Chapter Text
Erwin had to admit, the town he’d moved into was a bit strange.
The people were nice, he’d discovered, and he liked his new job as director of the city’s small historical society decently enough, but it only took the passage of two days after he’d gotten settled into the home he’d purchased before he began to notice that….well, the place seemed to be a bit spooky . It was perhaps a silly thing to think, he thought, but it was true, as there was no other word to describe the odd, seemingly otherworldly occurrences that had plagued him right from the beginning.
First, there had been the noises, the strange sounds at night that he couldn’t quite place, like the bumps on his roof that were followed by a quiet pitter-pattering that could have been tiny feet, the faint scratching sounds that often came from outside the walls, and the taps on his windows, too, that Erwin swore he heard even when he looked out and found that nothing was ever there. Then, of course, there was the hissing and yowling that often woke him up in the middle of the night, startling him out of sleep even if it seemed to come from deep inside the nearby woods, the bloody, mutilated corpses of small animals like mice and birds and moles that he always found around his house in the yard every morning, and the overall eerie feeling that he wasn’t alone, that he was being watched by some one or some thing in the distance that oversaw his every movement.
It was unnerving, and sometimes he would get such an intense sensation of it that the hair on his arms would stand up on end and he would freeze, perturbed enough so that he couldn’t do anything but remain still and silent for a few moments before he whirled around to see if something was behind him. That was what it always felt like, but not once did he ever see anything, which might have caused him to believe he was just imagining all of it if he didn’t always hear a loud thump above his head next or what sounded like skittering on the wood of his front porch, the noises coming so suddenly that he would sometimes almost found himself jumping out of fright.
Although Erwin wasn’t afraid , per se, because he had never really been entirely sure whether he believed in ghosts or not, the occurrences had begun as soon as he’d moved in and had gotten exponentially worse every day, so much so that even after just 10 days of living there he had started to entertain the normally irrational possibility that his house might actually be haunted .
What else could explain his experiences? He felt there had to be something logical, but he couldn’t quite come up with anything else that made sense of all of the strange things that continued to happen.
Even the thought that it could be a raccoon or a possum or a cat skulking around outside didn’t really fit because of the sheer amount of noises he heard — and the plethora of dead critters he found in his yard, which was potentially the most disturbing aspect of it all — and if it actually had been an animal anyway, shouldn’t he have seen at least some sign of it by now? Erwin thought so, but what could be haunting him, and why? As far as he knew no one had ever died on his property even if the house was quite old, but perhaps it had something to do with the history of the area, he thought, of the prominence of witchcraft that he knew to be closely interwoven with it all.
Erwin had been vaguely familiar with that even before he’d gotten his job, of course, because of his general interest in history, but now that he worked there he was starting to realize just how strong of a recurring theme it had been since the town’s founding as a tiny, isolated village over a century ago. Of course, there were witches that had been persecuted and burned at the stake there just like in many other places across the continent, but here it seemed that it didn’t just start or end with that, and Erwin had found something rather interesting the other day in the bottom of some long unopened archive drawer.
Still, though, he wasn’t superstitious, and what about any of that would result in his house being a potential center for paranormal activity? He wasn’t sure, not at all, but he at least began to feel slightly relieved when he discovered that it didn't actually seem to be just his house, but everywhere else in the whole town too. He hadn’t noticed at first because in the two weeks since he’d moved in he’d always been busy and distracted while out in public, but once things managed to slow down a bit and he had some free time, he quickly realized that things were not what they seemed in what he had previously thought to be a quiet, sleepy, quaint little place that he would enjoy living in.
In fact, the more time he spent out of his home the more he found the overall atmosphere in the city at large to be a bit disconcerting, the silence he had thought of as a good, comforting thing before now coming off as anomalous and almost oppressive. That was because it seemed to be present at all hours of the day, Erwin thought, and even when the city was busy with people and cars everywhere it was almost as if the sound was....well, muted like the volume on a television set. The air was heavy at night and all in all it was an exceedingly odd feeling, one that made Erwin’s view of the entire place start to change, his idea — and perhaps misplaced delight — of it being an old-world, isolated town rich in historic value turning into something else, something that made him feel like he was trapped in a bubble where things were ever so slightly distorted from how they were in every other part of the world.
Day by day, it all got worse, too, as the buildings dating from the medieval period or before that lined the streets had now begun to seem kind of creepy rather than charming or fascinating to him, just like the massive, aged trees that were planted everywhere, their long, twisted limbs completely bare and visible due to the fact that they had long ago lost all of their leaves. Erwin thought that unusual because it was only early fall — mid-October, actually, and just a few weeks away from Halloween — but either way it made them look grey and dead, unsettling on top of everything else and because of the fact that they usually sat underneath a cloudy sky, the eerie silence that pervaded the town sometimes being interrupted by random gusts of wind that would send the remnants of their fallen leaves scattering around at Erwin’s feet.
Other than that, the only other thing Erwin could sometimes hear when the city was calm was the random, odd sounds that would occur out of nowhere just as they did in his home, noises that no doubt made everything about the atmosphere of the place seem even more hair-raising. Out there, Erwin noticed, they were a bit different, too; instead of bumps above his head, he thought, there were clangs , and rather than scratching or skittering there was the crunching of leaves or a thumping on metal. All of it was louder, too, than in Erwin’s home which...well, said a lot , and before it was over with, they would be accompanied by sights — something that piqued his curiosity more than anything and that in the end, actually gave him a clue as to what might be going on so that he could stop suspecting that he was being followed around by something unexplainable.
