The Phantom Visitor Read online

tom Visitor

  Tropical storms at our beachfront home in Stanley are dramatic. On one storm evening I came home early to witness the vast expanse of sky and sea change. Clouds rolled in, getting darker and darker, lightning struck and thunder slammed. The sliding glass doors shivered with every onslaught.

  As I was about to open the door I became aware of an unusual scent, not the usual jasmine perfume. Something alien, mouldy. The next flash of lightning and thunder was followed by a loud hiss as if from a giant snake. I dropped my bunch of keys. The hiss was my imagination, I thought. Bending down to retrieve it, I experienced a nasty shock. An animal paw shot out at me from the flowering bush. The paw disappeared just as quickly as it had come. I froze for a few seconds. My heart began to beat wildly. I peered into the bush and saw an animal hidden in the rampant plant, two glistening eyes focused on me. Another loud hiss and an eerie fiendish yowl followed the next thunderclap. I could now see it was a very large cat in the bush. My terrified immobility frightened him too, I think. A couple of seconds later it took off in a mad slalom in and out of bushes, avoiding all garden impediments, and into the twilight. It fled in terror of me or the storm I was not sure. But it disappeared.

  About a week later I’d forgotten the wild animal incident. I returned home, this time not to a storm-threatened evening. I was caught unawares by the animal again. The grey malevolent brute with filthy matted lumpish fur. Again as I was about to open the door it gave a loud hiss. And this time the hiss was followed by a couple of yowls, sounding like a complaint, as if I were the intruder on my porch. The best I could do was to ignore the creature, open the door and go in quickly. I shut the door behind me before it could follow me in. I realized I was still afraid of it. But later that night I took courage and slipped out to look for it. It had gone.

  The next day when my friend Mai called I mentioned the incident with the giant cat.

  She said, ‘Be careful. Have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Why,’ I asked.

  ‘Aiyaa! Don’t you know? Devil ghost. They appear on stormy nights. Everyone in Hong Kong knows that. Your area is known to be haunted.’

  ‘Haunted, I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘All those war dead.’

  ‘All what war dead?’

  ‘The Japanese soldiers. World War Two. They killed many innocents.’

  ‘Oh, come on, surely you don’t believe in ghosts.’

  ‘If the brute comes and asks to be let in around midnight, don’t open the door.’

  ‘Hey, hey, stop it! Now you are freaking me out.’

  ‘Just be careful.’

  We chatted for a bit and she hung up.

  But in spite of Mai’s version of the visitor and her warning, I was a little bit disappointed when I did not see the creature the next few evenings. I began to miss the ghost. But I needn’t have worried. It soon reappeared. It stayed in the bushes, alert, but I was still a little afraid of it. With my friend’s warning ringing in my ears I opened the door nervously, fearing that at any moment the animal might just leap out and go in through the door. That night I left out a bowl of crackers crushed in soy milk, the only things I could find in my home in the way of cat food.

  The phantom cat appeared from time to time. I never saw it during the day, but its visits became more frequent and soon it was there in the bush every evening. I got proper cat food, dry crunchy stuff and cans of fishy stuff. I started leaving food out for it every morning before I went to work and in the evenings when I got back. I never saw it eat but the bowl was empty morning and night.

  I decided to make friends with Mr Cat. When I arrived home from work I started dropping my bunch of keys close to the jasmine bush so when I bent to pick it up I could make some kind of connection – and I continued dropping it, a little closer to him each time but not close enough that he could claw me. I started setting my bag down close to him and sometimes I dropped my jacket, allowing a bit of it fall on him. He stayed very still and watched my performances with great patience.

  I looked forward to coming home to see if Mr Cat was there. He never disappointed me. I continued to feed him. He seemed quite relaxed. The haunted, hungry look in his eyes disappeared. Soon it was he who came closer to me, and it wasn’t long before Mr Cat was spending more and more of his daylight hours by the jasmine bush and he began eating his meals openly.

  From behind the glass door I watched him. He had begun to clean himself, pulling his tongue across his long fur and tearing into the knots, a small section at a time. One day I left the door slightly ajar and it did not take Mr Cat long to sniff around the open door. He was cautious and made a quick exit after his first inspection. I left the door open again and kept well out of his view, fearing any slight movement on my part might be seen as aggression.

  Little by little over the next four weeks we became good friends. When I next reported these happenings to Mai, she said, ‘You are taking a risk. Are you certain it is not a ghost?’

  ‘This is not a ghost cat.’

  ‘It’s possible he’s hypnotised you.’

  ‘Mai, you’re one crazy woman.’

  She was not about to give up. ‘Okay I believe you, it probably really is a homeless cat. But be careful, those stray animals carry diseases.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. Don’t worry. He’s quite healthy.’

