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During these moments, in which India
Crowley's vengeance was taking place, many of Shadow Brook's tenants had heard
the commotion but had gone back to sleep.
For Sam Burns, Shadow Brook's preacher-manager, Halloween had turned
into the worst nightmare of his career.
After taking Alice home, he was afraid to get out of his car. For the first time since his childhood, in
fact, he was frightened of the dark.
India's threats had sounded so genuine to him. It was as if, after being artificial and phony all these years,
she had finally gotten it right. She was a witch! He felt like Elijah in the Old Testament,
who, after being a crusader for God, allowed Jezebel, a petty, small-minded
queen, to drive him away. Sam, who
believed India was a charlatan, had been caught off guard. Suddenly, he and Alice seemed to be
confronted with the real thing: a Satanist and witch, who believed she had
diabolical powers. In spite of what had
been an unshakable faith for him, he was afraid, and his confidence had been
badly shaken.
To play it safe for awhile, he
planned to hole up in his apartment, until the Halloween curse had passed. Until India cooled off or came to her
senses, he would feign illness and use his answering machine to filter out his
calls.
From what Sam viewed as her dance
macabre, when India made her entrance and began pirouetting across the lawn,
through her incantations over her cauldron, his anger had mounted. At that moment, she represented all that was
evil in his life. As a student of the
Bible, it was his duty to set things straight.
It had reached a flash point when India began summoning spirits from her
pot. After exiting the party in
protest, he and Alice Wagnall, his fiancé, continued monitoring India's
behavior from his apartment nearby. In
the darkened room, they could look discreetly across the lawn and watch her
every move. In consideration for the
other tenants, they had waited until the party was over before launching
another attack. . . It would have been better, he realized now, if they had
minded their own business and just left India Crowley alone.
Now, in the protection of his own
apartment, Sam was having second thoughts about this ill-conceived and poorly
timed attack. India had chosen her
path. She was a lost cause. Of all the tenants to sermonize to, why had
he picked her? Had he been showing off to
his fiancé again? Was he trying to
prove what a hot-shot minister he was going to be? Just what was he trying to
prove? Earlier she had been humbled
by their attacks. He remembered seeing
it in her face. At that particular
moment, however, it appeared as if India had been given by her benefactor,
Lucifer, a second wind. He had seen
that in her face too. When she erupted
in demonic rage, he and Alice pretended to be amused, but they were, in fact,
very disturbed. . . especially himself.
Because of Sam's growing fear, he
tried to barricade himself from the outside world. For the last hour, his answering machine had been set to record
so that callers would think he wasn't home.
For those tenants making complaints in person, he would tell them that
he was ill and couldn't come to the door.
He had received several protests at the party about her behavior from
onlookers who had witnessed her one-woman show. He had, as he dozed in his chair, received follow-up complaints
from India's next door neighbors about strange noises coming from her
walls. These callers reported sounds of
ecstasy, anguish, or pain. In the words
of one of the male tenants “India sounded like she was getting laid”.
He could hear their annoying voices
over the answering machine, as he fell into a deep yet troubled sleep.
Now, as his eyelids registered REM,
Penny Gruber, India's next door neighbor, was giving personal testimony into
his answering machine that India was a witch.
While deep in sleep, he found himself fleeing the Shadow Brook Witch,
until Penny's voice rescued him from his dream.
The gist of her complaints, spoken
in a loud, whiny, and petulant little voice, seemed almost dream-like, as his
eyelids fluttered open, and he sat there staring at the machine. What he did not grasp yet was the fact that
he had unwittingly lifted his phone off its cradle and held it to his ear.
Hearing his groggy reply, Penny
Gruber summarized India's nefarious activities tonight. After listening to her living room wall, she
had, as the other callers, heard eerie sounds on the other side. She also claimed to have heard a strange
voice inside India's apartment: a whispery series of utterances barely
detectable as she strained her ear. It
was, however, what Penny claimed to have seen outside her apartment that gave
Sam pause. According to the young
spinster, India had threatened to have a small black cat, that had ran by her
apartment, stuffed. This had made no
sense at all to Penny nor Sam. At first
her behavior seemed psychotic more than diabolical, but then, as Buck and his
gang arrived on the scene, India grew calm and crafty. It was, Penny confessed, an India she had
never seen before.
At this point, his subconscious
mind, having registered this report, was prickled with both irritation and
concern. For a few seconds more, as she
talked, Sam studied the receiver in his hand.
