Cat Magic (38 page)

Off the ceiling they came, out of the walls they came, all the cats he had ever known and feared, biting, scratching, squalling, killing him by their sheer suffocating numbers. When the smothering began to hurt, he threw some of them off. But more came, until he was nothing but a jerking hump in the swarm.

He was killed by the living flesh of his guilt.

The cats gobbled him, chewing and swallowing him in chunks, until at the end there was left only a belt, a pair of shoes, and three Bic pens.

The cats returned to the ceiling and the walls. The room grew quiet. Mandy lay in absolute stillness.

Some time later a fly entered the Kitten Kate Room. It circled for a few moments, seeking just the right place to undertake its project.

The fly landed on Mandy’s upper lip. It preened itself carefully, then turned around and began to lay its eggs.

It laid them in the cathedral of her left nostril.

MOTHER STAR OF THE SEA

The thing the demons couldn’t understand was that Marian hadn’t died in despair any more than had Moom. She had seen visions of the Goddess from her pyre and been laid in Summer afterward, where her soul had been renewed. Knowing that another fire awaited her return did not stop Amanda from wanting to go back to the Covenstead.

“But you can’t, you’re dead!”

“George wilt revive me.”

“It’s too late for that. He’s dead, too.”

The girl in blue waved her empty wrist, and a hole opened up in the ground. “Go on, look. He’s created a lovely hell for himself.”

Down the hole Amanda saw George laid out on an operating table, his whole belly opened, his pink insides exposed. She could see the froth of his screams, but thankfully was spared the sound.

Kittens were cavorting in his entrails, batting his intestines about as they might wriggling caterpillars.

She was stunned and appalled to see that she herself was his demon, standing over him with the scalpel that had opened him up. The demon image of herself looked up at her, smiled, and waved the scalpel like a child waving a treasured lollipop.

“Stop it! Please stop it!”

“How? Only he can do that, and he obviously doesn’t want to.”

“But he can’t have chosen such torture, and not from me. I don’t hate him!”

The girl snickered. “That image down there isn’t you. It’s part of him—his impression of you.”

“I’m not cruel, I could never do that. Why did he—”

“Demons serve their victims. Only a demon of you can punish away his guilt for murdering you.” A brush from her stub closed the hole. “Enough of that. I can show you beautiful things, Amanda.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I offer you the Land of Summer.”

“No. I’m going back.”

“Without the witches to guide you, you can’t. And I destroyed their circle.” She held up her wrist.

“Something of me is left in the living world. My hand is still there, and it isn’t dead. So I use it to manipulate life.” She laughed aloud, a harsh and bitter cackle.

As she did so, the illusion of the little girl shifted for a slight instant, and Amanda saw what
really
wore that frilly blue dress. It was a hard-shelled something, dark red and many-legged and misbegotten, and it bore the name of Abadon.

It looked at her through its many-lensed eyes, and in every lens she saw the gentle, smiling face of the
Leannan
. “You! It’s really you, it’s all you!”

“No. All except you. I am not part of you.”

“You are my demon. You must be part of me.”

“Oh, the devil take you, Amanda! Why didn’t you educate yourself more thoroughly? Don’t you know that I’m not only
Leannan
, not only Tom, not only Abadon and not really any of them. See what sort of a cat I really am?” She changed again, spitting and grinning, sharp lightning sparking from the buzzing tips of her fur.

“Schrödinger’s Cat!”

“That’s only a concept. More than that.”

Was it against the law of the universe for anything to be only what it seemed?

“Nothing is against the law. The law is its own violation. That is the core of all events, that is Schrödinger’s Cat. Just relax. I’ll take you farther than you ever could have gone yourself.” With that Abadon snapped his scorpion’s tail, Tom hissed, and the conceptual cat spat, and the
Leannan
laughed a laugh so mean it startled Amanda.

She stepped back, stunned by the realization that the world of the dead was at least in part a great slaughterhouse for souls, and the handless child folded into all of these other forms was one of the master butchers. She was leading Amanda toward the clicking maw of something so remorseless that it was willing to devour the frail and precious immortal bits of human beings, a sort of predator of the netherworld, that ate all the best of men as men ate full-ripened fruit or the tenderest parts of animals.

