Cat Magic Read Online Free PDF Page A

unnaturally large.
    It had a weathered, surprisingly kind face. And that kinked tail was endearing. The shredded ear, though, was almost comical, making it seem as if the whole cat was lopsided.
    The tom waited on the sun porch where Mandy’s easel and canvases were installed, waited amid the smell of linseed oil and paint. It saw the skill in her brushstrokes, and drank in the energy of the young woman. Poor, confused young woman. She had no idea how dangerous this story would be to her, as it unfolded.
    She had painted a haunted landscape with a fairy stealing down a moonlit path… painted it with skill and even passion, and more than a little of her own heart’s truth. But what a relentlessly sentimental notion of a fairy. It looked like a bug, with those wings. And it was far too small. The picture had the fatal defect of charm.
    Settling sounds began to come from the bedrooms. The cat grew still. It closed its eyes, concentrating on every nuance of their beings. It felt as they felt, sensed as they sensed, shook its dirty old body as they tossed and turned, gazed with George as he adored the mental images of his women, Bonnie and his lost Kate, and Mandy, felt the pulsing, stifled sensation in his loins, and knew with him the dreadful weight of time.
    The old tom waited until the moon was at the top of the sky to begin.
    Then it moved off to commit the next act of the story.
    It stole into George’s bedroom, listened a moment to his sleep. In one quick motion it leaped upon his bed. It heard his heart laboring softly and faithfully on toward its eventual breaking end, listened to his stomach digesting the day’s meals, felt his dreams, haunted dreams of frogs and death and girls and loss.
    The tom walked softly up his sleeping body, until its big head hung over his throat. It looked down at the pulsing artery in George Walker’s neck. It opened its mouth, its fangs just inches from the flesh. George Walker sighed, as if inwardly aware of the death overlooking him.
    The cat gagged softly and regurgitated. Something green and slimy slipped out of its mouth and onto George’s face. By the time he had taken the first shocked breath of awakening, the cat was in the enclosed porch, passing the easels and paints. By the time George was gasping and fumbling for the light, the cat was going through the back door.
    It slipped beneath the back porch as lights pierced the windows of the house and Mandy’s feet pounded down the hall while George Walker screamed and screamed.

Chapter 2
    One moment Mandy was asleep, the next she was running down the hall toward George’s bedroom. His screams called her deep instincts, so high they were, so like a panicked baby’s. Her first, hideous thought was of fire.
    Then she saw him, crouched in the middle of the bed, his fists clutching his thin hair. Moonlight streamed over him, making him seem a dangerous shadow. She fumbled for the light switch, found it at last behind the door, turned it on.
    The suffusing yellow light changed him to a crumpled old man. Something obscene and wet and green lay on the sheet before him. He was screaming at it. She went to him. Another bellow gushed out of him. His eyes were staring, oblivious to everything except the sticky mass on the bed. Each time he screamed, flecks of bloody sputum flew from his mouth.
    “George!”
    She grasped his shoulders, shook him. He was as rigid as wood. His skin was cold. He shrieked again.
    “George!”
    There were a series of broken gasps. Then another shriek, cracking, pitched like the cry of a bird.
    “Hey!” She grabbed his cheeks, leaned into his face. His nostrils flared, his lips parted for another scream. She slapped him hard across the right cheek. The scream shattered, became a sob. She turned his face and slapped him on the left cheek. “George, wake up! You’re dreaming!”
    He raised his hands to ward off her blows. For a moment they remained like that, she holding his chin, he seeking sanity in her