It happened one morning when he’d found himself sitting outside at a small cafe along main street, reading a book, sipping on some coffee, and enjoying the calm that surrounded him before the peacefulness was very loudly and abruptly interrupted. It had been Saturday and there had been no one on the streets at that hour, no cars or trucks or motorcycles rushing back and forth on the road as people hurried to get to work or school. Without those sights to distract him, the only thing Erwin had really been able to hear were the birds chirping in the trees and the distant noises of chatter that came from the patrons inside the cafe — actually quite clear that day, instead of muted, which was perhaps the reason that the the loud, positively discordant crash that sounded out suddenly happened to scare the absolute shit out of him.
There was no other way to describe how much it startled him, he thought, because it had been so loud that he’d sworn it had rattled his coffee mug on top of the table. Maybe that was the wind, though, which had gusted so hard right after Erwin had jumped about a foot into the air that he had to squint his eyes, finding that they opened about as wide as possible once it was over while his heart pounded like a hammer against his rib cage. Looking around wildly, almost, he had to fight the urge to stand up as if a shot of adrenaline had released inside of his body, somehow suppressing it and becoming distracted and a bit calmer anyway when he caught sight of what must have caused the jarring sound: several metal trash cans, lying in disarray outside of an alley about 10 yards away from him.
Upon realizing it, Erwin was immediately sure that they had not been like that before. He would have noticed a mess of garbage on the sidewalk, he thought, which was now the case, as the lids of two of the cans had fallen off, allowing the stuff to spill all over the place in a heap. Behind all of that was another one that was now slowly rolling towards the gutter while the rest of the cans lay stacked haphazardly in a chaotic looking, surely smelly pile, the side of the one closest to Erwin noticeably sporting a large dent that made it looked like it had been hit hard. Was that what had caused them to fall over? Erwin couldn’t be sure, but even if he had been, it wouldn’t answer the question of who or what had hit it, as there was absolutely no sign of anything or anyone else at all in the area. In fact, by the time he had registered what had caused the raucous, shrill cacophony of clanging, scraping metal, everything around him had gone quiet and deathly still again — so suffocatingly silent, actually, that to Erwin it all seemed to be a little eerie.
Adding to that, Erwin saw, was the fact that he had apparently been the only person to even notice, despite the two other people sitting outside the cafe with him and the group of three men that he’d glimpsed conversing near a bench across the street. They were even standing right in front of the alley, too, albeit several yards away, but not one of them nor the other cafe patrons had even batted an eyelash at the crash or looked away from what they were doing, something that seemed odd when the chaos had suddenly interrupted an otherwise quiet, uneventful morning. Feeling suspicious now, Erwin leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee and stared in the direction of the trash cans, focusing his eyes with a squint so that he could scan the entire scene over and over again to see if he had missed anything.
He hadn’t though, he decided, and he was quite sure that he hadn’t imagined any of it either. He wasn’t crazy and he knew he had heard it, but still, he tried to get back to his book, to convince himself that perhaps he was just being paranoid because of all the off-putting things that were going on in his house. It was just the wind, he told himself, it had to be, because hadn’t it blown past him right after he’d heard all the noises? It had, Erwin knew, but the trash cans had spilled out from inside the alley — a place situated between two relatively tall buildings that would have blocked the gust of wind. Even if they hadn’t they had exploded outward in the wrong direction, and what about the large, seemingly tell-tale dent Erwin had seen on the side of one?
Obviously, he thought, it must have been made some other time because he knew trash cans often got quite a beating during their time on the streets, and he was just trying to make this situation bizarre because he wanted answers. Although Erwin did his best to try and believe that while he continued to sit there, he unfortunately found that he just couldn’t. Something about all of this didn’t sit right with him, he thought, and he eventually gave up on trying to find his concentration again after five more minutes at the table saw his sneaking peeks at the alleyway over the top of his book at least a dozen times.
Sighing to himself, he closed it with a ‘thump’ and finished his drink, deciding that it was probably best that he get up to head home. Naturally, though, his undammable curiosity led him to take the long way to his car so that he could pass by the alley, practically craning his neck to look around the corner as he approached it — while his heart raced in his chest, for some reason — with so much focus that he found himself startled again a second later, caught off guard when he heard a growling noise followed by a streak of something black darting out in front of him, the shape proving to be a large, black cat that moved so quickly that Erwin had to stop.
Staring with wide eyes, Erwin watched in amazement as the creature hurried over to the sidewalk to....to pause in front of the street, its ensuing actions causing whatever assumptions Erwin had made about this being a normal animal to immediately disappear into thin air. The reasoning for that, he thought right away, was the fact that when Erwin saw the cat stop it had actually done so to seemingly look both ways as if to make sure there were no cars coming so it could cross the street. It’s head turned in one direction and then the other, Erwin saw, while its tail swished, and only after it was sure that the coast was clear did it finally cross, bounding across the road so that it could leap up onto the bench that rested in the grass just past the sidewalk.
What the fuck ? Erwin thought. Was he....was he losing his mind , or had he just seen a cat consciously checking to make sure that it was safe to cross the street before actually doing so? No, he knew, that couldn’t have been what happened because it was just an animal and not a human, and it must have just stopped for some reason altogether, pausing and looking around in a way that made it appear that it might have been checking for cars. That had to be it, Erwin thought, because to think otherwise was absolutely ludicrous, and so after forcing himself to shake that encounter off, he resumed his original plan of looking to see if he saw anything strange in the alley.
Unsurprisingly at that point, he didn’t see anything, but after thinking about it for a moment, it kind of seemed less odd now that he had seen the cat. It had probably been what knocked over the trash cans, Erwin thought, which actually made sense, and which again made him wonder if all the things happening at his house were because of an animal instead of a ghost or a demon or whatever other ridiculous entities he had started to entertain — an idea that obviously made him feel at ease despite the unnerving things he’d experienced in town too.
