There Are No Cats in Ericaville

Jeremy McEvoy, “Untitled”

By Isaac Murphy

They call it The Woods. Surely the place had a proper name once, but that’s just what They call it. As for whoever They are, well, we just call Them “They.” Their name must have gotten lost in The Woods, along with whoever They were.

Lots of things get lost in The Woods. Some say the place is hungry, imagining it to be a clever hunter luring in its dinner. It must be omnivorous, because if you lose sight of anything, or anyone--well, I can guess just where they ended up.

Somewhere between the trees is a little town lost to the planet beneath it. The people there call it Ericaville, not that the name matters much, as nobody outside of Ericaville has ever heard of it. The name of the town is too long to make it through the dense forest, and if any travelers tried to find the hidden town, such a fool would have been found by The Woods long before they could find their destination. There’s a saying in Ericaville: The Woods hold tight to the town and the town holds tighter to its people. No one has ever left the town, and no one ever would. The town keeps them safe.

The people in Ericaville don’t mind being kept. As far as cages go, the town is a very nice one with beautiful trees for bars that form a forest that only makes loud, unpleasant noises every once in a while, and who would you even complain to about the noises? A tree? Be reasonable now!

Ericaville is a nice town with nice people. The residents wake early to a personal serving of honey sunlight pouring slowly into their bedroom windows through eggshell curtains and they walk to work on uncracked pavements. Their houses are cozy, smelling like coffee in the mornings and sounding like old jazz in the evenings. The people in Ericaville are happy—they do not know any other way to be.

Miss Fooey is a resident of Ericaville, a first-grade teacher. She earned good grades at Ericaville Elementary and Ericaville Junior High and Ericaville High and she is a bright young lady with a pristine head on narrow shoulders. To her students, though, Miss Fooey must be an old woman, bittered by her career. Her twenty-something years are tripled by her manner, what with her sighing and complaining of constant headaches, and to those she teaches, there is no question why.

Lucas is six, and, unlike his shiny-faced peers, he does not walk to school with a missing-toothed smile. He is not a pleasure to have in class, nor is he a straight A student. By his account, he should be—it is not his fault he is the unluckiest boy in Ericaville. How could he predict his Big brother eating his homework every single night, or always having the same answers on every math quiz as Vicky, the Little girl who sits next to him?

Yes, Lucas is by far the unluckiest boy in all of Ericaville because no one believes a word he says, especially about The Cat.

Miss Fooey wishes Lucas would stop talking about The Cat and how it supposedly peeks its head up against the classroom’s window when only he is looking. His ramblings are quite distracting. You can hear the students whisper during their lessons.

“Have you seen The Cat?”

“No, have you?”

Miss Fooey shakes her head, then holds her head in her hands, then sits down at her desk and pushes her pens and papers to the side and lays her head down. She knows that Lucas hasn’t seen a cat. There are no cats in Ericaville. There are no animals in Ericaville. Can you imagine animals in Ericaville? How very unpleasant.

There once was a Friday in Ericaville. It was a pleasantly warm day with the sort of heat that leaves small pearls of sweat on a forehead but does not soak through a shirt. For some nonsensical reason no doubt, Lucas had chosen to wear mittens. Mittens. When asked why by his classmates, he said that they were new and soft and green, and that Vicky, the girl who sat at the desk to the right of his own, might like to see them. When Miss Fooey told him that Vicky was home sick that day, Lucas grumbled and stuffed both mittens into the crumb-filled pocket of his jacket before lessons started.

A whole day tick-tick-ticked by on the classroom’s oaken grandfather clock that was just a bit too large for the little room. It was a familiar day, as it was just like the days before it. Miss Fooey taught a history lesson. Lucas talked about The Cat. Miss Fooey declared it was nap time and cleared off her desk and took a nap. Miss Fooey woke up. Miss Fooey taught a spelling lesson. By the day’s end, only one soft, green mitten was left inside the Little boy’s jacket pocket.

“Miss Fooey!” Lucas cried out. “My right-handed mitten is missing!”

Miss Fooey, who was very tired from a long day of teaching eager boys and girls and Lucas, picked her head up off of her desk.

“Lucas,” the teacher sighed, “You must have lost it. Why don’t you retrace your steps? Go on and search the playground. And hurry–” she added, “you wouldn’t want to keep your parents at home waiting.”

Lucas was a first grade student, which meant that he had recently graduated from the kindergarten playground to the Big Kid Playground. The Big Kid Playground was bigger, much bigger than that old rinky-dink playground for kindergartners, and it had a jungle gym that was probably painted a brilliant shade of purple, or maybe orange, once, but it had all rusted over. The swing set croaked like an angry frog whenever anyone touched it, let alone swung on it, and if any child slid down the slide, they would wind up dampening the back of their freshly-ironed overalls in the murky puddle of rain water pooling at the bottom. Obviously, to anyone Lucas’ age, this was thrilling, and Lucas was no exception.

The only bad thing about the Big Kid Playground was the Big Kids. One day during recess, Vicky told Lucas that all of the Big Kids that wandered away from the Big Kid Playground walked right into The Woods, the very same Woods that held the town and, by extension, the playground, in place.

