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Mortimer, the Priest
Despite her depression, Irma found
the warmth of Elijah Gray's jacket and the rocking motion of the automobile
comforting. She was still sound asleep
when Elijah climbed out of Blaze’s station wagon and followed the sorcerer up
to Mortimer Hildebrand’s door.
When
the door finally opened, its hinges creaked in the fashion of all clandestine
inner sanctums. Blaze exhibited how
amateurish and superstitious he was to Elijah when he crossed himself and made
a quick, deft sign with his hand to ward off the evil eye in anticipation of
Mortimer Hildebrand’s appearance at the door.
Inside the preacher's coat Irma had felt warm and secure, but now, with
the sound of the creaking door, she grew frightened.
“Come in,” a deep, resonant voice
beckoned from the dark interior.
“I don't like this,” Elijah murmured
fearfully to the sorcerer. “I don't like this at all!”
“Don't worry,” consoled Blaze
unconvincingly, “the priest sounded innocent enough over the phone.”
“Incredible!” Irma meowed, peeking
out of Elijah’s coat. “A preacher, a sorcerer, now a priest!”
Holding a crucifix in one palm and a rabbit's foot
in the other, Blaze led Elijah into Mortimer’s house. After mumbling a magical formula that escaped notice too, Blaze
introduced himself and the preacher, and then introduced the cat peeking out of
the preacher’s coat. It was difficult
for Mortimer Hildebrand to detect between his visitors who was most afraid of
him: the trembling sorcerer or the cringing preacher, who followed Blaze into
the room. The little cat peering out of
Elijah's coat also appeared frightened of him as he reached in to give her a
pat.
Irma, who was not a practicing Roman Catholic,
herself, had been startled by the man’s cold hand and, despite an earlier
resolve to trust him, took an immediate dislike to the watery-eyed old
man.
In spite of being excommunicated by the church,
Mortimer Hildebrand still wore priestly attire. His clerical collar was frayed and his black suit was faded and
worn, but he carried himself as a priest.
He did not, as the preacher, approve of the sorcerer’s ankh necklace or
the occult medallion on his vest.
When he led the preacher and sorcerer into his small
apartment, his visitors could see a picture of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary,
and the current Pope on one wall and several smaller icons on the tables and
bureaus on the opposite side of the room.
Blaze, who would never have confessed his misgivings about turning to a
defrocked priest, was merely confused. Christianity
allied with magic, he asked himself, is it really possible? What sort of practitioner is this Mortimer
Hildebrand that Christ and the Virgin Mary are part of his art?
Elijah did not understand the iconography in
Hildebrand's house either, but he was satisfied that he did not see any satanic
paraphernalia in the priest's home.
Hildebrand, he concluded, for all his eccentricity, seemed to be a
practicing, all be it Roman Catholic, Christian. In spite of his dislike of what he called “Papists” and his
disapproval of a Christian dabbling in magic and the occult, he took comfort in
seeing Jesus and Mary’s pictures on the wall.
When the priest caught sight of
Irma’s large ears and elfin face, he recognized her breed immediately. The little cat was a Devon Rex. More importantly to him, as his watery eyes
focused upon the creature peeking out of Elijah’s coat, was the expression on
the cat. “This,” he murmured to
himself, “is no ordinary cat!” There
was intelligence, along with fear, in the cat’s blue eyes and an intensity in
its gaze and faint, rumbling purr. Irma
responded to his kindly pat with a rising growl, which seemed to underline her
protector Elijah’s fears.
“Do not animals sense evil?” Elijah wanted to ask
someone now.
Almost as if he had read his mind,
the priest seemed to recoil at his expression, and was also disappointed with
the reaction of the cat.
“I'm not a devil worshipper,” he told the scowling
preacher and the growling cat, as he led them all down a hall. “I sometimes
work with intermediary spirits in order to achieve my ends, but I pray to the
same God. When I perform an exorcism, I
must do exactly as Christ once did in Nazareth.” “Do you remember the passage Reverend Gray?” He tried warming up
to the preacher. “You probably
don't!” He looked disapprovingly at the
sorcerer now. “But the fact is that the transformation of animals requires more
than the power of prayer; it also requires the assistance of intermediary
spirits to achieve my ends.”
