Cat Magic

by Whitley Strieber

  “I want to. I’ve got to.”

  The sheriff put a big hand on Robin’s neck. “In love with a witch. I know just what you’re going through, boy.”

  “We will gather at the river,

  the beautiful, beautiful river…”

  They were singing again, the strong voice of the Episcopal rector leading the rest.

  The basement stank of dank earth and something else, something like overheated electrical wiring.

  Something awful. “We haven’t moved her, Robin,” Fred Harris said. “We’ll carry her up as soon as the casket comes.”

  Casket. Robin hated that word. He remembered their one experience of lovemaking, upon the humid earth, the moon setting red and low, she so full of all the furious urgency of the hunt, her body running with sweat and slick with the oils of the ritual, reeking of horse and human heat and the thick scent of love.

  Cold caressed Robin as he moved forward toward the little room where Mandy lay. Lights had been hung by the sheriff’s people, and the place glared harshly.

  “What is this? What are all these… cats?”

  “He was crazy. We just didn’t know how bad he was. Not even Connie.”

  “Where is he. Sheriff?”

  “We found his belt and some ballpoint pens down here. And there was blood on the floor. There’s no sign of a body.”

  “Why do you think he’s dead?”

  “She isn’t wounded, so the blood must have come from him. He’s dead, all right.” He gestured at the vast bloodstain. “People don’t bleed that much and live. Who killed him and what they did with the body we do not yet know.”

  “This room is—”

  “She had courage to come here.”

  Robin could hardly bring himself to go to her, so hideous was the place, jammed with the jumble of George’s strange scientific apparatus, haunted by the pictures of cats.

  Robin forced himself to cross the basement, past the bulging furnace, to the little chamber. Closer, the profusion of cats was almost unbelievable. Perhaps because of all of the cat images, this place seemed connected to him, almost a part of him. “Tom is a black spark,” Constance had once said, “from the eye of Death.”

  “Kate should have told us about this,” Robin said. “She was probably afraid. Look at the place.”

  When he thought about it, Robin realized that it was impossible that Kate Walker had kept this secret from Constance. Of course Connie knew all about it. She knew exactly how dangerous George Walker was. When Robin peered into the death chamber, he felt the presence there as a thickening of the dark.

  “Tom, is that you?”

  “Who?”

  “Connie’s familiar. The one she was going to give to Mandy. I sense his presence.”

  “There’s nothing like that here, Robin.”

  “I don’t think Tom’s going to show himself.”

  “That cat scares the hell out of me. It’s too old, for one thing. At least forty, by my count. In my time as a witch, it’s appeared once when Connie was a girl and Hoboes shot her to make her a shaman—that was in the twenties, for God’s sake—then when Simon Pierce came to town, and now I’ve seen it around, sulking along here and there.”

  Robin didn’t bother to mention that Connie owned a painting of Tom done in 1654.

  He took a deep breath He could delay no longer, and looked down at the form on the table.

  Even in death she glowed. Her beauty, Robin thought, could defy the grave. Her face had been caught in a living expression. Her eyes were open, the fine brows knitted as if in puzzlement. Her hands were clasped in her lap. “We removed the bindings,” Fred Harris said. “She was tied to the table.”

  Robin prayed in his own private, wordless way, to the Goddess who awed him and the God he loved He let their images ride in his mind, the tail, pale Goddess and her shadowed consort, moving as ever in the Land of Summer. He wanted their comfort now.

  Through the basement windows there came a honking of many horns and the ragged sound of human rage. “Damn,” the sheriff said, “they just ain’t gonna leave us alone, are they?” The honking horns obtained an angry rhythm, their notes long and bitter.

  “One of theirs died today, too.”

  “Robin, that man was trying to burn down your farm!”

  “He died a hard death.”

  The people outside were literally growling, their voices dull and deep, as the fall of rain upon a place already drowned. “I’d better get up there and give them a little hell,” the sheriff said. He fumed off across the basement.

  Robin went around to the head of the table. He thought to close her eyes. “You can’t, buddy,” Fred Harris said. “Too late to change the expression.”

  He did not want her to stare like this. It wasn’t a dead expression. Despite how cold it was, her body retained the suppleness of living muscle. In a way this was much more awful than the fixed stare of an ordinary corpse.

  She was so obviously not at peace. “Isn’t there any way at all?”

  “I can make ‘em look closed, but I have to take her back to my workroom.”

  Her eyes were the shade of the moon dimming toward morning. Constance had said: “Every one of us has a hidden name, our real name. When you call her to the circle, call Moom.”

  “Moon?” they had asked.

  “No, with an ‘m.’ Moom is her real name. The Leannan calls her that.”

  “Good-bye, Moom. Fare you well.” He visualized her on an old forest road, suitcase in hand, walking quickly away. Long breaths of sorrow filled him.

