Following Nick

by Dale Neibaur

It was a witching night in early September, with the moon just shy of full and the first taste of fall cooling the air. He moved easily through the night, comfortable with darkness and with his own company.

He really didn’t know when the cat started following him, nor where. But somewhere between the deserted streets of First North and Second Avenue he became conscious of its eyes boring into him, shattering his carefully constructed reverie. “Drat it!” he thought, “that’s the trouble with walking at night. You escape all the people, but there are animals that follow you everywhere waiting to be taken home and fed.”

“Well I don’t need a pet,” he said aloud, “so scat!” The last injunction was accompanied by a flying rock, which the cat neatly sidestepped.

“Miiiaaoow,” the cat reproached.

“Oh, all right. Come on then. But don’t stay clear back there. You drive me nuts staring at my back. Come on up by me. Well, come on if you’re coming!”

The cat stood up, walked over to his legs and circled them thrice, rubbing against his jeans. “Okay, Okay. Enough is enough. Let’s go.”

His train of thought was broken, but the night fit around him comfortably and he was more than happy to just continue rambling block after block. Sometimes the large grey cat was ahead of him, sometimes it lagged behind, but most often the cat stayed just a half step ahead of him on his left side.

He came to a realization of his surroundings with a start. “Holy Moses, cat, we’re getting out here a ways! I hadn’t intended to walk much past ol’ Doc Hapstead’s place. Musta forgot myself. Oh well, I can cross the stream at the old wooden bridge up ahead and head on home on the other side of town. It’ll be faster that way. I do have to get up early, y’know. It’s the first day of school tomorrow. That’s why I’m out here walking with you; I want to soak up the last bit of summer. … Look, I don’t know why I’m talking to you. I don’t usually talk to animals, and they don’t usually talk to me.” The cat stopped, sat with his tail wrapped around his feet, and looked up inquisitively. “You probably think I’m crazy, talking to a cat like this. Look at you! All attention. I wish Ann would listen to me like that. Well, we’re getting nowhere fast. C’mon!”

The cat turned into the short lane that led to the bridge, then stopped dead just at the edge of the wooden planks. He walked past the cat, crossed the bridge, then noticed the absence of his feline companion. When he looked back the cat could just be seen sitting on the other side of the short span.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Are you coming, or not? Come on!” Still the cat sat motionless.

“All right, if you don’t want to come, I guess you don’t want to. It’s been great seein’ ya. So long!” At the last words the cat set up a great howling. He stopped, turned. “Well, if you don’t want to be left behind, come on! … Oh, all right. Have it your way. I suppose I can afford part of a night following a cat. Though it’s beyond me why you turned into the lane if you didn’t want to cross the bridge.”

He was back across the bridge now, walking towards the lane he’d turned from a few moments earlier. “Come and show me which way you want to go, and I’ll follow for a while. …Hey!” There was another round of howling behind him. “What are you doing that for? And why are you still sitting by the bridge? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dumb animal. Look, what do you want?” The last was directed straight down into the cat’s upturned face; he’d returned to the edge of the bridge and taken a stance straddling the obstinate animal.

“C’mon, what do you want?” The cat sprang up and clawed its way up his jeans. He reached down, picked it off, and cradled it in his arms. “You’ve got sharp claws, friend. Why do you want to be carried? Let’s see. You didn’t want to go back the way we came, so I suppose you expect me to carry you across the bridge. Dumb cat.” The last was said affectionately; he had managed to evoke a purr by scratching behind the cat’s ears.

“Dumb cat. …Oh!” As soon as he’d crossed the bridge the cat sprang from his arms and set off purposefully down the road. “I don’t get it. First you gotta be carried, then you want to walk again. What’s the matter? Don’t you like bridges? Maybe it’s the water. …All right, already! Slow it down some. I’m coming!”

Once he was following, the cat slowed down to an easy walking pace. Again he took his position on the left side, slightly ahead. “Well, where are you taking me now? At least you’re headed in the right direction for home. Play your cards right and maybe I’ll smuggle you some milk. No comment, eh? Okay, be that way.”

The two continued down the darkened country lane for about half a mile, the cat always slightly in the lead. Suddenly the cat quickened its pace and turned into an almost completely overgrown side path. He stopped short. The cat, now about ten feet down the lane, turned and looked at him.

“Oh no you don’t. I don’t know who you are, or what you are, or what you’re up to. But I’m not about to go in to the old Fergusen homestead in the middle of the night. Nor in the middle of the day either, for that matter. I don’t take much truck with talk, but it’s a spooky place nonetheless, and it’s been deserted too long. Could be snake dens in there now. Oh, no, cat. If that’s what you are. You go on in to your family alone. I’ve got to be getting home.”

The cat walked back to where he stood at the entrance to the lane, then rubbed around his ankles several times. After that the cat walked to just within the two crooked old gateposts and curled up under a tall bush.

His throat went suddenly dry, and involuntarily he took one step into the lane. He’d been so involved in his ‘discussion’ with the cat that he hadn’t noticed his surroundings in the dim moonlight. “Lilacs!” he whispered. “In September?” His hands reached out and picked a bunch, which he held to his nose, then tucked into a pocket. “They’re real! But in September? … And the ivy is still green!”