“. . . A few seconds later,” Penny
was explaining “as India confronted the men, I heard her say ‘by the power
within me and the powers that be, rats you once were and cats you now
be'.” “. . . All I saw after that,” she
added after a pause, “was India waving her hands at them and suddenly seeing five cats!”
“I thought I was dreaming?” he
murmured to himself. “Is this part of my nightmare? . . . I don't remember cats
in my dream.”
“It's a nightmare all right,” Penny
said into her receiver, “but it's not a
dream!”
“What're you driving at Penny?” he
asked, glancing at the clock. “Are you saying that India turned those men into
cats?”
“I know this sounds strange, but I
know what I saw!” she spat into the phone. “You've got to do something
Sam! You're the manager. It's
you're job!”
“Call the police.” he replied
lamely. “I can't help you tonight.”
“I've already called them,” she said
through clinched teeth. “but that was half an hour ago. I don’t think they took me seriously,
Sam. You, as apartment manager,
should've called them hours ago!”
“I've been sick,” he lied.
“You were okay last night,” she challenged.
“I saw you and Alice at the party. You
were a firebrand then!” “Come on, Sam,” she blared into the
receiver, “everyone knows your not sick.
You just haven't been answering your phone!”
******
It was two a.m., Sam thought grimly,
November first, Sunday morning.
Halloween was over, but a curse now hung over Shadow Brook Arms. After listening to Penny admonish him about
his duties as manager of the apartments, he found himself consenting to her
demands but without Christian charity or a sense of duty. He just wanted her to leave him alone.
“All right, Penny,” he said quietly
into the phone, “calm down, “I’ll check it out. What you're asking me to do is very difficult, but I'll do what I
can.”
Shutting his eyes, he ran a
trembling hand through his dark brown hair.
Without saying goodbye, he hung up the phone and rose shakily to his
feet.
“The jig is up!” he said aloud. “. .
. That stupid meddling bitch!”
For reasons he could still not fathom, he believed
India's threat. Penny's anxiety mirrored
his own fear. He believed everything
she had said. And yet he felt
ridiculous for being afraid. He had
seen India as a pathetic shadow of a woman.
He had rebuked her often, not just last night. Where was his faith? How
could he allow her to effect him this way?
For that matter, where was his Christian charity toward poor Penny? She had been absolutely right: it was his job. He was the apartment manager!
Why was he such a coward? Where was his faith?
“Stupid meddling bitch!” he
nevertheless repeated as he looked down at the phone.
Adding a silent curse, which should
have been a prayer, Sam felt ashamed as he picked up his coat and slowly put it
on.
Deeply afraid, at this point, he
unlocked the door, threw back the deadbolt, opened his living room door, and
slowly walked across the lawn, onto the patio, and then up the staircase, at a
slow and measured pace.
He dare not ask himself what all
this meant. Either India Crowley was
insane or playing a sick joke. She could not possibly be a witch!
Several people had complained of
hearing strange noises. Penny Gruber,
however, had been the first tenant to report witchcraft at Shadow Brook
Arms. Of course Penny had seen things
before. As he gripped his flashlight in
his hand, he remembered another early morning tale. That particular time, though, Penny reported seeing her father's
ghost. The old man, she explained to
Sam, had treated her horribly when she was a child. After several beatings, she and her mother had escaped to start a
new life. Upon her father’s death
during a bank robbery, he ceased to be a threat in her life, until last week,
when Penny reported seeing him in her room.
“And why not?”, Sam asked himself
bitterly now. “If there can be witches, there can be ghosts. . . There can also
be zombies, vampires, and little green
men!”
As he approached India's apartment,
he found it dark, foreboding, and deathly silent. Obviously the witch was not home, he reasoned shakily, as he
contemplated her front door. After knocking
so faintly he barely made a noise, he backed away from the spooky apartment and
quickly trotted away.
“Oh well,” he told himself, scanning
the darkness ahead, “India's not home.
Maybe she's riding her broom somewhere, flying around like a ghost. She's probably over some graveyard right
now, looking for Penny's old man!”
Laughing hysterically to himself,
Sam put distance between himself and India's address. He imagined he heard footsteps following him downstairs, but, when
he turned to look back, he saw only a large yellow cat running past.
“Here kitty-kitty,” he called
light-headedly. “Don't be afraid. That
mean old witch can't hurt you! You're already a cat. Maybe she'll turn you into a person now.” “. . . unless,” his smile faded, “. . . you
were one of us!”
“I'm right here,” he heard her
whisper now.
