The Cat-God of Zebula
by Katherine Kerestman
Art by Jack Ruttan
“I’m going to make myself dream it again tonight. I’m going to make myself dream it all the way to the end,” Alice confided to the long-haired, white feline on her lap. Scratching Spirit behind her ears she continued, “You’re in it, you know. Do you think we can dream it together?”
Spirit purred, and the tip of her tail twitched.
All summer, Alice had been having the same dream several nights a week: a beautiful white cat padding softly on white paws among the stars.
“This book says that, if I mix a bit of dandelion with mandrake root and lady’s mantle, pass an elder wand over it, and speak the ritual, I can travel a path through my dreams. Do you believe that, Spirit?”
Her cousin Ruth in Massachusetts, knowing that Alice was a bookworm, had sent her a carton of old books which had belonged to Ruth’s mother (Alice’s aunt) Martha; Ruth was in the process of clearing out her mother’s possessions, for she had passed on six months previously. In addition to fin de siècle French literature (in translation) and classic early American works, Martha, it seemed, had been indulging a penchant for such arcane studies as magic, fortune-telling, and psychic roving. Alice was struck by the myriad and heretofore unimagined potentials hinted at in her aunt’s books — fairy realms, other dimensions, astral adventures, and so forth – wondrous states of being attainable by such simple means as herbal recipes and incantations.
“It’s probably a lot of nonsense, Spirit,” she went on, caressing the fur on the feline’s back and sliding her hand along the length of her tail, “Still, I think I’ll walk to that New Age store that just opened in the old bank building uptown and see if they carry these herbs. I’ll check out what’s new in the bookstore, too, while I’m in town. I trust you to keep an eye on things while I’m gone. I’ll bring back some fresh catnip.”
Alice poked her nose out the door to see how cold it was; and, finding that, despite the best efforts of a cheerful sun, the October air was cold and the sky was only a muted, grayish shade of blue, she went to the closet to fetch her woolen jacket. After bestowing a kiss upon Spirit’s pink nose and rumpling her fur a little, she plopped a blue beret atop her own brown curls and went out the front door. Gold, red, and brown leaves performed somersaults and cartwheels across the tops of her tasseled loafers as she made her way down Main Street to the red brick buildings with green canvas awnings which made up the “town” of Irving Bottom. She strode past a row of old-fashioned frame dwellings, whose front yards, enclosed within white-painted picket fences, were carpeted with a thick layer of amber and garnet leaves, to which a gust was diligently adding more. On her right, she could see the bank of the Hudson River, and the purple peaks of the Catskill Mountains, whose dark crevices contrasted eerily with the crags that glinted in the sunlight. Late autumn has a special significance for those who were bred on the Hudson River; Alice electrified to the gray autumn sky, the pewter clouds, the fallen leaves — and the thought of what she planned to do this equinoctial night.
Three – sometimes four – cockcrows each week, ever since the summer solstice, she found herself waking from an unfinished dream – the same dream — a dream which she was always reluctant to leave, for its unrealized finale would leave her unfulfilled. She had begun to wish that she might remain dreaming until the dream reached its natural conclusion; thus, she would try to will herself to resist waking. She dreamed of a star called Zebula, a sparkling, blue-and-white star ruled by a white cat-god with sapphire eyes and a ruby nose. Sometimes she would ride on the cat-god’s back, and sometimes she would walk among the stars and planets, carrying the cat-god in her arms. She dreamt of unearthly delight, but – just as a periwinkle dawn would begin to light up the ebony chasms of outer space – she would awake each time. She began to visit Zebula in her waking hours, too, in day-dreams; and she fancied, sometimes, that the snow-white cat-god resembled Spirit – for they both had almond cat-eyes of brilliant blue — and that is why she wished to find out if Spirit could dream the dream with her, too.
As she approached the small business sector of Irving Bottom, she spied orange-and-black crepe-paper bunting and gold streamers turning in the northeasterly wind – the new shop was having a Grand Opening. She peered at the strange wares displayed in its window: Ouija boards and Tarot cards, wands, a tray of crystals with rainbow depths that caught the sunlight, and many books. A little shop bell jangled when she opened the door; inside, she found a bespectacled gentleman in long sleeves and a green vest standing behind the counter.
“Good morning, Miss,” the soft-spoken man greeted her. “My name is Felix, and I own Enchantment. Thanks for stopping in.”
“Pleased to meet you, Felix. My name is Alice. Welcome to Irving Bottom. May I look around?”
