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Chapter
Twenty-Two
A Gathering of
Cats
At about the same time that Sheldon, Tanya, and
Penny began the last city block of their journey south, Mimjet, Francine, the
twins, and Cromwell’s four magical cats arrived in the visitor’s parking lot of
Shadowbrook Arms. It was now early
afternoon; it had been a long, morning for Buck and his gang. Mimjet, who didn’t want to overwhelm
the unsuspecting cats in Sam’s apartment, walked up to his door quietly with
Buck and the other cats, while Francine, Indira, and Maj remained momentarily
in the car.
As
he cradled Jim in his arms, Mimjet stood at the door, as the other three cats
climbed through the screen, calling out in his most gentle voice: “Hello
kitties, my name’s Mimjet Zohar. I
have one of your little fellows in my arms.”
“Jim,” the portly cat reminded him.
“Oh
yes, his name is Jim. He’s
injured,” Mimjet said, tapping the door with his free hand.
“They’re
cats,” Jim wanted to tell him, “they can’t open the door. You’ll have to hand me to them through
the screen!”
Inside
the apartment, a reunion was in progress that had the appearance of a silent
pantomime. The fact was the group
could barely hear Mimjet’s polite voice.
The sound inside all their heads was actually quite noisy. Eight cats were attempting to
communicate verbally as they had as humans, nudging, bumping, and licking each
other profusely, their collective consciousness loud, as all crowd scenes, with
eight jubilant voices—all greeting each other at once.
“Wait,
wait!” Sam screamed over the buzz. “This is the problem with telepathy. Drew just asked an important question:
where’s Jim? He was with Buck’s
group.”
“Listen!”
Irma said, perking up her ears.
“I
say, you kitty cats inside,” Mimjet called politely through the door, “I have
one of your buddies in my arms!”
“Jim!”
they cried happily.
Tempted,
himself, to break into the house through the hole in the screen, Mimjet stood
there wondering what he would do if they did not respond. Finally, Sam poked his little head
through the hole and meowed pertly at the strange looking man. A second head and then a third
followed, as Buck and then Drew tried to communicate with the human outside
their door.
“This
guy’s dense,” Drew told Sam.
“No,
I recognize that voice,” piped Ed, hopping up onto the chair by the window and peeking
out, “it’s our friend Mimjet. We
gotta let him in!”
“Will
he hurt us?” Wanda asked, moving behind Buck.
Inexplicably,
for several moments, Buck could think of nothing but the stunning white cat
behind him, not even the voice of Mimjet outside the door. It was Ed who, with his furry brown
head poked through the screen, began gesturing with his canine muzzle and paw
in an effort to “talk” Mimjet into handing the portly cat to them through the
hole. Mimjet, however, was afraid
this would injure Jim.
“Come
on Bozo,” thought Ed, beckoning with his paw, “ease him in. We’ll take it from there.”
“Oh,
I get it,” Mimjet laughed nervously, looking self-consciously around the
complex, “you want me to push him through the hole to you cats on the other
side. But the little fellow is
injured. Do you not remember his
injured leg?”
Hopping
down from the chair, Ed ran over to Buck.
“We
gotta open the door,” he motioned with his head, “or get that numbskull to hand
him through the hole.”
“He’s
too cautious,” thought Buck.
“He’s
too stupid,” thought Drew.
“I
know how he can do it.” Sam cried, scampering into his study. “I just
remembered: I have another key!”
******
As
Mimjet stood cursing in Bengali under his breath, Sam attempted to open the
middle drawer in his desk.
Luckily, he had left it ajar from the last time he had rummaged through
it, and it was not difficult to pry it open with his paw. Amongst the pencils, pens, paper clips
and general junk in his drawer, he found, after moving his paws and snout
around, an extra key that had been cut when Alice’s spare key was made.
“You
da man Sammy,” Ed called up brightly then.
“All
we have to do is drop it out the window to him,” suggested Drew picking it
daintily up in his mouth after Sam had scooted it off the desk.
The
three cats scampered into the living room. When Mimjet saw Drew’s little pink snout poke through the
hole in the screen with the small gold colored key in his mouth, he laughed
with delight, gently retrieved it, and quickly stuck it into the lock while
holding Jim awkwardly in his arms.
Jim continued to complain until they heard the tumblers fall into place
inside the lock.
