Cat Shout For Joy

Начало книги

For 99, a fine, bossy tomcat, and for Joanne, who allowed him to leave this earth with dignity, allowed him not to suffer

Epigraph

For the cat is cryptic,

And close to strange things

That men cannot see.

H. P. Lovecraft, “The Cats of Ulthar”

Prologue

Evening drew down quicker than the old woman liked. She hurried up the wooded hill with her grocery bags; she wanted to be in the house before dark. She didn’t like living alone since her nephew and his wife moved out, and this evening she had lingered too long chatting with a friend at the village market. Around her now there was only silence; nothing stirred on the narrow, shadowed street or in the overgrown yards.

Suddenly she was struck from behind, a hard blow across her shoulders that knocked her sprawling. Pain shocked through her, her hands ground into asphalt where she tried to catch herself; grocery bags flew from her arms, apples bounced away, cans of soup and beans rolled into the gutter. Flailing, trying to right herself, she heard racing footsteps, soft-soled shoes running, and then silence; a dark figure vanished among the dusky trees, blending with the shadows and then gone.

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