Chapter 48 – The Night of the Killing Cat – Holly Hayfield

Lilith was the first one to step into the cellar staircase in the same adventurous spirit that she had the first time we went into the basement. She was fearless when Malorie’s investigation was her priority. I followed her in next, not out of a sense of adventure but out of a sense of concern. Lilith needed someone to look after her. Sam followed me in, probably to look after me. Then Naomi and the rest came close behind.

The darkness of this staircase and its old grimy concrete walls made it feel like we were walking down into a crypt. The entire ceiling of the staircase was moldy and still wet with rainwater from the morning before. This staircase was a long, straight staircase with a brown wooden door at the bottom of the staircase. The way the staircase got smaller as we made our way closer to the door was giving me a feeling of claustrophobia.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and Lilith grabbed the door handle to open it. The door wasn’t locked, but I could see that the old rickety hinges didn’t want to budge. As Lilith pushed the door it hardly reacted. Lilith looked back at me with pleading eyes. I stepped up beside her to help her push the door open. There was barely enough room at the bottom of the stairwell to fit both of us. The rest of the group just had to wait patiently as we worked.

When the door finally came all the way open we were inside a pitch black room. Lilith and I scanned our flashlights around the place, trying to understand where we were. The entire group came in behind us, scanning their lights in the same manner. Was this part of the underground we had seen before? Or were we wrong and was this an entirely different basement? That concern was quickly put to rest when my flashlight landed on a familiar feature. It was an unlit candle.

“Look over there!” I said, pointing to the candle against the wall in the distance. “This is that room that the body was kept in! It should be just behind that door!”

Lilith was already running over before I even finished talking. I chased across the room after her.

“Wait!” I said. “Hold on, Lilith!”

Lilith wasn’t interested in waiting. As soon as she got to the closet that Malorie was kept in she threw the doors open. She shined her flashlight inside only for a moment. Then she backed away sporadically.

“No…” She said as she backed away, “No! No! No! No!”

I shined the light inside the closet as I approached to see what made her react like that. It was nothing. There was nothing there. Malorie’s corpse was gone.

“It’s gone.” I said as Sam and the others finally caught up to Lilith and me.

The others scanned the area around the closet looking for anything of interest.

“It could’ve been Ms. Sampson.” Sam said. “She may have forced Ms. Logan to move the body somewhere more secure. Look, Ms. Logan’s painting is right over there. This could just be purely to commemorate the spot where she was once kept. She could be buried now.”

Sam flashed her light over to the painting set up in the corner.

“No! No! NO!” Lilith shouted.

Lilith threw her flashlight into the wall. Upon impact the flashlight’s lens shattered and the battery casing ruptured.

“That god damned witch!” Lilith shouted. “I can’t believe she made fools out of us! All the effort to get back down here for nothing! That damn scheming snake!”

Lilith was pacing around in circles as she yelled out her frustrations. I caught her in my arms. She resisted my hug, but I wouldn’t let go even as she fought to break free.

“Calm down Lilith! Get control of yourself!” I shouted.

“No! Leave me alone! Let go of me!” She said.

She was crying in frustration as she fought to pull away. My hold on her didn’t loosen.

“There’s still more for us to search while we’re down here! We can’t get anything done if you’re going to fall apart!” I said.

That caused her stirring to cease. She stopped her fighting and cried into my chest. This was in full view of Naomi’s girlfriends who were wandering what to do next. First we needed to assess the situation down in the basement. It wasn’t going to be easy until Lilith recovered.

“Sam,” I said. “Remember the switch in the elevator room? Can you try to get the lights working down here? It might take a few tries.”

“Right,” Sam said and looked over at the other girls. “Anyone want to come with me? I don’t think it’s safe for us to go anywhere alone down here.”

“You’re right about that.” Naomi said. “It’s dangerous down here. We need to have each other’s backs. Mercy, why don’t you go with Sam to turn on the lights?”

“Hell no!” Mercedes shouted. “The corpse is missing and you want me to wander around this god forsaken place in the dark? I’ll stay right here with everyone else, thank you! Splitting up is how the characters end up dying in horror movies.”

Jin laughed at Mercedes.

“I’ll go with you.” Jin said.

“I’ll go too.” Perri said.

“I want to see the painting.” Silver said.

Casper and Silver went over to get a better look at Ms. Logan’s painting. Mercedes was clinging to Naomi the same way Lilith was now clinging to me. She had gone from resisting my hug to refusing to pull away. She was still crying softly enough that no one else seemed to notice. It was heartbreaking for me to see. I had never seen her so broken apart by something. I stroked her hair.

“We’ll find another way to get information.” I promised Lilith.

“It’s over.” She whispered. “Our entire investigation into Malorie’s story ends here. Nothing will be done for her sake. All she gets is a stupid painting. No one gets brought to justice.”

“That’s not true.” I said. “It isn’t over yet.”