“What? Who said that?” He froze in his tracks.
“Over here,” she giggled.
“Where? I don't see anything,” he slowly looked around.
“Here!” The whisper grew louder as
he rotated his head. “No here! . . Over
here! . . . No, right here!”
Gripped with hysteria now, Sam knew
she was close. He wanted to run and
call for help. But his vocal chords
seemed paralyzed, and for some reason he couldn't move. So he did the logical thing in his frame of
mind: he prayed. Unlike Irma, who
quoted the Twenty-third Psalm, Sam made up his own prayer, uttering it in an
almost mute whisper India could not hear:
Lord, suffer ye not a
witch. In thy name, I ask
for protection against India
Crowley, the
Shadow Brook Witch.
Send her into eternal damnation
where she belongs.
Protect me, your faithful servant
Sam Burns,
against the powers of darkness, so I
may continue
to serve you on earth.
“Sam Burns,” India emerged out of the
shadows, “are you calling upon God?”
“Uh huh,” he nodded, petrified with
fear.
“You pompous, overbearing son of a
bitch!” She cackled. “It won't do you any good!”
“I-I'm not afraid of you!” He tried
to sound brave, but his eyes were wild with terror, and he could still barely
talk.
“Yes you are,” she taunted, “I saw
it in your eyes downstairs. You and
Alice were both afraid.” “By the way,”
she smirked, “where is the bitch?”
“She's out of town!” Sam shot back.
“You leave her alone!”
“I'll get her,” India promised.
“It's just a matter of time!”
“What do you mean get her?” he asked in a strangled
whisper. “What exactly are you going to
do?”
“You already know Sam.” her normally pale face seemed phosphorescent
in the dark. “You saw one just pass. I
haven't been able to catch any of them yet.
But there's no hurry. They have
to return sometime to their apartments, unless they plan on becoming strays.”
“You're insane!” he managed to
utter. “You're stark raving mad!”
“You wish!” she snarled. “No,” she
took a condescending tone, “I'm not mad Sammy; I'm quite sane. I know exactly what I'm going to do.”
“Then you're evil!” he pointed a
shaky finger.
“Wrong again Sammy. I'm not evil,” she shook her head. “I'm
pragmatic. I know a good thing when I see
it.”
Expecting to be stabbed, clawed, or
chewed, Sam held his flashlight in a defensive posture and began backing away.
“Back off, you devil worshiper!” he
spat. “You try to sink those claws into me and I'll knock you on your ass!”
“I'm not going to scratch you my
pretty,” she cackled softly. “In fact, I'm not going to touch a hair on your head!”
As she moved in what seemed like
Karate motions, he noticed a strange ethereal light in her eyes and that
peculiar glow increasing on her skin.
Now that she was completely out of the shadows, he wondered fleetingly
where she had been. Had she been
invisible? Had she been out riding her
broom? “Truly,” he admitted giddily to
himself “this woman is a witch. . . a
bona fide, cauldron stirring witch!”
“By the power within in and the
powers that be, a rat you once were and cat you now be!”
******
As she cast her spell, Sam braced
himself for its effect. Irma, who had
been intoxicated already, did not experience the full effects of the spell that
Sam felt now. A strange yet ominous
peace filled him as he reviewed his life.
He had failed the Lord. He had demonstrated to the tenants at Shadow
Brook Arms his cowardice and unfitness for his job. A feeling of shame filled him as his body began its incredible change. He had many God-given gifts: he was
intelligent, he had a sharp memory, and quick tongue. But he lacked courage, and he lacked Christian resolve. During his last hours as a mortal man, he
had also demonstrated his characteristic small-mindedness toward others. He had been, as Saint Paul called it “a
sounding brass or tinkling cymbal”, but he had lacked Christian charity and
love. He had been a firebrand, as Penny
had put it, but a bogus facsimile, ready to turn tail and run when wicked
Jezebel appeared.
And yet, through it all, as her
magic took effect, he thanked God that a worse misfortune had not visited
him. Until hearing her incantation, he
expected something terrible. It would
have been much worse to be turned into a frog or toad.
He had always loved cats. He had, during his “pagan days” in college,
even written a poem about them. As he
began shrinking, however, and plunging downward into the darkness of his own
clothes, Sam was again gripped with fear.
He felt more helpless than at any other time in his life. He had no idea what India had in store for
him next.
