Cat People (21 page)

"I'm sorry," Alice got out, "what did you say?"

"How many miles you go?" the man repeated. He was wearing glasses. Smiling.

"I—I don't know. I don't keep track."

The second jogger, blond and soft around the middle, spoke up. "We try to do twenty a week. Heaven knows, I could probably use more."

Alice managed a weak smile.

The runner with glasses said, "St. Phillip's is sponsoring a 10-K run next month. I don't know if you're into that, Miss ... uh ..."

"Alice Moore."

"Hi. I'm Father Harn," said the first jogger.

"And I'm Father Jessup," said his blond companion.

Priests. Jesus Christ, they were priests. "Happy to meet you," Alice said. She laughed. "I am
really
happy to meet you."

The two priests jogged along beside her. They looked at each other in mild puzzlement.

The clank of a passing streetcar sounded like a heavenly chorus to Alice. When the path turned to parallel the avenue, she slowed.

"This is where I leave you," she said to the jogging priests. "Good night."

"Good night," said Father Jessup. "It's been nice talking to you."

"Don't forget the 10-K run," said Father Harn.

"I won't," Alice said. She pulled off the path and stopped for a moment to watch the two men jog out of sight. Then she cut across the avenue to a streetcar stop.

She jogged easily in place to cool down as she waited for the trolley. There was no one else waiting at the stop. In fact, St. Charles was uncommonly deserted tonight.

No, there was someone coming toward her along the sidewalk. A woman. Alice stood in a pool of light from a streetlamp. The other woman was in shadow, and she could not see the face.

The woman stopped abruptly. She stood twenty yards away in the darkness and stared at Alice. Something about the woman brought back all the fears of Alice's jog through the park.

At a hissing shriek behind her, Alice's heart jumped into her throat. She whirled, hands out in front of her defensively, only to see the pneumatic doors of the streetcar folding open. Weak with relief, she boarded the car.

She dropped her fare into the box and found a seat by the window, halfway back in the car. As it started to move, she peered out through the glass at the dark sidewalk. The woman was standing there still, her face hidden by the shadows, watching.

By the time she entered her apartment building, Alice had convinced herself that her nervousness in the park and on the street was entirely due to an overactive imagination. A vigorous swim in the pool was just what she needed to soak the tension out of her muscles and calm her frazzled nerves. She passed by the elevators and took the stairs down to the gym.

The gym instructor hired by the apartment association was a sturdily built girl named Sandra. She was just coming out of the gym as Alice approached.

"Do I have time for a swim?" Alice said.

"I was just closing up."

"All I want is a quick dip. Just enough to stretch the muscles. Be a pal, Sandy."

"Well ... five minutes, okay?"

"Wonderful."

Sandra selected a key and handed it to Alice. "No more than five minutes, now."

"Promise."

Alice unlocked the door to the pool area and went in. The water glowed blue and inviting, illuminated by lights below the surface. Alice flipped the wall switch and the big overhead fluorescents went on. She felt a little nervous at being the only one in the cavernous room.

At a bench along the wall she sat and pulled off the Nikes and sweat socks, then peeled off her jogging suit. Wearing only bikini panties, she ran across the tile deck and dived in.

The pleasant shock as Alice's body cleaved the cool water revived her spirits. She glided along close to the bottom, letting the momentum of her dive carry her half the length of the pool. She planed upward and broke through the surface, blowing and splashing like a happy seal. She went into a crawl and did two strenuous laps, then breast-stroked another. She rolled on her back and floated for a minute, then eased into a languorous backstroke, trying to do it as gracefully as Esther Williams in those old movies.

A metallic
clack
echoed off the concrete walls. Alice broke off in mid-stroke and rolled her head to look toward the door. No one there. She resumed the backstroke, watching the overhead lights glide slowly by.

Without warning the lights went off.

Alice rolled over, swallowing some water. She coughed, keeping herself afloat in the middle of the pool, and looked again toward the door. This time she saw a shadow that moved over by the light switch.

