In summer, emerald hills embraced the town. Its valleys, luxuriently overgrown with dandilions, glowed golden; the whitewashed cottages gleamed in tidy rows under a happy sun. In winter, silver roads meandering past slumbering, snow-quilted roofs suggested an eternally peaceful, immaculate Hallmark world. But the locals knew that such peace was illusion; they glanced at the mansion on the hill and wondered. In its yard, nothing grew; its granite turrets jutted like rabid teeth, biting a jaundiced and pocked full moon. Shaggy hedges and a high, barbed wire fence surrounded the mansion like a rampart. Squatting behind these, boys awaited the crash of the buckling, rust splotched roof; they imagined secret haunted corridors slithering through the thick ancient walls, a musty wine cellar stocked with poisoned vats and a spiral staircase creaking under squealing, swarming mutant rats. Adults reported that the place was uninhabited and condemned, soon for the wrecking ball. Few knew that Miss Rosa, who often walked into town in a shabby gray coat and hat that made her as invisible as any other old lady, had lived, watched and worked from there for decades.
No one had ever entered the mansion; it was a vacuum chamber that suffocated life while preserving Miss Rosa and her treasures from desecration. Inside, spiders dropped in tangled knots and mice fell, belly up, instantly mummified. Dogs sensed silence and the lack of any odors; for them, the antiseptic house and yard suggested annhilation, the stillness of a deep freeze, and they stayed away. Inside,the oak floorboards gleamed unscuffed, the peacock plumes never lost a barb, the ancient glass dragons sparkled unblemished by fingerprints. In this house untouched by time, Miss Rosa strained on tiptoe to peer through the eyepiece of the telescope she'd pointed at the valley homes; her buckling legs were as thin as a vulture's and her knobby fingers gripped the brass cylinder like talons.
"Five blocks up, three houses to the left", Miss Rosa snickered. No one ever visited 327 Delancy Street. For months, Miss Rosa had watched the house through her scope, eavesdropped on conversations at Mackey's Dinette, and scrutinized the interior through her magic mirror. Linda Samuels only left the house to buy groceries and to deposit the checks earned from her software programs. She'd even coated the insides of her garage windows with black paint, to keep nosey neighbors from spotting the glint of chrome, then rapping on her door and yelling "Don't hide, I know you're in there! I saw your car in the garage!"; if people thought introverts were psychos in need of the party cure, then Linda would thwart them in their game.
"That Samuels woman, she's a strange one - just like old Mr. Shortus," some townsfolk scoffed. But Miss Rosa knew differently. Old Shortus, the snarling hermit from the edge of town, didn't even own a phone. According to the dinette ladies, he hadn't painted his house since before World War II and he still used an outhouse, which stank like a sewer from a hundred feet away. Kids argued about whether the barbed wire fence, which kept away prowlers, was electrified; "Is not...is too!" they shrieked in the neck-high grass. Strips of wan paint sloughed off his home's clapboard frame like dead skin; porch poles leaned dizzily leftward under a wearily sagging roof. Sometimes old Shortus ripped open his front door, loped down his creaky porch steps and growled curses at all the taunters who trampled his weeds and bombarded him with ridicule. "Out!", he'd bark as he hurled rocks at the fleeing boys. "Out, you damn thrill-seeking rats, before I spray you with pesticide! Before I tie you to a tree and lash you till you can't weep any more - I can catch you, you can't run if I want you! Out before I call the cops and have you all locked up until you're limping and bald and can't enjoy the light of day through your cataracts! Or until you're punch-drunk from taking too many jailhouse beatings. Out!"
No, Miss Rosa smirked, Linda was much different from old Shortus. Like the other town recluse, Linda wouldn't be expecting company; Miss Rosa's visit wouldn't be interrupted by dinner guests or a spontaneous call from a friend who happened to be driving by. But Linda didn't bellow; she mumbled, even stammered. She cringed, slump-shouldered, even in private and stole through life seeking the invisibility of the undeserving. And Linda's house was much different than the old hermit's; Miss Rosa had seen everything herself.
"Isn't that right?", Miss Rosa squawked at the large convex mirror before her. "Isn't Linda Samuels different? Much, much different?". In the mirror's curved silver surface, Miss Rosa's nose, pinched near the brow and skewed jaggedly to the left, jutted forth defiantly like a beak of gouged steel; her sparse brows hooked over sleepless glittering eyes.
