by BoJenn
She longed for a real, true friend to ease the loneliness, and prayed that God would send her a close friend. A male friend would be nice, but she would settle on a great friend of any kind. At forty-five years of age, she had grown suspicious of people. She didn’t want to be like that, but twenty-five years of being rejected for no real reason was enough to maintain her distrust.
While Cat had been extremely humble and kind in her early years, gradually, anger and resentment from being shunned created a shell of toughness. A dog would be nice, but she couldn’t allow any living creature into her life; after all, they, too, might die in a fire.
The thought of the fire hung in her mind for many years. Sometimes, at night, she thought she could hear the boys coming to burn the mansion down, just like the barn. The boys were never prosecuted. The church ministers were the lawful magistrates, and the suspects were never brought up on any charges, on the grounds that there was a lack of evidence. No witnesses, and no one who was willing to come forth with other information, stopped all investigation.
Tammy had insisted publicly the three boys knew something, but Taylor Snuttgrass was the arsonist. The Snuttgrasses threatened her with slander charges. The town offered hush money to Tammy’s parents to get her to shut up. Mary wanted to keep it, but Larry looked them in the eyes and handed it back. “We’ll take no bribe.”
Tammy moved away after high school, and went to college a few hours away. Larry thought it would be best for Tammy and her mother, under the circumstances.
Cat started to look witchy, as time and events drew lines of sadness and animosity that would not be easily erased. She dyed her glorious honey-colored hair to blue-black again, and cut it to chin length. Her facial features, once soft, became pronounced to a sharp and angular definition. Her eyes looked like they could kill.
Once in a while, someone would call her because they had a sickness that couldn’t be healed; and Cat, even in her angry state, still would go privately, when no one was looking, to lay hands on those select few. Cat always went when summoned.
The poorest—mostly people in service professions and people of color—had no choice but to secretly ask for her help. The townspeople who had so terribly ridiculed her years ago still frightened the meekest and most oppressed residents. They were afraid of also being labelled witches; but, in times of severe illness, Cat Dubois was the only one to be called. She accepted no money; she came posthaste; and she did the job with health improvements at least 97% of the time. No human or animal ever suffered after she prayed.
Sometimes her best emotions were motivated by anger; and yet she knew anger didn’t produce kindness. She couldn’t help her raging tears, and, at times, believed she was going crazy. The roots of loneliness, despair, worry, and lack of forgiveness had grown into deep-seated depression, exacerbated by being an orphan and alone for so long, and, to top it all off, her animals were gone.
She hurt so badly without consistent, kind-hearted human contact, but she did try to live life His way. She had to fight and reason with her own negative motivations—because she’d almost cursed the mean townspeople. But, she knew better. She knew that curses could retaliate, returning sevenfold if not dealt with properly. Trying to be thankful, and remembering herself at seven years of age, Cat knew there was more. That belief saved her from giving into total blackness. She made herself remember life as a child when her godly quest was all consuming, burning, and captivating. Over and over she relived those memories of her relationship with God, talking to herself, rocking back and forth, forward and back, as if her mother was holding her close. She wanted to feel her again, she wanted desperately to believe like she did once a long time ago; and she found herself speaking aloud, trying to tell her story.
Perhaps someone was listening. She whispers, “One time, I looked at a flower and I saw the markings, veins, cells, and the very life that was created by an awesome God.” Cat picked up a single flower from a vase in the kitchen window. She held it and looked into it as she continued, “I watched the inside of a lily. It had veins just like humans and it also held nutrients, and ionic vibrational transfers. CO2 was exchanged with oxygen; there was movement—a life other than human, but without a doubt, a living force—and it communicated with the natural atmosphere. It attempted to speak to human life, but the radio transfers were not parallel, and any communication signals emitting from the flower were unrecognized. The lily was confused, because it spoke to its surroundings in the most natural way, but the moving energies surrounding it were unreceptive.”
