Wilhelmina's cat

Wilhelmina's cat

Wilhelmina’s old witch’s broom was her pride and joy. The holiday was coming up, so she meticulously cleaned and repainted its stiffened bristles with lamp black. Then she oiled the hardwood stick handle, giving the old grain a new finish. Polished its brash fittings and stirrups to a high gleam. Replaced the badly perishing, right over left, handed-grip along the haft, one procured from only the finest quality manufacturer. And made sure the side-view mirrors were positioned just right, never worried about the reflected rear-view. After all, ‘It wasn’t how safe you were, getting there, just how terrifying you looked when you arrived.’

She was ready for Halloween.

A group of three children knocked on Wilhelmina’s front door that night. And when opening it...

‘Trick-or-treat,’ they said, all dressed for the occasion.

‘Hello,’ said the kind, motherly woman. Short and plump, her hair neatly pulled back into a tight bun, she put her pink palms together near her chin. She delightfully rapped her fingertips one against the other, sizing up the two young boys, the oldest about sixteen and their little sister, who now stood before her. ‘But before I invite you in, you must tell me your names.’

‘I’m Sally.’

‘Johnny.’

‘I’m Hunter,’ said the sixteen-year-old. Acting as grown-up as he could.

‘Come on in,’ she said, ushering them through the door.

Hunter noticed a photo of a young woman as they were led into the old house. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties. He picked the photo from off the shelf and, inspecting it, asked, ‘Wow! Who’s this tasty number?’

‘That’s my granddaughter, Desdemona,’ Wilhelmina answered calmly. ‘She’s half vampire, half witch. Still young, though, only one hundred and seventy-six years of age. Would you like to meet her? I’m sure she’ll find you a tasty morsel.’

Hunter, playing along with what he thought was a Halloween act, thought the “tasty morsel” was what they were about to be served, asked, ‘Sure. She around?’

‘She’s gone trick-or-treating for the weekend,’ said the woman. ‘At an underworld gathering.’

‘Sweet,’ said Hunter. Thinking the woman was referring to an amateur crime convention and wanting to meet the granddaughter, asked, ‘What one?’

Wilhelmina calmly took the photo from the young man, placed it back on the shelf, and said, ‘It’s no place for babies.’

‘Cool,’ said Hunter, thinking the woman meant, ‘the amateur gathering was feral.’

Wilhelmina led them into the dining room. The table contained six chairs. Two on each side, with one at each end. On the two end chairs sat a couple of skeletons with slight traces of petrified soft tissue and some hair remaining.

‘Wow, who are these dudes?’ asked Hunter.

‘Oh, just a couple of my granddaughters’ fancies. Unfortunately, it’s so difficult to find good red-blooded men these days.’

‘Cool,’ said the teenager. Thinking it was all fake. ‘These look so real.’

‘Yes, they do,’ said the old woman. ‘If you will be seated, I’ll go fetch you some sweets.’ The old woman smiled a shark-toothed smile and left the young people to sort out their seating arrangements.

The two youngsters sat on the same side of the table, with Hunter seated alone opposite them. In the middle were a couple of large, old-looking candleholders, each with a candle. Rivers of solidified wax individualised their sides. Everything looked coated in layers of undisturbed dust. Hunter, inspecting the closest skeleton, noticed it was still wearing some jewellery. A couple of gold chains around the neck. The other one, the body leaning forward, his arm on the table, a gold watch at his wrist. And Hunter, thinking, said to his brother, ‘Hey Johnny. Wasn’t there some guys who went missing a couple of years back? That bling would match their description.’

Johnny shrugged. Both he and Sally were a little creeped out. Hunter lifted the chain around the neck of the skeleton. There was a nameplate attached, and, upon reading it, Hunter excitedly said, ‘Hey, that’s one of the guys.’

And in his excitement, he pulled a little too hard. The skeleton’s head detached and fell onto the floor with a loud crack, causing Sally to scream. Hunter fetched the skull, placing it on the table in front of him. The bone looking far too real, he commented, ‘Jeez, how Halloween-nee can you get?’

Then, the largest cockroach Hunter had ever seen in his life, crawled out through the skull’s fracture. The roach, the size of Hunter’s hand, crawled across the table surface toward him, then stopped at the edge, its feelers waving about and smelling the air. Sally, her eyes transfixed on the bug, looked like she might hyperventilate. Hunter poked at the front of it with his finger, and the creature snapped at him, biting him on the fingertip.

‘Shit,’ said Hunter, standing and frantically pushing his chair back from the table. ‘Bloody thing bit me.’

He placed his finger in his mouth, sucking on a slight trace of blood, then reached over the table. And picking up a candlestick holder, smashed the end down onto the location where the bug was. The insect hurriedly moved, scuttling to the end of the table, as the old witch returned to the room, witnessing Hunter prepared to commit insecticide.

‘Oh, delightful,’ she said. ‘I see, you have met my Dear Husband.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, My Harrold,’ said the old woman. ‘Happens to you when you get old, you see. I forgot how to perform a certain spell,’ she pointed a cruel finger at Harrold. ‘Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out how to reverse it. Poor darling.’

