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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/259279-Casting-Stones
by Shaara
Rated: 18+ · Book · Horror/Scary · #752727
These short stories were written for the Black Harvest Flash Fiction Horror Contest.
#259279 added October 1, 2006 at 7:59pm
Restrictions: None
Casting Stones
Casting Stones



          I do not allow my cat to go outside. The passing cars throw mud balls and rocks. Sometimes even a bottle or two is aimed at my window. A tree I’d planted twenty years before was cut down last week, a tall, stately pine. It used to soar twenty-five or thirty feet up into the sky. They heedlessly hacked it as if its life held no value to them. Then they left it for me to find. My tears rained copiously, but I did not bespeak revenge. Who am I to cast a stone?


          These are the reasons I do not allow my cat to prowl the night. Yet, some time while I slept, the old tiger cat broke out through the metal screen, eager to skulk about the yard. His body was strapped to my door this morning, a bloody corpse with a broken neck, his head twisted about gruesomely, his severed tail hanging bloodily on a Martha Washington geranium plant. I did not cry when I found him; I vowed to cast the first stone.


          I took the axe out of storage. I removed my carving knife from the kitchen drawer. The old stone honed them sharp. But I wasn’t through. I opened up my mother’s spell book, and I read what I had never read before.


          They have always called me a witch, but I have not been so. I was a good Christian. I read the Bible. I prayed. I turned the other cheek, but I now I bow to my heritage. Mother was right; the old ways are better.


          I did not bury old Pete. I sewed his tail back on, treated his wounds, and swathed his pierced eye with salve. Then, I spoke enchantments over his poor crooked body, words of power I have always known, the language of my heritage. For although the town minister had always preached of such things as being devil worship, I had known the difference. I had held those teachings of my mother, like seeds inside me, to be germinated in need.


          I jerked Pete’s neck back into alignment. It snapped into place with a painful crack that woke the old boy up. His eyes opened fully, and he hissed at me.


          “Do not be angry with, my friend. It is not I who has done this. It is the blasphemers, the ones who speak of love and God and do evil on Saturday night. They will pay for their sins, Pete,” I told him. “The old testament speaks of an eye for an eye. But as of tonight, I am no longer a Christian. I see that its road does not lead to Christian virtue. My mother was right. They will pay, Pete. I shall walk the old roads, my friend, and like the Druids, I shall give them death multiplied.”


          Pete staggered a step and then collapsed back on his side. His eyes were dazed. He was unsure what had happened to him. He had not yet returned fully. I lay my head down beside him and explained who I was and reminded him of his many years at my side. For a good twenty minutes I talked my friend back into the living world. My gentle hands soothed his fur. I explained how much I still needed him and why he should stay with me.



          You who do not understand the ways of Death Heal will not comprehend my patience with his weakness, but you see, although I had given him the healing, it was his choice if he would remain on this side of the doors of death.


          Slowly the chill left his body, and the glaze in his eyes took on awareness.


          I needed him. I needed him to be my friend and my familiar.


          I chopped some raw meat for the old boy and tossed in leftover peas and a potato. It had been several hours since I'd done the spell. He was ready to eat, and he would need to regain his strength.


          I’m not sure Pete remembered his former life, but he gobbled up his lunch and sat cleaning his paws. In mannerisms, he was quite like himself, but there was nothing I could do for the punctured eye, and although I had sewn his tail back on, it was limp and pulled after him like an appendage no longer needed.


          I placed the cat by the fire and kept watch while I read more of my mother’s book.


          The storm that had been promised for several days chose that afternoon to break. Lightning scored the sky with bolts of electricity. The hair on my arms stood up. I smoothed it down and laughed. Perfect, I thought. Let it rage.


          And so it did. Thunder pounded at the heavens. Lightning cascaded flash after flash, and the sky spoke its fury. Currents of rain pummeled the ground. The forces had marshaled for my battle. Like a general, I plotted.


          I doubted the town folk would bother me on a night like this, but there were those who blamed me for such conditions. The wart on my chin, my crooked back, and the streak of white spilling down the side of my otherwise raven-winged hair, "the marks of a witch," I had heard the people whisper. And my mother had possessed all three; perhaps they were right.


          I prepared the black cauldron. I had previously used it as a flowerpot for geraniums, but I dumped them out, moving the soil into used coffee cans. I tamped the plants down in those cans and watered them. I set them in the corner of my house, near the door, but far away from the fire. They would do better inside where the storm wasn’t raging.


          Emptied and scrubbed out, the cauldron amazingly showed no signs of rust. In fact, if anything, it looked shinier than I had ever seen it. Cauldrons become almost equal partners with their witch owners. Had this one only dulled because of my mother’s death? Was it coming alive now with the touch of witchcraft in my fingers?


          Old Pete lifted his head. He groaned in a most uncat like manner, and then his hair stood upright, and he came towards me, hissing.


          “What is it, old fellow?” I asked. “Have them come?”


          Pete and I often communicated in meows and body language. His body wasn’t up to his usual signals, yet he spoke, and, as usual, I understood; prowlers haunted the night.


          My cauldron, my spell, the mixtures that I needed, none of them were completed. I picked up the thick, heavy carving knife, and I held it in readiness, the axe on the table beside me.