When the phenomena ceased, he felt a
continuous outgrowth of hairs all over his skin, indicating immediately what he
was. In an eerie glint of light, he
could see that his fur matched the dark brown hair of his head. Shock, dismay, hope, and relief mingled as
oil and water in his mind. Aside from
his disorientation and light-headedness, however, he felt no different than
before. He was still Sam Burns, he
reminded himself shakily. It was as if
he was wearing a fur coat all over his body, including his face, and he now had
four legs instead of two. But he still
had a heart, soul, and mind. In spite
of his feline body, he was still a man!
“My name's Samuel Isaiah Burns!” he
reminded himself, as he felt her probe inside his clothes. “I'm still a man!”
“If you try to escape,” he heard her
say, “I'll strangle you and have you stuffed!”
As shadowy fingers moved through his
jacket and then his shirt, he was ready to bite and scratch her hand. But it would take a miracle to save him
now. This time India was wearing a pair
of gloves as she gripped the back of his neck and lifted him out.
“You are,” she cooed to him, “my
finest specimen and greatest triumph.
You're the loveliest brown cat I've ever seen!”
Although he spat, clawed, and
hissed, Sam found himself being carried in this humiliating fashion down the
hall toward India's apartment and an awful fate as either her pet or sacrifice
in one of her pagan rites. Just when he
thought he would never see daylight again, though, he noticed, with his greatly
improved vision, a distant patch of yellow charging their way. Something remarkable if not miraculous began
happening that would ultimately set him free.
The great yellow cat that had been
skirting the shadows now appeared directly ahead, running toward India, as if
he was going to attack.
“It's him, that troublesome Buck,”
she made kicking motions with her foot. “Oh, if only I had a club or a
net.” “I'll get you, you little
bastard,” she warned him, holding her prize higher and higher in the air. “I'll
find a big net, catch you, then have you mounted on my wall.”
In spite of her warning, Buck was
characteristically fearless. In an
effort to defend Ed, his Hispanic friend, the big blond athlete was credited
with battering three hoodlums half to death.
For the first time in their relationship at Shadow Brook Arms, Sam was
glad to see him. The hope he felt
during his metamorphosis now seemed justified, as the large feline began his
assault. In one great lunge, Sam would
always remember, he leaped onto her hand, bit down savagely into the glove, and
hung their patiently with Sam, as she howled in pain. Afterwards, when she had released his neck, Sam hit the deck
running. Without looking back, he and
Buck fled the Shadow Brook Witch, scampering down the staircase, through the
complex, and into the buildings next door.
******
On their way through what appeared
to be a maze of skyscrapers and Jack-in-the-Beanstalk trees, they were bound by
a common plight. As humans, they had
barely spoken to each other. Buck had,
in fact, hated the self-righteous preacher and warned him on several occasions
to shut his pious, Bible-thumping mouth.
With Sam's deep convictions as a born-again Christian and Buck's
hedonistic attitude on life, they were complete opposites in almost every
way. But that was last night, Sam
reminded himself, in another time and age: a world of giants and shadows, now
ruled by the Shadow Brook Witch. Into
this new kingdom of cats he now entered, with Buck Logan, his rescuer, leading
the way.
On agile paws in place of clumsy
feet and with the ability to see the most minute details in the dark, Buck and
his new friend flew through another apartment complex, across its parking lot
and passed a dreamscape of monstrous structures and trees, until reaching a
shadowy field across the road.
When they had scampered to the
center of the field and into the middle of a foreboding stand of trees, Sam was
greeted by Buck's circle of friends. He
knew at once who they were. It was, of
course, those other reprobate tenants Jim, Tom, Ed, and Drew.
Just as first light was brimming the
distant hills, Buck's great yellow body leaped lithely onto a nearby
stump. He seemed to enjoy his newly
changed shape. He was, of course, as he
had been as a human, their leader now.
They could not communicate, as they once had. They could only rub against each other, as cats often do, and
make that familiar rumbling purr deep within their throats. And yet they all looked quietly up to Buck
now, wondering what he was going to do, joined together the morning after
Halloween by the same witch's spell.
In spite of his gratitude for being
rescued, Sam was not encouraged by this scene.
In stead of acting like men who had been turned into cats, Buck and his
friends did not seem to be acting at all.
They really were felines: a
collection of stray cats gathered together into a pack.
Quick to sum up his options, though, Sam realized that, unless he struck out on his own, there was no where else to go. These were, however strange it seemed to him now, his people. He was in a new kingdom that was governed by new laws. The very notion of leaving it seemed unthinkable to him as he closed ranks with the others into a fellowship that needed no symbols or words.