Unfortunately, whatever comfort he’d managed to find just then only lasted a few minutes, because Erwin only got as far as another half-block before he started to feel that uncomfortable, eerie feeling again, the one that made him imagine there was something behind him watching his every move. Stopping in place once more, Erwin felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, barely managing to repress a shudder before he swallowed and stood up rigidly straight, steeling himself and practically holding his breath as he began to slowly and carefully turn around.
Once he did so, all he saw was the black cat, perched like a statue on the bench and staring at it with its large, unblinking, and absolutely piercing grey eyes.
Four days later, Erwin realized he’d been wrong about what he’d hoped for: the strange things happening around his house weren’t caused by a cat. Instead of that, they were caused by multiple cats, a dozen, he thought, or maybe even more, because he had since realized that the town was practically inundated with strays. It was something he’d noticed more and more after the incident with the trash cans, oddly enough, after he walked past the cafe around noon the next day for lunch and saw several of them rustling around in the alley. One rushed out while he was watching and disappeared behind a dumpster, and another jumped up onto a fire escape, the scrabbling sound it’s claws made on the metal audible from even across the street. After that, with cats on the brain more than they might normally be, Erwin started paying attention and saw that they weren’t just numerous in that spot either.
No, he thought, the cats were everywhere — in the park, hiding in bushes or trees in groups of 4 or more, and around nearly all of the food and business establishments in town. Erwin saw them while he was shopping for groceries sometimes in the parking lot or as he was driving into work, the fleeting glimpses of their tails or back legs as they shrunk away more than enough to confirm that what he’d seen was a cat. At the library he caught two of them sunbathing on an outside picnic table around 10:00 A.M., while a group of kittens rolled around and played with each other underneath it. Once, he even saw one jumping down from the roof of a house in his neighborhood with several others behind it, and that was when Erwin knew his mysterious poltergeist had to actually just be a group of cats.
Suddenly, he found, the frequency of tiny footsteps on his roof and scratching sounds on his walls and porch finally made sense when he had the thought that it was several animals instead of just one, as did the distant yowling — and most importantly — the butchered corpses of tiny animals that he often found lying around his yard. He’d even noticed some dead birds and squirrels in the park, too, that looked like they’d been....well, hunted and then toyed with by a cat, but unfortunately, realizing the source of his problems ended up just raising even more questions, like why were there so many cats running around in the first place?
How could there possibly be this many strays in such a small town? The proper part of the ‘city’ only consisted of 15 square blocks, and he didn’t even understand how so many cats could survive in the wild there. Were people feeding them? That was possible, he thought, but another strange thing was that he had barely seen anyone pay any attention to them. Sometimes it was like the citizens didn’t even see them, in fact, and no one seemed concerned or bothered that there were practically packs of stray cats roaming around the town at all hours of the day.
Furthermore, where had they even come from? Didn’t the city have an animal control service? If so, shouldn’t it be doing something about all these poor cats? That was what Erwin wondered, but when he looked it up and called, the teenager who answered the phone informed him that their town, in fact, did not have a cat problem. The strays were citizens just like everyone else, and they did perfectly fine on their own in the outdoors without anyone meddling in their business. Puzzled by that response which made them sound like humans, Erwin did have to admit that for the most part, the cats were seemingly healthier and more well fed than the average homeless creature — even though the majority of them were clearly mostly feral.
Those wanted nothing to do with him, but Erwin had been able to interact with some of the ones in the park a few times, taking it upon himself to buy a few cans of cat food and feed them despite what the kid at animal control had said. However, even though he knew he had the potential to make dozens of furry friends if he wanted to — and he wouldn’t mind, because he didn’t actually have a problem with cats when they weren’t making him think his house was haunted — there was one that he ended up finding himself strangely attached to a lot more than the others: the black cat, the first one he’d seen darting out of the alley that had stared at him so intently from across the street.
Although he had to admit that it had creeped him out a bit at first, the next time he saw it — before he called animal control, actually, after he’d found himself wandering down to the cafe on his lunch break one work day. He’d intended to eat a sandwich there with a cup of coffee, but he’d instead ended up sitting on the bench across the road from the alleyway, finding himself easing down onto it slowly once he glimpsed the cat sitting across the road. It was in front of the trash cans, he saw, which had been righted again by someone, and was sitting in a perfectly straight upright position, its tiny paws planted onto the ground in front of it with its tail delicately curled around and over them.
Again, Erwin noticed, it was watching him, and that, he supposed, was what made him have a seat and take his sandwich out there, unwrapping it and looking back at the cat before he took a bite. He wasn’t sure what he thought might happen — if anything — but unable to truly be afraid of a cat, his curiosity had again been piqued by the cat’s sharp eyes, by the memory of it’s oddly human behavior when Erwin had watched it cross the street a few days ago. Almost as if the animal could read his mind or something, Erwin was treated to a second display of what he’d been wondering had actually just been in his imagination ever since, when after a minute or two, the cat suddenly strode forward, stopping at the street all over again to look both ways before it bounded across and right up to Erwin’s feet.
Pausing mid-bite, Erwin looked down at it with his brows raised, feeling slightly taken aback as he watched it sit back down onto its haunches right in front of him. It stared, of course, with what Erwin could now see as clear, grey eyes, its head resting above a white patch on his chest and two front paws of the same color that he hadn’t noticed before. Behind it, its tail swished, and Erwin blinked once before he offered it a small piece of cheese on a whim. Surprisingly, it did not shy away when he held the food out on one finger and instead just sniffed him, stepping forward when it apparently liked what it smelled so that it could knock the cheese off with one quick motion from its tongue.