"Soon, very soon". Miss Rosa lifted her thin pale arms to extract two pewter bins from a high shelf, sniffed the contents of each, then shook dry green and brown flakes into a thick porceline bowl. Her fissured skin tensed over bent wrists and her knuckles gleamed as she pushed and rolled the pestle; then she sifted the dark powder into a glass vial of thick amber liquid and corked the top.
"Concentrate of Valerian root and Nightshade leaves, a few drops make anyone very sleepy." As she stared at the vial, her pinched mouth widened into a black crevice. "And belladonna? At this dosage, guaranteed to make her forget everything."
Miss Rosa shook the vial and counted; fifty shakes, no more and no less, were necessary for the ingredients to mix fully and for the solution to exert its power quickly when swallowed. Her long feet slid noiselessly across the floorboards as she paced strategically two steps back from the mortar, then twenty-six steps to a tall enamel and copper urn, then eleven steps to the ancient tapestry which had never faded or frayed; repeating the ritual seven times, while jabbering unintelligibly, was necessary if the mirror was to obey and tell her what she asked.
"Mirror, mirror on my wall," Miss Rosa panted, "Show me Linda Samuels now! Show me what she's doing at this moment!"
The glossy chrome dulled as the mirror transformed into a tinted window; slowly, the blurry gray forms clarified into the image of a young woman hunched over a computer keyboard. She cursed, scribbled something on scratch paper, pouted as she stared at the monitor, then gulped coffee from a mug. Whenever Miss Rosa had looked in on her, Linda had kept a cup of coffee beside her; often, this was a bitter dark sludge, from lukewarm tap water poured over a heap of instant coffee granules.
"Show me her bedroom," Miss Rosa commanded. "Show me inside the bureau."
The mirror obediently showed a cot heaped with rumpled blankets; a dark cat sleeping curled on the pillow. A thick book and a cracked lamp without a shade rested on a high, upturned wooden crate beside the bed. Tangled computer cables, floppy disks, old motherboards, scattered white socks and a pile of wrinkled blouses littered the top of the bureau; the maple veneer had stripped off one side. The mirror zoomed in on the drawers' interiors, showing underwear, then turtlenecks and sweat pants, then the lowest drawer holding boxes of old coins and jewelry inherited from the grandmother; according to the dinette gossippers, each of whom had heard the news from a very good source, these were rare coins and genuine rubies and diamonds.
"Still there." Miss Rosa exhaled deeply. "Thank you mirror, thank you very much; that's all for now", she whispered. The mirror demanded gratitude; if she didn't thank it, it would refuse to show her what she wanted to see for several days.
"It's time", she whispered, and dropped the vial into a deep dress pocket.
She pulled on her thick wool stockings and fleece lined boots, then lifted a glossy pamphlet from the table. At the front door, her old head jerked up on its shriveled neck and swiveled back and forth. Then, seeing nothing to alarm her, she hunched into her dark winter coat and strode into the early night, clutching the pamphlet as tightly as a last carrion supper. As she slipped into the swirling, smokelike fog, the long full coat fluttered around her like wings.
***************
In the oblique amber light cast by a row of streetlamps, the brass letters "327" gleamed bronze and promising. An electric chill of expectation coursed down Miss Rosa's spine; she pulled her dark hood closer around her craggy gray cheeks and over her collapsed chin spattered with bristles sharp as stingers. With one arced yellow nail, she pushed the doorbell. Then she prodded her bifocals up - the better to see her with, my dear; the better to see everything about her that was dear.
A long, grating buzz.
"Oh shit!," Linda groaned. Despite an unlisted number, telemarketers still phoned her and had to be screened with an answering machine. Pollsters, salesmen and evangelists occasionally rang her bell, even though an unlisted address and unlit porch meant "Don't bother me, keep away!". Nonetheless, this visitor might be important - a cop calling to tell her of a relative killed in a car wreck or a utility worker warning everyone on the block of a dangerous gas leak; such emergencies were rare, but demanded that she check who had rung. Linda pushed the chair back from the computer, clutched her new cup of coffee and loped towards the front door; the metal chair legs scraped across the uncarpeted floor and Linda's sneakers squeaked faintly on the hallway tile.
"Hello? I know you're in there, I hear you," a shaky falsetto cooed. "Could you let me in? It's cold out here."
