And then one day that August, the wind blew harder than usual.
My parents were gone that day on a fishing trip with out of town guests, and my sister and I had been left to our own devices for the day. This was not terribly unusual for those days. I guess nowadays parents would probably think twice before leaving a ten year old alone for the day, but we were pretty responsible. Times were different then. The world seemed less dangerous.
Our house was always a happy and safe place when I was a kid. I clearly remember playing with my cars and trucks when I was really little on the living room floor. I remember the way I could see the dust in the sunbeam that came through the window after my mom would vacuum. I remember music, and laughter, and late summer nights. I remember feeling secure as part of my family, the warm feeling of belonging to something.
In the summer, if my parents weren't going to be around for the day, my mother would leave my sister and me a note written on a piece of scrap paper with our chores for the day. We would come downstairs in the morning, and the note would be sitting in the middle of our living room under a paper weight. We would snatch up the note, and stagger off to make ourselves breakfast, blearily reading what our daily torture would be from squinting eyes.
The note would typically look something like this:
Julie: clean room, cook dinner (beef stew), dust
Eric: pick up dog stuff, do dishes, sweep
We had two Irish Setters, Rusty and Brandy, rust red colored and beautiful. While I loved the dogs dearly, and considered them almost siblings, I hated picking up the back yard. I would make excuse after excuse to avoid the chore, until the yard was a disgusting pit, at which point I would have to spend hours and hours catching up. Not terribly bright of me, but hey, it was an awful chore.
Julie and I were expected to complete our chores before our parents got home, but the order we did them in was at our discretion. My sister would usually get right to work and knock her chores out in no time, whereas I would spend a few hours in front of the TV, followed by a nice three hour float in the pool, accompanied by some serious comic book reading before I would even consider starting on my list of chores. It was summer, and as far as I was concerned, summer was for lounging.
On this particular August day, the dark clouds in the sky and a light sprinkling of rain had kept me out of the pool. My sister had completed her chores in record time and was down the street at Cindy Schaffer's house, doing whatever it is that young teenage girls do in the summer. I imagine it involved listening to records, dancing and giggling.
All of the other neighborhood kids were off doing something or hiding in their houses. All of my current comics and library books had been read several times over. A phone call to Meech revealed that he was going to be gone to Grand Rapids for the day. Morning cartoons had given way to afternoon soap operas. I found myself alone in the house with nothing to do. Chores it was. The rain could serve as my excuse for not picking up the dog stuff from the back yard (and believe me, any excuse I could latch onto was welcome), so I figured I would do the dishes. I went to the kitchen and started filling the sink with hot sudsy water.
My family always had an insanely loud stereo system in our house. My parents would have parties and blare the music late into the night. To this day, I can't hear certain songs without being transported back to my little bedroom, suffering through sleepless nights at the hands of Edgar Winters. Anyhow, when the family was away, one of my greatest pleasures was to open up all the windows and doors, and crank the stereo. We had two smaller speakers in the dining room, and two big bangers in the living room, and when you cut loose with it the entire house shook.
If I was going to do the dishes, I was going to need some music. I put in a tape of the new Culture Club album (I had made a copy of an LP I got from the library) and turned the knob to 9. I had never gone all the way to 10. I was kind of afraid of 10. 9 was plenty loud enough.
The Church of the Poison Mind came on, raging from the speakers at full force. I went into the kitchen, which was adjacent to the dining room, and plunged my hands into the sudsy water. I stood there for a time, singing happily to myself while scrubbing madly away at last nights dinner dishes. I was always a singing sort of kid. I still am, I guess.
I was about fifteen minutes into the work, and lost in thought and song when the tape player suddenly clicked to a halt with a loud bang. The cassette player was built into the amplifier, and it had these dire, sharp metal lever-buttons that you really had to jam down on to get them to stick. When you would press the 'stop' button, the entire thing would halt with a metallic clang. With my back turned to the stereo, the effect of it suddenly banging to a halt for no reason was kind of startling.