"Hey, what's the idea?" Alice called. "My five minutes isn't up yet."

There was no answer, but suddenly the underwater lights went dark. For a moment Alice felt utterly abandoned, floating in a limitless black void. The water was cold and unpleasant against her flesh.

"Sandy?" she called, knowing in her heart that it was not Sandy who had come in and killed the lights.

Gradually her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. The only light came from the glowing EXIT sign over the door. It was sufficient for Alice to see the shadow that moved low to the floor along the edge of the pool

"What do you want?" she said, not expecting an answer. She continued to tread water, keeping well away from the edge of the pool where she had seen the moving shadow. Her ears were attuned for the smallest sound, her eyes straining to pierce the near-darkness.

Something growled.

In sudden terror Alice lashed out toward the ladder at the deep end. When she reached it, the menacing shadow was waiting at the top. She paddled back, trying to keep the shadow in her vision.

A loud creak just above her head startled her. She looked up and saw the diving board dip. Something was edging out on the board.

In full panic now, Alice thrashed toward the other end of the pool. Her feet scraped against the bottom. She stood up and began to wade clumsily toward the steps leading up out of the shallow end. The shadow thing was there again, waiting for her.

Splashing wildly, Alice clawed her way back to the center of the pool. She was tiring fast. Her arms ached. A knot was forming in her stomach.

She pulled in a lungful of air and screamed for help. The sound of her voice echoed in the cavernous pool room. She screamed again.

All the lights came on.

"Alice, is that you?"

Shading her eyes against the sudden dazzle of lights, Alice peered in the direction of the voice.

"Are you all right?"

Standing by the light switch just inside the door was Irena Gallier.

"What are you doing here?" Alice demanded. She coughed some pool water out of her windpipe. "Why have you been following me?"

"Following you?" Irena came over and stood at the edge of the pool. "I don't understand."

"Like hell you don't."

The door opened. Both women turned to look as Sandra came in.

"What's going on?" the instructor said.

Feeling ridiculous as she tread water out in the pool, Alice pointed at Irena and said, "She ... she followed me in here. She turned out the lights and was trying to ... get at me."

Irena looked hurt. "Alice, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't find Oliver at the hospital, and I thought he might be here. I came looking for him. I'm awfully sorry if I frightened you."

Alice stared at her. The girl seemed so sincere, so innocent. Was it possible she was imagining all these crazy things?

Sandra stood with her hands planted on her hips, looking suspiciously from one of the women to the other.

"I'll say good night, then," Irena told them with a friendly nod. She turned and walked out through the door.

"What was that all about?" Sandra asked.

"Oh ... nothing," Alice said, realizing the impossibility of explaining her fears.

"Are you about finished in here?"

"I'm finished," Alice said. "I'll bring the key out to you."

Sandra went out, letting the door hiss closed behind her. Alice walked up the steps and out of the water at the shallow end, shivering out of control. She hurried across the cold tile to the bench where she had left her clothes. She picked up the jogging suit and began to shake violently. The shiny green suit had been sliced to ribbons.

Oliver sat slumped on the sofa in his living room. Lying on the cushions on both sides of him and in his lap were photographs. There were pictures of the black leopard live and the leopard dead. There were snapshots taken of Irena the day they went fishing at the jetty house. He had spent hours going over the pictures, examining them in minute detail, comparing them, searching for ...
what?

What the hell
was
he looking for? Oliver asked himself for perhaps the twentieth time this evening. He picked up the sheet of drawing paper that was the most troubling picture of all—Irena's self-portrait from her sketchbook. The catlike alterations in her face were terrifying to him, but the thing had no meaning.

It seemed nothing made sense any more. The memory of what he found when he cut into the leopard's corpse still haunted him. Had he made a mistake by not telling anyone? But who would he tell? With no evidence, who would believe him? Would he believe a wild story like that if he heard it from somebody else? Not bloody likely.