“You’re just saying that.” Lilith said. “You didn’t want to be a part of this anyways. You should be happy.”

“If it’s important to you then it’s important to me. That’s part of what it means to be friends. I haven’t given up on learning the truth about Malorie. You shouldn’t either. There are still places down here that we haven’t searched. Don’t give up just yet.” I said.

The lighting in the room came on just in time. Lilith wiped her face and straightened herself up. I held onto her shoulders as she pulled away. The fire in her eyes hadn’t been restored, but she was willing to look around. Naomi’s girlfriends were looking around the room now that the lights were on. It was clear just how much of a shrine this was when it was well lit.

“I would’ve liked to see it just one more time.” Lilith said. “Hey! Naomi! You were taking pictures when we came down here the first time, right? Do you have a picture of the body?”

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Naomi shook her head.

“After hearing you say it was a real corpse I couldn’t bring myself to. I thought it would’ve been in bad taste.”

“That’s pretty considerate.” I said.

“Yeah, I’m not heartless.” Naomi said. “It’s the opposite, actually. I didn’t want to believe it was a corpse but I had a feeling back then that Lilith could be right. I didn’t want to save something like that on my phone. Now I wish that I had. It’s like she just vanished into thin air.”

“Or maybe she got up and left…” Mercedes said.

“Stop it, Mercy.” Casper said. “You’re going to freak me out too.”

Sam, Perri, and Jin came back into the room.

“Everyone!” Sam said. “You’re going to want to see this! Come here!”

We all followed Sam out of the room. The lights in the hallway seemed to be holding up better than last time for the moment. The door to the room we didn’t check last time was open. That was where Sam was taking us now. When we went in we found a room not unalike the storage room across the hall. Except this time, the thing being stored here weren’t papers and mannequins, but costumes and stage equipment.

“This is awesome!” Silver said as she walked in. “Why is all this stuff down here? Why can’t it be upstairs in our art room?”

“Don’t take anything out of here.” I warned. “It’s too risky. Mrs. Sampson would probably recognize anything we brought up to the surface.”

“This is all horrifying…” Mercedes said as she tiptoed with her arms around Naomi. “I think I just saw something crawling over there.”

“Those are just spiders in the corner.” Jin said teasingly. “Are you sure you don’t want to get a better look, Mercy?”

“I’m sure!”

“Chill out, Mercy.” Naomi said. “Let’s split up and look around to see what we can find.”

“The other girls can split up,” Mercedes said, “I’ll stick with you.”

Casper was wading through the costumes, trying to get a better look at each of them.

“Man, these don’t look cheap.” Casper said. “The school must’ve dropped some serious cash on clubs back then. I feel kind of cheated.”

Perri snickered.

“Which club would you even be in, Casper?” Perri asked.

“The girlfriend club,” Casper said.

“That’s a great idea!” Naomi said. “Maybe if we make ourselves an official club we can apply for money from the school!”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.” I said. “There’s a ton of rituals and paperwork we had to go through just for potential student council funding. If we win there’s even more work for funding we have to do. They put up as many barriers as possible.”

“Those damn cheapskates.” Naomi said.

“You’re not going to try looking around, Lilith?” Sam asked when she noticed Lilith hanging onto my arm in a childlike way.

“What’s the point?” Lilith asked quietly. “The reason I came here is gone. We aren’t going to find anything better than that.”

“Let’s keep looking, everyone.” I said. “There has to be something of value here.”

So we all continued the search. Lilith searched around half-heartedly. She never got more than 3 feet away from me. She was so emotional that she was leaning on me for support. That was what I wanted before, but not under these conditions. This was less like the fiery Lilith I knew and more like a domesticated pet. I wanted to see her get back to her normal self. That was why I was personally putting so much effort into searching.

This room was gargantuan for its location. Given a photographic image of this room without knowing where it was it’d be hard to believe that it was underground. Unlike the other parts of the underground, this room was well lit as if new light bulbs had recently been installed. The height and length of the room was impressive for an underground facility of any sort. This made me wonder if this was even below another classroom of the Discipline hall, or beneath a walled off junction between structures.

Walking through the costume racks of this large room was reminiscent of walking through a clothing section of a department store. I wasn’t the only one having this feeling. Naomi and her girlfriends had halted their searching to try on some of the costumes that they liked. They even found a big box full of masks to parade around in. They were having fun. Sam and I were the only ones left searching for evidence to Malorie’s story.

Evidence came in the form of a desk on the far side of this large room. It was easy to miss upon looking around the room. This small, humble wooden desk was ancient and dilapidated. Its colors were faded, and its entire surface blanketed in dust. It was so odd to me that the floors and walls were so clean of dust and yet the desk was left as-is, like it was frozen in time. Without any sort of context the desk could be a minor detail in this large room fool of artistic supplies. It was what was on the desk that made the gears in my brain turn.

