Cat-astrophic Spells Page 8

  “Please, sit down,” I said, looking at Bea and Aunt Astrid, who were coming around the counter.

  “I can’t stay,” she said curtly. Her eyes bounced from Bea to Astrid to me and back again. She wasn’t just nervous. She was also very, very scared.

  “Brit Clegg? It’s really nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming,” Bea said with her hand stretched out for Brit to shake.

  The girl looked at Bea’s dainty, pretty hand as if it were a claw and nervously took half a step backward.

  “Honey, believe me when I tell you you are safe here,” Brit said gently.

  “Very safe, dear.” Aunt Astrid stepped up with her hands folded neatly in front of her. “Your father was our friend. We did business with him. It was a sad day when we heard he had passed.”

  I studied Brit’s face and could tell she was doing something I was familiar with. She was biting her tongue so she wouldn’t cry. How many times had I done that when I was young, and a memory of my mother came vividly into view? When a smell or sound came out of nowhere and sent me whirling back to when I was a kid, I would ache inside even as an adult. Then I’d bite my tongue so I wouldn’t cry.

  The furry paw of my friend pushed through a space at the top of the box to touch my hand, and I took him to a table away from the ladies. I barely had the top open before Treacle leapt into my arms, rubbing his soft head under my chin and along my face as his claws poked into my shirt and pricked my skin. He acted as though he couldn’t get close enough to me, and I hugged him back, kissing the top of his head, rocking him gently, and listening to his happy motor purring the whole while.

  “I was so worried,” I said in my mind, feeling tears in my eyes.

  “I was so scared she was going to take me away. I couldn’t talk to her. I didn’t know why she had me. Then I thought I saw you, but I couldn’t hear you. I was afraid.”

  Squeezing tighter, I held the big black ball of fur in my arms and stroked his head. “You’re going to have to lie low for a while, Treacle. Until we figure out what is going on, you’re staying in the house. There are two other scaredy cats who’ve been worried to death over you.”

  “I miss my friends.”

  “Well, be sure to thank Marshmallow. She was the one who found the trailer.”

  “How?” Treacle asked. “How could she see it?”

  “She came with me on a whim. She could see an aura around the place that I would have never seen. You didn’t see her when you peeked out the window?”

  “I thought maybe the female was bringing you to me.”

  “Was she mean to you?”

  “No. She was kind. But she is afraid of something, and that made me more afraid. And I think we should all be afraid.”

  I swallowed hard and looked at Brit Clegg as Aunt Astrid and Bea tried to talk to her.

  Then Brit started to get loud. “I’m not staying,” she said sternly. “I have to go.”

  “We just want to talk to you,” Bea said, and I could tell she hoped to touch Brit’s sleeve or hand. “You aren’t in any trouble.”

  “Please,” I said. “Let us put on some tea and fix you something to eat. We’ve got apple pie and some vegetarian chili and—”

  “No.” She looked at me sternly. “Don’t let that cat out. Next time, it might not be me that gets a hold of him. Why you’d let a black cat roam around, I don’t know. People don’t like black cats.”

  I lowered Treacle back into the box. He lay down immediately, and I could tell he was exhausted.

  “What do you mean?” I tried not to come across as scary or intimidating. “Treacle is a roamer. He’s just a tomcat. He’s been roaming the neighborhood since he was a kitten, and nothing—”

  “If you love that cat”—her eyes filled with tears—“then you’ll listen to me and keep him inside. Not everyone sees him the way you do.” Brit grabbed the door and yanked.

  “Wait!” Bea called after her. “Don’t go. Please, we can help you. We know you’re afraid of witches. We know there’s one in Wonder Falls, and she’s responsible for…” Bea couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “We know she, or he, is responsible for what happened to your father.”

  Brit froze. Her body began to tremble. She looked over her shoulder at us. Tears soaked her cheeks. “She,” she hissed. Brit’s eyes displayed the hatred she was feeling, and she clenched her teeth. “It’s a she.” She threw the door open and stomped out.