“You
are one wiggly cat,” said Mimjet as he opened the door. “My-my, how many
magical cats are there?” he mumbled excitedly afterwards, looking around the
room.
Upon
entering the living room, the tall Indian was greeted by eight more cats (nine
including the portly Jim whom he sat gently on the couch). Each one had the same intelligent look
he had noticed in Buck’s group. They bobbed and cocked their little heads as if
they were communicating with each other and, of course, purred as normal cats
do. In Mimjet’s Far Eastern and
Hindu frame of mind, the conflict that plagued the Judeo-Christian thinking of
Elijah Gray, Alice Wagnall, and Sheila Cromwell simply didn’t exist. He saw no conflict whatsoever between
nine bewitched cats and what he believed: a miracle that defied the logic of
reincarnation but not the will of the gods. His life had meaning again, if for no other reason than he
had helped four magical cats. Now,
he marveled, he had discovered five more magical cats. It suddenly occurred to him, however,
as he made the rounds petting and scratching each wondrous feline, that he had
forgotten that Francine and his nieces Indira and Maj were still sitting in the
car. Though the twins rarely
showed much emotion, the English woman was probably very agitated right
now. In what would prove to be an
unwitting blunder for the Indian today, he exited the apartment, after a brief
explanation and promised to return and fix them some authentic Indian cuisine,
only to run into Dolores Jeffries, one of the two tenants questioned yesterday
by the police.
Dolores,
who was in her seventies, was, in spite of the casualness of her robe and
slippers, a most dignified looking black woman, with large, piercing dark eyes
and an explosion of sparkling white hair.
Mimjet was in such a buoyant mood that he was caught totally off guard
by this imposing woman, answering her in a most lighthearted and cavalier way.
“Excuse
me fellah,” she called to him, clutching her robe to her chest, “are you a
friend of Sam Burns?”
“Well,”
he said truthfully, “I never had the opportunity to meet Sam Burns the human,
but if this is his apartment, I had the pleasure of meeting Sam Burns, the
cat.”
“Huh?”
She looked at him quizzically. “What’s that about a cat?”
Dolores
had been on the verge of merely asking the stranger if he knew where Sam, the
apartment manager, was. As she had
said to Frank Harper, her next-door neighbor, she hoped Sam didn’t show up at
all. Alicia, her daughter, she
explained to Frank, had borrowed her rent money to pay the deductible on her
hospital visit and she would be short this month. Now, thanks to Mimjet’s bubbly frame of mind, she was left
wondering what the strange looking man was up to. She didn’t like the way he looked, talked or acted (‘kind of
spooky-like,’ she would later tell Frank).
“What
you doing in that boy’s apartment,” she demanded to know. “He don’t mix much
with anyone but that blond lady Alice.
You break into his place?”
“Break?…
No, they gave me a key,” he tried to explain, but this only made it worse.
“They? Whose they?” Her fierce eyebrows shot
up and she looked passed him through the open door.
With
a guilty look on his face, Mimjet added more fuel to her suspicion by hastily
shutting the door. Dolores did a
double take when she heard the cats meowing inside the apartment. To make matters worse for him at that
point, Francine, Indira, and Maj, after wondering through the complex in search
of the tardy Indian, appeared suddenly on the scene.
“Where
in the bloody blazes have you been?” Francine asked, her normally pale face
flushed with rage. “We’ve been down there for over a half an hour. I have to use the ladies room! You still haven’t told us yet where
we’re going!”
Fear
and confusion registered on Dolores Jeffries face. “Humph,” she murmured to herself,
as she shuffled back down the hall, “something ain’t right…. Something ain’t
right here at all!”
Mimjet
sensed immediately that the police would be arriving soon on the scene. Dolores sudden exit indicated that she
was alarmed by the fact he had been in Sam’s apartment. She had grown even more suspicious with
the arrival of his friends. In
light of his hasty retreat from the Reginald Cromwell’s estate with three
members of his staff, it seemed prudent to make his getaway soon. He would have just enough time, in
fact, to say goodbye to the cats before risking being questioned by the
police. Francine ran in quickly to
relieve herself, followed by Indira and Maj. Mimjet stood in the living room a moment as they took turns
using the restroom, looking down at the wondrous cats. His faith in the gods had been
revitalized by this experience.
