Imelda

On a shelf over a small white desk sat a row of dusty books with colorful spines. A green monkey bookend peeked around the last book and on its other side sat Imelda, queen of the room.

She’d been Juniper’s mother’s and her mother’s before her; she was over 100 years old. Her porcelain skin was pale cream, her full round cheeks held a hint of the blush painted there so long ago. The small bow-tie lips were tinted the same peachy-pink color, they were posed in a solemn shape---not smiling. Not smiling either were the eyes---Frosty faded blue, nearly ash grey, they seemed to glare down upon Imelda’s realm, the lids were lowered slightly in haughty attitude.

The door to the pink painted room opened and Melissa entered with a spring in her step. She flung her hoodie onto her pink bed and went to her desk where she dragged her homework from her Hello Kitty backpack and splayed it neatly: math first, English assignment next. Melissa hated math, she didn’t get why she needed to know those fancy division techniques when she had a calculator.

Imelda had told her someday everyone would carry a device that had a calculator AND a camera! She thought that was pretty far-fetched…made her think of The Twilight Zone, an old-school creepy show her parents loved. As she worked on the pointless math problems, Imelda’s eyes shifted in their porcelain sockets to watch over the girl.

It was November, the light of the day faded fast after 4pm. By five her schoolwork was done and the day outside the window a soft greyish blue. Melissa opened her window and breathed in the fresh chilly air redolent of burning leaf piles and rain held aloft in clouds turning purple overhead.

“Lissy! Dinner!”

Melissa answered her mother’s call, “Coming!” She shut the window and turned off the desk lamp before racing out the room and down the stairs.

Imelda’s eyes, after following the child out the door, shifted back to the window.

Outside in the tree in the yard a figure in black put down his binoculars and smiled. The doll was there. Just as Cardinal Crow had said it would be.

The man in the tree climbed down and looked at the window a last time, then turned and headed off into the woods.

In the deepness of the forest, it was already dark. The man in the black hoodie and garb entered Cardinal Crow’s secluded cabin. Everything in it was unnervingly black---walls, floor, linens---ebony black. The candles on Crow’s desk flickered as he entered. The Cardinal himself looked up from a book he was reading and gestured with a thin pale hand for The Dog to sit.

The Dog lowered the hood from his ruggedly handsome face and sat in the chair opposite the desk. He waited until spoken to.

“Well, Sir Dog, your report?” The Crow’s voice was soft and low and sibilant. If a cobra could speak…

“Cardinal. The doll is there as reported.”

“Ahhh. After all these years. You say in a child’s bedroom?”

“Yes Cardinal, just sitting there on a shelf.”

“Did you notice anything strange about it? Movement perhaps?”

“Um…no sir.” Sir Dog was visibly controlling his confusion at the question.

It made the Cardinal smile his wicked little smirk that set his pointed mustache upwards…as his equally fine brows lowered. In the yellowy candlelight, the effect was unnerving. Like watching a shark study a school of mackerel, knowing it would get some, calculating just how many.

Cardinal Crow said, “I expect you have this under control…”

“Oh yes sir. Child goes to school. Parents go to work. I will have the doll tomorrow.”

“Yes. You will.” He did not need to add the dreaded, ‘or else.’

The cat sat under the shelf and watched the doll. After eating and going out the kitty-door to do her business, she was transfixed by the doll. Fluffy’s number one duty was to Melissa, she’d been sent to her via a garbage can, fully knowing Melissa would never give her parents any relief from screaming tantrums the scale of Hurricane Andress if they did not take in the wee fluffy greyish striped kitty.

The plot had worked, Valentria, nee ‘Fluffy’, had become the sentinel of the child’s bedroom. Her particular chore had been watching the ancient doll after being alerted to the danger it brought to the child and her parents. Fluffy hopped up onto the windowsill and looked towards the tree where just an hour or so before a man in black had been, his long-range specs had glinted in the sunlight and had put Fluffy on high alert. She was nervous when the child talked to the doll and nodded at some unheard reply. Fluffy’s hearing was sharp as a Shepard’s, perhaps more so…through multiple lives, heh heh, more than nine, she’d honed her large grey ears to detect sounds as undetectable to humans as, say, the tread of a raccoon on the porch boards at 3AM, or the frenzied copulation of mice in the walls.

