Grimalkin

Grimalkin
1.Bump In The Night
Every Saturday night, after finishing his shift at the basket factory, Sam Grant would head for the Bantam Bar and Grill and knock back whiskey until he was half in the bag. Then he’d drive back to the little house on Cavender Road, very carefully – he used to brag that he was the best drunk driver in Wayne Bridge – and drink more whiskey with supper. He’d get mean as a snake, and anything could set him off: a report on Fox News about niggers rioting in New York over something a cop had done, a story in the Wayne Bridge Courier about kids at Consolidated High School supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, an interviewer on NBC asking President Donald Trump unfair questions about the way he was handling the Covid-19 epidemic, or even a meteorologist on the Weather Channel talking about global warming when it was snowing outside. And if his wife Kate dared to interrupt him, he’d start slapping her around. One night he hit her so hard she fell down and banged her head on the floor. The next thing she knew, she was in an ambulance that took her to the Wayne Bridge Community Hospital, and she wound up in a bed with a rail around it. A woman in a white coat, holding a clipboard, came in and stood beside her.
“Who are you?” Kate asked. Her head still hurt.
“I’m Dr. Parker,” the woman said. “You had a bad fall, and we’re monitoring you closely to make sure you didn’t get a concussion. You also have bruises on your cheeks. Do you remember how you got them?”
“I slipped and fell down,” Kate said.
The doctor looked at her steadily for a moment. “That’s all?” she said.
“That’s all I remember.”
“Your husband had nothing to do with it?”
“Of course not! Sam loves me! We’ve been happily married for ten years!”
“No children?”
“No. We’ve tried, but I never got pregnant. My gynecologist says there’s something wrong with his sperm.”
“I’m sorry.” Doctor Parker made a note on her clipboard and went on. “Mrs. Grant, I’ve seen women with these kinds of injuries before. Very often they are the result of spousal abuse.”
“What?”
“Wife-beating,” said the doctor.
Kate hesitated, and finally said, “Well, all couples fight sometimes. He might have kind of pushed me. But he felt terrible after I hit my head, and he called an ambulance right away.”
“Why didn’t he come with you?”
“He had to work!”
“It’s after nine on Saturday night.”
“He had a night shift at the basket factory.”
The doctor sighed. “Mrs. Grant, the Wayne Bridge basket factory closes at six on Saturdays.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve treated people who have gotten injured there. Some of the machines are dangerous, and the factory has a bad safety record.” She stood up. “We’re going to keep you overnight to make sure you’re not concussed. A nurse will bring you some cream for your bruises, and a mild sedative that will help you sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.

2. Little Grey Cat
She knew she would be needed before the woman who needed her did. It was always that way, and over the centuries she had learned to refine her powers, so that she didn’t start an unnecessary war when only the elimination of a single cruel person was required. The worst mistake she had ever made in her long, long life was to become Cleopatra’s familiar. As Bast, she had helped the Queen of the Nile bewitch both Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius, but the final result had been a civil war that destroyed the Roman Republic and ushered in a tyranny that lasted until Rome itself fell to the Visigoths. For upsetting the order of the world, Amun-Ra, whose daughter she was, had punished her by transforming her from a leopard to a tabby, too small to hunt anything but mice. Ra had also made her sterile, because generations of her kittens, each of whom would have her powers, might eventually, through sheer numbers, threaten his supremacy as master of the universe. So she walked the changing world by herself.
But she was never lonely. Many times over the following years, witches, usually women, invoked her, and she always appeared to them. Often she was black, and when Amun-Ra, Zeus, Baal, Ogun, Shango, Pan Gu, Quetzalcoatl, Gitchi Manitou, and all the Elder Gods had been replaced by Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu, and Jesus Christ, she became associated with Satan and feared by the faithful, to such an extent that any black cat was regarded as demonic. Of course these devout Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Christians routinely slaughtered anyone who didn’t share their faith, so she concluded that they were more evil than the people they hanged, decapitated, or burned at the stake. Certainly the charms and spells she helped witches cast were more often benign than malevolent, and even the deadly cantrips were directed against vicious, greedy, murderous people who did unforgiveable things.