He drew a slow, ragged breath, then brought his other foot within the entrance of the ancient carriageway. “All right,” he barely whispered. “All right, whatever you are. I may forever regret it, but I’ll follow. I’ve come this far with you; I’ll follow. Lead on.”

The cat stood up, crooked its tail into the air, and continued down the lane. He couldn’t see very well, the tall elms that lined the old drive cut off even the faint starlight. But it seemed that the early frosts hadn’t touched here.

The cat reached the end of the lane. Without pausing it turned through the gate and began to walk up the path that led to the front door of a dilapidated farmhouse. Hurrying to keep up, he almost expected to see the cat walk up to the front door, expected to see the front door swing open at his approach. But the can took a side path around a corner of the house. He followed.

The boy was lying motionless in a patch of grass at the base of some old porch stairs. He looked as if he’d collapsed part way up the steps and tumbled back down. The cat, curled at the boy’s head, uttered a small cry.

He dropped to his knees by the boy. His scout training came in handy. The head wasn’t at an odd angle, and a light touch revealed nothing out of alignment with neck or spine. With a sigh of relief he found the pulse beating in the boy’s neck, and felt the whisper of light breath.

“Well, at least your friend isn’t dead!” he addressed the cat, straightening up to survey the frail youth before him. He might be about sixteen, he guessed, but he was incredibly thin. He was himself barely eighteen, but he was a farm boy, as his solid build and bulging muscles attested. “He doesn’t seem to have anything broken. But I don’t know what is wrong with him, unless you haven’t been sharing your mice. Let’s take him back to Doc Hapstead. …Why, he’s even lighter than I thought.”

Now that he had a purpose his stride lengthened and quickened, and it seemed no time at all before he was back at the wooden bridge.

“All right, cat. If you can’t cross it you can’t, but I can’t bend down and pick you up. If you need a ride then climb up my pants and the back of my shirt. Hey! Watch your claws!” The cat clawed nimbly upward, and settled around his neck. He was thus doubly laden when he pushed Doc Hapstead’s doorbell.

The lights were all out at Doc’s, but after a moment the porch light came on and a voice called out, “In a minute! Is it an emergency?”

“I think so, Doc. Please hurry.”

It was only a few minutes before the door opened to reveal a balding, slightly paunchy middle-aged man. He took one look at the boy standing before him and exclaimed, “Good heavens! Bring him in and lay him on the couch. I’ll get my bag.” The doctor hurried off, and the boy laid his still unconscious burden on a long soft sofa. While he was bent over the cat jumped from his shoulders and curled at the feet of the prostrate youth.

“Whose cat?” the doctor asked returning.

“Must be his. It was the cat that led me to him.”

“Oh? Where’d you find him?”

“Back of the old Fergusen place.”

“Back there? Lucky you found him. And the cat led you, huh? Tell me about it.”

He related the story while the doctor completed his examination. The doctor finally pursed his lips, removed his stethoscope, then turned to face him. “Are you familiar with any legends? You know, witchcraft and like that?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, nothing really. But the cat wouldn’t cross the river? And there were lilacs. …I’ll have to go check for myself in the morning, see what I can find. The boy’ll be okay, he’s suffering from exposure and malnutrition. A couple of days of food and rest will fix him up. Meanwhile, you’d better head home. You have no business staying out this late. If you go straight from here to bed, maybe I won’t tell your parents on you.”

“Okay, okay. What about the cat?”

“Leave him here. He probably wouldn’t leave the boy anyway.”

“Oh. Well, g’night then.”

The next morning he got up early and took a circuitous way to school, a way that took him past Doc’s. Early as he was, Doc was waiting for him.

“Morning! I figured you’d come on by here before school. Been waitin’ for ya.”

“How is he?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yup. I checked on him a few times last night, and every time it looked like he’d rested a week. When I got up this morning to take a look at him, both he and the cat were gone.”

“Where?”

“How should I know? I checked up around the Ferguson’s, but I couldn’t see anything up there. It was all locked up like it’s been the last fifty years or more. There wasn’t any lilacs either, and the ivy was yellowing and almost dead. You sure it was in bloom?”

“I’m sure.”

“Moonlight and spooky places can do strange things to your senses. Anyway, it makes no difference now. He’s gone, the cat’s gone, the lilacs are gone. I admit it’s peculiar, but there ain’t no use worrying about it. You’d better be gettin’ off to school.”

“Wait! I can’t believe it! There really were lilacs. And you saw him, and the cat.”

“Yeah, they were real all right. But don’t bother it none. No doubt we’ll be finding out what happened to them soon enough.”

That day at school dragged interminably. He was deeply glad when he was finally released.

“Hey Ann!”

“Yeah?”

“I have to walk by Fergusen’s place and look at something. Want to come?”

“Yeah, I guess so. What are you looking for?”

“Just something.”

At the Ferguson’s everything was just as Doc had said: yellowed ivy, dead spikes on the withering lilac bush, doors all firmly locked.

“Y’know,” he said ruminatively, “strange things sure can happen sometimes. And a guy’s imagination can really go wild.”

“Yeah. I know. Hey!” she said, reaching across him and putting her hand into his shirt pocket where she’d seen a flash of lavender. “Where did you get the lilacs?”