Cat Magic

by Whitley Strieber

  Or so said some anthropologists.

  There was a deeper mystery, though. Mandy saw in her mind’s eye the rage coming into Brother Pierce’s kindly face… she heard Constance’s ravens screaming, remembered the strange, lascivious young man, Robin, his naked skin shining in the morning sun.

  What was moving in among the trees? A great, broad-shouldered shape, gliding swiftly closer.

  With frantic hands she restarted the car. She had to reassert the Mandy she knew and trusted. She thought of herself as a woman of strength and effectiveness. She had an excellent imagination, but she did not hallucinate like this, not out in a public street.

  Nobody was going to burn anybody to death. No matter how neurotic this little town might have become, this was still the twentieth century. Maywell was no isolated medieval village; it was a modem town, linked to the rest of the world in thousands of different ways.

  She remembered more the tone of Brother Pierce’s voice than the words, that tone, and the hurt behind the hating glare in his eyes. They really were the saddest eyes she had ever seen.

  Somewhere in her mind the hallucination was still proceeding, asserting its presence just at the edge of awareness. As dreams sometimes do, it had doubled back on itself. She had not yet been burned. She stood before a trembling, excited bishop to receive her sentence.

  He put the red taper between her small white hands.

  Quiet, you! That part of her, the wild image-maker, must not be allowed to surface at times like this.

  Where the devil was her self-discipline?

  Be quiet, I order you, Amanda of the heart!

  There now. With a conscious effort of will she directed her attention away from the flaming maiden within her to the cute old ice-cream shop she was passing. It was Bixter’s, and she’d never seen a place that looked more like home, or safer. She’d spent an awful lot of good time at Bixter’s. Right out there, in the alley where they parked the delivery truck, she’d smoked her first and last cigarette, a Parliament that had been given to her by Joanie Waldron, who had married the Kominski kid when they were in their late teens.

  Beyond the front window she could see the wonderful old marble soda fountain, its spigots gleaming chrome and brass. There were the same wrought-iron chairs and charming little tables, and large numbers of students from the college. How she and her friends had enjoyed being mistaken for college girls by the occasional out-of-towner. How they had trembled when the college boys were attracted to them, cool, distant Bradley Hughes and men like Gerald Coyne and Martin Hiscott.

  Mandy could not face Bixter’s, not the Bixter’s of this sadly changed Maywell. Home might have been hell, but Bixter’s was a place a kid could relax.

  She turned onto the Morris Stage Road and began heading back toward Route 80.

  She could go back to New York easily enough. Her loft was waiting. Her friends were waiting.

  Or she could turn up ahead on Albarts Street and drive over to the Collier estate. If she dared.

  But of course she dared. She was going to illustrate the new Collier Grimm’s! She herself, Amanda Walker. It was a book as great, potentially, as the Hobbes-illustrated Faery.

  A poem came to mind. “For too long you have gathered flowers, and leaned against the bamboo.” Nan Parton had sent her that, and those lines applied right now, on this junction between New York and the estate. A poem of Wu Tsao. “One smile from you when we meet, and I become speechless and forget every word.” Romantic, intense Nan, so angry within that her canvases seemed to have been scourged.

  She could hear Nan now: go to the estate, it’s even more important than it seems. Don’t retreat now. If you do, you might never have another chance.

  “For too long you have gathered flowers…”

  Brave Nan, you would go.

  Albarts Street came up on the left, marked by a flashing yellow light strung across the center of the Morris Stage Road.

  God, Nan, I wish you were here to help me. The icons from the East Village: Robert when I’m lonely, Nan when I need courage. I loved her. “My dear,” went the end of Nan’s poem, “let me buy a red-painted boat and carry you away.” In the night, in the heavy gloom of her Bowery loft, she had come back to find Nan there weeping, her brave Nan. She was crouched naked on the futon Mandy used for a bed, clutching the sheets to her face, kissing them. Mandy had crept out, shocked and embarrassed.

  When she had come back. Nan was gone.

  Dry with fear, she guided the car between the stately homes, beneath the ordered arch of trees, toward the Collier estate.

  The thought of walking up to the house through that forest at night gave her pause. She could turn a comer, but she couldn't possibly do that.

  But cars must go there all the time, so somewhere in Maywell there must be another entrance to the estate, one that a car could take. Dimly, she remembered a way in behind the old town graveyard.

  Hadn’t some of the kids once gone in that way on Halloween… and ended up at a wonderful celebration where they’d been given hard cider, among other things.

  She turned onto Bridge Street and drove along the wall, past the high gate with its motto and the trees beyond, so great and so at peace that they seemed not to be plants at all, but the bodies of gods.

  She stopped beneath the streetlight at the comer of Bartlett and rummaged in her glove compartment for the map of Maywell she had bought at the EXXON station on the way into town.

  Yes, there was that road. It became a dotted line on estate property just beyond the graveyard. She went back to the end of Bridge and turned onto Mound Road. Soon she was passing directly through the public graveyard. The Indian mound that gave the road its name rose abruptly beyond the edge of the graveyard. Maywell had been burying its European-descended dead here for three hundred years. The Iroquois used to expose theirs atop the mound. Before them, the Mound Builders had buried theirs within.