All around him Buck and his friends and the other five cats, who he had
not yet been formally introduced to, peered up to him with expectant
faces. Tears welled up in his dark
eyes as looked down at them now.
“Oh
I wish I could have know you too,” he looked down at the others, whom he hadn’t
met.
In
response, though they knew he couldn’t hear them, the remaining five cats
replied “My name’s Irma…. My name’s Sam…. My name’s Wanda…. My name’s Neva…. My
name’s Drew.” As he looked at the
other cats, he noticed that Buck, Tom, Ed, and Jim, though weary after their
ordeal, were attempting to communicate too.
By
their feline stares, tilt of their fuzzy heads, and chirrup made with their
little tongues, they were trying to give him their names. He knew that he would never see them
again, at least not in their feline forms. Francine and the twins scurried passed him on their way
toward the car, but then they returned quickly when they realized he was still
making his goodbyes.
“In
the great wheel of life I hope we meet again,” he was saying to them solemnly.
“My
uncle!” Maj tapped his arm.
“I
will pray to Vishnu for you,” he spoke earnestly, raising his arms. “If it’s
possible, I will return to see if you’re all right, but I hope by then that
your benefactors will have broken the spell,” “for by then,” he added sadly,
“you will be mere humans again.”
“Please,
uncle Mimjet,” Indira pulled his sleeve anxiously, “I am thinking that we are
trespassers here. That black lady
is most certainly calling the police!”
“Yes,
Mimjet,” Francine insisted, stomping her foot. “How’re we going to explain this
to the police?”
“Goodbye,
Mimjet,” Buck cried, running up to rub his leg.
“We’ll
miss you.” Tom joined Buck, purring deeply as the Indian lifted him up and
kissed his head.
The
other cats, who had called out their names collectively, said goodbye to this
strange man. Jim, who lie immobile
on the couch, also wanted to bid him goodbye and Ed, who rubbed his other leg,
meowed furiously in an effort to talk.
Of all the cats, however, Mimjet was the most fond of Tom, whose
reference to Shadowbrook Arms on the keyboard, led him to more bewitched cats.
“I
will miss you especially,” he whispered to the Maine coon. “You remind me of
Nira, my own cat, when I was a child.
Nira has since been recycled to a higher form of life. I expect that she also will come back
as a human too.”
“Mimjet,
come on!” Francine barked impatiently, as Tom began to squirm.
“Go
along kitty, I pray for your deliverance,” he said, placing him back on the
floor.
After
shutting the door gently, Mimjet and the three women scurried across the hall,
out of the complex, and into the parking lot, running frantically to the car in
time to see a patrol car pulling into the lot. When the policemen emerged from their car, they ignored them
entirely as they proceeded into the apartments. Not believing his good fortune, Mimjet motioned frantically
for Francine to proceed, mumbled what she thought was another heathen prayer,
and sat back in both mental and physical exhaustion as Francine drove them
quickly away from Shadowbrook Arms.
“It’s
a jolly good mess you’ve made of things Mimjet,” said Francine, looking self-consciously
into her rear view mirror. “You’ve
as good as made us fugitives in this state. There’s no telling what Reginald might do.”
“Yes,
uncle,” chimed Indira. “Where do we go now? We have no jobs.
We have no homes.”
Mimjet
pulled a map from his coat and examined it myopically a moment. “Oh I wish you had a GPS,” he mumbled
to himself. Francine yawned
expansively and squinted at the road ahead as the twins, peeking over each side
of his turbaned head, watched him map out their fates.
“We
will go see my Uncle Agabi,” he announced flatly, spreading the map out on this
lap. “He will find us jobs in his restaurant chain. We shall do some sight-seeing first.” “But firstly you shall
pull into that MacDonald’s on the corner,” he ordered Francine politely. “I
have been thinking, ever since we began working for that Englishman, how good a
Big Mac would taste. I am sick of
all that international food served up at the Cromwells’ estate. From now on Francine and my nieces, we
shall endeavor to enjoy the bounty of this land. I will buy a digital camera. I will visit Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, and a California
beach…. No offense, Francine, but I hope I never see another one of your
countrymen again!”
******
At
almost the same moment Francine’s automobile pulled into the MacDonald
restaurant parking lot, Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny, footsore and weary, were
limping up to Shadowbrook Arms.
