The Winking Cat

I was never a man who believed in the power of fate until this particular series of events unfolded before me. It all began with the death of my daughter, freshly eighteen, whisked away to the far edges of the earth by the urge to make the world a better place. The cat came shortly after. As a widower of ten years, and now an eternal empty-nester, I sought the company of a relatively low-maintenance pet. One Tuesday afternoon, I entered the humane society just before closing. As I searched for my new companion, I noticed there was a single cage int he cat room which was occupied. A slight black cat with a star on his chest, and a particularly curious set of yellow eyes seeming to have an everlasting twinkle, blinked slowly at me as I asked the employee for a quick meet-and-greet. With a few scratches under the chin, and a low-purr that seemed to vibrate my entire core, my pocket was forty-five dollars lighter, and the black cat was packed up in a makeshift crate, mewing gingerly on the car ride home.

The cat, which I named Winston, didn’t take long to get accustomed to his surroundings. Before the evening was over, he had ventured out from beneath the guest bed, and began batting around dust bunnies and nudging items off countertops. The little white bag that I received from the humane society, which contained his veterinary records, a small bag of treats, and his microchip information, was laid on the kitchen table when he jumped up to investigate. His little black paw scooted it off the table and onto the floor. That was when I saw a peculiar item that I hadn’t previously recognized. Out of the bag fell a small black book, bound in leather with gold-leaf pages. Winston jumped down excitedly and sat on the book, beginning to purr as his new post felt comfortable on his fuzzy bottom. He meowed unhappily when I plucked the book from underneath him. I flipped through pages of cryptic poetry, written in very delicate handwriting, closely resembling that of my daughters. The curves of the Y’s gently curled under, the Z’s had dainty marks through the centers. It made the peach fuzz on the back of my neck stand on end. Could she be reaching out? Certainly not. Winston weaved through my legs as I read, purring and mewing tirelessly in delight.

The Brownstone on Fifth,

Where the treasure doth lie.

You might think it a myth,

But your fortune is nigh.

That place where both knowledge

And sundries are kept,

You’ll return none the richer

Should you make a misstep.

There lies twenty-thousand

For the one who’s most eager,

The puzzles are dense

Since the prize is not meager.

There was an old abandoned brownstone, right around the corner, on Fifth Street that had not been inhabited since before I moved to this part of town with my wife and newborn baby girl. Winston was now purring so loudly I could barely interpet my own thoughts. Before I knew it, I had my coat slung over my arm and I locked the door behind me as I ventured out into the chilly November night.

As I approached the Brownstone, the front stoop unswept and the handrails half missing, I saw the door was barely cracked, a small sliver of candlelight peeking into the darkness. I trudged up the stairs slowly, and knocked. Perhaps someone did live here, and they made a mistake of leaving their door open. It would be nothing else but rude not to make sure they were okay inside, and offer to close the door for them. Upon my knocking, the door blew open, and a small, black figure ran between my legs and slinked into the house.

“Winston!” I whispered aggressively. How in the world did he get out of the house when I left? I supposed I needed to be more furtive around this little sneak of a cat. “Come back here! This isn’t our house!” I opened the door further and saw candles strewn along a bookcase and Winston sitting in front of it, looking up at the books as if he were deciding which one to pluck and read. A sweet ‘Brrrrrreow’ escaped from the cat, and I crept gently over to the bookcase that he was eyeing.

“That place where knowledge and sundries are kept,” I murmured to myself. “This is what the poem was saying! Good job, Winston!” Winston then crouched to pounce, wiggling his back legs in preparation. He sprung up onto a shelf, about chest level to me, and wrapped his tail around a dusty ceramic tankard, with dead daisies wilting from its mouth. ‘Brrrrr’ he purred with an upward inflection. Taking his lead, I grabbed the vase off of the bookshelf and immediately felt the ground beneath my feet begin to tremble. The bookcase was splitting in two, right down the middle, slowly revealing a narrow lantern-lit corridor, gently descending beneath street level. Winston hopped off the bookshelf and darted down the skinny hallway. He kept his black silhouette just barely visible, making sure I was ever-following, as I trudged trekked downward, holding onto the heavily cob-webbed walls.

I was reaching for the black book in the breast pocket of my coat when I nudged Winston with my foot. He had stopped, so I stopped as well. I flipped through the pages again to another mysterious poem, hoping for another clue.

By the light of the lanterns

You are ever so close

Having walked down this cavern

You’ve come farther than most.

Just a bit longer

And you’ll reach your reward

DO NOT touch the shield,

Only the sword.

Heeding my rules

Is most imperative here.

