When I was little, I almost drowned. I was staying for a few days with my Grandmother Agatha—all of her seven grandchildren were expected to visit during the summer months, and at the time, I was no different. She was a distant woman that seemed to hide some kind of poisonous anger behind a thin veneer of cold curtesy, and even as a young girl I often wondered why she wanted to occupy her summers with a rotation of children she seemed to care about very little. None of our parents seemed to question it though, whether due to love or duty or fear or the simple fact that Agatha was very, very rich.
So when, at seven, a man stepped from the woods, my first thought was that he was a gardener. He wore a dark grey suit and white gloves, but I had seen a maid and butler in the house for years, and they both dressed up fancy too, so in my child’s mind it wasn’t unreasonable that my grandmother would make people wear a suit to work outside as well. I was playing at the edge of the backyard garden—one of the advantages of my grandmother’s perpetual disinterest was that I pretty much did what I wanted without supervision when I visited on my own—and after glancing up at the man’s arrival and giving him a nervous smile, I turned back to look at whatever it was I’d been doing. It was then that I saw it out of the corner of my eye.
The man was running for me.
I had time to look up and take in more detail of the man as he lurched toward me with outstretched hands. Time to see how grey his skin was in the daylight and how his mouth hung open like the entrance to a flesh cave of black gums and broken teeth. A chance to see how large his eyes were, nearly all whites except for small rings of blue iris wrapped around pinpricks of black. Enough opportunity to suck in a breath to scream, only to find the air forced out in a soundless whoosh as he reached me and yanked me backward onto the ground.
I was terrified, of course, my mind already flooding with vague abstract versions of all the terrible things that could happen if a stranger got you. I tried to struggle, but it was little use—he had a fistful of my hair and was far stronger that me, dragging me with ease toward the center of the yard where a large reflecting pool sat waiting.
My mouth was ready to try another scream when we hit the water. The shock of the cold stunned me for a moment, and before I could recover, he was forcing my head beneath the surface. I struggled again, harder this time, some dark corner of my brain kicking into gear at the threat of not just future dangers, but immediate death.
It still didn’t matter. I never even got my head above water, and it wasn’t long before the world began to darken as my mind narrowed down to a thin sliver of consciousness. It was as that last strand of desperate, terrified thought was about to break that the man’s hands were suddenly gone, and I felt my body lurch up in a desperate search for air.
It took a couple of minutes of me laying next to the pool retching and crying before I could even stand to go look for help. There was no sign of the man anywhere, not even wet footprints where he might have run off, but I was horrified at the thought that he might reappear at any moment. I crawled to the edge of the back patio as I caught my breath, and when I did manage to stand up, I ran inside and found my grandmother, hugging her and weeping as I tried to explain what had happened.
She was less than impressed. She told me I shouldn’t make up fanciful tales to excuse playing in the water, which had dirtied my clothes and no doubt left a trail of dirt and wet throughout her house, as well as on her. Face stern, she pried me away and held me at arms’ length, studying me for a moment.
“You don’t seem the worse for wear. Go clean up and change your clothes. Lunch will be in fifteen minutes.”
I did go and change, but not until I had snuck and called my mother to come get me. She was reluctant at first, but when she heard how upset I was and what I was saying, she told me her and my father would be there by the afternoon. They came as promised, and what followed was an hour of heated argument between them and my grandmother followed by my parents taking me home. After that, I never went back to visit my grandmother again, and as I got older, I came to understand that, for all intents and purposes, Agatha no longer considered us part of her family.
So I was surprised that, two months after her death, I got a letter from my grandmother’s attorney asking me to arrange a time to come in to discuss my inheritance. I almost didn’t go at all—while I could use the money, I knew she had cut my parents out of her will and I had nothing but bad memories associated with the woman myself. I talked to my mother about it, and she encouraged me to go. Said that whatever her mother had been, she was gone now, and I shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to get…whatever it was…just because of bad childhood memories. Maybe, my mother said, this was Agatha’s way of trying to make up for what happened years before.
The next week I was sitting alone in a large, wood-paneled conference room in the lawyer’s office staring at two envelopes. The attorney had pointed out the writing on the front of each, saying that, as my grandmother had indicated, if I chose to open the envelopes, I should start with the one on the left and then follow with the one on the right. I’d given him a funny look at that, asking why it mattered. He only shrugged, saying that it was Agatha’s wish and he asked I abide by it.