It fell to the ground, and the cat devoured it quickly, immediately walking around the bench so that it could jump up onto the back of it afterward. It delicately stepped along the thin edge of wood and made its way behind Erwin’s head, and it was at that point that he realized the cat was male — there was no denying that fact, he thought in amusement because of what was basically being stuck in his face right then — and that his behavior was by far not the only strange thing about it. No, Erwin saw, now that he had a closer look after the cat jumped down from the back of the bench and sat down next to him, his eyes were not that of all the others that Erwin had seen around the town.
Instead of that, they were almost human, the pupils rounded and the irises distinctly visible from the rest of the eye, and as the animal stared at him — noticeably looking him up and down in a way that another person might do — Erwin got the feeling that he was being sized up. It was a bit unnerving, he thought, but none of his hairs raised in the way that they’d been often doing when other, weirder things had happened, and so he just bit into his sandwich, finding himself raising an eyebrow at the cat when he licked his chops and suddenly flicked his tail impatiently. Did he want more food? Assuming so, Erwin pulled off a piece of turkey this time and laid it on the bench, watching as the cat practically gobbled that up too and then looked up at him expectantly for another bite.
“Are you going to leave enough lunch for me?” Erwin found himself murmuring to him then, idly speaking in the way that people often did to their pets without even thinking about what they were saying. He smiled in amusement as he did so and gave his new lunch companion a generous helping of turkey, cheese, and bread, one that Erwin felt should be more than enough to satisfy the cat’s appetite. “Too much of it might turn you into a big, fat cat, you know.”
Although Erwin had just been talking nonsensically, the animal in front of him apparently took some kind of issue with his words. In fact, he reacted as if he had actually understood just what it was that Erwin had said, because immediately after he’d spoken he tore his gaze away from the food to look back up directly into Erwin’s eyes, his tail flicking sharply behind him as he flattened his ears and narrowed his eyes and then raised his tiny cheeks up a bit over his teeth in a way that wrinkled his nose. All in all, unless Erwin was crazy which was kind of possible at this point, the expression that the cat was making seemed to indicate that he did not appreciate anything about Erwin’s comment, and with the sudden feeling that he’d done something to offend, Erwin reached out as if to pet him in apology.
Before he could do so, however, the cat hissed at him quite fiercely and then picked up the food in his mouth, the threatening sound turning into a muffled, irritated growl that came from somewhere low in his throat. He jumped off the bench like that abruptly, and in the next second he was gone, having run off and left Erwin on the bench, stunned and feeling like a veritable door had just been slammed in his face. What the hell had just happened, he wondered? He felt confused, of course, and concern because of the possibility that he might be losing his mind, but more than that there was curiosity, an interest in the strange cat that he felt he couldn’t really explain.
Probably it was just because of the fact that he couldn’t explain it, and it was just so....odd to begin with along with the other weird things that he’d seen in this town, and unable to stop thinking about it, Erwin found himself coming back to the bench the next day, and the next. He did so in the hopes that he would see the black cat again, of course, and amazingly enough, despite the fact that they’d had a bit of a rocky start, he was not disappointed. Again he approached Erwin from across the street and again Erwin fed him pieces of his lunch on the day after, this time reminding himself not to make any rude comments about the cat’s weight so that he wouldn’t end up offending him.
It was ridiculous, he thought, to even think of something like that, but he found that he couldn’t help it, and he found that he stopped questioning the cat’s human-like qualities the more that he interacted with him. Instead, Erwin just marveled at them — at how sometimes when he stared at something Erwin imagined he could actually see him thinking , at how he seemed to respond when Erwin spoke to him each time, too, in his own way, of course, and at how he just acted as if he understood things that cats shouldn’t in addition to knowing how to cross the street, like when Erwin had the last bite of sandwich his meal was done and that stepping in mud would get his paws dirty, and that Erwin came to visit him at the exact same time every single day.
Erwin suspected he’d figured that out fairly quickly because he was always nearby, but on his seventh lunch break at the bench he found his feline acquaintance actually waiting on him, already sitting in front of the seat for the first time before Erwin had even approached. By then, he thought, he’d become more familiar with the cat and felt that they had actually started to become something like friends, and he couldn’t deny that he was a bit delighted to see him there, resting on his haunches like he often did and looking in his direction expectantly as he reached the bench. Smiling as he sat down, he leaned over to watch as he was treated to the furry thing rubbing himself against his legs for a moment, remaining still before he then lowered a hand towards him, holding it out for the cat to sniff for a moment before he finally spoke.
“Hello.” He murmured, waiting until the cat meowed back in greeting like he’d started doing — a soft mrow that had Erwin nearly melting that day, because he had to admit that he’d grown fond of the kitten too, and found a lot of what he did to be....well, adorable — and then headbutted his palm, a sure sign that Erwin had been given permission to scratch behind his ears. Gently, Erwin did just that with his fingers and was then allowed to pet him all down his back, smiling to himself again at how the cat’s eyes went lidded at the rubdown in a way that clearly indicated he liked it. “How are you today, hm? Does that feel good?”
As a result of his words, Erwin suddenly found himself with a lapful of black and white fur, something that took him aback for a second because his friend had never done that before. Usually, he thought, he stayed on the ground or jumped up onto the bench without stepping all over him, but he didn’t mind it. In fact, it was just another sign that the cat was feeling more and more comfortable with him, something that had, of course, happened gradually over the past week after Erwin managed to earn forgiveness for his earlier verbal faux pas. It had been two days after that before the cat had allowed Erwin to pet him, in fact, and then another three before he’d actually started to give him some affection back.
