THE CAT'S MAW

CHAPTER II

II: OF CATS AND CATASTROPHE

His feet arced up into the sky.

They looked as if they could scrape the clouds. He felt weightless. Light and fast and free. The cool breeze of each swing whipped through his hair and against his face, and when he fell backward he would look up at the tree, transfixed by the tangled canopy rushing overhead.

There was something else in the branches, looming a little closer with each downward swing. Through the dark of the leaves he could see its eyes shine like tiny suns, and its lithe body weave in and out of the tree's limbs.

Billy closed his eyes as he swung upward. A sound struck his chest like a thunderclap, or the roar of a mythical beast. He opened them. The swinging continued, the sky tilting and spinning as it does in a dream, but his vision stayed fixed. It was drawn to one thing.

The cat.

It was perched on the lowest branch, snaring the boy in its golden gaze. It twitched its whiskers and swished its tail.

And then the cat spoke.

"You shouldn't have come here," it said.

The words didn't come from its mouth. They didn't make sound in the air, as words do. Instead, they seemed to rise in Billy's mind like ghostly balloons,popping gently to reveal themselves.

"It's my dream," Billy said, reaching out to pet it. As his hand moved closer, the cat blinked. Its pupils swelled, engulfing the gold in blackness.

"Are you sure, child?"

The cat dissolved into smoke. Wisps of black and white swept through Billy's fingers and down the trunk of the great elm.

"That's not fair," said Billy, stopping the swing. "It's not fair that you can do that, and I can't."

He spun around looking for some trace of it, and saw smoke coming from the old Thomas house. From the windows. And there, on the sill of one, was the cat.

"Is that what you want?" it said, eyes aglow in the haze. "To do what I do, and know what I know?"

Billy stumbled towards the house. His legs felt heavy and weak, especially his right one. The wet ground seemed to be sucking at his feet, and he stiffened as reached the window and met the cat's gaze.

"That's why I followed you," the boy said.

Suddenly, he was no longer standing by the house. He was on the road now, one foot on either side of the faded yellow line that cut down the middle of it.

"We're so sorry." The elderly voice came from somewhere behind him.

Billy turned to meet it. He saw a silver-haired couple, finely dressed. Their heads were bowed, faces creased with age and regret. Behind them sat a vintage chrome and powder-blue sedan.

Blood dripped from the front fender.

"It happened so fast," said the old man. "You were looking the wrong way."

"Yes," said the old woman, "you were looking down there." She lifted her hand. It was clad in a crisp white glove, and pointed north.

Billy turned again.

The whole world opened up, like he was seeing in all directions at once. There was a large bonfire in the front yard of the Thomas house. It crackled and popped, and a column of dark smoke rose into the sky. The smoke drifted and formed black clouds over the far mountain range. The clouds flashed, and jagged bolts of lightning crashed into the highest peak.

He heard a howl then, like the baying of a wolf. The mountaintop exploded, sending plumes of stone and fire hurtling into the air. The clouds themselves fell, as if wounded by the burst, striking the horizon. They splashed and rolled and swept down the highway in a black, colossal wave.

Billy spun back around. The old couple were gone.

The wave swept forward, tearing the trees and farms and houses from the earth in its wake. It began to crest and the vast blackness of it unfolded, spreading in the sky like the wings of a giant bat.

The wind howled and the sky went dark. Lightning crashed and the wave stretched higher, billowing like the sails of a great black ship.

'NO MORE!'

The boy heard the voice and tried to run, but the water held him fast. He cried out, which did nothing to slow the rising tide or the mammoth shape upon it. He stood helpless as the sky burned, and the earth shook, and the black wave swept over him.

A pain shot through Billy's leg then, and he remembered. He took a deep breath, covered his ears, and clamped his eyes shut.

This is only a dream.

The storm collapsed around him in the darkness, vanishing like warm mist. A soft, empty silence filled the oasis in his mind.

Billy breathed.

With each breath the darkness was pierced like pinholes in the fabric behind his eyes, filling his vision with a shimmering ocean of stars. Billy scanned the constellations, searching for the cluster that had always called to him, the one that held vigil in the lonely night skies of the waking world.

Orion.

The stars blinked and then trembled. The sky shook, as if gripped in a pair of celestial hands. There was a CRACKof thunder, a frightening HISS, and a BUZZ that grew to deafening. And then voice returned.

"NO MORE!"

The scream flooded the void. The stars died with it, their light toppling like glittering rows of dominoes. The last to fade were a pair of distant golden orbs, burning to their last before blinking into nothingness.

"LISTEN," the voice hissed, and buzzed, and gurgled. "You are with USsss now.""

The sound was low, and wet, and treacherous. Billy felt it closing in and began to panic. He tried to concentrate, to breathe and remember.

It's just a dream, he repeated. It's only a dream.

"A good trick, BOYyyy," said the voice. "But you'll have to live a long, long time to know what WE knowww."

The air grew hot and foul. Billy had had hundreds, maybe thousands of dreams before, but none of them had ever smelled. He choked when he took another breath, and felt the sick rising in his chest. It was a reek of filth, and garbage, and utter decay. It was a smell so awful, so dense and noxious and violent, that Billy feared he would lose his mind.

It was the smell of Death.

"Let USsss see that pretty skin..."

The hissing grew louder, like a thousand hungry mouths sucking air through rotten teeth. Billy opened his eyes, and for a moment he thought the stars had returned. The darkness had given way to hundreds of tiny blinking lights.

But he was wrong. They weren't stars. They glowed red. And they were in pairs.

In the cruel and hellish light, Billy saw that he was in a cramped room. Its floor and walls were stone slabs covered in thick, putrid slime, and there were things twitching in the dense shadows. Things with eyes. Things that moved.

Rats.