The Mysterious Happenings at the Curious Cat

The Curious Cat bookshop on the corner of Wilmer and Doxx is haunted.

No, really, that’s what all their customers rave about in the reviews. Books fly off the shelves unprovoked, cups leap from the line up at the cafe, and during the holiday months, their lone Christmas tree doesn’t stand a chance before all of the decorations are found strewn across the carpet.

“It’s a lingering spirit who has a vendetta against Christmas!”

“It’s a restless author seeking revenge on the modern publishing world!”

“It’s just a cat,” he tries to tell them. A tiny tuxedo, to be exact, but nobody believes him.

“I’ve never seen a cat here before,” they argue, stubborn as the general public tends to be. “It’s a poltergeist!”

Louis sighs and hands them their receipt. “Yup, it’s a poltergeist. Have a good day.”

He really shouldn’t complain. He’s just the seasonal hire around here and this ‘ghost’ has brought in more publicity than any graphic design art slapped together by AI ever could. The horror section was constantly run through to the bare bones and people have traveled from all over Canada to experience a real life haunting. They’ve even had some famous boy band reject paranormal investigator and his traveling camera crew spend the night here before, claiming that all of the rumored activity could be a sign of a potential Gateway to Hell. Their episode of the Curious Cat bookshop went viral for reasons that completely escaped Louis’ comprehension.

All this fuss over a stupid cat’s shenanigans.

“Is your sole purpose in life to torment me?” he asks the mischievous little feline resting on the counter beside him. The creature trills happily at being acknowledged, knocks his favorite mug of cold tea to the floor, and darts back to the dusty corners of the shop to hide from any potential witnesses. He sighs again. What a nuisance.

“Are you alright, boy?” The bookshop owner, Mr. Daevis, an elderly gentleman with gray hair, pauses in his efforts to put on his coat. “Not seeing ghosts again, are you?”

“Of course not, sir.” This ‘haunting’ was really getting to his head.

“Yes, well, I’m off to my appointment. Don’t forget to lock up.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to escort you, sir?”

