Familiar Spirit

So I live in a witch’s house, thought Sarah. It was an interesting thought, and already she was shaping events into a story to amuse her friends, recasting her encounter with Valerie in a new light and choosing her words. And there, underneath the bedroom carpet . . .

A sudden rapping sound made Sarah turn, her smile fading. “Who is it?”

But when she went to look, she found no one at the back door. As she hesitated, wondering, the sound came again. This time it seemed not a knocking, but a muffled thumping. Following the sound, holding her breath in order to hear it better, Sarah came to the bathroom. The noise had a focus now: something was moving beneath the bathtub. She listened a moment, then reached out and pounded sharply on the wall. The sounds of movement became more frantic, scurrying and scrabbling.

Valerie’s voice came to mind, and her sly smile: “I think there’s a rat in the cellar.”

Sarah nodded grimly and went for her flashlight.

It was time to take a look at that cellar. At the back door she paused a moment, then turned back and exchanged her tennis shoes for a pair of sturdy boots. Outside she shivered at the unexpected chill in the air and glanced up at the overcast sky, but didn’t bother going back for her jacket. She didn’t plan to be outside long.

The door to the cellar was on the west side near the front of the house. Old, unpainted, warped, it had no handle, and Sarah had to grasp the splintering edge and struggle to wrest it open. Inside it was dark, the windows too dirty and hidden by leaves to let in much light. Sarah thumbed the button on her flashlight and slipped through the doorway, ducking her head to avoid a spiderweb and looking around cautiously.

The space below the house was cold and damp and filled with a rotten, penetrating odor. Generations of rats might have lived and died and disintegrated here to judge from that smell, and Sarah wondered that it hadn’t seeped up into the house yet. The floor was earth, soft and dusty. Sarah stepped carefully, crouching to avoid the overhanging pipes, and breathing shallowly through her mouth. She swept the space ahead of her with the beam of light, alert for any motion, any unexpected mass or movement that might give form to the noises she had heard. And as she looked, she prayed she would find nothing. Later, she would put out poison and traps, but for now she hoped the rat would have the sense to stay out of sight. She began to regret her impulsive rush down here, armed with nothing but a flashlight, and a sudden internal chill made her grind her teeth together as she remembered her dream.

Her boot struck something soft.

With a cry, she leaped back. Heart pounding, Sarah forced herself to stand still, and she turned the light in the direction of the thing she had so nearly stepped on.

It was a dead cat. Coming closer, Sarah saw that its throat had been cut, so ferociously that the head was nearly off. The fur seemed to shimmer and move in the light—the small corpse was crawling with maggots.

Shivering, her stomach twisting unpleasantly, Sarah backed away from the butchered animal. All heart for further exploration was gone, and the previous tenant’s excursions in sorcery no longer seemed amusing. Whoever had killed this cat was senselessly vicious, possibly dangerous. Sarah felt a perhaps groundless but still powerful conviction that Valerie had killed the animal, probably as one of her witch-spells, a blood offering to some evil spirit.

Do you have a cat? I think there’s a rat in the cellar.

Sarah remembered the gloating madness that had twisted the woman’s face. Crazy. She was crazy.

And her throat tightened in sudden fear. Valerie had wanted her here, living in this house. Why? She thought of the nearly useless locks on the doors upstairs and decided to have them changed the next day. She would have bolt locks installed on both the inner and the outer doors. Just in case.

Hating it, but knowing it had to be done, Sarah used some old newspapers to transport the cat’s body to the garbage can, and fastened the lid down with a shudder. She could almost feel the maggots squirming on her hands as she hurried inside to wash.

When she came out of the bathroom she paused in the doorway, staring at the floor. The green-white pentacle seemed to mock her. Had there been blood spilled on this floor? Sarah wondered. Had Valerie raised the knife here in this room and brought it down on her unsuspecting cat, later discarding the body in the cellar? Had she meant for Sarah to find it, pointing the way with her hints of cats and rats and cellars? Stop thinking. Do something. She squared her shoulders.