The Dark Yule Read online

  I started to reply, to question—and stopped. Sitting upright, paws together, I rotated my tufted ears, and stared over Tilly’s back at the iced-over pond. Eyes unfocused, I searched for That Which Cannot Be Seen.

  Tantalizing fishy shadows slid beneath the ice. These I tried to ignore…until I realized that their numbers had abruptly tripled. For an eyeblink, dozens of black shapes writhed beneath the surface of the water, in a place where I knew only a few ferociously tough carp survived.

  Next I turned my attention to the withered, stunted corpse of a long-dead bonsai on the other side of the pond. I concentrated my whole being upon the bare brown branches, until I dropped into a deeper state of consciousness, where thought merely babbled in the background, and primal, unceasing awareness took hold.

  Time slowed. My eyes jerked, involuntarily, to the left. The bonsai vanished. It reappeared a second later, blurring itself slowly back into position. However, its shadow was at a different angle, one that did not correspond to the sun’s position.

  I swore, and blinked repeatedly, until things looked mostly normal again. The bonsai’s shadow, however, was still not at quite the right degree.

  Tilly emitted a rusty-sounding purr. “You see,” she said. “I’m not surprised you saw one night-gaunt. I’m surprised you haven’t seen a dozen. Not to mention a lot of other, much worse beasties besides.”

  The fur was rising on my spine, a stiff, prickly manifestation of fear. “What’s happening?” I demanded. “What is this…dislocation?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tilly. Damn her, she didn’t sound concerned at all. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

  A past-life memory tickled the back of my synapses. “Time often gets slippery around the solstice,” I suggested. It seemed true, but I could also sense that I hadn’t quite grasped the memory correctly.

  “Fair enough,” said Tilly, shutting one eye. “But this is more than a bit. And it’s more than time.”

  “It’s space as well,” I agreed.

  “In the old days, I wouldn’t have worried,” said Tilly. “Not this close to Yule. The humans would’ve burned bonfires and beaten the bounds of the town. Their prayers and songs would have marked this place as theirs, as surely as a tomcat’s spray, and the blood of the sacrifices would’ve appeased every spirit within a day’s travel.”

  Tilly’s memories went back further than mine—I could not recall a time of animal sacrifices. “Or,” I suggested, “the church bells would’ve rung on Christmas morn.”

  “Or that,” Tilly agreed. “And the world would’ve slipped back into its rightful track, without any fuss.”

  “But not now,” I said. It was half a question.

  “Not now,” said Tilly flatly. “Reality has been sadly neglected. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s held up this long.”

  A sudden scratching sound came from the back wall, and I hissed. “Who’s there?” I demanded, my back arching.

  Libby poked his ridiculous, bat-eared head over the top of the antiquated bricks. “It’s me! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  “Everywhere?” I questioned, slowly resuming my seat.

  “Well, at your house,” Libby admitted, pulling himself over the wall and jumping into the yard. “Here was next. But anyway! Pumpkin Spice!”

  “Present,” I affirmed, closing my eyes and purring.

  “I saw a night-gaunt! No, I saw two!”

  My eyes snapped fully open, and my pupils dilated, so that with dazzling clarity I could perceive every whisker and hair upon Libby’s bony muzzle. “Where? When?” I demanded.

  “On my roof! MY roof!” Libby seemed indignant about this, as if night-gaunts belonged solely on other people’s roofs. “I tried to get Mark to see them when he was getting in his car, but they just flew off before he could turn around.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Tilly murmured. “So few humans these days can See That Which Cannot Be Seen.”

  “Well, you needn’t tell me that,” Libby huffed. “I just got smacked silly for clawing his pants. Why do humans make such a fuss about a few tiny holes?”

  “Do you think they’re attracted to what’s happening to the town?” I asked Tilly.

  Tilly frowned and, for the first time, turned her ghostly, unseeing eyes upon me. “Of course,” she said. “And as I said, I’m surprised we’re not downright swarmed with creatures from all hundred and eight realms. They’re bound to be attracted to this mess.”

