He was downstairs at his front door. Like always he was too lazy to place his jacket in the coat closet and decided to hang it up on the banister. It fell off and landed on the wooden steps. He picked it up and placed it on the banister again. It fell off again. He picked it up again, looking for a new spot to place it. He turned around and saw the doorknob. As he leaned forward to hang his jacket there, he saw the knob jiggle. 
 
He froze. The knob was starting to move more violently. His mind froze. The knob was turning and the door was starting to open. He thrust himself against it but the force on the other side was too great. It knocked him back onto the floor.
 
He looked up and saw a figure enter his house. Shadows consumed his face until a flash of lightning illuminating everything in the world for a split moment. Staring down at him from the doorway was the Creepy Man, his eerily wide smile showing all his grotesque teeth. His nearly vacant eyes determined to inflict pain.
 
“Alex,” he said in a raspy voice.
 
Alex wanted to scramble up and run but the Creepy Man had him cornered. There was no escape. He wanted to scream but his voice had locked itself up.
 
“Alex,” said the Creepy Man again. Now his voice was getting deeper… getting different.
 
“Alex!”

Alex opened his eyes. His head was pounding and sweaty. He exhaled heavily, letting his heartbeat relax with the realization that it had all just been a dream. In front of him, directly in his line of vision, was Shagner. The black cat was sitting on the pillow beside the one his head was resting on, its yellow murky eyes watching him with interest. The slits for pupils were replaced with large black circles.
 
“Good. I have woken you up.”
 
Alex furrowed his brow and sat up, surveying his room for who was in his room. He did not recognize the voice. It was deep and strong. And male, which was the most concerning of all. He was the only male that lived there. But his eyes could find no one. His room was empty. The house, he could tell just by listening carefully, was mostly empty too. His mother hadn’t returned home yet and it sounded like Rosie had gone to bed. All the lights that would have shone into the hallway were off and the only sounds he could hear were the consistent rain battering his bedroom window and the wind blowing. 
 
He turned his head and looked at the clock: 7:03 PM. He mentally scratched his head. Rosie had said he wasn’t very tired when he told her he might take another nap. And if she had taken a nap, she would have been up again in half an hour. She never slept long when it wasn’t her bedtime. But then, Alex was just as confused by his own sleeping habits as well. He had felt fine until he got in the house. Then an overwhelming desire to sleep had snagged him, and again after he and Rosie had prayed—
 
“We must leave.”
 
The same deep voice again. This time it made him jump. It sounded more real now instead of a fragment from his dreamy state. It sounded like there was someone in his room talking to him. He looked around the room frantically. The voice had seemed so close.
 
A black blot of movement made him jump again. Shagner was walking from the pillow to the spot on the bed beside Alex’s thigh. He sat there, tail still waving on the bed behind him, eyes still staring. Alex had forgotten the damned cat was in his room. He had admitted to himself that he was starting to like the animal, but at the same time he couldn’t help but think that its apparent obsession with him was a little strange.
 
He let himself relax again and scratched the cat’s head. Then he snorted to no one in particular and looked back into the cat’s eyes. “We must leave,” he breathed absent-mindedly. “I’m going crazy.”
 
“Yes, we must leave at once.”
 
Alex withdrew his hand from the cat and stared. The voice, clearer than ever, had come from down beside his leg. It had been real. It had echoed into his ears from the direction of the cat.
 
“You are not going crazy.”
 
Alex continued to stare with bulging eyes at the feline. 
 
“You have put us in great danger.” Shagner’s mouth did not move. It did not open. But somehow it was speaking. Somehow the voice was coming from him.
 
There was silence now. Whoever – whatever – was talking to him wanted to hear a response. Alex’s mouth felt dry. He only kept staring in disbelief and fear… his mind racing for an explanation. “I’m still dreaming,” he said barely audibly.
 
“No!” the voice coming from the cat yelled. “I do not have the time to become impatient. You must listen to me. You have put me in great danger, and in doing so you have put yourself in great danger. We must leave. The Aim has been prolonged long enough as it is.”
 
