Free Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell Page B

bags full of fur and blood.
        The cat food must have been tainted, she thought. She'd smelled it in her rooms, the smell of what had driven the cats mad. The owner of the Rover had crossed the street now, walking slowly as if that were apologetic or respectful, leaving her to gaze at the bags. She didn't think she could bear to open them. She carried them to the back garden and took a spade out of the communal shed.
        She dug for almost an hour in her patch of flower bed before she was convinced the hole was deep enough to keep the bodies safe. The stray dog might still be roaming Queen's Wood, even though the accountants had complained to the police, and it might try to dig up the grave. She peered through the railings whenever shadows stirred. Too many bunches of roots appeared to be crouching bonily, but she could never catch sight of a watcher, only flowers shifting in the dark. Every time she peered she had to dab at her eyes.
        At last she finished digging. Holding each bag at both ends, so as not to feel how broken the cats were, she laid the bodies in the trench. "Goodbye," she said, "you rest now." She gazed down at the glint of plastic, then she replaced the disinterred soil gently and patted it smooth. "Look after each other," she said, and eventually went back into the house.
        The smell was gone from her silent rooms. She went down on all fours to the feeding bowls, but could find no trace of it there. Nevertheless she found the empty tin and scraped the remains into it to be analyzed, then she sat on the bed and wept for a while. Afterward she picked up the fragments of Graham's notebook, but they were indecipherable. She remembered most of the details, she told herself, not just the names, except that her head was aching too badly at the moment for her to recall. Her nostrils felt stuffed with rust. She went to bed so as to close her aching eyes.
        When she managed to sleep she kept wakening convinced that the cats were near her. Remembering why they weren't made her feel hollow and frail. Once she dreamed that one of them was outside the window of the main room. She saw a thin lithe shape leap from a treetop and grasp the sash, dragging it down, and awoke with a cry that left her heart quaking.
        In the morning she felt so empty that she ached. Why couldn't she have stayed at home last night instead of wasting time on her frustrating visit to Roger? Everything seemed meaningless, no longer worth her trouble, and that frightened her. On the Underground she hugged the carrier bag that contained the tin of cat food and clenched her fist on the overhead strap.
        The host of the consumer-advice program was Piers Falconer. On screen he wore a permanent concerned frown, but when she looked into his office his large round face was almost blandly welcoming. He frowned when he heard her story, and took the tin from her. "I'll send it in today for analysis and let you know the outcome the moment I hear."
        She went upstairs and tried to interest herself in editing a tape shot at a soccer match, where spectators attacked the away team as they came onto the pitch. The people around her left her alone when she kept answering them monosyllabically, until Lezli came looking for her. "Phone for you."
        "Sandra? We've been meaning to call you. How are you? Still enjoying your work?"
        It was her father. His voice made her feel unexpectedly homesick for the house in Mossley Hill, the log fires he would light as soon as the winds off Liverpool Bay turned chilly, the long evenings when she had been able to discuss all her adolescent problems without holding anything back. Homesickness solved nothing-her parents didn't even live there now-and she didn't want him to know how upset she was when, at that distance, it would only make him feel helpless. "Oh, pretty well," she said.
        "We heard that your friend died. We remembered how fond you said you were of