Cat Magic (2 page)

“Okay, Clark. Let’s get started.”

On Stone Mountain the creature—which was still only eyes—began spinning itself a cat body so it would be ready as soon as the sun went down. Two sparrows, who saw something astonishing create its own solid presence out of thin air, took flight, screaming in the silence. A raccoon stiffened and stared, and mewed. What it saw had no taxonomic classification. No, indeed, for it belonged to a rare law, this creature of mercy. Pacing now, it waited for the sunlight to rise away from the streets of the town. And suffered along with the frog.

The frog understood nothing it saw around it. There were long strands sweeping out above its eyes. It could see every turn and wrinkle in the wires leading from its skull. But it did not understand the wires It saw them as legs, and thought of bugs.

It liked to use its good eyes, to see sharp. Seeing sharp meant eating well. But there were no wings whirring, no fat bodies, no good scent connected with the sight of these long legs. The frog’s tongue swelled with the blood of hunger. It wanted to see insects, to smell dampness, to be in green water. It wanted to hop. But it was stuck right where it was.

“That looks like a good, steady electroencephalograph to me, Clark. The frog’s normal. Not too happy, but normal.”

“Don’t let it jerk out my electrodes, Bonnie. I hate frogs. Give me something big any day.”

“Like what?”

“Like a person, Bonnie dear.”

“Constance wouldn’t like that.”

“No, and she doesn’t like this either.”

“You’re doing it.”

“She might not like our work, but she appreciates the necessity, at least. That’s more than I can say for the Stohlmeyer people. Sometimes I think they’re secret followers of Brother Pierce.”

“God, don’t bring him up. I don’t want my hands to shake while I'm working.”

A silence fell among the three people in the lab. They all knew the eventual object of their experiment, the goal given them five years ago by Constance Collier: to kill a human being and return him or her back to life. Her goal, her program.

But Constance didn’t like all the animal killing they had to do to succeed. “I feel every one of those deaths,” she had told George. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake. Maybe you ought to stop.”

He would never stop. He had pursued this goal at Yale and destroyed his career mere. He would pursue it at Maywell and drag his name up out of the mud. He was going to vindicate himself in this little backwater. One day this college would be famous because of what he had done here.

The technician, Clark, finally spoke. “Okay, folks, I’m ready to proceed.”

“I’m set,” said Dr. Walker.

“Bonnie, how about the audiovisual?” Clark asked.

“Up and running.”

“Right. Here we go. Beginning the count. Five.”

The frog felt heavy, as if it were buried in mud. Heavy and smothering. Its heart began to beat harder.

“Four.”

Something tickled inside the frog. It was terrible, this feeling, like nothing else the frog had known, tickling under its skin, like water spiders running there. The frog tried to move, to escape the tickling, but the weight seemed to bear down the more. Fear made its eyes bulge.

“Three.”

It was as if the frog were being tom apart. It had a vision of talons, of huge whistling wings.

Death came to it then, and its heart slowed.

The smell of water rose up around the terrified creature, then became a vision, water in darkness. The talons let go, and the frog fell into the quiet water, then it was dawn and flies were rising, and the frog was on a lily pad singing up the sun.

“Two.”

The dream sank to dark, and the frog felt itself falling into nothingness.

“One.”

The black parted, and the water dream of a moment ago lay before the frog, and this time it was real.

The frog was free. It hopped easily to the good-smelling water, and the water splashed around it and made its skin jitter with pleasure as it dove down into a black bass pool. Reefs of tadpoles swept past and sticklebacks darted in shafts of sunlight, then the frog went up again and broke the surface amid blooming lilies.

“We have complete termination. It’s dead, George.”

Cloaked by darkness at last, the cat began to move down the mountain. As it did, its form flickered and grew ever more solid. When it crossed the ridge, it was a shadow of a cat, a shudder in the light, a wisp of colder air. When it reached the edge of Maywell, it was a scampering, dark suggestion of something quite familiar.

By the time it came into the streetlight at the comer of Indian and Bridge it was quite clearly an old black tomcat with a tom ear and a proud, bent tail.