  For a few seconds, none of us moved.

  “Meow?” was the only noise that cut through the silence. I looked into the box and saw Treacle looking contentedly at me as I scratched his head. His green eyes blinked lazily, and his tail waved almost in slow motion.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” I said.

  Witches Can Die Too

  Two days had passed since Brit had returned Treacle.

  The black cat seemed to be happy inside for the first time since he was a kitten. As soon as he settled in, and I knew he was home and safe, I asked Treacle what had happened.

  He climbed onto my lap and stretched his arms to either side of my neck as I stroked his short black fur. He looked at me intently. “I was across town. Something was buzzing around there,” he told me in his mind.

  “What do you mean?”

  Treacle licked his nose. “My usual felines would tell me what was going on, but I couldn’t find anyone. They were all hiding. They wouldn’t come out, but they peeked out from corners and shadows.”

  “You didn’t think maybe you should get out of there?”

  “I saw the gray cat with the scar. I don’t like him. We usually fight. He seemed to know something, but he wouldn’t tell me. He growled low at me as I approached him. Not his usual fighting growl but more like he was mad I was giving away his hiding place.” Treacle’s claws poked from soft paws as he continued his tale. “I should have run. I should have hid like the other cats, but I didn’t.”

  “Oh, my poor boy,” I soothed, rubbing his head behind his ears and stroking his back.

  He continued his story. “The next thing I knew, I couldn’t see. Someone had covered me completely. I scratched and bit and tried to move. I screamed. I cried. But I was pulled off the ground. I was in something... a sack. I didn’t have a lot of room, and I couldn’t see anything. Nothing I did seemed to help. I was being carried away.”

  The thought of Treacle being taken away against his will, violently, cruelly, and brought to a strange place, tore at my heart. My eyes filled with tears.

  “When I was finally free of the confines, I was in a place like this,” Treacle said, looking around our home.

  “You were in her trailer.”

  “Her trailer, yes. She’d never had a cat there. She fed me and tried to pet me.” Treacle scooted closer to me, so close his whiskers rubbed against my cheek as he nuzzled his head along my jaw. “But she wasn’t you.”

  I scratched the back of his head and neck.

  “I missed you, Cath.”

  “You have no idea how much I missed you, big kitty.” I hugged him, letting my tears fall into his shiny black fur and disappear. “You’re home now and safe. And tomorrow, we’ll go visit your friends Marshmallow and Peanut Butter. They’ve been so worried about you.”

  “I’ve missed them,” he purred.

  Treacle fell asleep next to me on the couch. I stretched out, putting my feet up and stuffing my favorite throw pillow behind my head. Every time I moved even slightly, it set off Treacle’s purring mechanism, and he’d start buzzing happily, his eyes still closed.

  I must have been more tired than I thought because I fell asleep within just a few minutes. I was so grateful Treacle was safe and sound. Brit may have been weird and scared, but she didn’t hurt him. What had she wanted with him? She’d gone through a lot of trouble if all she wanted was a cat.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder what she meant when she said not to let that cat out because next time it might not be her who got a hold of him.

&nb
sp; That thought rolled around in my head as I fell asleep, leading me to a terrible dream. Treacle was gone again because I’d simply left the door open, something I’d never do in the waking world. I intentionally left my home vulnerable and Aunt Astrid’s, too. Marshmallow was also gone because I’d left a door open. In the dream, I didn’t tell anyone it was my own negligence that led to the animals’ disappearance. I held the guilt inside and pretended nothing was wrong until something made its way into my home.

  The strange creature in the dream was human-like. It had two arms, two legs, and a head, but it was shrouded in a black robe that was dirty and worn and appeared to have been buried or left in the elements for several seasons.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I think there were living things on it… small, ugly, writhing living things that fell onto my beige carpet along with bits of dirt and twigs. Bony, white hands were all I could see. On the right hand was a gaudy, obscene ring with a black gemstone and a rhinestone pentagram. Had the horrific creature decided it needed a little bling to be truly terrifying so it bedazzled a cheap, imitation gemstone ring?

