The Cat in the Bookstore
Harley Royston stared at his computer screen, his mind searching for words to fill up the blank page of the untitled document he had opened. The words, however, eluded him. The keys appeared to be waiting impatiently for him to type something—anything. Worse, the blinking cursor seemed to mock him. He knew what he wanted to write about, but the words wouldn't come. Finally, he admitted to his temporary defeat, turned off the computer and stepped away from his desk.
The bestselling author of historical fiction stretched his arms, legs, neck and back, and then walked out to the living room. He stood in front of his picture window, admiring the Pru and the Hancock, which dominated the Boston skyline. It was an expensive view, but he could afford it.
The sun shone brightly on that crisp autumn day. It was perfect weather for a stroll around the city, not to remain cooped up with a bad case of writer's block.
I think I'll grab a bite to eat at Quincy Market and then walk over to the Common, he thought as he donned a comfortable sweatshirt.
One of Harley's greatest pleasures in life was to walk down the center of Quincy Market's food court and experience the tantalizing aromas of the cuisine being offered: everything from fresh seafood and clam "chowdah" to various ethnic foods, burgers and baked goods. After considering a lobster roll, he changed his mind and on impulse bought the largest pulled pork sandwich he had ever seen. Not only was the roll a two-fisted one, but there must have been half a pound of coleslaw on top of the meat.
After finishing his belly-busting lunch and washing it down with a Diet Coke—every little bit helps!—he felt uncomfortably full.
I can really use that walk now, he decided, loosening his belt slightly.
Harley left Quincy Market and headed toward Faneuil Hall. After a brief glance at the statue of patriot Samuel Adams, he picked up the Freedom Trail and followed a crowd of tourists toward the Old State House. As the majority of sightseers stopped to take photographs with their cell phones—Harley wondered why so few people used actual cameras these days—the writer continued along the red line of the Freedom Trail.
As he shortened the distance between himself and the Common, Harley spied a small cardboard sign, less than a square foot in size, with the words written in Magic Marker: NEW AND USED BOOKS. Both a writer and an avid reader, Royston rarely passed up a bookstore. The arrow on the sign pointed down a narrow alley, one most people would drive past without noticing.
I'm in no rush to get home, he decided. I think I'll see what they've got.
From the outside, the store was not very impressive. There was a simple sign, a plain wood and glass door and a display window featuring a combination of recent bestsellers and old favorites. There were a number books on the Kennedys—this was Boston, after all!—a few on the Red Sox, a selection of books by Dennis Lehane and others by Stephen King.
Walking through the door, Harley's first impression was that the shop was definitely no Barnes and Noble. It was no large, modern bookstore with a coffee bar. It didn't sell music or movies, just books. The building was old and divided into many small rooms, alcoves and hallways.
There was no cash register, no checkout counter. Nor was there a single employee in sight.
"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone here?"
A middle-aged man with thick glasses and an old-fashioned bowtie popped his head up from behind a large stack of books.
"Can I help you?" the shopkeeper relied.
"No. I'd just like to browse."
"Go ahead and be my guest. Fiction is at the back of the store. The rest of the books are separated according to subject area. You'll see the labels on the shelves. If you need any help, just holler."
When Harley turned the corner to browse a case of books devoted to American architecture, he came face to face with a large orange cat that was perched on a shelf at the writer's eye level.
"Hello, there," he said with amusement. "Who are you?"
The cat responded with a bored meow.
Harley scratched the animal on his neck, beneath his ear, and he immediately began to purr.
"You're a friendly one."
Harley briefly examined the titles on the shelf and then moved into another room where books on British history were kept. The cat followed him and rubbed up against the author's leg.
"You seem to have made a friend," the man with the bowtie said as he passed by Royston, carrying a large stack of paperbacks. "Chaucer doesn't take to too many people. He usually spends most of his time hiding in the room dedicated to the supernatural and paranormal books."
"Is that his name? Chaucer?"
"That's what I call him. Everyone that works here calls him something else: Shakespeare, Dickens, Lord Byron."
"So the animal is community property?"
"He followed a customer into the shop one day and never left. We tried to find his owner, but we didn't have any luck."
"He seems to have a good home."
"We have a lot of animal lovers who have worked here over the years."
"How long has the cat been here?"
"Oh, about five or six years now, I think. We feed him twice a day, and we have a litter box in the back room, right near the books by Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly," the shopkeeper said with a laugh.
"That's a good place for it," Harley, a fellow liberal, agreed.
The man with the bowtie then excused himself and went about his business. Meanwhile, the cat sauntered out of the room, stopping to turn and look at the writer as he crossed the doorway. Out of idle curiosity, Harley followed him. The cat continued down a long hall and passed through the third doorway on the right. The room was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, all of which contained biographies and autobiographies.
