Call Me Stranger

By George Lambelle

Call Me Stranger is a fantasy for adults which retains our childish love of the magickally impossible. Yes. Magick, not Magic is what counts in this romp where Evil takes on Good.
The war between Darline and the Cat didn’t really get going for a thousand years after Darline was burned at the stake for Witchcraft. Cat did all a faithful Familiar could, but Time Rules tied his paws as he fought to prevent the newly Evil Darline wreaking havoc.
The shy accountant, Norman Boosbeck, didn’t even know he was a Warlock because Magick died off centuries Cat’s team of Witches all carried their own weaknesses – dipsomaniac Erin, kleptomaniac Lydia, or pipe-smoking smelly tramp, Ramona. They were joined by the brattish child-medium Melanie (who was also the lovely adult Alice, sent to inspire Norman) and the dapper Warlock hypnotist, Darren.
Irving, a dwarf from an unknown planet, met Cat in Limbo after getting lost in Time. However, Cat appointed him unofficial leader of the eccentric gang intent upon bringing Norman back within the Magickal fold.
It was difficult! Today’s world couldn’t even spell ‘magick’, let alone use it. Everything went wrong when the man in Darline’s life, Lord of the Manor, Sir James Hawkney became a pawn in the ambitious schemes of the King’s Prosecutor, Hubert, and Cedricke, the Executioner.
Marching sheep, talking rabbits, four-foot frogs, twelve-inch crickets and three very worried Spirits didn’t help much, either.
At the centre of it all, though was the vain, enigmatic and unpredictable Cat. Whose side is he really on…?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press UK
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982281663

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Copyright © 2020 George Lambelle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-8165-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-8166-3 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/30/2020

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Norman

Chapter 2 A Day in the Country

Chapter 3 Spiritual Help

Chapter 4 Irving and the Cat

Chapter 5 The Story of Irving (and the Cat)

Chapter 6 Magickal Friends

Chapter 7 Enter Erin

Chapter 8 Magick not Magic

Chapter 9 A Little Practise

Chapter 10 Lydia and Melanie

Chapter 11 Power Play

Chapter 12 The Seance

Chapter 13 A Definite Plan

Chapter 14 Enter Ramona

Chapter 15 Darline

Chapter 16 Emotions, Fears, Ideas

Chapter 17 The Second Seance

Chapter 18 The Inspiration

Chapter 19 Preparation

Chapter 20 Alarums before…

Chapter 21 …the Conflict

Chapter 22 Good Timing

Chapter 23 Comparing Notes

Epilogue

TIME

There is no horizon during the Passing of Time.

No land. No sea. No sky. No clouds.

No true light or true dark, although there are Moments of both,

illuminating and hiding the multitude of Changing Colours.

There is Good and Bad.

There is also, of course, Time itself.

But in another Dimension altogether.

You might travel through Time for a week — and yet arrive

at a point only seconds after you left it. It might also only take

those same few seconds to pass by several Centuries.

Like travelling the World.

You arrive quickest only if you take the shortest route. Without a

map or the right vehicle, you can be lost for a very long Time.

The Cat knew all the routes.

He needed no map — He just had a Good memory.

He had travelled Time for ever. He was there when it began.

Naturally, he had been very young then and

did not yet have his perfect memory.

That was a pity, because The Cat would have liked to have

gone back to the Beginning and started all over again.

He might even have tried to draw a different shape

for his journey into and out of Life.

Or would it eventually become Lives? He wanted only one.

He hoped it would not become more than one, because it had

taken so long to find a suitable Witch to start his first Life.

Finding his Witch had been his first Search through Time.

Losing her had started his Second Search — this one for Help. It had gone

on for nearly a thousand years according to the Time by which humans live.

And yet he had still been unable to find the kind of Help he needed. He

knew there must be somebody wandering Time who would be able to Help.

But it had to be somebody Special.

GettyImages-962891822-GS.jpg

CHAPTER ONE

NORMAN

The moon was a crescent and the stars merely flickering pinpricks in night’s purple three-dimensional infinity as a thundercloud menaced its way earthwards en route to its transformation into the Cat. Blue-black, haughty and fifteen feet tall, the Cat stalked down the historic High Street — a spectre in slow motion, terrifying in his exudation of power.