There were papers spread sporadically across the desk, surrounded by arrays of multiple pens, pencils, crayons, markers, highlighters, erasers, and white-out. Beside the desk was a small metal mesh trash bin filled with crumpled up papers. Someone was working on something here. As I pulled Lilith over to get a closer look she began to inspect the scene with me. I could see the light begin to come back to her eyes as she realized just what I was leading her to. The handwriting on the papers confirmed my theory.

This was Malorie’s writing desk. Her brother had mentioned in passing that she was working on a play for the Art and Theater club. This was it. This was the play. Lilith and I both picked up the same paper, each of us using one hand to support it. The name of this work-in-progress play was right at the top.

“The Night of the Killing Cat.” Lilith and I read out loud together.

Lilith and I looked at each other in awe. I waved Sam over.

“Did you find something?” She asked as she approached us.

“The Killing Cat wasn’t just an urban legend that Malorie was writing about in her diary.” I said. “She was working on an entire play based around it. Take this.”

I handed the paper over to Sam as Lilith and I began to go through the stack of papers on the desk. Lilith and I, without saying a word, began to cooperate on arranging the papers into the right order. The play was a mess, and not just because of all the dust on it. It was evidently a work in progress going by all the lines crossed out and all the edits made off to the side. Once Lilith and I gathered the papers by number we flipped through it together.

There were pages missing, but a quick skim through the collection of pages that were there revealed the plot of the story. It was about an innocent young student at a girl’s academy. This girl was an outcast because of her uncanny ability to talk to animals. Everyone avoided her and treated her like a witch. This girl didn’t mind. She preferred to be surrounded by the peaceful animals she loved.

One day a new animal approached her in the woods. This animal was a black cat. This shadowy creature scares away all the other animals that the girl normally speaks with in the woods. Its footsteps scourge the earth beneath it as it trots into this girl’s hidden forest alcove. This cat, like the serpent in the book of genesis, is depicted as a cunning trickster that gets into the girl’s head and manipulates her.

“They hate you because they’re afraid what you’re capable of.” The Killing Cat tells the young girl. “Trust in me and we can end your suffering.”

The Killing Cat goes on to use the girl not for the sake of the girl’s betterment, but purely for vengeance. This cat is less of an ally and more of an evil spirit. The Killing Cat puts the girl’s enemies into a ‘deep sleep’ like something out of Sleeping Beauty. The girl finds her day-to-day problems disappearing as The Killing Cat works its magic, but in the end it backfires. The girl is left alone as every student at the academy was put into this sleeping state.

The girl is left alone as a result of her vengeance. The girl finds herself feeling lonelier than she was ever before. Not only did the Killing Cat put all the students to sleep, but the cat also scourged all the ground it touched. Nothing grew in the woods where the girl once communicated with animals, and so none of the animals came back. The story doesn’t have a proper ending. It just ends mid-paragraph with the girl being completely alone now that the Killing Cat had left her.

“What a depressing story.” I said.

“That’s Malorie.” Lilith said. “Malorie is this girl in the story.”

“Do you think so?” I asked. “This is more depressing than anything in her diary.”

“It’s because of what she was going through at the time.” Lilith said. “She created a self-insert within this story to communicate her pain.”

“We should take pictures of all the text.” Sam said. “Val and Jay will want to see this also.”

“Let’s get started on that right away.” Lilith said, with new vigor in her voice.

Something just behind the desk caught my eye. There was a stereo system that looked like it had crashed into the ground. Around the broken stereo system was a collection of cassettes that had been scattered to the floor. The tape from the cassettes were drawn out and tangled up. It looked like someone had tried to fix them, but gave up part way.

“You two go ahead and get started on that. I’m going to take a look at these tapes.”

Sam and Lilith both pulled out their cellphones to get started. I knelt down to get a better look at the cassette tapes. They were all labeled similarly.

“The tapes say ‘The Night of the Killing Cat Planning Session’ on them. They each have a different number.” I said.

“Are they salvageable?” Sam asked.

“I’m not sure. It’d take a lot of work. It looks like someone tried to fix them but failed. If it was Ms. Logan I don’t imagine her having the patience to fix it.” I said.

“I have my aunt’s cassette player someone in my basement.” Lilith said. “She never throws junk like that out. If you can put those away we can take it back and work on it on the weekend. I doubt Ms. Logan comes into this room often. She probably won’t notice we took them if she comes back here.”

“That’s a good idea.” I said. “I need a bag to carry it in though.”

Sam took off the backpack she was wearing.

“You can use mine. You can just give it back to me whenever you’re ready to give that hoodie back too. Keep it as long as you need though, I have more bags at home.” Sam said.

“I’ll bring it back on Monday if we’re done fixing the cassettes by then.” I said.

I opened up Sam’s bag and looked inside. There was plenty of space for the cassette tapes. The only things inside the bag were spray paint cans of varying colors. I took one out and shook it. It had plenty of paint left inside.

“I think… I think I’ve got a crazy idea.” I said.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“I want to leave a message down here.” I said.