Without knowing it, Mimjet and the three women had just passed three
more magical cats on the street.
It had been the longest journey of the three cats’ short lives and they
were, in spite of a fine meal this morning, ready to drop in their tracks. A great feeling of accomplishment, as
if they had defied not only death but destiny, itself, filled them just the
same. Not realizing that, of all
the cats, they hadn’t been rescued by humans and had saved themselves, they
felt this feat on a personal level that didn’t need words. It took almost all of their remaining
energies to walk up to the looming complex where the witch had transformed
their lives. Unlike Sam, Buck, and
the others, when they first returned to the apartments on foot, they had seen
India shot point blank by Penny, so they had no fear as they approached the
buildings now.
As
they approached the manager’s apartment on their way to Tanya and Penny’s
apartment above, they noted with typical feline curiosity the hole the cats had
made in the screen and, as they had in the alley in town, heard their feline
counterparts’ telepathy grow louder as they came closer to the source. Not long after this discovery they also
heard the telltale meows from inside the room. After standing there shakily on his worn paws, Sheldon,
though more exhausted than he had ever been before in his life, set the example
by hopping up and leaping through the hole. Tanya and Penny followed stoutheartedly, plunking down not
far from where Sheldon had dropped.
Meowing
in greeting, the other cats ran to them, and there was a reunion as great as
the one for Buck and his gang.
Sheldon and his companions’ first instinct had been to spook and hump
their backs, since it seemed so bizarre to them that all the other young adults
had been turned into cats. When
Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny had accepted the fact that this entire room was
filled with bewitched humans, they were overwhelmed with emotion and the
chatter of voices in their heads.
“Irma,
Sam, Buck, Drew, Wanda, Neva, Jim, Ed, and Tom!” Sheldon called out in a roll
call of his newfound friends.
“It’s
Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny!” Irma cried out, nudging, bumping, and licking these
newest members to the group.
“We
have much to talk about.” Sam came up to Sheldon in greeting and rubbed his
nose. “Buck and his friends arrived just a little while ago, themselves. I bet you three are starving too!”
“I
know I am.” Jim groaned, looking down
from the couch.
“You’re
always hungry,” teased Ed.
“Thank
you…. It’s good to be here, but we just ate,” the three travelers replied
collectively to everyone, as they were mobbed by the cats.
“Come
on Wanda and Neva,” Irma called, “let’s find something for Buck and his gang to
eat!”
******
After
eating a hearty meal of meat scraps, fried bacon strips, and stew from the
containers placed in the refrigerator by Alice before she left, the cats
congregated one-by-one, after they finished gorging themselves and using the
kitty litters, onto Sam’s bed—as long lost friends reuniting with many stories
to share.
“Well,
Irma,” piped Sam, surveying the new additions, “you were right; she bewitched
Tanya and Penny, but I’m surprised that she got Sheldon too!”
“Yeah,”
Sheldon sighed, looking around at the group, “it’s been hell out there!”
“What
happened?” asked Drew, bumping his side.
“Yes,
tell us,” Neva cuddled between them, “for we have stories too.
After
relating in a tired mental drone how he and the girls ran into the city, got
lost, and eventually wound up as a demented woman’s pets, he paused to allow
Tanya to explain how they escaped her clutches by playing dead and springing
free when the old woman opened the cage.
Penny’s story, however, which should have come first, was the most incredible
of all.
“You shot the Shadowbrook Witch?” Neva
asked in disbelief.
“You
idiot,” cried Drew. “How will they ever
undo her spell?”
“Nonsense,”
Sheldon bristled at the pair. “It was self-defense for Penny. She could have finished India off, but
instead she let her live. Tanya
and I wanted her to kill her, but Penny was afraid that this might seal our
fates.” “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” he declared resolutely, “and I
can’t blame Penny at all.”
“Neither
can I,” Sam gave her a lick.
“Me
too,” Irma and Wanda agreed joining in the gesture, as Penny, Sheldon, and
Tanya cuddled next to them on the bed.
Neva
and Drew sat pondering what Sheldon said but were soon making friends with
Penny too. By now, Tom and Ed and
the injured Jim, who hobbled in with his friend’s assistance, approached the
congregation, wondering if there was enough room for them on the bed. The sounds of purring and licking from
all of the other cats was interrupted by Jim’s meow, as he looked fondly up at
the group.