          “Oh, witch lady,” a man’s voice called. I recognized the slur of his speech, the sloppy vowel sounds. I knew who he was. I closed my eyes and spoke a spell.



In the blackness of night
With its lightning so bright,
Evil dares to come near.
Thus, let fire appear
To burn it from here
With one downward spear.




         I had never practiced magic, at first because I did not believe in it, and then when I had watched my mother too long to hold to that modern-day skepticism, I distained the practice because I was a Christian and held witchcraft to be wrong. So, when the spell’s last word had flowed with my voice into the warm air of my living room, I think I half supposed that it might not work. I was wrong. The tingling flowed from my mouth down to my fingers, and then my body was charged with a flow of ions so powerful that it could be compared to currents of raw electricity.

         For that instant, I was the storm. I was the lightning and the thunder and the very sky itself. My hair flowed outward and up towards the heavens, and my clothes were thrust tightly against my body, as if they, too, had been swept up into the spectacle. I breathed in the heady feel of it, and then I laughed.


         Calmly, I waved my hand with one forceful shake, and the energy flowed down and away from me, out into the room, where it raced about touching the cauldron, old Pete, my knife, and my axe. Then, like the winds of a storm speeding across the prairies, sweeping dust and gravel as it went, the current rushed right through the wooden panels of my door, and out into the night.


         For a moment I stood as if in shock. I listened to the howling surge of it, and then the screams that followed -- the man-screams of fear and agony. That came only a moment later, when the spell that I had set loose met those of nature. It was merely an unlucky strike of lightning, the townspeople will say. But I know better. Witchcraft had cast the first stone.


         Ignoring what I knew I would find outside, I continued my preparations as if nothing had occurred. I found all the ingredients for the spells I needed down in the cellar where my mother had left them bottled up and bagged in readiness. Had she foreseen all this? Had she known that I would have need of her witchcraft?


         My mother had told me once that our line traced back to the most potent of Druid priestesses. Once only warlocks had sweetened our nights, and by them the blood of future daughters. Such was my heritage, and now I was glad for it.


         Pete’s tail moved slightly. He panted in a cat whimper of pain. I reached down and petted him. “That spell should have helped you, my old friend. As we work more magic, you will feel even better.”


          Pete licked my hand and purred. His tail moved enough to curl about him. Contentedly he fell asleep.


          The cauldron mixture had begun to boil. I tossed another log onto the fire. I had plenty more in the basket beside the hearth and a stack as high as my chest in the lean-to beside the house. It would be sufficient to ride me through the storm. Food, water, fire, and the companionship of old Pete, what more could a person need?


         The storm calmed during the night, enough anyway for Sheriff Beaster to stop by and talk with me. He’d found the bodies of several oif the town's ruffians. I answered the sheriff's questions, but what more could I say? He left looking puzzled.


          Old Pete turned away from his food. I talked with him. I encouraged him, but he mewed plaintively. I understood. He wanted me to let him go.


         "Hold on old, friend," I begged. “Please, don’t leave me.” He took one bite of the food and walked away, his body sagging, his belly almost touching the ground. His tail dragged like a dead thing.


         That evening I had more visitors. Once more I brought the curse upon them. The lightning bit. Screams pierced the night.

         Old Pete still had not eaten. I wept. Loneliness crept about me like the shadows of darkness.


          In the morning the sheriff was back again. I thought he was there to warn me about witchcraft. I half-expected him to handcuff me and drag me off to jail, but instead he'd brought me a kitten. I turned away from his handful of fluff.

          The sheriff had tears in his eyes when I turned back around. "I noticed Pete was looking rather low. I thought maybe you might like..."

          The sheriff's voice dropped off as he saw my face.

         It was old Pete who insisted that I take the little one in. He meowed insistently.

         I brushed at my cheeks, angry over my tears. Then I reached out for the kitten the sheriff had brought. It was no bigger than my hand, the same size as Pete when I'd first met him. The little kitten licked me. I sobbed openly and told the sheriff "Thanks."

         "Let me know if you need anything, Miranda. A phone call, and I'll be here. My wife says to say 'Howdy,' by the way. You take care now," he said, donning his hat and closing the front door gently as he strode away.

          I carried the kitten toward the fire and laid him on the hearth rug. Strange cats upon meeting always hiss and carry on, but Pete stiffly walked over to the young tike, gave him a lick, and then curled up beside him.

          All that day the two cats scarcely left each other's side. The kitten ate the meals I gave him. He used the box, and then he reclaimed his place at Pete's side. Pete never budged. I carried food to him, but he ignored it, his eyes dark and filled with pain.

         I tried to do another healing over him, but he hissed at me and would not allow it.

         "Please, Pete. Please," I pleaded, petting his matted fur.

         Pete licked my hand, and then his tongue pushed out between his teeth, and he panted. The kitten mewed and brushed his head against old Pete. Once more my friend turned from me. He laid his head on the kitten's chest, and he closed his eyes.

         Pete slipped away that night. The screen once more was torn. I found no sign of him although I searched all around my yard and the woods beyond.

         But the old fellow had made sure I had a familiar. He'd passed on his knowledge to the kitten, and although the little one was too young to help me in my work, the signs were there that he would grow into it. Meanwhile, nightly my tears wet his fur.



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© Copyright 2006 Shaara (UN: shaara at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Shaara has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/259279-Casting-Stones