19. Hell hath no fury like an irate cat #2
I questioned some spirits and fought others.
Sometimes, I even got paid, and the word spread like wildfire that I was efficient at getting rid of pesky entities.
It didn’t take long before Gerald Pickett contacted us again, complaining about how we were robbing ExorSquad of its clients.
Lana took great pleasure in telling him to go fuck himself.
As I’m about to exit the hospital through the broken entrance door, the hair rises on the back of my neck and freeze. Pearl’s tail swishes, hitting me on the shoulder.
“I feel it,” I tell her.
I turn to look at the long corridor stretching into darkness. I pull a flare out of my satchel, light it, and throw it into the void. It slides on the ground before resting on a fallen chair.
Pearl and I stare and wait. Something stirs in the red light.
Hope is an annoying little thing. I always poke what’s lurking in the dark, hoping with all my might that finally, I have found Ewan. But what I usually get are angry entities.
Tonight is no different. The darkness takes the shape of a wolf and rushes towards us, eyes glowing red like the flare. I throw a fistful of salt from my pocket at the creature, having no time to use a tough-love bomb. The wolf growls and jumps back, but doesn’t disappear.
A powerful spirit, then. I expected no less.
Only old entities can change shape like this.
This one has probably been haunting this place for a long, long time.
It might be the reason why it didn’t get eaten by Earl Lynch like the others.
Or maybe it’s just smarter, and it hid just like the nurse did.
The wolf shakes it’s phantom mane and howls. It readies for its next attack, and I pull out my dagger coated in salt just in time to stop it from biting my head off. Salt turns powerful ghosts corporeal where they touch, and my blade makes contact.
The wolf isn’t a normal beast, of course, but neither is my cat.
Pearl launches herself from my backpack, hissing loudly.
She lands on the back of the entity and claws it with all her might, backed with the power of the uncanny she possesses by being part of a sentient house.
The wolf whimpers from the pain and surprise.
It tries to shake Pearl away, but she hangs on with all her feline might.
Hell hath no fury like an irate cat, I think.
Pearl really doesn’t like canines, and by extension, lupines.
I slash my dagger at the wolf in warning, and it finally relents and dashes away. Pearl jumps off his back before it disappears down the dark corridor, her fur puffed out impressively. She glows faintly.
My phone vibrates and I check it out while I put my dagger back in its scabbard. I read Lana’s text.
The cats are yowling and the lights are flickering. What's going on with Pearl?
She got a little excited chasing a ghost wolf, I message back. It’s all good. The beast has been chased away.
Sometimes I wonder if there are places more haunted than the hostel with its seven cats. No ghost has ever impressed me more than Pearl and her siblings.
Read any history book or folklore, and you realise cats always walked the narrow path between life and death. From ancient Egypt to Japan’s folklore, they always had a little something more. A little magic in them.
I put my phone away and grab Pearl from the floor. She’s still a little tense, and I kiss the top of her cute head before helping her climb on my shoulder. Her fur is sticky with the pink residue of salt.
When Pearl started following me out of the house, Lana wasn’t happy.
The vast world isn’t really a safe place for a cat, even a paranormal one.
But there was nothing we could do to stop her once she had set her mind.
No closed door can hold her back. And no matter how far she travels, she’s still connected to the house, somehow, and to the other cats.
We make our way out of the abandoned hospital, leaving the ghosts behind. I have no reason to exorcise those particular ghosts if I’m not getting paid to do so. I have more important things to do.
Like chasing hopelessly after a man who isn’t even your boyfriend because you were too dumb to ask before he disappeared? I think. Yes. That. I sigh.
I parked our car by the forest, a blue Ford Capri from 1970 that Lana inherited with the house. An old, trusty thing. Pearl jumps on the left seat as soon as I open the door. She’s the ultimate passenger princess, to say the least. She starts cleaning her fur, and I have to scold her to stop.
I drive us to the dingy hotel room I booked for the night in the nearby town. Pearl stays hidden in my backpack as we walk by the reception desk, then jumps unto the bed as soon as the door of our room is closed.
I clean her fur first thing, or else it’ll just get worse over time. She meows and hisses as I brush her, ever the drama queen, and I have to bribe her with treats. Once we are both satisfied with the result, she headbutts me then curls up in the middle of the bed to sleep.
I enter the narrow bathroom for a quick shower.
Once clean, I turn the light off and join Pearl on the bed, my body curved around hers.
In the dark, I turn on my phone and bring up Ewan’s picture, like so many nights before.
Shirley took it during the first week as he helped put up Halloween decorations.
He’s smiling wide as he hangs a garland with paper bats. I remember watching him that day.
I was always watching him.
I drink his smile like it's the elixir of life. Some days, it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore.
Pearl's soft purring lulls me to sleep.