At night
During part of my childhood, my bedroom was upstairs. I never really
felt comfortable in that room. I don't know why, but the room seemed
uninviting. Eerie.
Long before the glasses of milk began appearing, other odd things
happened. When I slept, I would sometimes wake at night to
the sound of foot steps on the roof above. My mother heard them,
too.
They would slowly travel the length of the house,
and then return.
It was the sound of pacing.
Late one night, I was looking out my window at our back yard. A
large
field extended from our house to the highway, a quarter mile away.
It was a bright, moonlit night. I don't know what I was looking
for,
but I couldn't sleep, and the back yard was better to stare at
than
the walls of my room.
While looking at the field, I noticed an area of darkness at the
back
edge of our yard, where it met the field. The dark area slowly
spread
out into our yard. As it fanned out, it approached our house,
growing in size and blackness. In minutes, it was much larger than
it had been when I'd first seen it, at least a third the
size of our large yard. It was blacker than the shadows of the
tall
grass in the field, cast by the moon light. Its darkness seemed
to
absorb any light that fell across it.
At first, I wasn't scared. Just curious. For a time, I didn't notice
the fear that was gradually crawling up my spine. But the darkness
continued to come.
All at once, it moved quickly toward our house. The
hair stood up
all over neck. I tried to yell in fright to my parents
sleeping
down the hall, but I couldn't make a sound.
The darkness approached to within a few yards of our house then
divided,
traveling around both sides toward the front yard. When it had
disappeared from view, I ran down the stairs and
into the living
room at the front of the house. I thought for a few seconds that
I could
hear a cacophony of small "squeaks" coming from outside. It sounded
very much as if a million rats or mice were gathered around the
house.
I continued to listen as it (or they?) moved around the house,
toward
the street. The sounds began to fade, until soon, there was only
the
silence of a sleeping neighborhood.
I peered through the curtains and was relieved to see the darkness,
whole
again, moving silently away, down the street and into the night.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It had not occurred to me up to that point, that what I was witnessing
may have been a mass migration of the mice that inhabited the large
field behind us, following some unseen, unheard Pied Piper. I never
discovered the true nature of that darkness. But it was not the
last
time I heard that sound.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Over the years, I'd begun to question what I thought I had seen
and heard that night, coming from my back yard. Rational thought
doesn't leave much room for experiences that can't be quantified
by
touch, measurement, or some other form of analysis. Whenever I
would (cautiously) relate this story to others, it was usually
met with the skepticism that most adults feel for a child's
tall tale.
And so it was, 14 years later, a pleasant surprise to have someone
else on hand to witness a similar occurrence.
I had already related this story to my fiancé.
She came to visit one night. As we talked, we began
to hear mouse-like squeaks surrounding the house. We both knew
exactly what that sound meant to me.
Excited, and feeling somewhat vindicated in my belief that I had
seen
and heard the strange things I'd described to my friends, I raced
up the stairs for a better vantage point from which
to look down onto
the back yard.
A large field no longer swept from our back yard to the highway.
In its
place was a storage "mall" and next to it was a large apartment
complex.
The darkness, too, was absent this time. Bright lights shown from
the
high points of the buildings behind us, driving away would-be thieves
and
vandals.
But the sounds remained. And they grew loud as they crept around
the
house, much more pronounced than when I was a child. I returned
downstairs,
looking out front as the noise became a chorus of squeaks. Then
the sounds
faded as their source passed around us, out into the circles of
light,
which the abundant street lamps cast onto the ground. I was disappointed.
No darkness accompanied the noise. And soon, too, the noise was
gone.
The unidentifiable sounds that were the subject of childhood
mystery, and
adolescent myth, were again lost in the constant din of
an adult's
reality.