Henry

Adel fought with the door, twisting the skeleton key back and forth while pushing with her shoulder. For years the manor sat empty, sealed up, waiting for someone to bring life back to its halls. Now it refused to open back up, like a scorned lover. She turned the key again and heard a deep click. The door groaned inwards, sending an echo through the antechamber. 

Adel picked up her bags from the stope and entered, taking in every little detail. She  had viewed the manor before buying it, but now that it was officially hers, she wanted to take it all in. The manor came fully furnished, mostly antiques left behind by the previous owners. It gave Adel an eerie sensation, like the manor awaited for them to return at any moment. The dust on every surface said otherwise. 

Adel’s children and grandchildren thought she had lost her mind, buying a house out in the country and living there all by herself. After her husband’s death, she just couldn’t live in their old house anymore. Too many memories. She didn’t want to burden her children either. They all lived in the big city with their own lives. 

For as long as she could remember, Adel had longed to live out in the country in a manor along the moors, like in a Jane Austin novel. She had spent her whole adult life doing what was expected of her. Go to college, get a good job, get married, have children. She wasn’t complaining naturally. She had a good life, but always that fantasy lingered in the back of her mind. Now that she was retired and alone, she could finally indulge herself. 

She went further into the manor, passing the staircase wide enough to drive a truck through. The dimly lit hall entered out into a large sitting room, with twelve foot tall windows looking out into the backyard. A garden and a pond resided on the other side, taken over by weeds and green algae as thick as royal icing. 

She still couldn’t believe she had purchased the manor so cheap but then again, it lacked all the modern amenities that most people were used to. The realtor warned her that the electricity worked sometimes, and the water pipes had a nasty habit of bursting at random. No central heater or air conditioning. No cable connection whatsoever and the internet was spotty at best. Well, none of that bothered Adel. She knew how to start a fire, and never had much use for cable or the internet even back home. 

Adel towed her two suitcases up the stairs and went straight for the master bedroom. A massive bed greeted her, wrapped in a dark wood frame with damask curtains. The head board covered half the wall with a swooping, curvature design, like finely drawn eyebrows.  At the foot of the bed sat a teal ottoman with sides that curved up and inwards mimicking a handlebar mustache. The whole set looked like a face caught in a perpetual state of surprise

Adel dropped her suitcases by the ottoman and peeked her head into the adjacent bathroom. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of the large clawfoot bathtub. Finally something she could fully soak in. 

She returned to her suitcases to find one had fallen over on its side. The clumsy things had a habit of falling over on their own. Adel started with the knocked over one, taking a stack of folded clothes and putting them away in the dresser drawers. When she turned back to the suitcase, her clothes looked rumbled up, some even fell out over the edge. 

“What in the world?” Adel took great care of her clothes. She hadn’t moved them had she? Maybe the contents shifted during the move. She put it out of her mind. She needed to refold them anyway. 

Next order of business was the removal of all the dust accumulated around the manor. She pulled from her car a broom, dust pan, mop and bucket, dozens of cloths, and an extender pole with a duster to reach the areas out of arm's length. 

With her arsenal ready, she closed the front door and headed down the hall, when she heard scratching. She paused, her ears honing in on the source of the sound. It came from the front door. On the outside. 

Thinking it an animal of some kind, She opened the door only to find nothing there. No sign of any creature. Not even marks on the door. Confused, Adel went back inside, closing the door after her. She took only a few steps, when she heard it again, only this time, it sounded closer. From the inside. 

She whipped her head around to see nothing at the door. The scratching persisted, slow at first and increasing in intensity. Annoyed, Adel yanked the door open.

Nothing.

“What in the devil?” she whispered. 

She closed the door again, this time standing by, waiting for the scratching to begin. Minutes went by but Adel only heard her own breathing. 

She let out a huff. Whatever it was, it was gone now. No point in wasting more time. She wanted to get as much cleaning done as she could while she still had daylight. 

Adel went through the manor one room at a time, starting at the front and working her way back, dusting surfaces, sweeping and mopping the floors. Her last task for the day was to vacuum the enormous curtains that framed the windows in the sitting room. Adel knew those were a dust harbor, a place most overlooked. She used the extender on her vacuum to reach their tops, sweeping down and then back up. 