  “What’s going on? What’s happening to the town?” Libby demanded.

  Tilly ignored him. “But, then again…night-gaunts. Hmm. It is odd.”

  “What is?” I pressed.

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure they’re drawn to all this, but…”

  “But?” I prompted her.

  “But generally they just sort of hover near the edges, you know, drifting between our world and the dreamlands. To be pulled this far into the material realm, they’ve usually got to be summoned.” Her tail twisted and thrashed in thought. “I suppose it could have something to do with the ghouls.”

  “The ghouls?” I asked.

  “Ghouls and night-gaunts have an ancient alliance,” Tilly explained. “It’s mostly in the dreamlands, but…”

  “It’s not as though Kingsport doesn’t have an infestation of ghouls,” said Libby, with a fastidious shudder. He licked his paw and ran it over his ear as if to wash away the very thought. “There are more of those canine bastards every year.”

  “Yes, and they’re on the move,” said Tilly. “I’ve heard them scampering about their tunnels, during all hours of daylight, no less.”

  Tunnels! I’d nearly forgotten to tell Tilly of the creature I’d encountered—a creature whose presence now took on ghastly implications. “Speaking of tunnels and creatures and so forth,” I began, “something in the gutters tried to eat me this morning.”

  “So it begins,” said Tilly, and yawned. When I tried to speak again, she made a warning noise deep in her throat. I stopped.

  “I’m tired,” she told Libby and me. “This lifetime won’t last past Christmas, not if I’m lucky, and I’d like to end it in peace. So whatever is happening now, it’s on you young things. My advice is to take a look at the ghouls. Get one to talk to you.”

  “Uh, how?” Libby asked, tilting his head. “Why would any ghoul talk to a cat?”

  Tilly’s eyes were closed, and her chin was dropping slowly, jerkily, toward her chest. My senses, sharpened by the recent vision, could see her figure dim as her soul slipped away into the dreamlands, where she was once again young, and beautiful, and powerful.

  4

  Eldritch

  We used the crosswalk at the corner of Walnut St. this time, but only after exploratory sniffs confirmed that the Bastard Pack had already jumped their sorry excuse for a fence, and were roaming free elsewhere.

  Well, all except for one.

  “I smell the fish,” said Libby. We were crouched on the sidewalk, a safe distance from where I’d nearly been pulled down into the sewer. “And dog.” He paused. “And blood.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. My own nose isn’t as good as Libby’s.

  “It’s faint but it’s there,” he said. “What do you think? Did one of the Bastard Pack get too close?”

  “If so, it’d have to be one of the Pits,” I said. “I don’t think anything bigger could fit down there.”

  “And you have no idea what it was?” Libby asked for what must have been the fifth time.

  “I said no. I’ve never seen a…a fishy, person, thing in the sewers before. Have you?”

  Libby shuddered. “This is putting me right off fish,” he muttered, backing away from that ominous opening in the gutter. “I hope Mark and Clarence bought the lamb flavor last night. I’ll have to turn my nose up at anything else and hope they take the hint.”

  “Morwen always gets whatever’s cheapest at the store.”

  “No wonder you hunt so much,” Libby sympathized, swiping
past me with a friendly shoulder-rub.

  We leapt atop the fence and meandered onward, single-file. The day was warming beautifully. It was the perfect time for a lengthy nap in a sunny spot on the floor, and I knew without asking that was likely Libby’s plan as well as my own.

  Still, Libby paused when it came time for us to part ways, at a quiet corner not far from my house. “I’m not sure I want to go home,” he confessed, easing his butt down upon the narrow fence and squinting at the bright winter sky. “Two night-gaunts at my house, Spice. That’s twice as many as at yours.”

  “Well, you can’t come home with me,” I reminded him. “At least, not if Her Husband is home today. He won’t tolerate more than one cat. ”

  “And he yells so loudly.” Libby flicked his ear in memory. “I suppose I’d better go back. What would Mark and Clarence do if one of those things got inside? Even if they could see it, they’d be helpless as kittens.”

