Portals
Page 15
The surgery took four hours. His mare had a twisted gut. Bob rued that he had talked to the darn witch in the library. How was he supposed to do anything about a situation he had no connection to?
The vets expressed said all had gone well. Bob agreed to leave his horse at the clinic so they could keep an eye on her.
“What am I going to do about the baby?” he asked.
“She’ll get too stressed if we separate them all the way, I suspect,” Ralph said. “We’ll can keep the baby next to her and let it in for feedings. I don’t want the baby to mess with any of the drainage tubes, though.”
“Got it. I see where you’re going on this,” Bob agreed. The entire evening had flown by. Hyped up on coffee by now he was half amazed to learn it was only six in the morning. “Thanks man for saving my horse.” The two men shook hands.
He waited until later in the morning to contact Cassie. “We need to talk,” he messaged her. “Your witch friend played a dirty trick on me last night. I need some answers from you this time.”
37
Too Much of Everything
Cassie had stayed up late the night before messing around on her mother’s computer. She often did that when her husband had the boys and her time was her own. She called it “fiddle farting around.” Since she was earning some money, she still liked to shop online and seek deals. Her mother’s computer was an older model, and she hated using it but at least she could surf the net with it.
On Saturday night she spent only $150. All of it was in anticipation of her big move she would have to make. For furniture she’d probably end up buying a lot at thrift stores. All Ralph had given up were the boys’ beds. Most everything else was now in storage she’d sold off it in the garage sale trying to pay Ralph back. Her mother’s place had the basic stuff but Hayworth had tagged several pieces she wanted to move with her once she joined Frank. Cassie realized she was rather destitute. They needed a table to eat off, right? And plates? She’d been so angry and distracted that she’d just unloaded, threw out, and donated too many things. It was like the cycle of life, except for Cassie it had turned into the cycle of stuff. One one hand it excited her to buy stuff, to pull the trigger and commit to a sale. On the other, she worried that she might be overspending. Why couldn’t she have it easy like her sister, she thought.
When she woke up and saw the urgent message from Bob, she felt uneasy. She wasn’t sure if he wasn’t one of them and was setting a trap. That was the first thought came to her mind.
She called him this time. He answered on the first ring.
“I met a special witch yesterday at the library,” he explained. “I’m sure she put some spell over my horse, Cassie. It was bad. She wanted me to get you to pull Annie and her husband out of jail.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. But you’re mixed up with some terrible stuff,” he admitted.
Bob took a breath. “That witch is a piece of work. I’ve got to finish feeding here. Is there any way we could meet? Nothing sexual I just think it’d be better if we could try to join forces or something…”
Cassie didn’t answer.
“You still there?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “I was hoping to be away from all this voodoo stuff. It’s creeping me out. I want my boys to be gone from here.”
“How do you think I feel?” Bob sounded exasperated. “What am I supposed to do? Up and move forty horses someplace else?”
“Calm down. Look, Ralph doesn’t bring the kids back until usually after six. I could meet you this afternoon.”
“Actually, your kids got to spend the night at his vet clinic last night. I had to hire your husband to save my mare. A fun time was had by all.”
“Oh Bob, they got to your horses?”
“I’m telling you, whatever you are messing with is some powerful stuff. We need help.”
Cassie agreed to meet him for coffee.
The man she saw at the coffee shop was not the same quiet, serene fellow from a few days ago. Bob looked anxious and tense. He’d already chewed through a straw.
“Look, I agree that there is no way to control whatever this stuff is,” he said in a soft voice. He cast his eyes warily about the place. “It seems for whatever reason much of these issues revolve around you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. The Coach told me about what you tried to do. You should never try to kill a witch.”
“What did I know?” Cassie stirred her coffee, too nervous to drink it.
“You can cajole them, humor them, maybe ignore them.”
“No way I could have ignored her. She’d kidnapped my kids, Bob!”
“All right.” He gripped her hand. “We need to find somebody who can help us.”
Cassie looked outside of the window. “Yeah, sure. Coming right up. Help is on the way.” Tears formed in lower lids of her eyes.
“Snap out of it,” he whispered, low. “Crying will not help.”
“I could always move.”
“Not good enough. I tried that already,” he said. “They’ll find you. The good and bad ones. Now take a breath. Calm down.”
“It’s affecting my whole life. I hate it. I was just living a tiny, normal life. So tiny. In a tiny little house with tiny little dreams. Just wanting to get through the day.”
“We need to find the Coach,” Bob told her.
“How?”
He checked his watch. “Let’s go to the library.”
“God, no. I won’t even walk inside that place anymore. In fact, I only used the drive through drop off last time. It’s too much for me,” Cassie said.
Bob scanned her face. She looked as scared as he felt.
“This is a long shot,” he began. “I saw one of them do this before and we could try to create our own portal. No promises. What you do is this…”
Bob held his palms up towards Cassie, leaving his elbows resting on the table. “Touch my finger tips with yours. Keep the same form with your arms,” he told her. “Then close your eyes.”