  I stared at the ring on the monster’s hand as it proceeded to crawl through my open bedroom window. It was pulling itself through in a grotesque manner that made me think of someone having a convulsion. I didn’t try to stop it. I was paralyzed and could only watch as it pulled itself farther and farther into my home. Finally, it stopped its horrible jerking movements and looked at me.

  Underneath its shroud was a ghostly pale face with empty, black sockets where the eyes should be. As I stared at its face, the thing laughed. It sounded like the voice of a classroom bully, a heartless child mocking another. And the voice was even more terrifying than the face because it was unnatural. The whole thing was unnatural. When I opened my mouth to scream, all I could hear was the hiss of a cat.

  My eyes snapped open, and I felt my heart pounding. My skin was wet, and as I blinked, my familiar room came into focus. But the hissing sent my body into a spasm that jerked me clear off the couch and to my feet.

  It was Treacle. He was in my bedroom. He stood stone still on the floor about two feet away from the bedroom window. Then I heard it. Scratching. In my head, I tried to remember if I had left the window open or closed the night before. I was pretty sure it was closed as listened again.

  I tiptoed to the bedroom door entrance and placed my hands on either side of the frame to steady myself. Luckily, the window was closed.

  Treacle slowly arched his back. Every single strand of his jet black fur stood on edge, making him look as though he were at least ten pounds more cat than he actually was. Whatever was making those scratching noises was not supposed to be there.

  The scratching was slow and long as if whoever or whatever was doing it was scraping its claw, fingers, talons, or something from the top of the window diagonally across to the opposite bottom corner. Treacle’s whiskers twitched, his eyes unblinking as a serious, mean growl came from deep inside his gut. The creature at the window was more than just a squirrel or chipmunk getting too close to Treacle’s personal space. Whatever was outside was something dangerous.

  “What is it, Trea?” I asked, carefully whispering with my thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” he said, still growling. “But it’s out there, and it wants to be in here.”

  We both stood perfectly still. I don’t know about Treacle, but I held my breath, focusing intently on whether I could hear any other noise besides the scratching. I remembered the image from my nightmare that had snapped me awake, and I began to sweat.

  It couldn’t have been a premonition. I didn’t have that gift. Aunt Astrid was the one who could see future possibilities, not me. My dream was probably just a collection of all the things that had been going on, right? There wasn’t going to be some disgusting, eyeless form with maggots and worms on its clothes pushing through my bedroom window, right? And if there were, Aunt Astrid would have seen it already, right?

  Well, she would if she were looking, but if she were distracted and looking in another direction, then who knows?

  I let out my breath and felt winded. Just as I was about to take a step inside the room, Treacle bolted to the window. He was up and underneath the curtain within a split second, hissing, clawing, and scratching at the glass. Not wanting my precious pet to get hurt, I forced myself to move.

  Throwing back the curtain, I watched as Treacle continued to scratch at the glass, growling and hissing. Then I looked up to where his eyes were focused and saw nothing.

  Growing up in a witch’s family instilled a few rules in my head that most kids probably wouldn’t think twice about. One rule was that seeing wasn’t always believing. Sometimes, we believed in things greater than ourselves, even though we may not have been able to see those things.

  But as puny humans, we were terrified of things we couldn’t see. All I could see was the little patch of green grass outside my bedroom window along with the nearby tree line. I squinted into the foliage and saw nothing… no cluster of moving shadows outlining a human form, no eyes peering back at me, nothing. But Treacle was still going mad.

  Leaning closer to the window, I pulled the curtains back to see if I was missing something.

  BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Someone was pounding on my front door. The blows were so loud and hard that Treacle and I jumped a good foot into the air.

