by Will James
First published 2019
The narrator once loved animals, especially his black cat Pluto. But alcohol transforms him into a violent man who torments the creatures he once cherished. In a drunken rage, he cuts out Pluto's eye, then hangs the cat from a tree. A fire destroys his home that same night, leaving only a wall with the image of a hanged cat burned into the brick. The narrator finds another black cat, nearly identical to Pluto but with a white mark on its chest. This new cat follows him home, and the white mark grows to resemble a gallows. His hatred for the animal consumes him. When his wife tries to protect the cat, he kills her with an axe and walls up her body in the cellar. The police arrive to search the house. Just as they prepare to leave, a horrible shriek echoes from behind the cellar wall. The cat, accidentally sealed in with the corpse, has betrayed the narrator's crime. This collection also includes tales of premature burial, conversations with the dead, and a plague that stalks a masquerade ball.
Genres: short-stories, 20th-century, horror, 19th-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: unreliable-narrator, violence
Period: 19th-Century, 20th-Century
276 pages · Paperback · Independently published
Content warnings: alcohol-abuse, animal-death, domestic-violence, gore, graphic-violence, murder