In one mighty leap, the cat jumped from the floor to the second shelf, a distance of more than five feet. When he landed, he displaced a volume from its shelf, and the book tumbled to the floor. Harley stooped to pick it up and noticed the title on the cover: The Life of Sherwin Larch.
"I was a real fan of Larch's when I was younger," Harley said aloud although no one but the cat was in earshot. "I think I read everything he ever wrote at least once and some of his stories several times."
Although not as well known as Edgar Allan Poe, Sherwin Larch was one of the great nineteenth century writers of macabre fiction. A master storyteller as well as a prolific author, he might have surpassed Poe but his untimely, mysterious death put an early end to his career.
The cat meowed and stretched out a paw as though to touch the book. Harley's blue eyes stared into the cat's mesmerizing, green ones.
A sudden idea came to Royston.
I ought to write a book about Sherwin Larch. His life and death would no doubt make a fascinating historical fiction.
As Harley went in search of the bookseller in order to purchase the biography in his hand, the cat jumped down from the shelf and went back to the room containing books on the metaphysical world. There, he jumped on a comfortable box of books, curled up into a ball, closed its eyes and promptly fell asleep.
* * *
Still comfortably full from his pulled pork sandwich, when Harley Royston returned to his penthouse apartment, he went straight to his favorite reading chair and opened to the first page of the biography. As he read, he highlighted key facts with a yellow marker. Although his novel would center on the last weeks of Sherwin Larch's life and his mysterious death, Harley would want to include information about the late author's early life as well.
He read for hours before finally closing the book well past three and getting some sleep. But he was up early the next morning, and after a shower and a cup of coffee, he continued reading. Two days later, when he came to the end of The Life of Sherwin Larch, he opened his laptop and began to outline his novel, frequently referring to the highlighted text in the old biography.
I suppose I ought to consult more than one source, he thought.
Harley could have gotten all the information he needed without leaving his home. The Internet, after all, was a vast repository for background information. Instead, he chose to return to the odd bookstore where he had purchased the biography.
The cat was there to greet him, this time sitting atop a selection of travel books. The man with the bowtie was not working. Rather, a young woman with long hair brown hair and a freckled face was minding the store.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"I'm looking for any books you might have on Sherwin Larch. I purchased one here the other day, and I was hoping you might have others."
"Your best bet is to check our biography section, which is ...."
"Oh, I know where it is. Chaucer here was kind enough to show it to me."
"Chaucer? Oh, you mean Hawthorne?"
Harley smiled, wondering if the cat answered to any of its names.
The animal in question got down from its stack of books, arched its back, stretched its legs and jauntily headed toward the biography section at the rear of the store.
"You know just where I want to go, don't you?"
Oddly enough, Harley saw nothing out of the ordinary in his talking to a cat. A dog man, he had never formed an attachment to any feline. Why then was he so fascinated by the one in the bookstore? Maybe because it was clear to him that there was something different about that particular animal.
When he and the cat arrived in the biography section, Harley began searching the shelves for material on Sherwin Larch. Since the books were listed in alphabetical order by the subject's name, it wasn't a difficult task.
"Ah, this book looks promising!"
Meow.
"Are you agreeing with me?" Harley said, more to himself than to the animal.
The cat jumped up on a shelf, bringing its eyes on a level with the writer's.
"It's as though you wanted to speak to me."
When the cat jumped down to the floor and headed out into the hallway, Harley had the distinct impression that the animal wanted him to follow. Curious, he tailed the cat to the room where material on the paranormal was kept. Again, the cat jumped up on a shelf, upsetting one of the books.
"What's this?"
The writer picked up the paperback to read the title: Unexplained Mysteries. He then opened it to the table of contents. The fourth chapter dealt with the disappearance of Sherwin Larch.
It's as though the cat wanted me to find this.
Royston shook his head at the preposterous notion.
I ought to reserve my imagination for my writing, he thought with a smile and then headed back to the biography room.
Just the same, he decided to purchase the book.
* * *
The information in Unexplained Mysteries, if correct, was astonishing. (Even if it turned out to be more fiction than fact, it still led to a pretty good story.) According to the author, just prior to his disappearance, Sherwin Larch had been doing research on a legend of a ten-foot-tall, fur-covered man beast that was said to wander in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Last seen purchasing supplies for his journey north, the novelist went missing before being found more than a week later lying unconscious in a Boston gutter. He was taken to a hospital and died several days later. What had happened to him or where he had been in that interval of time has always remained a mystery.
Armed with this new information, Harley began writing his latest historical novel. For three days, he labored at his computer, his words pouring forth without cessation. Finally, on the fourth day, he ran out of steam.