  He was granted a vision of Moom: a dumpy little brown ball of a human being, reeking of fire smoke and rancid fat, full of thigh-slapping pride and laughter. That was the young Moom. Now the ancient soul seemed to stand over him, its face grave with the wisdom of very long time. “I feel her. She’s right in this room.”

  “Come on, now, the casket’s arrived.”

  Robin wanted just another minute alone with her, but there were a whole lot of people waiting and outside the din was getting louder. There were thuds. Rocks hitting the house. Sheriff Williams could be heard shouting, but he wasn’t having much effect. Upstairs the singing went on. “Amazing Grace,” then the Pentagram Chant. “Pentagram glow, bring us tight and glow, oh, glow, pentagram glow…” Ivy led it in her powerful voice.

  “You go on up, Robin. Tell some of my guys to come down and help me.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “You don’t have to—I’ve got plenty of men upstairs.”

  “I don’t mind touching her. I want to.”

  Her body was slack and cold. To put his hands on her like this, when in his imagination she was so warm and full of life, was really very difficult. But it was right. This was his responsibility, this body.

  They got her strapped to the stretcher and carried her across the basement. Other hands took her up the ladder. When Robin arrived at the top, the stretcher was just going around the comer into the living room. The house was full of winking yellow light. The Bees had arrived with boxes of their handmade candles.

  Others unstrapped her from the stretcher and laid her in the simple coffin favored by the witches of Maywell, a box of hand-rubbed pine, tightly made. “Let the flesh return quickly to the Mother,” Connie said. The box was a concession to state burial laws.

  Ruby of the Rock Coven came to the head of the coffin. She looked long at Amanda. “We’ll go back in procession,” she said. “Rock will carry her all the way to the mountain.”

  They closed the coffin then, and Fred Harris bustled up. “You’re going to walk all that way? That’s two miles.”

  Ruby was Fred’s daughter Sally in the outside world. Robin wouldn’t have challenged her like that.

  “There are plenty of us,” she snapped. “We want to do it this way.”

  “That crowd out there—”

  “There’s a crowd in here, too!”

  “Okay, honey, I meant no offense. I was just pointing out the facts.”r />
  “We want to show our strength. And to respect our dead.” With that Ruby was joined by the rest of her coven. They surrounded the coffin and took its gleaming brass handles. Others gathered before and behind them, witches and town people alike, all carrying candles.

  The local churches preached acceptance, and the witches in turn respected them. Together the group, Christians and witches alike, filed out into the rage of the night.

  Brother Pierce was standing in the back of a jeep, his jutting jaw flashing in the glare of gasoline lanterns and powerful searchlights. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 a wave of survivalism had swept his congregation. World War III had not broken out, but they had not abandoned their preparations.

  Station wagons, jeeps, pickups, and powerful four-wheel-drive trucks were their vehicles of choice.

  “You are the harlot of the Devil,” he roared, pointing at the advancing procession. “You killed a man today, you murdering demons!”

  Ivy was the first to start singing. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

  “You see nothing but the darkness and evil of your hearts! What are you doing—celebrating our sorrow?”

  Brother Pierce and his flock had been attracted to the house by the crowd assembled there, not by any knowledge of what had happened to Amanda.

  His spitting voice mingled with the hymn. For an instant Robin saw his face clearly in the sweep of a searchlight from one of the trucks. His expression was not one of hate. It was beyond that. You couldn’t look at it.

  The entire crowd lapsed to silence when the coffin was -brought out the door. In the back of his jeep Brother Pierce made a sullen hissing sound. Slowly one of the lights came about and fixed on the Rock Coven and its burden—

  They were humming softly, a nameless song of woe.

  Brother Pierce pointed at them. “Rejoice, for death has taken one of the evil!” He hugged himself, twisting and smiling to the night sky. “For wickedness burneth as the fire; it shall devour the briars and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke!

  Oh glory, oh hallelujah!”

  He began to clap, and each clap of his long, narrow hands exploded through Robin’s sorrow. But Ruby had been right, so very right! They belonged here, with their burden.

  A song burst from the throats of Brother Pierce’s followers: “We’re gonna tell the world about this!

  We’re gonna tell the nations about that! The battle’s done, the victory’s been won. There’s joy, joy, joy in our hearts.”

  How quickly they forgot their own dead.

  The procession left the street at last, leaving Brother Pierce and his jubilant mob behind. Father Evans fell in beside Robin. “I hope you can forgive them, Robin.” His head was bowed. “I’m trying myself.”

  “Are you succeeding?”

  “No.”

  “It’s that much harder for us, Father. For me, I loved her, you know.”

  “The rector told me how important she was to you. Still and all, that nude ride—”

  “That’s our way!”

  “Okay, let’s not get into that. Just know that it sure upset the Catholics. You oughtn’t do things that violate the town ordinances.”

  “We had a parade license.”

  “The nudity—”

  Robin really didn’t want to have an argument with Father Evans. “I doubt if you’ll see another Wild Hunt.