Felix said Of Course, and, soon after, Alice inquired, “What is this?”
“That is a dark mirror. They’re used for scrying – for seeing the future, or for learning things not readily apparent to most people.”
“You have an – um — interesting store. I shall come back for a more thorough look another day. Today, however, I have brought a shopping list.”
When Alice had finished telling him that her list consisted of dandelion, mandrake root, lady’s mantle, and a wand hewn of elder tree wood, Felix asked her what she planned to do with those things. Alice explained that she had read in an old book a way to make a dream go on until it was finished, to forestall the precipitous awakening which brought an end to most sleepers’ dreams. She asked him whether he thought cats could dream, too, and Felix said of course they can, all creatures can dream.
“Alice, may I propose that you consider adding a grain of this?” He held up a very small vial of silvery dust. “Your magic will yield a superior result.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“That I may not reveal; and, yet, I may vouch for its efficacy.”
Despite mild reservations, Alice accepted a single grain of the silvery matter. The shopkeeper wished her luck and asked her to tell him of her experiment when next she came to town.
She went next to the bookstore, a shadowy and cluttered place that specialized in old and second-hand books.
“Hi, Marty! I’m looking for a book on dreaming,” she said, upon entering the store.
“Mornin,’ Alice. And why do you want to read about dreaming?” the gray-haired gentleman answered, as he emerged from behind a stack of books which was taller than he was. “Have you been reading Freud and those psychoanalysts?”
“Oh, no, I’ve just become interested in dreams of late,” she said. “I mean, we all dream, don’t we?”
Marty guided her to the books on psychiatry, and then he pointed to a bookcase in the back of the store.
“Those are the books on witchcraft and the supernatural,” he said. “Probably not what you’re looking for, but they also talk about dreams.”
“’Tis the season,” Alice quipped merrily, as she ventured into the darkest corner of the little shop, to peruse the esoteric volumes.
As she paid for a tattered book, she told Marty that Dream Magic guaranteed good All Hallows reading. She daydreamed the whole way home, dreamed about the white cat-god and blue-and-white Zebula in star-speckled outer space.
***
“What do you think, Spirit? Shall we give it a go? Personally, I’m getting sleepy, and I’d like to give this cocktail some time to work before we go to bed. I say, we each take just a wee taste of it.”
Spirit twitched her whiskers in assent.
Alice opened her aunt’s book and laid it on the kitchen counter, and then she lined up the cellophane packages containing the herbs beside the book. She pulled a bowl from the cupboard, as well as a wine goblet and a whisk. Next, she got out a corkscrew and decanted a bottle of Amontillado, which she had been saving for a special occasion. The wand! Oh, yes, she had left the elder rod, which was carved with mysterious runes, on the table in the living room. She went to get it.
“Here goes, Spirit,” she announced. Spirit was studying her every move, as if she knew that something weird was about to happen.
Reading the page aloud, for Spirit’s benefit, Alice followed the instructions presented therein. She began by filling a goblet with the wine, which she then poured into the mixing bowl. To the crimson liquid she added a pinch of dandelion seed, and then stirred the potion twice, slowly, with the whisk. And then she put in a dram of ground mandrake root, gently whisking it into the liquid, stirring widdershins this time. The next step involved placing a bit of lady’s mantle on her palm and then gently blowing it into the bowl. Finally, she waved the elder wand over the whole, while reciting the incantation prescribed in the book
“Celestial orbs,
Drawn in a net made of stars,
Guide me into the Land of Dreaming
Realm of Somnius,
Heart of Wonder
Let me wander
In the Hall of Dreams”
seven times.
When she had completed the ceremony, Alice observed a ray of light glinting on the counter – the single grain of the strange silvery element.
She made a quick decision to add it to the draught.
Alice tasted the wine, and it was not bad. She dipped her finger into it and gave it to Spirit to lick. She poured the remainder into a glass bottle with a stopper, put it in the refrigerator, and then cleaned up her implements. Then she placed Spirit in her wicker basket and went to her own bed and turned out the light.
***
The periwinkle luminosity dissipated until nothing was left but the utter and complete blackness in which the stars bobbed and the planets rotated in dizzying pirouettes, some turning clockwise, others revolving counter-clockwise. It was enough to precipitate a case of vertigo in the casual spectator. The black went on forever, a void, save for the spinning and floating spheres of gas and rock that speckled the foreground. Beyond the planets and stars lay a never-ending horizon, an infinite ocean of blackness, an emptiness without surcease.