Nothing any man had ever done to any man was as bad as this.

“We’ve got to get going,” the thing in the shape of the little girl said briskly. “Oh, Amanda, you’re just going to love deep Summer. It always makes me so glad when I can take somebody there. I really feel that it makes my job worthwhile.”

Amanda did the only thing she could do: she started to run away.

In an instant Abadon shed its disguise and leaped on her, grabbing her in enormous pincers and scuttling away with her.

Amanda fought it with teeth and fists. She had expected it to be impossibly strong, so she was surprised when huge plates of its shell came off in her hands. Then she discovered mat it was no more difficult to open the pincers than it might be to push aside heavy doors.

When she freed herself, the thing slumped back, whipping its sting about and howling with rage and pain.

“You’re a cheater, you don’t play the game!”

“I told you, I’m going back.”

“You’re dead, you haven’t got the right! This is just the border of hell, baby. There’s terror beyond belief between here and life.”

“I’m going back, and that’s that!”

“You are in violation of the law! Have you heard, ever, of anybody returning from the dead?”

“Osiris. Christ. Lazarus.”

“And little Amanda Walker from Maywell, New Jersey. Don’t make me laugh. Now, come on, you’re wanted elsewhere.”

Amanda strode back toward the garden gate, determined this time to go through it, and stay gone. She opened it and stepped forth.

Before her was a forest, a most unusual forest. From here it didn’t look too nice. It seemed to be made of enormous human legs, festering with sores and ooze.

Amanda reached the gate. Behind her the girl in blue waved her ragged wrist and laughed her angry laugh.

The odor of the forest was pretty bad. Gas gangrene must smell like this, Amanda imagined, clinging to your nasal surfaces as oil clings to water.

“But I don’t have nasal surfaces. I am dead. All of this is an illusion.”

From far behind her there came a shout: “Give my regards to Mother Star of the Sea.” Then the
Leannan’s
needle-sharp laughter once again, merging with another very different sound.

This noise came from beyond the forest, and it was more welcome by far. One witch, still chanting.

Robin.

“I hear you! I’m coming back!”

But the chanting did not get stronger as Amanda entered (he forest. The stumps grew taller and taller, absorbing all noises. She felt awful and alone and small. A little white bird fluttered gaily. “Come with me, me, me!”

Of course the bird was trouble. Big trouble. But; at the same time, she was out of alternatives. The only place the forest opened up to let her through was where the bird went. She began to follow. It didn’t seem likely but you never knew. Maybe she would get through.

It stank fantastically in among the towers of rotted flesh. They were too close together to pass without touching. Soon she was covered with ooze and scrapings. The bird flew eagerly ahead, deeper and deeper into the forest.

Amanda had to fight with all her strength to retain self-control. She was almost mad with revulsion. The wounds seemed to spit at her. And there was even a sense that unseen hands were caressing her from inside the cracks in the stumps.

What ungodly creatures must make their homes in these filthy things. “Don’t touch me!”

Nothing replied except the bird, which warbled furiously. “Come on, on, on!”

Amanda couldn’t stand any more. She stopped walking. She stared down at the ground.

And saw that it was a seething mat of long-bodied beetles. “Oh, no! Oh, I can’t bear any more of this!

Why won’t it stop? What have I done?”

“You didn’t play the game! You won’t judge yourself, not you! you! you!” The bird’s eyes were silver pins of hate.

“I am not guilty, that’s how I judge myself! Not guilty!” She stomped into the crunchy surface beneath her. “My name is Amanda Walker and I am not guilty. My name is Maid Marian and I am not guilty. My name is All Women and I am not guilty!”

The beetles were beginning to bore into her feet. She hopped. “I am Moom, full of blood and milk and babies!”

You, woman, are burning in the evidence of your name.

Amanda sank down into the crawling, hurrying masses of beetles. They swept over her like a wave but she just didn’t care. Let the worst happen. She had gotten herself sent to a very special hell, the one hell not of the condemned’s own making: the hell of those who refuse to face their own consciences.

