Midnight
No one in the development of Indian Mountain Lakes keeps cats anymore—not after what happened to my family.
It began one October, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones. One morning, we found a cat on our doorstep: pitch-black fur, yellow eyes that glowed like candlelight, and a collar with no name. It meowed, walked inside as though it belonged, and curled up by the fire. I named it Midnight.
That’s when things started. Lights flickered. Footsteps echoed through empty rooms. Scratches appeared high on the walls, far above where a cat could ever reach. At first, we laughed it off as strange coincidences. But then Midnight died.
I found him myself—lying on the porch, body still warm, neck twisted unnaturally. We buried him under the rose bush in the garden. I cried for days. But the next morning, Midnight was back. Whole. Alive. Sitting at the window, watching us eat breakfast. No one said a word. I opened the door, and he walked in like nothing had ever happened.
We pretended not to question it. Maybe we buried the wrong cat. Maybe we had imagined it. But then it happened again. This time, I found him under my bed, chest crushed as if something had stomped on him. We buried him again, deeper this time, behind the shed. And again, he returned.
It never stopped. He would die—burned, drowned, sliced open—and each time, he came back the next morning. Perfectly whole. Always watching. Always waiting.
By the sixth time, Father had stopped sleeping. Mother muttered prayers constantly. I wouldn’t go near Midnight anymore. Because by then, he had started whispering to me when no one else could hear.
"Only three left," he purred.
That night, Father tried to end it. He tied a stone to Midnight and threw him into the river. But in the morning, the cat was waiting at the door, wet footprints trailing all the way to my room.
"Only two left," he whispered.
Our neighbors noticed how wrong my family looked. Pale, hollow-eyed, distant. One day, the house burned down. People said it was an accident.
But I was the only one who survived. They found me barefoot in the road, my hands bloodied, clutching the black cat. I was humming a lullaby, and Midnight purred in my arms.