The Violet Bottle

I’ve lived at 13 Ravenwood Lane for nearly eight years now, ever since I was eight and my parents brought us here from the city. I’m turning sixteen on New Year’s Eve, which feels like an eternity away. The house is an old Victorian with peeling wallpaper and a staircase that creaks even when no one’s on it, but we’ve made it our own. When I was younger, I’d hear soft thuds and whispers at night, but I blamed it on the draft or our two cats, Marmalade and Pepper. Now we have four: Marmalade, Pepper, Ash, and Binx. The weirdness started about a year ago, and it’s been escalating.

It began with a tiny bottle of violet food coloring, one of those decorative ones you put on a shelf for color. It sat high up on my bookshelf, next to my collection of perfume bottles and nail polishes, far above any cat’s reach. One afternoon, I came back from school and found it lying on my bedroom floor, the cap off, and the deep purple liquid completely gone, leaving only a faint stain on the carpet. The shelf is over six feet high, and nothing else was disturbed. Marmalade is the only cat brave enough to jump that high, but she would have knocked over my precious ‘Eau de Magnolia’ at least. I told my mom, but she just said it must have been a draft, and I let it go.

Months passed, and I almost forgot about it. Then, just last week, things started happening more frequently. I’d be in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, and the faucet would turn on by itself, the water running cold for exactly three seconds before stopping. I’d spin around, expecting to see someone, but no one was there. My cats started acting strange, too. Ash, who’s normally aloof, would sit in the corner of my room, staring at a patch of wall with wide, dilated eyes, his tail twitching. He’d growl softly at nothing. The other cats would refuse to enter my room altogether, flattening their ears and hissing when I tried to bring them in.

Two days ago, I was in the living room when I heard a loud crash from the bathroom. I ran in, heart pounding, and found the mirror cabinet swung open, the glass shelf shattered on the floor, and a bottle of my mother’s lavender oil in pieces, the oil pooling like a dark purple wound. The cat? All four were in the kitchen, meowing for dinner. There was no way they could have done that.

My room feels different now, like there’s a pressure in the air, a subtle wrongness. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to find my door cracked open, though I always close it before sleeping. And last night, I found a small puddle of what looked like violet ink on my desk, even though I own no ink. It evaporated before I could touch it.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried talking to my parents, but they just say it’s an old house with creaks and drafts. I’ve scoured the internet for explanations, from carbon monoxide to ghosts, but nothing fits. The cats know something I don’t. Ash refuses to sleep on my bed anymore, and whenever I look at the spot on the floor where the bottle fell, I feel as if I’m being watched. I’m starting to worry it might be tied to me, to this house, to something that’s been here longer than I have. And I’m terrified to find out what it wants.