The Cat of Malivaunt

by Jim Wright

Drivers entering the village of Malivaunt along County Highway 30 sometimes spot a large black cat sitting in the road. As they approach, the image of the cat invariably melts away and resolves into the ordinary—a fallen branch or a stray pile of leaves or a late-afternoon shadow. 

The folks of Malivaunt debate the puzzle of the disappearing Cat. The scientifically-minded declare it to be an optical illusion. Congregants of the Baptist Church mutter that it must be a devilish imp. Antiquarians insist that it is the spirit of Priscilla the Witch, a settler who died long ago protecting children of the town from raiding native warriors.

Despite the Cat’s mystery, most of the townspeople look upon it as their spectral mascot. A few, though, ponder the unseen beings that move through the world and wonder whether the Cat is an agent of light or of darkness.

***

On a gray October morning, a battered brown sedan growled over the west hill toward town. The driver was a slight man with thinning ginger hair, freckles, pale skin, and soft hands. He picked up a driver’s license from the passenger seat and squinted at it. Today his name would be…Sanford Cuthbertson. He tossed the license back on the seat.

Driving past a pumpkin stand and a peeling “I Like Ike!” billboard, Sanford noticed a cat sitting placidly in the road ahead. His face lit up. He sat up straight, gripped the wheel, and steered toward the animal.

As the distance closed, the feline seemed to blur, then snap back into focus. Now Sanford saw a black cat standing and glaring at him, large as a small dog. He stepped on the gas. The car lurched forward, the cat arched its back and contorted its face into a hiss, and then—impact. The car barreled over the creature and Sanford listened for the satisfying crunch of its body. But he heard only the hum of his tires.

He slowed the car and peered into the rear-view and side mirrors. He shot a quick glance out the window. No sign of the cat.

Sanford shook off his disappointment and drove on. Last evening, he had picked this town at random from a roadmap and driven much of the night and the entire morning to reach it. He now stared with curiosity as a cluster of buildings swung into view that made up the Malivaunt Business District: Recetta’s Diner, the Esso gas station, Northeast Kingdom Bank, Ridgeway’s Hardware Store. The tiny settlement lay tucked away in a valley of eastern Vermont, encircled by looming peaks of the Green Mountains.

Sanford eased the car into a parking space in front of the hardware store. When he turned off the ignition, there was silence, except for the droning of a fly bumping against the passenger window.

A gray coupe pulled up. A woman stepped out and crossed in front of his car to enter the hardware store. She was slender, with a pixie haircut and a black wool coat. She looked at Sanford as she passed and gave a half-smile. Sanford saw that she walked with a slight limp. His eyes narrowed.

The fly continued to buzz, but now he heard in the sound an added resonance that hovered at the edge of hearing, a faint scream of chaos and lunatic pain. Sanford felt a familiar sensation in his solar plexus, like snakes twisting.

From hell, Megiddo was calling.

Sanford sensed his master groping blindly toward him, accelerating out of infinite darkness like a rock falling from space. As the thing drew closer, power surged through Sanford’s limbs. Then Megiddo slammed into his headspace, and for Sanford, it was like being crammed into a phone booth with a tornado. Oblivion washed over the man in a wave as Megiddo leered out of his eyes. It caught the briefest glimpse of the woman before the door closed behind her. Just as quickly, Megiddo withdrew, and Sanford felt consciousness and daylight trickle back into his brain. And he knew that Megiddo had chosen its next sacrifice.

The man opened the car door and scrambled out, sweating and little shaky. He dabbed his forehead with a linen handkerchief, pulled his tie straight, and slipped on his suitcoat.

The clothes had been a lucky stroke. Last night, he staked out a tavern in St. Johnsbury. Around midnight, a guy in a suit about his size staggered from the bar and wandered across the lonely lot. Sanford crept up from behind and used only his hands to drop the man and drag him to his car, as he needed the clothes unstained.

Now Sanford regarded his reflection in the window, smoothed a few unruly hairs along his temples, and walked into the hardware store. He felt Megiddo’s hovering presence and panting breath crowd him as he entered.

