The Hollow Above

The morning of the Feast of Saint Isidore, I found my cat, Marmalade, dead on the gravel drive of our farmhouse, a single crimson thread trailing from her ear. She was a sturdy tabby, not prone to wandering, and the nearest road was half a mile away. My gut said it wasn’t a car. The neighbor’s boy, a sullen teenager with a slingshot, had been seen lurking near the fence. But I had no proof.

Grief gnawed at me, so I sought a woman in the nearby town, a reputed seer named Agnes. She smelled of dried lavender and old paper. Without preamble, she said, ‘Your creature was struck by a stone, thrown with malice. She died quick, but her spirit lingers, bound to the land.’ She paused, her eyes unfocused. ‘She’s not alone. There’s something else, something older, that’s taken a liking to her company.’

I returned home, unsettled. A week later, I began construction on a second story, converting the attic into a studio. The contractors cut large openings in the ceilings of the downstairs rooms to run ductwork, leaving yawning black rectangles above. I covered them with plastic sheeting, but the wind would often tug at the corners.

One evening, as dusk bled into night, I was reading in the living room, the only light a warm lamp. A sound came from above—a soft, rhythmic scratch, like claws on a hard surface. I froze. It came from the plastic-covered hole in the ceiling. I approached, heart thudding, and pulled the plastic aside. A face stared down at me. It was not human, but it was familiar: a lean, sharp-featured animal, with eyes that glowed faintly amber. It was not a cat. It was larger, sleek, with a wildness to it. It blinked slowly, then withdrew. I heard the patter of feet running across the new floorboards. I shouted, ‘Hey!’, but my voice echoed in the empty room. I scrambled up the ladder to the second story, but the room was bare, dust motes swirling in the beam of my flashlight. Nothing. No sign of any creature.

The scratching became a nightly ritual. It would start at the same hour, just after midnight. I would climb up, and always find nothing. The animal, if it was real, was somehow traversing the joists beneath the floor, slipping through impossibly narrow gaps. The construction workers said the floor was sealed. I began to doubt my senses.

Then, one night, I placed three solar garden lights on the lawn, their soft glow casting eerie shadows on the house’s white siding. I was watching from the window when a shape emerged from the dark field. It moved with a fluid grace, pausing at the edge of the light. It was the same creature, but now I saw it clearly: its coat was the color of dried blood, and its tail was long and tufted. It looked up at the house, directly at me, and opened its mouth. A sound came out, not a screech or a growl, but a series of clicking, chittering noises, almost like speech. Then it trotted to the base of the wall, where the new foundation met the old, and in a motion too swift to follow, it was gone, up the wall, through a gap no wider than a hand, and into the new second story.

I didn’t sleep that night. At dawn, I climbed to the second story with a hammer. There was a new hole in the wall, hidden behind a loose board. Inside, I found a nest of dried grass and animal hair, and in the center, a single, smooth stone, stained with something brown. I picked it up. It was warm. And from the hole, I heard a faint, familiar purr.