At least, that’s what it looked like. Animals and children, though, were not deceived. They sensed the true shape of this vast and terrible being, and were filled with dread.

All over the town cats awakened and stared at darkened windows. Strays slid beneath porches or huddled under cars. Birds stirred in their trees and dogs at their masters’ feet. Here and there a napping infant screamed. On the grounds of the Collier estate old Constance paused in her walk, closed her eyes, and entered the immense space within herself. She knew she should try to stop Tom, but she did not.

George would manage, he was a survivor. And the poor frog!

In any case, her gesture would probably be futile. Such a deep violation of the laws of life was making the cat awfully mad. Constance’s interference wouldn’t even be noticed.

The black tom began his progress across Maywell, intent only on one goal; Animal Room Two, Terrarium D-22, Wolff Biology Building. He hurried down the sidewalk on the right side of Bartlett Street, past the tall homes that had housed the same Maywell families for generations, the Haspells and the Lohses and the Coxons, families whose ancestors had seen the Revolution from those leaded-glass windows, who had leaped in the springtime fields and left mandrakes for the fairy.

The tom passed a red Mustang convertible beneath which an elderly and very arthritic tabby hid.

The tom heard its wheezing breath, saw the pain in its eyes. Frightened of the enormous spirit it saw stalking down the walk, the tabby yowled miserably.

The tom stopped. He lowered his head, concentrated on the neglected, dying animal before him. A sensitive paw reached out and touched the cowering tabby.
I give you the gift of death, old cat. You have earned it
. Instantly the tabby’s body slumped. The tom watched its soul leap up like smoke into the starry sky.

None of the tabby’s fleas crossed to the tom. They chose rather to risk the cold autumn ground.

The tom continued on its way, and everything sensitive to it took notice as they might the transit of a wendigo. As it passed the Coxon house, it brought a vision to the innocently open mind of little Kim, the eleven-month-old baby. She began to wail in her crib. She didn’t know words, but in a painful, true flash from the enormous mind that was passing, she had seen her own end, far from now in a sleek blue thing she did not yet know was called a car, in the bellowing water of a flooded river, on another autumn night.

And in the prime of youth.

Hearing the desolation in her cries, Kim’s mother came into the nursery, picked her up, and clucked and sang and patted. “Oh, had a burp,” her mother said. “Such a big burp!” When the wailing passed, she put Kim down.

The frog found fat, lovely flies skimming along the surface of the water. It caught them, aiming with its keen eyes, darting its tongue.

Something the frog might have called a goddess, had if known of such things, marched the water, raining desire down on the feeding bull, making it forget its feeding and follow.

“Monitor the blood flow in die extremities. We’ll wait until it stops completely before we bring our baby back.”

The frog was jumping and leaping for the green goddess, wanting to show that it was the greatest bull, the bull of bulls, huge and strong and thunder-voiced. It dove deep, shot to the surface, dove again.

“That’s the last of it, George. No more blood flow.”

“So we can confirm one absolutely dead
Rana catesbeiana
?”

“By any definition. Even the Stohlmeyer Foundation’s.”

“This time. Doctor, they’ll accept our protocols. For sure.”

“Thanks, Bonnie.” George Walker kissed her straw-sweet twenty-year-old hair. He stood to his full height, six feet of slim but fiftyish male. God, he thought, the beauty of her youth! “I have ninety seconds of null readings, Doctor.”

“Good, Clark. I think we’ll convince ‘em this time.”

“For sure,” Bonnie repeated.

And if we don’t, George thought, you kids are going to be’ out of Maywell State College on your tight little asses just like me. No Stohlmeyer grant means no professorship—and no assistantships either. But then again, what would Clark care—he had the Covenstead to return to. Bonnie was too wild to live in Constance Collier’s witch village. As for George, he kept his house in town. He had his reasons for staying away from the estate, chief among them his career. It was one thing for people to commute into New York from the Covenstead, another for them to try and work in the town.

Any professor foolish enough to have open contact with the witches could forget things like tenure.

If the Stohlmeyer grant ended, Constance might find George some money for his work, but the grant was the validation that the college trustees needed to allow him to continue it here. Loss of the grant meant loss of career. George could not bear that thought: he had worked so hard, and been so misunderstood.