She put her hand on the table, and Harold crawled onto her leathery palm. She affectionately stroked the cockroach, saying, ‘He likes that. Calms him down.’ Then gave the creature a gentle kiss, who only waved his feelers in the air. Wilhelmina placed the oversized roach in front of Sally, saying, ‘If he gets upset, dear, just stroke his back.’ Then, looking back at Hunter, ‘He didn’t cause you any trouble, I hope.’

Hunter silently shook his head.

‘Good.’

And Hunter noticed the woman looked a little more haggard than before. Then, thought to himself, ‘No, can’t be.’

The cockroach stared intently at Sally, who was on the verge of tears. With her big, dark, watery eyes, she looked pleadingly up at the witch, wanting her to take Harold away.

‘Oh, please, my dear, don’t look at me like that,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘You remind me of my pet Theraphosidae.’

‘A what?’ asked Hunter.

‘My pet Tarantula,’ answered the witch. ‘She was a Theraphosa blondi, a Goliath bird-eating spider.’

The look of fear increased on Sally’s face.

‘The poor dear wasted away, unfortunately,’ explained the witch, ‘after the neighbourhood stopped buying pet birds.’ Her hands clenched into white-knuckle rage, ‘No idea why they did that to her?’ Then she quietly said, ‘Sad really. She was such a loving pet.’ Wilhelmina made a mournful cry, ‘I eventually had to put her down.’

Sally’s tear gates were about to burst, so Wilhelmina pushed on. ‘But my dear. You would know what I mean.’

Sally nodded, not knowing what she was nodding to. The child’s watery eyes were still fixed on the witch, her hair now growing out wild and wiry.

‘Your pet bunny, when it succumbed to cancer,’ continued Wilhelmina. ‘I understand that your dad and older brother Hunter here took it out the back and shot it.’

Sally looked at Hunter, whose face betrayed him. He couldn’t deny what the witch now claimed, although to Hunter’s mind, it wasn’t as brutal as Wilhelmina implied. He had promised his mother never to tell Sally what actually happened.

Sally protested, ‘Stuart died in his sleep and went to heaven.’

‘Oh no,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘Tell her, Hunter. Tell your little sister what you did to Stew.’

‘Stew,’ he had often taunted his sister with. Calling her rabbit by that name instead of ‘Stuart.’ Causing the little girl to rally to her rabbit’s defence, ‘Don’t you call my rabbit-stew.’

To which Hunter would frolic in laughter, prompting further taunting. And Hunter now realised the witch knew the terrible truth. And in his defence, he bawled what his dad had said to him: ‘It had to be done.’

And Sally promptly burst into tears.

Yet, Hunter failed to mention how gleefully it made him feel, cruelly dispatching his little sister’s rabbit. The witch smiled at him, tapping the side of her nose with her finger, her nose looking a little more hooked than it had been a moment before. And winked at the boy, the eye’s colour changing from blue to yellow when next it opened.

‘There—there,’ said the witch, patting the distraught little girl on the head with her bony, long-fingered hand. Her fingernails had grown, gnarly and twisting. And now, splitting, they were almost as long as her fingers.

‘That’s much better now,’ she said as Sally bawled. Wilhelmina smiled, ‘Just let it all out, dear. I’m sure it was a mercy killing after all.’

A black cat strolled into the room and sat for a moment on the floor at the end of the table, where Johnny was seated. It licked its black fur a couple of times, then crouched and pounced upon the table in front of John.

The cat, long, lean, and scrawny, sat on the table, again licking its mottled black fur. Johnny noticed a distinguishing white mark on its body. The same as one of the neighbour’s cats. And he shifted forward in his seat to take a closer look, and noticed...

There was a partially visible scar circling its neck, making the head appear as if it had been sewn on. Other, similar scars were discernible where the limbs joined the body and the ears joined the top of the head. And the base of the tail bore a mark, suggesting the same surgery. The fur on different parts of the body didn’t quite match. And on either side of the neck, collocated with the scar, were minor, circular wounds that had healed. The pinkish-looking skin, reminiscent of electrical or lightning burns, the boy had seen on a friend’s dad. If an iron bolt had passed through and exited either side of its cervical vertebra, the image of the “Franken-feline” would have been complete.

And Johnny now meticulously counted off the prominent scars, one by one, on his fingers.

The four limbs.

The head.

The two ears.

The body.

And finally, the tail.

They totalled nine.

Then he realised nine black cats had vanished without a trace, from the district over the intervening months before Halloween. And additionally remembered, a savage lightning storm having passed through, two weeks previous, the likes of what no one had seen before. With some witnesses adamant that this house, in which they were now trapped, had been hit. And although the child correctly suspected foul play and realised what happened to the cats, he had yet to spot the significant correlation in the numbers.

Nine cats, each giving up their singular existence, to make one with nine lives.

The cat turned its head toward Johnny, revealing it was missing an eye. And although taken aback a little, Johnny, driven by a boy’s overwhelmingly morbid curiosity, looked into the empty socket. And noticed movement. Then realised, with horror, that the cat’s brain was crawling with maggots.

