Norton, Andre - Anthology (18 page)

 
          
 
So Harlan was a magical creature. (Aren't all
cats?) That being so, she supposed Harlan's talking to her wasn't completely
unthinkable but it certainly was unexpected. Cats talked so eloquently in their
own peculiar language that Harlan's resort to human words must be because he
couldn't make his point in cat-language. (But of course that business about
humans being monkey-like creatures who chattered, was a base canard.)

 
          
 
That night something happened that caused her
to wonder briefly if Allyson and Harlan weren't right about the inadvisability
of her living alone in the big Larch-mare House. She wasn't sure of the origin
of the impulse, but she chose to take a large candle and poke around the back
of the house (the electricity was on only in its front, where she lived).

 
          
 
She didn't go all the way back, where she
understood the deterioration was advanced, only to the middle section, which
contained a spacious ballroom, a book-empty library, and a big hallway with a
wide staircase rising to the shadows of the second floor. This part of the
house had not been remodeled and repaired as had been her own quarters and a
noticeable aroma of antiquity and decay filled its air.

 
          
 
With some trepidation, Miss Hettie climbed the
stairs. Up here were corridors and bedrooms and bathrooms, relics of the
distant past when the Larchmare House had been inhabited by a large family and
servants, with accommodations for guests. Miss Hettie poked around, peering
into the bedrooms, where plaster and lathing and occasional broken fixtures
dotted the floors.

 
          
 
She stuck her head into one of the bedrooms
and all at once a cold wind seemed to blow over her heart. She was suddenly
sure that this was one of the bedrooms in which Leonard Larchmare had strangled
one of his victims—one of his parents, or a sister, or perhaps the visiting
relative. Almost she could see the body lying on the big bed, in its tangled
bedclothing, the bruising finger marks on its neck.

 
          
 
Hastily Miss Hettie retreated and hurried back
downstairs, to the pleasant surroundings of her own rooms.

 
          
 
But Harlan's revelation of his magical nature,
Miss Hettie discovered, carried with it some subsidiary benefits. She half
expected Harlan to become a rather talkative companion after that outburst, but
that didn't happen. When she talked to Harlan, he reacted much as he always
had, just looking at her with yellow eyes and not saying a word. But the fact
that he had talked once loosened her own tongue: she knew now he was
intelligent enough to understand what she was saying and she talked to him
about things she wouldn't have otherwise, instead of the prosaic stuff she
usually talked to her cats.

 
          
 
And, since she knew Harlan understood, she
confided to him some of the nostalgia that so frequently affects the old.

 
          
 
There was her precious memory, which she would
have felt foolish mentioning to Harlan before, of her first real kiss. She
related it wistfully to Harlan, and suddenly she was back there again. Really
there. Not dream-real, but real-real. She was 12-year-old Hettie Fisher,
walking by the school gym, and Tommy Knowles, the good-looking (boy, was he
good-looking!) football captain, came out and Hettie stopped him to tell him
how excited she'd been when he threw that touchdown pass against Central High.
And Tommy, four years older than she, grinned and grabbed her by both arms and
planted a big, firm smack right on her mouth. Then Tommy walked away, leaving
an ecstatic Hettie thinking this was by far the most wonderful thing that had
ever happened in her life.

 
          
 
Of course after it was over and Miss Hettie
found herself sitting on the sofa in her apartment, somewhat breathless and
with her spectacles awry, she recalled that nothing ever came of it. Tommy
never even dated her (what high school football captain would actually date a
twelve-year-old girl?) and he went off and married that little snip from
Waynesboro
a few years later.

 
          
 
Harlan was sitting on the carpet in front of
her, his tail curved behind him, gazing straight at her with sleepy yellow
eyes.

 
          
 
"Harlan, did you do that?" asked
Miss Hettie.

 
          
 
"Miaow," said Harlan.

 
          
 
Miss Hettie was convinced that Harlan had,
somehow, and she was convinced more than ever when she experienced other
similar regressions. After all, if hypnotists can do it, why not cats? She
lived again through the time Mr. Worrall, her boss on her first job, pinched
her on the butt and she slapped his silly face (and lost the job) ... the
beauty of her only serious love affair before Martin went overseas and was
killed ... her pride when Allyson got married a&d later when Allyson's
first child was born (she still felt Edward was, in a sense, her own grandson)
... a lot of things like that.

 
          
 
The years stretched behind Miss Hettie like a
bridal veil of scented memories, each with its tale to tell. Nearly a hundred
of those years now, nearer and nearer to a hundred each year. Some of the tales
told by the years were rose-happy, some were violet-sad and some were so bland
as to be almost forgettable ... almost but not quite, because they were all
forget-me-nots, each as full as all the others. Miss Hettie could look back
along that chain of years and say "that was my life, that is my life, for
those years I remember are my years."

