Forever Dead Read Online Free Page A

happened to you, eh, puss?” I asked as I glanced uneasily at the cat’s ear, matted with blood, its tip hanging on by a thread. There was a huge gash down the cat’s left flank, caked with dried blood, as though some animal had raked it with its claws. But the loss of its leg was an old injury — there was no blood there. I reached out my hand and tried to scratch the cat, but it backed off and stood staring at me, not moving. Suddenly it meowed loudly and moved off down the portage trail. It looked back once and then stopped as if inviting me to follow, all the while emitting a low, haunting whine that made meshiver. Why was the cat alone? Where was its owner? I called out to Ryan, and when he came loping down the path toward me he stopped dead when he caught sight of the cat.
    â€œIs that a cat?” he asked incredulously.
    I didn’t answer. Instead I moved forward slowly, but the cat loped away into the woods ahead of me, its agility surprising after the loss of a leg. When I reached the spot it had run to I could see the cat sitting under some bushes looking back at me, waiting. I looked up and saw something glinting high up in the trees about a hundred yards into the bush. As I watched, it seemed to swing slowly back and forth, like a pendulum sparkling in the sun. The cat sat patiently waiting, tilting its head, silently, unnervingly watching me. I glanced down into its golden yellow eyes and suddenly felt an inexplicable coldness steal through my sweaty body like a thief. I couldn’t fathom what it was trying to steal, but I didn’t like the feeling one bit. Instinctively I backed away and then felt foolish as the cat broke the spell by running back toward me and rubbing itself against my leg.
    â€œSomeone must have left something behind, besides the cat,” I said as Ryan came up behind me. I pointed toward the woods.
    â€œTwenty feet up a tree?” quipped Ryan.
    I repositioned my collecting pack from my shoulder onto my back. “I’m going to take a look,” I said. “Just in case the cat’s owner is hurt.”
    â€œAnd I’m going to stay right here and have a snooze! No way I’m bushwhacking my way down that poor excuse for a trail. It’s probably only a piece of tinfoil.”
    â€œBut what about the cat?” I asked.
    Ryan shrugged, sat down, leaned against a tree, and pulled his cap over his eyes. “Let me know what you find.”

chapter two
    I peered unenthusiastically at the tangled undergrowth converging on the old trail. It was going to be a lovely bushwhack. Did I really want to do it? I glanced at the cat. Something in the way it stared at me sent a shiver of fear down my spine. I looked back at Ryan, who had slouched further down against the tree in a spectacularly contorted position that looked impossibly uncomfortable, and yet he was already softly snoring. A wisp of his red-blond hair, like a coiled golden snake, had escaped from the confines of his cap and now sproinged across his right eyebrow, which suddenly twitched in annoyance. I took a deep breath and waded into the woods after the cat, shoving aside the branches and twigs of the dead layers of jack pine that grabbed at my legs and arms. I stumbled over a tangle of hidden roots and watched in envy as the cat nimbly moved through the underbrush, patiently waiting for me each time I got tangled in the bracken.
    Eventually the undergrowth thinned and we broke out of the bush into a glade, a legacy of the sudden violent death of a pine whose great gnarled and naked roots stood upended in a mocking reversal of life. After being torn from the earth, the great tree had toppled and taken out a handful of other younger trees. Directly in front of the downed tree and dangling from a rope thrown high over the limb of another tree was a medium-sized olive green canvas pack.
    The glint I had seen from afar came from the sharpened edge of the blade of a bush axe. As I