The Glass Casket

I was eleven when my grandmother’s Siamese cat, Juniper, died. She was only three, and the vet said it was a sudden heart defect, something she was born with. I was devastated. Gran had raised her from a kitten, and Juniper was more a sister to me than a pet. We buried her in the backyard under the old apple tree, wrapped in Gran’s favorite yellow scarf, and I cried for days.

A few months later, I started sleeping with my aquarium light on. The blue glow made the water in my fish tank look like a piece of the night sky, and it kept the shadows at bay. I had always been afraid of the dark, but after Juniper, it got worse. I would lie in bed, listening to the hum of the filter, and imagine her padding across the floor, her ghostly form shaking the water in her bowl.

One night, I woke to a terrible cold. My teeth were chattering, and I couldn’t stop shivering. I checked my clock: it was almost one in the morning. The aquarium light was still on, but the room felt wrong, like the air itself had thickened. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and tried to calm my racing heart. Then I heard it: a soft patter, patter, like small feet on the hardwood floor. Juniper used to make that sound when she trotted down the hall.

I froze. The pattering stopped right beside my bed. I didn’t hear my door open, didn’t hear any creak, but I knew something was there. The mattress dipped on the right side, just enough to press down the blanket near my hip. I held my breath, my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for a cold nose or the brush of fur. The pressure stayed for a long moment, then vanished.

I sat up so fast I almost fell out of bed. The air was still cold. I looked toward the aquarium, and my heart stopped. The water was rippling, as if something had just been pulled out of it. And on the floor, where the light hit the wooden boards, there lay a single, wet paw print. It was already evaporating, leaving a dark, spreading stain that looked like a tear in the surface of the world.

I never slept with the aquarium light on again. But that night, I lay awake until dawn, listening to the water in the tank settle, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Juniper wasn’t gone. She had just changed shape, and she was waiting for the right moment to come back to me.