“Rosie!”
 
“Your sister is fast asleep.”
 
Alex started to back away from the cat until he was on the other side of his bed. “How are you talking?” he demanded, fear bubbling up inside him. “What the fuck? I’m hearing voices! Rosie!”
 
“Be silent!” The cat’s back straightened up at its order. “I am speaking to you through the mind. Cats do not have the ability to speak. You must stay calm.”
 
Alex laughed a laugh that was closer to insane than he would have liked. “Through the mind! I see! Now I have the ability to hear what cats are thinking!”
 
“I am not a cat.”
 
“What the fuck…? I’m crazy…” Alex muttered.
 
“Please listen—”
 
“ROSIE!”
 
“ALEX!”
 
Alex cowered, nearly falling off his bed, and stared silently at the cat again. Shagner looked like he was unhappy; a stronger look than the one of simple displeasure he gave Alex in the bathroom a few hours earlier.
 
“It is my observation that humans rely too much on mental illnesses to explain away things. You do not have to believe this is real, but you do have to listen to me. Will you listen to me?”
 
Alex nodded at once. He still didn’t believe what was happening was real. All of it seemed to belong to a gigantic dream: the Creepy Man, the ‘storm of the century’, and now his cat with the stupid name his sister thought up was talking to him. Maybe he had taken more naps than he thought he had. Maybe it was 7 in the morning and he had to get up for school very soon. The sky would be clear and sunny and he wouldn’t run into any strange people at the intersection on the way home.
 
But the cat spoke to him again and each word seemed more real than the last. “You made a terrible mistake, Alex. You have made my presence known. They will be coming. Once they’re here, you will be in danger as well. We must leave right now.”
 
“Wh… who?” Alex asked, a little embarrassed that he was now speaking with his cat.
 
“Minions,” Shagner said grimly. “Creatures with motives far beyond the worst things you could imagine. We have to leave. You must accompany me with The Aim.”
 
“What?”
 
“There is no time to explain at the moment. We must use haste.”
 
“Where…?”
 
“I will explain later. Please get up.”
 
Slowly, Alex pulled himself off his bed, always watching Shagner with fearful intrigue. 
 
“Quickly!”
 
Alex stood up straight at the foot of his bed. “Where?”
 
“To the front door,” Shagner said, leaping off the bed to stand at Alex’s feet. “We must leave. Hurry.”
 
Alex started out of his room, unsure why he was listening to his cat. Unsure why he was so willing to get out of the house and face the horrifying storm outside. 
 
“What about Rosie?”
 
Shagner was trotting in front of Alex as they passed Rosie’s bedroom. “We cannot take her with us.”
 
“Why?”
 
“It will be too dangerous for her. She has a chance if she stays here.”
 
Alex’s head was swimming. All he could tell was that his cat wanted to leave the house (Good Christ, my cat is talking was still a familiar thought inside his head) because ‘minions’ were coming and where they were going would be too dangerous for his sister. “I don’t have a chance?”
 
Shagner did not confirm or deny it. “You are older,” he said as he leapt up onto the kitchen dinner table.
 
Alex stopped at the hallway entrance and moved back to the bathroom door, pushing it open a little and turning on the light. “Hold on, let me stop in here.” 
 
Good Christ, I’m asking my cat to stop so I can go take a piss, he thought. This is one hilarious dream.
 
Shagner wheeled around on the table, his eyes large with fear. “NO! Do not go in the bathroom!”
 
Alex stepped back from the bathroom doorway, afraid just from the urgency in his cat’s deep voice. He wondered if Rosie could hear Shagner yelling as well. The thought frightened him. If Rosie could hear him, then he wasn’t dreaming.
 
He looked at the bathroom, then back at his cat. “Why?”
 
“You humans are resourceful and intelligent beings,” Shagner said, “but sometimes you dig too deep.”
 
Alex furrowed his brow. His chest felt warm from his fast-flowing blood and his head was starting to hurt. “Just what the fuck are you?”
 