With
their tummies full and bladders emptied, Tom and Ed joined the
congregation. Buck, who had taken
his time eating his dinner, nudged a pillow from the living room into Sam’s
bedroom and motioned for Jim to lie on it, since it was impossible for the
calico to jump up on the bed. He
wasn’t happy with what Penny had just related to the group. It had been the big tabby’s belief all
along that to break the spell India had to be dead. His thoughts were naturally heard by everyone and he was
surprised that all of them, even Tom, agreed with what Penny had done.
“It
would be like murder,” Tom thought, looking down at his friend.
“Hah!”
Buck snorted looking up at Sam. “What was all that ‘ye shall not suffer a
witch’ bullshit you were spouting Halloween night?”
Although
Sam’s fiancée Alice had also uttered this quote, it had been his idea to
confront the Shadowbrook Witch. He
now shared in the blame for India’s spell. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so intolerant, they might have
been spared her wrath.
“I’ve
learned a lot in the past few days,” he looked down reflectively at Buck. “One
of the things I learned very quickly was I
don’t know very much! I’m
really a very stupid man!” “But I’ve
also learned what true friendship is.” He now scanned the group. “I don’t care
what you all believe; I love you just as you are!” “As Saint Paul once said:” he grew misty-eyed, “‘Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am as a
sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and
all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
and have not love, I am nothing.’”
“Good
grief!” Buck shook his head.
******
Soon,
as if the bed was not crowded enough, the big yellow tabby was suddenly
bouncing upon the mattress too.
Embarrassed but moved by Sam’s burst of emotion, he gave him a big lick
and gave Irma one too. He found
himself pressed up against the precocious Wanda on the crowded bed, and he was
again torn between his human feelings toward Francine and his feral instincts
for Wanda, the cat.
“Hello,
Wanda,” he said sheepishly. “You’re looking fit today.”
“What’s
wrong with Jim?” She asked, looking down at the portly cat.
“Someone
kicked him in the hospital after we tried killing the witch,” Buck said
casually, as if it was but a trifle matter to explain.
Buck’s
feline heart was beating heavily as he remembered Wanda, the human in a bikini in
the Jacuzzi Halloween night. After
that point at the party until his bewitching, everything was a blur for
him. Wanda, who could, of course,
read his thoughts telepathically, blushed but didn’t take offense.
“Is
Jim’s injury serious?” Irma asked him with concern. “I studied nursing for a
couple of months in college before changing schools.”
Buck
shook his head drowsily. “According to Mimjet, who patched him up, he didn’t
break anything; he just bruised a muscle.
He’s damn lucky he’s alive!”
Sam
and his group realized that Sheldon, Tanya, and Penny were exhausted, having
gone through a nightmarish experience by themselves on the street, so Buck was
coaxed by Wanda and Neva to tell his story before he, too, fell asleep. At times, Tom, Ed, and Jim would add
something to the tale. The
strangest part of Buck’s story was when the cats arrived at the Cromwell estate
and were held captive by Reginald, who wanted to exploit their miracle for
himself. The group cheered when
they heard how Mimjet saved Buck and his friends. Sam, Irma, and Drew perked up with attention as Tom
explained how he typed out the message that led Mimjet to Shadowbrook Arms.
“That’s how I communicated with Mortimer
Hildebrand.” Irma nodded.
“It
wasn’t easy,” Tom reflected. “The traditional method didn’t work—not with these
little paws. It was hunt and
peck—like when you first learn to type, but it convinced Reginald Cromwell that
we were ‘miracle cats.’ I’m just
thankful Mimjet and Francine rescued us.” “I gather you used the same method.”
He glanced over at Irma and Sam.
“Yes.”
Sam looked at Drew. “We left an e-mail for Alice that brought her here.”
“That
poor woman,” thought Wanda. “We drove her nuts.”
“What a menagerie,” Drew enumerated wistfully “a
preacher, sorcerer, priest, Hindu,
identical Indian twins, and two blond babes!”
“I
liked Mimjet,” thought Ed. “I’m gonna miss him a lot!”
“Mimjet
believes we’re gods,” commented Buck, as he drifted off to sleep. “…. That
Francine was all right too…. She had a nice body,… but she wasn’t too bright….