Cat had transported herself back in time. She went on talking to herself, and God—and whatever spirits might hear her. “When I held animals I felt their souls, I read their minds. I communicated without speaking, and animals were drawn to me. They loved me and I loved them. I looked on all life as a gift from God, who taught every human a different lesson, which could only be perceived in the spirit—spirit-to-spirit communications traveled through vibrations. Not possible? Well, that’s what many people thought, but truly, it is a fact. I knew this a long time ago, since I was a small girl, so inquisitive, innocent and terribly naive.”
“The animals tried to warn me. But, I refused to listen. They told me that people were not good. I did not understand them. Nonetheless, I learned, despite the fact, that such knowledge alienated me from the “normal” children. Learning the hard way was the lesson I learned not. However, through the loss of my animals and the fire, I learned that healing is a gift, a pardon, and an offering of divine love, there for all who know and see the way it is meant to be. I wish I knew it now…” She wept.
“Oh physician, heal thyself” was printed on an old piece of paper that fell out of her mother’s book of poetry. Cat had picked the book up and the paper fell from between the pages. She reached down to get it. It was written in Old English cursive, with ink from a well. It was her mother’s handwriting. She sniffled through the next sentences, sobbing, and continued the talk to herself.
“During that time, my heart leapt for joy when I became aware of this knowledge regarding healing. I was just a young girl. However, now…” Cat sighed. “That was then. I don’t think I can return to my innocence. No, there has been too much pain. Fires and name-calling. Hatred and war. I can’t.”
Pain and sorrows grew in her heart. She missed her family, and she still missed Daniel, whose whereabouts were still unknown and no one seemed to miss him at all. She cried and poured a snifter of brandy.
Many nights she prayed earnestly for his safety and for his health, mentally and physically. “You, can come home Daniel. I’m family who desperately needs you. Please…please come back. I need you,” she begged.
Catherine went outside and faced west. She spoke into the wind as she raised her right hand into the direction of Daniel’s possible whereabouts. “Take this message to Daniel’s ears,” she commanded the wind. “If I’m a witch, then I can make things happen! Deliver this message to Daniel!”, she cried.
It was if her words swept down her arm, then past her fingers into the atmosphere; up and away the message flew on the wind. There was no one to wipe away her tears. Only silence and cricket legs rubbing together, night after night. It seemed like an eternal hell living in the manor on the hillside on Downy Ridge Road—by herself.
By forty-five she was consumed, captivated and burning with hostile feelings. Her once childish, faithful ignorance had vanished. Now, animosity had become a weed within her being. Yes, Cat had changed and not even her best hopes for others and herself kept her from hating. There was nothing to stop them from absorbing into her psyche. Cat had taken on the Gothic, witch-like appearance and role that the Glory Town people had long ago assigned to her. After all, they had called her a witch, so she might as well look like one…and hopefully scare them in the process. “They deserve it,” Cat spoke, looking into the mirror as she put on blood red lipstick. She thought grimly, “They definitely deserve it. I’ll show them. I’ll give them what they deserve.”
> So, as usual, the nights passed, moon after moon, starry skies and thundering ones, warm and cold, for many years. Cat settled into a perfectly developed evening routine: soup for evening meals, red wine in winter, and white in summer, were part of the ritual. Sitting on the porch looking out on the hillside in the wicker rocking chair, listening to the sound of the crickets, she wished, again, she could get a dog for company. Having a dog to enjoy the beauty of the countryside, and the solitude at night, was only a wishful desire. She was unable to stop thinking about the cruel ends of all her animals who burned to death because of her. That single memory kept her from getting such a friend to enjoy the display of each nightly starlit masterpiece.
In summer, similar to winter, though winter nights began earlier, Cat embraced the night skies having wine, then switching to tea when the hour turned late and she entered the private study that also served as her dwelling room.
Retrieving a book from the bookshelves of the ancient family library, Cat could smell the old paper, remembering the scents of her mother, before she settled down on her favorite, velvet couch. The cognac wouldn’t be far off for a nightcap. There on the couch, she would read until midnight or so, give or take an hour.