“My God, I don’t believe this!” Irma
tried saying in a series of meows. “If only you could read my thoughts! All this occult trivia won’t help! You’re
wasting time with this clown!”
“Exactly what intermediary spirits
are you talking about?” inquired Elijah, his eyes flickering with distrust.
“Ghosts, angels, poltergeists? Are
these spirits heaven-sent or among the dark forces used by sorcerers and
witches in their rites?”
“Spirits of the dead are in fact ghosts, not angels,” the
priest explained, gently reaching into Elijah's coat to touch the cat. “Angels
only come down here for special reasons.
There are no such thing as poltergeists on earth. But there are evil spirits, which we often
call demons: free-moving agents, the counterparts of angels, from hell. I am, in addition to having the gift of
spell-changing and exorcism, a medium.
I can utilize the spirit world--ghosts, if you prefer--who can help
bring out the demons who have given the witch or sorcerer their powers to
transform.”
“Sweet Mother Mary,” spat Irma,
rolling her blue eyes, “I never heard such crap! You’re going to have to use her spell
against her or kill the bitch!”
As if to say “Ah hah, I told you
so!” Elijah flashed Blaze a triumphant look.
Irma was growling and hissing, her nails digging into the underlining of
Elijah’s smelly coat. This was, in
Elijah’s mind, dabbling in the occult: witchcraft. Why couldn’t the priest just admit it and forego this
claptrap? Although the self-styled
sorcerer was incredulous, himself, about the priest's claims, Blaze, as Irma,
now rolled his eyes, but at the pig-headed preacher, not the priest, as
Hildebrand continued to make his point.
Of the two visitors, the priest liked the preacher the most and felt
spiritually closer to Elijah than the sorcerer in spite of the preacher's
distrust of him now. As he continued his discussion, however, the
preached was forced to reach in and continually console the unhappy cat.
“It’s true,”
declared Mortimer pedagogically, “that in the Apocryphal Scriptures, Saint
Thomas’ Gospel relates a story of the Christ Child performing a shape-changing
miracle too.”
“Oh,” groaned Irma, “now a Bible story!”
“It seemed so outrageous to the early church
fathers,” droned Mortimer, “they eliminated it from the Canonical
Scriptures. But the fact is there was a
precedent from the Master, himself, the greatest magician of them all, for such
transformations. You must understand
gentlemen: no sorcerer can do such a feat, and only a priest in direct
communion with the Savior has the power to reverse such a spell. The difference is that Jesus Christ did not
require intermediary spirits. He is God.
A spiritually connected priest such as myself needs all the help he can
get.”
“But you're considered a heretic and
blasphemer,” the sorcerer played the devil's advocate this time. “You were,
just like me, excommunicated from the Roman Rites. Why would the Lord work with someone like you instead of working
through the legitimate Catholic Church?”
“Because, unlike some people,” he looked squarely into Blaze's
eyes, “I did not forsake my Christianity to practice magic. My faith is
my magic, and it is my life. I do not play with it or mock God. The center of my magic is Christ, and the
prime force moving everything else is prayer.”
“Incredible!” The sorcerer muttered
to himself as Irma continued to growl.
A smile played on his bearded
face. The preacher, however, was not
amused at all by these conflicts.
“What causes humans to be
transformed into animals in the first place,” he redirected the subject. “Is it
through the power of Satan or simply the ability to harness these free-moving
agents? How is it possible that a man
of God would associate with such things?”
“It is the power of a great demon,
whose identity I must discern,” explained the priest without hesitation.
After hearing his answer, Irma realized just how
knowledgeable the priest was. All of a
sudden, after such a long-winded seemingly irrelevant stream of information,
his words came as a thunderclap in her mind.
The power of the great demon! Had she not seen such a demon in India’s
apartment? Was not this apparition
invited during India’s circle of lights?
“How did he know that?” She wanted
to ask the preacher. “He couldn’t of known it. . . . unless, unless . . . .”
Irma’s tense little body suddenly
relaxed as the priest reached boldly into the preacher’s jacket and brought out
the trembling cat.
