jumbo all-Hail rubbish in
Nine Lives
, he’s the key to putting a stop to all this. I’d appreciate it if you would have a look at the last page of the pamphlet, where there is talk of some sort of ritualistic device called a “Debaser” that the Cat Master “holdeth” – but what is it? Something about “a circle closeth”? It makes no sense to me – but as you can imagine, it’s hard to think straight right now. It’s such a shock to have lost Winterton. And it’s irritating, too. Winterton knew so much, Wiggy! Even if he was the most infuriating source
of evil-talking-cat information in the world, he was a direct line to Roger – and more importantly, to Roger’s history. And now Winterton has been smothered in his hospital bed by – presumably – the Captain lying across his face as he weakly struggled and wriggled and died! I think I know what sort of nightmares my future is full of now – assuming I have a future at all.

I can’t afford self-pity right now, but I keep thinking that just three weeks ago I was at the seaside, at my lonely cottage, watching Watson run in circles on the beach, indulging myself in my sweetly sad feelings of loss over the sudden and unexplained natural death of Mary. Did I
really
know nothing of all this then? It’s impossible to imagine it now. I remember how Roger put it to you, when he was telling his life story: that once you’ve seen the world in a different way, you can’t go back. I’ve had so many new perspectives to deal with in the past couple of weeks that I can hardly keep track of them all. For example, Mary didn’t just
die
. Cats are
murdering bastards
. A load of black hairs on a suffocated man’s pillow do
not
indicate an assailant using a black fur jacket. The library has been holding powerful cat occult bastard evil
shit
ever since I’ve worked there. And as for Julian Prideaux – just a few days ago, I was saying that he was the laziest librarian on the planet, and I was mocking the way he used to leave his dandruffy cardigan on the back of his chair! I was wondering how a man of 70 had kept his job when others, like me, had been made to retire at 58.

And now I know from the list printed in the back of this pamphlet that he is the Grand Cat Master, appointed in person by Beelzebub, and has been so for 50 years, ever since John Seeward hanged himself in the garden at Harville Manor on September 3rd, 1964.

(By the way, you didn’t send that link.)

Telepathic message (also known as an Emiaow) from Roger the cat to Julian Prideaux, Grand Cat Master

Sent:
Tuesday, January 20, morning

Subject:
All Hail, Cat Master

All Hail, Cat Master. Roger here. May I approach thy presence, figuratively speaking, oh great librarian and holder of the Great Debaser? From afar, I cringe and fawn unworthily before thy almighty cat power and all-round top-drawer diabolical connections – etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Emiaow from Prideaux to Roger

Speak, Roger. This is an unexpected pleasure.

Roger

Yes, I expect it is.

Prideaux

Although I would appreciate it if you tried not to sound so bloody sarcastic. Beelzebub himself ticked me off the other day for not getting the proper respect from you blasted cats. He came all the way from Pandemonium because he found out that the Captain had started calling me “mate.” I said to him: it’s a different world nowadays, Beelzebub. It’s not as respectful as it used to be. People on mobile phones; people cycling on the pavement; people cycling across pedestrian crossings even when the lights are against them.

Roger

What did he say to that?

Prideaux

Oh, the usual platitudes. He doesn’t care.

Roger

Did he say, “This is hell, nor am I out of it”?

Prideaux

He did, actually.

Roger

He always says that. He thinks it’s funny.

(
Pause
)

Roger

I just wanted you to know that I heard.

Prideaux

Heard what?

Roger

About Winterton. About him being polished off in intensive care by “feline body-surf asphyxiation.”

Prideaux

Roger. Are you upset? I expect you’re upset.

Roger

Of course I’m not upset. I’m furious.

Prideaux

Roger, Roger, Roger. If you want to make a formal complaint –

Roger

What, to Beelzebub?

Prideaux

Well, technically, he is our line manager.

Roger

Yes, and I wonder what he’ll say when he finds out that, due to your incompetence, a librarian called Alec Charlesworth is now in possession of
Nine Lives
and intends to use it?

Prideaux

What? What did you say?

Roger

He’s in possesson of
Nine Lives
.

Prideaux

Alec from Periodicals? Look if this is some sort of joke – .

Roger

No joke.

Prideaux

Oh my God, the idea of
Nine Lives
being in the hands of someone like Alec from Periodicals! Roger, that book explains everything!

Roger

I know it explains everything, oh Satan’s Appointed Deputy. Including how Cat Masters themselves can be destroyed.

Prideaux

Now look. Don’t threaten me, Roger. Beelzebub himself –

Roger

Oh sod Beelzebub.

Prideaux

Roger!

Roger

I’m going to help this periodicals man. He likes Tennyson, and he called his dog after Dr Watson in Sherlock Holmes. He even remembers key passages form
Jane Eyre
in moments of crisis.

Prideaux

Roger, Roger. Stop and think. You’re rightly upset about Winterton – but haven’t you known for years that the Captain would get to him one day? Isn’t it simply a miracle that Winterton managed to elude him for so long? The Captain always blamed Winterton for taking you away from him, all those years ago on the Acropolis. Even when you were both with Seeward after the war, Winterton was always in the background, wasn’t he? The Captain knew that. When you left the Captain for a second time – when you
chose
to leave him – it really broke his heart.

Roger

He’d already broken mine! No, it’s over, oh Great Cat Master. I’m old, I’m jaded. I’ve even started to look at those people cycling on the pavement and think, “This
is
hell, nor am I out of it.” I worked it out last night, oh Lord of All Cat Evil: all told, I’ve been responsible for the deaths of
eight people
.