by N. M. Howell
“Oh, look, she’s alive,” the first voice said.
I squeezed my eyes shut, not quite ready to deal with the spinning world around me. My body ached, and my head pounded something fierce.
A toe reached out and poked me in the side. I groaned again, squeezing my eyes shut even tighter.
“Well, you can’t stay there all day, River.” I recognized Rory’s voice.
I painfully turned my body over so that I was staring up into the patterned plaster ceiling of 21 Black Cat Lane, my shared home for the past few months.
“Everything hurts,” I groaned. I lifted my arm to cover my eyes as someone flicked the ceiling light on. “Turn that off, you witch.”
I heard a laugh that I recognized as Bailey’s. I squinted up into the blinding light above and made out the faces of two of my housemates looking down at me in mock concern. Rory and Bailey were witches like me, and we lived in this beautiful, albeit run down, Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine with Jane, my third housemate, and our pink-haired, pint-sized landlady, Mrs. Brody. Jane and Mrs. Brody were also witches, and between the five of us, my new cat, Soot, and the many ghosts that frequently made an appearance in Mrs. Brody’s basement apartment, the house was full to the brim with magic and mischief.
“Off, please,” I muttered. The ceiling light felt like it was burning a hole through my brain.
“Well, based on the number of bottles scattered around the floor, I’m surprised you’re even capable of speech,” Rory laughed, poking me again with her toe.
Again, I groaned. I then started to become more aware of my surroundings, and slowly turned my aching neck to see the carnage that lay around me. The floorboards had been torn up, and wood splinters lay around me. My closet door was off its hinges and some of the trim board had been pulled away from the wall. A number of holes had also been made in the plaster walls, revealing thin strips of splintered lath behind.
“Oh, no.” Memories of the night before came flooding back into my mind all at once.
“Have fun last night?” Rory asked, smirking down at me with her arms crossed in mock concern.
“I didn’t realize we were renovating,” Bailey laughed. “You should have told us. I would have bought some paint.”
Both girls laughed and I shook my head painfully. The pounding in my temples was getting worse, and I shut my eyes again as the room began spinning once more.
“What were you doing?” Rory asked.
I let out a loud sigh. “The stupid cat,” I managed to say through my piercing headache.
“This cat?” Jane walked into the room holding Soot.
I immediately sat up and gaped at her. “Yes, that cat. Where on Earth did you find him?”
Jane raised her eyebrow as she pet the tiny gray fuzzball in her arms. “What do you mean, where did I find him? He was sleeping on the stairs like always.”
I pressed the palms of both hands to my temples in an attempt to stop the throbbing sensation in my head. “No, no, no, no,” I said, slowly shaking my head in disbelief. “Not possible.”
“What are you talking about?” Bailey asked. “Why did you rip up the flooring?” She bent down to try and place one of the torn-up floorboards back into place.
“The damned cat,” I said again. “He was in the walls. All night. He wouldn’t stop meowing from inside the walls.”
My three roommates stared down at me, their brows raised in unison.
“You sure you didn’t just drink too much?” Rory asked. “Were you drinking absinthe, by any chance?”
“You are looking a little bit like the green fairy right now,” Jane laughed. I felt nauseous and imagined Jane wasn’t too far off from the truth.
“Definitely not,” I snapped. “The cat was screaming from inside the walls all night long. It was driving me insane!”
The girls glanced back and forth at each other, then stared back down at me like I was some sort of unstable mental patient.
Suddenly, a meowing sound came from down the hall. Everyone turned to look in the direction of the noise.
“See,” I said, crossing my arms stubbornly. “Not crazy.”
Jane placed Soot on the floor, who immediately sauntered down the hall to where the noise had come from. He walked up to the hallway closet, sat down, and looked back at us expectantly.
“Huh,” Bailey said. “Maybe Mrs. Brody was right, and this house is haunted, after all.”
“I don’t think that’s a stretch, considering she invites ghosts over to visit every other night,” I muttered, then lay my head back on the ground in desperate hope that the room would stop spinning so violently around me.
Rory opened the closed door and the three girls leaned their heads in to inspect the space.
“Nothing in here,” Bailey said.
Another muffled meow came from the closet.
“What the heck?” Jane said, walking up to the closet wall and placing her ear against the plaster. “It’s coming from inside the walls.”
“Told you so,” I sang. I was quite pleased with myself despite the vicious hangover.
“Does anyone have a crowbar?” Bailey asked.
“In my room,” I said, remembering that I had brought nearly the entire contents of the tool shed in last night to aid in my attempt to find the stupid cat.
