Follow me Through the Shadows

Serena was still thinking about her parents' argument when a small, beautiful white cat with grey stripes came up to her and meowed. She was startled to see it suddenly appear in front of her. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed it approach her.

Before Serena could react, the cat sat down near her grandma's gravestone and started staring at her intently.

Serena frowned. "What do you want?" She asked the cat. "Food? I don't have any with me right now." She almost forgot that the cat couldn't understand her because it just seemed so...intelligent, like it understood every word.

The cat didn't react to her words, as expected. It just continued to stare at her. Serena didn't know what to do. She had been interrupted by this cat so now she couldn't really go back to her reverie, it was better for her to go somewhere else, maybe to her old friend's house.

She was about to get up when the cat meowed once again, as if reading her mind. The cat got up and started walking away from her. Serena was about to say good riddance when the cat stopped, turned her head towards her, meowed again and then resumed walking. It was almost as if it was asking her to follow.

Serena didn't know what to do at first but then she shrugged and decided to follow the mysterious cat thinking that it might be one of her grandma's signals. She wasn't superstitious but when it came to her grandma, she was willing to believe just about everything. It was in the hope that she'd be able to communicate with her again.

The cat kept walking and walking but Serena patiently kept following it. After getting out of the cemetery, the cat turned left and kept walking. Soon, they reached the backyard of Serena's house which was connected to a short cut which led to the cemetery. Her parents had told her that Serena's great grandmother had picked a spot while she was alive to get buried after her death and that spot slowly converted into a full fledged cemetery over the years but since their house was built by her great grandparents, its backyard was directly connected with a short cut to the cemetery. She had never used that short cut until now because it kinda scared her but here she was now, led to her own backyard from that very path by a cat.

The cat was staring up at her room's window. Serena didn't understand why the cat had brought her to her own backyard and what confused her more was that the cat kept staring at her room's window.

Her room looked out on the backyard while her sister's room was at the front. This had always put Serena at an advantage because their backyard was simply amazing. It had a small pool and a beautiful flower bed (now grown wild) to the side. There were a few classy wooden chairs surrounding a table which looked like a tree trunk hewn in half. Even though it required maintenance, the backyard was still beautiful.

The cat meowed, pulling Serena out of her reverie, once again. She frowned, annoyed. This cat was irritating her. What did it want? It meowed again and this time, there was desperation and a sense of urgency in its eyes. Serena felt like she could finally understand what the cat wanted. It clearly wanted her to go to her room...but for what?

She began going towards the front so she could enter her house when the cat stopped her in her tracks by blocking her path. It did not want her to go inside through the front door. It further annoyed Serena. How was she supposed to go inside if she couldn't use the front door? Then she remembered.

During her high school days, she used to use a pole ladder to get out of her room to attend parties and climb back up since her parents would definitely not have allowed her to step inside the house if they knew that she had attended a party on a school night.

She remembered hiding the pole ladder, before she moved out, in an old shed that nobody in her family used except herself. She didn't know why she had hidden it, she just had but now that she remembered where they were, she decided to use them again and enter her room without using the front door as per the cat's wishes.

After setting up the ladder, Serena picked up the cat in her hands (she had no idea why she did that and why the cat allowed her to) and climbed it precariously. She opened the window which was never locked, even in her school days.

The cat immediately jumped out of Serena's hands and went inside the room. Serena followed suit without jumping, she simply climbed in. She observed the cat who was intently staring at all her books and then it pounced on a book that her grandma had given her on her 18th birthday. It was locked so she had never been able to open it. Whenever she had asked her grandma for the key, she had told Serena that she would find it on her own one day. That one day hadn't come until the cat raised its head and revealed a key attached to its collar.