By the time he had left, I’d already decided I was opening the right one first, if for no other reason than…well…fuck Agatha. She was a weird, controlling bitch even from the grave. Or was trying to be.
Smirking at the thought and feeling a kind of happy anger bubbling in my chest, I grabbed up the right envelope and went to tear it open, but the paper didn’t budge. It was nice, thick paper, but I saw no reason I shouldn’t be able to rip it. Grimacing, I tried again with no luck.
I looked at the edge of where it had been sealed shut, thinking I might could pry it open there with a fingernail, but when that didn’t work either, I tossed the envelope back down and stared at it. There was definitely something inside it. Something with a bit of weight to it that slid around. A key maybe? The paper was too thick to tell. Too thick and apparently made of Kevlar.
Sighing, I looked at the other envelope. It read, “Open this envelope first.”, and just seeing the delicate loops of my grandmother’s handwriting made my stomach clench a little. I considered going and asking for a pair of scissors or something to get the right envelope open, but I decided against it. I was being petty, and dragging this whole thing out way more than it needed to be. Better to try the other one and then go from there, if it was any easier to open. If it wasn’t, I’d go borrow a blowtorch or something.
The left envelope opened easily, however, and inside I found a single sheet of cream-colored stationary lined with more of Agatha’s writing.
Despite the truncated nature of our relationship and the unreasonable behavior of your parents, I am bequeathing to you something of great worth. In truth, out of all that I have, it is of the greatest value to me, and perhaps in time, to you.
I call it Bertie. Bertie the cat. This may seem a childish name to you, and it is, but I first acquired Bertie when I was a young woman that still possessed a whimsical sense of humor not yet hardened and sharpened by the stony truths of the world.
You may be asking now if I mean an actual living creature or if this is just a metaphor. I assure you it is the former, though I understand your confusion at how a normal cat would live for such a long time as to be passed on to you. The answer is simple: Bertie is not a normal cat.
He does not require much from you other than the following three things:
First, your companionship. He will always be with you.
Second, once a year, he will ask you for a name. It must be someone who you have personally met and that is alive, but those are the only requirements.
Third, a week after you give him a name, he will grant you a wish. There are certain limitations on this, but Bertie is capable of doing miraculous things.
If you abide by these three rules, you will find your time with Bertie very pleasant and profitable.
Enjoy.
Your Grandmother,
Agatha Dance
P.S. You may now open the other envelope.
I stared at the letter for a moment and then reread it. Was it some kind of weird practical joke, or had she gone senile before the end? I glanced back at the other envelope. Maybe this was some odd prank where the other envelope had a key in it to her house…or to a storage unit filled with cat litter. Either way, it all seemed really out-of-character for my grandmother, or at least my idea of who she had been.
I stopped at that thought. The truth was, I had no idea who she really was. My memories of her weren’t positive, and the stories I’d heard from my parents weren’t much different or better, but all of that was also tainted by the fear and anger of what had happened when I was a child and her reaction to it. Maybe there was more to her than that small window from the past. Maybe she was a quirky woman isolated by her success and hamstrung by personality flaws. Maybe by the end she was sorry for how things had gone, and this really was her way of trying to make up for it.
Shaking my head, I pulled out my phone and tried to call my mother. This was all so weird, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to even open the other envelope, money or no money. The phone just rang and then went to voicemail, so I hung up. Frowning down at the right envelope, I let out a sigh. I’d try to open it one more time. If I couldn’t, I’d carry it outside, the lawyer or somebody could open it for me, and I’d finally find out what the punchline to all this really was.
This time the envelope opened easily. My heart hammering, I tipped it, catching the heavy thing inside as it slid out into my palm. As it landed there, I let out a hiss and let it drop to the table with a clatter. Looking back to my hand, I saw a small dot of blood, and when I glanced back to the thing on the table, I understood why.
It was a small, flat oval of metal, ornately carved with symbols winding around three tiny but sharp-looking bumps protruding from each side. One of those stubby needles had been what had poked me, and I had a moment of panicked thoughts ranging from tetanus to poison-tipped booby traps. But no, I was being silly. It was looking more and more like my grandmother had just been crazy when she died, and whatever this was, it seemed harmless enough aside from being sharp. Wondering why it hadn’t torn or poked through the envelope, I looked inside to find a second letter that had been bunded with the piece of metal.