Alice realized that she was looking into black infinity. She also realized that she was sitting upon a lavender crystalline rock. She was ever so glad to see Spirit sitting on her haunches at her feet, on the ground which was made of a kind of transparent glass-like substance. She smiled as she looked at the cat; she was thinking Are we dreaming? Yes, we are – the thought came to her in her mind, and she knew it had come from Spirit in answer to her question. They smiled at each other.
Spirit started chittering and flicking her tail, for the great constellation Pisces was swimming from outer space toward them, splashing the heavenly bodies with great waves of black ether and redistributing them in the void. Alice watched as Spirit rose to her feet and gathered her four legs and then sprang at the great fish, sprang through the black ether, sprang at Pisces, and brought him back in his mouth, his fanned fishtail wiggling in her maw, and laid him at Alice’s feet.
A constellation at her feet! What a dear Spirit was! And what a beautiful mystery it was to dwell among the stars. What need to wake from a dream? What other world could possibly compare with interplanetary life? In reply, Spirit leapt onto Alice’s lap and began to lick her face, communicating her love more effectively than she could either with sound or with thought-transference.
They began exploring the glass rock.
Spirit, look here! thought Alice. Do you think we’re on Saturn?
Spirit joined her at the edge of the crystalline ground and, like Alice, peered over the edge. Cat heard woman’s thoughts and agreed:
I agree. I too see the wide, wide rings of red, blue, and gold, spinning around the glassy orb on which we stand. I wonder if I can catch one?
Alice giggled as she watched Spirit jumping from one moving ring to the next, as if she were chasing her tail. The feline leapt from a yellow ring back onto the crystal ground, and Alice scooped her up into her arms and smothered her friend with kisses, especially her furry little belly.
The sudden sound of snuffling and snorting, combined with the rolling of the crystalline orb under their feet made the pair spin around – a bull! A bull made of brilliants — a constellation of stars – was charging straight at Saturn! As swiftly and as gracefully as a matador, Spirit confronted Taurus, confronted the bull head-on, and then bounded to one side, causing Taurus to careen into the black void in the other direction, sparing Saturn from destruction.
Part of Alice wanted to tremble in fear, and part of her wanted to swell with pride at Spirit’s courage. As she was wavering between these responses, she saw that Taurus had turned around and was coming back, his head bent low so that his horns would deliver the deadly thrust.
Just then, Spirit expanded to a vast size, swelled up larger than the bull, larger than the constellation Taurus, larger than the galaxy. The great white cat swatted the bull with his great cat paw, caught him up in her cat toes, caught Taurus up in her white paw, and flung Taurus into the pitch of the void.
You are the cat-god of my dreams! I knew it, thought Alice. Your eyes are sapphire and you dwell among the stars. Your home is on Zebula. That is why there is always a far-away look in your brilliantly blue cat eyes.
I’ll take you there, if you like, purred the cat-god Spirit, Ride on my Back.
And with one elegant leap, the dreamers plunged into the vast blackness, gliding past the diamante crab Cancer, evading the volley of arrows from twinkling constellation Sagittarius, and soaring over the shining helmets of the Gemini Twins. Eternity expanded before them, colorless, lightless eternity.
At length, they came to Zebula. Blue-and-white star Zebula, beautiful, radiant Zebula. Spirit reduced himself to earth-cat size, rubbed Alice’s legs, and said in her mind, You have always given me a loving home. Now you are welcome to mine, if that is your wish.
Alice was tired, and so Spirit led her to a bower of soft leaves, laid a silken comforter made of moonbeams upon the velvety vegetation, bid his mistress lay her head on the bed, curled up at her head, and watched over her as she slept.
***
Felix kept knocking at the door. Why didn’t the girl answer? Her car was in the driveway. She could be out for a walk, he knew she liked to walk. He walked around the house, peered into windows. No sign of her. Maybe she was out.
He tried a window at the back of the house – unlocked! He slid it open, eased himself in. Now, where would that potion be? She couldn’t have possibly consumed it all, there hadn’t been time.
Thinking that the kitchen would be the likely place to prepare a beverage, he tiptoed carefully through the house until he found it. Neither exotic urns or jars nor cauldrons were in evidence, not surprisingly, for though a natural adept (he had sensed it right off), the girl had not been a habitué of the dark arts. She may have even used Tupperware, for Chrissake! He ransacked the cupboards, no longer caring that he might be discovered. He looked to see if she had hidden it in the dishwasher. He opened the refrigerator and sniffed the contents of the bottles. Bingo! The key to transcendence of earth and time, for which he had long sought. He hurried home with the red bottle containing the red wine.