He looked at all the pictures again. The leopard, Irena, Irena with the face of the cat. What the hell did it mean? Oliver lay his head back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes. He was more tired than he realized, and in less than a minute he was asleep.

His dream was a mixed-up thing of giant cats and naked women with blood on their mouths. From somewhere a high-pitched voice called to him, trying to tell him something urgent. The voice called to him over and over and ... became the ringing of the telephone.

Oliver jumped up, spilling the photographs onto the floor, and stumbled across the room to the telephone. He grabbed up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Before he could get the word out there was a click and the hum of a dial tone. Damn, why couldn't they have hung on another five seconds? Now he would worry the rest of the evening about who was trying to call him. As though he didn't have enough to worry about already.

In her apartment Alice drummed her fingers on the telephone after hanging up in frustration. Where could Oliver be? She felt it was urgent that she tell him about the bizarre events of the evening—her sense of being followed in the park, the silent woman who watched her get on the streetcar, the menacing shadow at the pool, Irena's strange appearance, and the destruction of her clothes. Alice was sure that Oliver was in danger. She was the only one who could warn him. She would try his number again in a few minutes in case he had stepped out only briefly.

Oliver started to return to the photographs, but thought better of it and headed for the stairs. A good night's sleep would help him straighten out his thinking. He had intended to sit up until Irena came home from wherever she had gone, but there was no point in that if he was just going to fall asleep on the sofa.

He went into the bathroom upstairs and carefully removed his shirt to have a look at the wounds left by the leopard's attack. Nothing had soaked through the dressings, that was good. He peeled back the bandages and saw that the scratches were healing nicely. He washed them out and daubed on medication from a tube. As he capped the tube he heard the telephone ringing again. He started for the stairs, but before he got there the ringing ceased. Puzzled, he walked back to the bathroom.

Alice chewed on a thumbnail as she listened to the burr of the telephone ringing in Oliver's house.

"Please be home," she muttered. "Please answer the phone."

There was the sound of somebody picking up at the other end. Alice went weak with relief.

"Oliver, where have you been? I've been trying to reach you. Something happened tonight that you'd better know—"

A click on the other end, and the line went dead.

Alice stared at the instrument in her hand as though it had bitten her. He couldn't have hung up. Rapidly she dialed Oliver's number again. This time she heard the maddening buzz-buzz of the busy signal.

Damn! What was going on? She jammed the button down, held it there for several seconds, and dialed again. Again the busy signal. Weeping with frustration, she slammed the receiver back into the cradle. The recent storm must have screwed up the lines. Alice pounded the tabletop with her fists.

In the dark living room of Oliver's house the telephone receiver lay on the table next to the cradle. The dial tone hummed faintly, but no one listened.

Upstairs Oliver pulled on a light terry-cloth robe, belting it carefully so as not to irritate his wounds. Where was Irena? he wondered. Then he grinned crookedly at his image in the mirror. He wae acting like a worried father. However, his feelings for Irena were anything but fatherly. Besides, it was only a little after nine o'clock. He decided to go downstairs and find a book to read until he fell asleep.

In the living room he stopped halfway to the row of books on the mantel. A cold breeze was coming in from somewhere. He looked around and saw the window open over his writing table. When he walked across to close the window, he saw the telephone lying off the hook.

What the hell was going on here?

Oliver replaced the telephone receiver, then lowered the window. As he did so he was startled to see the reflection of Irena in the dark glass. He spun around to face her, and for a long moment they stood without speaking. She had a strange look. Wild.

The telephone rang. Again. On the third ring Irena picked up the receiver and handed it to Oliver without saying anything.

Alice's voice came filtering through the earpiece. "Oliver? Is that you?"

"Yes."

"You sound funny. Are you all right?"

As Alice spoke to him, Irena walked over to the standing lamp by the front door and snapped it out.

"I'm all right," Oliver said. His eyes followed Irena. "What is it, Alice?"

"I called you before. I don't think your phone is working right."