perl command?

File:
are you here now
are you here now
are you here now
are you here later
are you here later
are you here later
are you here now
are you here later
e you here now

Code:
open (FILEHANDLE, "< test.txt") or die "oops: $!";
while(<FILEHANDLE>)
{
my $char = getc FILEHANDLE;
print $char;
}
close(FILEHANDLE);

Output:
aaaaaaaea

I'm only getting the first character of each line but I want to print or store or output the word "here". Can someone please help???