  She laughed and said, ‘This cat I’ve got to meet.’

  ‘Come on over.’

  ‘I’m coming over but I am keeping well away from the animal.’

  ‘Why? Don’t you like cats?’

  ‘Cats, yes, but this one I am not so sure. You’re certain you saw it in the daytime?’

  ‘He more or less lives on the patio. Come and see for yourself.’

  Mai left for Korea on one of her business trips and did not get around to visiting me for another two weeks.

  Not only did Mr Cat move in, he took over. First he slid in and rather cautiously walked about the house checking out every nook and corner to make sure there were no other residents. Except for the odd cockroach, lizard and spider, I had no other animal visitors.

  Having satisfactorily conducted his inspection of the house he moved in but only during the day. He did not rub himself against me, the human. His mistrust of humans had diminished but not gone completely. He rubbed himself against the furniture, his favourite the white linen sofa. He began staying in more often, slept on the best chair in the house, and when awake went through long cleaning sessions, especially cleaning his face. Licking his paw, he wiped it over and over and up and down and around his face. He spent most of the day eating, sleeping and grooming. His long fur was now silky smooth and almost white.

  When Mai returned from her trip she paid us a visit. Mr Cat raced out to meet her as if she was his good friend. Mai stood fearlessly by the door. Forgetting he could be a devil that hypnotised me, she fell in love with him.

  She squatted down to pet him. ‘Oh, Jean, you did not tell me he is cute. He is so huge he could be a dog. And, oh, he’s so pretty.

  ‘Don’t let him hear that. I don’t think he’d like being called pretty.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind taking him home. He makes a lovely pet.’

  ‘He’s Mr Wild Outdoors, not a pretty pet for a tenth floor apartment,’ I said a little peevishly.

  She chatted to him in Cantonese. Mr Cat studied her face intently. Listened with concentration to what she said.

  Traitor cat, I thought. She’s the one who wanted me to have nothing to do with you, Mr Cat, and now you’re treating her like your best friend.

  ‘He’s became very good at making his wishes known. He insists on being fed three times a day, and will only drink water from a running tap at the kitche
n sink. He complains when I talk on the telephone and insists I turn the television volume down low.’

  ‘He’s a talking cat, almost human,’ said Mai.

  ‘I think he is bilingual. I talk to him in English and he listens to me with the same concentration that he’s showing listening to you. He talks back with deep rumbles in his throat, like a tiger.’

  ‘Really, he has not said a word to me yet.’

  At the end of her visit, Mai said, ‘He’s certainly taken over your home and your heart.’

  ‘Yes, he lords it here.’

  Mai was gone again for another few weeks. She telephoned me as soon as she returned from her trip. Choking back tears I said, ‘I have something to tell you about Mr Cat.’ My friend must have realized it was serious. ‘I’m coming over right now,’ she said. She arrived within half an hour. I told her the story.

  ‘He would leave about ten every night and return at six in the morning. To this day I have no idea where he went, or where he slept on rainy or cold nights. He was a cat of many secrets.

  ‘Thunder was the one big weakness of my otherwise fearless friend. He was terrified of thunder and never came out from under the bed until it stopped. But for a cat afraid of thunder he loved water. He liked walking about in drizzle. He leapt about in the garden when the sprinkler was on and then came in looking like a wet rag.

  ‘And the only human food he craved was ice cream. In return he brought me gifts, left them on the living room rug: A fat luminescent garden lizard, tail missing and still alive but only just. A freshly dead rat, no markings on its body, probably expired of a heart attack. And birds. Birds were his favourite gifts, always with their insides clawed out, feathers bloody, eyes sharp and pleading.’

  Mai let me talk without interrupting. I must have stopped for she said, ‘Go on. Where is he now?’

  ‘It’s two weeks now since the incident took place. I heard this hiss and spit, growl and caterwaul on the patio. When I came to the door I found my neighbour trying to disentangle her two dogs that looked pretty mangled. They should have been on leashes, I thought. She said over her shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, your cat is very brave. He’s only protecting his territory. My two boys shouldn’t have strayed in.’

  ‘No sooner had she dragged her dogs away Mr Cat bolted into the house. When I came in he was lying on the Tibetan rug, eyes open. But he was gone.’

  Mai said, ‘Gone! He died just like that, so fast, no wounds, no bleeding’

  ‘No, nothing. It was as if he lay there asleep.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible shock. You must miss him terribly.’

  ‘Yes I do. But sometimes I also feel he’s still here with me.’ I trailed off.

  Mai broke into my thoughts. ‘You know what I’d call him?’

  I looked at her.

  ‘Thak Sing Sin Sang.’

 

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Mr Victorious. He overcame his fears.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  End