Mimjet had to blackmail her before she’d help.”
Sam
felt great affection for his newfound friends. They had forgiven Alice for being a cat-hater and accepted
the eccentricities of the three men.
Noting Irma’s unblinking blue eyes, he realized that she was the only
cat not dosing off this hour.
“What
about you?” He nudged her warmly. “You should tell our new guests your story
too. You have the strangest tale
of them all!”
At
first it seemed to be an exercise in futility. One-by-one, the twelve cats were falling asleep. Though growing drowsy herself, Irma
related how Elijah had found her on the street and how the preacher and the
sorcerer took her home after discovering that she was a bewitched cat. When she told them about how the
make-believe sorcerer, Blaze, had introduced Elijah to a wizard priest, it
didn’t seem so extraordinary considering what they had all gone through. But when Irma told them how the Spell
Reversal Team, as they called themselves, had begun looking for a practitioner
whom Irma referred to as a white witch (instead of the more ominous title
‘super witch’ as Blaze called her), Buck jerked awake. His response, though calm, was loud in
their collective consciousness.
Virtually all of them were also shaken awake.
“I’m
sorry, I know we’ve discussed this before,” he looked into Sam’s golden eyes,
“but I don’t understand this. I
thought you and Alice didn’t suffer witches. Aren’t all witches
bad?”
“I
guess not,” Sam sighed with resignation, “at least not white witches.”
“I
don’t get it,” Neva shook her head. “As a human, I’m a black woman. You, Ed, are brown. What would they call a good witch who
was black or brown?”
“It’s
a moralistic term,” Drew frowned at Neva, “like dark and light and good and
bad!”
“So
you’re saying white is good and black
is bad,” Neva moved angrily away from him.
Drew
sat up and looked at her in disbelief.
“That’s not the point, Neva.
We’re talking about a witch—”
“The
point is, honky,” she spat, letting
out a hiss, “white witch and black witch are white man’s terms!”
“Yeah,”
Ed looked down at Jim, “I smell racism again.”
“You
wetback,” said Jim with a yawn, “you smell racism everywhere!”
The
subject had drastically changed.
At that point, Buck sat up and looked with utter amazement at Neva and
Ed.
“Hello!”
he cried out sarcastically. “Do either of you cats understand what’s going on
here? They’re getting a
card-carrying witch to undo India’s work!”
“Yeah,
who gives a shit if she’s actually white or black,” Drew murmured in
frustration.
“I
can’t believe it!” Tanya cried.
“This
doesn’t make sense!” said Penny, rising groggily up on her feet.
“I just drifted off,” Sheldon murmured with a yawn.
“Was I dreaming when I heard that?
Tell me that’s not true, Irma!”
“It’s
true Sheldon,” Irma piped, looking around sympathetically at the three. “I
didn’t like it myself, but the fact is we’re waiting right now for them to find
her so she can undo the spell.”
“All
right,” Buck nodded, looking over at Sam, “you’re the expert on this sort of
thing. Do you think this is gonna
work?
“Don’t
ask me,” Sam sighed again, “I’m just a cat.”
“We’re
all cats.” Tanya wrinkled her pink
little nose.
Jim,
Tom, and Drew were yawning vigorously now. Penny laid her little head back on her paws and fell
asleep. Sheldon and Tanya fought
slumber but finally lost, their collective thoughts leading them into an
enchanting dream.
“I
can hardly believe,” Buck thought looking around at the sleeping cats, “India
Crowley bewitched us all! She even
got Sheldon, who doesn’t live here.
You’re lucky Sam that Alice didn’t get zapped too!”
“Yes,”
Sam murmured wistfully, “Alice is one of our protectors now. She’s part of the Spell Reversal Team.”
“They
have to find a witch who’ll reverse the spell,” Irma reminded Buck earnestly.
“It’s the only chance we have!”
Within
a few moments after Irma’s declaration, all twelve cats were sound asleep in a
collective consciousness no human could possibly understand. In their telepathic minds, in which
dreams were also shared, they were all young men and women again sharing in the
merriment of Halloween night, but this time, as the wicked witch appeared,
another specter materialized intangibly at first: a woman in a white robe with
marbled white skin, blazing azure eyes and bellowing white hair, a spectral
image they would never meet in this life but who would soon change the course
of their lives.
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