Adel always thought cleaning felt therapeutic. Something about the repetitive motions sent her into a meditative state. All her problems would melt away in those strokes.

Up and down, up and down. 

She finished one set and moved to the next. Before the vacuum could touch fabric, tears appeared in the curtains. Low at first, then climbing up and up. 

Adel jumped back, tripping on the cord and falling over. The vacuum fell beside her, sucking at air. She fumbled with the off switch, all while keeping her gaze on the curtains. 

Slash. Slash. Rip. Rip. 

Adel’s fingers touched the switch, the whine of the vacuuming dying. The tears stopped. Silence hovered.

Adel scrambled to her feet and touched the torn curtains. She couldn’t say why, but she felt like she had to touch them to see if they were real. She felt along the rips. No jagged edges.  

She dropped the curtain from her hands like they had stung her and fled upstairs to her room. There, she paced, trying to reason out what had happened. 

But she could not. Fabric didn’t just spontaneous rip. Then there was the matter of her suitcase and the scratches. Only one answer seemed possible, one she would have never entertained before. A ghost. 

“That’s ridiculous, Adel. Get a hold of yourself.” She refused to believe in ghosts or anything supernatural. Still, she could not explain the strange events. A ghost would make sense. Perhaps someone who once lived in the manor. It would also explain why it had sat empty for so many years, and the low price she paid for it. 

Adel tried to shake off the incidents but she couldn’t help feeling tight on the inside. She needed to relax, to calm her nerves and nothing helped better than a nice hot bath. Yes that would do. She deserved it after a long day of cleaning.

She filled the tub and slowly sunk herself in. She could feel the heat soothe her sore muscles from her extensive cleaning.  All thoughts of ghosts fled her mind, leaving her with ideas on how she wanted to redecorate the manor. Nothing over the top of course. She wanted to keep the manor’s Victorian aesthetic as much as possible. She closed her eyes and envisioned the changes in her mind. Some new light fixtures and rugs in the hall. Those torn curtains would need to be replaced . . .

Something hit the floor. Her eyes snapped open to find her tube of deodorant on the tile. She looked up at the counter, waiting to see if something else moved, her heart pounding hard, each beat echoing in her ears. 

Her hairbrush slid across the counter, slowly inching towards the edge until it abruptly stopped. Adel held her breath, waiting. She thought maybe she had just imagined it all, until the brush flung itself down to the floor.

Adel splashed water at the counter. She couldn’t say why she did it. She just needed to feel like she could do something to make whatever it was go away. The ghost yelped. Brief but sharp. Adel sunk deeper into the tub, as if it were a suit of armor. She waited for something else to happen, but nothing moved or made a sound. Whatever it was, she had scared it off. For now.

She climbed out of the tub and wrapped her bathrobe around herself. There was no denying it. There was a ghost in the manor. But whose ghost? Adel crept out into the bedroom, looking around for any signs of paranormal activity. Night had fallen. Nothing stirred, nothing moved. 

“Hello? Who are you? What do you want?”

Silence. 

Adel sighed. Now she really felt crazy. “Maybe I shouldn’t have moved in here by myself. I’m turning into an old hag who talks to herself.” 

She sat down on the bed, instinctively on the side she always slept on, back when she shared a bed with her husband. She looked over to the other side, where his body used to always be. She thought she had cried all of her tears for him, her sweet Henry, but they came again, soft at first, then a hard, weeping wail. She had pretended to be fine, that she liked being alone, but the truth was plain. She missed him dearly. She missed her children and grandchildren. She missed her home.

A soft, soothing rumble resonated beside her. At first, she found it comforting, until it dawned on her that she was in fact alone. Alone, except for the ghost. 

Adel leapt off the bed and backed into the dresser. She couldn’t see the ghost in the dark, but she sensed its presence. Her phone. She had left it there on the dresser while unpacking. She picked it up and turned it on, facing the bright screen toward the bed. There, two yellow eyes glinted back at her.

Adel screamed. She ran down the stairs, fleeing to the kitchen. She needed something to protect herself, though she had no idea what worked against ghosts. She looked around and found a cast iron skillet. Perfect. Only she had no idea where the ghost was. She needed something to give its appearance away. 