  “Why is someone knocking like that? I have a doorbell,” I said more to calm myself than to actually get an answer.

  I looked at Treacle, who seemed to have calmed a little. He sniffed around the edges of the window, his eyes scanning the yard. Whatever had been out there was either gone or suddenly not so menacing. Treacle perched himself on the small ledge and stood as my sturdy and true lookout.

  Tiptoeing to the front door, I had already made the decision not to answer it. No way was I was just going to pull the door open. I squatted down to see if I could make out the shadow of feet across the bottom threshold, then I stood and stretched my neck to see if a shadow could be seen pulling away from the peephole. I saw nothing. I turned my head and listened. Then I heard a swish sound coming from beneath the door.

  Treacle was at my side in an instant, hissing madly. Both of us stood there, stepping closer to see what was inching its way underneath the door.

  “Should I rush the door and yank it open?” I asked out loud.

  “No,” Treacle said then made a dash for the bedroom again.

  I swallowed hard and watched. It was paper. Just paper. A note was worming its way through the narrow slash of space between the door and my foyer floor. I’d never been so terrified as I was watching the scene unfold in front of me. It felt as if I were watching a film being run in reverse, in which rain fell upward, and people backed out of doors. Our brains were conditioned to recognize when something felt wrong.

  I listened for Treacle and heard the thump-thump of his tail whipping on the floor as he sat studying something. I looked at the front door, half expecting it to explode inward or pulse as though it were alive. But it didn’t. It remained a normal door.

  “Stop being silly,” I said to myself. “Whoever is dropping off notes is obviously more scared of you than you are of them.”

  That line of complete bologna made me feel a lot better. Sometimes, I impressed myself with my own words and how I could encourage myself. I walked up to the door, bent down, swiped up the note, and took several careful steps back, just in case.

  My hands trembled. What I saw was shocking and obscene. Letters cut out of magazines formed a jagged message that looked as dangerous as the threat:

  Stay away from Brit.

  Witches can die, too.

  The message was bad enough, but the handwritten scribbles at the bottom froze me to my core. Next to a cutout magazine picture of a black cat on a silver platter with its head separated from the body, someone had scrawled,

  The cat will be mine.

  Boiling Blood

  Terror and anger filled me. I was
n’t sure what emotion won out. I was terrified that someone knew we were looking into Marvin Clegg’s death, and that the person was most likely the killer and a witch. The fact that the hag would threaten my cat made my blood boil.

  Treacle snapped me out of my conflict. He was in the bedroom again, growling and scratching the glass.

  “What? What is it?” I called to him.

  “Outside! It’s out there!”

  Darting into the bedroom, I threw aside the curtains with more anger than I expected then stopped. It was a cat. I had never seen him around before. He was just sitting there, staring at us. Normally, a cat would blink, a muscle would twitch, or its nostrils would flare as it picked up a scent. But I wasn’t looking at a normal cat. The black-and-white tuxedo cat with intense green eyes looked like an average cat, but there was a hollowness in its eyes. Something else was there… something sinister.

  I heard Treacle calling to it. He said he’d seen it before around the trailer park. The tuxedo cat would slink underneath trailers, around cars and garbage cans, and climb on top of mailboxes and makeshift fences so it could stare at Treacle when he was at Brit’s. The cat never spoke to him, and it wasn’t speaking to me either. It just sat there as if it were studying us.

  “Treacle?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you say it’s out there?”

  “Because that’s what it is. It’s not a feline. It’s an it.”

  My body shook. I had the sneaking suspicion this creature could hear our thoughts and just chose not to speak. I don’t know how long Treacle and I stood there trying to stare down the creature in front of us, but the tuxedo cat seemed to become more and more menacing with each passing second.

  The ping, ping, ping of my phone made the two of us jump. I ran into the front room, grabbed the phone quickly, and ran back to the bedroom to look out the window. It was gone.