***
Alice yawned and stretched her arms, to find Spirit curled up at her head, patiently watching over her. She cuddled her to her breast, kissed her little ears and nose, and made her little friend purr. They spent their time on Zebula looking at the fields of intergalactic catnip, watching sparkling Libra in the black infinity trying to balance her scales, and rhapsodizing on the blue-and-white glow of the star Zebula. Mars came whizzing by, spinning like a top, red as a fire, and tipping his satellites by way of greeting them.
Is that little green-and-blue ball Earth?
Yes, Alice, it is.
A great roar distracted them from their earth-gazing. The heavens bowed and swayed, in the ripples generated by the lion’s whipping of his star-tipped tail, the planets spun and their orbits tipped. Leo roared again, sending out shooting stars from his mouth, and fiery comets from his throat which those on Earth would determine to be ill omens.
Let’s see what is the matter, Spirit thought, and Alice climbed onto his back.
One prodigious bound of his padded cat feet and the two were soaring through the firmament once more. Showing off, Spirit glided just beyond the sharp, pointed star-tips of the goat-horns of Capricorn. Alice was not afraid, having complete confidence in her cat.
They could see that the lion was angry, as they approached him. He was pacing through outer space, thrashing his tail, showing the stars of his teeth, and the red-star-glow of his eyes, in the process of creating all manner of havoc among the heavenly orbs.
Leo, lest I propel your stars out into eternal space, separate them from each other, and render your constellation burnt out, confess what causes you to be so angry.
Oh, Cat-God, I desire not your wrath. I could not help it when the earth-man plucked a Red Giant Star from my tail.
An earth-man?
Yes, oh, Cat-God, an earth-man.
Whence came he?
He appeared on an asteroid and reached out to pluck mine star, and I grew wroth.
Where is he now?
He hied unto that cold dwarf star yonder.
See to your temper, Lion, and I’ll see to the earth-man.
Yea, Oh, Great Cat-God.
Thus, Spirit bounded once more, to the asteroid belt, where he spotted an earth-man riding by on a rock.
Spirit, it’s Felix, the man from the shop who sold me the dandelion, the mandrake root, and the lady’s mantle, as well as the wand hewn from elder wood, and a single grain of the secret silver substance.
Alice, he deceived you. Despite his felicitous appellation, he’s abused your trust. What would you like to do?
We must wake him from his dream, cause him to forget.
Very well, I’ll bat that rock out of orbit with my prodigious cat-god white paw. I fear that you and I may also awaken in the process.
Dear Spirit, cat-god of the blue-and-white star Zebula, we must take that chance, lest he wreak untold mayhem upon Dreamland.
And so, the great white cat-god of the blue-and-white star Zebula, batted the asteroid ball out from outer space, so that it crashed upon the earth, blasted a crater in the desert of Africa, blasted the thief, saved Dreamland from wanton destruction.
The disturbances in outer space which resulted from the impact of the asteroid upon the third planet from the sun, the interstellar ripples that bounced the balls that floated and spun in the black ether, wakened Alice and Spirit from their dream.
***
“Now I’ll never be able to make the potion again,” sighed Alice, as she pulled a string for Spirit to chase. “Felix stole the bottle from the fridge, and he never told me the name of the single grain of silver matter which went into the draught.”
She knew that Spirit was listening, even though he appeared focused on capturing the wiggling string.
“Marty says Felix just walked off one day and never returned, and his store has been foreclosed for lack of payment. Marty says he’s sorry to lose the little bit of local color Enchantment brought to Irving Bottom. The old bank building is vacant again.
“I’m tired now, my dear, and tomorrow’s a workday. Spirit, I’m going to turn in.
“Pleasant dreams, Puss.”
Katherine Kerestman is the author of Lethal (PsychoToxin Press, 2023) and Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (WordCrafts Press, 2020), as well as the co-editor (with S. T. Joshi) of The Weird Cat, an anthology of weird cat stories (WordCrafts Press, October 2023). Her Lovecraftian and gothic works have been featured in Black Wings VII, Penumbra, Journ-E, Spectral Realms, Illumen, Retro-Fan and The Little Book of Cursed Dolls (Media Macabre, 2023), as well as other discerning publications. Katherine is wild about Dark Shadows and Twin Peaks. When she is not cavorting in the graveyards of Salem on Halloween, you can find her worshipping with the Cult of Cthulhu at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. She may be stalked at www.creepycatlair.com