We were giving the kids a bath when the lights in the bathroom went off by themselves. Sheila and I looked at each other in the dimness and laughed.

Funny, I said. Whats weird is the hallway lights are on. In fact, no other lights are off upstairs. Ive never seen that.

Our house was new to us and we were still discovering it. I bought this house on the island for my new corporate job. I commuted to the mainland every day on a ferry.

Its not that weird, Sheila said, as she scrubbed chocolate pudding off of Isaac’s chest. Our kids were playing with their toys in the bathtub. My wife was a perennial skeptic. We always argued about the existence of the supernatural, afterlife, God, etc. She used logic and facts for her opinions, while I sided with my intuition, usually.

We probably have some bad wiring, she said. In the attic.

The next time the lights went off, we were in the kitchen. And again, only in the kitchen. And again, it was raining. I looked at my wife and laughed. This is a little harder to explain. I said. I ran up to the bathroom where the lights had first gone off. I checked. Those lights worked. I came back downstairs again, feeling perplexed. I looked into my wifes puffy eyes and stoic face. Well, the lights in the kids bathroom work just fine. Its just the room we are in.

Ooooh. How scary! Hah. She rolled her eyes. Dont worry hon, I am sure there’s a good explanation. Wiring is tricky, she said. Every house has its problems.

Yup, I am ok with that. We can fix that.

Its probably an animal living in our attic, she said.

Later my wife and I were reading in bed. My wife said, hon, I know you are ruminating right now. But think about it, this is a new house. We know the only other people who owned this house, and they are nice. And they aren’t Satanists or anything.

You don’t know that, I said.

I don’t think Satan worshipers are so granola she said. Or so liberal.

OK, fine, I was thinking about it. Indians have lived on Bainbridge for thousands of years, probably. We don’t know much, but we know there was a lot of super violent bloody battles. Just for occupation of this island. Long before white folks got here. We might be living in scene of a bloody battleground. For all we know. We just have no idea.

Maybe she said.

———————————————————-

A month later I returned from work and my wife greeted me at the door almost bashful.

Hiya sweetie! Its great to be greeted at the door, I have to say. But whats wrong?

Hiya! Well, something happened today.

Uh, boy. I trudged in, exhausted from my long commute. I dropped my bag, and fell on the couch. Something good?

I heard a voice today. In the kitchen.

What?

Alex was at school and Ikey in day care. I was just finishing cleaning up the kitchen, when i heard a mans voice. He sounded young. And friendly. He said,

Hi. How was lunch?

It didnt sound spooky, cept i was scared there was a man in the house. I thought maybe it was a contractor working at the neighbors house who maybe got lost. But I looked all over the house, every room. I looked outside. There wasn’t anyone! Then I walked to the neighbors house, and there was no-one there, Sandy was probably out with the kids. But noone.

Okaaay. Did you feel in danger at all?

No, no. The voice sounded midwestern. Friendly. Wasn’t scary, except for the fact that there was noone there. I was thinking about calling the cops, but it would sound stupid.

Where are the kids now?

They’ve been playing happily outside this whole time since school.

And you didnt hear anything else the whole day?

Nope.

Ok, well, maybe the house is wired. Maybe there are hidden speakers, and cameras. Come on, lets have a look. We searched every corner and nook, and found nothing.

——————————————————————-

Wednesday was a warm sunny day. I took the day off from work.

We placed Ikey in the baby carriage and strolled down our neighborhood street, ending at a beach under a sapphire sky.

This beach faced Seattle. A giant body of water lay supine and frigidly blue between us, limitless toward the horizon due north and south, while due east you could just make out Seattles buildings and ceaseless urban activity like microbes busy in a festering wound.

The sand felt soft and squishy and Alex ran barefoot and carefree along the water’s glassy edge. He hunted for geoducks buried in the sand which squirted you with water if you stomped your foot next to their hole.

Poor geoducks! I said to Alex. They are just defending their homes which makes you want to torture them more.

On the way back we walked under a tree that meowed at us. Ikey pointed up at the tree and we saw a scrawny calico cat looking out over us. It had only one eye and seemed distressed.

Hon, can you reach it? My wife asked.

I climbed up the tree trunk enough to coax the cat forward and let me grab her. When it got close enough i grabbed it by the scruff and handed it down to my wife.

Oh God, dont do that! You cant pick up cats like you can dogs! My wife hissed.

It was thin and small and friendly and liked being held. Oooh, he is just a baby, my wife said. Not quite a kitten.

