Muthah and Fuckah were lazy little sods at the best of times, but they were normally up to making the modest effort required to go outside once in a while. Or they had been until recently. What had changed? Perhaps they just needed a little encouragement.
Owen scooped up Muthah and carried her downstairs. He took her to the door leading from the basement kitchen to the back garden and opened it.
Immediately he’d done so, the cat began to struggle as if possessed. In spite of his best efforts, he couldn’t put her down where he wanted. She squirmed, wriggled, scratched and bit, all the while meowling, until he was forced to let go of her. The animal fled upstairs quicker than he’d ever seen her move before.
He repeated the manoeuvre with Fuckah, with the same result.
It seemed obvious to Owen that there must be something outside that the cats were afraid of, but what? He went into the back garden and looked around. There was nothing he could see that was out of the ordinary. Then he walked around the edge of the garden, carefully inspecting the fence and the privet hedge.
That was when he saw it.
Lying under the privet was the skeleton of a small animal. He guessed it was a cat. Something had eaten it, probably an urban fox, Owen reckoned, and had eaten half of the bones as well as the meat, skin and fur. It must have been a very hungry fox.
Owen got his garden spade and buried the remains in the hope that this might improve matters, but it didn’t. The cats still wouldn’t venture outdoors.
Too bad, he thought. Anyway, the fox won’t be here forever. Sooner or later it’ll go, and when it does, the cats will start going outdoors again.
Then he thought again about the remains he’d seen.
No, it couldn’t have been a fox that did that, he decided. The bones were picked too clean for it to have been a fox. And the cats wouldn’t be scared of a fox; we’ve had foxes before and they didn’t give a monkey’s about them. What could it really be that’s scaring the cats?
He cast his eyes towards Stonker Edge, which reared up on the other side of the valley, overlooking his house. A grassy and near vertical slope, much of it covered with trees; it was one of the most commanding heights of Huddersfield. Then he remembered the were-cat that he’d seen in Nobblethwaite, the village which lay on the other side of the moors beyond Stonker Edge, and shuddered. For some reason, it occurred to him to wonder whether the were-cat had anything to do with the skeletal remains he’d just buried. He quickly dismissed the idea.
Bob Slawit, the Beast of Nobble Moor, or were-cat, or whatever he was, couldn’t be responsible for the dead cat. Still, Owen felt troubled by the thought.
He returned indoors wondering whether the fear that had infected his cats could be contagious, and whether he might have caught it.
When he got back upstairs he found the Huddersfield Examiner waiting for him on his doormat. He had it delivered every evening. He picked it up and went to his lounge, while reading the headline on the front page: “MORE MEN MISSING — FEARED DEAD.” It screeched.
Sensationalist horseshit, thought Owen. Nevertheless, he read the story.
“Quince Roper was the first to disappear.
Next, Bert Fossett was killed by an unknown assailant in his own back garden in Birkby. It seems his attacker could have been an animal. Some are suggesting he was killed by the Beast of Nobble Moor. A spokeswoman for the West Yorkshire Constabulary says that the police regard this theory as highly unlikely but they are keeping an open mind about it. In the meantime, anyone with any information should call the number at the end of this article immediately to discuss the matter.
Shortly after Fossett’s disappearance, Barbados Jones went missing. A neighbour reported seeing a dried bloodstain on the pavement near Jones’s house, lending weight to the theory that the Beast of Nobble Moor may have claimed a second victim. Unfortunately, by the time the police forensic team arrived on the scene, there had been heavy rainfall, and the municipal road cleaner had been at work in the area, with the result that the forensic team could find nothing to assist the police investigation. Jones’s sudden disappearance remains, for now, an unexplained mystery.
Equally puzzling are the disappearances of John Ainsley and Andrew Dyson.
But perhaps the most puzzling and disturbing of all these events is the fate of two men who worked together, Adrian Broadbent and Paul Formby, both whom worked for Acme TV repairs and Rentals Ltd. Their bodies have never been found, but in a shock development echoing the circumstances of Barbados Jones’s possible demise, bloodstains were discovered in a shed at the Cemetery Road allotment in Birkby. Police analysis has established that the bloodstains were made by the blood of the two missing men, but their bodies have not been found.
Intriguingly, it seems that the shed was used for the breeding of rats, and traces of organic rat and cat matter have been found in the shed, leading to speculation that the men may have been devoured by rats, or by cats, or even — however unlikely it may seem — the Beast of Nobble Moor.”
In spite of his doubts, Owen began to wonder if it was indeed possible that Blind Bob Slawit, whom he knew beyond shadow of a doubt to be the Beast of Nobble Moor, could have trekked across the moor and begum wreaking his terrible brand of havoc on the citizens of Huddersfield. Perhaps he could have done.
If that was the case, then perhaps Owen could get a video of Slawit turning into the Beast, or at least attacking someone while he was the Beast, and this would silence the many doubters who were making life unbearable for Owen, and making mocking comments on his blog.
He looked out of his window at the sinister slope of Stonker Edge rearing up into the sky.
It must be him, he thought. An urban fox might have been capable of killing that cat in my back garden, but it couldn’t have done for Fossett and Jones, and Broadbent and Formby and the others. And if the police knew what I knew, they’d be taking the Beast of Nobble Moor theory a lot more seriously than they are doing. I know that Bob Slawit is a were-cat, and I’m sure he’s behind the disappearances. And what’s more, I’m going to prove it. I’ve got time on my hands. I’m in-between jobs right now. This is the perfect opportunity to show the world that I’m not a lunatic.
He put on his walking jacket and was about to go out when his wife Kylie saw him.
“Where are you going?” She asked.
“I’m just popping out for a walk,” he replied.
“Where are you really going?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Owen, I can always tell when you’re not telling me the truth. What are you up to?”
“All right, you know that thing I told you about with Bob Slawit in the village of Nobblethwaite — the old bloke who became a shape-shifting were-cat? I think he’s crossed over the moors. I think he’s lurking somewhere up on top of Stonker Edge, and he’s coming down at night and attacking people round here. It makes perfect sense.”
“Owen, I’m beginning to worry about you. You’ve become obsessed with Slawit and were-cats. I want you to drop the subject before you go too far, and — and—”
“And, what?”
“I didn’t want to say this, but now I’m going to have to: get yourself sectioned, that’s what. Honestly, Owen, you should hear yourself speak. I could just about put up with it before when you were going on about the Beast of Nobble Moor killing folk in far away in Nobblethwaite somewhere, but now that you’ve started imagining it’s here in Birkby, well, all I can say is: please don’t tell our friends, and definitely don’t post about it in your blog. Do you remember what happened last time you did that?”