Now, clearly, he trusted Erwin enough so that he was not afraid to make it clear that he wanted attention, something that was obvious by the way he’d just jumped into his lap and then rubbed his hand against Erwin’s outstretched arm. He was purring, too, Erwin noticed, and he couldn’t deny that the cat’s friendliness made his heart warm. He missed having a pet like this, he thought, as he had never found it in him to replace the dog he’d grown up with that had eventually passed away. Now, though, he wasn’t afraid to admit that he wouldn’t mind having this cat in his home permanently — he already hated the thought of him living outside too, despite the fact that he seemed well-fed and his fur was as shiny as any other house cat’s — but he wasn’t foolish or inconsiderate enough to assume that he could just do that without at least asking the little furball for permission.
“Do you like that?” Erwin murmured absentmindedly, as he stroked the cat’s back again and then began to rub his sides with both hands — completely uncaring that he was probably getting black and white fur all over his suit. “How would you like to come home with me one day? You’ll have all the turkey you can eat, and a warm bed. Plus, I’ll pet you like this whenever you want.”
While speaking, Erwin watched the cat closely for any reaction. He had come to expect them so much as this point that he’d almost forgotten how strange and uncannily human his communication was in the first place, and just felt pleased when he received a happy sounding ‘chirp’ in response. It seemed to come from somewhere inside the cat’s chest, and melded back into his low purr that gradually grew louder as Erwin continued to rub at him with his fingers. Sliding one palm up so that he could scratch under his chin, Erwin couldn’t help but smile warmly again when the cat leaned into his touch. It was cute, he mused, and the little thing was turning out to be more charming than he’d let on at first, and perhaps without really thinking about it, one thought popped into his head that, because he had come to understand the cat’s personality a bit, he perhaps should have hesitated a bit before saying out loud: “You really are quite the needy little thing, aren’t you?”
Oops. Erwin realized his mistake right away, when the animal that had been so….well, sweet with him a few moments ago seemed to actually bristle, his eyes opening back up as he pulled his head out from underneath Erwin’s palm. In the span of one single second he had slapped a paw down on top of his arm, too, and dug his claws into his skin through the clothing — not that hard, Erwin thought, but enough for him to feel it and consider it a warning along with the accompanying, high whine-slash-growl that came from inside the cat’s throat.
“Ah, alright.” Erwin said, unable to chuckle despite himself at what had just happened. Clearly, he’d done something to offend again, but thankfully this time his friend had not hissed and run off, his expression only changing into that familiar high-cheeked, wrinkled nose one that caused Erwin to have the distinct impression he was being scowled at. That, in addition to the subtle clawing and the manner in which he now bit — or nibbled, really — at the tip of Erwin’s finger when he tried to pet him again in apology, was all he did to express his displeasure. “Alright, I get it. I’m sorry. Forgive me?”
Flicking his tail, the cat seemed to consider Erwin’s words for a moment before he pulled back and abruptly gave the side of his thumb a small lick, an obvious sign of forgiveness if Erwin had ever seen one. Then, he stepped down from his lap and sat next to him on the bench, and eyed the bag he had sitting next to him that they both knew had his food in it.
“Ready for lunch?” Erwin asked at that, getting an answer in the form of the cat licking his chops.
By then, Erwin had started bringing along extra turkey and cheese so that he wouldn’t be heading back to work without a full meal, and removed each from the sealed baggies he’d brought it all in for the cat. Like that, they ate together while seated on the bench like a pair of actual humans, a comfortable sense of companionship passing over Erwin despite the fact that neither of them spoke, or....well, meowed . It was routine by then, Erwin thought, and he had realized days ago that he enjoyed it, and as he finished his lunch, he again began to idly think about what he really would have to do to bring the cat home with him.
Should he just...take him? Was it that easy? No one else owned the cat so he supposed it was, but regardless, he would need to make a few preparations at his home anyway. Erwin would need to buy him food — some real cat food — and a bed and some toys to make sure that he’d be coming into the ideal environment when Erwin brought him home, all of which made him more excited to go shopping than he had been in a long time. It was nice, he thought, to feel that way about something there finally after he’d had such an odd and disconcerting first three weeks in the town, too, glad that he’d found something to distract him from it so much that he’d even begun to think he’d perhaps just been being paranoid.
Perhaps, he thought, he’d just blown everything up in his mind because he’d had nothing else to do, but regardless, he was thankful that things had calmed down a bit for him, that he was finally beginning to settle in so that he could focus on his job and making friends. That being said, he recalled that he’d been invited to a Halloween party by his co-workers a few days ago, as it was, in fact, October 30th by then and the holiday was tomorrow, finding himself leaning in the direction of actually going. He hadn’t planned on it before because he hadn’t been feeling in much of a social mood lately, but his newfound cheerfulness had apparently changed that, and while sitting there, he even began thinking about what he would dress as.
Before he could decide, his thoughts were interrupted by the cat — Erwin would have to name him, he thought, when he brought him home — who suddenly perked up from where he’d started to clean himself. He’d been licking his paw and rubbing it across his face in one of the most adorable manners Erwin had ever seen, in fact, but he stopped so abruptly and all but launched himself off the bench that it caught Erwin’s eye. Raising a brow, he held his tie down when a sudden gust of wind blew his hair and sent dozens of dead leaves swirling down the sidewalk, the front page of a newspaper all but flying by too which was apparently what the cat was heading for. Much to his amazement, despite everything else he’d seen from the cat, his potential new pet ran over in the next second and all but leapt on top of it.