“Let’s earn some gold, kiddies, and bring this little sucker back to life.”

The frog heard, thrumming in the whole air, a rush as of bird wings. It was low and large, too large even to be a bird. Was it wind?

The frog saw scud on the surface of the waters, saw the lilies tearing, saw the leaves of cypress and willow lift into the black sky, heard the thrumming rise to a scream. It waited no longer, but rather leaped for the dark, safe deeps.

A shimmering, golden goddess of a frog swam there. The bull’s heart was captured and he went deeper and deeper after her, his loins tingling, his muscles singing in the quiet. She lured him farther and farther, deeper than any frog should go. Come, she said with her quickness. Swim, she said with her grace.

Swim! Swim!

The wind was seething behind him, roaring through the lilies, ripping the green and quiet waters, the holy pond.

Swim, little one, the goddess called, swim with all your soul!

The black tom began to run. He rounded a comer onto, Meecham Street. The neighborhood changed from houses to a row of neat little shops. Bixter’s Ice Cream was open, its video games clattering and buzzing. Beside it the B. Dalton bookstore was just closing up. Joan Kominski locked her register and turned out her lights. The passing tom, unnoticed by her, shot her a vision of her own future: she was in a hospital room dragging breaths that would not fill her lungs. The hallucination was so detailed that she could smell the oxygen, see a picture of a clown on the wall, hazy beyond the plastic oxygen tent, taste her own drowning fluids. And feel Mike’s hand in hers and hear him calling “Doctor, Doctor!”

She paused, stunned. With shaking hands she lit a cigarette. She stood in her darkened bookshop, smoking, calming herself down.

The tom trotted quickly down Main and crossed the Morris Stage Road. Mike Kominski was roaring home full of Amtrak martinis, late as usual from his job in New York, and it would not do to be caught in front of that particular Lincoln.

The wind was just behind the frog now and he knew it was dry and he knew it was hot. He swam and swam in the roiling, dirtying, darkening waters. Ahead the maiden frog, the goddess, glimmered, urging him to rush on and on, deep to her, deep to her!

“We’re getting an electrical field!”

The wind touched his back and it was hot and ugly and hard. It must be deathwind, for it smelled of the man-place.

He must not surrender to it! Ahead she flashed her gold beauty. He swam as he had never swum before, the water hissing past his nose and eyes, his whole body surging with the effort of it. Her eyes shone and her skin gleamed.

The wind touched him again.

“Heartbeat!”

No!

The wind surrounded him.

“It’s coming to rhythm.”

The wind sucked at him—

“It’s getting steady.”

His whole heaven collapsed. But she did not abandon him. Alone of all that beauty, the most beautiful part remained. When she saw him being dragged back, she turned and came, too, swimming fearlessly into the dry agony that had captured him. She ceased to animate his determination and concentrated on giving him courage. She went deep, deep into him, into the secret place where glowed the strength of his spirit.

Then he hurt all over and he was hungry and he was hot and it was white and there were no fly smells and it was bleak again.

“It’s alive, George!”

“Damn right it is.” George Walker could hardly restrain himself. He stood up from the bank of instruments, he clapped his hands. And Bonnie leaped, a blond streak of joy, into his arms. He kissed her moist lips.

He enjoyed the deliciousness of the girl while young Clark looked on, glasses steaming. Relax, Clark, let an old man get a little. What does it matter, you get all you need on the Covenstead.

George did not have that privilege. His relationship to Constance was too deep a secret; he could not go on the Covenstead except by dark of night, and then only in those rare instances when he was called.

And as for living among the witches—well, if his work here was ever done, maybe. He had never told Constance his dream of retiring to the hidden witch village.

He was afraid to. If she said to him what he feared, that it was not his fate to find peace in this life, he did not think he could stand it.

Sometimes the loneliness of his position was very hard to bear.

“We’ve got to get it out of the halter,” Clark said, his voice full of testy eagerness. “It’ll dehydrate. We really don’t need a damaged specimen, do we, folks.”