Jiji, demon hunter?

[asakiyume]

(I'm back home now. Slowly I'm working through my friends list backlog, but I probably won't make it all the way back to all the entries I've missed--I'm sure glad to be back with you all though.)

I have a creepy little story to tell you about my first night home. We were talking at dinner about the cats that come calling for our handsome Jiji. The healing angel was saying that one night he heard a sound like babies crying, right outside the house, but he knew babies couldn't be crying right outside the house, so he figured it had to be cats.

"In Japanese stories, you'd shoot an arrow at that noise, and in the morning you'd find a giant wild boar with an arrow through it, lying near the door," wakanomori remarked.

Well, in the wee hours of the morning, right outside our open, ground-floor window, I heard a voice calling, "Hello? hello? hello?" An unearthly, weird voice. It had to be cats (like these cats), but at three in the morning, at the open window, it was hard to think rationally about it. And it kept on and on. I got up to close the window, disturbing Jiji, who'd been asleep and ignoring this greeting. Jiji ran to the window, looked out, then ran away.

The window was closed, but the hellos continued. And then there was a bang and a tearing noise, like something hurling itself at the window and maybe tearing at the screen.

"It's trying to get in," I said to Wakanomori in a terrified voice. He went and banged on the window. The hello-er shifted over to the living room window. Eventually it went away.

"Jiji must really be a prince of cats, and the ladycats just can't resist him," I said next morning.

"No, he's a demon-hunter," said the healing angel. "Only he tangled with something in the swamp that's more than he can handle, and now it's after him."

That sounded shiveringly more likely.

Fortunately, last night, whoever it was decided not to pay a visit.

see the scar in the screen? That was where the demon tried to get in

Comments

[wuweibaby.livejournal.com]

Yikes!


And, welcome back ❤️🙋🏻

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's good to be back.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Wow!

The Voice Outside the Window.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hee--your remark sent me to Reddit, where I read The Voice Outside the Window. A good haunted tale!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Welcome home! I hope your father is doing better.

And, yikes, creepy about the voice.

When I lived in Nashville, we had some HUGE owls that lived in the woods behind our house. At night, we'd hear them "laughing" like people in a horror show insane asylum, and that was soooo creepy.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pileated woodpeckers sound really maniacal too--I think they're what Woody Woodpecker is based on.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I wonder if it was some sort of bird. it certainly sounds like a creepy experience!

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's creepy no matter what it was!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, frankly, even if it's just a randy cat, that's a little too forceful an expression of desire O_O

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, they can sound exactly like children. I remember a huge, scarred, tattered male cat called Candy that would hang around our house for a while when I was a kid, and he'd go "Mama, mama, mama" in the dark every night.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I can definitely see why people associated cats with the spirit world: they sound so humanlike, but with an unearthly twist.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is seriously creepy. Maybe it would have been nothing much in daylight, but at three a.m. everything is weird.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You're right about the time! If it had been daytime, we'd probably have been laughing.

[sovay]

"It's trying to get in," I said to Wakanomori in a terrified voice. He went and banged on the window. The hello-er shifted over to the living room window. Eventually it went away.

That is like something out of Manly Wade Wellman.

I'm glad you're back! Congratulations on surviving a weird tale!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was very Manly Wade Wellman (speaking of, doesn't he have just the best name, especially for this sort of tale?)

If only our house was a cabin on a lonesome hillside!

[sovay]

It was very Manly Wade Wellman (speaking of, doesn't he have just the best name, especially for this sort of tale?)

(Yes! I grew up on his Silver John stories. Cats crying with babies' voices are right in his line.)

If only our house was a cabin on a lonesome hillside!

Probably just as well not!

[edit] I related this story to my mother and she said that she would not let Jiji out of the house for a while. Just in case.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Your mother is a woman of sense. Jiji is, however, like one of those characters who insists on going into the cemetery on a new-moon night and then suggests to friends that everyone split up.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

That video is adorable.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

A few of those cats sounded JUST LIKE the nighttime demon.

[pameladean]

Glad you're back! And eeeep.

We have had juvenile raccoons fighting in the back yard and overturning trash cans, and their vocalization is just unearthly, and while it doesn't have words in, it's so complex you start hearing words anyway. We almost called the police the first time it happened. It sounded like drunken crazy people were rampaging all over and trying to kill one another with metal trash cans full of bird seed.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Raccoons can be terrifying! Once when we were at a campsite in Quebec, they came marauding through--we thought it was bears, they made so much noise. And they were Much Bigger than we'd reckoned on.

[pameladean]

A 40-pound raccoon is indeed terrifying. A previous cat treed one once. I was very glad to get the cat into the house, where he spent the night pacing in front of the window and yowling. The raccoon eventually came down the tree and ambled away. I am grateful that it was apparently a mellow one.

Our trash-can raccoons were little ones, but there were five of them.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's basic raccoon math that 5 small raccoons > one big raccoon.

[gwynnega]

Yikes!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Right??

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I hope Jiji gets the better of The Scary!

Not scary, but in Mayotte, we had cats in heat outside our apartment that sounding like they kept saying "oh wow!" over and over again. Every time J and I hear cats in heat now--or someone says "Oh, wow!"--it cracks us up.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That is hilarious! Perfect for feline sexytimes.

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

Wow, creepy!

And glad you're back, hope everyone is doing well.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Many thanks <3

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

You are in a 1970s' horror movie. Run.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Gonna sprinkle salt under that window, just in case :-)