`She was certain Imelda did not speak. Yet, the child communicated with her, nonetheless. Fluffy had known in her expansive past, that children often have invisible friends or give voice to an inanimate things such as a teddy…or a doll. Curious. A cat’s favorite category of obsession.

As Melissa’s father tucker her in for the night, Melissa said, “Dad, can I take Imelda to school tomorrow?”

“Um. I don’t think that’s a good idea honey. She’s an antique, and delicate---”

“I knoooow…but she says the man will come take her away.”

“Oh honey, she’s safe and sound right where she is. Would you like her tonight? That’d be okay. In fact, I bet she’d like that.”

Melissa only nodded. She knew her parents didn’t understand that Imelda really did talk to her. She understood their placating tone and figured she’d probably be the same way with a child of her own. Her father took the doll off the shelf and nestled her in beside Melissa.

Fluffy, who sat at the end of the bed, hissed and bared her teeth.

“Woah…look who’s jealous,” Steven said, somewhat shocked. The mild-mannered kitty had never done that before.

The little girl tucked into the bed said, “Oh Fluffy,” and giggled.

Fluffy frowned a grumpy cat face, curled into a fluffy grey ball, and stared at the doll. Imelda stared back at the cat. After the light was turned off, Imelda continued to stare at the cat, the cat did likewise, lids and corners of mouth lowered, her yellow eyes glowing in the weak light from the open curtains.

Outside, in the oak tree, The Dog watched as all the lights went out in the house. He wanted to sneak in that night, get it over with…and have his business with that psychopath be done and he be paid, but he knew the family would all be out until four-ish the next afternoon. What to do, what to do?

He’d been spying on the home and its occupants for the past two weeks and felt he knew their schedules well enough. Better safe than sorry, he waited in the tree until dawn. Then at 8AM when all three occupants headed out he did likewise.

In the girls’ room, he went towards the doll on the shelf…when a large fluffy grey ball with white teeth and whirring claws leapt down upon his face!

“Aaaaaiieeee!” he screamed. Then doubled over as the cat fell from his face. He needn’t have rushed to the window to look outside, he already deduced there was no neighbor within screaming distance. But it still had unnerved him, he was not one prone to screaming like a lassie like he had. In anger, he looked around the floor for the beastie-outta-hell with the wide yellow eyes. He shuddered. He had never liked cats…sneaky, suspensefully quiet…until they were not. “Ugh!” he spat as he grabbed Imelda and shoved her in his back-sack.

He furtively looked around for the fluffy grey beastie from hell…but made it out without another attack on his bleeding face. He raced across the grassy backyard-field, passed the oak tree, and kept on going.

Under the bed Fluffy licked the blood from her claws as she watched the intruder and thief grab the doll from the shelf. She smiled as she noted his wariness, no doubt looking for her. As Imelda was taken from the shelf, her pale icy eyes narrowed in on the cat peeking out from under the bed. As Fluffy watched, the doll’s eyes blinked and locked onto her yellow ones. She didn’t growl this time but instead an understanding passed between them.

Fluffy followed the thief.

At the black cabin, The Dog shivered as he crossed the threshold. The red candles lent an eerie, satanic quality to the creepy blackness. Cardinal Crow whisked his hands together in anticipation, to the cat lurking outside the doorway, the sound was like newspapers being rustled together. For The Dog, it was a good sign, the cardinal of doom was pleased.

Cardinal Crow lifted the doll to his face and smiled so widely, all his pointed teeth showed.

The Dog thought to himself, ‘I outta file my teeth lime that. Damn impress. Scary.’ He said, “So...I’m to be paid, yes,” and nodded towards the doll.

“Oh aye. Aye. Well done,” the creepy cardinal said without enthusiasm and a flick of his long black nails. He tossed a bag of heavy coins towards The Dog and the man in black had to dip down and lunge forward to catch the leather purse.

Once in hand, he turned and exited quickly. Or, he tried to anyways…he tripped over a fluffy grey lump as solid as a boulder. “Wha…?”

“Meeeooowr.” Was the reply.

It was that dang cat! The one that’d torn his face apart…he’d know those eyes anywhere…

He turned to leave with his sack of coins…but…turned back to look at the cat.

At the home of Melissa and her parents…and Fluffy, a wail of despair rang through the overcasting clouds like the wail of a siren who’d lost her sailors.

“It’ll be okay sweetie, “ her dad said soothingly. “It’s just a doll.”

He added, “Look, see you have Fluffy by your side.”