But despite their wickedness – or because of it – those monsters went on ruling the world, as they had always done. She remembered a time in Scotland, more than a thousand years ago, when she had been a witch’s familiar. The crone called her Grimalkin, a common name for a housecat, and when war broke out between the King of Scotland and one of his thanes, a man called Macbeth, who had an ambitious wife, she had helped tip the tide of battle in favor of the thane, because her witch sought to create chaos in the realm. The witch had two sisters, one of whom kept a toad named Paddock as a familiar, and the other an owl named Harpier. War broke out, and when it was over, Macbeth was King. His reign began peacefully, and he was popular with the people. But the previous King, Duncan, had been slain by Lady Macbeth, and the three witches, or rather, their familiars, had to punish her and her husband for trying to interfere with destiny. A man named Malcolm, the son of King Duncan, had fled to England, where he raised an army and invaded Scotland. Macbeth was killed in battle, Lady Macbeth went mad and killed herself, and Malcolm assumed the throne. But he was a cruel monarch, and his vassals rebelled against him. He was killed while besieging Alnwick castle by the Earl of Northumbria, whose lands he had devastated.
The cat liked the name Grimalkin, and kept it through many more relationships with witches in need, although the witches often gave her names of their own. She was Madame Defarge’s cat and watched with her mistress from the foot of the scaffold where Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off. Grimalkin was glad, because Marie had kept a slew of yappy little lapdogs.
Napoleon’s bewitching wife Josephine named her Diablerie, and when the Emperor divorced her, Diablerie cast a hex on him which caused him to believe that he was unconquerable. He invaded Russia, and was utterly routed. After he abdicated the throne, he was exiled to the island of Elba, but the hex was still in force, and his escape from Elba led to a final doomed campaign which ended at Waterloo. The victorious Duke of Wellington exiled him to a more remote island, Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean, and the Bourbon Monarchy was restored.
Maria Josephine, the wife of King Louis XVIII, preferred dogs to cats, and Grimalkin had nothing to do with her. Instead, she went to China, and became the familiar of Li Shuxian, wife of the last Chinese Emperor, until her husband was stripped of his title and became an ordinary citizen. Afterwards, Li lost the ability to call Grimalkin, whom she called Ann-Chi, and assumed she’d run away. Which she had, in another sense.
But before that, Grimalkin had some mistresses in America. At the end of the 17th century she belonged to Rebecca Nurse, a saintly old woman who only called upon her when she wanted to wish for a good harvest or an end to someone’s illness. After the merciless Judge Danforth ordered the goodwife hanged, Grimalkin appeared in a dream to Governor William Phips, whose wife had been accused of witchcraft by one of his political enemies. She took the guise of a demoness with women’s breasts, goat’s horns and cloven hooves, and warned him that if he didn’t put an end to the trials, he would roast in Hell for all eternity after he died. Phips was so rattled by the nightmare that he not only stopped the trials, but also made restitutions in land and money to the families of the hanged women.
She was Dixie, the eldest of Abraham Lincoln’s three cats, and when Lincoln, devastated by the death of his son Willie, dismayed by the Confederacy’s early victories in the Civil War, and unable to make up his mind about freeing the slaves, one night Willie appeared to him in the Bardo, the transitional stage between incarnations, with Dixie in his arms. “Pa,” he said, “it’s all right. You have to let me go. But Dixie will help you make the right decision.” The next morning, on the train to Gettysburg, Lincoln wrote a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation. This war was necessary to the restoration of the world’s balance, and slavery had to be abolished.
As Woodrow Wilson’s cat Puffins, Grimalkin helped the President frame the Fourteen Points that led to the formation of the League of Nations, but isolationists in Congress prevented the United States from joining it, and Wilson soon died of a stroke brought on by overwork and despair.
By then, most Americans had stopped believing in witchcraft, and Grimalkin’s power to influence large-scale events waned. She could still help good people right injustices, and punish bad people who did monstrous things, but she had to restrict herself to aiding ordinary individuals instead of world leaders.

3. Kate Gets A Cat
Kate had an electroencephalogram two mornings later, and that afternoon Dr. Parker gave Kate the results. “There’s no sign of concussion or brain damage, Mrs. Grant, and I’m going to let you go home. But before you leave, are you sure you don’t want to tell me what really happened to you?
“I told you! Sam and I had an argument, and he slapped me. I lost my balance and fell down.”
“The bruises on your cheeks suggest to me that he used his fist, not his open hand,” said the doctor. “If that’s the case, he committed a crime, and you can file charges against him.”