Answering the doorbell could be dangerous, the newscasters warned. The stranger might be a rapist scouting the block for trusting women A burglar, casing ground floors for video players. A teenager jonesing to get high on blood and screams. The voice sounded too old for an armed robber but one could never be too cautious; Linda flicked on the porch light and leaned forward to peer through the spyhole. A wan face etched with wrinkles stared imploringly up at her through thick bifocals; the shivering form wrapped in a dark coat seemed as thin as a winter-starved bird.
"What do you want?", Linda grunted.
"Friends of Jesus from The Apostolic Light Ministry", a tiny voice cawed. Miss Rosa widened her eyes plaintively as she gazed up at the round glass peephole. She gripped the pamplet tightly, digging her nails into its glossy cover to release the mounting tension of anticipation. Fortunately, people didn't heed the newscasters' warnings when salvation came knocking; every one of them, even the atheists, could be persuaded to open the door. And most people couldn't describe old faces; they just saw wrinkles and "old". Every old face was a caricature, especially when the old face offered brownie points with God, a hedge fund for bribing the bouncers in paradise. Age and piety made for excellent disguise. "So come out, come out, wherever you are," Miss Rosa hissed under her breath, "Out of the corner, out of the shade. You can't escape; I've all night to perch here, all night to wait."
"A Jehovah Witness. Or somebody just like one. Damn!", Linda grumbled to herself.
Linda had rehearsed thoroughly in preparation for the day a Jehovah Witness would knock on her door. She didn't want to waste hours listening to sermons. Evangelists were persistent; she didn't want to waste energy on arguments and threats, merely to evict one from her house. A little pretense and sarcasm could save her hours of irritation. "What?, say that again?" she'd gasp, "Can't hear you over the water!". She'd snap "Look lady, I'm in the shower. If you want to see one dripping nude body, then I'll open the door for you. One god-aweful ugly, nude wet body, with a hunchback and criss-crossing scars and witch's tits up and down the front. If you want to see that, then I'll open the door". Linda sighed. The Friend of Jesus might live three doors away. She might know that Linda's back was as straight as a nun's ruler. With a fat red marker, she might print "Linda, liar and profaner" in her little black book of the damned. Linda might need to get along with this neighbor, until the day she could protect herself with rusty barbed wire and the reputation for a singeing stare.
"Friends of Jes-". The raspy voice cut short Linda's musing.
"Yeah yeah, I heard you the first time", Linda muttered.
"Have you heard of Christ?" The frail soprano, a voice made from air and desparation, seeped through the door like an insidious gas.
Who hasn't, in this culture?, Linda thought. Wasn't he just below God on the top ten list? Wasn't that name, shouted in neon from billboards above churchless towns, muttered by everyone who stubbed a toe?
"Have you been saved?", the woman asked in a hesitant tremulo.
Linda crouched near the door and slid her palm over a cat's black, mink-sleek fur: the cat purred consolations.
"Yes'm, I've been saved more times than a cat's got lives," Linda said through the door. "First time by the lifeguard at Lighthouse Point. Next time by an ole granny who wacked me on my chest and turned me upside down when I was choking on a sourball. Then by the rescue dogs sent to sniff out survivors after the avalanche. Then by a spelunkers swat team when my penlight blinked off in a cave where my butt, had got caught in a passage. So yes'm, I've been saved lotsa times, and I don't dare ask to be saved when I'm not needing it. A cat's guaranteed nine lives, but I don't know how many I've got. Don't know how many salvation chips I've been handed, or how much longer I can cash them in at the front desk. So don't offer to save me now, you might be taking my last chip, and I don't want use up my rescue quota yet."
The muffled rasp of a cough behind gnarled hands, the scratch of cotton sliding over cotton. "I'm not chased away so easily," Miss Rosa sneered inwardly "Be flip, tell me stories. But I don't go away. I'll stay here until midnight if I have to. Until dawn. Until tomarrow night. Until the night after that". Miss Rosa rolled the pamplet restlessly back and forth between her palms; Linda, looking through the peephole, thought she did so to keep warm.
"Please, dear, Christ died so that we can be saved," the feeble voice pleaded. "I really wish you'd accept Christ in your heart - for your sake, not for mine. But even if you can't -" Miss Rosa paused to cough dryly, then gasped. "Could you let me in for just a minute? It's cold out here, less than twenty degrees. I've been going house to house all day, with arthritis and no pain pills. Dearie, my body's getting numb all over; when you're my age, frostbite's no joke."