“Calm down,” he said soothingly,
“you are among friends!” “. . . . I've heard about it before but mostly in
cats,” he explained calmly, “a dog, a pig, and even a horse. It's impossible to determine if a human can
be turned into a primitive form of animal or a plant.” “For a creature such as this,” he said,
placing the small cat below them on the desk, “it is easier to detect how much
humanity is left in the beast. It only
takes a small trace when bringing them back to humanity. After that, when they are fully a beast, it
will be too late.”
Irma found herself lulled by the
benign forces of these men. Regardless
of whether they could help, she did, in fact, believe that she was among
friends.
“I've never really believed this was
possible, myself,” Blaze responded in awe. “Have you ever brought out such a
demon and undone his magic. This isn't
some sort of pet theory of yours, is it Mortimer? Can you really save this little cat?”
“Yes, father,” she looked up
quizzically at the priest, “I need more than theories right now.”
“Please remember that this is not a pet nor a cat.” Hildebrand said, smiling at his play on the words. “. . . . It is merely a woman transformed
into her current form. She is still
spiritually human. . . . With the Lord's help, I've done it in the past. I can
do it again!”
With these words, the strange man
won Irma’s affection, and her growl was replaced by a pleasant purr.
“Once,” Hildebrand continued softly,
stroking the small, purring beast, “I wrote a paper on it and was promptly
censured by the church. It was
considered heretical. Later, when I
refused to retract my theory on free-agents, I was ex-communicated. It did not matter that what I was doing was
for Christendom and the Holy Mother Church.
I am, they believe, a heretic and blasphemer. I consider myself still a priest, but I am on my own now. The Lord is my guide!”
“So our free agent or demon has
magical powers,” Blaze muttered in amazement. “Why didn't I know about
this. I've never read anything like
this before. What kind of powers are
being let loose on the earth?”
“Oh, this is nothing new,” explained Hildebrand, studying the small cat
closely now. “It has been going on for
thousands of years without anyone understanding the evidence at hand. No one was the wiser when a man, woman or
child was transformed into an animal or plant.
They simply disappeared, when in fact they might be right there close by
unable to tell their family members, spouses or friends what had happened to
them. It was, of course, much more
difficult to turn someone into a dumb brute or tree rather than an intelligent
ape, cat or dog. Our particular spirit
is not very original, since the common house cat (felis catus) is the most
common form. It seems as if every witch
with the power to transform will, in fact, change her victims into cats. Perhaps it was such cats who accompanied so
many witches on their nightly sojourns.
But the great master witches could turn their victims into funguses or
lichens if they wished. This is, of
course, almost a death sentence for their victims. Their demons have much greater power!”
“So we're dealing with a mediocre witch?”
Blaze pursed his lips in meditation.
“And a mediocre spirit,” Elijah
offered, looking down protectively at his new friend.
“Good grief!” Irma thought looking
back and forth between the three men.
“If this was the sixteenth or
seventeenth century, I would say that you're both right.” the priest commented as he fondled the cat. “However,
considering that this is the twentieth-first century and this has occurred only
ten times in the last one hundred years, we must accept the fact that this is a
very dangerous witch.” “. . . This is,
after all, gentlemen” he paused for emphasis, the Age of Unbelief. We don’t have an inquisition to capture and
try such a witch nor do we have a credulous public to give us moral
support. We cannot rely on local law
enforcement to help or protect us in our endeavor. We cannot even expect local Christians to believe such a
tale. We are alone in this, gentlemen,
totally isolated as any other member of a lunatic fringe seeing Leprechauns or
little green men.”
Blaze exchanged a frightened look
with the preacher as Mortimer paused to study the expression of the little
black cat purring contentedly in the arms of her latest protector.
“During the Middle Ages and fifteenth through
sixteenth century,” he continued thoughtfully, “when thousands of witches were
burned, tortured, and hanged, it was much more common. Back then we could hunt them down with a
force of ruffians or police and drag them off to justice, if they didn’t hex us
first. There were, of course, untold
numbers of frogs, lizards and especially cats who had once been human
beings. Since those dreadful times, the
ability to transform humans into animals seems to have disappeared almost
entirely. There is no record of it
again until a few isolated case in the late nineteenth century and the period
of time during the nineties when I encountered seven related cases in
California, Utah, Mississippi, and New York.