This little guy has been through a lot. She said. But he is a warrior.

There were no tags, no collar. We checked with the few houses along the street, but noone said that they had ever seen a one-eyed calico cat before. Sheila took the kids and the cat home while I walked up and down the street knocking on doors. Noone claimed the cat.

It was dark when I finally got home.

Hey Dad, Alex said. Does this cat belong to anyone?

Seems not, on our street anyway. I’ll put up signs tomorrow. Ok? But I dont you give him a name until a week goes by and noone claims him. Understood?

Mmmhmmm. Said Alex. Too late. Mom already decided to call him Woden.

I sighed. I wish she hadn’t done that. Ok, but just know he might be someones cat, and we cant keep him if it is. His owner is probably worried and sad, you know. Some people love their cats like their kids. Which is forever.

After putting the kids to bed, my wife got a cardboard box with an old blanket for Woden’s bed. She put it next to my side of the bed since the cat seemed so attached to me.

I stayed up late working. The cat sat and watched me. Thin, scraggly, but attentive. With its one eye it seemed to constantly wink at me, like we shared a secret.

Yo Woden. I said. I hope you stay. But if you do, we will have to really get you cleaned up. And shots. And tagged. And lastly, I really hate to say this, you’ll get your balls cut off, ok?

He walked up to me, purred, and walked between my legs and lay down under my chair.

It seems like you want to live with us. I hope you do. I think you are what this family needs.

The cat looked at me and sat up on its hind paws as I picked it up.

Geezus you are filthy. Still cute though.

———————————————————————

To the delight of our kids, noone reported a cat missing. My wife cleaned the cat, took it to the vet, got shots, medication, registration, collar.

The ghosts continued. We heard hellos from the midwesterner sporadically. It wasnt scary. I noticed something weird happening, to all of us. We got accustomed. We normalized them. These random encounters were random and harmless, sometimes amusing. My wife never felt endangered. The kids were not frightened, though they recognized them as odd. My wife and I were careful not to show fear in front of the kids, just wonder. Also, we found out our neighbors had similar experiences. This happened over a few months.

It was like living in a hotel, where some of the residents were invisible.

That illusion of a hotel got shattered one night when I felt a hand on my shoulder in the middle of the night.

I woke up with a start, believing someone needed rescuing. Paralyzed in my bed, I could not even turn my head. I could only open my eyes, which I shut tightly.

I heard a quiet background noise, like being in an open public space. It sounded like I was listening to the sounds of grand central station, where there were many people walking around in some large room, a hum of people moving, hushed talk, constant motion.

Opening my eyes I saw my wife sleeping next to me. I tried asking for help but couldnt. After minutes of helplessness, my heart pounding, waiting for something else to happen, the background noise stopped abruptly, as though a window closed.

I regained motion, and sat up. The only person in the room, was my wife, sleeping peacefully. I walked to my kids bedroom. Both sleeping. I walked around the house, finding nothing and noone.

The following morning at breakfast I told my wife what happened.

This was different than anything we’ve seen before. This woke me up. Until now, everything just let us live our lives, and gave us a bit of privacy. But a hand on my shoulder, thats not cool. And it felt so real.

A mans hand? My wife asked.

No, like a small womans hand, though. I thought it was you at first, in trouble.

You sure it wasnt? Did you get any sleep?

Yes Im sure. Too freaked to sleep.

Look honey, you are a person with a lot of anxiety, and I think thats what this was. Its not a coincidence you are going through some stressful shit at work. This doesnt really fit with the pattern weve experienced so far. You probably had a nightmare.

It was true. I worked in a giant corporation, and I was convinced I was about to get laid off. I had that feeling of doom in the past two weeks, that at any moment i would get laid off. Still though, for some reason, this was different, separate. And it mattered to me that my wife believe me.

How can you say that? I was shocked. We’ve had nothing but weird experiences here. How can you still not believe me? I almost felt hurt, betrayed.

I don’t believe in ghosts, I cant explain whats going on, sure. But just because I cant explain whats going on doesn’t mean its supernatural. Everything so far has been passive and almost friendly. The paralysis thing sounds like an anxiety attack.

I looked deep in my bowl of oatmeal in front of me, unable to accept her answer. I know it doesn’t matter what I say. But you are wrong. It was so real.

I looked down at Woden, who was sitting, looking up at me. You believe me, dont you little Woden?

