The searches started. They were trying to find the animal that did it but after that party, I don’t know if it was an animal. A fox, coyote, or a jackal are all reasonable answers but they haven’t found any. They thought that maybe it had a burrow or some other time of shelter where it could hide easily. The idea that a human did it came only after three searches without results. I don’t know who started the rumor that a human was doing it, but I supported it completely.
On the 13th of November, the fourth search was started. Even my brother, who didn’t have college classes at the time for some reason, joined the search. Who or what were they looking for? From the early morning of the 1st of October up until the 9th of November, 17 neighborhood cats were found massacred. Most of the cats had more than half of their flesh eaten. We only found the skeletons from the other ones. One of the cats was found cut in half with its two parts connected only with its guts. The cat was pregnant when the cat was killed and the bodies of 5 little kitties it carried were laid out on the floor next to their mother’s guts.
Another cat was found impaled on a branch about 7 feet above the ground. The big branch completely decimated the cat’s ribs and due to its size, it pushed one of the cat’s lungs out through the other side. That one, I believe, was found on the third search on the 12th of November and that was the one that led everyone to believe that a human was responsible for that. There was another one that helped with that as well. The entirety of its body was crushed and unsettlingly boonless. It seemed like the only part of it that wasn’t crushed was its tail. People came to the conclusion that it was picked up by the tail and swung around.
What kind of a sick person would do stuff like that? I only found one strange thing about this. Usually, when someone’s a sociopath, they do kill animals, but just as a start or practice. After some time or a certain number of dead animals, they switch to humans. But killing 17 cats in only a week is more than insane. I also assumed that all the three cats I saw the posters for were killed by this person as well. Jessica’s cat Denim also fell victim to their sick game. That makes it a total of 21 cats. After the number of dead cats reached the public, people started to be afraid and they started to lock their cats inside.
We did the same. Luna and Bunny weren’t really outdoor cats so they didn’t have a problem with staying inside the entire time. Darkness, however, was very different. She would constantly scratch at the windows or the front door and meow expecting us to let her out. We never did. My brother Daniel sometimes took her out in the yard, but he always put her on a leash so that he can just pull her closer to him if need be. Lucy and I always warned him to be careful and begged him not to take her outside but he just laughed at that.
“We should go help them in the next search,” Elle told us.
“Are you insane?” I asked. “Why would we do that? If they can’t find it, how would we?”
“Well, Elle knows the forest almost as good as her dad,” Caitlyn answered. “And since he doesn’t have time to help in the search, Elle is their next best option.”
“Exactly,” Elle pushed the idea.
The three of us became friends at the beginning of high school and were almost separatable. Apart from Luna, they were the only thing that could make me genuinely happy and I felt pretty safe around them. As Jessica strayed further from me, I needed to start finding new friends and after a couple of small interactions, I realized that these two were perfect for me. We generally liked the same stuff, enjoyed the same activities, and liked similar foods, yet our personalities were very different.
Caitlyn wasn’t the most open person out there, but she could talk to people without becoming anxious and messing it up for no reason. I would love to be like that. She is the smartest out of the three of us and has good grades in most of the subjects without even doing much work at home. She was always interested in IT and that kind of stuff and was very good with devices. The drawing was another one of her passions. In fact, she was the one who suggested the creek drawings.
Elle, on the other hand, is very outgoing. We met when she approached Caitlyn and me at lunch. She asked if she could sit next to us and after talking for some time, we started to have a really nice time. Though not really a sporty type, Elle is athletic since she works out. I wouldn’t call her muscular, but she is fit. People usually find it funny because she is by far the shortest out of the three of us. After seeing my and Caitlyn’s drawings, she asked us to help her learn how to draw. She was a quick learner.
“I don’t care,” I replied. “I’m not going into that forest to search for… some… animal or whatever that killed 17 cats.”
“Of course, it’s an animal,” Caitlyn emphasized.
“Yeah, but which one,” I said knowing that it was no animal. “What if it’s a wolf, or maybe even a bear? You can maybe scare a coyote or a jackal off, but a wolf or a bear would devour us without a second thought.”
“It’s not a bear,” Elle chuckled.
“But she could be right,” Caitlyn argued. “It could also be a coyote with rabies which I would say is even worse.”
“You see,” I said looking at Elle.
“We should still go,” Caitlyn said. “We might find something.”
Elle didn’t say anything. She just looked into my eyes with a victorious grin appearing on her face. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but then again. I was the only one who saw the person on the roof. I was the only one stalked in the woods by the same person. I could not describe the terror I felt in the person’s presence and how clearly dangerous they were, but if I told them that, they’d just think that I’m insane.
