Maguire, Gregory - Lost by Maguire Gregory

Author:Maguire, Gregory [Maguire, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Fantasy, London (England), Ghost Stories, Americans, Ghost, Authors, Women Authors, Americans - England - London, Jack, Genealogy
ISBN: 9780061960574
Google: 9yTGZ6rHRqMC
Amazon: 0061960578
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-09-17T07:00:00+00:00

reality Winnie caught just the flip of a tail. An eye like a nugget of smoldering bronze. She saw a sliver of feline sneer without seeing anything as

recognizable as a small, perfect mouth with its small darts for teeth. It was

like the Cheshire Cat—the smile without the cat, the attribute without the

subject. Free-floating disdain.

Then it was gone.

"Oh, sweetheart, come out," said Winnie. "What are you scared of? Your old mama

out there is going bonkers with grief. Come on." She raised her voice.

"You'll

have some tinned fish or liver, something with a smell?"

"Not for me, thank you, I've had my elevenses."

"I mean for the cat. Here, kitty kitty kitty."

Mrs. Maddingly didn't answer. Perhaps she'd forgotten what Winnie was doing.

"Oh, well, I suppose another little drop won't hurt, if you must," she was

saying to herself. The sound of sherry pouring gluggily.

"Here, kitty," said Winnie.

She switched on a bedside lamp; the bulb, all ten watts of it, flickered.

She

angled the shade, a cone of cinnamon-colored cardboard, to try to get more

light. Something twitched. A sliding heap of old-lady housedresses or nightgowns, their nylon surfaces whispering against one another. "Come on, you

cat; no sense scaring the poor thing out of her mind. God knows she's half there

already." Yeah, she and who else? Winnie thought to herself: Here you are being

jittery about a housecat?

Fearing a slicing claw, Winnie picked up a walker that the old woman no doubt

used to get out of bed. She touched the laundry with the leg of it. Then she

reached and tugged at a hem. The top garment lifted up at an angle, caught on

something unseen. With a crusty ripping sound, it came away. A clot of dried

sherry or some other more intimate fluid, patching one garment against another?

The far edge of the next garment rippled; the cat was backing up underneath.

She said a poem to stiffen her nerves.

"Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been?

I've been to London to visit the Queen.

Pussycat, Pussycat, what did you there?

I frightened a little mouse—"

She stifled a gag as she peeled back the top nightgown.

Two, then three cats came to light, blood matting their fur to the nightdress

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