by Norman A. Rubin
It was a warm summer's day in England as Jeffrey Redlaw stepped lively on his morning's constitutional. As his walked in his stride he reminisced silently on the pleasant weather, that all was well in the Realm of Queen Victoria and... Before Jeffry Redlaw was able to continue in his thoughts he spotted a small furry animal sunning itself on his very path.
“Ohh my lord a cat.. Shoo, shoo, scat!
If there was one animal that Jeffrey Redlaw hated more than another was a cat. Not that he was not fond of animals – for he had deep affection for a devoted spaniel that had formerly been his pet. But a feline creature seemed to bring out his worst emotions. Probably he inherited an instinctive dread and hatred of his enemy when he might have been a small defenseless creature in the life of his soul's entity.
The presence of a cat affected him in a curious and strange fashion. There was within him a deep revulsion at the sight of a feline. The idea of the shining eyes of a cat fixed on him, the thought of listening to the soft tread of its paws, and the imagined touch of its soft fur, all sent shudders through his entire body. He tried over and over again to overcome his fear of cats, but to no avail. Jeffrey Redlaw was afraid of cats, and it was useless to deny it.
Yet there was one particular cat that haunted him. It was a large black Tom, aged in years that prowled the fields in search of game. At times when Jeffrey took his early morning walk the cat would either cross his path or stare at him with bright yellowish eyes. Jeffrey would curse, shaking his walking stick or pitch a stone at it to drive it from his sight.
When one day the rheumy old Tom found the comfort of his lawn chair it angered him when Jeffrey spotted the so-called outrage and he rained blows upon the sleeping cat. The poor creature dragged its hurt body to a safe haven in the garden before the fateful end, leaving no trace of its being. Within a short period of time Jeffrey Redlaw discounted the incident and put it out of his mind, as he treated it as a minor matter.
Probably this obsession to cats was due to some extent that Jeffrey was a man of leisure. He was a typical landed man of the Victorian Age, interested in trifles rather that doing a bit of honest work. With more urgent matters to occupy his thoughts, he might have outgrown those fancies with the advance of middle age. But dislike for any work that call for a bit of energy, or the rejection of an interesting hobby to fill up his time, left him free with his simple fancies, and the fancies mastered him.
Jeffrey Redlaw was gentlemen of approximately forty-nine years of age, dressed in the appropriate dark gray of dress, was rather short in height, dark haired, and slim in form. His neatly shaven florid face was adorned with thick wire framed spectacles. He was living a comfortable life on an inheritance from his wealthy father, now lying peacefully in his grave. Apart for the cat obsession, he was man of eminently balanced mind. He was the last person to imagine things or to be influenced by any but proven facts.
But he occupied a bit of his time in writing trivial non-fiction pieces on some unimportant historical subjects. He had been writing on some phase of some Assyrian life in the recent days that kept him partially occupied. Jeffrey Redlaw was busy in searching for facts for his article in antiquarian bookstore and in the shelves of libraries, both public and private. When not out in those simple pursuits, he filled out his time in the comfort of an armchair in the parlor with a favorite tome in his hands. He occupied the stately family manor upon inheritance and enjoyed the pleasures it offered. Yet, like old and rambling places of its kind it had some black history to haunt the premises and to present from time to time strange sounds and mysterious sightings.
Yet another undefined mystery coursed through the edifice. It surrounded his untimely and tragic end and the horror that hung over him, which came as a surprise to all who knew him. It was revealed later in his diary and even from the reports from official documents. Much remained obscure and his kith and kin had to trust the entire evidence at hand and try to piece together the puzzling event.
From the record it appears that some weeks before his demise, Jeffrey Redlaw was enjoying a summer's day comfortably seated on a lawn chair under the shade of an old oak reading a rare book. As he turned a page, his eyes rested upon a small mound of earth that probably his gardener overlooked. There was nothing unusual about that heap of soil, but somehow it fascinated him. He resumed his reading, yet the mound was insistent in demanding his attention. Jeffrey was determined to keep his thoughts on the tome. Yet, it was a struggle, and in the end he closed his book and looked once again at the black soil, and he looked with curiosity as to the cause of such an absurd attraction.
Jeffrey Redlaw was a realist and not given into fantasies, and he smiled at the absurdity of his fascination. The surprise was registered on his features, for he saw the reason for his obsession. The heaped earth resembled in his mind the likeness of a black cat! He laughed at the absurdity of it for there were a couple of yellow pebbles just where the cat's eyes should have been. He was put out by his thoughts and he jumped up from chair, and kicked the mound out of any resemblance to a black cat. He returned laughingly to his comfort. Yet he was disturbed and it left him with a sense of disquiet and vague sense of fear, which he did not like.
About a fortnight later when he was absorbed in his writing efforts, a sense of undefined horror slowly encroached upon him and he found himself in a sort of a daydream that had the terrors of a nightmare. He dreamt himself stroking an enormous black cat, which grew and grew to gigantic proportions. The creature's soft fur entwined around his fingers like a mass, of silky living snakes that caused tiny multiple wounds on the skin of his hands, while the purring of the cat grew in until it became a roar like a raging storm and overwhelmed him in all his senses. With all his hidden strength in his semi-consciousness he sprang free from the evil daydream. The incident of the deathly nightmare left him in a state of shock, which took some time for Jeffrey to recover his wits.