He pressed his paws down on it, Erwin saw, as if he was holding it down so that it wouldn’t blow away, but even that was not as startling as what the cat did next: after sniffing the paper excitedly, he stared down at the words for several, fascinatingly long seconds as if he could read them, and then looked back at Erwin one more time while he flicked his tail. Pawing at the paper, he held Erwin’s gaze like that for a few seconds, his eyes boring into him so piercingly that he suddenly found the hair on the back of his neck standing up again, and eventually glanced away before he bounded across the street to enter the alleyway — after he had looked both ways to check for cars, of course. Left sitting there after the cat had disappeared inside of it, Erwin was aware of the confused expression on his face, his brows drawn down and his mouth practically hanging open too at what he had just witnessed.
What had that been about? What had caused the cat to run off? Had it been something he’d seen on the newspaper, and was Erwin really, honestly of the belief that he could read and understand what was written on it in the first place? No, he thought, no , of course not. That was ridiculous — all of this was ridiculous, and all he’d found was a smarter-than-the-average cat, he told himself, not some strange, magical, other-worldly one or whatever could lead to it acting so human — but still, even after his heart stopped pounding and a solid five minutes of trying to explain what he’d just seen, Erwin couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, some way, the black cat that he’d become friends with had been trying to tell him something.
Perhaps it was the way he’d stared at Erwin so intently and pawed at the paper that made him think that, or perhaps there was just something wrong with his brain. Maybe, he thought, he was even dreaming, but if so, this was a pretty long one and he wondered when the hell he would wake up. Regardless, he was too curious to keep himself from getting up eventually, rising off the bench so that he could walk over and pick up the paper. Holding it out in front of him, he determined after a quick scan that there was nothing particularly unusual about the page the cat had been looking at; instead, it just seemed to be a typical menagerie of local news stories, articles about the weather, and because of the time of year, an advertisement for whatever Halloween activities the city had planned.
The only hint to what the cat might have been interested in, Erwin saw — hypothetically , of course — were some scratch marks from his paw situated right over where the date was printed in the top right-hand corner, directly above a small opinion piece that argued ‘the witches should not be allowed to congregate in the park,’ a sight which caused him to frown thoughtfully but eventually fold the newspaper up a few moments later. Tucking it underneath his arm, he stood up straight and went back to the bench to throw his trash away, his mind once again full of questions about strange things that he did not understand. Apparently the peacefulness that Erwin had thought he’d found was going to be short-lived, he thought, and as if to symbolise that, the wind gusted by once more so strongly that he was nearly knocked off his feet, and he heard a long, low yowl echoing from across the road and inside the alley.
As he walked off, his hair stood on end, and without turning around this time, he knew there was a pair of glowing, grey eyes situated somewhere in the distance behind him.
That afternoon, Erwin found it hard to get back to work — especially with the paper sitting on the edge of his desk. He’d brought it with him and set it there, perhaps foolishly, and kept looking up and remembering the strange incident with the cat, finding that the mention of witchcraft just reminded him of all the supernatural thoughts he’d had at the beginning. He wasn’t superstitious though, he wasn’t and he reminded himself that he never had been, but again, the thought of something unexplainable just did not sit well with him. He had to be missing something, he thought, and with that in mind, he ended up going down to the basement of his work place before he left for the day, making his way over to the large archive cabinet where he’d found the interesting artifact a few weeks ago.
It was a diary he’d discovered, one that was several hundred years old and that was practically falling apart from its poor preservation — something that made Erwin frown, along with the fact that it seemed to have been basically thrown away and shoved into the back of the drawer like garbage. Although he now had plans to conserve it with modern materials so that the pages might be protected, he hadn’t gotten to it yet, and as a result of the neglect the pages were practically falling apart and whoever handled it would have to be exceedingly careful. That being said, Erwin had no plans to take it out of the basement, and instead stood there in front of the cabinet underneath the dim lighting, tense even as he opened it to the pages he’d looked at before because of how thin the paper was.
Even the gentlest touch seemed as if it could turn bits of it into dust, he thought, but after setting it on a table, Erwin managed to find the entry that he’d scanned before which...well, which contained the variations of the word ‘witch,’ along with several other interesting sentences that Erwin had not been able to completely decipher yet. Now, though, despite the faded ink and the near illegible 17th century cursive, while squinting at it he thought he could make out a few lines describing some sort of ceremony, along with something about worshipping a goddess and following ‘the old ways,’ and what looked like a list of ingredients.
That was interesting, Erwin thought, because this diary was from the late 1600’s — a time period where monotheistic religion had been first and foremost in the region for decades. In fact, it was essentially mandatory because of unchecked persecution for anything else, and it was odd to see even a hint of something that might be pagan mentioned anywhere. That was what the word ‘goddess’ indicated to Erwin, anyway, and it had him recalling the ancient history of the town, the parts where the village it had been founded upon had actually once been a pagan site of worship for a religion based around deities who happened to be women.
Was there a connection, Erwin wondered? Was whoever wrote this diary a witch — or at least, someone who had been accused of being a witch? If so, he figured it was likely that they’d met the same unfortunate, fiery fate that so many others of their kind had in a time period where the fear of witchcraft was especially prevalent in the area. Regardless of that, was it possible that there were those in the village who had held onto its original pagan beliefs even after so much time, and passed their knowledge down each generation so that they continued even today? That seemed a fanciful thought, Erwin mused, and extremely unlikely, but the mention of witchcraft in the newspaper made him wonder. Obviously, he knew that their were those who practiced it in modern times, of course, but the fact that it was in this town and so casually discussed in comparison to other places seemed more than strange.