  “You’ve got to be there to warn them,” I affirmed.

  “Hah! Fat lot of good it does. You should see the nasty creatures that get into our house sometimes. The guests bring them, I think. There was this little black thing that walked on two legs but was the size of a rat—it came in one of the guest’s suitcases and lived in the hall shadows for weeks. I tried to swipe the damn thing every time I saw it, but my paw just passed through.” Libby held up said paw, contemplated it, and nibbled at an overlong claw.

  “Did it bite?” I asked.

  “Not me,” said Libby, after spitting out a fragment of nail. “But it went after the guests once or twice. One of them accused Mark and Clarence of having bed-bugs, even though the bites were all wrong. Such a kerfuffle! And of course, for at least a month it was, ‘Stop yowling, Libby, there’s nothing there!’”

  “Oh, of course.”

  Libby inspected his paw, decided it passed muster, and eased into a long, yawning stretch. The bright sun doubtless made him languid, as it did me; night-gaunts and time-slips and even shadow-rats all suddenly seemed capable of waiting. “At least,” Libby added, “your Morwen knows a bit about magic.”

  “Hmm. It’s nothing to count on,” I admitted. This was a good reminder, though: I’d meant to check up on possible occult activity in our home. I had better do it at once. “Well, see you later, Libby.”

  “I’ll dream of you,” he said, rather formally, and jumped down, slinking through a small gap in the next door neighbor’s fence.

  By the time I’d reached my own house I could barely keep my eyes open, but I’d made a promise to myself, and it’s bad habit to break those—it wreaks havoc not only on one’s psyche, but also on one’s magic. How can you expect the universe to obey your commands, if even you ignore them? So I slipped through the cat door and went straight to the stairs.

  I heard the television blaring in the living room as I passed, and easily smelled the patchouli reek of the newest in a long line of babysitters. My baby was shrieking along with whatever was playing on the devil-box so I knew he was well, although if a kitten had made noises like that I would have smacked him. Humans are different, though—so much depends on the quality and quantity of their squawking language. Silence does not come naturally to them.

  The carpeted stairs took me to the bedrooms. A second flight of bare wooden stairs brought me to the attic. The door was closed, but the handle was a simple lever. I stood up on my back legs and pawed at it, and the door fell open with a welcoming click. I was lucky it hadn’t been locked. Perhaps Morwen had been up here after all.

  As soon as I stepped inside, however, I knew I’d been wrong. Nobody had used this little room for quite some time. There was a thick coating of dust on the worn wooden floorboards, and in the air it was heavy enough to make me sneeze once—twice—three times. Stacks of cardboard boxes leaned precariously in random locations, and my baby’s bassinet was standing on end against the dirty window. What had once been Morwen’s special place had been given over to storage.

  Nonetheless, it paid to be sure. When my sneezing fit had finished, I stepped forward to inspect the barely-visible remnants of the chalk circle. No sign of renewal. I then negotiated my way around several moldering boxes, to the writing desk that still held Morwen’s small magical library. It was an antique, that desk, one that Morwen had brought home in great excitement—I’d gathered she’d considered herself lucky to find such a beautiful old specimen. Luckier than she knew, perhaps, because from my perspective it was easy to spot the eldritch symbols carved into its underside. Even now, when I looked to See That Which Cannot Be Seen, a faint aura of magic clung to the age-polished wood, like the lingering aroma of rare incense. Kingsport was quite an old settlement, after all, and its residents had carried on certain rites and rituals for longer than many other towns, even in this tradition-loving area. It was really not so surprising that the property of one practitioner should pass to the hands of another—and, perhaps, it was not purely luck.

