The Ghost of Carlos
Linus and Lily had sleepover guests this weekend, their friends Simon and Lila. As we were putting them all down for bed, they demanded that I tell them a story. Years ago this was something Linus demanded each night, but unfortunately with a monotonous and quite limited selection of acceptable story subjects and subthemes. It sounds bad, I know, to say that you hate telling your kids stories, and in fact I love telling my kids stories, but you try telling the same six stories to your kid for a year and see how you like it.
But then we began reading at bedtime, and the Story Problem eventually went away. In fact, it went away so eventually that I instantly became nostalgic and a bit taken aback when Linus asked me for a story this weekend. How had I gone so long without telling stories? I approached the request with renewed vigor, since after all I had two years to come up with new material. I asked what kind of story they wanted to hear, and to my relief Linus didn't mention Spider-Man, dinosaurs or Speed Racer, some of his old standbys.
Instead, he said he wanted a "halloween" story. A scary story. The other kids quietly agreed this would be acceptable, though Lila spoke up and said maybe a story about Spring would be better, something with flowers in it. Being the master storyteller I am, I knew that Spring could be just as scary as Halloween, and proceeded to make it so.
What follows is my tale...
Many years ago, another family lived in our house (for of course, you know, we haven't always been the people living in this house, and in fact have only been here for seven of its 80 years of existence, which is an odd thing to consider even for adults, so naturally kids never think of that kind of thing because they are so immature and self-centered and have a profound lack of respect for history as a result), and they lived with a cat named Carlos. Carlos was a massive gray cat, remarkably like our cat Buster, who happened to be lying on the bed at the feet of the children as I told this story.
Anyway, one sunny, beautiful Spring day full of flowers and butterflies, Carlos was chasing a mouse through the gardens. Mice never got away from Carlos, and he ruled the yard and surrounding areas with an iron paw. I mean this both figuratively and literally, as Carlos had once stuck his paw into a running lawnmower's blade in an attempt to extricate a favorite toy, which he did successfully despite the loss of limb. At this the children asked what "extricate" meant, but I shushed them, and explained that all they really needed to know was that Carlos was one tough hombre. They then asked me what an hombre was, and I told them if they wanted to learn Spanish they should watch Sesame Street or Dora, which both talk about tough hombres all the time. What they needed to know wast that nobody messed with Carlos; even the lawnmower blade had to be replaced after Carlos took it on, and the two maintained a grudging respect and distance from one another forever onward.
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the sunny garden. On this particular day, Carlos found himself chasing a mouse that wasn't succumbing to his usual tricks, and was providing some much needed sport. The mouse zigged through the hostas, zagged through the rock pile, and generally amused Carlos with his pluckiness. "Meow", Carlos thought to himself. At any moment, Carlos felt he would be able to end the romp and deliver the crushing blow with his iron paw, or perhaps pounce and drive his fangs between the vertebrae of the mouse, seperating the bones and cleanly snapping the spinal cord. Was it a mere coincidence that a cat's fangs were spaced so perfectly to match the notches on these little mammals' necks, the very same way the lion's teeth were spaced so perfectly to fit the vertebrae of large savannah mammals? Of course not! Cats were meant to catch and eat their prey, an erotic feline drama played out millions of times over the millenia, and today would be no different. Carlos would catch this mouse, eat it, lick himself and then sleep for 16 hours. It was a perfect plan.
Except there was a problem. Carlos could never quite seem to get close enough to pounce. He could feel the mouse's tail brush against his whiskers, but just as he prepared for the fatal lunge, the mouse would put more ground between them. In a panicked moment, Carlos wondered if perhaps he was losing a step. Was this the beginning of the end, the downhill slide to dotage? Never! Carlos would never depend on the humans for his food. This mouse was merely fortunate, and had probably just eaten some coffee grounds or something to make him unusually speedy. Soon he would slow, or take a wrong turn, or...
HORRORS! The mouse had bolted for the door of the house. Usually this meant certain death, for the door would not open merely because a feeble mouse stood before it, and while it hesitated there and wondered where to go while it cursed the fates, Carlos would pounce, and that would be that. But on this particular day, as this particularly fortunate mouse bolted toward the door, the door swung open as one of the humans came outside. No one but Carlos saw the mouse bolt through the door, and Carlos had to haul ass to get in as well before the door slammed shut again.
