Cruel World(37)

Alice rolled her tongue around in her mouth as if she’d tasted something bad and then took another drink if vodka.

“She’d just gotten back from vacation, somewhere in California I think, heard her mention it to the building manager after she finished complaining about the heat not working for the hundredth time, and those cats had already started yowling again. She’d brought them somewhere while she was gone, and it was awesome not to hear them scratching and clawing on the door at all hours of the night and day. That night I’d just gotten back from The Cabinet, it’s a liquor store where I work—worked—anyway, I was coming up the stairs, and there’s this pale, scrawny thing crouched half in and half out of the old bat’s apartment. I remember thinking that somehow one of her chairs had mildewed and she was trying to shove it out through the door. I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what I was seeing. She heard me and stepped out of her apartment all hunkered down because Mrs. Wilhelm was about five foot nothing and this thing was over eight feet tall. It had a cat in its mouth, one of the tabbys. I remember the orange and white stripes on its tail and ass that hadn’t been chewed up yet. Its fur was all matted down with saliva and blood. The thing just looked at me for a minute. It had pieces of gut on its chin, and it just stared at me with Mrs. Wilhelm’s eyes.”

Alice set her empty glass down and swallowed. She gazed into the fire not saying anything. After she’d been quiet for over a minute, Quinn cleared his throat.

“You don’t have to finish; I get the picture.”

“She came for me,” Alice said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “She spit the chewed cat out and started toward me, her long skinny legs pumping and hands touching the floor like some sort of hairless monkey. I grabbed the closest thing to me, which was one of the old fire extinguishers hanging on the wall—they were everywhere in the building—and I swung it up right as she lunged for me. It hit her in the side of the face and her head bounced off the wall as she grabbed at me. I fell on the stairs and managed to snag the bannister on the way down, but the old bat wasn’t so lucky. The stairway was one of the old ones with a landing for the second floor and then for the third but it didn’t turn at all. You could look down from the third floor and see the first floor landing. I was always terrified Ty would trip down them. We would’ve never moved into that damn place if we could’ve afforded somewhere else.”

Alice seemed to come back to herself and looked around the room. Ty turned in his sleep and sighed. The fire cracked, and a couple of embers flew out of the hearth, fading away in midair.

“She fell and I heard her neck snap on the second landing. By the time she hit the first floor, there were bones sticking out of her skin and blood running along the treads. All I could think of was, had she gone across the hallway and visited Ty and his babysitter while I’d been gone?”

The fire eating at the dry wood became the loudest sound in the room again. Alice turned her empty glass slowly on the table.

“But they were okay.”

“They were fine. His babysitter was freaked after hearing the commotion outside the door, but I was so thankful she hadn’t opened it. If she had…”

“Did you leave right away?” Quinn asked, trying to keep her from focusing too much on the memory.

“Pretty much, if you don’t count the time it took to put some clothes and food together. My car’s a shitty Pontiac Grand Prix, but it never gave me any trouble. It would still be going if those *s hadn’t run us off the road.” Her eyes swam with tears and she blinked once, long, and when she opened them again, the tears were gone. “They even took his walking cane. I don’t know why or what they’d use it for, but they took it anyway. I looked in the ditches hoping they’d tossed it out after realizing they had no use for it, but it wasn’t there.” She sniffed once and swallowed.

“I can make him one, I’m sure. Something around here would work,” Quinn offered.

“No. I’ll find him one when we get going again. There’ll be a medical supply store in Portland.”

“That’s where you’re headed?”

“Yeah, well, it’s a stop anyway.”

“Why Portland?”

She looked at him again, tracing his face with her eyes so that it seemed like fingers were probing his features. He nearly shivered.

“My mother. She’s in a home there. She’s got early onset dementia.”