The store was a long room with a rough plank floor and a high ceiling studded with dim, glowing globes. A fan spun lazily overhead. The walls of the store were lined with built-in shelves that stretched to the rafters. They were stuffed with a vast amount of merchandise—shingles, and bags of cement and box nails and stacks of two-by-eight lumber. Enough inventory to build a second Malivaunt from scratch. And in the air floated the pleasing smell of licorice and a touch of camphor, with notes of axle-grease.

A bell rang a silvery chime at Sanford’s entrance. Two people at the cash register looked over. A stout older woman with short-cropped gray hair and a red-plaid lumberjack’s shirt was leaning heavily on her elbows, as if the counter were propping her up. She talked with energy in a low, grinding voice. Listening behind the counter was the slight, short-haired woman that Sanford had seen outside the store. She gave a little wave and turned back to her customer.

Sanford took his time in browsing the shelves, picking up sharp tools and testing their heft and grip. Finally, with silent prodding from Megiddo, Sanford chose a hammer and a linoleum knife with a sharp hooked blade that strangely excited him.

Approaching the register, Sanford focused on the speech rumbling from the older woman in the plaid shirt.

“—radio says he was a patient there,” said the woman. “Can you believe it, Bunny? That they would let a psycho-killer like that, an inmate from the Asylum, go out in public on work release?”

“Oh, my,” said the clerk behind the counter.

“An’ they say he strangled his hospital orderly, the poor man guarding him, stole his car and lifted his wallet,” said the older woman. “It happened at lunchtime yesterday. Down in Brattleboro. Why, he could be all the way to Boston or Albany or New York by now.”

“Or here in metropolitan Malivaunt,” said the clerk, throwing a smile over at Sanford, who grinned in return.

The older woman drew herself up and picked up a cylinder of chicken-wire from the counter.

“Guess it’s time to get home and fix my turkey-fence,” she said. “I want to be inside with my door locked by dark. You should too. Bye, Bunny.” She exited at a stately pace, and Sanford stepped up to the register.

He pushed the knife and hammer across the counter toward the clerk, studying her face as she rang up the sale. She was in her early forties, he guessed. She had hazel eyes, a pinched nose, and a faint tracery of smoker’s wrinkles that spread across her upper lip. Her brass name tag read “Betty Franklin”.

“That’ll be two dollars and thirty-two cents,” said the clerk. Sanford opened his wallet and fished out a five. She handed back the change.

“What brings you to Malivaunt, mister?” asked the clerk. He felt her looking at him and realized that he found her attractive. But she had been claimed by Megiddo. Sanford kept his eyes on the counter as he scooped up his change.

“Here for some sight-seeing in the mountains,” he said.

The clerk reached for a bag. From some place far in the back of the store, Sanford heard the ticking of a clock that accentuated the silence. An itch spread through his bones as if they were licked by electricity. Megiddo saw that they were alone with this woman and was rising, engorging, eager to merge with him to make the sacrifice. Now.

No! It was too dangerous. Anyone could come through the door and discover them. Sanford’s hand shook as he fought the compulsion to take up the gleaming linoleum knife from the counter.

At last, the struggle ended with Megiddo’s grudging retreat. The roar of blood receded in Sanford’s ears, and his head cleared.

“Have a nice day,” the woman said brightly, placing his purchases in the bag. He picked it up, murmured a goodbye, and moved toward the door.  The phone rang and she answered it.

Sanford noticed a coat rack at the entrance, from which hung a black wool coat. A yellow silk handkerchief peeked from a pocket. He snatched it up and crumpled it into his fist as he left the store.

It wasn’t much trouble to get the hardware clerk’s home address. Sanford stopped at the diner for lunch where his waitress, Gabe, served him a grilled-cheese sandwich and a steady stream of chatter. Sanford pretended to be a family friend of Bunny Franklin, visiting for the day from Newport, the next town over, and looking to drop in at her home and surprise her. And that was all the wind-up that Gabe needed. She opined that Bunny was probably the nicest person in Malivaunt, wasn’t it a shame that she never married, and how she had a neat little blue ranch house up on Millegrew Hill. Easy to get to, just drive two miles out of town, it’s the last driveway on the right before the road dead-ends, can’t miss it.