  How long had burials taken place here? Thousands of years, probably.

  By the usual standards of the United States this was a very, very old place. Once outside the graveyard the road turned abruptly west, toward the bulk of Stone Mountain, becoming strewn with leaves and narrowing to a car-width strip of asphalt.

  She passed a “Do Not Enter” sign attached to a tree. As soon as she did, the road deteriorated, losing its asphalt and becoming a clay track planked here and there by rotting boards.

  This was a desolate spot… the sort of place she might encounter—she did not quite know who, unless it was Brother Pierce with his terrible eyes and his spitting rage.

  He seemed so familiar to her, as if, in some circle between the worlds, she and he had always been enemies.

  Her firelit screams shattered the night.

  Image of an owl alighting on the top of a charred stake, soft dangerous thing of darkness…

  She was jarred back to reality when her head banged against the roof of the car.

  You stupid dreamer, where the hell have you been? There wasn’t even a road anymore. She was driving across naked heath. The Volks was struggling, bottoming and slurrying about in the soil.

  The Volks began to skid. Mandy downshifted to second, then to first. The tires caught again and the car lurched forward—only to get stuck even more.

  She got out of the car and walked around to the back. The tires had tom through the thin covering of grass to the boggy earth beneath. For all she knew she might have driven this Volkswagen back to the Middle Ages. Maybe Brother Pierce was on his way in his bishop’s robes, trembling with eagerness to burn her.

  She gathered dry grass and stuffed it down under the tires. Then she tried again to get out of the mud.

  The car shuddered, the tires whined, then she lurched forward with a roar from the engine—and promptly sank again.

  She turned off the engine. It was dark out here and she was at least two miles from Maywell, perhaps half that far from Constance Collier’s house—assuming she could find it. She hit the heels of her hands agains
t the steering wheel. Give a city person a few trees and an unpaved road and watch the fun. She’d grown up here, she knew the condition of these old roads. Why had she allowed herself to get into this jam?

  There was nothing to do but walk. She didn’t care to stay with the car all night. A VW Beetle is no place to sleep if you are much more than three feet tall. At five-nine Mandy would be tortured by knobs and bumps and comers.

  She felt around the glove box for her flashlight, turned it on, and was delighted to discover that it cast a beam. “At least—” The beam faded and died. Better put new batteries on her shopping list, she thought bitterly. She slammed the hood and set out on foot in the general direction she had been driving.

  She would eventually see the house off to the right if she could just keep going in a straight line. With Stone Mountain on her left that wouldn’t be very hard. She hadn’t gone twenty feet before the ground got mushy.

  She might walk toward Stone Mountain on the theory that the land would rise in that direction. She took a step and almost pitched forward. That way lay actual open water, lying in a pool across a sheet of mud.

  Perhaps the other direction would be more productive. In fact she could see forest hugging the land like a black cloud over there.

  It must be the forest of the guardian fee, the little stone fairy she had seen when she first came here. Well, what the hell, the forest was a lot safer than this bog. She should have left her car on Albarts and walked in as she had before.

  Mandy strode along, her feet sucking busily, her eyes barely able to discern the ground in front of her.

  She hoped that the blackness ahead really was that forest.

  If it was, she would soon see the lights of the Collier house off to her right.

  When she saw lights, though, they were not to the right. They glowed with deep radiance, but so softly that they might not be there at all. She stopped and stared toward them.

  Very, very faintly she could hear the rhythmic jangle of a tambourine. There was a tang in the air, too, of wood-smoke. This must be the village where Constance’s followers lived. If so, she was deeper into the estate than she had ever come as a girl. The witch village was a place of dark town legend.

  She could see the dim outline of walls of wattle and straw, heavy thatched roofs. Candles flickered here and there behind leaded glass. Mandy found her way between two of the cottages and into the muddy track that separated this row from its opposite.

  Candle lanterns hung before doors. Round stones for walking jutted from the track between the two rows of cottages. It was a scene from the Middle Ages, but the peace of it was far, far deeper than had ever been known in that tormented era. Mandy stepped along the stones. Just when she was sure the village was uninhabited, she heard the tambourine again, and this time noticed that it was accompanied by a low chant.

  She knew then that this was indeed the witch village. She had come to this place of childhood legend.

  At the far end of the path was a round wattled building very different from the cottages. Mandy went up to it and paused before the shut door. The tambourine was quite distinct now, as was the voice of the chanting woman. Mandy couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was pure and firm and full of love.

  Then there came a cry.

  The voice and the tambourine stopped.

  Behind her in the path Mandy heard panting. It was loud and close; when she whirled around, it became deep, chesty growling. It began to advance toward her. She had the impression that she was being menaced by a huge dog and backed around the edge of the building. This was one of the reasons that the townspeople stayed away from the estate.

  There was a sense of quick movement and Mandy could feel the heat of its presence where she had just been standing. Then, in the faint light of a candle she caught sight of a long tail with a kink at the end.

  “It’s you! You, Tom!”

  He growled again, a most uncatlike sound.