Linda sighed. She lifted Pillow, the fat orange tabby who immediately curled into a furry collar around her neck, and yanked open the door.
*******************
"Look," Linda protested, "I'll let you stay long enough to get warm, but I don't need any preaching. I already have a religion. One's enough, I don't need another."
Miss Rosa swept past the young woman, towards a kitchen chair. As she strode forward, the black cat lept from the tail of her rustling cape and slid into the dark haven behind the hutch; the gray and white longhair darted away from her clacking boots instead of nuzzling her shins in welcome. The orange tabby's body tensed; its claws hooked into Linda's sweater and its ears snapped stiffly forward.
"What religion?" The old woman's dark glare bore through Linda.
"Uh, Catholic," Linda stammered, recalling catechism and the glowering nuns of elementary school. She could probably still say a Hail Mary, recite passages from "Lives of the Saints" and describe the ecclesiastical hierarchy from lowly monk all the way up to the pope.
"Catholic?" The old woman's head bobbed up and rotated as she scrutinized the barren kitchen and the bare, dimly lit walls of the bedroom, visible through an open doorway. "Where are your Madonna figurines? Your portait of the Mater Dolorosa? Your big and little crucifixes, showing a suffering Christ in every room? Every Catholic I know has icons, lots of icons; their homes are shrines, minus the incense and stained glass." Miss Rosa paused and fixed her stare on Linda's jittery eyes. "And I know for a fact that you haven't been to a church in years."
Linda set her cup of coffee on the plastic tablecloth and slumped into a chair. Having gotten inside, the old woman seemed set on preaching, Linda couldn't physically push her out the door without risking charges of assault and battery; such a frail and helpless old lady, with her shriveled skin and quivering voice, would win the sympathy of cops and juries, and Granny probably knew this. Linda sighed wearily. Maybe the visitor would give in to old age and tire quickly; then she'd be gone.
"The Church of the Apostolic Light doesn't like liars," Miss Rosa intoned. "Christ doesn't like liars. God doesn't like liars. You, with your supposed Catholism, ought to know what God does with liars. You must know about the circles of hell, about the suffocating sulfur fumes, the fires that burn you forever, the screams that no one hears." Miss Rosa's voice, rising in pitch and volume, now twanged as incisive and commanding as a parrot's. "So, my little sarcastic dearie, it really would behoove you to make peace with God. And take baptism anew, to show that you mean what you say. Not tomarrow, not next week - today! Or", Miss Rosa taunted, "As they say in young person's lingo, cut out the crap before it's too late; do it now!"
Linda cringed and stared helplessly at the floor. Miss Rosa leaned silently over the table, plucked the vial from her pocket and tipped it over the cup of coffee; the
drops trickled lazily downward, then dissolved into the bitter sludge. Miss Rosa re-corked the vial, dropped it back into her pocket, and pushed the coffee cup slowly towards Linda with the tip of her finger. A wad of matted dust clung to the handle's underside while gray fingerprints and tan splatters covered the exterior. Probably, the cup hadn't been washed for weeks; Miss Rosa winced in disgust as she inched it forward.
"Well, I've been reading about Buddism lately," Linda croaked. "If you want to convert somebody, you might have better luck elsewhere. Call me a lost cause if you want, I don't care. But you spend you time better up the block, find someone up there who's really interested." Linda glanced up at the old lady who, somehow, had never needed to sit down. "And you've had time to warm up. You seem like you've gotten all your energy back.
"Buddhism!" The old woman slammed the table with the pamphlet she gripped in her talons; the vinyl flattened under the blow and an empty cup rattled protestingly in its saucer. "Buddhist, Wiccan, Pagan, Heathen!", she hammered the table with the pamphlet as she squawked each word. "Worshipping jade statues with fat rubbable tummies. Worshipping goats before sunrise slaughter. Chanting Sanskrit, Sutra script, all of it Devil's Script!" Miss Rosa hurled the pamphlet down. Linda startled as it cracked against the checkered tablecloth like a bolt of lightning. She reached for her cup of coffee and gulped mechanically, as she always did when under stress, then sighed at the conventional face of Jesus, haloed in yellow against a purple backround, on the pamplet's cover.