I believe that, with the new millennium, super witches--the kind that were seldom even encountered by the
Inquisition and witch hunters of the sixteenth and seventeenth century--began
sprouting up.”
“These are,” he turned to face the two men, “the End
Times, are they not? We must expect all
manner of evil in the world!”
“Okay, priest, enough of your fine
words. You claim you can do it. So do
it!” Elijah responded in a put-up or shut up tone.
Blaze was growing impatient himself
but found the preacher's sarcasm intolerable, and yet Hildebrand understood
Elijah's concern. As Elijah had felt
earlier, he was not fond of the sorcerer.
It must have been painful for him to associate with such a man, he told
himself, as the preacher cast him a reproachful eye.
Elijah, ironically, had begun to
feel sorry for the sorcerer, who was trying so hard to be Hildebrand’s
friend. Blaze, he realized, was a
harmless eccentric, whereas the priest’s preposterous claims defied everything
in which he believed.
******
Silence fell over the room as the priest
considered Elijah’s demand. Irma was
very tired. She had not slept more than
a few moments at a time since her escape from Shadow Brook Arms. Even in the safety of Blaze’s apartment and
in his automobile the two men had kept her wake with their constant chatter,
allowing her only a few catnaps tonight.
Considering everything she once believed and the
elements of India’s newfound profession that had rubbed off on her, she did not
see how a defrocked priest, street preacher or make-believe sorcerer could undo
the spell. But she knew that the priest
had been correct. . . . She was among
friends.
Exhaustion was overtaking her again, so that even
the mesmerizing touch of the priest failed to cause her to purr. Instead of a feline purr, the small black
cat looked up at Mortimer, sighed and purposefully laid her chin on his
hand.
Moved by this human gesture, the
priest’s eyes twinkled and a smile broke his wrinkled face. “I can work with
this cat,” he announced cheerily. “There's plenty of humanity left in her. Look at that adorable posture. I just need to communicate with her. We need to find out as much information
about the antecedents of the spell as we can.”
“Excuse me sir,” Elijah cleared his
throat with irritation, “we’ve got all the information we need. All we need is for you to unzap her, if, in
fact you can!”
“Oh, how rustic, Reverend Gray,”
Mortimer’s eyes narrowed slightly, “just when I was beginning to like you, too.
. . Tsk-tsk-tsk, a Doubting Thomas!”
“Listen, you fools!” Irma came alive
again. “You need more than his pretty
words! You need the words to India’s
spell.”
“We don’t have much time,” Blaze
reminded him, as he reached down to scratch Irma’s head.
“Don't worry,” the priest smiled
reassuringly, also stroking the cat.
Irma now bristled at Mortimer’s
touch, not knowing what to expect from him.
Hildebrand wanted to perform a
few tests on her to see how far gone she was.
It seemed redundant to the preacher, but the sorcerer signaled patience
with his eyes. Mortimer began by
teasing her with his hand. She reacted
to his playfulness with a disapproving hiss, batting her paw at his advancing
and retracting hand. She was cranky, at
this point, and yet she purred when he began gently scratching her head and
seemed to be falling asleep. Irma was
anxious to communicate some more and had no patience for his silly tests. She was also exhausted. After he thumped the table behind her to
check her reactions, she humped her back up in a typical cat-like pose and
hissed again, this time growling deep in her throat.
“Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” She
meowed loudly.
The priest told the preacher and
sorcerer that he had performed his simple tests successfully and that it was
not too late, but they, in fact, had only a few days to undue the spell. In too many ways she was behaving like a
beast.
“Well, duhhh,” Irma gave him a
feline sneer.
“Now I want her to communicate with me this time,” Mortimer said, looking around his cluttered office, and biting
his lip pensively as he searched the room.
“Don’t tell me,” she collapsed
unhappily onto the table, “you don’t have a computer! He’s looking for a piece of paper for me to write on! I just know it! I can see it in his eyes!”
“Let’s see, where’s my laptop?” he
mumbled aloud now.
“Huh, what did he say? . . . At
last!” she brightened, the purr returning to her throat. “Gimme a
keyboard. Better yet gimme a computer
with a graphics program, and I’ll give you a first rate report!”
“Thank God. He’s computer literate,” Mortimer could hear Elijah murmur to Blaze.
