What is that noise?
I’m jarred awake by a noise in the dark. Down the hallway—a bump or a thump. My action thriller brain, sharpened by my latest choice of book genre, evaluates and calculates. The thriller part of the brain reaches out and estimates the time as half-past five as I hear the neighbor’s jeep crank to life and head off to work. The action part of the brain halts right before demanding action, so I will not be reaching under the pillow for a weapon. Half an hour from now, what’s left of my brain will still be musing… “What could that noise be?” If there were an actual threat and I had to rely on reflexes. I’d be trussed up like a turkey in no time. But, my mind is really stretching and it wonders, “Should I wake the husband?”
I’ve attempted that before--waking the husband--with poor results. This is not my first experience with a potential home invasion. We were living in our first home—a rambler built in 1977 and it was a Friday night. One remembers all the details like that, (or one’s inventive mind fills it in,) and Mr. Darcey and I were both deep in REM sleep. I was startled out of that dream-state slumber by a crash on our back porch and a scrape as the back door was pushed open. My toned abs jerked me to a sitting position. (My creative mind likes to add fitness to my fantasy whenever possible,) and then another thump in the hallway added to my panic.
As most of you know, I belong to that gut reaction group whose immediate response is to fight. I do not freeze, nor do I flee. Nope, I am a fighter, so immediately I leapt—to the conclusion that we were being invaded. I turned to the deep-sleeper and with my feet in the middle of his back, I pushed while I frantically whispered the details. “Listen! What’s that? Get up and find out!” I shoved him off the far side of the bed. In the fantasies of my youth, the knight still faced evil and ultimately rescued the fair maiden, but the stumbling, bumbler who staggered out into the hall looked more like the court jester.
Turns out that I had conveniently forgotten that I told my cousin we’re going to be out of town, so of course he could use the house. We didn’t leave town and I had completely forgotten my promise. I recall that the cousin did mutter something about being grateful for weak pacifists who don’t have guns, as things could have really gotten ugly. Like my choice of nightwear at the time.
Back to the current noise in the night. It could be ghosts. Our home is almost a century old and it has a reputation for being haunted. My baby sister from Wyoming,1 is a reluctant medium who attracts unwelcome visitations from the alter-world. She declares from her vast experience with ethereal companions that, "Yes it is true. Your house is haunted."
I like the idea of a ghost. If the house is haunted, then I can blame all the unexplained phenomena on the haunt. Along with mysterious bumps, thumps and weird smells, there is wallpaper that separates and rolls off the wall in big sheets. I find empty tubes of bath gel and the contents squirted all over the shower. And one winter we were out of town and we were called by the city municipal department who told us that there was water running in our house. A lot of water. About 40,000 gallons of water had run out in the last few days. That’s unusual in the dead of winter unless someone, somewhere is crafting an ice mansion. And we were not. When our neighbor checked, he found the bathtub faucet gushing water down the drain. There could have been some other reason for the outburst, city pressure or some such, but it’s kind of cool to have a specter and so I’m going with it.
Back to that strange noise in my hallway? I lay there and wonder. “Should I panic? Why am I not more concerned?” I have found that worry is a very effective deterrent because nothing I worry about ever happens.2 But to make worry a really impelling force, you’ve got to do the work. You must make the sacrifice and put in the time. So in the depths of night, I worry and I rationalize and I reason most of the world’s problems away. You can thank me later.
The short skid down memory lane has brought my brain to a sharper wakefulness but if I don’t resolve this soon, I’ll never be able to get back to sleep! I have done the work, imagined the worst and look. I am still alive. I survived. So, now that I've worried about worry, I can slide down deep under the warm comforter and remind myself that there are better ways to die than trying to rouse the deep sleeper again--that guy who would only stumble groggily down the hallway and frighten the visitor with his choice of sleepwear.
I hope that whatever or whomever has bumped and thumped in the night will find themselves an empty bed and if I’m lucky, maybe they will also drink the rest of the milk before it goes out of date.
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1. I have to identify my sisters like this. There are five of us. Stick with me and you’ll see.
2Great meme, huh?
That’s my Reality and Sometimes It Bites. And When it Does, I Write.
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