THE RETURN OF THE ACCURSED HICKORY CAT

Many and varied are the strange legends that have grown up over the years around the Accursed Hickory Cat and the unfortunates that have come into contact with it over the years, but few are stranger than the story of Lord Underwood, 15^th Earl of Nether Buttering and his beautiful young bride of barely an hour.

The Hickory Cat had been missing for decades, and had long been rumoured by many to be at the bottom of the ocean, when, during a chance clearout of a forgotten room in a rambling, crumbling pile of a neglected country house, a dusty old cardboard box was found in a cobweb strewn far corner, hidden behind the bric-a-brac of a good half century.

The 15^th Earl had recently inherited the house from the rather unfortunate 14^th Earl who had lived alone in the house watching it deteriorate around him for more than four decades after the tragic death of the 13^th Earl in such bizarre circumstances that they led to the cat being hidden away and, if not completely forgotten about, certainly very much ignored. The 14^th Earl of course knew exactly where it was and it plagued his nightmares for many nights through the years. Many times he had thought about venturing up into that attic room and seeking out that box, bringing it downstairs and trying to get rid of it somehow, maybe as a gift or a donation to the unfortunates of the parish. His conscience however would not allow him to because he was a kindly man at heart, despite the wicked ways of his father and the final slide into madness of his mother. Instead he chose to sacrifice his own chances of happiness rather than have to pass on his accursed line to another generation.

The 15^th Earl was the grandson of a long forgotten cousin and was rather surprised to gain such an inheritance as he had been working as an underemployed booking clerk in a naval yard in Canada when he got the news. Within days of having his fortunes so dramatically and unexpectedly turned about (or so he thought) he was crossing the Atlantic by a swift steamship in the anticipation of taking up his duties and surveying his prize.

Sadly for him, Underwood House turned out to be something of a disappointment, such was the neglect that had been shown to it by his less than illustrious predecessor. Not only that, a personal reading of the will discovered rather a significant quantity of debt had accrued over the many years of his isolation, not least due to the amount of produce that he had ordered to be delivered to him in order to survive his exile from the wider world. The 15^th Earl’s dreams of fortune and easy living due to his unexpected legacy faded rather fast, especially as he discovered another clause in the will stated that he was unable to even sell off the old place due to an ancient and binding Royal Charter.

He set about trying to crawl back some kind of profit from the sickly hand he felt he had been dealt by the fates, by having the entire contents of the house catalogued and assessed, with a view towards a possible sale by auction. This of course is when the cardboard box came to be rediscovered by one of the unfortunate workmen hired by the assessors to assist with the matter. Tragically, as he went over to pass the box down through the trapdoor to where his colleague was waiting on the ladder to receive it, that fellow’s foot happened upon one of the many rotten floorboards that were a feature of that old house and he tripped and fell headfirst through the opening and collided with his colleague. Seconds later both crashed headlong to the floor below and one broke his spine and the other his neck. The surveyor came running at the sound of the screams and the subsequent crash and found them both there, and alongside them was the broken cardboard box, burst open with its contents strewn about the room.

Now it could be said that this was just an unfortunate coincidence, but the poor man had been passing to and fro over that very spot for much of the day, and it was only when he was carrying that fated box that his foot went through that rotting plank and caused the accident to occur.

After the poor workmen had been removed, the surveyor returned to that room and found the Hickory Cat and the papers that it had once been tightly bound in. Those papers told the story of the 13^th Earl’s tragic demise as written by his widow and hidden away by his son and heir, and pieced together some of the fragments of a tale long forgotten and eventually known only to the late 14^th Earl.

The Hickory Cat, it transpired, had come into the Underwood’s possession after the 13^th Earl had issued an eviction notice upon a struggling family from one of the cottages on the estate. The grandfather of the family, a long serving estate worker, had become too old frail to continue working, and his son, a weak and feckless youth, had not been able to take upon himself enough of the burden of his duties and had soon fallen into arrears with his rent. The son had however managed to shape himself enough to marry fairly well, to a rather comely young girl whom the Earl had brought to his attention once when she had assisted in the kitchens at a long ago Hunt Ball.

When the lad came to the house to plead his case, the Earl had suggested that they might be able to come to some kind of arrangement if the lad’s wife were to perform certain favours that his own wife was not prepared to do for him any more, although under the strict understanding that she was never to find out about it. The lad, being something of a weak-willed simpleton, thought this might indeed solve his problem and agreed to return to the house that same evening with his good lady wife.

They did indeed go up to the house later that day, although the lad had failed to fully explain the situation to his wife, and so she was rather surprised by what the Earl suggested almost immediately upon their arrival.

Naturally, she rejected his proposition out of hand, although he persisted with his advances and was not prepared to accept her refusal. She freed herself from his clutches and ran off out of the house and into the woods to escape him and he set off in wild, lust-fuelled pursuit on horseback, determined to run her to ground and have his way with her. The young lad, with a sudden realisation of the horror of what he had done, set off after them, stopping only at the cottage to pick up a weapon of some kind.

He caught up with them after the Earl had already wrestled her to the ground and beaten her very badly, and was so enraged at what he saw was happening, he swung at the back of the Earl’s head with the carved lump of Hickory wood that he had in his hand, killing him stone dead.

The Earl’s body was found by one of the footmen sent out searching for him the next morning after his horse had sauntered home alone without him. His breeches were about his ankles and the bloodied Hickory Cat lay at his side. Of the little family who used to live in the cottage there was no sign.

The Hickory Cat will sometimes protect its own, it would seem.

The story was brought to the attention of the 15^th Earl who mocked its silly superstition and went ahead with his sale, which brought in enough money for him start thinking about seeking a wife for himself. Sadly, it later turned out that a number of the pieces of antique pottery sold at that sale were worth many, many times the price he got for them. The Hickory Cat, however, was not sold, and for a while it served as an ornament in one of the front facing windows.

Nonetheless, within a few months the 15^th Earl had indeed made a good match, to a young heiress that he genuinely seemed to be very happy with, and a wedding was duly announced. At last, it seemed, for a while at least, as if the misfortunes of Underwood House were going to finally be put behind it. Sadly, on the way back to the house after the wedding ceremony, as they on the front driveway, both of the horses pulling their carriage reared up unexpectedly and the carriage toppled over, killing the young bride and severely crippling the Earl. A maid later claimed that she’d been polishing the Hickory Cat whilst standing at the window and it must have been that which spooked the horses, but few believed her, although no other reason was ever found.

After that the 15^th Earl took to drinking heavily and one day, about six months later, he locked himself in the tool shed with a loaded shotgun and the Hickory Cat claimed another victim.

There are some who doubt its existence, there were some who suggested that he was only ever really a dream, but recent researches have uncovered the attached photographs taken from a catalogue for a clearance sale held long ago, alongside a short description that describes a cat fashioned out of hickory wood which is about 18 inches tall and is mostly dark brown in colour, with painted decoration.

Its expression is surprisingly coy when you look at it, and, rather than having the expected evil expression of legend, the carving is almost friendly, but then it was originally meant to be a gift for a small child so I suppose that should be expected. I have my doubts about whether it is genuine, of course, not least because it appears to have been surviving the years rather well for an object of its alleged great age at that point in time. In the catalogue, after the description, there then follows a short but rather lurid account of the earlier legend of the Hickory Cat without once claiming that this is actually the genuine article itself.

If in doubt, print the legend.