Measured strides took the Cat silently past centuries-old buildings containing businesses and fishing village cottage homes on England’s North-East coast. Marske-by-the Sea was changing but still based much of its economy on the sea.

Traditions has been challenged by new housing estates planted there to cash in on a hint of olde worlde atmospherics with their red brick semi’s barely acceptable, but still brazen, in their clash with Marske’s traditional architecture and heritage.

As the Cat walked, he did so with shining eyes setting off a sense of purpose while slowly, eerily, he shrank while padding up to the gate of Number One-Three-Three — a grey-stone terraced cottage near the bank. Quaintly, on the right hand side of the garden fence a path passed under part of the first floor.

As the Cat continued to shrink a white Vauxhall Astra roared past with an accompanying tsk, tsk, tsk of its radio entertaining its young occupants. The Cat was still very large, but the teenagers noticed nothing at all unusual. The Cat knew it. He could only be seen if he wished it.

Finally reaching a more natural earthly size, the Cat bounded on to the top of the black wrought-iron gate and landed lightly on the crazy paving which was the path. Without even a glance at the beautiful red and white roses splashing their presence across the postage stamp garden, he stalked, stiff-tailed, to the front door.

Once on the stone step, he paused and looked back as if checking for prying eyes among the sleeping houses opposite.

Hardly surprising! After all it was two o’clock in the morning. Perhaps just as well, because the Cat was about to encounter someone he’d never met, had never known and yet who didn’t even know as much about himself as the Cat. All rather strange and even risky because the Cat’s entire future and future millennia on earth rested upon the next few hours.

With his hind feet firmly fixed on the doorstep, the Cat walked his front legs up the woodwork lengthening his body until he reached the letter box where he hung on until his rear end caught up. Only then did the Cat push the flap open with his head and followed it inside with the remainder his body.

The flap dropped sharply, momentarily trapping the Cat’s tail, which slithered through the silence broken by a half-mewed, half muted hiss of annoyance.

Thus did the Cat introduce himself to the home of the accountant, Norman Boosbeck, at present soundly sleeping his uncomplicated, unworried, dream-free way into another, to him, fascinating day of figures and financial fuss, of cussed clients and their self-made problems. It was the life he loved and far away from Cat magick — and even further from today’s lack of not today’s magic!

The cottage was built around a central staircase, fitted between the walls of the front and rear rooms. The Cat glided from the front door vestibule with the outer wall to his right and passed by the deep brown varnished rocking chair in the front living room. On he went into the dining room, where he turned left and moved to the foot of the staircase, which was neatly hidden in the corner behind a heavy woollen maroon curtain.

Continuing to pad stealthily, the Cat turned left again at the top of the stairs and waited for the bedroom door to open of its own volition.

Norman never stirred, even when the Cat hopped lightly on to the double bed. He sat down, purred, nodded his head — and then smiled as he contemplated the recumbent accountant.

Norman turned over and grunted as though feeling the weight of the Cat’s steady stare. Satisfied with what he’d seen the Cat floated himself to the floor and watched the duvet move one way and then the other as one man’s peaceful night filled with restless uncertainty.

Hours later, remnants of the previous night’s stars still hung in pinhole hints of their former lives — ineffective in the grey blue of the spring morning — when Norman opened a single bleary eye. He contemplated the new day which, for him, had arrived too soon because even its harmless grey light had become an abomination to leaky eyeballs.

Outside, post breakfast-time life was beginning to growl, beginning with paper boys and girls disinterestedly tramping by. Buses and cars grumbled and whined intrusively in defiance of sleepy Marske’s early morning yawns.

Blinking away his tears, Norman slithered a leg off the bed and on to the floor. The duvet tried to follow and, sighing, he heaved it back. With stiff legs and thudding heels, he gave up the hunt for slippers and took his six foot angular frame downstairs without bothering to wash. He was due at the office on the dot of nine o’clock — and he would be there exactly on time.

Today, though, Norman was on the wrong metaphorical foot because his being throbbed itself mercilessly after hours of ceaseless unwanted cerebral activity. His mind still carried the sharp dreamtime memory of a woman engulfed in flames. His unease had him pulling faces and scratching head, chest and abdomen without any semblance of relief, all worsened by disconcerting moments of imbalance.

Arriving downstairs, Norman went into the back kitchen to set up kettle and toaster.

