Stray on Tanner Street

         “Sorry buddy, I’m allergic.” Alex kept a shoe between him and the black cat while he tried to shuffle through the front door to his apartment. The cat was a relative newcomer to the street, but then again, so was Alex. In fact, he felt he would be more likely to pick the cat out of a lineup than any neighbor. Usually he spotted it poking about the October piles of street leaves when he got home from work. Sometimes it followed halfway up his stoop, but then stopped as if it knew better than to indulge in a hope so contrary to life experience. So imagined Alex, anyway.

         Today was different. The car had barely rolled to a stop when the cat pounced onto his windshield, startling him. “Careful, you might scare someone,” he’d said as he got out of the car. Then he remembered it was Halloween.

         And now, stuck halfway through the doorway, he watched the cat dance frantically around his outdoor leg in a desperate attempt to get inside. “What’s with you?” Alex said.

         He finally slipped through and quickly shut the door, but immediately put a palm to his forehead. His keys were still in the lock. He pulled back a curtain from the front window and saw the cat sitting on the top step, right below the door. But he didn’t need to see; the mewing was loud and persistent.

         He gave it a few minutes. He sneezed. The grey skies began a light drizzle, but the cat didn’t leave. So he braced his leg back into the doorway and cracked it open once more. His hand was on the keys in an instant, but he was shocked to feel claws sink into his shins. He instinctively thrashed and kicked, and then heard a jangle on the pavement.

         Alex recovered and scanned the sidewalk, and there was the black cat. It held the metal ring in its mouth, keys glimmering in front of its inky black fur. Alex stared and the green eyes stared back. A whisper of bitter wind rustled the empty branches overhead, and the drizzle dripped down his hair and onto his scalp. The cat moved first.

         It darted left down the sidewalk in a flash. Alex sprinted after and for a moment thought he might be able to catch it, but the cat was only playing. It weaved easily through a line of oak trees before angling right toward the alley.

         The cat was soon out of sight, but he kept running after it onto the gravel drive, past fences, garages and garbage cans. He slowed to a walk toward the end of the alley, feeling foolish and out of breath. There was a yowl from around the corner where the alley met the road.

         Alex rounded the corner and stopped short. An impossibly tall, lanky man scooped a black fabric bag down over the black cat, and swiftly hoisted it over his shoulder. The man was draped in so eerie a tattered cloth, even for Halloween, that Alex involuntarily stepped back behind the corner fence to watch. The catch had happened so abruptly, and was so foreign a sight that he questioned whether he had imagined the cat going into the bag.

         But when the tall man opened the trunk and carelessly tossed the black bag inside, he heard another yowl— and a metal jangle. The trunk closed with the familiar whump of an old sedan; in this case a bruised purple Crown Vic. It passed right by Alex, who was still crouched by the fence.

         At the sight of all his keys driving away, he pushed down his irrational fear of the strange man and ran after the car, waving his arms. It didn’t slow down, and he watched it make the next left in a puff of blue exhaust. Alex recalled a long traffic light down that road. He continued to run, cutting across the Hamsfeld Cemetery in a last ditch effort to catch the car.

         As he pounded up the gravel path, he marveled at what he had seen: surely not a loving owner, with a bag and a trunk; and surely not animal control, in a costume and Crown Vic. He tried to remember the man’s face.

         Alex crested the top of the cemetery hill and saw the green light. The car sped through, but then braked and took a turn he did not expect: Tanner Street, a no outlet drive with nothing on it but the old Vinchester house. He pulled his coat a little tighter. Halloween was really shaping up.

         Tanner Street stretched on longer than he remembered, probably because he had never walked it before. There was no sign of the Crown Vic, but he knew there was no other exit. A long row of chestnut trees lined the farmland on his right. The left side of the road was a dense tangle of hornbeams and ivy. Then the pavement gave way to dirt, and he knew it couldn’t be much further.

         His phone vibrated. He checked the name and picked up.

         “Alex Alex Aleeeeeex,” the voice ribbed. “Are you still coming tonight?”

         “Dude. I forgot it was Halloween.”

         “No Alex, noooooo. Why do you do this to me? You’re missing everything. I’m a blue-footed booby. Get it?”

         “I don’t think I do.”

         The curtain of foliage on his left gave way to an unkempt yard, where a house loomed out of the twilight. A hint of fog hovered low about the porch, and he heard frogs chirping from a small pond on the right side. The Crown Vic was parked in front, next to a white chevy van and a rusted red truck.