Either way, his deep thoughts were interrupted when the lights suddenly flickered and a loud, abrupt, cracking sound from outside the building made him jump about ten feet into the air, his mind only realizing that it had been thunder after he’d looked towards the basement entrance with wide eyes. It was dark down there, he thought, and a bit chilly and silent, and despite the fact that it was silly, he actually began to feel a bit uneasy. Swallowing, he shook his head and placed the diary back in it’s cabinet, closing the drawer and locking it back up before he hastily made his way back upstairs to his desk — but not before snapping a few pictures of the pages with his cell phone in case he wanted to look at it again later.
There, in his office, he tried to get back to work again with the lightning and thunder continuing above him — there was a storm coming through, apparently — and the rain pelting against his windows, but barely succeeded like before, finding that his mind was still fixated on the mystery that he had perhaps just created for himself. Wasn’t it possible that he was reading too much into things? It was, he knew, but what about the stray cats? What about his cat? What about the theme of witchcraft that seemed to be subtly popping up throughout the ages, and the strange, unnerving feeling about the town in general?
No night before had it been so strong as it was when Erwin left work to drive home, finding that his entire body was rigid with tension as he squinted out the window and struggled to see through the storm. Even with his windshield wipers running at full speed he could barely make out anything in front of him, and so he told himself it was the storm that was making him feel so uneasy, ignoring the fact that the ever-present silence was more heavy than usual and that there seemed to be electricity in the air, too, an aura, almost, that made him feel on edge as if something was about to happen that he wasn’t ready for.
It persisted even when he made his way into the suburbs and into his house, and while Erwin had thought he’d grown to live with them and been unbothered with the surely cat-induced noises all week, he now seemed to hear every one, unable to not feel unnerved when the loud scratching sounded out at his door or the yowling began in the distance. That night, for whatever reason, it seemed almost constant, and on top of that, the cats began to meow, too, and to race across the top of his roof so fast that it sounded like they were actually galloping. The fact that it was still pouring down rain made all of this seem unusual, he thought, because weren’t cats supposed to hate getting wet?
Most of them did, he knew, but honestly, by the time he decided to try and go to bed, he was too tired to bother trying to make sense of anything anymore. He wanted to sleep, he thought, but the noises distracted him, and when he finally did drift off all he saw was a pair of glowing, grey eyes surrounded by darkness, the sight causing him to wake up with a start — or maybe that was the loud, sudden sounds, reminiscent of the incident he’d witnessed outside the alley, of his trash cans being violently knocked over in the driveway. Unfortunately, that along with his dream caused him to feel such a surge of irritation that he contemplated going outside to try to find a way to chase them off, but a bolt of lightning that lit up his house in the next second immediately quashed that idea. Instead, he just decided to give up on sleep and to find something else to do that would distract him, like playing loud music or watching television on the couch with the volume turned all the way up in an effort to drown out anything else.
Thankfully, about thirty minutes before midnight it seemed to get better along with the storm, and as the clock struck 12:00 Erwin felt he might be able to finally fall asleep for good. The cats had stopped screaming and having the apparent time of their lives around his house, he noticed, and the lightning and thunder and howling wind, too, had lessened into a light rain that might actually be soothing to him, and with relief in his belly, he finally made his way off the couch and into the bathroom so that he could brush his teeth. He’d done so before, of course, but he’d eaten a snack while he’d been watching television and needed to do it again, feeling his eyelids begin to become heavy while he stood in front of the mirror.
He was going to be exhausted in the morning, he thought, but at least he would hopefully get some sleep before the night was over — a notion that he unfortunately found dashed all of a sudden when something else happened, something that caused him to freeze with a handful of toothpaste in his mouth and to stand straight up, his eyes widening out of alarm because....because it was not normal for his doorbell to ring in the middle of the night. The loud, resonating sound of it seemed to echo around his house in an eerie way as if to reflect how uneasy such a thing made Erwin, and he stood there for a moment, facing his reflection in the mirror while his toothbrush hung out from between his lips haphazardly.
He was practically clenching his teeth around it, he realized a second later, because he’d become so rigid with tension in virtually a split second, and bent to spit out the toothpaste that was still in his mouth before he turned around to face the doorway. Although it was dark and he could only see the top of the stairs from where he was standing, Erwin found himself unsure of what to do. Who could possibly be ringing his doorbell at midnight on Halloween, he thought? Obviously, it wasn’t a cat because they couldn’t do that — a thought which left him feeling highly suspicious and uneasy. Glancing back at himself in the mirror for a few moments, he wondered whether or not he should answer it, his hesitance apparently causing whoever was on his front porch to become impatience and ring the bell again a few moments later.
At that, Erwin decided he was more curious than afraid, although he certainly had plenty of thoughts swirling about in his head about whether or not he was about to be murdered. That was the first thing he’d thought of, naturally, but who would want to murder him? Some serial killer who happened to hate blonde men for whatever reason? Erwin supposed it was possible, but then again, why had he rung his doorbell? Waiting another few moments, Erwin eventually crept out of his bathroom and made his way down the stairs quietly, holding his toothbrush in his hand still like a weapon while his bare feet occasionally made the wood creak. Each sound made him tense up as if it was possible for his potential killer to hear him coming from the outside, something which he obviously didn’t want, and which made him freeze again when he reached the last step and saw a shadow lying across his front porch outside a nearby window.