“Why should we go? I’d rather not know what animal did it than getting killed by it,” I got angry.
“It’s not going to kill you,” Elle chuckled. “We can defend ourselves and I’ll even bring a gun to scare the animals if it’s needed.”
“A gun!?” Caitlyn and I said in unison.
“Look, Elle, I know this is the US and all of that, but don’t you think that people would find three teenage girls walking around woods with a gun a bit weird?” Caitlyn asked.
“I don’t know but it’s better than to be killed by a wolf,” Elle answered.
“And it’s even better if we didn’t go at all,” I tried to stop them.
“If you’re such a little pussy, then you don’t have to go with us,” Elle replied fiercely.
We have been throwing insults at each other since we met and some of them were much worse than this one, however, all of those were jokes. Elle genuinely thought this and tried to hurt me with it. It worked. The insult itself wasn’t that bad, but the fact that she said and meant it destroyed me.
“Okay,” I barely held back tears in my eyes. “But I assure you, if you die in that forest, I won’t care. You’ll be dead to me just like to everyone else.”
I started to walk away from them when Caitlyn stood up and tried to pull me back by grabbing my arm.
“Come on, girls,” she said. “We can’t fight about this. We’re best friends.”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore,” I replied getting my arm out of her grip and continued walking away.
When I came home that day, I immediately went to my room, jumped onto my bed, and started crying. I lost one of my best friends and since Caitlyn stayed with her, I thought I lost her as well. Lucy came and tried to calm me down, and so did my parents. They managed to get some laughs out of me, but they still didn’t stop me from crying. Later, I felt like I made them feel useless because their attempts were unsuccessful. I didn’t even go downstairs when my brother got back from the search. I could hear him greet us all from the front door, but when I didn’t reply, he called out to me.
I assume that my parents told him that I’m in a bad mood at the moment and that he should visit me later. It was around 7:40 PM when he knocked on my bedroom door and came in. I had my back turned towards the door and was looking outside through the window. I could hear him sigh and slowly walk up to my bed. He gently sat down right next to my feet.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied turning onto my back and looking at the ceiling.
“I know you don’t, but sometimes stuff like that helps a lot even if we are not sure that they will.”
I lifted my head just enough to point my eyes at him. He was turned away from me with his head pointed downwards. He put his elbows on his legs, just above his knees, and with his hands, he covered his face.
“I’d still rather not talk about it,” I replied. “Not even 24 hours have passed and everything could get fixed by itself.”
“Don’t rely on those lies. Nothing can be fixed by itself. You have to act on it because if you don’t, you’ll lose an opportunity, and believe me, opportunities are some of the most important things out there.”
I turned my eyes back toward the ceiling.
“I’ve missed many opportunities myself and I regret it every single day,” he said with a truce of sadness in his voice.
“So, you’re saying that I have an opportunity?” I asked. “I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
“If you act on it, you are carving your path. No matter what the outcome is, you’ll be responsible for it. If you don’t act on it, the universe will carve out a path for you, but you’ll never like that path. It will not be your creation and you will not be proud of it no matter what heights you reach. Sometimes, acting on it can end in a worse situation; however, it is worth the try. There’s not much difference between how bad things can be, but trying can achieve you something much much better.”
Both of us stopped talking after that. I kept thinking about those words. I remembered some of my missed opportunities and realized how much I hated myself for not trying. There were many opportunities when I had to choose and I was happy with most of them. Those where I chose poorly, my memories of them are much brighter and happier than those when I have let the opportunity slip out of my hands.
“What happened in the forest?” I asked him after about 10 minutes of silence. “Did you find anything?”
“We found eight more dead cats,” he answered. “By this rate, all of the cats in our neighborhood will be gone in about a week and a half.”
“How is it that fast?”
“Because whatever animal is killing those cats, it kills them exponentially. The best example would be one cat on the first day, two cats on the second, four cats on the third day, and so on and so on. It’s not exactly exponents of the number two. It doesn’t really seem to have the understanding of exponentials. In translations, it kills randomly. Food doesn’t interest it that much since it leaves most of the cats untouched.”
“Have you found any evidence pointing at what could be doing that?”
“No,” he replied turning his head to the right so that he could see me in his periphery. “We found nothing, but most people believe it’s a larger jackal or a wolf with rabies. It not leaving footprints must be an astronomically incredible coincidence.”
“What if it wasn’t an animal?”
He turned his torso to the side and his head towards me. The expression on his face was one of confusion.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“Maybe it was a human. Maybe someone just hates us for… I don’t know… not liking the dogs maybe.”
