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Chapter
Twenty-Five
A New Beginning
At
the very moment that India’s spirit left her, a transformation took place among
the twelve cats. At a signal from
the Gate Keeper, India Crowley, the onetime witch, detoured to Purgatory to do
several centuries of penance for the mischief she had wrought. India, who had once been a member of
the Roman Catholic Church, understood the levels of torment she must pass
through before her period was up.
She was thankful that she hadn’t been sent directly to hell where Nebo
had returned.
The
reversal first came to the twelve the cats in a collective dream in which they
had been at the Halloween party again and seen a woman in a radiant white robe
and flowing white hair confront the Shadowbrook Witch. Now, during this apparent nightmare,
however, India fell dead on the ground and the woman, who they thought was an
angel, told them that it was over, the spell was broken and they could wake
up. Though the dream had been
different from the actual event, a dizziness and feeling of weightlessness
struck all of the cats as they fell from slumber to wakefulness and transformed
back into human form. They could
feel their arms and legs grow swiftly, their faces tingle with change, and they
experienced a sudden inexplicable chill as the hairs vanished from their bodies
and left them shivering naked on the bed.
The
bed groaned under their collective weight, collapsing finally as eleven naked
men and women returned back to their previous forms. Jim, who had been sleeping on a cushion on the carpet below,
was the only young adult who had not crashed to the floor.
He
stood there with the cushion in front of his private parts, staring in
disbelief at this scene. At first,
as they found themselves in a tangled mass on the mattress, the dazed mortals
did not know what to make of their predicament. Sam was lying next to Irma with his chin between her small
breasts. Wanda had managed to fall
directly onto Buck, who thought he was in heaven now. The remaining cats found themselves in similarly
controversial positions: Sheldon
pinned between Tanya and Penny and poor Neva pinned between Ed and Drew. Tom, who had been lying on Wanda’s
rear, was the first to jump up onto his shaky legs. It was Jim, however, who
made the announcement, “The spell is broken!” before the young adults began
scrambling with embarrassment to various sectors of the room.
“Oh
my God,” cried Neva, pulling a sheet up to her breasts.
“Oh
yuck, Buck!” Wanda shivered with disgust as the tall blond-haired youth stood
there gaping at her frame.
Sheldon,
Tanya, and Penny likewise disentangled themselves and, with grunts, groans and
squeals, found a respective pillow, blanket and bedspread to cover
themselves. Tom and Ed simply ran
out of the room, while Sam broke away from the startled Irma, racing toward his
closet where his clothes hung.
Embarrassed
but happy to be back, Sam began rummaging around for clothing his friends could
wear. After slipping quickly into
a pare of jogging shorts, he began tossing them pants, sweaters, shirts, and
anything else he could grab quickly and toss into their outstretched hands.
Neva’s
beautiful chocolate body was soon clad in an oversized white sweatshirt with a
university logo on the front, while the blond, exquisitely proportioned Wanda
was tossed a red sweater she pulled down to her knees. Buck was able to squeeze into a pair of
Levi’s, though he could not button the front, while Drew had the opposite
problem as he scrambled into a pare of green corduroy pants. Irma’s spare frame fit nicely into one
of Sam’s dress shirts, which draped satisfactorily around her hips and
thighs. For the time being, Tanya
and Penny settled for stretchable black sweat pants that they yanked up over
their breasts and tied up with a string.
When
Tom and Ed returned to the room, they both exchanged the sofa cushions they
sported for the short sleeve white shirts and dress pants offered by Sam. With their modesty in tact, the
remaining men also attempted to complete their wardrobes with more of Sam’s
clothes, while Irma, Neva, and Wanda seemed satisfied with what they now
wore.