Shagner sat on the table. “Do you believe in angels?”
 
Alex smiled in spite of the fact that he was still talking to his cat and the ‘storm of the century’ was still threatening to blow his house over. “That’s what you are? An angel?”
 
“If you prefer,” Shagner said.
 
“So what’s after you then? Satan’s minions?” His smile continued to grow.
 
“Yes.”
 
As if someone had slapped him, Alex’s smile disappeared. Shagner – or at least the voice that was supposed to be Shagner’s – had no single trace of jest in it. In fact, he had said it with such deadpan seriousness, that it surprised Alex. And scared him badly. He wanted to laugh and compliment his cat on such a fine delivery of his punchline, but his mouth felt dry again. Shagner’s simple answer seemed more convincing than any detailed explanation he could have possibly given.
 
“We must leave—”
 
“You’re an angel? But you’re my cat.”
 
“I told you, I am not a cat. I am in the form of a cat.”
 
“Jesus Christ—”
 
“Please! Do not do that.”
 
Alex pressed his palm against his forehead and tried to organize his busy thoughts. “What did you mean by we dig too deep? You’re saying we-we… tapped into Hell?”
 
Shagner blinked. Although he was a cat (or a cat form), it looked like a blink of grim sadness. “No,” he said. “Hell tapped into you.”
 
Lightning struck somewhere outside, brightening the dark house for a moment. Then, as if on queue, a gargling noise erupted from the pipes underneath what Alex determined to be the bathtub. 
 
Shagner’s ears perked in Alex’s direction and his pupils grew larger. “We must leave immediately.” 
 
Alex was frozen, staring into the bathroom. He watched the bathtub curiously, then darted his eyes over to the sink’s tap. Thunder rippled through the air somewhere very far away, but other than that the only noise was the continuous rain and wind. Then the bathroom became silent again as the pipes quit their odd noises.
 
“Alex,” Shagner urged, “we must—”
 
The toilet flushed on its own. Alex let a small yelp out and stepped back against the hallway wall. The gargling noises in the pipes started up again, louder this time. Closer. Alex kept his back against the wall, watching the water in the toilet flush away but not return. The noises continued to get louder. Alex thought he even heard something that sounded almost like an angry grunt.
 
“Alex!” Finally, Shagner was successful in drawing Alex’s attention. “We must leave right now!”
 
With that, Shagner jumped off the table and ran down the steps towards the front door. If he hadn’t done so, Alex might have stayed frozen against the wall, but instead he broke free of his restraining terror and ran after the cat. He clambered down the stairway, noticing Shagner sitting at the bottom step, watching him.
 
“Quickly, Alex, quickly. Open the door.”
 
Alex jumped off the last two steps and landed with his hand on the doorknob. He opened it right away and Shagner rushed outside onto the driveway. Alex grabbed his jacket off the banister and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. He looked at Shagner sitting in the driveway, letting the heavy rain fall on him. For some reason, that seemed stranger to Alex than what he had just witnessed happen in his bathroom. All cats detested water. But Shagner was not a cat.
 
He put his jacket on and zipped it up, then stepped out onto the driveway beside his cat, who was already soaking wet now. Shagner shook uselessly, then trotted up the driveway. Alex ran after him. When they got on to the road, Shagner slowed his pace to stay beside Alex. They jogged-trotted down the flooding road, Alex stamping through puddles and Shagner leaping over them nimbly.
 
“Where are we going?” Alex asked, trying to make his voice louder than the wind and the rain.
 
“Let us find the city limits,” Shagner called back from below.
 
“Will Rosie be okay?” Alex looked down at the cat as he asked this. It was so dark out that Shagner was nothing but a black blur against the wet, black road, occasionally more visible each time they passed a streetlight.
 
“I don’t know.”
 
Alex felt disheartened. He cursed himself for leaving her behind now. Whatever was coming in through the bathroom was sure to find her and she would be so scared…
 
“You prayed, Alex,” Shagner yelled through the rain. His voice wasn’t angry, but it definitely wasn’t content either.
 