Bailey grabbed the metal tool from my room and brought it to Jane, who immediately set to tearing out the trim board in the closet.
“It’s easier to just smash it into the plaster,” I said.
She popped her head out of the closet and narrowed her eyes at me, then shrugged. “Alright.”
A loud bang emanated from within the closet a moment later, and then came the sound of splintering wood being torn out from the walls.
The meowing grew louder now that a hole had been put into the right wall. The poor cat was obviously stuck somewhere within the structure of the old house.
Soot meowed back, and Jane reached into the hole in the wall to feel around for the source of the sound.
After a few moments, she pulled out a little furry ball of black and white fur. “Aw, look, it’s just a kitten,” she said, lifting the cat up for all to see.
“How did you get in there, little guy?” Bailey asked, scratching the cat’s ears.
Jane put the kitten down on the floor and it immediately pranced down the hall to me and climbed up to sit on my chest. It looked down into my eyes and meowed.
I stared back up at the little cat’s light blue eyes.
“He likes you,” Bailey said, coming to sit on the floor next to me to pet the cat.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said to the kitten. “Already got one too many cats in this house.”
Jane laughed. “Don’t be silly. She’s obviously already chosen you as her person.”
“That’s not up to the cat,” I said. “People adopt animals, not the other way around.”
“Tell that to the cat.”
The kitten meowed again and pawed at my chin with its tiny little feet.
I sighed. “This is getting ridiculous. It’s going to be a zoo in here.”
Bailey beamed. “The best kind of zoo!” She tickled the kitten under the chin, who then rolled over onto her side on my chest and began to purr.
Soot walked up to the kitten and sat down next to me, watching its every move.
I heard another muffled noise coming from the closet and froze. “Did anyone else hear that?”
Bailey nodded. “Sure did.”
Jane went back into the closet to inspect the source of the noise. “Can’t see anything.”
The noise sounded again, this time louder.
Jane let out a loud sigh and reached for the crowbar. She then began ripping out more of the plaster to make the hole bigger. After a few minutes, she reached into the enlarged hole in the wall and removed a rather large, fluffy white cat.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, staring up at the large animal in Jane’s arms.
She
let the cat down on the floor, and it padded up to the kitten that was still sitting on my chest and began licking its face.
“Aw, it’s the momma cat,” Bailey squealed.
“Great, just great,” I said, looking back and forth between the three cats sitting around me. “This is not happening.”
“Looks like you got yourself a nice little fur family,” Jane laughed.
I lay my head back down on the floor, giving up on any false preconceptions that this day may have played out to be just a normal Saturday.
Rory looked around the hallway and frowned. “We’re going to have to do something about this before Mrs. Brody sees the state of the place.”
Jane laughed, then looked over at Bailey. “You got this?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bailey said, her eyes remaining fixed on the kitten in front of her.
She lazily waved her left hand in the air, and the pieces of the house began to fly back into place.
“Wow, Bails,” Rory said. “That’s incredible. How the heck did you do that?”
Bailey shrugged, completely disinterested in the looks of awe that her magic had drawn from the rest of us. She continued to pet the kitten, already absolutely in love with the little thing.
“You should keep it,” I said, picking the kitten up off my chest and placing it on the ground in front of Bailey as I sat up and leaned against the wall for support. “Keep all of them, actually.”
The kitten immediately walked back to me and stepped up into my lap. She then curled up into a ball and fell asleep. The mother cat curled up next to it and fell asleep as well. Soot just sat and watched them curiously, flicking his tail back and forth in silence.
“Nah, I’m pretty sure they’ve made up their minds,” Bailey said.
I shrugged, then let out a sudden sneeze. I then glanced down at the cat on my lap and frowned. “If I’m allergic to you, I’m not going to be happy, cat.” The kitten purred.
I sneezed again.
“Soot hasn’t bothered you at all, has he?” Rory asked. When she noticed the expression on my face she immediately added, “In terms of being allergic, I mean.” She knew how little sleep I got from that cat, as I was often grumpy in the mornings when we would all have coffee together. I hadn’t slept well since Soot came into my life a few weeks back, as he loved waking me up in the middle of the night by pouncing on my face as if I were some sort of play thing.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, although, my allergies have been bad since I first got him. I just figured it was the dusty old house, though.”
“Well, were your allergies bad the first weeks after you moved in?” Jane asked.
I thought about that for a second. “No, don’t think so.”
I stared down at the three cats in front of me with wide eyes. “Don’t tell me I’m allergic to cats.”
Bailey laughed. “Well, I don’t think you have a choice either way. Once a cat has attached itself to you, there’s no getting rid of it.”
