“Maybe I will,” she says. “I just want to get the meat in the oven and then we’ll see. Now go on, before you torch the whole forest.”

But Charles is already halfway out the door.

Margaret turns, face strained, and watches him through the wavy glass of the old window, walking away across the humped mound of green grass, through the twilight, toward a rising pillar of black smoke that she knows, from experience, reeks of death.

In the window’s reflection she sees a small shadow standing behind her, hovering at the kitchen door. “You better get cleaned up,” she says.

But the shadow does not move and does not answer.

“Sam?” she says, and frowns, the air sour, thick with the stench of burnt leaves.

MARMALADE

BOBBY CLARKE, NEIGHBOR

When Ms. Grimmel finally died she was old as shit. Petrified shit. Jurassic shit encased in amber. I mean, that lady had always been old. Her skin was papery—like dry and wrinkled, but also sorta loose? Hung from her bones like a soggy diaper. Okay, look, imagine the skin covering your whole body was the same skin as your balls. Like, nutsack skin. That’s the stuff that covered Ms. Grimmel’s entire body, especially her face and arms and legs—you know, the parts you could see.

Are you gonna write this down?

…

You’re recording? Good, because it’s important.

…

Okay, okay.

So yeah, she was just this weird old lady, always sitting on her porch, covered in wrinkly skin, rubbing her wormy lips together, busy knitting some scarf or hat or whatever. Just rocking and knitting all day, gums working like she was sucking the world’s biggest gobstopper. You know, from Willy Wonka? Oh, she also had these bulging eyes that always locked onto anyone who walked by her house. They looked like raisins in a bowl of curdled milk, wide and swimming behind huge wireframe glasses. And they would flick up to study the street, watch whoever was passing like they’d done something wrong, you know? Her gums would be working, lips all wet, gnarled old hands clickety-clackety with the knitting needles. Man, no offense? But she was creepy.

Anyway, the deal with Ms. Grimmel is that she became really famous for some stuff that happened one summer a few years back. And now she’s infamous. Like, people hate talking about her, but they also can’t stop. I mean, what happened was just too crazy… but the thing is, she isn’t famous because of anything she did.

She’s famous because of her cat.

Yeah man, no joke. Her fucking cat.

I know what you’re thinking—what, did the cat do tricks or something? Was it a super rare cat? Did it win first prize in a stupid cat show? No, man, no. None of that. This cat was for real. Now, granted, I was only a little kid when all this went down, okay? I was just ten going on eleven. But I heard about it from everybody—again and again, over and over. Always some new fact, some new twist to the stories, as if they weren’t weird enough already. Like I said, around here, you can’t get people to shut up about it. It’s like every party, every school thing, every time the adults get together, it’s Marmalade this, Marmalade that. Hey, remember Marmalade? Holy shit, right?

But the kids? Like me? We’re so sick of hearing about Marmalade we want to throw up. It was years ago! Still, I can sort of understand why it’s a big deal. Truth is, even us kids get that it was pretty, you know…. Horrible. We’re not stupid.

So, here’s the story.

About five years ago, Ms. Grimmel gets super sick. And no, if you’re wondering, there ain’t no Mister Grimmel. That dude died so long ago his cause of death was meteorite. Get it? So, Ms. Grimm (that’s what we called her, mainly because she never smiled) is sick. Like, gonna die any day, maybe any minute, kinda sick. I mean, she was probably gonna die any minute anyway—the woman was old as space.

Still, five years ago? She was still sorta healthy. She could move around and cook or whatever. By the time she finally croaked, earlier this year, she couldn’t even get out of bed. Cat or no cat, her time was up.

Anyway, she gets sick, and everyone’s like “Oh my God, Ms. Grimmel is gonna fuckin’ die!” and freaking out. I think she had gotten pneumonia or something and her lungs were filling with fluid, and she couldn’t breathe, and she was already ancient so her white blood cells were fucked up and she was gonna croak, blah blah blah. No big deal, right? Nature doing its thing.

Here’s where it gets weird.

And by weird, I mean spooky as hell.

Enter Marmalade. An everyday, fluffy orange tabby cat with bright, eerie green eyes. Apparently, the cat was named after the color of her fur which, I have to say, did look a lot like marmalade, especially if it was backlit by the sun. Man, sometimes it was like that cat glowed.

Whatever, glowing fur, bright green eyes, old Marmalade was still the dumbest cat in the world, I swear. She got stuck on Ms. Grimmel’s roof one time, took hours to get her down. Another time she almost got clipped by a car giving herself a bath in the middle of the street. So, not the brightest animal, okay?

That said, she was also a stone-cold miracle.

You know… until she wasn’t.

SANDY KOLCHEK, NEIGHBOR

It started with Ms. Grimmel, that’s true.

I suppose it all went downhill from there.

By the way, I heard you were going to interview Oliver Shepard. I wouldn’t bet your farm on his facts, as my father used to say. He’s just a kid, not even out of college. He doesn’t even have a job.

…

Well, that’s up to you. Still, after what happened to his father. I mean, what he did.

Just awful.

And the cat … well, you know all about her, of course. What she did for my Ted? That’s why you’re talking to me, am I right?

No need repeating all of it. What happened to Barbara, Ms. Grimmel that is, has been told and retold so many times it’s all but scratched into the concrete streets of our little neighborhood. You know, to look at these green, manicured lawns and white-post porches, the smiling neighbors mowing their grass and walking their dogs… you’d never think something horrible happened here.

Something supernatural.

But it did, of course.

I see the red eye of your little recorder staring at me, unblinking, demanding the truth. The whole of it.

…

I know it’s just a tape recorder. I’m not dense.

…