For Those Who Dream Monsters (23 page)

The train journey was exhausting. The removal company was going to deliver most
of their things, but even the basics that Emily’s mother had insisted they take
themselves filled three heavy suitcases, a hold-all and several ungainly
plastic bags. Miraculously they had managed to load everything onto the train
before it departed, but Emily couldn’t stop worrying about how they would get
it all off at the other end. She dozed off during the long ride, but her sleep
was fitful, her anxiety giving rise to a horrible dream. Not only were they
unable to get all the luggage off on time, but her mother disappeared and the
train left with Emily and her pet still on it, taking them to a dark, deserted
place, where she got separated from Bagpuss and didn’t know how to get home.
From this she awoke sweating and headachy.

“What is it, dear?” asked her mother, in
that tired, indifferent tone that had been in her voice ever since Emily’s
father had walked out one day and never come back.

“Nothing,” said Emily, relieved that it
had been just a dream. Her worries still played on her mind though. She moved
the cat carrier slightly and peered in through the bars at Bagpuss, who meowed
– a plaintive, pathetic, frightened little noise, cute in a kitten perhaps, but
strangely unnerving in a large, lazy, eight-year-old tabby lap-cat. Bagpuss had
been emitting similar sounds ever since Emily and her mother had forced him
into the blue cat carrier. He had struggled with all his might, wedging his paws
against the plastic
around the opening of the box and tensing up his entire body
with strength extraordinary for a being a fraction of the size of the two
humans trying to push him in. But as soon as the battle was lost and the bars
of the cat carrier came down before his eyes, he started mewling in the tiny
yet penetrating way of an unwanted kitten destined for a stone-laden sack at
the bottom of a lake.

“It’s okay,” Emily told
him, “I’m here. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Bagpuss had been with Emily since he was six weeks old, but he had been silent
as a kitten, and had only found his tongue at a later age, sparsely using a
low, gruff meow to indicate that he was hungry or wanted to go outdoors.
Mostly, he would lie on Emily’s lap, purring loudly and sometimes even snoring.
So the eerie little squeaks and cries were something new and distressing to his
twelve-year-old mistress – as new and distressing as having to leave her city
life and move to the countryside, away from her room, her house, her street,
and everything that made her feel safe. New things, new places, new people had
no appeal to her; they gave her a nasty tight sensation in the pit of her
stomach – a feeling like something really bad was about to happen; a feeling
that had increased in frequency since her father had left. Now that they were
on the train and heading for her new home, the feeling of impending doom was
stronger than ever, and Emily was convinced that Bagpuss felt it too.

“How many more stations before we get there?” Emily asked her mother.

“I don’t know, dear.”

“You have to ask
someone, mummy.”

“Why?”

“We have to get ready
to get off the train before it reaches the station. Otherwise we won’t have
time to get everything off.”

“Of course we will.”

“But we have to get
ready before we get to the station, mummy.”

Emily’s agitation was
starting to break through the protective barrier of Valium, and worry her
mother. The child had always been timid and oversensitive, but lately she was
stressing about everything. Emily’s mother tried to remember being twelve. She
had been brought up in the countryside and remembered her childhood as being
full of sunny days – helping on the farm, cycling with her friends, running
down to the river to fish or remove socks and shoes and paddle – unstressed and
carefree. Not like Emily, who always fretted about everything. And her father
leaving had provided the perfect opportunity for the child’s anxiety to run
wild. Perhaps life in the country would be good for the girl. Perhaps a new
start in life was what they both needed.

As they pulled into the village station, all their things were already by the
train door – at Emily’s insistence, of course – and Emily was firmly clutching
Bagpuss’s cat carrier to her chest.

“Mummy, I’ll go first
and put Bagpuss down, and then I’ll help you get the suitcases down, but you’ll
have to pass them to me because I don’t want to leave Bagpuss on his own on the
platform because someone might steal him.”