Miss Rosa leaned forward, sniffing the lingering aroma of a plate spattered with clotted ravioli sauce, a wedge of bagel sodden with absorbed butter and a glass streaked with tatters of drying orange pulp. What couldn't those predatory nostrils smell in the faded tablecloth stained by one woman's dreams and victories, in gritty linoleum and plaster walls that had absorbed fifty years of history, in cat paws that had rummaged through the narrowest cranny? The itchy dry smell of dust. The acrid stench of sweat and sin sneaking out of every pore. The sweet stink of filthy rotting lucre, going to waste in a bottom drawer. The beak twitched; the scaly lids narrowed over accusing eyes; the arid outcropping brow hardened with adamancy. Miss Rosa's parched mouth opened into a toothless crevasse that sucked in the gnats, the particles of light, even the molecules of oxygen that sustained life.
"Sin! It's all around you, in you, in your clothes, in your cats...your purring, weedling, whining, wirling, winding ...familiars," she sneered. "And how many cats do you have? I counted four. Why do you need four cats?"
"Because I'm a cat collector, because I didn't want five," Linda thought, but lacked the energy to challenge this looming old woman with sarcasm. "Companionship," she mumbled, and shrank into her chair.
"No use hiding, lovey," the dark mouth shrilled as LInda cringed. "I can sniff the taint in your marrow, see the rebellious crookedness of your spine through all those layers of clothing, I can smell the mangled voles and cunning greed in the breath of all your....familiars. The only way is through me, my water, baptism by the Apostolic light."
Miss Rosa might be 70. but when did age keep a bird of prey and prayer from parting the air? When did bent arthritic knees keep her from her high perch? When did knobby knuckles keep her from pinching every glittering nugget and raising her claws to dowse the captive with the waters of salvation and dread? She rose on tiptoe, a looming shadow with ember eyes that seared souls.
"Do you repent?" the dark form shrieked.
"Yes, " Linda gulped. She hunched forward in her seat, pressing her foreams stiffly against her tense abdomen and staring fixedly at one red square in the checkered tablecloth. The old woman was obsessed, maybe certifiably mad; she seemed impervious to reason, gentle pleas or blunt requests. She was set on saving Linda's soul and wouldn't leave until she'd acomplished her mission. Perhaps, if she complied, the old woman would disappear soon.
"Do you accept the water of salvation for yourself and your cats? Do you accept Christ of the Apostolic Light as the one and only true savior?" the metallic voice clanked faster and faster, each "Do you, do you ,do you" hammering Linda's brain like a steel piston. Linda felt lightheaded, more weary and drained of will power as each word bombarded her. The kitchen light had thickened into a topaz broth; the air had congealed into a pulsing mass ready to engulf her. She yawned; the heavy amber air oozed down her throat, seep through her lungs and stomach and into her every cell. When Linda reached for the coffee cup, her arm dropped limply against the table top; she didn't notice the old lady's slight, triumphant grimace.
"Yes", Linda stammered feebly.
Miss Rosa jerked her withered arms upwards and out; a glass vial of water, clutched between two sallow pincers, glinted at her left. The dark cape fell over each outstretched arm, a great wing ready to enshroud Linda and all obstacles in its devouring blackness.
"And where are the wicked little dearies?" she cackled. "I only see two, the orange collar you're wearing and one shivering by the cabinet. Where are the others? Baptism, it's all or none in one house or damnation for all. The others?"
"In... bedroom, maybe," Linda slurred, cocking her head weakly leftward. "Under .... closets."
"Then I go there first," the old woman rasped.
"Just don't -, "Linda mumbled, fighting the extreme grogginess. " Don't....A drop...." Her head rolled forward; her body slid down and she slept, slack-jawed, arms dangling over the armrests, legs splayed limply. When the orange cat yawned, kneaded her neck, then lept down to mieow at her from a scuffed gray patch of floor, Linda didn't awaken.
********************
In the bedroom, Miss Rosa strode towards the bureau as mewling cats bounded away. She slipped a hand under her cape and slid one talon into each of the many pockets, separating the velcro from the satin lining; her parched knotty fingers darted from pocket to pocket, automatically performing a task they'd memorized decades before. She'd sown large pockets in the linings of this cape and several loose-fitting coats and jackets; the pockets could hold jewelry, money, silver place settings, even small antigue figurines and bronzes. The coats had served her well on hundreds of jobs, had helped her keep the house on the hill. When the coats were buttoned, nothing showed from the outside; even when she carried fifty pounds in metal and gems, others saw only a gray faced old biddy weighed down by time.