         “Dude, I’m at the Vinchester,” Alex whispered.

         “I guess that’s pretty Halloween. How’s it holding up?” Alex sized up the property.

         “Three stories of broken glass. Looks just like Luigi’s mansion.”

         “What are you doing there?”

         “A cat stole my keys, and then someone bagged the cat and threw it in their trunk, and drove it here.”

         “Was the cat black?”

         “How’d you guess?”

         “Alex. Aleeeeex. Shelters don’t even let you adopt black cats in October.” Alex scanned the windows but saw nothing.

         “I don’t follow.”

         “You know. Halloween, black cats.”

         “You mean like Hocus Pocus?” Alex asked.

         “No, what? The one with Salem?”

         “I think that’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”

         “Whatever. Witch stuff.”

         “So witches want classic pets?”

         “Not pets, man.”

         Alex looked up. A single shrill voice, or maybe a small chorus of voices, called out an indiscernible word from inside the house. It was dark enough now for him to notice a warm glow from one of the first floor windows.

         “Alex? What was that?”

         “I think I’d better go.” He began to turn away from the house back down Tanner when he heard wild yowling; all the unearthly sounds only a cat can produce. Alex tried to imagine what was happening inside, but couldn’t. All he could see in his mind were the green eyes on his stoop.

         “Alex? You still there?”

         “I’ll call you back.”

         He crossed the yard to the Crown Vic and peered inside. Books and papers littered the floor, and a yellow film covered the seats. He kept walking and gingerly took the five steps up the porch to the house’s massive double doors. The cat was yowling again, and he took the chance to enter. The door swung open noiselessly.

         The large front hall was extremely dark. He could make out a grand staircase straight ahead with large wooden banisters, but the faint light proceeded from another room on the left. Adrenaline hit his bloodstream and he suddenly felt as if his body was moving of its own accord, as in a vague dream. He drew near the open doorway toward the glow and heard the crackle of a fire.

         There was a stench about the place. The cat protested louder and still more desperately, which was followed by another shrill chant of human voices. Alex gripped the trim on one side of the open doorway tightly, and slowly pulled one eye past the edge.

         Three silhouettes stood in front of a blazing fireplace, surrounded by a ring of candles. One was impossibly tall; the man Alex had seen. Another was inconceivably short, and a third improbably wide. They appeared almost comical as a trio, but the strange tattered clothing no longer looked like a costume in this context, which disturbed Alex. The tall man held up a black bag, which shook and tumbled and meowed.

         Then Alex noticed the dark stains on the floor, and the wisps of fabric all around. Not fabric; fur, he realized. And finally, with horror, he spied a tangled pink lump near the fire, wet and glistening.

         The fat one held out the hilt of a knife, and the short one accepted it. Their lips were moving silently, or else murmuring too quietly for Alex to hear. The tall man reached a gloved hand into the bag, and produced the cat by its neck like a magic trick. The cat emerged resignedly, inexplicably clasping the keyring in its mouth. This was too much for Alex. Its green eyes met his.

         Then he caught a wretched whiff from the fireplace. He sneezed. The three figures didn’t turn to look, but slowly lowered their arms and spoke in unison: “Welcome, stranger.”

         He’d seen enough. Without thinking, he threw the only object he had as hard as he could at the tall man and lunged toward the black cat. His phone struck the man in the temple, and the crack and flinch were enough for the cat to struggle free. It launched from the tall man’s shoulder toward Alex, who caught it halfway across the room.

         The short one and the fat one looked at him with beady black eyes and began to laugh shrilly, before taking sudden steps toward him. The knife caught the firelight, and Alex turned and ran with the cat still in his arms.

         He ran out the front door and down the steps, past the cars and down the dark corridor of Tanner Street. The cat clung tightly to his shoulders. It should have run too, but he was grateful for its presence.

         The laughter echoed in his head. He kept expecting to hear an engine rev and headlights to light him up at any moment, and he braced himself to jump into the thick tangle of bushes if necessary. But he was alone with his footsteps in the dark. He didn’t stop running until he made it back off Tanner, where the streetlights began. He paused, set down the cat and knelt to take the keys from its mouth. It brushed against his legs and walked behind him all the way back to the apartment.

         He swung the door open wide and let the cat in first. It hopped onto the sofa. Alex locked the door and then the deadbolt, and collapsed onto the couch beside the cat. He stroked its back until it stopped quivering. He sneezed.

         And that was the beginning.