June 2023 short story: Black Cat

I’ve been wanting to write more fiction, so I set myself some prompts – random phrases that popped into my head – to inspire me to write something on a monthly basis. June’s prompt was ‘black cat’

The first time I saw it was when Grandma died. I didn’t make the connection at the time. I was only 7, and I didn’t really understand death back then. My parents used all the usual euphemisms: Grandma had ‘gone away’, she was ‘no longer with us’. I thought maybe she’d gone on holiday.

It was only when my best friend Holly confidently informed me that Grandma was dead that I realised she wasn’t coming back. Holly’s grandparents had died a few years earlier within months of each other so she considered herself something of an expert on the subject.

After that, though, I didn’t see it for years. Death doesn’t come calling that often when you’re a kid, not once you’ve lost both grandparents. There I go with the euphemisms, too. We can’t help ourselves can we?

I saw it again when I was 20. I was at university, studying economics at Newcastle. I loved that city; loved the Geordi accent. In summer term, at the weekend, a big group of us would take the Metro to Tynemouth and party on the beach at Long Sands all night. Drinking, lighting bonfires, sleeping on the sand. It wasn’t really allowed but we weren’t doing any harm.

It was during one of these wild weekends that I saw it again. A small black cat with bright green eyes just winding its way through the reclining bodies of drunk students. “Hey look!” I called out. “A cat. Hey kitty, kitty, kitty.” I clicked my fingers, hoping to entice the little furry thing over to me.

It was quite late and a lot of my friends were asleep, or passed out from too much booze. But the few who were awake glanced in the direction I’d indicated, only for a look of confusion to come into their faces.

“How drunk are you, Caz?” they asked. “There’s nothing there.” It was my turn to be confused. “What are you talking about? It’s right there.” I pointed directly at the cat. It turned to look at me with its big green eyes, but it resolutely ignored my attempts to befriend it. Typical cat. After a while it just turned around and wandered off. “Oh, it’s gone.” I assumed it had headed home, having found nothing to interest it in our little makeshift camp. There were mutters of “Whatever,” and “Yeah, right. Maybe drink some water.” But it was late and we were tired and drunk and we all just slipped into sleep without giving it any further thought.

I woke up just a couple of hours later at dawn to watch the sun come up over the sea. The bonfire had died out by then and it was chilly. But it was worth it to see the sunrise. I stood at the very edge of the water and watched as the sky turned purple then red, orange, pink and blue, with the ruins of Tynemouth Priory silhouetted in the background.

The others started waking up slowly, all in differing states of hungover-ed-ness. Slowly, we started clearing up our mess. It was only then that one of the boys called out “Hey, where’s Mike? Is he skiving off the tidying up?” There was half-hearted laughter at the weak joke. But the truth was Mike wasn’t the skiving off type. In fact the clean-up sessions were his idea. We owed it to the beach, and everyone else who wanted to use it, to leave it the way we found it, he had insisted. We’d all laughed and rolled our eyes at the time, of course, but we knew he was right and we’d always made a point of gathering up the empty bottles and takeaway detritus in big black bin bags and taking them away with us.

“Maybe he went to get breakfast,” someone suggested. But without saying something? Without asking if anyone else wanted anything? That wasn’t like Mike either. I was starting to feel uneasy. I remembered the black cat from the night before. Weren’t black cats supposed to be unlucky? I thought to myself. Or was it lucky? I could never remember. The clean-up operation was almost done. “Look, you guys finish up here,” I said. “I’ll go look for Mike.”

There wasn’t really much to look at. Long Sands is long, open, gently curving bay that’s easy to scan. Not like the more sheltered, rocky King Edward’s Bay under the priory. That’s the beach the surfers use. I figured I’d check there first. The tide was right out, making it possible to walk on the rocks between the two beaches, rather than having to go up to street level.

I knew as soon as I made it round to King Eddie’s Bay that something was wrong. A group of surfers was already there – planning on making the most of the early morning surf. But none of them were in the sea. Instead they were all huddled round a lump of, well, something at the water’s edge. I started running, a wild feeling of panic rising in my chest. I could barely breathe by the time I reached the surfers and not just because of the unwanted exercise of running in the sand.

I recognised Mike’s winter coat immediately. We’d all joked about it – how it wasn’t that cold in summer even in the north-east. But he’d wrapped himself up in it anyway.

The police were called, the beach cordoned off. We were all questioned and sent back to our student digs with orders not to leave Newcastle without telling the investigating officers. An inquest ruled the death ‘accidental’ and a few weeks later we were all at Mike’s funeral. That was the last time any of us partied all night on Long Sands.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about that cat. I was convinced the two things were connected. The cat that no one else could see and Mike’s death. It wasn’t a coincidence, I insisted to anyone who would listen, it meant something. “It means you’re fucking crazy,” Mike’s boyfriend said to me eventually. And I realised I had to stop talking about it.

Even then I didn’t make the connection with the cat I’d seen just before Grandma’s death. That came later. I’d graduated from Newcastle by then and had moved into a tiny flat in east London with Holly, my childhood best friend. We’d stayed in touch all those years and were so proud of still being friends. We drank a bottle of warm prosecco on our first night in that flat. The fridge wasn’t working, so it was the best we could do. The landlord had promised to sort it out within a week. We’ll never know if he did or not. Because that day I saw the cat again.