“I don’t deserve this! I do not!”

Somewhere far away, something tremendous and kind agreed with her and took an instant’s pity on’ her.

It allowed her to hear a music human beings almost never hear, the sublime harmony that rules and arranges all things.

The final government of the world is this music, coming from no throat nor bird, but from what fingers the harp of creation.

The blessed music of the
Leannan’s
harp faded into me rustle of the beetles. It wasn’t much, but it suffused Amanda with a new and rare strength. Despite the beetles she raised herself to her full height.

Even so, her face did not clear their mass. In these few seconds she had sunken deep into the hordes of them, so deep that she was swimming beneath their surface.

If she opened her mouth—

She raised her arms, she began to claw slippery handfuls of them, pulling herself upward, crushing hundreds of them at a time in her struggles.

Music, indeed!
This
part of creation at least was all disharmony.

The voice of the
Leannan
: “You chose this, remember.”

Amanda’s lips were tingling, and feelers were coming in between her teeth and tickling her tongue.

“I don’t really have a body! So this isn’t actually happening.”

But it felt more real than the sharpest living moment.

Her flailing right hand connected with something solid. She felt, she grabbed, she clutched. And she pulled herself out onto the root structure of one of the stumps. The bird was fluttering and shrieking. “I thought you were a goner, goner, goner!”

Amanda dragged herself up out of the morass of beetles. As long as you stood
on
the dam things, they were no problem. Just don’t relax. Never relax, not if you are trying to cheat death.

Amanda took a deep breath, and when she did, became aware of a most perplexing new odor.

It was the tang of gingerbread.

She moved by her nose, in the direction of the smell. “That’s right, right, right,” the bird shrilled. Soon another scent was added, of warm chocolate. And then one of jelly beans. And then just a hint—wasn’t it—of searing steak?

The bird darted, it flopped, it peered at her with its silver eyes. Amanda followed because the smells were from life. They brought tears of remembrance. She had loved gingerbread, and she had baked it often.

It was the essential smell of the best of her past, a mamma-smell from before Amanda could even talk.

Poor Mamma. What a tragedy to leave life unatoned. It is so much harder later.

“Here we are, are, are!” The bird swooped off into a clearing. Amanda’s eyes almost popped out when she saw what was there. Nestled in the center of the clearing, in its own pool of thin yellow light, was a most charming little cottage. It was decorated with chocolate drops and jelly beans and taffy whorls. The walls and roof were made of slabs of gingerbread, the chimney was a gleaming licorice top hat. Thick green smoke poured out of it, rising into the hazy air.

Amanda wondered who she saw moving behind that rock-candy window.

The trees pressed closer. The creature in the cottage bustled back and forth past the frosted window, and the smoke poured from the licorice chimney. The little bird spiraled up into the sky and disappeared.

Lucky little bird.

Amanda had no intention of going into that cottage. But not to worry, the door was opening.

The wind curled some smoke across the clearing, and Amanda caught a whiff of overcooked pork. A strangely familiar smell. School food.

There was a dark figure in the open doorway. Amanda stared, almost unable to believe what she was seeing, the long black dress, the white around the face, the silver cross on the breast.

What was a nun doing in a place like this? “I’m Mother Star of the Sea. Glad you’ve come to see me.”

Amanda thought it better not to say hello.

“Come on in, Amanda, darling. Time for our lesson to begin.”

Oh, yes, it was her all right, despite the fact that she now had the rough voice of a stevedore.

“I think I’ll stay out here.”

“Oh, no, my dear. Look, I’ve got all sorts of goodies for you—candies, cakes, gingerbread.”

“No, I’m okay out here.”

Mother Star of the Sea came forward, prancing, mincing, her arms akimbo, her head lolling from side to side, her jaw snapping.

Perhaps she intended to be amusing, but she could hardly have chosen a more unwelcome appearance.

Ever since she I was three and she’d been chased by a man dressed up as Mr. Peanut, Amanda had loathed and despised all forms of puppets. Little puppets made her skin crawl, but big puppets—life-sized puppets—they rattled their gums in her nightmares.