  But that had been before Her Husband came, and this was now. The colorful paperbacks on the desk’s shelf smelled only like aging paper and more dust, with not one whiff of Morwen’s scent. Granted they hadn’t been of much use to her even when she’d been practicing, but these cheap, mass-produced grimoires had at least been a starting point. I’d appreciated that these books had encouraged her to involve me in rituals as her familiar. More than once I had, perhaps, been able to nudge a spell or two in the right direction. But her magical career had ended almost as soon as it had begun, when she’d gotten her new job and met Her Husband. I doubted Morwen had even noted my assistance.

  I touched a paw to the books, in a brief, bittersweet salute to old times, before crossing the remnants of the chalk circle, and following my own dusty footprints out the door. It was evident that the night-gaunts had not been summoned in response to anything Morwen had done. In all likelihood, given Libby’s double sighting this morning, they were not targeting this house or family in particular. Whatever their business in Kingsport was, it had nothing to do with me and mine, and I was sleepily grateful for that.

  Below, the TV still blared, and my baby still squalled. I would inspect him later, and give him the post-lunch bath he would almost certainly require. In the meantime, though, I would treat myself to a nap amidst the soft, milky-smelling clothes on the shelves of the baby’s room. Her Husband would never know.

  * * *

  That was a good nap, but I had a better one that evening, in a basket full of baby blankets that had been shoved under an end table in the living room and subsequently forgotten for months. Safe in this secluded space, I’d ventured once more into the realms of dream; not, this time, to the sunset city, but to Ulthar.

  Ulthar was a bustling town famous in the dreamworlds for its formidable felines. You see, there had been some unpleasantness many, many centuries ago, when a child’s kitten was killed by a wicked old couple, and the child had called upon ancient and terrible gods to exact his vengeance. That vengeance had come in the form of a cat army that had—there’s no delicate way to put it, really—devoured the old couple down to the littlest finger-bones. Hence the local law against the killing of cats.

  So the cats of Ulthar are comfortable and sleek, and nap on the sun-warmed cobblestone roads, secure in the knowledge that the three-wheeled carts of Ulthar will steer carefully around. And in addition to hosting many cats of its own, Ulthar is a popular tourist destination for cats of all types, from a variety of worlds.

  That night, I was one of those tourists. I was at the Arched Back Inn, which did not exactly cater to cats—Ulthar being, technically, a town for humanoids—but which was famously cat-friendly. The proprietor was a one-eyed man with side-whiskers and a soft spot for felines, and he not only permitted cats to lie upon his enormous stone hearth, but occasionally laid out bowls of rich cream, or small fish, or liver, or other such tasty treats.

  As it was dusk, the Arched Back was crowded with both cats and people, but I didn’t mind; I was being charmed by a cat named Solar,
a handsome brute of a Tom nearly as big as I, with fluffy cream-colored fur and a rakishly ragged ear. Solar was a cat of Earth like myself, but he’d postponed his reentrance into the material realm, preferring to adventure in the more uncertain—but more exciting—worlds of dream. Judging by his vague memories of horse-drawn carriages and powdered wigs, Solar had been dodging his reincarnation for quite some time.

  “But, you know, there are rumors Carter is still around,” he said, “though I don’t see how it’s possible. The sunset city has gone to rack and ruin. He left it to the cats, of course—all right and proper—but it would hardly be in such a state if he was still living.”

  I dredged my memory. “Carter is the sorcerer the cats rescued from the lunar beasts, right? On the dark side of the moon?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Solar purred. “I was there. Good eating that day. Those big toad-looking beasts don’t look tasty, but actually their flesh bears a distinct resemblance to chicken.”

  “Sounds like a good time,” I said. My tail twitched with jealousy. I had always moved dutifully from one lifetime to the next, never questioning or attempting to avoid my repeated incarnations in Kingsport. Now I wondered if I wasn’t missing out on the real fun.

  “He led an army of ghouls, too,” said Solar, making the face most cats make when ghouls are mentioned. “And took out the lunar beasts’ base.”

  My ears rotated forward at the mention of ghouls, betraying my interest. “He befriended both cats and ghouls?” I asked. “Odd. You’d think he’d pick one or the other.”