Before he could figure out if it came from a person or not — he had blinds, and it was hard to tell even with his porch lights having been left on — his gaze was torn from the sight back to the door when he heard a soft knock, a quieter sound than the doorbell, obviously, but one that was not any less alarming or concerning, as it became clear to him that whoever was on the other side was apparently not going to go away and accept that he wasn’t going to answer. Perhaps he would have to chase them off, he thought, and so after swallowing, he eyed a large umbrella he’d left by the door before grabbing it to hold for protection, pausing for another moment to position himself at the side of it before he took a deep breath and spoke.
“Who’s there?” He asked, raising his voice and averting his gaze towards the window again.
At his question, the shadow wavered in place and Erwin was able to make out a head and shoulders and arms this time, the sight causing him to instinctively place a hand on his door as if he feared whoever was on the other side was going to try to force their way in.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.” It said instead, though, it’s tone somehow sounding irritated even through wood and rain and Erwin’s loudly pounding pulse. “I didn’t before, so just open up. It’s fucking cold out here, and I’m wet.”
Before? Perturbed at that, Erwin raised a brow and again glanced back towards the door. Eyeing it, and then the lock, his mind raced while he struggled to make sense of what he had just heard and of what was going on. Obviously, he knew, whoever stood on the other side of the door could be lying to him and waiting with an axe or a knife in hand to stab him with despite their words, and opening it would probably be stupid. Still, though, the fact that the person had spoken as if they had met already was something he couldn’t ignore, especially considering that he was pretty sure none of his co-workers — the only people he’d even slightly befriended since he’d moved there — would be showing up on his doorstep at midnight, as they didn’t even actually know where he lived.
That probably should have made it seem even more foolish to open the door, but for some reason, Erwin found himself drawn to the voice, calmed a bit by it, even, and reassured that his dead body wasn’t about to be on the morning news as the object of the latest mystery. Above all of that, though, he still felt curious, and while thinking that it would likely one day be the death of him, Erwin found his handing moving towards the doorknob, cursing his lack of peephole but undoing the lock anyway so that he could crack it open enough to peek outside. Holding the umbrella tightly in one hand as he did so and his toothbrush in his other, Erwin nearly ended up dropping both when he finally saw the person that was standing on his porch.
That said a lot considering he had no idea who — or what, really — to expect, he thought, but the sight of a small man dressed in fanciful period clothing with cat ears and a tail was enough to thoroughly render him still. In fact, he was speechless and shocked, staring with wide eyes at the figure on his porch and wondering if he was seeing him right. Had he gone insane? Was he dreaming? Erwin didn’t know, but as soon as the man spoke again, he felt a sense of recognition, nearly dropping his toothbrush on the ground as he found himself questioning his wits even more.
“Hey, big guy. Remember me?”
Drawing his brows down tightly at that, Erwin naturally found his gaze sweeping over the man after his question before he could even help it. He took him in from head to toe and eventually ended up resting his eyes on his face so that they locked with the mysterious stranger’s, and it was then that Erwin nearly felt his heart stop in his chest all over again, realizing right away that they were clear, grey, and obviously familiar in way that struck him so hard he abruptly shook his head in denial.
“I…” Erwin uttered, thoroughly at a loss for words. It was something he wasn’t used to, he thought, but no one would surely blame him when he found himself stunned by the sudden thought that the man on his porch reminded him of the cat — his cat — who he ate lunch with, and who had interested him so much with it’s curious, human-like behavior. “I…you... what?”
“I guess that’s a ‘yes.” The man said at that, snorting and raising an eyebrow of his own as if he found Erwin’s reaction to be amusing.
He crossed his arms, too, from where he’d been holding them at his sides and looked up at Erwin, who still had not managed to get his thoughts together enough to do anything else but stand there. How could he, when the more he looked at the man the more he reminded him of the cat? Obviously, the ears jutting from black, silky hair and the tail swishing behind him might have regardless, but it was more than that, Erwin thought, it was all of him — mostly starting with his eyes. Erwin had noticed that right away, of course, but even his expression reminded him of the cat’s, as did his clothing, especially the white cravat and gloves he wore that matched his furry friend’s chest and front paws.
It was ridiculous, but it was uncanny somehow, and the fact that he was wearing clothes that could have been from the 18th century — he wore a white shirt underneath a black vest and a long coat, it's lacy sleeves visible right above his gloved hands, and pants that stopped around his knees while the rest of his legs were covered in dark, leather riding boots — obviously made it clear that this was no normal man anyway. In fact, he looked like he’d time traveled from another world, Erwin thought, or come out of a museum, but he couldn’t have. Was this just some sort of elaborate Halloween costume, or a prank? If it was, someone had gone through a lot of trouble just to mess with him, but Erwin had no idea who would even do such a thing.
Besides, as much as he kept trying to tell himself that this man...cat...cat-man? couldn’t be real, he was, and he was standing there damp and dripping wet like he’d said, the sour expression on his face and the way that he flicked his tail irritably no doubt coming from a sense of discomfort. For some reason, it was that which caused Erwin to finally snap out of the astonished daze he’d found himself in and to step to the side, his manners perhaps absurdly kicking in because he at least figured if he was going to be murdered than he probably would have been by then.
In fact, he’d gotten the feeling that this wasn’t anything like that because it was just too bizarre , too unexplainable to be anything criminal, and again, he couldn’t deny that his inquisitiveness was quickly replacing any hesitance he might have had about interacting with the stranger on his porch. If he wasn’t a murderer, Erwin thought, then what was he? Who was he, really, and why had he come to his home in the middle of the night? Furthermore, was there any end to the surprises that this town continued to throw at him?
Erwin didn’t know, but one thing was for certain: after everything he had experienced, he was starting to accept the fact that the explanation — and the man on his porch, for that matter — just might not, after all, be something that fit into his definition of logical.