He looked at the length of his document and declared with satisfaction, "I deserve a break."
Despite the dark clouds that threatened to unleash a downpour, Harley decided to walk to Quincy Market for lunch. This time he opted for a lobster roll in lieu of the pulled pork. After finishing his meal, he walked to the bookstore.
The man with the bowtie was once more minding the shop.
"Hello, again," he said, carrying another stack of used books.
"Hi," Harley replied, his eyes seeking out the cat.
He found him in the fiction section.
"There's my friend," he said, scratching the cat beneath his chin.
For ten minutes, he remained with the animal, listening to its soothing purr.
Now I see why so many people own cats.
Relaxed, Harley let his mind drift. Soon it was flooded with ideas for his story. He had to hurry home and write while his creative juices were still bubbling over. Not wanting to leave the shop empty-handed, he grabbed a book off the shelf without even bothering to look at the title, paid for it and quickly left.
For the next eleven months Royston made steady progress on his manuscript, thanks in no small part to his furry muse. During that time, he took at least a dozen trips to the bookstore to pet the cat and experience the calming effect of its purr, which never failed to help him focus on the task at hand.
Finally, with the fact-based early life of Sherwin Larch having been written, it was time for Harley to address the subject of his disappearance and death. For days, the writer considered one idea after another, always rejecting the many theories posed over the past hundred and sixty years. Although most of the popularly held explanations for the man's death were possible, Harley felt they were just not plausible.
Sherwin Larch was well known at the time he died. I don't understand why no autopsy was performed. Even given the limitations of medicine during the nineteenth century, doctors surely could have discovered something wrong had they bothered to look.
Finally, unable to decide on the direction his book would take, Royston turned off his computer and engaged in what was now a well-established routine. He stopped by Quincy Market for a bite to eat—a twelve-inch Italian hoagie loaded with pickled peppers and dripping with oil and vinegar—after which he followed the Freedom Trail to the bookstore.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, he noticed something was decidedly different about the place. It felt wrong somehow.
"Can I help you?" a young man with a Celtic tattoo on his neck asked.
Harley's eyes conducted a quick scan of the room.
"I'm looking for my friend," the writer replied.
"Man or woman?"
"Neither. It's a cat."
"A cat? In a bookstore?"
"Yes. A large orange cat that goes by the name of Chaucer or sometimes Dickens or Lord Byron. He's always here when I come in."
"I've only worked here three days. I've never seen or heard of a cat in the shop. No one ever mentioned it to me."
"I hope nothing has happened to him. He was quite an animal."
"I'm allergic to cats myself," the tattooed young man declared.
"I'll take a look around."
"Call me if you need anything."
Harley followed the winding maze of hallways, looking into every room. There was no sign of the cat anywhere. He even peeked into the back room where the books by Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly were left to gather dust and was shocked to see there was no little box or cat food bowls nearby. Instantly, he imagined the worst. The cat must have got out of the shop, wandered out into the busy street and was run over by a car.
Feeling as though he had lost his best friend, Royston stumbled out of the room and slowly walked through the halls toward the shop's exit. There was no pretense of looking for a book or buying another one he had no intention of reading.
"Have a good day," the tattooed young man called, but the customer gave no indication of having heard him.
* * *
Tears misted in Harley's eyes as he headed home. The heavy weight of mourning and loss was almost too great to bear.
This is silly, he tried to reason with himself. It wasn't even my cat.
However, his lack of ownership did not make the loss any easier to bear. As odd as it may sound, the cat was not only his friend, but it also gave him the inspiration to continue writing. Now, when he needed him most, the animal was nowhere to be found. His broken body might very well be rotting away in some municipal garbage dump.
How will I ever finish my book without him? Harley selfishly wondered.
He stood outside his front door, key in hand, not in the least bit eager to enter. The laptop would be there to remind him of his unfinished manuscript.
Maybe I ought to call my old college buddy and invite him to go to the pub with me. We could watch the Red Sox game on the television there. That ought to take my mind off ....
There was a strange noise behind the door as though something were scratching on it to be let out.
What the ...?
He put the key in the lock and turned it. The door opened, and Harley was stunned to see the orange cat in his apartment, staring up at him.
"What are you doing here?" he cried with joy.
Meow.
The cat headed toward the writer's home office, and Harley dutifully followed.
"I thought I turned my computer off," he said seeing the file for his manuscript was left open.
The cat rubbed against the screen and hit the keyboard with its orange, furry paw.
"It can't be!" the writer exclaimed with disbelief.
Nonetheless it was true. The first draft of the book was completed, but who had written the final chapters?
Harley turned his head and stared into the cat's green eyes.
"Was it you?"