"Empty famished pockets to carry away the catch", Miss Rosa mused, "The sterling trinkets, the emerald nuggets". The large one near her breast hungered for gems; the long one near her thigh craved a gold necklace or antique pocketwatch on a chain. Every urban vulture needed a sweeping cape with large pockets stitched inside; Miss Rosa would hunt, grab, feed those open hungry pockets the jewels they craved.
She switched on the bedside lamp. Linda Samuels wouldn't awaken soon; and, like any proper hermit, she kept her blinds drawn. She hissed at a lurking cat, "Scram. I don't have time to trip over you and pull your claws out of my coat. Not tonight." Then she crouched by the lowest bureau drawer and pulled.
"Nice, very nice," she cooed as she squinted at the contents of the assembled boxes. Gold and silver European coins from the 17th century would sell for a high price; she slipped them carefully, fifty or sixty in all, into several of the cape's pockets, then pressed the velcro securely shut. Her eyes scanned rows of bracelets, rings, brooches, necklaces and earrings. Some, with silver or gold wrought in Victorian arabesques, might sell for less due to the baroque style; still, the embedded opals and emeralds seemed like first class stones to her practiced eye. From other, plainer settings, large flawless diamonds glittered.
"Definately worth the trip." Miss Rosa breathed quickly; the magic mirror had shown her jewels, but hadn't hinted at how many or how perfect they were. Miss Rosa's gnarled fingers scurried over the loot, grasped, sprang to pockets, flitted to a sapphire ring, scuttled and clutched Grandma's largest diamond; her hands lept to pockets until these bulged, full and satisfied, and the boxes in the bottom drawer gaped, empty.
"I'm an old hag, a witch, a harridan, a hideous steroetype," she spat as a cartoonish cat shadow lept across the wall. "Describe the perp," she cackled as she switched off the lamp. "The perp? - Oh, she was old. More detail? - she was very old. Maybe she wore bifocals, maybe she didn't. Maybe her hands were arthritic, maybe they weren't. But officer, she did wear a dark winter coat."
"You're saved for now, you sneaky furry witches, but don't let the devil under your skin again!" Miss Rosa screeched as she strode back into the kitchen, holding the glass vial high, like a torch of triumph. "Take the apostolic light of Christ into your green eyes! Take Salvation's song into your ears! Draw the waters of his protection from your fur and into your blood!"
She leaned over Linda's sleeping body, relieved to hear the deep rhythmic breathing, and wondered why anyone so wary hadn't locked her treasures in a safe deposit box.
"And you too - saved! Like it or not, despite the Buddha bellies and fake Catholicism." She snickered. "Did I interrupt a dinner of stale bagels and sour milk poured in a caffeine slurry? An intimate date with the internet? A session of chanting for impossible dreams or trying to remember if you ever sat through confession? Have my words frozen you, has my stare burned away that sarcastic, fretful will? Dearie, Lovey, you are saved, and salvation never comes for free. When you awaken, you'll find that some things have changed - but that's a small price to pay for salvation!". Miss Rosa cackled; she snatched up the pamphlet she'd brought, flushed the liquid Linda had partially drunk down the toilet and pocketed the cup, then strode briskly towards the exit.
**************
When Linda awakened, a day later, she sensed that something important had happened. But her thoughts would only follow the pounding beat of her headache; the orange tabby, curled on the table beside her, stretched out one paw in consolation. When, two hours later, Linda discoverer her jewels and coins gone, she remembered only that her visitor was "Old, very old, maybe a Jehovah Witness and drably dressed". She recalled another wan face in a town of wintry faces, and her cats moving liquidly through thick air that muffled sound and sank stonily to the bottom of her lungs; such a description, however, wouldn't help the police catch the thief. Wondering why her memory had failed her when she needed it most, Linda stared out at sodden brown piles of fallen leaves and patches of snow melting in the drab light. All the color seemed leeched out of the world; the intruder had drained all the vitality from the air and light. Even the orange tabby's fur had faded; Linda wondered if she'd ever see the same again.