He made it, but of course now the situation had turned completely. This was no longer a joyride, a pleasant diversion. This mouse was in the house, and if the people saw that Carlos would be shamed forever in the house and the larger neighborhood. Carlos decided to terminate the mouse with extreme prejudice, though at that moment his more immediate concern was simply not losing sight of the little rodent. The mouse rounded the stairs and scurried up the railing to the second floor, with Carlos in hot pursuit. Through the bathroom, under the toilet, under the bed, over the bed, pleaseohplease don't let the humans see this mouse in the house, back through the bathroom, then headed back down the stairs.
At this point, the mouse attempted the impossible, a move so brazen that Carlos could scarcely believe it. The mouse lept from a stair to the railing and then flung itself across the top of the living room, onto a blade of the spinning ceiling fan. By this point Carlos was in a disbelieving rage, and all caution was thrown to the wind. For years Carlos had been waiting for a worthy adversary, for every champion needed a worthy opponent to reflect his own glory, just as Connors needed Borg, Lincoln needed Douglas, and Holmes needed Jeremy.
Carlos needed this mouse.
He leapt for the fan, sans plan. His fur looked sleek and regal in the breeze, and for a split second he knew what it was to fly as a bird flies, the fulfilment of a lifelong dream. But then, just before he got to the fan, he saw the blade with the mouse whir around past his face, and the mouse leapt off in a new direction, successfully using the fan as a springboard to an escape route. Carlos turned his head to follow the mouse...and then he lost it.
His head, that is. There is an old fable that says you should never stick your head in a moving ceiling fan, but Carlos never was much of a reader and had no use for advice from others, and that was never so true as when his head smacked against the wall and came to rest with a dull thud on a nice hand-knitted doily that was resting on the back of the couch. His body landed with much less panache, but substantially more blood, right in the middle of a neglected game of Uncle Wiggly the kids had been playing on the living room floor.
The mouse was never seen again. But Carlos, despite being buried in a box by the black locust tree, was not so easily removed from 1073 James. You see, Carlos's presence in this house was a strong one, and given that he died a particularly sudden and violent death (as is so often the case with ghosts), it seems that Carlos was not yet ready to go wherever it is dead cats go, and so his ghost walks our halls. You might see him at the end of a hallway, or sitting in the window, but of course it's very difficult to tell when you are seeing Carlos and when you are seeing Buster, because they look so much alike. You'd think Carlos would be easy to spot, with his iron paw and lack of a head, but for whatever reason some ghosts come back without the various hurts they may have suffered in their tangible lives. In Carlos's case, I suspect vanity and pride caused him to take his pre-mangled form.
Sometimes, late at night, we will hear the sound of a cat howling somewhere in house. Again, this is tricky, as both our cats are prone to annoying howling about miseries that cannot be decoded by human beings. One never knows if it's them howling or Carlos, though of course it's possible they are howling because Carlos is troubling them in some way Most terrifying of all, Carlos will sometimes lay at the foot of the bed while we sleep. You'll think it's Buster, but it's really Carlos.
"Well, goodnight, kids. I'm just going to let Buster sleep here on the bed with you guys, OK?"
I turned out the lights and turned up the ceiling fan, but as I started up the stairs Linus asked, "Should we be scared of Carlos? What will he do to us?"
"Er...well...he won't do anything to you, necessarily. Some ghosts are friendly ghosts."
Linus sat up. "Then that's not really a very scary story, is it?"
"Well...ghosts are sort of inherently scary, you see."
Simon piped up. "Why?"
"Why? Because we don't understand ghosts very well, I suppose."
Linus shrugged and asked, "Then why do you know so much about Carlos? Who told you about Carlos?"
"I...just sort of figured it out."
"What do you mean? How did you figure all of that out?"
"Well...I...WHAT'S THAT ON THE BED? IS IT CARLOS?!" They all frantically scooted back, kicking their legs at poor Buster and making him move before they realized it was not the Ghost of Carlos. Or was it?
Feeling vindicated by their terror and uncertainty, I bade them goodnight.
10:51:46 PM 
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