“What?”
 
“You prayed. I understand that you didn’t know any better, but it was the one and only mistake you could have made.”
 
“I don’t understand,” Alex said, breathing a little faster now from the jog.
 
“They can hear prayers,” Shagner explained. “Ever since the war started, Alex, they’ve had the ability to hear them.”
 
“What war?”
 
Shagner did not answer. “When you prayed, they knew you instantly,” he pressed on. “They knew everything about you: from your beliefs to the color of your eyes. They also knew everything around you. They found me, which is a very big problem. I have something I need to do here in this realm, understand, and it would have been a much easier task had I not been discovered. Unfortunately for me, I had not been here long in this feline form before I was captured and placed in what you call here an SPCA. It was you and your family that adopted me from the shelter, but it was all a large setback. Sometimes good will does not end up doing good things.”
 
“So what are you exactly?” Alex asked.
 
“I am a servant of God, as we all are,” Shagner answered. “I have been sent down from the Kingdom of Heaven.”
 
“So you are an angel?”
 
“If that is what you wish to call me.
 
“You must understand, Alex, that what I have to do is vital. Although you have made my presence known, you have not made my motives known. I have determined that I will need your help. If I had just left you, they would have taken you back down with them, anyway. You are in just as much danger as I am. We must be cautious and help one another if we are to survive.”
 
“If I was in danger, why isn’t Rosie in danger? I can’t believe I left her…”
 
“Do not worry for your sister. It was your prayer they intercepted, Alex. They want you. But they will not get you. You must stay close to me at all times. I cannot protect you against many, but I can protect against few. Let us hope that we only come across none.
 
“This is a dangerous time right now. The storm is only just beginning. It is likely that there will be a period where it will die down before it gets at its worse.”
 
“Why is this storm happening?” Alex asked. He found himself full of questions, but exhaustion was starting to sink into his sides. “What’s going on… with… the world and everything?”
 
“I will explain when we reach the city limits.”
 
“If the storm’s going to get worse, what will happen to everyone?”
 
“You refer to humans,” Shagner clarified. “It is likely that there will be many deaths. There will be even more if I fail at what it is I must do. I am sorry, Alex. It is unfortunate that your world lies between two greater ones. You are caught right in the middle.”
 
Alex felt sick. Most of Shagner’s words made no sense to him at all. He still had the nagging need to go back home and take Rosie to the city limits, especially now that he knew it was likely there was going to be ‘many deaths’.
 
“Sha… uh… should I just keep calling you Shagner?”
 
“That will do.”
 
“Okay then. Shagner, if we’re going to the city limits, I want someone else to come with us.”
 
There was a pause. Then: “Alex, we are both capable of—”
 
“Sorry, I’m just…” Alex groaned. “I don’t feel right. If this is all really happening… if you can really talk… and I have to travel with you… then I want to be sure that it’s all real. I want someone else to go with us, if only to prove that you really can talk. You wouldn’t want me going insane on you.”
 
The most human quality his cat had yet to express (other than talking, that was) occurred: he sighed. “Very well, then.”
 
“Good. Let’s go back and get Rosie.” Alex stopped jogging and looked down at his cat.
 
Shagner quickly stopped with him, staring up at him. His fur would have been blowing all around with it wind if it hadn’t been plastered to him from the rain. “No. Your dwelling is infected.”

Alex bit his lip. Poor Rosie… why did I leave you…?

“Anyone else might do,” said Shagner.

Alex thought, his only answer coming to his Mom, who was God knows where, or his best friend Thomas who lived a few more blocks down the road. Thomas would be a more reliable choice, anyway. At least he would humor Alex and listen to see if his cat could talk.

“I have a friend who lives up the road,” Alex said. “He might come with us if he knows you can talk. Then maybe you can make more sense of everything for me and him.”

“Very well.”

They set off again down the road. Alex’s mind still wandered to his sister. He felt like praying again, asking God to keep an eye on her. But now that he knew praying was not a safe activity, he didn’t know what to turn to.