The Shape of Night(12)

“That’s what everyone said, but I wondered about it at the time. I still wonder about it.” He pulls his hammer from his tool belt and turns his attention back to his job. “But no one cares what I think.”





Six


Hannibal has vanished.

Only as I finish eating supper do I realize I haven’t seen my cat since Ned and Billy packed up and left for the day. Now it’s dark outside, and if there’s anything reliable about Hannibal, it’s the fact he will always be sitting by his bowl at dinnertime.

I pull on a sweater and step outside, where an evening chill has swept in from the sea. Calling his name, I circle the house toward the cliff’s edge. On the granite ledge I pause, thinking about the girl whose body would have landed here. In the light that shines from the window, I can almost see the girl’s blood still spattered across the rock, but of course it’s just dark patches of lichen on the stone. I glance up at the widow’s walk, where the girl had dangled from the railing, and I imagine her plummeting through the darkness to land on this unforgiving granite. I don’t want to think about what such a fall does to a human body, but I can’t shut out the image of a shattered spine and a skull cracking open like an egg. Suddenly the sea is so loud it sounds like a wave is roaring straight toward me and I retreat from the cliff’s edge, my heart pounding. It’s too dark to search any further; Hannibal will have to fend for himself. Isn’t that what tomcats do, prowl around all night on the hunt? At twenty-six pounds, he can afford to skip a meal or two.

    I really should get him neutered.

I walk back into the house and am just locking the door when I hear a faint meow. It comes from upstairs.

So he’s been inside the house all this time. Has he gotten himself shut into a room somewhere? I climb to the second floor and open the doors to the unused bedrooms. No Hannibal.

I hear another meow, still from above. He’s up in the turret.

I open the door to the turret staircase and flip on the wall switch. I’m halfway up the stairs when the lone lightbulb suddenly gives a pop and goes out, plunging me into darkness. I should not have drunk that fourth glass of wine; now I have to steady myself on the railing as I climb. I feel as if the darkness is liquid and I’m dragging the weight of my body through water, struggling to surface. When at last I reach the turret, I grope along the wall for the light switch and flip it on.

“There you are, you bad boy.”

A smug-looking Hannibal sits among the jumble of carpenter’s tools with a freshly killed mouse at his feet.

“Well, come on. If you want dinner.”

He appears utterly disinterested in following me downstairs; in fact, he’s not looking at me at all, but is staring steadily at the window that faces the widow’s walk. Why isn’t he hungry? Is he actually eating the mice he catches? I shudder at the thought of him hopping into bed with me, his belly full of rodents.

“Come on,” I plead. “I’ve got tuna for you.”

He merely glances at me, then his gaze returns to the window.

“That’s it. It’s time to go.” I reach down to pick him up and am shocked when he gives a ferocious hiss and lashes out with his claws. I jerk away, my arm stinging. I’ve owned Hannibal since he was a kitten and he’s never attacked me before. Does he think I’m trying to steal his mouse? But he’s not even looking at me; his gaze is still fixed on the window, staring at something I cannot see.

    I look down at the claw marks he raked across my skin, where parallel tracks of blood are now oozing. “That’s it. No dinner for you.” I turn off the light switch and am about to feel my way back down the dark staircase when I hear his feral growl. The sound makes every hair on the back of my neck suddenly stand up.

In the darkness I see the unearthly glow of Hannibal’s eyes.

But I also see something else: a shadow that thickens and congeals near the window. I cannot move, cannot make a sound; fear roots me in place as the shadow slowly assumes a form that is so solid I can no longer see through it to the window beyond. The smell of the sea floods my nostrils, a scent so powerful it’s as if a wave has just washed over me.

A man looms in the window, his shoulders framed by moonlight. He stares out to sea, his back turned to me as if he’s not even aware I am in the room. He stands straight and tall, his hair a mass of thick black waves, his long dark coat molded to broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Surely this is a trick of the moonlight; men do not suddenly materialize. He cannot be standing here. But Hannibal’s eyes are aglow as he too stares at this figment of my imagination. If there is nothing there, what is my cat looking at?

Frantically I reach for the light switch, but I feel only bare wall. Where is it, where is it?

The figure turns from the window.

I freeze, my hand pressed to the wall, my heart banging. For a moment he stands with his face silhouetted in profile and I see a sharp nose, a jutting chin. Then he faces me, and even though his eyes are only a faint shimmer, I know he is looking straight at me. The voice I hear seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

“Do not be afraid,” he says.

    Slowly I lower my hand to my side. No longer am I frantic to find the light switch; I am focused only on him, on a man who cannot possibly be standing before me. He approaches so silently that all I can hear is the whoosh of my own blood through my ears. Even as he draws closer I cannot move. My limbs have gone numb; I feel as if I am floating, my own body dissolving into shadow. As if I am the phantom, adrift in a world not my own.