“Oh, I have a computer too, but it’s
busted right now,” Blaze replied conversationally. “I’m going to buy a laptop,
myself.”
“You need to get yourself one with
at least 400 megahertz, 512 megabytes
of memory, and 10 gigabytes of space” the priest said, rummaging around his
cluttered desk. “You also need cable or DSL to get quickly onto the web!”
The priest’s house was not nearly as
messy as Blaze’s apartment. His study
was neatly arranged, in fact, except for his desk. Piles of notes lie in a bizarre order that only the priest could
explain. A modest sized printer, a
scanner, and a fax machine implied that the priest meant business. His visitors were duly impressed.
“I have a feeling that she wants to
tell us something more,” the priest now declared, setting the state-of-the-art
laptop in front of Irma’s face. “Now here’s how were going to do this kitty,”
he said lightheartedly. “Since you have
only stubby little paws, I want you to come right up to the keyboard and use
only one claw.” “Can you hold up one claw for me?” He asked, tickling her chin.
“Yes-yes, let me have it! Let me have it!” Irma wiggled excitedly now.
“Oh good, you’re right-pawed,” he
sighed with delight. “. . . That’s it, one claw. . . She’s got the hang of it
boys!”
Slowly but steadily, in
hunt-and-peck style, Irma typed out “By the powers within and the powers that
be, a rat you once were and a cat you now be!”
“It’s the spell the witch cast upon
her!” cried Mortimer, who danced a little jig.
“So that’s what she was driving at
when she was pointing at the yellow pages,” Blaze said, scratching his beard.
“Boy, are we dumb!” Elijah said, shaking his head.
“Well, I’m impressed.” the priest
whistled under his breath.
Although he seemed genuinely awed, a
frown played on Mortimer’s wrinkled face.
He watched Irma struggle with the incantation India uttered in her
apartment, not recalling such a blasphemous prayer, but convinced it was used
to invoke the demon. Genuinely proud of
herself for remembering the incantation, she pointed her paw at the screen:
I deny the creator of heaven and
earth.
I deny my baptism and the worship I
formerly paid to God.
I cleave unto thee and in thee I
believe.
Oh Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, come
to me tonight
so that we can make our trade.
I will sign a contract with you: my
soul for your power.
Please father Satan, hear me at
last!
Elijah
cringed at this blasphemy. Even the
liberal-minded Blaze blanched at what Irma had typed. A flicker of disappointment clouded Mortimer’s expression that
grew to compassion as he considered Irma’s achievement. Obviously, she felt as if she had done
something quite important and she was waiting for him to acknowledge it now.
“Listen, my child,” he addressed her
as a human this time, “I know what you are typing below the spell: it’s the
incantation. . . But these formulas, remarkable though they are, cannot be used
to reverse India’s spell. A counter-spell
is based upon age old formulas written by wizard-priests and white witches, but
their power is based upon many factors.”
“Gibberish!” Elijah spat angrily.
“What the hell does all that mean?”
“It’s hopeless!
Hopeless-hopeless-hopeless!” Irma wailed in a long plaintive meow.
“Wait a minute!” the priest
protested.
“Plee-ease,” Blaze held up his hand,
“let the man speak!”
“All right I’ll cut to the chase,”
Mortimer Hildebrand said, spreading his fingers and shutting the laptop’s lid.
“It’s too late to go over to India Crowley’s apartment tonight. Witches, as you probably know, are very
powerful during this time.” “Let’s all
grab a snack and get a few hours sleep.
Tomorrow, bright and early, we’ll all visit Shadow Brook Arms. Fear not, I will be spiritually armed when I
meet the witch. I will use one of
several different formulas I have memorized to undue her spell!”
“Now that’s a good a idea, isn’t it
Reverend Gray?” Blaze tried to console the preacher.
“Humph,” Elijah said, following the
others into the kitchen, “we’ve wasted a lot of time!”
“Can you really help me, father?”
She wanted to ask the priest, as he carried her in his arms. “. . . You’re a
nice man, you really are, but you’re also kind’ve goofy. India never told me about priests using God
to fight spells. She never talked about
using magic this way. Witches are bad,
never good. India proved that to me!”