“People around here will think we’re weird.”
“Nah, nobody cares. We’ll won‘t be gone long. A nanosecond. You know the drill,” he said.
At the moment they formed this gesture, Cassie knew she was going back.
Zap! Together they stood at the main door to the Coach’s office.
“What if he’s not there?” Cassie asked.
“Quit it. Boy, you sure think negatively.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Bob turned the brass wheel and opened the vault-like door. He knocked on the side of the entrance. “Hello?”
“Welcome my friends. I knew you’d visit.” The Coach was sitting all perky-like and smiling at them.
“We’re at a loss, my man,” Bob began.
38
Tiger
“I see that,” the Coach agreed. He slowly peeled an orange. “Those witches are bad mamo-jamas.”
Cassie rushed towards his desk. “How do we get rid of her? I want all of them out of my life.”
“You violated a rule,” the Coach reminded Cassie.
“There must be a way to change things,” Cassie begged.
“You will get closer,” the Coach said.
“No.” Cassie was surprised how loud her voice sounded in his chambers. Neither Bob nor she took any of the black soft chairs that offered themselves to them by rising from the floor.
The Coach reached inside his desk and pulled out an apple. He solemnly cut it on a small wood cutting board on the credenza behind his desk. Cassie saw how strong his profile looked and wished she felt that strong herself. Instead, her knees were weak. She feared the future.
“I’m thinking,” the Coach told them.
Bob reached for Cassie’s hand and squeezed it, looked at her, then raised his eyebrows as the Coach finally stood up to address them.
“Here’s what I can do for you,” he offered. “The couple in question is now un
der house arrest. Your sister has been watching through her kitchen window and not calling you about this because she didn’t want to upset you, Cassie.”
“Oh great,” Cassie moaned.
“That means they aren’t, how do you say? Out of the woods yet. They are in trouble. They also mean to cause you trouble.”
“We got that,” Bob said.
“Why is Annie in cahoots with the witches in the first place?” Cassie asked.
“Greg,” the Coach explained. “He wanted to make money off of your portal computer. Remember? He’s the deal maker.”
“The best one can do in these sorts of cases is to neutralize the source,” the Coach explained. “So what I propose is this—Bob, you take Cassie over to their house in a cat carrier and set her free.”
“Cat carrier?” Cassie cried.
“You will be Tiger.” The Coach waved his hand at Cassie. “Don’t worry. It will just be long enough so you get the job done.”
“Then what?” Bob asked, maintaining his composure.
“Cassie, you must gain entrance into their home. You must circle each of them around their legs three times and repeat the following…”
“Come on, Coach, this sounds crazy,” Cassie warned him.
“Listen,” the Coach growled.
“’I send you to your place, you send me to my place.’ Now say it, exactly as I have said it!”
Cassie dutifully repeated the sentence.
“Now go! I’ll do the rest.”
They heard the door open just then. Bruce entered.
“Here’s trouble,” Bob told them then laughed.
“Glad I made it in time,” Bruce said. He joined them and winked at Cassie. “You’re doing good, my friend. Bob’s quality people.”
“You know each other?” Cassie asked Bob and Bruce.
“We’ve had to work on some projects together,” Bruce explained. “You don’t think the Coach can handle everything, do you?”
“Why not.”
“Let’s get with it,” Bob told her.
“This will be so strange,” Cassie announced, then turned to the Coach.
“Tell me, what do I do after I do this circle thing?”
“Get the hell out. That’s where Bob can help. He can pretend he’s lost or a repairman that rang the wrong bell.” The Coach looked at Bob. “You can handle that much, can’t you?”
“Sure.”
The Coach returned to Cassie. “You need to run out the front door.”
“Understood. Once we do this, no more trouble?”
“Correct, no more trouble. The entire thing will vaporize. It even neutralizes the trouble they’ve been in. No more issues with those earthling authorities. That kind of thing. Just stay away from her, okay?”
Bob and Bruce did a mock fist pump as the meeting broke up.
“I’ve never been a cat before,” Cassie said just before she and Bob transported back to routine life.
“Yow,” Bob replied.
Back at the coffee shop, Cassie hunted through her purse and gave Bob a house key.
“This is a spare to my mom’s house. If something goes wrong, at least you can get the cat or me back inside. Here’s the address, for her house and for Annie’s, too. She lives next to my sister’s house.”
Cassie kept on, “I sure would hate it if I didn’t revert to human form. Don’t you ever worry about that?”
Bob nodded, then laughed. “It might not be so bad if I came back as one of my horses.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Cassie said. “I’ve got kids.”
“You could say I have kids too,” he replied, putting his hands to his chest in a mocking gesture. “No, you’re correct. This conversion stuff is tricky. Hey, we didn’t get the Coach to tell us how it’d be best to reach him from now on.”
“I still don’t have a computer—at least not of my own.” She stopped. “Tell me more about Bruce.”
“You could say he’s like my brother from another mother,” Bob said. “I met him while I was in the Middle East. He got killed.”