Johnny instantly pulled his head away. The cat stood on all fours and walked toward him. Johnny withdrew in terror from the creature as it approached, sitting as far back in his chair as it would allow. The boy freaked as the cadaverous cat leapt from the table and onto his lap. And sitting, it fixed him with a hollow stare from its cavernous eye socket now only inches away.

Johnny fearfully turned his head from the abomination, looking over his shoulder. Then, whimpering, looked at it from the corners of his eyes, wondering what it would do next. The stench was overpowering. He realised that a carnivore’s breath could be bad, yet this was Satanic. The smell of brimstone emanated from whatever hell the creature was created in.

‘Well, look at that, would you,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘He wants you to pat him.’

And when Johnny refused...

‘Go on,’ shouted the witch, turning into something demonic and slamming her fists down hard on the table beside Johnny. The boy wet himself. Then all nice as pie, she was back to the charming yet aging crone she was a moment ago, ‘he won’t bite you know. That kind Doctor Frank, forget his last name, put him together for me.’

Gingerly, Johnny put his hand on the cat’s back and began gently rubbing. As did Sally with the roach, apprehensively placing her small hand on its back and rubbing the chitinous shell. The child, torn between the fear of the insect biting her or the witch shouting again, hoped she wouldn’t have to kiss Harrold. She was sure he wouldn’t turn into a handsome prince.

Johnny could easily feel the bones under the cat’s fur, making him queasy. And thought he could sense things, horrible things crawling under the skin. Then, the cat purred. The sound it made was more like a heavy chain dragged through gravel than a cat.

Yet Hunter wasn’t having any of it and told his brother, ‘It’s all just clever tricks.’

‘Tricks, you say,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘Would you like to go for a ride on my broom. I am a witch after all.’

And with a cavalier attitude, Hunter said, ‘Riding a broom. This I got-ta see.’

‘Now you two, stay here and look after my cat and husband,’ said Wilhelmina. With a long face, Sally slowly nodded, guardedly stroking Harrold. And turning, the witch left the room with Hunter following.

In the backyard, Wilhelmina told Hunter, ‘Stand with your legs bowed, like riding a horse.’

‘Like this,’ said Hunter, wearing a grin. ‘Is this how you ride a broom, or a witch?’

‘No, foolish boy,’ said the witch, placing her witch’s hat upon her head. Then, taking the broom, slammed it up between Hunter’s legs. ‘It’s so you don’t get hurt.’

Doubling in pain, Hunter lay along the broom, his arms wrapping the haft.

‘Now, SIT-UP.’

Groaning, Hunter struggled upright.

The witch, now tall, lean and gaunt, jumped onto the broomstick in front of him, her back letting out a large ‘Snap.’

‘Damn Arthur Wright Arse,’ said the witch, straitening with a ‘Pop.’

‘Who?’

‘My other husband, dear. He’s a real pain. Now, you’re about to learn to fly, so put your arms around my waist, don’t want you falling off.’

Hunter did as instructed, and the witch grabbed the front of the broomstick; it shot off into the night. The witch cackled wildly, and Hunter screamed uncontrollably from behind her.

The following morning, before sunrise, three children left via the front door of the old house. Never believing they would survive the night. Sally was still sobbing, and Johnny was pale and smelled of stale urine. The oldest boy, looking straight ahead, unblinking and mumbling incoherently about heights, the two younger children were leading him by the hand.

Dawn was approaching when Desdemona flew in through an open window.

‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ said Wilhelmina, as her granddaughter transmogrified into human form. And checking off her list, asked, ‘How was it?’

‘My flight back was good. No headwind to contend with.’

‘Good,’ said the old witch. ‘Weather can be a bitch for bats. Have you had a good time?’

‘Yeah, grandma,’ she said, giving the old woman a hug. ‘Thanks.’

‘It’s my turn next year, don’t forget. Did you meet anyone interesting?’

‘Oh, a couple of young human studs. Someone invited along.’

‘How’d that turn out?’

‘Good,’ responded Desdemona. ‘I bled them of their blood.’ She pushed her lip away from one of her fangs and scratched at it with a talon-like fingernail. ‘What about you?’

‘Let’s see,’ said Wilhelmina, as she held up her list, ticking off items.

‘Made the little girl cry all night long. Music to my ears. Her brother peed his pants in fright,’ she said, stroking her cat. ‘His fragrant perfume filled the house. A wonderful aroma.’

‘And the third?’

‘Hmm, the oldest and toughest one. Teenagers these days,’ she said to her granddaughter.

‘They’re getting harder to frighten each year,’ commented Desdemona.

Yet another mark adorned the page, and Wilhelmina smiled, saying, ‘Poor lad lost his mind completely.’

‘Well,’ said Desdemona. ‘I’m retiring to my coffin.’

‘Oh,’ said Wilhelmina. ‘Perhaps I should have kept him and placed him in your casket to warm it for you.’

‘You’re so adorable, Grandma,’ said Desdemona, giving Wilhelmina another hug. ‘But, I’ve already had dinner.’