“I would never do that! I told you, he felt terrible about losing his temper, and he called an ambulance right away.”
“Why didn’t he drive you to the hospital himself?”
“He… he thought it would be safer to call the EMTs.”
“I see. But you’ve been here for almost three days, and he’s never come to see you.”
“He’s… he’s busy! I told you that. The basket company went back on double shifts on Monday, and he volunteered to work the swing shift as well as the day shift because they offered him overtime pay.”
“I’m sorry, but you never told me that.”
“Well, I’ve been a little confused. But I’m fine now.”
“All right, Mrs. Grant.” Dr. Parker sighed and shook her head. “I’ve written you a prescription for oxycodone. It’s a very strong painkiller, and it can be addictive, so don’t exceed the recommended dose. And don’t drink any alcohol.”
“I don’t drink!” said Kate.
“Good. In case you change your mind about filing charges, call me. I’ll help you get in touch with the district attorney, and if the case goes to court, as your physician I’ll testify on your behalf. Take care of yourself.”
Sam seemed sincerely ashamed of what he had done to Kate. He apologized, and he stayed off booze for three weeks. But then the Boston Red Sox won the pennant, and took on the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. The Sox won the first three games, but the Royals rallied and evened it up. Kate wasn’t much interested in baseball, so Sam decided to watch the final game with his factory buddies at the Bantam and Grill. The Sox won, and he celebrated with his buddies, knocking back whiskies with beer chasers, until the bar closed. On the way home, he got into a fender-bender with another car. Instead of stopping, he left the scene of the accident. The other driver called the cops, and a cruiser chased him all the way to Elm City before catching up with him. He failed the breathalyzer test, and was taken to the county jail for the night. He was allowed to call Kate, but she had finally lost patience with him, and refused to bail him out. He went straight to the state prison in Concord, and did thirty days.
Kate knew exactly what he would do to her as soon as he got out of prison, and she was terrified. She thought of running away, but she had no place to go. Her parents were dead. There was an older brother in New York, but she knew he wouldn’t take her in. Don was an urban real estate speculator who had made a good many shady deals, and he had just remarried, after a bitter divorce from his first wife, a pornographic movie star who had accused him of mental cruelty. To avoid divorce court and a scandal which would scare off future investors in his various enterprises, her lawyer persuaded him to settle out of court for a monthly alimony payment so steep he’d been forced to declare bankruptcy and borrow money from the Russian mafia. He was still in business, barely, but his new wife, a former model, was just as flashy and greedy as his first one, and she had already made it clear that Kate wasn’t welcome in the penthouse duplex on Park Avenue.
She began to feel claustrophobic in the little house, and she put on her coat and went outside for some fresh air. It had been raining earlier, but the clouds had scudded away and a gibbous moon was rising. She saw something moving in the back yard, and at first she took it for a squirrel. But it walked up to her and made a mewing sound.
“Well, hello, pussycat,” she said. “Where did you come from?”
Grimalkin was a brindle cat this time around, and she wove herself around Kate’s ankles, purring. Kate knelt down and stroked Grimalkin between the ears. She noticed that the cat’s fur was wet. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Let’s get you inside and dry you off. And you look hungry, too. I have some tuna fish. Do you like tuna fish?”
“Yahrl,” said Grimalkin, and licked Kate’s hand.
Kate picked her up and carried her into the warm kitchen, where she toweled her off, set out a saucer of milk and a bowl of tuna for her, and sat down on the kitchen stool to watch her eat. “I wonder whose kitty you are. You’re pretty scruffy and skinny. Did you run away from home? Was somebody mean to you?”
“Yahrl,” Grimalkin repeated, louder, and pinned her ears back. Her back went up, her golden eyes narrowed, and her tail twitched. For a moment Kate was afraid she might attack her. But then the cat relaxed and started eating the tuna. Kate suddenly remembered that cats needed litter boxes to do their business in. On the porch she found an empty cardboard carton, and last week’s Wayne Bridge Courier waiting to be taken to the dump. She crumpled up several pages of the newspaper and put them in the carton. Then she placed the improvised litter box in the mud room, so the cat could have some privacy when she needed to go, and returned to the kitchen.