“I’m old, Louis, not decrepit. Don’t patronize me.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Mr. Daevis stares at him like he might say something more, always on the brink of some monumentally tantalizing confession, before he inevitably decides against it. He walks out the door without another look back. It’s no secret that his health is failing him. Louis has noticed it more and more with each passing day. A dropped pen here followed by a long sigh there. He just hopes when the time finally arrives that the old man won’t be too proud to ask for his help.

~~~~~~

The door bursts open.

“Sir, wait!” A young man stumbles onto the roof in a panic.

“Get out of here,” the elderly gentleman standing on the ledge doesn’t even bother to turn around. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“We can talk about this!”

“I’m tired of talking about it. There’s nothing left to talk about. I’ve reached a dead end. I’ve no more motivation, no more passion, no more drive. I haven’t even got any friends left alive. This is for the best.”

“I’m your friend, sir!” Louis staggers forward, adamant. There’s a desperate look in his eyes as he reaches for the older man’s sleeve. “We can work through this together. Your disease doesn’t have to win. Not like this. We can figure it out, I can figure it out!”

“You are far too young to understand how powerless we truly are to such things. This is not your burden to bear.” He jumps with no hesitation. Louis tries to catch him and misses. He screams, watching his late boss plummet to the pavement below.

The door bursts open.

“Sir, wait!”

“You’re watchin’ this again? Ain’t you got nothin’ better to do, old man?”

Mr. Daevis sits on the abandoned roof of an old car garage, watching his young seasonal hire stumble about in a misplaced panic. He hears his own voice; “Get out of here. This doesn’t concern you.”

A man with bedraggled hair sits next to him, yawning. “Feelin’ sorry for yourself, huh? I get it. You’re still pretty fresh but you’ll get over it. He might not, but you will, probably.”

The old man sighs, clenching wrinkled fists. That’s not it…

He watches his own death. He listens to the seasonal hire scream. He rewinds.

The door bursts open.

“Sir, wait!”

“Why did you jump, Lin?”

Lin stretches, nonchalant and unbothered. “Dunno. Just felt like it, I guess. Don’t really remember.”

He’s never gotten a straight answer out of him. “There must be something keeping you here on this roof, after all this time. Some kind of last regret or dying wish.”

“Hmm,” Lin hums. He leans back to turn his face up towards the starry night sky. “Guess I regret not askin’ that cute cashier out onna date. Real bummer. She had great tits.”

Lin never takes anything seriously.

The door bursts open.

“Sir, wait!”

“As much as I enjoy eternal despair and suffering, you’re really harshing my vibes, old man.” Lin lumbers to his feet, shuffles away, and vanishes into thin air. Still, Mr. Daevis knows he hasn’t gone far. They can’t leave this roof, after all. The door is solid steel and hasn’t opened since the building got condemned. Despite what people believe, he’s long since learned that ghosts can’t just wander about wherever they pleased. They can’t reach out, or touch, or push, or pull. They can’t do much of anything at all except wait. Powerless.

He watches the scene of his death play out again and again, repeated on an endless loop, searching for something amongst all of the familiar details.

The door bursts open.

He listens for Louis’ voice, eyes hazy and unfocused, but is only met with silence.

Instead, a woman staggers onto the roof. She’s wearing a well-fitted dress, a pair of fancy shoes, one with a broken heel, and her hair is disheveled. She teeters precariously, catching her balance on the banister. How did she manage to get past the security guard downstairs?

“Where do ya think you’re goin’?” A husky man follows her. “You’re drunk, Mia.”

“No,” the woman refutes with a weak shake of her head. She sure looks drunk. She can hardly stand upright and her eyes are blinking slow like she can’t be bothered to keep them open. “Barely had a glass… you did som’thin… wha–what’d you do?”

“I ain’t done nothin,” the man barks, hostile and bristling defensively. He advances with a strange, malicious glint in his eyes. “Let me take ya home. It’s not safe for you to be out here all alone, pretty girl like you”

“Stay ‘way from me,” the woman slurs. She finds the ledge through her haze. “I’ll jump.”

“You crazy bitch!” The man grabs for her.

Mr. Daevis knows that he’s powerless; a pathetic bystander to the lives of those around him, but he can’t just sit back and watch this young woman be assaulted. He won’t.

Despite the lingering phantom pains of his bad hip, something distant forces him to lunge. Miraculously, his hands feel the solid form of the man’s shoulders when he bumps into him. He latches on and pushes. The drunkard stumbles, staggers, teeters and sways in slow motion. He continues to reach for the young woman as a means to steady himself. She moves out of his way and lets him fall, just like Mr. Daevis had fallen all those years ago.

If there were screams to be heard, Mr. Daevis is unaware of them as he stares at his own hands in disbelief. It worked. He had actually done something. Something that mattered. A rush of excitement leaps through his veins. In a moment of adrenaline-induced fervor, he turns towards the heavy door next to where Lin has reappeared, standing with a gaped mouth.

“Holy shit,” he exclaims in awe. “You just totally killed that guy.”

That hardly seemed the point right now.

Mr. Daevis approaches the door, holding whatever breath there was left for ghosts to hold. His palms would be sweating if they could still do such a thing as he reaches for the handle.

The door opens.

“Thank you.” A woman’s voice quivers weakly in the wind.

He doesn’t bother to hear her.

~~~~~~

On the eve of the 7th anniversary of Mr. Daevis’ death, he shows up at the Curious Cat’s front door. Louis looks at him like he’s just seen a ghost because, quick frankly, he has. Mr. Daevis was pronounced dead on impact at the scene. Louis confirmed his body at the morgue after a grueling interview with the police. He saw his face in the casket at the funeral. And now, he was seeing it again, gaunt and white, staring at him through the window marred with pink markers declaring the cafe’s daily specials.

“Holy shit.”

“Pardon?”