Tanya
and Penny, whose bizarre attire generated snickers, found two clean tee shirts
to slip over their torsos, slid their baggy sweats down a ways and retied them
at their waists. Buck went into
the restroom to change from the tight fitting levis into a pare of sweats Sam
pulled out of the dirty clothes hamper and a faded yellow sweatshirt Sam had
set aside for the Goodwill. Drew
pulled a tee shirt over his hairless bare chest, while Jim, who had stood in
the background ogling at the women, found himself draped in a bed sheet, since
nothing else would fit around his corpulent frame.
The
cast on Jim’s leg had, of course been shed with the return of his great mass,
but the injury he had suffered remained.
He began limping into the living room with the other humans, support
being offered by several helpful hands.
“Put
it on, it stretches really wide.” Sam placed a pair of shorts in Jim’s hand.
Jim
nodded obligingly but had begun feeling the pain acutely in his leg. Looking around for a place to sit down,
he looked pathetic draped in his sheet and holding the shorts limply in his
hand. Plopping down in an easy
chair, his chubby bare legs protruding beneath, the once portly cat caused
laughter in the group. Irma had
the presence of mind to find a bottle of aspirins and a glass of water for him
as she chattered happily with members of the twelve. Not caring what they were going to do or where they might go
from this point, the young adults were elated and exalted by their
transformation. The sound of their
own voices and the ability to walk on two legs was a wondrous experience for
them all. After the twelve humans
had congregated in the living room, Sam led them all in a prayer of
thanksgiving. This time there was
no mockery in Drew or Wanda’s voices.
There were, in fact, tears in everyone’s eyes as the apartment manager
gave all the credit to God:
“Lord,
we thank you for giving us our bodies back. We know now that there are secrets that even the prophets
and saints didn’t know. The
nightmare inflicted upon us by India Crowley tested us as cats and, as we
adjust to our human forms, has given us all a new lease on life. Please let our incredible experiences
make us better humans now that we have lived these days as cats. Do not let us ever forget your special
creatures, for they are specially blessed!”
“God
bless the cats.” Irma murmured, and they all followed with a heartfelt “Amen!”
Except
for their bare feet, Tom and Ed, whose measurements were close to Sam’s, looked
rather sporty in their dress shirts and slacks, but the smaller and thinner
Drew looked like an adolescent wearing his older brother’s clothes. All of the girls had to be satisfied
with sweatshirts, sweaters, and shirts.
But no one seemed to care what they looked like at this point. Without being asked, the women held up
a sheet while Sam, Buck and Drew helped Jim into the shorts Sam salvaged from
the Goodwill bag. In the end, the
portly youth added the sheet, itself, over the garment but as a flowing cape
that he fastened crudely at the neck.
They
were back. The spell had been
broken. They would, they agreed,
forever be family and friends. For
that hour before the Spell Reversal Team returned, the twelve young adults
continued to marvel at their restored bodies, sharing the experience in excited
spurts of emotion as would sleepers awakening from a long, incredible dream.
******
Alice,
who had more at stake than the others, had coaxed Elijah to leave the hospital
as the priest followed Madelyn’s gurney from the room. It seemed ludicrous to give the Last
Rites to someone who had invoked Lilith, the mother of witches, to undo a
spell, and yet Blaze wanted to believe that Madelyn could be saved, for it
meant he could be saved too.
Mortimer had no such doubts.
The priest could do no more than raise his hand up in a blessing and
mumble a few words before Madelyn was rushed into the trauma room down the
hall, but he sensed, as had Blaze, that Madelyn Fontaine, after a long,
controversial life, was at peace with God.
******
“Father,
bless me, for I have sinned grievously,” Blaze said to Mortimer as they settled
in the back seat of the car.
Mortimer,
who had been fastening his seat belt, did a double take now. “I beg your
pardon,” he uttered in disbelief.
“I’m
not an ordained minister,” Elijah interrupted, as he turned the key, “but all
you have to do is ask God to forgive you, Blaze. You don’t need to confess your sins.”
“Yes,
Mister O’Dare,” piped Alice, “pray to Jesus; that’s all you have to do!”
As
the gravity of the sorcerer’s request filled his mind, Mortimer, the wizard
priest, almost laughed aloud until he saw in Blaze’s dark eyes something he had
not seen before.