Our flat was the top floor in a converted house in a row of converted houses. Each one had a tiny front yard, barely big enough to hold the green and black bins needed for each apartment. A waist-height brick wall ran along the front, broken up at intervals with gates leading to each house. It was on this wall that the cat was sitting. It stared at me with those big green, unsettling eyes as I walked past on my way to the corner shop to get our wine. Holly was still in the flat, trying to find which of our many cardboard boxes held the wine glasses.

I hadn’t thought about Mike’s death for ages, but that cat’s deep green stare brought it all back to me. I shivered, suddenly cold all over, and hurried away to the shop. When I got back the cat was gone. “Have you seen a black cat hanging around?” I asked Holly over our first glass of prosecco. She frowned and shook her head. “Why?” She asked. I shrugged. “No reason. I just saw one on the wall outside and wondered who it belonged to.” I was trying to sound nonchalant, but Holly knew me too well. She heard the discomfort in my voice. “Come on Caz. What’s really going on?”

I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath and told her all about Mike and the cat, how no one believed me, but even now I was convinced it was no coincidence, and I definitely hadn’t been hallucinating. I expected her to laugh. To tell me I was being silly and to drink my wine. But she didn’t.

There was a silence as she mulled over what I’d said. Then: “Caz, do you remember when your grandma died?”

“Grandma?” The question confused me; I couldn’t see why it was relevant. “No, I was only 7.”

“You said the same thing back then. How this little black cat was following you around but it wouldn’t let you touch it. I looked for it for ages. I was jealous – I wanted my own cat to follow me around. I mean, we were 7. But there was no cat.”

Holly was deadly serious, I realised. Her voice quiet and calm. And I kind of did recall the cat. Over the years it had just slipped my mind.

Holly looked at me with her big brown eyes wide open. “It’s weird, right?” She had always been more into supernatural stuff than me, but I couldn’t help thinking she was right on this occasion. It was weird. I didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about what this particular appearance of the cat might mean.

I tried to smile, but it didn’t quite work. “Come on,” I said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating.” I held her glass out to her and she took it. By the time we’d finished the bottle that night we’d both forgotten about my black cat haunting. We went to bed happy; Holly to her attic room up a narrow, steep little flight of stairs, me to my smaller, but mercifully first floor room.

I got up late the next day. Holly and I had planned to go shopping together, but not till the afternoon, so I made the most of it being Sunday morning and had a lie-in. It was after 10 by the time I left my room. And that’s when I saw her, lying there in a crumpled heap at the bottom of those steep, narrow stairs.

I lost it when I saw the body. I was screaming so loudly that the woman in the flat below came running upstairs and started hammering on the door. I managed to let her in, to calm down enough to tell her what had happened. She was great. She took me downstairs to her own kitchen and made me a cup of tea with three sugars in. She phoned the emergency services. It was the second time in my young life that I’d had to speak to the police about the death of a friend; I was just as useless this time as the first. But at least I had the wherewithal when they asked me what I meant by screaming ‘It was that cat, that cat did this’ to answer that I didn’t know and couldn’t even remember saying it. The second part at least was true.

It turns out Holly was a sleepwalker. She’d got up some time in the night and unwittingly opened her bedroom door and tumbled down those unfamiliar stairs. I don’t know if she’d died immediately or if she’d laid there for hours, in pain and trying desperately to reach me somehow.

Of course, Holly knew she sleepwalked and that it might be a problem. She’d asked the landlord to put a lock on her door but he didn’t think it was important. There was a criminal investigation and a court case, but there was no evidence that Holly had explained why she needed the lock so they couldn’t show negligence. Holly’s parents brought a civil case. They won that one, but it broke them. It broke me too. I went back to live with my parents, unable to look after myself.

I stopped going out, stopped seeing friends, couldn’t go to work. Unsurprisingly, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. The antidepressants I was prescribed didn’t seem to help at all. Being signed off work just meant I laid in my childhood bed all day staring up at the ceiling. I tried counselling, but the thing I was truly afraid of – seeing that cat again and what it would mean – was the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to talk about.

That was two years ago. In all that time I haven’t left the house. I’ve barely left my bedroom. My mum brings me food, leaving it outside the locked door. She knocks quietly and then waits. Eventually I’ll hear her sigh and walk away. I sometimes then unlock the door, take in the tray with whatever she’s made and eat a few mouthfuls before putting it back outside the door. Mostly I just ignore it. I’m rarely hungry these days.

I figured this was the only way I could protect myself, the only way I could ensure I’d never see that cat again. But I was wrong. It showed up last night, sitting there on my windowsill, silently staring at me with those big green eyes. I started to cry. I’ve been waiting all day to hear Mum’s heavy footsteps up the stairs as she comes to inform me who’s died this time. But she hasn’t come. I can hear her and Dad going about their business. Every other time the death has happened within a few hours of the cat’s appearance. But this time, there’s been nothing. When I look in the mirror and see my dark-ringed eyes and my thin, wasted cheeks I think I understand what’s going to happen. I think I welcome it.