To Get To The Other Side

I spent most of the evening yesterday finishing up the decluttering of my house. This is the supplemental cleaning that compliments Sunday’s share of just over ten hours. I’ve been doing this while the family is out of town, you see. I had just turned off the light and – wait. Let me back up.

I’m not a sissy little pansy girl. I’m a man. A big, strong, mean mother cobbler. I’ve seen just about everything I need to see to qualify that statement, and have confronted every bit of it with a boldness I’d possibly not have considered I possessed. I’m not a bad ass, but there’s really just not anything that can scare me. Sure there’s stuff that will worry me or cause me to fret. Like the safety of my daughter, gas prices (good call, trumby) etc. But I’m scared of nothing. Well, until last night. Last night I became a sissy little pansy girl.

I had just turned off the light and – well, hang on another second. I’d also like to preface this with a blanket statement about my beliefs. I’m skeptical as the day is long. I don’t believe in UFOs like Flavio does. I’m always up for a good conspiracy theory, but I don’t buy into them blindly. I think Sirhan Sirhan did it and that’s that. I don’t believe in ghosts or psychics or tarot cards or bullshitty astrology hogwash. I just don’t. I especially don’t think that if someone’s going to tell my ‘fortune’ that they’d be able to do it over the phone. How the hell can anyone get good cerebral reception over a phone line? I digress. Just know that I don’t buy into shit easily. I’m not naive, and I don’t believe in things I cannot see or feel or experience or prove myself.

So anyway, I had just turned off the light, and – wait. That above statement doesn’t include God, of whom I’m very fond – I have felt and seen his work. Let me go on the record as saying I am a believer. Okay. Let’s carry on.

So I had just turned off the light – in the kitchen, that is – and now the house was dark. I was heading back to the bedroom to go to bed. It was about eleven thirty. A little later than I’d intended to turn in, but still not unreasonably late. I’d just spent the last four hours or so finishing up the folding, cleaning, laundering, whatever. So I was tired. And in that small hallway between my kitchen and the master bedroom, something luminescent whipped silently across my path, just in front of my face at eye level – and disappeared into the darkness of the living room beyond.

I sort of jumped because I instinctively thought I was going to run into something. I think I might also have grunted or something. But I stopped in my tracks, and stood still for quite some time – scared stiff and covered with chills. My back felt like someone had come at me with a thousand icy steel stilettos. I was also perhaps a little in shock. I slowly backed up and turned the light back on, then tried (like a reasonable non-sissy man) to recreate the situation. To see it happen again. Nothing. Okay, so I was seeing things. I carried on. Even still, every few seconds the chills would reassert themselves – letting me know they hadn’t forgotten my fear.

I couldn’t lie in the dark though. It had freaked me out that much. I turned on the television for some light, and turned the volume all the way down. And I tried to sleep. Heh. Not a chance. Actually after about thirty minutes of lying there, I started drifting off. Peace at last. My fear had begun to settle and my manliness was back in check. I was once again in charge. Then I heard a noise. It was the sound of two adjacent keys on a keyboard (like a Casio) being pressed one time, simultaneously. There is one small piano in the house. It’s a cheap little toy piano someone got Callie for Christmas. It’s in Callie’s room. WHOA SHIT what the hell. I opened my eyes wide in the darkness, now coming to full realization what could have produced such a sound. There’s only one object in the house capable of that sound. As I lay there staring holes in the darkness, my blood running something slightly over three degrees Kelvin, I began to realize my sighting earlier wasn’t so far-fetched.

And then the little noises kick in. The outside ambient sound is filled with cicadas. That’s pretty loud outside my window. But I thought I was hearing something else. Little sounds. Like a child playing quietly in his room would make. A click here, a scratch there, a rub on the carpet and tiny creak there… Altogether a little frightening when you know you’re alone in the house. I turned and quickly looked at the baby monitor, and watched as with every sound, the LED meter illuminated. There are six or seven little LEDs and the louder the sound is, the more of them will come on. These clicks and pops were bringing in five and six little lights.

All right, so now the real me kicks in. I realize what the hell is going on here. Someone is in my house. I slip out of bed quiet as a whisper in a dream, and open my gun vault. Within ten seconds, I’m creeping down on Callie’s room with my Kimber .45 automatic and a SureFire 100-lumen torch. I pour around the corner of the door and blast fresh white light into the room, my hand cannon at ready beside the flash, ready to create a mortal escape for the intruder.

I cleared the room quickly, slicing the pie as it were. But there was no one there. I checked the office, the bathroom, the living room, the other bedroom, the closets – all silently, and with soft, quick bursts of light to destroy the darkness. Yet I was still alone in my house. The front and back doors were still locked. I was alone.

Alone, I’ve come to realize is a relative term. There were no other living beings in my house with me. But there was something there. And in that companionship, I spent the night awake on my back in the dark. I must have finally drifted off around 0440 or so, and the alarm banged me awake at 0555. That’s where the tired part comes in.

Perhaps I’ll never know truly what it was in my house that night, or maybe never even see it again. But at some point I realized this wasn’t someone I would be sending to meet his maker. If there really was something here, it had already met its maker. So I put the pistol away and tried to reason with myself that nothing like that could really hurt me anyway. It’s not hurt or pain that I’m afraid of though. I’m afraid of having the holy living asshole scared out of me at three in the morning, waking up to a screaming soul right in my face, bright white light pouring from its face, detached from anything living and far beyond the grave. If I ever wake up and see that, I may just join him. So keeping the pistol out would probably be a good idea.

And that was it. Never to be seen or heard from again. Pussy ass ghost.

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