Page 76 of The Harbinger
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Katya turned away and left me alone once more, the birds chirping in the treetops.
I looked down at the trembling creature in my arms. “We’ll figure something out for you,” I said. I grabbed the box and hurried into the house, my eyes darting left and right.
Once in my room, I shut the door, set the kitten on the bed, and kneeled beside it. “You need a name.” I paused, tapping my chin with my finger. “How about...Loki?”
He shook in his towel and meowed. “Okay, not Loki. What about Alfredo?”
It was perfect. Alfredo wasn’t Loki. Loki was a villain. But also a superhero? And since I’d caught him hiding in a tree, I’d say he was anything but.
Alfredo, however…
“Now, you wait here while I find something to fill your litter box.”
I gave Alfredo a pat on the head and paused. The sound of coat hangers clanged together like bells in a funeral procession echoing around me.
“Hello?”
Silence greeted my ears, and my skin pebbled with sweat. “Stay right here,” I whispered, leaving Alfredo on the bed.
My feet moved heel-to-toe towards my closet, my breaths coming in ragged gasps. “Katya?”
One. Two. Three.
I turned the corner, and the sweat along my spine chilled. In the corner, beside the long crimson dress, hung a flurry of swaying hangers, their ominous chorus like dark laughter in the air.
“Who’s in here?” I whirled on my heel, the pounding of my heart reverberating in my ears like a raging sea thundering against a harbor town. My feet moved of their own volition as I searched through my bathroom, inspecting the shower, the toilet room, and every hidden nook and cranny... all vacant, absent of any life, free of devilry. I retraced my steps into the closet, and my heart screeched to a catastrophic standstill.
They were gone.
A yawning emptiness engulfed the area where the swaying hangers had been. They were gone.
How was that possible?
My stomach tightened as tears pricked my eyes.I’m not crazy. I didn’t imagine it. They were there—I’d heard them and saw them.Yes, I had auditory moments of madness but never had I hallucinated.
Jagged bits of dread clawed down my psyche as my chest heaved for air. How would I know what was real and what wasn’t? My chest tightened, and every bit of oxygen escaped my lungs.
The room spun, and the walls closed in.
How would I know?
I repeated the question over and over, but it only brought the walls closer. My stomach pitched, and the weight of a thousand dumpster fires sat on my chest. What if my memories were false? What if I’d fabricated them to fill the void? I sobbed, holding my chest as my knees wobbled.
A thud from the other room broke my wheezing breath.
Alfredo.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks, my heart still pounding as my choking breaths leveled.
I’m okay.
I can do this.
I exhaled long and slowly through puckered lips and returned to my bedroom as Alfredo bound beneath the bed.
“Alfredo, come out from there.” I dropped to my knees, sniffling, and glanced under the bed. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
Could cats catch a cold?Or was that only a human thing?