Our theme for the month of October is “haunt.”

I wake to a crash, somewhere in the apartment. It is dark outside. The only light is from the street lamp by our bedroom window as it casts lines of shadows in long rows on the floor of our little room. 

It is the type of noise that you cannot place, the type that wakes you without continuing long enough for a bleary mind to place it. Next to me, Caleb is fast asleep, his breath rising and falling and calling me paranoid. I strain to hear around his quiet commotion, waiting for movement or sound. 

There is a thudding in my forehead, at my temples. I know old houses, like the one our apartment is in, settle loudly and often, but as I think of the evening and our laughter on the way home from pickleball, I am unsure of whether we remembered to lock the front door. I am no longer bleary-eyed. 

There is a rustling in the kitchen, as if someone is searching through the snack box on top of the fridge. I can see, in my mind’s eye, a tall man, ragged and hungry, having broken into our apartment, sifting through our food. The rustling increases. But I know that the stairs to our apartment are loud and tall men are heavy. I would’ve heard his footsteps. 

Would I? 

I stare at the ceiling, focused on the sound. It stops. There’s two quick, successive thunking noises. Is he pounding snacks on the counter? 

Every story I’ve heard or read about unwanted visitors—from squatters to people living in people’s attics to run-of-the-mill thieves—play unceasingly in my mind. My breathing is much too loud, much too shallow. 

I daren’t sit up, but I roll, slowly, toward Caleb. If he walks into our room, he will see that I am awake and Caleb is not. Those are the worst possible odds.

Tonight of all nights, I regret that our bed is lofted for maximum space in our apartment. I cannot see the floor very well, and from my corner of the mattress, I cannot see the door to the kitchen at all. 

A light pattering—footsteps?—cross into our room. The picture in my mind shifts to a young person, small and light, carefully walking toward the stairs to our bed, knife in hand. I watch the end of the bed, unsure whether to wake Caleb or to pretend to sleep. 

There is a faint cooing, and our little cat—a tabby-co named Peaches—appears by my feet. 

From where she lays in my lap as I write this now, many mornings after that first night, our little perpetrator coos in her sleep and rolls to stretch her paws toward my hands. When she was young, her prowling brought vicious memories of stories I’d heard of poltergeists who turned out to be real, dangerous people, but as she has learned to knock over dishes in the sink or—more recently—the crock full of mixing spoons, I have become more accustomed to noises in the night. I have come to trust our little ghost as she haunts our space curiously, flattening snacks and sleeping in baskets of toiletries. 

The night is safe in her paws while we sleep, though the cups in the sink are not. 

Kate Wilmot

Kate Wilmot (’24) is a Grand Rapids resident who has found herself in the in-betweens of undergrad and post-grad life. She is an avid children’s fiction reader and a globally-minded cook who will feed anyone that walks in her door. You can find her losing to her husband in pickleball, weight lifting, or getting coffee with her mom.