  “Tom?”

  When she tried to approach the building again, he spat at her.

  “My God.”

  The cat was on guard here. It was very obvious that it wanted her away from the round building. How could that nice old cat possibly act this way?

  Unless, in the dark, she had made a mistake. Maybe she wasn’t facing Tom at all.

  Maybe this was something else.

  When it growled again, she trotted, then ran around the building and onto the heath behind it.

  She listened as she moved. Of course it was just the cat. Toms are crochety. If she’d held out her hand, he’d probably have rubbed against it.

  Even so she did not stop. She had to climb a sharp rise. This must be one of the hummocks she had seen from fee house. At the top she was forced to pause for breath. Just stood, gasping, the night close about her, longing for just a gleam of saving light, listening for paws padding through the grass. She’d deal with that cat again, but not until daylight.

  She tried to take her bearings. The little village was bordered on one side by the bog, on the other by these hummocks. It must be invisible from every direction except Stone Mountain itself.

  Ahead, Mandy was soon relieved to see the lights of the Collier mansion. They were soft, but there were so many of them it could only be that great house. Her confidence renewed, she set off across the tumbling little hills, losing right of the house in the valleys, regaining it on the hilltops. With the sliver of moon now free from clouds there was even a small amount of light. She had the luxury of being able to miss stones with her ravaged shoes.

  She came suddenly to the edge of the gardens. The smell of the land changed, became at once more complex. Then she realized what was underfoot: she was walking through an extensive herb garden. Too bad she couldn’t see well enough to find a path. She hated to crush the plants. Come morning Constance no doubt would rage at her about the damage.

  She was soon crossing tall grass. Up a steep slope she found the swimming pool, its water reflecting the moon. The windows of the house glowed with the loveliest light Mandy thought she had ever seen. She mounted the porch steps. The whole place was lit by candles, in holders, in chandeliers, in the wall sconces in the hall.

  There came from the library Constance Collier’s voice, speaking with a gentleness and humor Mandy had not before heard from those lips.

  “Miss Collier?”

  The voice went right on. Mandy entered the kitchen foyer, then passed through the kitchen proper. There were no candles lit in here and she had to move carefully to avoid bruising herself against the big table.

  When she reached the library, she paused at the door. The room was crowded; Constance Collier was obviously giving some sort of a talk.

  And the gentleness in that voice! Where was Will T. Turner’s harridan now? Mandy approached the doorway, emboldened by the sweetness of the voice to a greater confidence than she had felt here before. “Mrs. Collier?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’re welcome here, Amanda. Take a seat and listen if you will.” There was a single candle glowing in the room, lighting Constance Collier’s old face in such a way that the lovely young woman she once had been seemed to flicker in its shadows, ready to emerge again. As astonishing as Constance was her audience.

  They were children,’easily two dozen of them, arrayed at her feet, so rapt with attention that they didn’t even react to the interruption. They ranged in age from perhaps four to thirteen or fourteen. All were dressed in simple gray homespun. Constance herself was in a white linen dress embroidered across the bodice with green vines and pink buds. A lovely effect, so simple that it was elegant. On a young woman that dress would have been heart-stopping.

  Lounging against a far comer Mandy saw Robin. His sister Ivy sat on a chair beside him. They also wore gray homespun now. When Mandy’s eyes met his, he smiled a very small, very audacious smile. He shocked her, and the shock was delicious—which annoyed her.

  “Now listen,” Constance said. “This is the story of Godf
ather Death.”

  “The thing you must understand is that this story is very, very old. It is far older than fairy tales, and fairy tales are ancient things. This story does not come to us from the fairy-folk but down the human line. I suppose it has been told since we were granted the right of speech. And before then—well, it was in our hearts.

  “A long, long time ago, when this world was still young and we were younger still, there was a woman whose fields were not great enough to support her growing family. She had been blessed with many daughters, and they had all found men and raised families of their own-, until not even the woman’s best harvest-leaping would bring up sufficient corn to feed everybody.

  “Then one Lammas night her first daughter came in with yet another child. The mother took the baby and praised her daughter, but when the daughter had gone she wept, for the child must be exposed. Her heart heavy, the mother stole out in the cold of the night to give the boy to the sky.

  “She was going along the road when she met a tall man with great horns on his head and eyes as fierce as a wolf’s. This was not a bonded man at all, but some great hunter come in for the season’s Sabbat. The mother held out the child and said, “Please, stranger, take this child of your own kind, and be his godfather.’

  The stranger took the boy and gave the woman a wand of rowan in return. “This is a miraculous twig; with it you can heal the sick. But be careful, for if you see Death standing at the head of the sickbed, touch the patient with the rowan and she will recover. If Death stands at the foot, however, say ‘She will die.’ ”

  “So she became a great physician and very wealthy, and her whole family prospered. One day the Queen called her to the bedside of her own child, a great and powerful hunter who had been gored by a stag. Death was standing at the head, and the boy lived. Then a second time the boy was gored, this time by a long-toothed tiger. Again Death stood at the head, and the boy was cured. But the third time, when the boy was sick with love, Death was at the foot of the bed and the youth had to die.