An idea came to her. It seemed silly, the sort of thing that only happened in movies, but she had nothing else to go on. She searched through the cupboards and pulled out a bag of flour. 

“Alright ghost where are you?”

Adel stood on high alert, eyes darting back and forth, searching for the slightest sign of the ghost. The manor sat in utter silence. She had never thought it to be so painful. She actually yearned for any sound to break it. Finally, she heard that rumble, coming towards her. 

Adel began to frantically throw the flour, hoping that she would land at least a few on the ghost, revealing it’s outline. Flour coated the floor and counters. No ghostly outline. She dropped the bag of flour and wept. All her efforts were useless. 

“Please let me be!” She cried out. “Haven’t I been through enough?” She shrank down to the floor and there, she saw what she had not noticed before. In the flour were paw prints. Small ones, the size of a cat’s. She sniffed back her tears and followed them around until they began to appear right in front of her.

“Are you . . . a cat?” She couldn’t say how, but she felt like the ghost was sitting right in front of her, staring at her. She reached out her hand. “Psp psp psp.” In a flash, the ghost made itself visible. 

A grey tabby bumped its head into her hand, purring. Adel moved her fingers under its chin and scratched there, earning a louder purr of delight. Her tears melted into laughter. She felt silly for being so afraid when it had only been a cat wanting attention. 

It all made sense now. The scratches, the curtain, the knocked over items. The cat must have been trying to comfort her on the bed, having heard her cries. She wrapped her hands around the gentle creature, and held him in her lap, petting its soft fur. The cat had no warmth to give, but it didn’t matter to Adel. She just needed something to touch, something to make her feel less alone. 

“I wonder. How does a cat become a ghost? What happened to you, love?”

The ghost cat looked up at her, and touched his nose to hers. In her mind’s eye, Adel could see the world from the cat’s perspective. She could tell she was seeing the past, though not much of the manor had changed. She saw flashes of a family who loved the cat, but also argued a great deal. The cat didn’t understand but Adel guessed it was about money troubles. Someone came and forced them out. They left behind all of their possessions, but most of all, they left behind their pet cat.

The cat waited for them to return. Waited and waited. Days went by. The cat curled up and died of a broken heart. It longed for it’s family so much that it’s spirit stayed, walking the halls of the manor, still hoping they would return. He would sit at the door, expecting any moment that they would come bursting in. Weeks went by. Months. Years.

One day, a family did arrive, and though they were not the cat’s original owners, the cat was  glad to no longer be alone. He followed them around the house, begging for attention, but the family left in fright, afraid of the ghost that haunted the manor. Another family moved in, but they too fled in fear. The cat began to think he would always be alone. Until Adel arrived. She had come by herself, wearing a heavy sadness. She too had lost someone dear.

The images in her mind vanished and Adel returned to the kitchen in the present. “You poor thing. Being here all alone all those years. Well not anymore. From now on, we’re pals, so long as you don’t go around destroying things alright?”

The cat chirped in reply. “Good. Now what to call you?’

The cat looked up at her and somehow, Adel knew his thoughts on the matter. “Henry. Yes, I think my husband would like that.”

Henry let out a soft meow of agreement. 

For the rest of their days, neither Adel or Henry were ever alone. Even when Adel took a bath, Henry lingered nearby. She no longer slept on her side of the bed, but right in the middle, with Henry curled up beside her. 

Adel never told anyone about the ghost cat. She figured no one would believe her or think she had gone senile. It was just as well. She liked having a little secret all to herself.

When long age settled into Adel’s bones, her children insisted she move in with them, but Adel refused. Henry could not leave the manor, and she would not go where he could not follow. Her daughter came to stay with her instead as a compromise. Day after day, Adel felt the life in her fade away, like a flower losing its petals one at a time. Until one day the last petal fell. 

She passed peacefully in her sleep with Henry at her side. Her spirit stood at the foot of the bed, looking back at her withered body. She barely recognised herself. In her spirit form, she looked like her twenties again. 

Adel thought perhaps she too would haunt the manor, but a brilliant white light beckoned down the hallway. When she looked at it, she felt warmth and peace wash over her. Somehow, she knew she was meant to go towards it.

Adel looked down at Henry who rubbed his chin on her legs. “Ready to go my friend?”

Henry let out a content meow and together they walked into the light.