The Cat sat placidly in the corner contemplating a paw as Norman returned upstairs to dress.

He didn’t notice the Cat!

After a brief splash in the bathroom, the still groggy half-dressed accountant found his way back to the breakfast table struggling with unappreciated cornflakes, tea and buttered toast enhanced with strawberry jam.

The Cat was now stretched out under the table eyeing a distorted screen on the television, which Norman had not switched on.

As Norman’s muddied reflexes finally registered the television he was immediately irritated. The picture was obliterated with noisy interference, so that he couldn’t follow the news. It still held Norman’s bleary eyes rather like them being gripped by the swirls within a washing machine’s transparent panel.

With nausea persistently nibbling his intestine, he gave up on the cornflakes and tried the toast. As he lifted it towards his mouth, Norman’s arm froze as he realised: I never switched tha—!

The Cat settled back and fixed his yellow eyes quietly behind his chair to keep a feline eye on the television.

With a show of irritation Norman stepped to the set and switched it off set and the lines vanished.

The Cat sniffed and, after a few moments thought and a bleak glance at Norman, contemptuously raised a paw and pointed at the television.

To Norman’s dismay the wavy lines reappeared and with them, through all the interference a male newsreader standing by a desk in blue jacket, pink shirt and claret bow tie above multi-coloured knee length shorts, was fumbling through a sheaf of papers.

Another dream! Norman knew it.

He groaned and literally lurched from the room, leaving his unfinished breakfast on the table. He would have tripped over the Cat if he had not simply passed right through him. The Cat did a slow motion glide on to the table and glared fixedly at the dishes which obediently faded away.

The noise of running water echoed into the dining room as Norman splashed cold water over his head in an heroic fight for normality. Ten minutes later, he came cautiously downstairs still scrubbing a towel through his thick dark brown hair. He peeped round the stair corner dreading what he might see.

Norman leaned against the wall and sighed.

Oh lor’!

The Cat shot to seated attention — fully alert and smiling mischievously.

In the dining room the screen continued its intrusive racket — another nail in Norman’s confusion. All he could do was contemplate his wrecked routine — and he lived by routine. Everything in order. A life without surprises was the desired existence for the unadventurous, sensible, and professionally well balanced Norman Boosbeck.

Oh lor’!

A mouthful by Norman’s standards, who was never given to over-reacting.

The burning woman crashed into his consciousness once again.

A witch!

That was it.

A witch!

A witch being burned alive!

And those eyes! Yellow, staring eyes demanding control of everything.

Those yellow eyes followed Norman as he trudged back to his chair trying to rationalise the past hours. Dreams, he was sure, always had a personal connection; something which had happened in his life; or as a result of something which had preyed on his mind.

But what? The illogicality of it all bemused his ordered accountant’s mind.

NORMAN!

Norman jerked himself upright.

Pay attention!, said a female voice from between the television lines of interference.

He pulled, heaved and gasped at the door, but it remained irrevocably shut!

In a blind panic, Norman turned to look back into the room.

He stared in the direction of the invisible Cat, who gave a smug smile of pleasure at his confusion and the television screen went blank and silent.

Norman brought a cup of coffee from the kitchen and sank with closed eyes and momentary relief into a dining room chair. It had all un-nerved him and destroyed his usual self-possession. He stretched back and closed his eyes.

The Cat, still and silent, watched Norman recover, twitching his whiskers around a patronising smirk, and with a swish of his pay, dissolved all the crockery on the table.

When Norman opened his eyes his coffee was cold. He looked around the room and felt a little better. For the first time, he noticed that the breakfast dishes had gone. Puzzled he went to the kitchen cabinet and saw them all back in their places.

He could still taste the cornflakes and toast, so he had eaten.

And washed up!

Apparently!

His brow furrowed and he considered for the first time that he might not go into the office today.

The thought was an instantaneous antidote. Immediately he felt quite well.

In view of earlier events, Norman was a little nervous when he turned on the TV.

Breakfast television came on as normal. After a few seconds, he lost interest and switched it off.

Norman sat down again, relaxed for only a second before his imagination once again created a twenty-foot high woman with yards of jet black hair. Screaming and cackling. And a wild mob dressed in funny clothes on a beach. And three howling men flung on to a fire at the foot of a huge, solitary rock.