“Listen
my son,” Mortimer said wearily, patting the sorcerer’s knee, “I may only be a
heretic priest, but you’re still a Catholic, a member of my church.”
“Excommunication can be reversed.
If you wish to confess your sins,” he whispered conspiratorially to him,
“we’ll conduct this in private, so these non-believers won’t hear.”
Stricken
with the absurdity of it all, the overwrought Alice began to laugh hysterically
then. The long, dreadful ordeal
leading up to India’s death and the overwhelming concern that Sam might still
be a cat seemed to catch up to her all at once as her laughter grew imbecilic
and then turned to tears.
“Alice,
Alice, stop it!” Elijah patted her leg gently, glancing at the two men in his
rearview mirror.
“Non-believers,…
he calls us non-believers,” her voice
began to constrict, “a heretic priest says this to a blasphemer, who mocks the
Lord. ” “…. This has been one, long, frightful obscene joke on reality, hasn’t
it Elijah?” She shook her head.
“My fiancé wanted me to pet him and stroke his fur, but I couldn’t help
it, I still hated cats. They made
my skin crawl. What does that make
me, Elijah? God forgive me for not
reaching out with my heart to those poor furry little beasts!”
“There-there,
Miss Wagnall,” Mortimer consoled, tapping her seat, “you did everything you
could for them. It’s how you’re
raised. My mother loved cats when
I was a child, and so I grew up loving them too.”
“I
had one cat that looked a lot like Neva,” Blaze said wistfully, closing his
eyes. “Sometimes I think she was
the best friend I ever had.”
“When
this is all over,” the priest suggested earnestly, “we should all go straight
to the animal shelter and adopt three or four. They’re hardly any trouble. All they need is a little food, a kitty litter, and a warm
lap to lie on once in awhile.”
“You’re
right, Mortimer,” Elijah nodded thoughtfully, glancing at Alice with concern,
“I don’t think I’ll ever look at cats the same way
again!”
******
Upon
reaching Shadowbrook Arms, the group grew silent as they imagined what they
might find. Would it be humans,
they wondered, or would it be cats?
With bated breath, they climbed out of the station wagon and walked as
quickly as their trembling legs would carry them to apartment 1A. When they arrived at Sam’s apartment,
it was, of course, Alice who began hammering on the wood with both fists
calling out impatiently for them to open the door.
“Sam,
Sam, all of you, we’re back.
Please let us in if you can!
For God’s sake, open the Goddamn door!”
Wincing
at this blasphemy, Elijah tried to comfort her but his own heart was hammering
too loudly for him to speak. Irma, he thought reflectively, I almost wish you would remain a cat!
When
the door opened, it seemed to do so on its own accord, swinging wide to expose
a dark cavern inside.
“Surprise!”
the twelve adults shouted.
The
last rays of sundown flooded into the living room as the Spell-Reversal Team
stood silhouetted against the glow.
In youthful exuberance the twelve young adults had treated this event as
a reunion in which honored guests had just arrived, but it was too much for
poor Alice. As she had done after
discovering the bewitched cats, Sam’s fiancée fainted abruptly onto the floor.
“There
she goes again!” cried Wanda.
“She
must be anemic,” Drew whispered to Ed.
“Someone
get a glass of water,” Sam directed, bending down to cradle her blond head in
his arms.
For
a moment Irma looked with understanding at this poignant scene. The bitter-sweetness of her experience
as a cat and Sam’s companion had ended with the breaking of the spell. This scene seemed to make it a
reality. Looking around the room
at her newfound friends, she wondered if it might also be the same for them now
that they were back in human form.
Neva and Drew had been inseparable as cats, but now the tall, beautiful
black woman looked with embarrassment at the sparsely built Drew. Wanda, for that matter, would still
need to be drunk to have a fling with Buck. Sheldon, it appeared, was still engaged to the sassy
Tanya. Penny, who sat quietly in a
distant chair, had seemed to withdraw back into her old introverted self, in
spite of all she had been through with that pair. For Tom and Ed, who had not paired off with anyone in the
group, it was not so easy to tell, but Irma was certain that they would go back
to their old selves too.