An intelligent man, he knew the question was blatantly ridiculous. A cat couldn't write, and it certainly couldn't operate a computer! Yet ....
Suddenly, the events of the past several months flashed through Royston's mind. He remembered the cat knocking over the biography of Sherwin Larch and thereby giving him the idea to write his book in the first place. Furthermore, whenever his creativity had stalled, it was the cat that had urged him on.
"I always thought there was something remarkable about you, but I never dreamed just how extraordinary you are!"
The cat, still purring, squinted its green eyes as though smiling at him.
"Now let me see how good a writer you are," Harley said, sitting down in front of his laptop to read the conclusion of the manuscript.
The cat immediately jumped onto his lap. As he read the unfamiliar material, the writer stroked the cat's head, and the purring grew louder.
What unraveled on the computer screen was an unbelievable tale of the final days of Sherwin Larch. Researching what was to be his next horror story, the writer traveled to Vermont in search of the Bigfoot-like creature. He stopped in a small, isolated village along the Glastenbury River. While he was there, he heard rumors of strange magical practices and of an old Celtic religion brought to the New World from Glastonbury, England.
This is good, but where did this information come from? Harley asked the cat, but not surprisingly he received no reply.
Although they were benevolent, nonviolent people, when the villagers learned of the stranger's identity, they feared with good reason that their secret would be made known to the world and that their entire way of life would be destroyed. For their own protection, they had to silence Sherwin Larch. It was a matter of self-preservation, not malice that made the head priest of the pagan sect cast a spell on the writer.
When Larch returned to Boston, he was intent on writing about the people he had discovered in Vermont. Sadly for him, no sooner did he arrive home than he fell sick from a strange malady. He was found the following day in a gutter only a few feet from where the bookstore was located.
What a coincidence! Harley thought, feeling the hairs on his neck rise.
The next several pages described in amazing detail Larch's last hours. They told of his briefly gaining consciousness before the end and asking for God to forgive him—a strange act from a confirmed atheist. Then he closed his eyes and slipped away, never to waken again.
"So he died from a spell placed on him by a Celtic priest?"
Although the cat was not able to speak, it did find a way to answer the rhetorical question. The Word document on the computer screen went blank. Then the cursor moved across the new page as unseen hands worked the keyboard.
THE SPELL DID NOT KILL HIM. IT SIMPLY RELEASED HIS SOUL FROM HIS BODY.
"What happened to his soul then?"
IT FOUND A NEW HOME.
"Where?"
IN AN ANIMAL THAT HAPPENED TO BE SLEEPING IN THE ALLEY OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL WINDOW.
Harley knew before the words were spelled out on the computer screen that the animal the unknown writer referred to was an orange cat.
* * *
The door to the bookstore opened, and Harley Royston went inside. He didn't waste any time. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, what books he was interested in reading. Following the maze-like hall, he went to the room where the volumes on the occult were kept.
The answer must be there! he prayed.
Before reaching the room, he encountered the middle-aged man with thick glasses and an old-fashioned bowtie, carrying another stack of used books.
"Hello there!" the shopkeeper called. "It's nice to see you back. I was beginning to get worried we'd never see you again."
Harley tried to reply, but he couldn't. All he could manage was a pathetic meow.
"You must be hungry, Chaucer. I'll open up a can of cat food and pour you a saucer of milk. Oh, and I'd better put your litter box back next to the Republicans."
As the man with the bowtie headed to the back room to ready it for the returning cat, Harley headed for the occult books. By reading one of them, Sherwin Larch had found a way to appropriate his body, leaving Harley's soul to seek refuge in the orange cat. Now, Sherwin Larch was living in his body, residing in his apartment and using his laptop to write his next horror novel.
As he crossed the threshold of the room, Harley looked up at the shelves filled with hundreds of books and knew it might be years or even decades before he found the answer to his dilemma.
I can't do it on an empty stomach, he thought, remembering the pulled pork sandwich he'd eaten at Quincy Market the day he first encountered the cat. I'd better have a can of Friskies and a saucer of milk before I begin my daunting task.
After filling his belly with ocean whitefish, Harley made his way to the room dedicated to British history. Sleepy, he curled up in front of the fireplace on a stack of books on the Wars of the Roses. As he drifted off to a peaceful, comfortable slumber, he realized that as magical spells went, being turned into a pampered pet in a Boston bookstore wasn't so terrible.
While walking along the Freedom Trail in Boston in September 2015, I found a used bookstore on a side street. Never one to pass up a bookstore, I went inside to browse. There was a large, friendly, long-haired orange cat who had the run of the place. I decided to write a story about him.
Reading always puts Salem to sleep, but then it doesn't take much to tire him out!