 
          
 
Much had happened to Hettie Fisher during
those many long years, not an exciting muchness, not a dramatic record, but all
in all a satisfying trail of years. She had been many places and seen many
things she would not have gone or seen if she had married and settled down as
she had expected to when she was a girl. She would have, too, if Martin hadn't been
killed, but Miss Hettie was what she supposed people called a Victorian
romantic: her true love lost to her, she never loved again.

 
          
 
The many places and things of her life, the
important ones and the unimportant ones, were brought back to her and made real
again over the ensuing weeks, by Harlan—or by somebody. It was as good as time
travel— and maybe it was.

 
          
 
But, though Harlan was always there looking up
at her when those experiences ended and she was sure he was doing it, he
wouldn't talk. Not in human language.

 
          
 
Except once.

 
          
 
"Harlan, I know you can talk and you're
intelligent enough to know what I'm saying to you," she complained in
exasperation. "Why don't you say something? And not just 'meow,'
either."

 
          
 
"Oh. Well," said Harlan, "if
you want a demonstration of my intelligence and vocabulary, I disagree with the
Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum theory. It is
dualistic, while as a matter of principle it should satisfy conditions of
unitarity, positivity and cluster decomposition."

 
          
 
"Harlan! You know I don't know anything
about such things!"

 
          
 
"Well, you were the one who brought up
the question of relative intelligence," said Harlan dryly.
"Miaow."

 
          
 
After that Harlan didn't deign to talk any
more. Miss Hettie understood how he must feel and wasn't sure it wasn't best
all around that he didn't. There were times when she didn't want to talk to
anybody, about anything, and if she'd wanted somebody around yakking all the
time she'd have arranged for someone to live with her. As for her own talking,
most of the time it was just musing that didn't require an answer and if Harlan
wasn't around to direct it to she was just as content to talk to the stove or
the saucepan or the lamp when it wouldn't turn on.

 
          
 
She'd forgotten how she first learned Harlan
could talk human speech until one night when events proved the cat knew what he
was talking about when he advised her to listen to Allyson's advice.

 
          
 
Miss Hettie liked to relax and read in bed in
the evenings and this evening she was deeply immersed in an Agatha Christie
murder mystery. Harlan was snoozing comfortably on the foot of the bed, curled
in a circle with his tail wrapped around his nose.

 
          
 
Miss Hettie hoped to finish the book and find
out who murdered Linnette Doyle and the others, but by
11 o'clock
her eyes were so tired she gave it up until
tomorrow. She laid the book facedown on the bedside table, opened to the place
she had stopped reading, followed it with her spectacles, and turned out the
table lamp. She had gotten that lamp in
Istanbul
. . . and how many American ladies, even
living as long as she had, got to
Istanbul
? With a sigh, Miss Hettie slid down under
the sheet to go to sleep.

 
          
 
She did—but some time later (she didn't know
how long) she was awakened by a slight noise.

 
          
 
The moon was up and shining slantingly into
the bedroom, illuminating it dimly. Miss Hettie lay there for a moment, her
eyes half open, wondering what had awakened her. Then she. became aware of a
shadowy figure in the room.

 
          
 
Miss Hettie's eyes popped wide open and her
heart began to beat faster. At first she couldn't see anything in the room and
was on the verge of deciding it was only her imagination when her bedside lamp
went on.

 
          
 
Brett Warren was standing beside her bed, a
pleasant smile on his face. She was vaguely aware of Harlan, leaping off the
bed and landing on the rug with a soft thump.

 
          
 
"Brett!" she exclaimed, sitting up.
"What are you doing here at this time of night?"

 
          
 
"Why, Miss Hettie," he replied in
his always-congenial voice, "the time has come to finish the job."

 
          
 
"What do you mean?" Fear crept
through her.

 
          
 
"You probably don't remember, you were
such a little girl at the time, but you were the one who got away, a long time
ago," said Brett. "You were the little girl I missed that night. I
knew if I waited long enough, you'd be drawn back to this house—and now you
have. I'm Leonard Larchmare, Miss Hettie, and I'm here to complete the task I
wasn't able to finish then."

 
          
 
Leonard Larchmare! It was incredible,
impossible. He had been a young adult when he strangled the Larchmare family in
their beds, and he should be an old man now, nearing the century mark. But he
was still a young man, no older than Leonard Larchmare had been when he committed
that unspeakable crime!

 
          
 
Yet Miss Hettie believed him. Somehow, through
all these long years, Leonard Larchmare had haunted Larchmare House without
aging, waiting, waiting for the time he could get his strangling hand on the
little girl who got away.

 
          
 
And now those strangling hands were reaching
for her throat, almost gently, almost lovingly. Miss Hettie squeaked.

 
          
 
All at once a shadow pounced on Brett (Leonard
Larchmare?) from behind, a shadow as big as he. He grunted and his hands
fluttered and reached back frantically as he was borne down beside the bed,
below her line of vision.

 
          
 
Sounds of a confused struggle down there came
to her ears and she sat up in bed, peering over the edge. In the dimness she
could see nothing but a tangle of heaving, twisting shadows, hear nothing but
muttered curses and muffled growls. The bed shook as the combatants bumped into
it.