As
she found herself watching the resuscitation of this frail woman, wishing that
she could have remained a cat and feeling guilt because she hoped Alice would
not be resuscitated at all, a notion forced itself into her thoughts
contradicting her present mood.
“It is possible,” she
whispered, delighted at the sound of her crinkly voice, “after all we’ve gone
through, that we’ve actually changed?
This experience has certainly changed me!”
She, Irma Fresco, would use
every ounce of her energies for the rest of her life, to make it so. When she looked up again, she noticed a
certain look in Penny’s silent gaze, a quiet strength and nobility, and there
was, though fleetingly, a fond fair glance exchanged between Neva and
Drew. A voice broke into her
reverie then “…. Irma,… Irma Fresco,… Irma, is that you?”
Elijah
had looked at the slightly built little woman with short black hair and
almond-shaped blue eyes and recognized her immediately.
“Hello,
Elijah,” she extended a small, trembling hand, “would you like me to introduce
you and the others to our group!”
“I’d
love it!” he said, taking her proffered hand.
By now, Alice had come to,
rose up with Sam and Mortimer’s help and been directed groggily to the
couch. Blaze looked up Neva to
tell her about his own black Persian cat, as the young adults mulled festively
in the room. Irma gathered
together all three men and asked them to sit next to Alice on the couch.
“May I have your attention!”
Irma called out in a jubilant voice. “These wonderful people, Elijah, Mortimer,
Blaze, and Alice, whom most of you have met, would like to meet you all once
again in your human forms.”
“I’m
Irma Fresco,” she began to introduce the twelve with a polite bow. “The young
man, nursing Alice, is her fiancé Sam, the sable-colored Burmese you saw
scampering around the house. That
big blond haired fellow was the big yellow tabby Buck…. This fellow, Buck’s
best friend, is Tom, the Maine coon everyone liked to pet, and here is that
naughty Havana cat, Ed, and the sleek tan feline Drew, who is Buck’s and our
dearest friend.” “These women,”
she pulled them both forward by their wrists, “are, of course, the wonderful
Persians you liked to cuddle, Neva and Wanda—black and white negatives of
themselves. And let’s not forget
our brave Sheldon, who had been a Norwegian forest cat, his girl friend Tanya,
a Siamese, I believe, and,” “come on, don’t be shy,” she motioned, looking
across the room, “… Penny, a beautiful Abyssinian I wished you folks had seen.”
“Last but not least,” Irma directed the spell-changer’s attention to the big,
portly young man, whose toga-clad body was reminiscent of Emperor Nero as he
lounged in the chair, “I want to introduce you to that entertaining fat little
calico everyone loved: Jim Courtney.” “How are you feeling, Jim?” she smiled
sweetly down at him now.
“It’s
good to be back.” Jim reached out and gently squeezed Irma’s hand.
As
if this was the proper thing to do now, the four members of the Spell Reversal
Team rose up from the couch and mingled with the twelve young adults. Alice paired off with Sam, but the
apartment manager would glance frequently at Irma, marveling at how much she
had changed.
The
stories told and retold from their smiling faces would one day be written down
by Irma Fresco in a book. She had
learned so much as a cat. Once in
the shadow of her friend India Crowley, she had struck her neighbors and
friends as mousy and unattractive by virtue of her attitude and drab apparel,
but everything had changed now…. And something else, she suddenly realized
after experiencing this same marvel as a cat…. She no longer needed her
glasses! This realization, though
astounding, seemed somehow irrelevant after the ordeal she had gone through,
and yet she wanted to share it with someone special now.