“Nobody’s going to
steal Bagpuss.”

“Well, a dog might
attack the cat carrier and Bagpuss might get hurt.”

“Nothing’s going to
happen to Bagpuss,” sighed Emily’s mother.

“Yes, but you don’t
know that, mummy. I have to stay on the platform with him to make sure he
doesn’t think we’ve abandoned him and get scared.”

“Very well, Emily. You
stay on the platform with Bagpuss and I’ll pass the bags down to you.”

The unloading went
smoothly, apart from Bagpuss’s desperate mewling as his miniature prison got
moved again and the cat temporarily lost the ground under his feet, his whole
world shaking and lurching until Emily placed the carrier down on the platform
– on solid ground now, but still imprisoned and claustrophobic.

There were no cabs at
the station, but the station master phoned for one and, after a long wait, a
man in his sixties arrived and somehow helped them load all their belongings
into his battered old Ford. The man chatted away to Emily’s mother and eyed her
with an interest that made Emily nervous. The girl ignored the cab driver, and
concentrated her attentions on Bagpuss, who had fallen deathly quiet in his
sweaty prison.

“It’s a ten-minute
drive,” her mother had told her, and five minutes into the journey the feeling
of impending doom in Emily’s stomach had grown to a level which made her want
to clutch her abdomen. Instead, she hugged Bagpuss’s cage tightly. The cat
yelped, and Emily was certain that he was sharing her fear of what was to come.

Five minutes later, and
the three of them – Emily, Emily’s mother and Bagpuss in his plastic cage –
were standing in front of their new home. Emily’s mother had turned down the
cab driver’s repeated offer of helping them carry their bags into the house,
but had taken the business card on the back of which he had jotted his home
phone number. And Emily finally understood the feeling in the pit of her
stomach that she’d had since she was little – the feeling that crept over her
in the middle of the day or in the dead of night; the feeling that grew as she
tossed and turned in her bed – formless and indescribable until it took shape
and found expression in her nightmares and anxiety dreams: those dreams of
finding ourselves naked in front of others, of facing an examination paper
without knowing the curriculum, of fleeing something unspeakable along corridors
that get narrower and narrower until we can scarcely breathe…

Emily
trembled as she looked up at her new home, and knew that the recurrent feelings
of impending doom had all led to this: the brooding dark house whose eaves cast
a shadow that somehow managed to reach her and make her shiver on this fine
summer afternoon. A house whose gloomy corners would devour her, and her mother
and her cat. Even the roses climbing ramshackle up the walls of the house were
the colour of congealed blood, their scent suffocating, their thorns waiting to
scar anyone who came close. But worse still – worse than the house with its
bloody roses and windows gaping like cataract-covered eyes – was the untamed
expanse of land behind the building. A wilderness of plants, spiky and barbed,
ready to impale anyone who ventured among them. Tangled roots ready to wind
themselves around an ankle and bring its owner crashing into the
spider-infested undergrowth. A place teeming with unseen life, a thousand
creatures – scurrying, crawling, watching, waiting. And beyond all that: a dark
tree line looming ominously on the horizon.

Emily felt faint. All
she had ever known were the familiar streets of the city in which she had lived
all her life – streets with names that made sense and instilled a feeling of
security: First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue; streets that criss-crossed
each other at reliable right-angles, forming orderly squares with houses and
shops where they intersected. Even the parks were safe – the grass neatly mown,
the trees arranged symmetrically, planted evenly apart, their branches trimmed
regularly so that they could not grow into monstrous limbs that reached for you
and tried to drag you into a scratching, deadly embrace…
Velvety moss,
scented wild herbs and colourful meadow flowers brought Emily no comfort. What
should have been a Garden of Eden was to Emily a Garden of Evil.