******
In truth, the sorcerer was beginning
to doubt Mortimer Hildebrand's qualifications as a wizard, himself. The priest was the most unorthodox cleric he
had ever known. Not only did he claim
to have clairvoyant and magical powers, which seemed to be in contradiction to
his spiritual claims, but he was an exorcist too. How could a priest, even a defrocked priest, mix Christianity
with the occult? Would God really work
with such a man? . . . . This last question, regardless of his misgivings, had
possibilities for Blaze O'Dare's future and the salvation for his own soul.
As they all bedded down after a
snack of brownies and hot chocolate, the sorcerer heard the priest ask the cat
as she curled up on a cushion beneath the couch where the preacher lie, “Do you
believe in the powers of prayer, Irma Fresco?”
“Meow,” she replied.
“Have you asked the Lord to change
you back?”
“Meow,” she looked up sleepily.
“You have? Goo-ood girl. Prayer is
good!” the priest sounded genuinely pleased.
“There’s no denying it,” Blaze
murmured to them dreamily, as he dozed in his chair, “. . . this puts a whole
new spin on the word magic!”
Turning his attention to the
preacher, the priest asked Elijah, in idle chit-chat, what his Protestant
denomination was. Although this seemed
to be a very personal question to Blaze, Elijah, without hesitation, answered
promptly “God’s Army, we don’t have denominations on skid row.”
This confession startled both
Mortimer and Blaze. Irma was jerked
awake when he mentioned that dreadful place.
“Skid row?” The priest probed
indelicately. “How fascinating! You
were assigned to that region?”
“No,” Elijah replied wryly, giving
Irma a pat, “I lived in that region.”
“I’ll be damned,” she looked up
groggily. “You lived in that awful place?”
“What? . . . What did he say?”
Blaze, who had almost fallen asleep, himself, bolted upright in his chair.
“It’s a long story,” the preacher
sighed, as he stoked the cat. “We should all get some sleep.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Mortimer
gazed quizzically across the room, “I’ll give you my life in a nutshell if you
give me yours.” “You too,” he added quickly, looking over at Blaze. “I’ll bet you got an interesting tale.”
“I’m game,” the sorcerer shrugged.
“Very well,” Elijah sighed, staring
reflectively at the ceiling, “I will give you my life in a nutshell. . . . I’ve
told this to only few people. There’s
really not much to tell.”
Irma hopped up on his chest and
looked down into his drowsy face. His
normally resonant voice, now somnolent, was joined by a loud, rumbling purr
from Irma’s chest, that was pleasantly distracting to the preacher. He had fallen in love with the little black
cat. To Irma’s great surprise, evident
in her big blue eyes, Elijah had been an up and coming high school
teacher. When his wife and child had
been killed by a drunken driver, however, he became a drunk, himself, and wound
up, after a long period of decline, on skid row. After a few years of living on the street, the Lord led him to
God’s Army Mission--a broken, misbegotten soul. After a period of study at the church, he became a spiritual
advisor to homeless men at the mission, while earning a modest income teaching
adult education uptown.
Blaze, who seemed eager to relate
his own down-and-out tale, surprised Irma almost as much as Elijah when he
claimed that he, like Elijah, had once been quite successful but in business,
until one day, after reflecting on his life and career, he dropped out of his
unfulfilling marriage, abandoned his spoiled daughters, and, while living on a
humble inheritance, devoted most of his time to the occult.
Mortimer, who could find no parallel
between the two dropouts, let this opportunity to needle the sorcerer
pass. With surprising honesty, Blaze
explained how he joined a club of would-be sorcerers but was now freelancing on
his own. As his listeners fought the
throes of slumber, he admitted that he had attempted sorcery, himself, but had
only limited success. Finally, when it
appeared as if the sorcerer was finished, Mortimer began, in his gravelly
voice, to related his own life experiences, the most astounding tale of them
all (had they only stayed awake!) From
his early seminary days, when he realized he had special gifts, through the
difficult period when he found himself crashing headlong against church dogma
and law, he had spent many years as a priest and then as an excommunicated
priest battling evil on behalf of Christ (if not the Holy Roman Church).
It was the kind of story of which novels were written and movies were made, but, by the time Mortimer had finished his own nutshell account, everyone, including the little black cat, who had curled up on the preacher’s chest, had fallen into a deep, untroubled sleep.