Looking
around at all her chattering friends, then focusing a last moment on Sam, she
turned suddenly and found Elijah standing next to her again in the room. Remembering the warm little black cat
in his coat, Elijah’s voice constricted with emotion as he tried to tell her
what was in his mind, but his heart was hammering too loudly again for him to
speak.
“Guess what Elijah,” she
said, clasping his shaking hands, “my eyes are twenty-twenty now. I was so nearsighted before I couldn’t
go anywhere without glasses. How
do you account for that?”
“I-I
can’t Irma,” he stumbled with the words, “perhaps all of you will retain
something from your feline bodies…. I can’t speak for the others who were
cats…. The only cat I grew to know and love is now a young woman again. I feel like I lost my favorite pet!”
“You
haven’t lost me, Elijah,” she promised, her blue eyes flashing with tears. “How
can I ever forget the warm haven you gave to me? How can I not love you in return?”
Not
daring to misconstrue her meaning and spoil the mood, Elijah very wisely,
smiled, but turned the subject his way.
“Perhaps,”
he began clumsily again, “… I mean I am several years older than you, but,
but—“
“Yes,
of course,” she nodded pertly, a lock of black hair falling over her brow.
“I
was going to ask you on date.” Elijah began to relax. “…. I’m sort of out of
practice, but perhaps we could have dinner and go the theatre or something.”
“I’ve
got a great idea,” Irma emitted a girlish squeal, “why don’t we have a party!”
“That’s
a capital idea!” cried Mortimer now.
“Yeah,
it will be our first reunion as humans!” piped Sam.
“I
don’t know,” quipped Neva, looking across the room at Drew, “the last time we
had a party like that we were turned into cats.”
Drew
boldly walked across the room toward Neva, while Buck, who had finally inched
up next to Wanda Craven, felt himself drowning in her gaze. Sam, Alice, Mortimer, Blaze, Tom,
Sheldon, Tanya, Penny, and Ed joined this foursome to plan the reunion ahead,
as Irma, the very person who had initiated the idea, withdrew with Elijah into
another room.
As
they looked down at the collapsed bed, Elijah could not help laughing when he
realized what this meant.
“Ho-ho! That’s where you cats were lying when
the spell was broken!” he declared, moisture willing up into his eyes.”
“Yes,”
nodded Irma, “we ruined poor Sam’s bed.”
“So,
tell me,” Elijah pressed forward awkwardly once more, “would you consider, I
mean, a real date, not just the reunion?”
“Yes,
my dear Elijah,” answered Irma, bending forward and kissing his check, “I would
be honored. One would think it was
you who needed glasses now!”
“I
think you’re a beautiful woman Irma,” Elijah tried to explain, “but not in a
way that some of those fellows out there would understand.” “…. You have,” he
searched for the words, “a beautiful mind and soul…. You have the most
expressive eyes I’ve ever known…. You’re generous, sweet, and
unpretentious. You were, as a cat,
Irma, the most precious miracle to grace my sore eyes…”
Elijah’s
voice trailed of in reflection.
Irma thought about what he had said and shook her head. Irma, the human being, was, for the
preacher, beyond mortal words. He
remembered how she had studied her reflection, as she did now, in a toaster in
Blaze O’Dare’s kitchen. Now she
stared with the same wonderment into a mirror on the bedroom door. The long sleeved men’s dress shirt that
covered her little body could not have been more becoming in Elijah’s
eyes.
“You
are describing Irma, the cat,” she said, looking in wonderment at herself. “Irma, the human, was an eccentric, who
dabbled in the occult and, when she was India Crowley’s friend, had wanted to
be a witch.”
“Your
mind and soul are beautiful,” Elijah insisted, studying her pixie frame. “….
Those are constants, Irma, that make all the difference in the world. You have found your way back to God
after being bewitched by India Crowley.
You have taken the best parts of Irma, the cat, with you. I’m thankful now that I was a part of
this miracle. So much of that
small, black purring cat is left in the Irma Fresco looking into the
mirror.” “Don’t you see?” his
voice constricted again, “… it is I
who am bewitched now!”