Kate had never had a cat before. Her parents had an old Irish setter named Jack, but Jack died when Kate was eight, and they never replaced him. Kate asked her mother if she could have a cat, and her mother told her to ask her father. Her father said he didn’t like cats. “Nasty, sneaky things. You never know what they’re thinking. “
Don didn’t like them either. “They kill birds,” he said. “Millions of birds every year. And if one of them scratches or bites you, you can get cat scratch fever. It can put you in the hospital. Everybody says so.”
So Kate grew up without a cat. But she always wanted one. “I hope you’ll stay with me, pussycat,” she told Grimalkin. Grimalkin finished eating, took a sip of milk, sat back on her haunches, and said, “I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me.”
Kate was so startled she almost fell off her stool.
“You can talk?” she asked.
“Of course I can,” Grimalkin said. “But only special people can understand me.” She bent over and licked the fur on her belly, raised a hind leg and scratched one of her ears, and sat up straight, regarding Kate calmly.
“Am I special?” Kate asked.
“You took me in when I was cold and wet and hungry. That makes you a cat lover, and cat lovers are very special, Kate.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you. I’m your familiar.”
The word jogged Kate’s memory. There was a movie called “Bell, Book, and Candle” that she had loved as a teenager. It starred Kim Novak as a witch who had a cat familiar named Pyewacket. The cat helps her cast a love spell on a publisher played by James Stewart.
“I don’t need a love spell,” Kate said. “I need a curse.”
“That can be arranged,” said the cat. “But please don’t call me Pyewacket. That name is an insult to all self-respecting familiars.”
“What shall I call you?”
“You already know.”
“Oh, of course. You are Grimalkin, the First Witch’s cat in ‘Macbeth.’ Hello, Grimalkin.”
“Hello, Kate Porter Grant,” said Grimalkin. “Let’s talk about the curse.”
“If you can read my mind, don’t you already know what it is?”
“Yes. But you have to say it out loud, or it won’t work.”
“I curse you, Sam Grant!” Kate said. “May you die in jail!”
“Are you absolutely sure you want Sam Grant to die? That’s a terrible wish, and you are not a terrible person, Kate.
“No, no, I’m not. That’s my problem. If I were terrible, men would have been scared of me, and they wouldn’t have dared to be cruel to me.”
“That’s right,” Grimalkin said. “Change the curse.”
Kate thought carefully, and said, “May you get the Covid virus in jail and lose your memory.”
“Good choice,” said Grimalkin. “Say it two more times to make it stick.”
“May you get the Covid virus in jail and lose your memory! May you get the Covid virus in jail and lose your memory!” Kate said loudly.
“Done,” Grimalkin said. “And you’ll get your first wish after all. In the prison hospital, Sam will lose his autonomic memory as well as his cognitive memory. His heart will forget how to beat.”
“So I’ll be rid of him?”
“Not entirely, I’m afraid. His ghost may haunt you.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts!”
“But you believe in witches and familiars?”
“You mean ghosts are real, too?”
“They’re less substantial – I mean, they don’t run around in sheets like children on Halloween – but they are certainly real. They’re the spirits of people who die with unsettled matters troubling them. And the only way they can find peace is to settle those matters. Sam’s spirit feels guilty for mistreating you. You can help him move on by forgiving him.”
“You mean he’ll go to heaven?”
Grimalkin yawned and arched her back. “There is no heaven,” she said. “No hell, either. He’ll just get another life.”
“As himself?”
“No. The Sam life is used up.”
“I have an idea.”
“I know you do. It’s a good one.”
“Thank you, Grimalkin.”
“You’re welcome, Kate Grant.”
The little grey cat jumped into the woman’s lap. Kate stroked her back and smiled.
 
4. Rebirth
The young husband stayed at his wife’s bedside throughout her labor, holding her hand and stroking her forehead when the contractions made her cry out. “Bear down, darling,” he murmured to her. “You’re doing great. It won’t be much longer.”
The midwife said, “Remember to breathe… good… another deep breath… push… breathe… push…and there! Out you come, little one! Welcome to the world!” She turned the baby upside down and slapped it briskly on the buttocks. The baby coughed and let out a howl. The midwife turned it upright and placed it in the young mother’s arms.
“Nothing wrong with this young lady,” she said. “Do you have a name picked out?”
“Samantha,” said the mother. “Her name is Samantha.”