My wife’s assertion, though hard to admit, made a lot of sense. Things at work were bad, so bad that I quickly forgot about the ‘hand from the great beyond’, as my wife cheekily called it. I noticed i was not being invited anymore to a number of meetings. I would walk past meeting rooms where most of my peers were deep in discussion, but I was not invited. I was given tasks that were too easy, or impossible. I came in on a conversation among 20 years olds where people were talking about someone being too old to be taken seriously, and they quickly stopped. People avoided me in the halls. My boss, who had never been kind, seemed to be unaware of my existence, or would no longer greet me.

A sense of foreboding pervaded every moment at work. I felt perpetually tense, certain that at any minute I would get laid off or screamed at. As the only parent bringing in income, the prospect of losing your job is devastating.

Work got so bad that I walked the halls feeling haunted, ready for an HR meeting request to appear in my inbox. And still the work piled on, and I felt drowned in work I couldnt possibly finish. I started working on both days of the weekend just to prove myself. This continued for weeks.

In one of the scariest moments so far, I thought I was having a heart attack one night.

My wife drove me to the ER. They did an immediate assessment, took an EKG, took blood tests, did an ultrasound of my heart. I was told by an ER doctor, in no uncertain terms, to stop working, stay home, and rest.

Turns out I was so stressed I caught pneumonia. I had ignored what I had presumed to be a cold, while I worked and worked. At my follow up with my regular doctor, he told me my blood pressure was extremely high. He said if I continued doing what I was doing I would live a very short life.

He put me on blood pressure medication.

I started sleeping in the guest bedroom to quarantine myself. In all my extra alone time, I realized I had gotten a wake-up call. I am not religious, but I did feel fate trying to tell me something. I hated leaving this extremely lucrative job, but it was killing me.

One night, I woke up paralyzed and lying on my stomach. Again, I heard that sound of a window opening to a large room full of people walking and talking in hushed tones. A chill crept up my back as I realized I was hearing a voice speaking to me I had never heard before in the house.

I dared not open my eyes.

It was the voice of a middle-aged woman. Speaking personally to me. She was behind and above me, by a few feet. And not in a language that I had heard before. In fact, it didnt sound germanic, asian nor latin in any way. Too organized and coherent to be gibberish.

After a few minutes of this foreign monologue, she stopped, and the window closed.

Free to move, I jumped up and ran down the stairs to my wife and told her what had happened. Unsettled, I cranked on and watched TV for the rest of the night, eventually falling asleep on the couch.

During all my work struggles, Woden got bigger, flea-free, and healthier. His fur got thick. He looked like a normal cat, except for the one-eye. He got an appetite and got frisky and playful with the kids. Sheila worked to make him feel safe inside the house. She even provided a bed and litter box in the laundry room.

And though Woden played with the kids during the day, he would come hang out with me when I got home. Cats are compassionate creatures, and will care for you.

Eventually, I stopped trying at work, and started spending all my free time looking for another job. Once I committed to leaving, I felt free. I still worked all weekend long, though. But now it was for me, putting together my resume and tracking down job prospects.

I had one last encounter with foreign lady.

One night I lay down on the carpeted floor next to my kids bunk bed and read to them. They had just had baths and my wife went to bed early since she was exhausted. After reading about three chapters, I could hear them passed out. Woden had come over and lay next to me as I read. Cuddling, we both fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of that ghostly window opening and the sound of the people walking in a large room. This time was different because the foreign lady sounded angry and was talking quickly and clearly upset with me. I felt chills going down my spine and arms, but I was paralyzed, unable to run away. I just clamped my eyes and waited.

The woman began growling at me like an animal, a new sound from her. She didnt sound human. It was more terrifying than anything yet, and I began to fear for my life. I felt this was territorial, over my kids. I had the presentiment she felt they were hers.

Thats when Woden took charge. Even though my eyes were clamped shut, I heard a low hissing start from right next to me, from Woden. He moved around the room, hissing and screeching, as if he was in a fight. This cacophony of her animalistic growling and Woden screeching loudly grew wilder and from everywhere all at once.

And suddenly, everything stopped, the woman felt absent, and the window slammed shut. I was no longer paralyzed. I jumped up and looked around, but I could not find Woden anywhere. Amazingly, the kids were both still sound asleep.

I never heard that woman anymore, nor did I mention it again. We couldnt find Woden anywhere. While my wife and kids put up signs and mourned, I knew what actually had happened, and where Woden had gone.

I got another job a month later, and we moved out. To a smaller house. To one that never felt spooky. When we left our house for the last time, my kids said goodbye to Woden, hoping that they could see him one last time to say goodbye.

I knew we would all see him again someday.