“That doesn’t really make much sense. I mean, it might be a person, but your reason is not the best,” he stopped to think for a second. “I can suggest the theory to the police chief. I’m sure he heard many stories of young children and teenagers killing animals only to switch to humans later on in their life. And I can tell that it was your idea.”
“What? Why would you tell him that? You can’t speak about this to other people.”
“Why not? It’s a search. Everything we find is public information unless the police are hiding something from us.”
“I guess you’re right,” I told him sitting up and pulling my legs close to my chest. I hugged them and looked at the bottom of my bed just next to where my brother was sitting.
“I need to go now,” he told me. “Remember, it’s better to take the opportunity than to waste it. Go talk to the girls. If you mess up, you forged a new path and you’ll remember it as a change. If you go talk to them and reconcile, you’ll be happy. But if you do nothing, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
I smiled and only a few seconds later I noticed that he knew about my fight with my friends even though I haven’t mentioned it all.
“How do you know what happened?” I asked him.
“Mom and dad told me,” he said standing in the doorframe. He winked and left the room closing the door behind himself.
When he left, I took my phone and looked at some pictures of Elle, Caitlyn, and me. There were so many moments when one of us is going through hard times and the other two would help her. I reminded myself of all the times when I was crying and the two of them came over to my house with a box of small donuts. We would eat them while crying together and would get better a lot faster. Usually, when something like that would happen, they would sleep over.
Around 9 PM, we all heard our doorbell ring. My parents opened the doors while I stayed in my bed. I could hear them speaking to someone, but I didn’t know who they were talking to. Only a minute after the front door closed, I heard knocking on my room’s door. It slowly opened and from behind them, Caitlyn’s face appeared.
“Hey,” I said wiping off my tears and sitting straight up. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need someone to talk to,” she came in. “And I brought some donuts,” she smiled showing me the box.
I smiled at her and stood up. After walking up to her, we hugged and I offered her to sit on my bed.
“I see you haven’t taken this the best,” she told me. “I would have taken it much worse.”
“Have you heard from Elle?”
“Yes, she’s okay. She’s sad but managed to keep it in for today. Her extended family was coming over or something, so I can’t go visit her after you.”
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?” I asked.
Caitlyn looked into my eyes and then laid down on the bed next to me. As our hair intertwined, she looked at the ceiling.
“She’ll ask you to forgive her,” she chuckled. “She was the one who started it and she knows it. She reacted so explosively because she was afraid for her cat. Milko disappeared a day ago and since he was a birthday present from her grandpa, she’s really upset about it.”
“Oh… I didn’t even know that.”
“She told me when you left.”
“Huh…”
There was silence for a few seconds.
“So… everything’s going to be alright?” I asked.
Caitlyn turned her head towards me and smiled. Our eyes connected.
“Of course it’s going to be okay. When have we not recovered our friendship after bad stuff like this happened.”
I smiled back at her. We spent that night talking about various other stuff like tv shows, celebrities, boys… Casual teen stuff. I asked her if she wanted to sleep at my place and she called her parents to ask them. They allowed her and I gave Caitlyn my pajamas. They were a bit too small but we just laughed it off. We continued our conversation up until we fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes, I could only see darkness. Looking around, thanks to the moonlight shining through the window, I could see the outlines of my room. Caitlyn was still asleep and I didn’t try waking her up. I sat up and checked my phone to see what time it was. It said 2:27 AM. What the hell was I doing awake that early? I decided to go to the bathroom. Luna was sleeping next to my legs so when I stood up from the bed, she looked at me. I gave her a kiss on her head and went to the bathroom.
When I returned, I expected the find the room exactly how it was before, and I did apart from a small part. Luna was now sitting on the window sill and looking out into our front yard. I walked up to the window and looked outside. On the street next to the edge of our yard closest to the forest, a cat was standing on all fours with all of its fur pointing up. It was clearly awaiting something to attack it and it was hissing at the attacker. I just assumed that it was a different cat and Luna, just like any other cat, hates cats apart from those she grew up with.
I was just about to get back into my bed when I got that feeling again. The dread slowly rose in my chest and I started to breathe heavily awaiting the worst. I could not stop looking outside at the cat. Both Luna and I had our eyes wide open. Suddenly, out of nowhere a thin clawed hand appeared from behind the fence on the side of my yard. It shot out and grabbed the cat pulling it behind the fence. It happened in barely two seconds and I didn’t get the best look at the hand, but I can say that it was long and thin with 5 fingers ending in talon-like claws.
Just like on the night of the party, I just froze and didn’t know how to react. Luna jumped off of the window and hid under my bed. I stayed standing at the window and looking at the place from where the hand shot out. After 15 minutes of standing there, I snapped out of my trans and got back into my bed. That night was another sleepless one.