I sighed, then scratched Soot behind his ear as he brushed himself up against me. “If you’re the reason behind my scratchy eyes, you’re being put out on the curb,” I said to the cat.
He meowed and flopped down on my lap next to the kitten, who was snoring lightly.
“Aw, it sounds like Mrs. Brody,” Rory said, looking down at the cat in adoration. “How cute.”
“What should we call it?” Jane asked.
I watched the tiny snoring kitten for a moment and pondered. “Agnes?”
The girls all laughed and it was decided.
“Agnes the kitten,” Rory said. “Just don’t tell Mrs. Brody.”
We had learned our landlady’s first name a few weeks ago when we had brought the ghost of a young murder victim home with us. She had made us promise to never call her by her first name, which we, of course, respected. But, you have to admit, Agnes really is a fantastic name for an old witch.
It’s also a perfectly cute name for a little snoring cat.
I scratched the kitten’s belly as it made little snoring noises, and I could feel the rumble from the purring in her chest.
“What about the mom cat?” Bailey asked.
I glanced around the room to see if anyone else had an idea for a name, but everyone shrugged.
I sighed and reached out to scratch the white cat’s ears. “Looks like you’re just going to be known as Momma.”
Momma purred and rubbed her back up against my arm on the floor.
Jane picked up a small empty bottle of spiced rum off the floor and held it up to me. “So, what spurred your binge fest last night?”
I sighed and closed my eyes as I leaned my head back against the wall. That was one part of the night I really didn’t want to remember.
“You know Zack? The insufferable journalist I knew from NYU who came to help with the paper after the three murders happened at the beginning of the month?” I asked. Jane nodded and came to sit next to me on the hallway floor.
“The one who basically drove you out of your job and treats you like a bag of dirt?” Bailey asked.
I narrowed my eyes at her, then sighed again. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“But, yes,” I continued. “That’s the one. I just found out he’ll be staying indefinitely. JoAnn, my editor, has offered him a full-time position at the Brimstone Press.”
“You can’t be serious,” Rory said. “So, what does that mean for you?”
I shrugged. “Not sure, but it’s not good. Not only am I essentially demoted, but I now have to put up with his condescending and misogynistic attitude every day at work.”
“Oh, let’s curse him!” Jane exclaimed.
I laughed at how excited she sounded. Oh, how I wish I could curse him. “No, not just yet. JoAnn and Zack are doing the dirty – don’t ask me how I know - and knowing Zack, I suspect he’ll find some way to mess it up sooner or later. I just have to wait it out, and hope that JoAnn sends him on his way.”
“Well, maybe you should have gotten into your editor’s pants first,” Jane said. “Then maybe you would have gotten the job instead.”
Bailey smacked Jane on the shoulder but laughed just the same. “That’s no way to get ahead in the workplace.”
Jane winked at me and I groaned. “Well, technically I already had the job, but that’s a whole other disastrous story.”
Soot yawned and stretched on my lap, triggering my own loud yawn in the process. I tried to ignore the itchy sensation I could feel building in my eyes. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be allergic to cats.
I petted both cats that were lounging on my lap, then softly pushed them off onto the floor. They both curled up together and went back to sleep, completely ignoring the rest of us talking around them.
I pushed myself up off the floor and steadied myself with the wall as a wave of nausea nearly overtook me. I walked towards the large window that overlooked our front lawn, and lifted the heavy wood-frame window open. I then leaned out and breathed in the crisp late October air, and immediately felt better.
The trees had turned a beautiful golden orange and red, and the wind blew falling leaves around on the grass. I loved the fall, especially here in Maine. The colors were so vibrant and made the town glow a warm gold all season. It was much nicer here than in New York City, which was mostly just gray and dreary this time of year.
I took a few more refreshing breaths, then pulled my head back inside the window and went to join my roommates who were picking up the empty bottles in my room.
I helped them tidy, then sat on my bed, glad that it was now the weekend and that I wouldn’t have to face Zack or JoAnn for another two days.
Until then, I could enjoy the beautiful fall weather, recover from my hangover, and lounge around with my randomly growing family of cats.
I laughed to myself, as I’ve never in my life been a cat person. Dogs, I liked. Dogs obeyed you and loved you unconditionally. Cats have a mind
of their own, and I had never really been fond of them.
At least, until now.
I lay back on my bed and Soot jumped up to join me. Bailey picked up little Agnes and put her down next to me, then joined us at the foot of my bed.
The two cats curled up next to my face, taking up all the room on my pillows.
I nuzzled my face into the little kitten, then sneezed.
Read Witch Way to Hallows’ Bay HERE.