Late that afternoon, Sanford drove up Millegrew Hill. The waitress had failed to mention that it was a narrow, potholed road that inclined steeply as it climbed a mountain slope, with sharp switchback turns and sheer drop-offs without guardrails. His car whined as it beetled up the gradient, shimmying over eroded stretches of washboard pavement. Finally, he passed a driveway, catching a flash of a small blue house set back on a wooded lot. About a hundred yards beyond, the road abruptly ended. He pulled his car to the side under an overhang of pine branches, lit a cigarette from a pack he found in the glove compartment, and waited for sunset.

Slowly, the light leaked away at the approach of night. Sanford pulled Bunny’s yellow silk handkerchief from his pocket, bunched it in his palms, and buried his face in it, breathing in deeply. He smelled lavender and a hint of sweat and body odor. He felt both arousal and pity for this innocent creature, who was oblivious to the terrible truth of what would soon visit her alone in her home. But what could he do? He served only Megiddo, and Megiddo must be sated. He pressed the handkerchief more tightly against his nose and inhaled again, and again.

At last, the roadway was shrouded in twilight. Sanford quietly exited the car, gripping the hammer in one hand and the knife in the other. He moved slowly toward the house, alert, hearing only a slight stirring of wind. As he walked, he knew that Megiddo must be nearby, circling him, driven always by the yawning void of insatiable urges. He berated himself on his earlier soft feelings for Bunny. Megiddo had chosen her for sacrifice, and it was not his place to question.

Soon he reached the driveway and saw the low silhouette of the house. Soft light glowed from behind the blinds of a large picture window, faintly illuminating the gray coupe now parked by the front door. To the right of the house was a woodlot. In the last traces of daylight, he thought he spotted a creature—possum? a cat, maybe?— lurking under a space in the trees that could be the entrance to a path. Its eyes glowed in the gloom.

Sanford turned his attention back to the house. How to get at her? First, he would gently test the front door latch. Next, he would circle the house, try each window and check for locks that he could force. If all else failed, Megiddo would smash the door down—

With a start, he realized that a figure stood silent at the opening in the trees where he had last seen the cat. He could just make out her willowy outline in the near-darkness. Bunny must have slipped out a back door. What was she doing by the woods?  

The figure turned and walked under the trees. As she disappeared, Sanford saw a spark kindle in her hand, pale as a ray of moonlight. A pocket flashlight, he guessed. Taking her should be easy. He crossed the driveway and slid into the woods after her, bracing his arms in front of his face to deflect branches in his path.

For a time, the wispy light danced at a distance in front of him, bobbing in and out of view, with Sanford stumbling along the path in pursuit. Gradually, though, he saw the gap closing with his prey. Ahead, the figure reached an open space that looked like a large clearing. She stopped and turned to face Sanford, holding her flickering light high.  She was exposed and at his mercy.

It was then that Megiddo burst in a flood into Sanford’s consciousness. A red mist welled up behind his eyes as Megiddo seized possession of his mind. With a grim smile, the man raised the curved blade of his knife and charged straight at the light.

The sacrifice was at hand…

***

Several weeks later, a highway worker discovered the stolen car abandoned at the end of Millegrew Hill Road. The plates were traced, and the state police swarmed Malivaunt in a search for the man the papers called “the Asylum Killer.”

A few days into the manhunt, they discovered the suspect’s partly skeletonized remains in a jumble of boulders at the base of a granite cliff. According to investigators, he had apparently tumbled off the precipice at a full run. The remains were boxed up and sent off to Montpelier for analysis.

In later years, curious hikers were drawn to the location of this lurid death. Especially in late autumn, visitors might report the strange sight of a large cat glaring down from the top of the precipice at the heap of boulders where the killer’s body had been found. Then it would vanish.

Jim Wright (he/him) lives in central New York State, USA. He writes short stories when he can and works as a school psychologist when he must. He is a past member of the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, NY.