During winter, the house would creak; in summertime, the doors were hard to open and close, yet it was most often wintertime when the manor seemed to call her name at night. In the whispers, she listened closely, and thought she could hear the voice calling out to her, “Catherine, Catherine!”
“I’m going crazy. Stop it!”, Cat thought, viciously looking around as the candlelight flickered unnaturally higher and lower before one blew out. These happenings would come and go. But, the alcohol dimmed her abilities to know, and to sense the supernatural. It all became mush.
She picked up an old picture, presumably her mother’s, from the table. It, too, had fallen out of a book some time ago—the old Bible she picked up once in a blue moon. The Bible had belonged to her mother, and Cat loved reading her comments written in the margins. The phrases, spelled out in artistic cursive, were tender reminders of her mother. By reading them, she could almost feel her nearness. The photograph was again placed back into the pages without Cat looking at the subjects.
“Gibbly gobbly mish mash…that’s all this sixth sense stuff is. A bunch of childhood fantasies. None of it is real. Delusions…” Cat thought, with certainty. An entire day and night of conversation and discord with herself, she, now, easily dismissed everything she had once known and understood as a child—it was simply easier.
When the summer came, the manor was still quiet, along with her spirit. But this summer, the whispers of her name were heard more often than before. They always sounded like a young boy calling her. Cat paid no attention, though; and after a while, dismissed the voice completely, blaming it on having drank too much wine or cognac—or, blaming it on two old souls named “Loneliness” and “Isolation”.
She personified these two pestering, overstayed-their-welcome kind of visitors, imagining them as tall, dark-skinned, and always looming around her. They never said anything. They were simply always present. “My two old companions,” she chuckled in sarcastic amusement. “Why do you insist on occupying my time and my life? Were you sent to torment me, or accompany me? What are you here for? Come on, tell me! What is it that you want from me? Here, I’ll give it to you. I will offer you anything you want, just leave me alone! Please. God, please send others, please!” Cat had pleaded urgently, but sarcastically. She lit a small fire to take the bit of evening chill out of the damp house, even though it was a summer evening, and thought, “Maybe, just maybe, a little warmth will make me feel better.”
Cat then started a heart-to-heart conversation with God, while finely resting on her couch. In anger, she threw the glass of cognac at the fireplace. The snifter hit the stones above, shattering the inexpensive crystal, the cognac dripping onto the fire’s flame, a renewed blaze now flaring upward, burning the alcohol until it was gone. “There! Happy now?”, Cat thought, defiantly.
A light began to glow, over her right shoulder, out of the perimeter of her vision, but bright enough that it caught her attention. She abruptly turned her head in the direction of the light. It shimmered, translucently. She looked closer. From the corner of her eye, standing behind the door with a partially exposed left shoulder was a young white boy, sort of blond-haired, though any distinct features seemed far too vague. He stood looking at her, one eye hidden, and appearing to be somewhat frightened as he watched her from behind the wooden frame. In his hands, he held an old black rag-dog. He held it up as if he wanted to give it to her—as a gift it seemed.
She was immensely taken by the apparition who had finally appeared long enough to be sure, after many years of glimpses. She looked at the black rag-dog he held. It meant nothing to her at the time, but the boy seemed familiar.
“What? Who are you? What do you want?” Cat stood up to approach the boy, but he turned and ran off before she could reach him. The sound of footsteps echoed from the stone-floored hall. She grabbed the door frame and swiftly rounded the corner, but he was already gone. Vanished. He took the ragged, ghostly dog with him. The stone tiles had sand on them and she bent down to examine the gritty floor. “This sand came from somewhere,” she mused. “But where? There is no way that boy could have made it to the next door down the hall in that short amount of time. And—this sand— everywhere.”