Louis startles, promptly reminded of the very nice young woman sitting at the table across from him. Darlene, he thinks her name was, though he could hardly remember. All of the women on those dating apps start to blend together after a while.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, standing formally. Mr. Daevis is gesturing for him out of the corner of his eye and it’s incredibly distracting. “This was great – you’re great. I just remembered I was meant to… meet with my boss?”

Before she can contradict him or call him on his bluff, Louis grabs his coat and rushes from the cafe. He scans the street where he had last seen Mr. Daevis standing; the fresh snow marred with tracks from the daily foot traffic.

“Sir?” he whispers like a secret.

A passing couple gives him a funny look like he’s gone mad. Maybe he has.

After a moment of searching, he finally spots the ghastly figure of Mr. Daevis floating about the aisles in the bookshop.

“It still looks the same,” Mr. Daevis relays when Louis rushes to join him. “Like nothing has changed.”

“I took over management after you…” died? “Sir, how–?”

“I’m not sure I could explain it to you, even if I knew.” Mr. Daevis turns to him with urgency. “You took over management?”

“Yes, sir, I’m sorry but I–”

“Excellent,” Mr. Daevis darts about in an excitable flurry. “I’ve been overcome with new ideas. Things that will really make this place stand out. You’ll help me, won’t you, Louis?”

“I–” Louis is at a loss for words. “Of course, sir.”

“The rumors will finally be true,” Mr. Daevis grins, overcome by newfound enthusiasm. “We really will have a ghost.”

And a ghost is exactly what they had. Mr. Daevis haunted the historical literature section of the Curious Cat, dropping books with inexperienced ghostly hands, passing through customers with no spatial awareness at all, leaving them consumed by a chilly draft full of sensory cobwebs, muttering to himself about ways in which they could improve the shop, his whispers echoing like a lingering tingle shivering up people’s spines. Louis has never seen him this involved in his work before. He supposed that dying was one way to reignite an old spark of passion.

He was so distracted with this thought that he failed to stop that damn cat from knocking over the stack of newly returned books that he had just finished alphabetizing. They scattered to the floor before the cat took off to find something else to ruin. He sighs. When will this torment stop?

“You know, cats wreak havoc where they feel most comfortable.” A woman browsing the postcards glances coyly in his direction. “He must consider this place home.”

“Huh?” She actually saw the cat? Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as he believed.

“Is he the curious cat?”

“I suppose he is,” Louis humors her, like any good salesman giving a pitch. “He’d like that title, I’m sure.”

“What’s his name?”

“Oh, he doesn’t have one.”

“Everyone ought to have a name,” she reprimands him sternly. “For example, I’m Mia.”

He knew she looked familiar. She was that woman from the news; the one they say pushed that drunk man to his death. The lab results confirmed that she had drugs in her system but people still argue the credibility of her story, stupid as the general public tend to be.

“I’m Louis.”

The tiny tuxedo trills curiously from its hidden crevices.

“And that is… Mischief.”

Mia smiles, a pretty thing. “What a wonderfully perfect name.”

An elderly granny waves Louis down with the latest romance novel at the till before he can respond. He braces himself to endure the running bit and starts ringing her up. “Good evening ma’am, I hope our resident ghost didn’t bother you too much today.”

“Do you think I’m daft, boy?” the old woman banters with a wistful shake of her head. “There’s nothing supernatural about this store. Everyone knows it’s just the cat.”

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Mia covers her mouth with her hand to hide her laughter, and for some reason, Louis feels caught.

“The gig is up, sir!” he calls out to the ghastly figure looming somewhere in the other aisles.

“Who are you talking to?” Mia’s head cocks sideways.

Louis’ blood runs cold at the directness of such a question. Sure, someone may have finally acknowledged the cat, but there’s no way she could know about Mr. Daevis, could she?

She laughs, as if letting him off the hook. “I’m just kidding.”

But there’s a look in her eyes that makes him wonder if she really is.

Still, whether she is or isn’t, wasn’t really any of his concern, he decides in that moment, because they shared something else that was far more important. They shared the same kind of story. The kind that no one would ever believe.