Just follow my words,

And you’ve nothing to fear.

With another curious purr, Winston began hopping down the rest of the corridor, flitting from side to side, as if he were avoiding invisible obstacles. Touch the sword, but not the shield? What did that mean? I lifted my foot to take a step forward, when I looked down at the floor. Where the floor up until this point was mostly dirt and broken tile, the ground was now made up of square stepping stones, each block about a foot long and wide. Upon closer inspection, I recognized small etching in the surface of the rock. Just a thin line carved into one of the stones. On the one beside it, a circle. Suddenly, it clicked. I was meant to step on the stones patterned with the line, or the sword, and avoid the stones with the circle, or the shield. This was why Winston was bounding from stone to stone. This was where I began to wonder about that cat.

Quickly, I made my way across the floor, ever so careful not to make a misstep and be punished by the unknown. I could see Winston waiting for me at the end of this stone puzzle, his ears perfectly erect and his tail whipping back and forth. I stretched my foot out for the last stone, and Winston began winding through my legs again, coming dangerously close to the circular tiles.

“Winston, be careful!” I said as I touched down on the safe end of the puzzle, but not before the cat stepped on a stone with a circle. I watched the stone depress under his small body as he leapt past me and bounded further down the corridor. Fire began erupting from the walls at my back, torches hidden from view behind small slats, waiting to be freed by some clumsy oaf. Or cat. I scurried away from the flames, my feet giving out beneath me as I retreated. Once safe from being scorched, I reached back into my pocket for the book, hoping we were almost finished.

Just a bit farther,

One puzzle to spare.

Get through this last chapter

You’ll be rich for the wear.

Be careful that the riches

Don’t reach to your head,

Because if you’re too greedy

May the coin be your bed.

I looked up from the book and a wooden door materialized in the darkness as my eyes adjusted from the now ceasing flames behind me. Winston was nowhere to be found now, which didn’t surprise me, since the spitting fire probably scared him to hide in a shadowy corner. Surely he would turn up eventually. I was ready to find this treasure and get out of this weird house with this weird, deadly puzzle underneath it. As I reached for the door handle, I heard a sweet mew coming from behind it. How did the cat get into that room already?

The door opened into a small room, no bigger than a garden shed. The walls looked to be made of mud, and the floor now turned into a creaky hardwood, the floorboards bending under my weight as I stepped inside. There was a desk in the middle of the room with a small candy tin placed in the middle, and behind it sat a large chest, not unlike something you’d imagine sunken at the bottom of the ocean. Dust billowed beneath my feet as I went to inspect it. There was an old brass lock on the chest, and in the candy tin, a single key. The large, rusty key fit snugly in the lock on the chest, as it dropped with a heavy click. I raised the bulky, domed lid of the chest, its hinges squeaking, and found thousands of dollars in coins, bills, gold and gems piled inside. My mouth and my eyes began to water as I beheld the glimmering treasure. This was exactly what the poem had predicated. Twenty-thousand dollars. Perhaps even more with the increased prices of gold nowadays. I picked up pieces here and there, feeling their weight in my hands. Now I just had to get it all home! I started to stuff my coat pockets with as much as I could fit, planning on multiple trips throughout the night until I made off with the lot of the money, when I heard Winston meow again, this time, above my head.

He was perched on a high shelf on the other side of the small room, sitting gingerly beside a crystal vase, slowly blinking at me. I stood and inspected the vase. It was old and worn, but gold filled each tiny crack. Black figures danced around it, diamonds illuminating their eyes and sapphires glinting off of their bodies. This vase alone appeared to be worth thousands, if not millions. I reached for it, and then noticed that it sat on a button, in an Indiana Jones-esque way. I remembered the last poem: “Don’t be too greedy.” This was its meaning. If I grabbed that vase, no matter how tempting it may be, something bad would happen. Winston meowed again as I turned away slowly. I was heading back for the chest, to continue to stuff my pockets when I heard it. A shatter that seemed to echo all the way down the corridor. The vase was no longer on the shelf, but scattered in shards on the floor, after being shoved off the shelf by a slender feline body. The ground beneath my feet began to rumble again, just as it had when the bookcase began moving. Winston jumped down and flitted out of the doorway back into the corridor, just as a shield of impenetrable glass closed me into the small room.

I could feel the air going stale as it stagnated around me. ‘May the coin be your bed.’ Your death bed, it meant. Winston sat outside the glass, peering in at me with his ever twinkling eyes. I never thought I would see a cat smirk, but with that and a small wink, Winston bounded down the corridor, his tail held high in the air, and his black silhouette disappearing against the wall of darkness.