Congratulations. Bertie is yours now.
The object bundled with this note is very special. In some circles it is known as a Staring Eye. In others, a tumerin. For you, it is a symbol of your bond with Bertie, and like Bertie, it will always be with you.
Do not attempt to rid yourself of it. It will always come back to you.
Do not fail to abide by the rules outlined in the other letter.
If you do as I say, you will have a good life. If you do not, Bertie will become angry.
We humans do not understand true anger. Or true despair.
But you will find an angry Bertie to be a very good teacher.
I’m curious what you will do. If you are like your worthless parents, you will see it as a curse. If you have some of my strength, however, you may find yourself thanking me for the greatest gift you’ve ever received.
Time will tell. I’ll say good-bye with this last bit of advice and a small secret between grandmother and granddaughter.
Remember that others cannot see Bertie. Often you won’t either. But he sees you. He always, always see you.
As for the secret? I didn’t pick you for this.
He did.
Fifteen minutes later I was back in my car. I’d tried questioning the lawyer about the letters and the metal eye, but he wouldn’t say anything other than that he had been explicitly told by Agatha to let the inheritance speak for itself. When I asked about Bertie, he paled slightly and told me he had a meeting he was late for, but that he certainly hoped I had a good rest of my day.
It was as I was driving out of the parking lot that my phone began to ring.
“Hey, honey. I’ve been trying to get you after I saw I missed your call. Everything okay?”
“Um…yeah, I think so. I just left the lawyer’s office from the inheritance thing? It was super weird.”
“Weird how? What did they give you?”
“A couple of letters and some metal thing? The letters were really odd. Like…did grandma ever have a cat named Bertie?”
There was a pause and then, “Did you say a cat? No. She never had any pets when we were growing up, or later on either. And, I mean, I can’t say what she had or didn’t have in the last twenty years, but I’m pretty positive it wouldn’t be a cat either way.”
“Why?”
“Your grandmother…she was always a very strong woman. Cold and hard to know, yes, but I can’t deny that she was very strong-willed and determined. Fearless…at least most of the time. The one thing that terrified her was a cat…I think it was from something that happened to her as a child, but I can tell you that she hated them for as long as I knew her. Hated them because they were the only thing she was actually scared of.”
When I finished talking to my mother, I was no closer to understanding what I’d been given and why then when I started. She didn’t know what a Staring Eye or tumerin was, although she admitted most Agatha’s beliefs and interests were mysteries to her far before our family split in two. She suggested I get the piece of metal appraised to see if it was somehow valuable before throwing it away.
I almost argued against the idea by pointing out it was probably just a piece of junk from a crazy old woman, but something stopped me before I began. I think it was the wounded sound in my mother’s voice at having to talk about the dead woman at all, at having to remember how things had been left between them and speculate at what had become of Agatha over the last decades of her life. I don’t think my mother regretted cutting us off from her, but I’m old enough now to understand that even the right choice can hurt sometimes.
So I let it go, and I came home and put the envelopes in a drawer. I spent a few minutes looking online for reputable appraisers, but before long I was too sleepy to do anything but sink into my pillow and the swallowing dark.
I woke up a few hours later when something climbed up onto my bed.
Sitting up, I blinked blearily in the darkness, heart pounding. Maybe it had just been a dream, like when you wake up while you think you’re fall…
There was a man sitting at the foot of my bed.
I let out a gasp as I pulled my legs in and sat up further. “Who are you? What…what are you doing here?”
The man just stared at me, smiling, and I stared back, transfixed by my fear and the realization that, in the silver light of the moon, I recognized him. Remembered him.
His grey suit and matching skin. His boiled egg eyes and drooping, jagged bone mouth. Ghost white gloves covering the long-fingered, strong hands that had drug me by the hair and held my face underwater until I almost drowned. The man from my memories and my nightmares.
The thing that, in all of my life, I feared the most.
I recognized him, but more importantly, I knew who he was.
Voice trembling, I breathed out the question like an offering. “Bertie?”
The man’s bony shoulders shook with a deep, rumbling chuckle as his boneless lips twitched and stretched into an obscene impression of a smile.
Comments