Now, Lucas may be a bit of a fibber, but he’s no fool. Miss Fooey had warned the class about the dangers of The Woods before, and no little boy likes to be lost, not even a lying one—but Lucas needed the mitten to show to Vicky when she was back in school, so he had to find it. Armed with his youthful determination and clammy hands, the Little boy went to the Big Kid Playground to retrace his steps—all alone.

Well, he wasn’t alone, of course. Big Kids liked to play on the Big Kid Playground after school while all the Little Kids walk home. Lucas watched the Big Kids with awe in his eyes. They played so strangely. They didn’t swing or play Hide-and-Seek like the Little Kids did. They just stood there, spread out, one occasionally letting out a long groan. Sometimes one spun, slowly, looking around, almost in search of something that wasn’t there. They were aimless. The Big Kids stood much closer to The Woods than Lucas had ever dared to go.

Lucas searched every inch of the Big Kid Playground for the missing mitten. He looked under the puddled slide and on top of the rusty jungle gym, but his right-handed mitten was nowhere to be found. Yanked over his apprehension by his desperation, Lucas brought his search to where the Big Kids played.

Lucas stared at the Big Kids with a sickened sense of wonder. They were each silhouetted by sunlight and never before that moment had Lucas felt so small. Each one of the Big Kids loomed over him. Another one of them groaned and Lucas felt his lunch stir in his stomach. The boy watched with a curious fixation as one of the Big Kids, a massive red-haired girl, crouched down to pick up a lone, right-handed mitten.

The stretch of grass between Lucas and the Big Kids began to shorten as the boy rushed towards the mitten-grabber. He felt his pulse in his breath as it bloomed and wilted and bloomed again in his chest. He made his way to the Big Kid with his mitten, stumbling over his own speed and feet.

“That’s mine!” shouted Lucas, as he pulled the left-handed partner from his pocket and waved it above his head like a flag.

The red-haired Big Kid, with her back to the boy, let out a long groan, sounding more like a bear than a girl, and slowly turned around, her heavy feet squishing the dirt below.

Lucas had never seen a Big Kid this up-close before. She was hunched forward, her arms reaching out towards him, and her eyes staring in just a way that they reached for him too. Her skin was rough and wrinkled and it stretched over the masses of bone and cartilage on her face, poking out in angles alien to the boy, as though she had too few eyes and too many noses. Instead of freckles, the Big Kid’s face was covered in clusters of little orifices, each oozing with oil, glinting back up at the sun. Her ears were just a bit too big and a bit too low on her head and her jaw jutted forward. Her belly was big and empty and it roared like a hungry beast that had just caught sight of its dinner. She looked down at the left-handed mitten the Little Kid held, and then at the right-handed one she clutched between her clawed fingers. The Big Kid smiled a big smile, revealing a mouth full of sticks, crawling with buzzing insects.

Lucas screamed a childish, cowardly scream and every neck that wasn’t his on the Big Kid Playground cracked all at the same time, as every Big Kid turned to look as the Little boy.

The red-haired Big Kid let loose another groan as she dropped the mitten. Lucas threw himself at it, but it was catapulted back, far back into a quick breeze, carrying the mitten straight into The Woods.

Lucas felt his fear burrow deep into his throat, but he swallowed it down into his belly. Left mitten in hand, Lucas ran away from the Big Kids and into The Woods.

Ahead of the boy, the breeze coursed deep between the trees, picking up as many leaves as it could in its trek and carried them behind the mitten one by one by one, like a parade. Just behind the breeze, Lucas dashed through The Woods, keeping an eye on the mitten as his little legs pushed him onwards. His feet rained down in rhythm with his breath, fast and fueled by his unwavering purpose. Successful in his impassioned pursuit, the boy jumped up to grab the mitten. He missed it, but as he punctured the body of the breeze, it let out a pained howl and fled around a rather large tree, obscuring the mitten from the boy’s view.

The breeze, trying to secure its new find, tucked itself away into the depths of the trees, burying itself and the mitten under all of the leaves it had collected, as it created a little leaf pile in the darkest corner of The Woods, where not even a drop of the sun’s honey glaze could fall upon it.

Lucas continued to scavenge through The Woods in a fierce hunt. His untied shoes crunched down on twigs and crisp, autumn leaves. The freshest air he had ever breathed filled his lungs as he poured himself through the trees.

The tree branches wove together so tightly that not a single ray of daytime could peek down onto the forest floor. Lucas longed for the tick-tick-tick of his classroom’s clock, as he had no idea how much time had slipped into the dark of The Woods. The boy had searched for so long that weariness and the chill of the forest had crept their way into his bones, making him terribly sleepy. He laid down on the mossy ground and curled himself up into a warm leaf pile, as he would curl up in his favorite blanket after a particularly bad dream. His mind and body almost drifted to sleep, but he was startled by the sound of breathing, soft and slow.

“Hello?” cried the boy, “Is anyone here?”

A chuckle was carried through the breeze of The Woods, followed by a voice, sweet like candy and rich like steak.

“Hello Lucas. You must be awfully cold, what with only having one mitten.”

The boy stammered through his thoughts.

“Hush now child, it’s alright. Would you like help finding its match?”

The boy nodded.

The breeze picked itself up, pulling the leaf pile around it into the familiar shape of a cat, the glove warm in its belly.

“Come, Lucas. Let’s look together.”

The two of us headed deeper into The Woods.