The same place as his dream, but the woman was now screeching maniacally and no longer among the flames!

Amidst all this was a cat with yellow, staring eyes and a big smile. Not like Alice’s Cheshire cat. This cat smiled a knowing smile. Not malicious. An almost cheeky smile showing the certainty of his own superiority.

The dream itself hadn’t been frightening in the way of a nightmare. He had just been watching something happen. Like seeing a film. But detached — with no personal danger involved.

He jerked himself upright and fetched his jacket and mac.

The Cat watched him thoughtfully from beneath the table. Then, as though he’d seen enough and was satisfied, trotted purposefully to the front door. He contemplated the letter box for a moment remembering his still tender tail. The door opened and closed of its own volition allowing him to pad his feline way into the bustling little High Street.

He walked purposefully towards the direction from which he had originally arrived, steadily growing back to his original fifteen feet. A line of vehicles passed right through as he sprang gracefully into the air and dissolved into a black and white cloud above the village’s only roundabout. Marske’s daily business proceeded normally.

Shortly after the Cat’s un-noticed departure, Norman drove his green Vauxhall Cavalier towards his Guisborough office. It was just coming up to 8.30 and the country road was filling up with other cars. Norman felt a little irritated with himself.

Dropping off to sleep again had been careless. It could have made him late! As he left the house, he’d found the morning paper folded neatly on the doormat with not so much as a hint of damage to the girl on page three. So it was just a another dream.

Surely this was simply a gastric disturbance? What had he eaten last night?

Darn it!

Norman never swore. Oh lor’ and darn it! was as bad as he ever got.

He was reacting to a jam ahead and in a second — as if on cue — the local radio station was giving details of an accident on the Guisborough road. A lorry had shed its load.

Norman switched off the radio and tapped the wheel in frustration. He was never late and suddenly his perfect record was in doubt.

Another glance at his watch.

8.37.

He snorted impatiently.

"If only I could fly."

He glanced in the driving mirror and froze. Two yellow eyes regarded him coldly, but before he could react, his car began to move, keeping pace with the vehicle in front.

Then both left the ground.

Panic took over as Norman pressed his white face against the side window to look below. Together, the cars floated smoothly about twenty feet above the traffic. Norman could see a dozen or more 12-inch diameter pipes scattered over the road and grass verge. The lorry driver was looking sheepishly at an equally fed-up copper.

They shot past the incident and Norman saw the leading car make a gentle four-point landing.

Norman bounced in his seat as his own car touched own and drove onwards without pause.

Glancing in his driving mirror, he saw the road behind was clear.

Nothing behind? No jam?? Looking ahead he saw that the car in front had disappeared!

He looked into the mirror and saw a fading yellow-eyed image of a furry face. Norman’s blood ran cold as his car radio burst, untuned, into life.

Nothing to report on the roads today. Everything’s hunky dory, too, at the airports and railway stations, chirruped the irritatingly bright breakfast show DJ.

Norman drove miserably into Guisborough and stopped in his office car park tucked inside three-storey gray stone office buildings.

Despite everything, he was in good time. Slowly he walked to the foot of his office stairs behind a couple of secretaries who should have been there earlier than Norman. They hurried ahead, embarrassed that their tardiness had been spotted. Norman was — at 27 — a senior, even though, in terms of a career, very much a young man.

He realised he would have to hurry if he was to walk in dead on time — a practice he had cultivated out of some sub-conscious pedantry. He tried to quicken his pace, but his legs became heavy and refused to respond.

Oh, for an escalator!

The staircase began to move. Norman gulped. The girls screamed. Speed was gathered. Ahead lay a ninety-degree turn and the stairs banked steeply to the left to take it. The girls’ screams turned into an elongated crescendo as they and Norman hung on for dear life.

The accelerating stairs were unable to take the second bend, and smashed straight through the wall and into the open air. Miraculously, neither Norman nor the yelling girls were hurt.

They were in the open air on a crazy ride aboard a raft of about nine or ten steps covered by a piece of carpet. The handrail came along, too, and instinct made them grasp it, even though they could see that it had no apparent connection with the stairs.

Banking like an aeroplane, the stairs swung about and shot back through the wall, widening the hole they had just created. Bricks and plasterwork scattered around them and all three ducked as the masonry fell about their heads.