A faint scent wafted through the air and Cat straightened up. She could smell the ocean of a faraway country. She looked down the hall again, confused, but still no boy was seen. The sound of bare feet and pitter-pattering through the halls could still be heard from some undeterminable place in the manor. Cat moved down the hall and turned on the lights. They were amber and the shades cast a golden hue with more dramatic shadows. Her eyebrow lifted, and she thought “Perhaps I’ve definitely had too much to drink this time. If I had a life, I might give this up.”
She returned to the study, her awareness heightened. She looked around the room here and there. The boy with bare feet came in the summer, and with him came the fragrance of seawater and the ocean’s breezes; but he whispered her name in the winter when a chill was in the air, and her name was crystal clear.
Time passed again, as usual —seasons, days, years—and then, one summer day, Cat watched Tammy from afar when she came home between semesters. She knew Tammy had something unique that others didn’t. She wished Tammy would remember her and would return to say hello. But, Tammy was older now, in college, and busy being young and free as she matured into a fine young woman.
Tammy had forgotten the pain and hardships of Glory Town once she moved away. She also, in time, almost forgot Cat Dubois. They had been there for each other, once upon a time. But, Cat never forgot Tammy.
“It’s good that she moved on. Maybe I should have too,” Cat reflected on the “could haves, should haves, and would haves.” But, she was happy for Tammy. Tammy had made the right decision. Then again, perhaps Cat was envious in a strange way. Tammy had escaped from the madness, the insanity, the voices of accusations, and the narrow-minded people caught in the warp of time that made things seem as if the ridicule and loneliness was endless. Tammy had gone on with her life.
The next fall, Tammy was awarded her master’s degree in anthropology and began teaching at a community college a long way from Glory Town. She would come again only to visit her mother and father during Christmas.
Several years had passed when Tammy made her way to Glory Town for the holiday season again. This time, she brought her fiancé, and came into town by way of Downey Park Road, pointing out Cat’s home. She had not thought of Ms. Dubois in all those years. Tammy directed her soon-to-be husband’s attention to the manor. “There. Over there. That is the home of Catherine Dubois. I had forgotten about her.” She paused. “She was the wisest woman I had ever met.”
“Are you going to introduce me?”, he asked.
“Perhaps.” She smiled back at him. “Maybe
one day.”
Longingly, she eyed the home as they drove by. She hoped to catch a glimpse of the woman who saved her life a long time ago. Even though Tammy had put Glory Town behind her, she could never really have forgotten Cat Dubois.
“Ms. Dubois was responsible for many things.” She fell silent as they passed out of sight of the manor.
Her fiancé was unsuspecting of the thoughts Tammy held back about Cat Dubois. “It’s not important now, but I still hope she is alright? Doing well…”, she thought to herself.
Tammy looked forward over to the next hill. “There!”, she pointed. “That’s the old ruby mine!” Tammy was exuberant to point out the beautiful areas of the Appalachians. Onward they drove and rarely ever returned.
Back at the manor home, into the antique mirror Cat stared. She saw nothing but a lifeless, ghostly reflection of herself. Her black hair was cropped like Liza Minnelli’s from “Cabaret”, and her skin remained a perfect opaque white, only contrasted by plump red lips that had never been kissed. She continued her examination in the light reflected in the mirror. Even the outline of her body appeared vague. “Soon, I will vanish. Gone, no more. It will all be over. Soon,” she said. There was relief in the possibility of death. “But, I’m special.” She smirked, having become thankless and sarcastically regarding her emptiness.
She questioned her reasoning for remaining in Glory Town. Still so unresolved to her independent spinster fate, she uttered aloud…and often. Rather feeling sorry for herself, she gave thought to the fact that she was, indeed, given the two thorns for punishment—the ones with whom she had grown so close—”Isolation” and “Loneliness”. “Sent here to guide me, to accompany me throughout life, where are you? Oh, right here as usual. Why would I look for you?”
Cat lived her mundane life in their silent company. And, except when she drank heavily, she rarely gave notice to those two companions. Spirits then came to chat too; they came out to toy with her mind, as well. At least, that was how she described their intrusions.
