I know I said this blog was going to be about fixing up an old Victorian place, with lots of "how to" and "how I did it" kinds of posts, but spooks are something you can't just ignore.
So to the point. Coming in from a visit to Home Depot, Goose made an alarming "Oh oh" sound. Now I'm pretty much in a perpetual fog anymore so it required her grabbing me by the nape of my neck and rubbing my face in it before I glimmered onto the piles of feathers scattered about the house. First thought of course was that one of the cats got the parakeet, but even I noticed that the feathers were black while the "Keet" is yellow. Closer inspection also revealed drops and small spatters of blood on the floors and even some walls. Obviously there'd been a slaughter here!
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| Artists recreation of the Hideous Evil Crow |
Where did it come from (besides Hell)? How did it get in? And where were the cats? Questions with no obvious or rational answers.
But pieces of the puzzle were coming together. With an eye trained for color, Goose noted that the purple splatters around the house were distinctly similar to an abundance of berries blossoming in the backyard and the pieces of 'stuff' could easily pass for berry seeds. Crow shit? Splattered around the house? Piles of feathers and a crow in the laundry room? Far from slaughter, this spoke of an epic battle, Feline vs Avian, careening from room to room, bold cats defending their home from this hellish intruder. But what to do with the crow? We opened the laundry room window but the malevolent creature refused to leave. Finally gathering my manhood I backed the feathered demon into a corner and grabbed it with my bare hands. After a bout of fierce staring at each other, I flung the crow out the open window and Goose and I both felt the weight of pure evil lift from our shoulders.
Just then we heard a faint 'croaking' sound which is what passes for a 'meow' from Kitty and she and Bert the Cat both emerged from under the bed where they had been cowering.
Still, the question of where the crow came from remained unanswered. Did it come in through the cat door with evil intentions? Did Mewbert stun it outdoors and drag it in only to have it recover while she laid there in self satisfied smugness?
Or was it something else? There are odd corners in this house. Strange geometries that serve only to baffle and confuse. Do these arcane and labyrinthine corridors lead to eldritch Lovecraftian landscapes? Passageways for evil incarnate in the form of a crow to enter? Will we ever know?
We did put a cafe table in the pop-out window area of the dining room so that I could enjoy a frosty martini overlooking Mill Creek at the end of the day and that's exactly what I was doing when the next incident occurred. You'll note the foreshadowing here: Gin soaked cats and martinis. Yes, something is afoot, and I don't think it's natural.
But anyway, Goose and I were indeed relaxing at the end of the day. Dinner was over and I was basking in a mild alcohol glow induced by one of her fabulous dry martinis ( Dolin Vermouth and New Amsterdam Gin mixed in secret, well guarded proportions). I was about to reply to a question about the day when a crash from the front room made us sit up and stare at each other. No one else was in the house, but sure enough a quick run into the front room found the lid to the cocktail shaker rolling around on the floor in front of the bar.
Now this in itself is not enough to indicate the presence of spooks. Things do occasionally fall to the floor of their own accord and there are perfectly natural explanations, or so argued Goose the rationalist. Me, I'm not so sure, but read on and see what you think.
Settling back down, we started on a spirited discussion about spirits and multi-dimensional beings and our varying encounters with either. I'd had some trying experiences back in the 60's-70's and was busy recollecting those days when out of the corner of my eye I noticed something odd. Our cat Kitty, normally mild mannered and for the most part fearful of just about everything, was perched about four feet away on the back of the sofa staring in our general direction with a mindless sort of catlike intent. Without warning, she leapt at the table, crashing into my martini glass sending gin and glass shards everywhere. Just as she hurled herself, the stereo which had been humming along with our favorite Pandora mix fell into awesome silence.
Alright. We jumped. We squawked. We stared in amazement as kitty, who would never ever jump across four feet of space slunk off, her tail dripping with gin.
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| Kitty recreates the martini incident |
Now you can rationalize this as the Goose did (even though she spent the rest of the night on the couch with the TV on). You can say that Kitty is upset and bothered by her new surroundings, that she needed our attention to comfort her right at that moment when the receiver mysteriously switched inputs, silencing itself for no reason. Laugh it off if you want to. But I've seen this before. I've watched Paranormal Activity and the Blair Witch Project and a dozen other movies just like them. Yes, it always starts with something trivial and a little silly. It always starts with the rational explanations and the laughter and belittling the more sensitive character. But sure as shit, it always ends with one of the principals being dragged off into a black, soulless inter-dimensional hell while the other lies face down on the floor, the camcorder grinding on recording his blank, staring, dead face.
So there you have it. Is Goose right? Is it all just nonsense? Time will tell, my friends. If there are future posts, then all is well and good. But if there are no others after this... Well, you decide for yourself what happened.
Live Long and Prosper,
Fish