Melissa snuffled gobs of snot through her little nose and only nodded. Her father had always been oblivious to the magic of Imelda. He had always simply nodded and patted her head. After he went back downstairs to where her parents were watching Jeopardy, Fluffy came and snuggled up close, head upturned, eyes imploring the girl to understand…but no. Communication between cat and girl would always be frustratingly out of reach for Fluffy.

I crept downstairs after the poor child cried herself to sleep. I understood. Imelda had not just been a friend and confidant, but had actually talked somehow with her. Why had the doll been taken when nothing else had? I was thankful the creepy thing was gone. Maybe just leave alone and be the girl’s new best confidant.

The next day, Melissa’s mother did not pick her child up from school as she had said she would. Melissa’s father had shown up an hour late, he got off work later than her mother, and told her that Susan had fallen down a flight of stairs at the office building she worked at and was in emergency care.

Melissa cried on her mother’s bosom in the hospital bed until her father told her to come with him home. Once at home, Steven turned on the porch light when the two of them were inside. The warm, welcoming light that shone through the side windows flickered then went off.

“Hmm” Steven said, as he flicked the switch up and down. “Weird.”

“Dad.”

Steven turned to face his ten-year-old daughter and before he could say anything, she pointed to the lights overhead, “Power’s out.”

“Fuck.”

“Dad! Language!

Steven nodded absentmindedly and picked up the phone to call in a pizza order. No dial. “Fu…!”

Melissa smirked. “It’s okay, we have Mexican leftovers. I’ll add some cheese. We’ll be good.”

Steven nodded appreciatively at his little girl, admiring the mojo. He sat in front of a dark tv as Melissa brought him a cold Budweiser. Steven started the genny and they existed.

As they ate, the wind picked up outside, howling around the house and barn and shed like a banshee on the prowl. Halfway through the movie they’d decided on---Princess Bride---a howl from outside made them both sit up.

“Dad?”

“I don’t know sweetie, just stay put, okay?”

The girl only nodded, her eyes wide and trying so hard to trust her dad’s face.

An hour went by. Then two. Then the tears came. And so did Fluffy. She tried to comfort the girl, but alas, she understood the poor girl’s nightmare.

Fluffy was on a mission. She would get that doll back. Unfortunately, as she slunk out into the night towards the oak tree, she was enveloped in darkness. A sack that smelled of old money and mice fur and…and…death.

She felt herself being flung…out and over, tumbling…’WHUMP!’ the sack and cat hit solid ground. But only for a minute. Then water began to seep in through the bag’s seams.

At first, Fluffy panicked as any cat thrown in water would do. Then she allowed herself to float, held her breath and sure enough, the bag surfaced. She held her breath and painstakingly undid each stitch in the bag’s top. The threads were thick and easy to file through. After five minutes. She was swimming towards the shore. She ran up the dock and followed the road she’d already followed before. She found the cabin easily and understood no human would have been able to.

The doll, Imelda, sat on an altar in this all black cabin. Fluffy’s eyesight in dim rooms was impressive…she saw the man in black leave. She saw the strange man that Imelda was now a captive of.

Imelda’s grey-blue eyes opened wide as she saw the cat. Fluffy saw too and nodded.

The crazy man who lived in blackness stirred from his prone position. He looked to Imelda and said, “Help me, please. You are the goddess of the rites through hell. Help me live forever and I’ll make your name …IRREVERANT!” he bellowed the last and looked into Imelda’s grey eyes.

She smirked at him as the cat leapt up and tackled the doll.

“Aaaahhh!” cried the cardinal as he fell backwards into piles of hymnals and books. They suddenly burst into flame. “Aaaahhh!.” He cried again, as his rounded eyes looked around in disbelief…but…he knew in the last moments, he’d been correct the whole time. He’d be driven off into oblivion…for now. But he now knew for sure how powerful the doll was. He would be back.

Fluffy grabbed the hateful doll in her jaws and raced back home.

She flopped the doll back onto Melissa’s bed then curled herself into a catball and pretended to be asleep. With one eye open, she witnessed Melissa’s joy at the sight of her best friend. The child cuddled the doll and then placed her upon the shelf. Fluffy had hoped the girl would have been good then and come back to the bed to cuddle her.

But no. Melissa was immersed in conversation with the doll. Fluffy sighed. After the lights went out, Fluffy’s eyes again stared at the doll’s.

Imelda winked at the cat.