Cassie set her cup down. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I get to see him now from time to time…being that he’s on the other side.”
“All of this is confusing,” she admitted. “I better go. Need to be home in time to greet the kids. When do you want to do our cat thing?”
“Tomorrow? Just after lunch?”
“How will we make me turn into my cat?”
“I wouldn’t worry. The Coach is watching all the time. He’ll take care of the details.”
“I sure hope so,” Cassie muttered.
39
Get This Cat Out of Here
Cassie set it up so her mother would keep an eye on Josh. All she told her mother was she was meeting a friend for lunch. Hayworth was glad to know it was with a guy. At the last minute, Cassie grabbed Tiger and stuck him in a cat carrier. She wasn‘t sure if that was necessary. Tiger didn’t like it and meowed the whole time he was in the car.
“Calm down. I need you,” she kept telling him at the stoplights.
She hefted the carrier into Bob’s truck once they met at the burger place.
“This makes me nervous,” she admitted.
“You know what you need to do.” Meanwhile, Tiger kept up a constant yowl from the jump seat in the truck.
“How are you going to get me in?” she asked.
“Ring their bell?”
“They are so evil.”
Since the address was in River Ranch, the streets were narrow, cute cultivated affairs. Bob’s dually stuck out. He had trouble finding a parking place and had to leave his truck around the corner.
“Ready?” he asked Cassie, turning to look at her in the front seat.
“Yes.”
They both cast their gaze to Tiger who sat unhappily in his carrier.
“It’s show time, Tiger,” Cassie said to the peeved cat.
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“What do we do now?” Cassie asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should start by opening his cage door?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let’s wait a moment. See if the Coach can do something,” Cassie suggested.
Bob jokingly put his mouth towards his watch. “If you hear us, come in Coach, come in.”
At first nothing happened. Then Cassie turned into a smokey blue glow and disappeared.
“Guess that’s it,” Bob said. He grabbed the carrier’s handle and pulled the cage out of the truck. “Here we go.”
Bob had worn one of his Western sponsored shirt that had insignias sewn on it. One tag read “Wrangler.” Another on his upper arm said, “Tough Rider. To a person casually looking him over, he could pass for a utility worker or a tradesman.
In the mid-day sun there were no passersby. The residential street was empty.
Bob walked up to the front door of Annie and Greg’s pseudo New Orleans French Quarter house and rang the bell. He left the carrier in the bushes that flanked the entrance, out of view but with the small front door slightly open.
Annie answered the door. She still looked disheveled. Life had not gone well since they’d gotten into trouble with the law.
“Ma’am. I’m here to work on your plumbing,” Ralph said.
“No. Not us.”
Cassie, now as Tiger, quietly slipped inside the house, avoiding all contact with her ankles. She saw that Annie wore an ankle bracelet that tracked her movements.
Bob pulled out a piece of paper from his breast pocket and pretended to check the address.
“Oh, so sorry! I am at the wrong place!” He turned to leave. Annie shut the door.
Cassie slunk into the kitchen and found Greg watching the news. Unfortunately, he had his feet up on a chair. Damn, how was she going to get him to lower his legs?
Oh well, there was no time like the present. First she waited until Annie walked over to the sink, then she quickly did her three cir
cles around the woman’s feet whispering the Coach’s phrase.
Annie screamed. “What is this doing in the house?”
Greg jumped up. “What is it? A rat?”
“No, some cat. Get this cat out of here!”
Greg rushed over and lunged at the cat.
Cassie leaped up to the top of the kitchen counter and hissed. She barely had time to look at Annie and could tell that already Annie’s personality was changing. Greg, though, was another story. He moved like a snake—quick and efficiently. In a flash she considered her options. She leaped onto the back of his shirt and clawed his upper shoulders. He hunched over, trying to grab her off of him.
Annie had gotten a pan and was trying to beat the cat off of her husband. Cassie next leapt to the floor and began her circling. Greg, seeing the cat, tried to grab it. Cassie widened her last circle panting the mantra.
“Get that damn cat out of here, Greg!” There was much pounding and scruffling going on. Annie now had a broom and beat it in Cassie’s direction.
“Open the door, Greg! I’ll get this thing out of here. Poor you. You’re bleeding!”
Seeing the open air, Cassie flew upwards and pounced out of their house. She ran into the front yard The door slam loudly behind her.
They’d done the deed. Her heart raced. Bob, bless his heart, still pretended to be looking for the bogus address. He had moved the carrier to the front walk. Cassie ran towards him.
They thought all was safe until Cassie heard a familiar voice.
“That’s Tiger!” It was Catherine.
“What are you doing with my sister’s cat?”
Catherine had driven up to enter her garage and paused on the street.
“No, ma’am. This is my cat,” Bob claimed.
“That’s Tiger. I know his markings. He has that funny nose.”
Catherine pulled her Mercedes to the side. Her nine-year-old daughter got out with her.
They walked up to the carrier and peered inside. Cassie turned her back to them and tried to make herself small against the rear of the carrier.