Then the staircase slowed down and stopped, fitting neatly into place, leaving Norman a only few strides to reach the top.

It was almost, but not quite, completely silent, because the girls were chatting away happily. They disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs.

Norman looked back.

No mess. No gaping hole in the wall. No loose or broken bricks. No broken plasterwork. No jagged join mark where his piece of staircase had separated from the rest. He walked into the main first floor corridor.

A few moments more and he…

Morning, Norman.

Morning, Henry.

…walked into the main office.

Norman worked for a sizeable and reputable country firm in the Cleveland County dormitory town of Guisborough. Outside, the high street buzzed with noise. Inside, there was the usual polite tippy-tap of computer keyboards and other electrical needs, punctuated by the odd beep-bop of the out of date trimphones.

He took off his short, dark blue car coat and tugged straight his double-breasted grey pin-stripe suit.

Morning, Mr Boosbeck.

Sammy hurried past in her industrious way. Norman politely acknowledged her greeting with a bleak smile and settled to his desk in the large open plan office.

He’d been dealing with the income tax problems of a journalist. He worked for a local evening paper, but spent most of his time flogging off stories to other newspapers. The Revenue had finally caught up with him and now he wanted the matter sorted out quickly and delicately because his employer would definitely be miffed to find out about his disloyalty.

Norman fitted his spectacles, opened the file and tried to clear his mind before tackling the journalist’s figures. It wasn’t easy. Thoughts kept returning to this damnable snarling, burning female with long, black hair swirling in anger about her head. Still twenty-feet tall.

And that Cat…

Oh lor!

Norman’s feature set themselves firm. He shook his head violently to clear his mind for work.

Around him the office continued its discrete murmurings. Ticker tape machines hickered near-quietly and every now and then a footfall produced its minimal sound from the dark green, fitted carpet as staff threaded their way between their light oak desks.

Slowly it all merged into a distant background as Norman’s one-track mind de-recognised all external distractions.

Beep-bop!

The telephone was an electric shock, jerking him back to reality.

Boosbeck!

Hello, Norman, said a voice he didn’t recognise.

Who’s calling?

Sir James Hawkney.

He didn’t know the name. The voice sounded rather distant and yet very clear. Also, there was something about the accent, which Norman couldn’t quite place.

Yes, Sir James. Can I help you?

Indeed you can, Norman.

Norman?

The use of his Christian name was unsettling. Even if he was a knight, Norman didn’t like over-familiarity at first contact. Business was business and he preferred to be called Mr Boosbeck until the relationship had time to settle down.

Excuse me, Sir James, but have we met? I’m afraid I don’t recall….

No, Norman, we have never met.

Norman glanced up and his spine tingled. The room was completely silent.

No-one was speaking.

No-one was even moving.

Some kind of practical joke? No!

Mr Stainsby would never tolerate such a thing. His modern attitudes extended only to computers and Open Plan. Or anything the Army did.

How can I help you, Sir James?

Norman’s eyes roamed the frozen room as he struggled to sound as though nothing was wrong.

I need your assistance, Norman. You have already offered it and I’m pleased to accept it for myself and on behalf of others.

"Others?"

"Indeed. It is a difficulty of a nature I am unable to communicate here and now. But you can be of inestimable value to us, even if you do not yet grasp the manner in which you will be able so to do?"

Norman doubted that his value would be inestimable. Mr Stainsby would do the estimating closely followed by the sending of an account.

Another thought jolted him.

Calls came through the switchboard. And new accounts were usually arranged through a partner. Then a member of staff — in this case Norman — would telephone the client to arrange a meeting.

How did you get straight through to me?

Worry not, Norman. Everything will be the way you like it in due course.

Worry not! I bet he lives in an Elizabethan castle!!

Norman glanced around the room again.

Greta was putting down a cup of coffee on Mr Sedgefield’s desk. She’d been stuck there for ages. Mr Sedgefield sat perfectly, one arm rigid in thin air reaching over his desk.

One girl appeared enthralled by indecision, but if it was indecision, it was an extreme case, for she had held one foot in mid-air long enough to have earned a theatrical booking.

Most distracting!

Norman wrenched his thoughts back to his telephone.

Could you give me some idea of your needs, Sir James?

Through the window, Norman saw everyone outside in the