My visit to my hometown hadn’t gone too badly, all things considered. Parents will be parents, after all, the food was great and time had gone by quickly enough. It was already the last night, and there was some comfort in walking around the quiet timeless snow covered streets of my childhood, knowing that tomorrow I would be far from it all, back in the big city where I now belonged. “They roll up the tarmac here at 6” my father was fond of saying, and the quiet small-town streets, empty even though it was barely 7pm, bore him out.
But it wasn’t true to say nothing had changed, I thought, staring at the huge new statue in the town square, lit up in the evening by a complex arrangement of white lights. It was of a small, seated woman, a veil falling over her face, holding a giant cat like a baby. The cat, as big as a lion, appeared to be sleeping, although the look of despair on the women’s face as she stared down at the cat was intense enough to suggest otherwise.
“I think it’s based on La Pieta” I said, turning to Luke, my childhood friend and companion for this early evening walk around downtown. Another change. He had become widowed since I was here last, and our parents’ comedy attempts to throw us together was straight out of a Hallmark movie. Poor Mandy, she had been one of my close childhood friends, although we had drifted apart after I moved, and she embraced married life with Luke. I had been very sad to hear of the brutal car accident which took her too soon.
“What?” Luke frowned.
I googled, trying to bring up the image of the famous statue of Mary and Jesus on my phone, but my internet wasn’t working. Rural internet.
Luke placed his hands on my shoulders, looking at me with a such a deep expression that for a minute I thought he was actually going to deliver a line like “Oh Lisa, you’ve become too smart for your own good, with your fancy city ways!”
Instead, he said “They become alive at midnight.”
My blood ran cold, radiating iciness outward so I felt I was freezing solid, about to fall over and shatter on the stone-cold pavement. A car drove by, its harsh moving lights casting long moving shadows. Then we were alone again by the still white lights of the statue.
I stepped back from Luke. He had been around all my life, but it suddenly occurred to me I didn’t know much about him. I looked up at his shadowed face. He had turned and was staring at the statue.
“Luke?”
“Mandy and her cat. The statue. They become alive at midnight. They walk about.” He said it quite matter-of-factly.
I cannot describe the terror surging in me- I just knew I had to leave. But Luke reached out again and gripped me tighter.
“It was an accident. Everybody knows that- everyone in town! The police said. That fucking cat- I braked- I wasn’t going to run it over- but Mandy just ran out- I had told her to get rid of the goddamn cat- we were trying to have kids you know- everyone knows cats make women barren- but then she died, and they went and put this stupid statue which walks around – I don’t even know where the goddamn cat went, I looked for it- I would have taken care of it for Mandy’s sake, she loved that damn creature so much- so did I- I wouldn’t have run it over- for you believe me don’t you Lisa?” His voice shrill, his strong fingers dug into my shoulders. Later, I would find perfect circular bruises on my shoulders, but in the moment I didn’t feel the pain. I was just trying to parse the torrent of words which had flooded my brain.
“Please Luke-”
“You have to stay and watch them come alive with me!” cried Luke. “I know you will see them too, Mandy loved you- she was always talking about you- she wanted to come visit you- you’ll understand, I’m not the only one seeing them!”
“Let me go!” I cried, struggling to break free from his hands.
Whoosh!
Something large knocked Luke over, breaking his grasp. He fell backwards, away from me. I heard his screams mixed with the yowls of a cat. I paused for an instant and saw the silhouette of a large cat at Luke’s throat. I was deeply confused- it wasn’t midnight? But surely, I wasn’t thinking the statue was alive? Idiotically I looked over at the town square, but the white lights were dark now, and I couldn’t see. Luke was trying to peel the cat away from him.
“Run.”
I whipped around and a small familiar woman walking swiftly away. I hesitated no more. I turned and ran towards the safety of my parents’ place, my heels clacking on the empty deserted pavements, leaving the howls and screams behind me.
I never saw Luke again before I left early morning the next day.