  This Covenstead will probably disband.”

  “If I’m ever needed—”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  The procession straggled along, a bobbing line of lights, an occasional murmur of song. Up front the pallbearers were chanting quietly to keep themselves going. The Rock Coven was determined to carry her all the way. They were a heavy work team, building and maintaining roads on the estate, rooting stumps, making wattle and erecting cottages, hauling beams. Still, there was a weight in that box that must drag them down more by far than the heaviest stump.

  As they marched they drew more and more people from their homes, until it seemed as if all the town that was not with Brother Pierce was in the procession.

  “Are there any more candles?”

  “Dad!”

  “Connie called me. It’s a terrible thing, son.”

  Robin couldn’t answer. His mother had come down from the house as well. She and Ivy were walking together just behind.

  They entered the main gate of the estate, which had been thrown open for the occasion. “Who was she, son, really?”

  “She’d been coming to us for a long, long time. We belonged to her.”

  The great old forest that separated the estate from Maywell was filled with the peace of nature. Some small creature screamed among the trees, and great wings swept away. By the time they passed the house the procession was more tightly packed, in part because there were more people and in part because the Rock Coven, struggling at the front with the coffin, was slowing down. The house was totally dark.

  It was some little time before Robin saw Constance standing on the front porch. Around her the ravens clustered in unaccustomed silence. In her black cloak and hood she might have been a statue, faintly sinister in the light of the moon. She raised her head and Robin thought she might be about to speak. But then she came forward. She joined her people, and Robin was very glad—

  The coveners had laid a way of hooded candles up the mountainside, each one carefully placed among stones to avoid the danger of fire. Even so, it was rough going, and not everybody was prepared for the journey. Even some of the town witches fell by the wayside. They joined others gathering in the fields, and as Robin negotiated the rough path he heard them beginning to sing together. Ahead the Rock Coven struggled mightily with their burden.

  When Robin reached the Fairy Stone, the coffin was already placed upon it. People made a ring of candles around it, which guttered in the wind, flickering reflections of the mourners in the polish of the casket. The witches formed a circle. Behind them the townspeople who had made it this far. Stood or sat.

  A deep silence came. Far off the wind moaned, its voice echoing through all the Endless Mountains. The moon stood bright and high amid the stars. Robin looked up at it, and the living intensity of its gaze awed him. This night, he thought, the old moon is an eye into eternity.

  Chapter 24

  REQUIEM FOR A WITCH

  There had never before been a funeral like this in the Covenstead. In the deep silence there was a black flash of movement, then Tom jumped up and stood on the lid of the coffin.

  His eyes were so fierce that Robin literally could not meet them for more than an instant. They burned green and they challenged, almost accused.

  Constance Collier walked forward until she stood before the coffin, face-to-face with the huge, glaring creature that crouched upon it. The wind whipped her cloak. She spoke in a clear, soft voice, directly to Tom.

  “O Great Irusan, King of the Cats, keeper of the doors of death, take this daughter of life safely through the shadowed abode. Keep her in your timeless kindness, lead her into the cleansing water. Smile upon the descent of the living, O Great God, as they go in thy lands of dark and laughter.”

  She turned. “Robin. Come here.”

  He forced himself to approach her, and thus also the cat Tom seemed to have become twice his normal size, the tips of his fur glowing blue, his claws digging into the lid of the coffin. “We want you to invoke now, young man,” Constance said.

  “Invoke?”

  “Call Ama. The Dark Mother.”

  Constance stood behind him, a trembling wraith, her breath rattling, her right hand steadily rustling the cloth of her cloak. The wind had been rising since they had arrived on the mountain. Now it seemed to gather itself and pour down upon them in a great, cold breath. Their candles sputtered and guttered out, the flames driven away by its enormous force.

/>   Robin was not dressed for this; he was cold Jeans and a sweater were never meant to keep out the breath of such things as were approaching this circle.

  He searched his mind, but he could recall no familiar form for calling Ama. She was the aspect of the Goddess associated with empty fields and winter’s waiting. She was also the mistress of secrets.

  As best he could, he invented an invocation. “I call to you, sterile Mother. I call to you, Ama of the empty fields. I call to you, mystery Mother. Take your daughter through Death’s cold pleasure, lead her, gentle Mother, all the way to the Land of Summer.” His voice was snatched and harried by the wind.

  Without the candlelight the faces of those around him had been transformed by the moon, which hung more than half full, high over the mountains. Very faintly, from down in the valley, Robin could hear the others singing.

  “Silver water of the sky

  Flow forever, flow forever

  Until I know why,

  Until I know why.”

  The Song of Sorrows. It had not often been sung in this place.

  Suddenly Father Evans began to speak. “May I add something, Connie, on behalf of your visitors?”

  “Of course, Al.”

  “This is from Ecclesiastes. Take it as a message from my God to yours.” He bowed his head. “In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low:

  “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

  “Or even the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.