Bagpuss mewed wildly in
his cat carrier – no longer a tiny, pitiful squeal, but a feral, desperate cry
– and threw himself against the bars, rattling the plastic cage so hard that
Emily feared it would overturn and harm her pet. She carried the box with the
wailing, thrashing animal up to the house and, once her mother unlocked the
door, inside. Emily made sure the front door was securely closed again, put
down the cage and opened it carefully. Bagpuss sprang out faster than Emily
thought possible, and headed straight for the front door, scratching at it
feverishly.

“You’d better let him
out,” Emily’s mother told her. “I have to open the door in any case, to bring
our bags in.”

“But mummy…”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Okay. But I’ll go with
him.”

“Don’t you want to have
a look around the house?”

Emily cast a fearful
glance past her mother, at the murky hallway with doors leading off it, and the
winding staircase leading up into darkness.

“Maybe later,” she told
her mother and turned her attention back to her frantically meowing, scratching
cat.

As soon as Emily opened the front door, Bagpuss bolted out like the proverbial
bat out of hell and took off down the porch steps.

“Bagpuss, wait!”

The cat reached the
bottom of the steps and paused, looking around, sniffing the air, droopy
whiskers and fluffy tail twitching nervously. Bagpuss had never known a world
such as this. His cruel imprisonment in the evil-smelling plastic cage was all
but forgotten, as a universe of magnificent scents, sights and sounds burst
open all around him. It was as though he had sleepwalked through his life and
now, finally, he was wide awake – his nerves tingling with excitement and the
blood singing in his veins.

Bagpuss hardly noticed
as Emily caught up with him and spoke to him softly.

“There you are,
Bagpuss.” Emily reached down and stroked the cat gently. Bagpuss became aware
of his friend next to him, and looked up at her, purring loudly. He could smell
the lush scent of the roses clinging to the walls of the house behind him. He
could smell wild flowers and herbs, birds, mice and other small creatures in
the bushes all around. But Bagpuss could smell something else too – an
alluring, intoxicating scent, and it was calling him. The cat quivered from the
tip of his pink nose to the tip of his black and grey tail, then set off at a
trot.

“Bagpuss, wait!” Emily
ran after her pet, terrified of losing sight of him. She found him standing
behind the house, gazing across the expanse of meadow towards the woods on the
horizon. Bagpuss’s nose twitched as he took in that wonderful scent – it was
the fragrance of the warm grass before him, it was the scent of open space –
the smell of freedom. He took off across the field.

“No, Bagpuss! You’re
going too far!” Emily followed her cat, trying not to fall as the branches of
strange plants curled around her ankles; increasingly distressed as she kept
losing sight of the cat in the tall grass.

As Bagpuss bounded over
the exotic landscape, the breeze ruffled his fur, and the sounds of birdsong
and of small frightened creatures scurrying away through the grass caressed his
ears. Even through all the new aromas of plants and animals, Bagpuss noticed
another, stronger smell. He slowed down, years of dozing on Emily’s sofa having
taken their toll on his natural feline stamina, but continued to press ahead,
until the strange new scent was joined by a rushing, gurgling sound. As he
navigated the last few metres of grass between him and the noisy thing ahead,
Emily cried out behind him.

“Oh my God! No,
Bagpuss, no!”

But Bagpuss had already
burst out onto the riverbank, and was staring down at the river – narrow at
this point, only a few metres across – silver and blue-grey, light dancing
between the brown and dark green reflections of the trees that grew on its
other side.

As the cat stared in
awe at the flowing water, the dancing light, he caught sight of movement made
by something more solid – it was a fish. Bagpuss carefully made his way down to
the water and contemplated sticking in a paw.

“Bagpuss, no!” In the
second that it took Bagpuss to glance back at Emily, the fish was gone. Then
Emily was picking him up, enveloping him gently in her arms, her scent familiar
and soporific.

“You mustn’t go near
the river, it’s not safe.” Bagpuss was disappointed to be leaving the
riverbank, but he was tired now, and after an initial half-hearted squirm, he
allowed himself to be carried back to the house.