The next horrific incident happened a few days later. He had retired for bed and slept soundly, but towards wakening his sleep was disturbed by a kind of a nocturnal fear. A nightmare occurred that pictured vividly two brilliant stars coming towards him. Then when were nearly upon, they suddenly turned into two enormous cat's eyes, flaming green and yellow. He sprang up from his sleep with a terrified cry, and found himself wide-awake. And there on the sill of a high casement window loomed a large black cat with its back in a defensive stance glowering at him with yellowish eyes. A moment later the cat disappeared.
But the mysterious puzzle to the entire sighting was that the window- sill was not accessible to any creature without wings. There was visible way by which a cat could have climbed to it. Nor was it possible for creature to enter from the outside as the window was sealed in its embrasure.
About a week later on a fine evening when he was returning from his club he felt something soft and furry rubbing his legs. He was taking the keys to his house when he thought something rubbed against him. Looking down in wonder, he saw nothing that would indicate that strange feeling. Then looking back he though he saw a black shadow behind him. Jeffrey Redlaw was not the type to have such imagination, so he dismissed it to tiredness of the late hour.
As he entered into the house and paused in the vestibule to remove his topcoat he thought he something move within the house. When he switched on the lights he again saw a faint black shadow and this time it was going up the staircase to upper floor. He was certain it was shadow, but there was nothing solid near it. The light was good and he saw it clearly.
“Strange,” his mind rambled, “Dearie me there is nothing about to cast such a shadow. Ohh my god, it has the motions of a cat...”
Strange incidents continued to encompass Jeffrey Redlaw that caused him quite a bit of misery. A near fatal incident happened on a stormy evening in the coming of the winter months. Jeffrey was coming downstairs when he noticed in a badly lit corner of the staircase something that resembled that he took to be a cat. He pulled back due to his natural revulsion of cats. As he turned away it seemed that the shadow moved. As he shrank back his feet entwined and he tumbled headlong down the remaining stairs. He fell heavily that shook himself badly.
On picking himself with the hold of the banister he found that one leg of his trousers was torn a bit above the ankle. The curious thing about the rend was that there were three parallel vertical tears – something that would be caused by a cat claws. Then he felt a smarting on his leg and to his horror he found three deep scratches on the side of his ankle, similar to the tear on his trousers.
“That strange apparition of cat meant mischief,” he mused shakily, “but where it the cat! I have seen its shadow, felt it fur, and now scratched by its paws.”
Jeffrey would have liked to believe that it was a mere optical illusion, but the physical evidence of touch and sight cause a gloomy foreboding. From then on his mental outlook was more or less tinged with dread and obscured with fright.
The following Jeffrey's leg still pained him and he retreated to an armchair in the parlor where spent the good part of the day with one or two of his favorite books. Towards the early afternoon another unusual happening occurred that caused alarm. While turning a page he heard a soft thud, something that might have been caused by a cat's paws landing on the wooden parquet. He was startled by the noise and when he searched through the room he saw on the stone of the hearth a crouched cat with gleaming eyes, and in a moment it was not there.
Jeffrey Redlaw was truly scared. It was bad enough for him to have the sight of shadow apparitions, but it was far worse to have something that was certainly real by the prospect of being attacked by a cat from some other plane of existence.
Jeffrey Redlaw did not sleep restfully that night as his mind was absorbed by thought of a specter cat that was gaining power of his mental state and was now able to manifest its presence and hostility in a more forceful fashion. But a further shock awaited him upon rising the following morning.
He found some blood stains on the white of his pillow; up inspection in the mirror above his dressing table he note the presence of tiny wounds on his neck that could of been caused by a cat clutching his neck with its sharp claws.
The final tragic act occurred a week later. The slightly deaf housekeeper seemed to be awakened once during the night by strange noise emitting from the master bedroom like a cat snarling mixed with fearsome gurgling and a screaming noise. But the poor dear put it aside, as she contributed it to an old woman's imagination.
In the morning Jeffrey Redlaw did not answer when called at his usual hour despite repeated calls to the effect; and the door was found to be locked, which was also unusual, as her master never secured the door to his room. The housekeeper procured assistance from the gardener and together they forced they way into the room. They were shocked when they found Jeffrey Redlaw covered in blood and crouched in a corner of the room. The unfortunate man's throat had been torn open all around. So far it could be ascertained, Jeffrey had been asleep when he was attacked for the sheets were bespattered with blood. He apparently got out his bed to defend himself from the Thing that had him in a fearful grip. The look horror on his distorted face was beyond description.
There was nothing to show how an assailant got access to the room, as they were no signs of entry. Yet, on the bloodstains on the floor were footprints of gigantic cat that led from the corpse to the opposite wall – and there they ceased. The revengeful beast never came back, but whether it passed through the solid wall of the room of disappeared in the thin air was never know. In some mysterious way it came and went: and in passing did that deed of bloody horror.
And in the nearby fields the grasses parted to a soft tread......
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