I turned and went into the dining room to inspect the machine. There had been occasions where the tape had been eaten by the player, which would cause it to stop. I ejected the tape from the machine and gave it a couple of experimental whirls with my little finger. It wasn't eaten, and it wasn't wound too tight. It seemed okay. I stuck it back in the player, hit play, and went back to my dishes. In a moment or two, I had forgotten all about the tape player incident and had begun happily signing again.
Clang. The player suddenly halted again. This time I was a little spooked. I noticed that the rain had picked up outside, and that the wind was whistling a bit as it passed between our house and the Dowling's next door. It took me a moment to gather my wits and slowly turn around to face the player. I was hoping that my sister (or maybe one of the neighbor kids) was there and they were just messing with me, and I would see them standing there with their hands over their mouths, trying not to laugh. There was nobody there.
Again, I wiped my hands on the towel and walked into the dining room. I decided that I would check the entire house before looking at the tape player. I went into the living room and closed and locked the front door and windows. The dogs were laying on the floor in their spots peacefully. If someone had come in, they would have been barking like mad. I crept up the stairs nervously and checked each of the bedrooms. Nothing.
Feeling somewhat better, I went back to the tape player. It was normal. No problems. There must just be a glitch in the mechanism somewhere. It happened. Things broke. Things malfunctioned. No big deal. Just me freaking myself out over nothing. I hit play again, turning the volume knob down to four. I wanted to be able to hear the house around me.
I turned back to the dishes, somewhat frightened. There was no real reason for my fear, I knew. It was just being alone in the house, with the wind outside, and something unusual happening. It was nothing to be afraid of, I told myself. The dogs were there with me. They would rally to my rescue if anything strange were to happen. I began to do the dishes yet again, this time quietly and with much less gusto.
Clang.
The player stopped again. Angrily, I grabbed the towel and stomped into the dining room. I was completely fed up. I was going to get that damn tape and smash it. I stopped cold as I went around the corner into the room. Both of the dogs were sitting in the archway between the living room and dining room, ramrod straight, staring intently at me. They were growling.
What happened next is hard to describe. I felt something, a wind perhaps, rushing towards me through the house. I could hear the wind whistling outside, but there was no sound coming from what was whipping through my house. I saw the newspapers from the morning rustle and unfold as the wind ripped past it. The dogs both tipped their heads to the left in unison, still staring and growling. And then I felt it hit me.
The sensation I had was like nothing I ever felt before. It was like being hit by a wall, or like falling from an incredible height into a pool of cold water. It was sudden, and shocking, and hard. I felt something pushing around me, pressing me from every angle, almost as though it were trying to push inside me. Yes, it was, I suddenly realized. It was trying to push inside me.. I felt a huge wave of unreality wash over me, as though I were only an observer to whatever was taking place. I was dizzy. It was suddenly difficult to breath. I felt myself struggle to maintain control of my body.
The dogs went ballistic. They made what can only be described as a screaming noise, and jumped straight off the ground. They lurched towards me, teeth barred. Rusty, the older dog, jumped right at my face, her mouth wide open as though she were going to rip my face off. I hit her with the side of my arm and screamed. The voice that I heard come out of my mouth was not my little boy voice. It was deeper, louder. It was terrifying.
I turned and tried to run to the back door. It was as though I were in a dream. I was willing my legs to move, but they wouldn't go anywhere. The rooms swung around me, and stretched out of proportion. What should have only been a few steps was now seemingly miles away. Each step I took towards the door was a battle. I felt that if I could just get outside, I would be safe. I was glued in spot, struggling in slow motion, fighting with everything I had simply to move, to unglue my feet. Finally, in desperation, I did the only thing I could think of to do. I cried out to God to help me.
Suddenly I was at the back door. I was there, unlocking it, throwing it open, and running out of the house. I was screaming in the rain.
The next thing I knew, it was dark. I was still outside, and my mom was shaking me, asking if I was okay. Hours had gone by, and I had no idea what had happened during that time. I had stacked the garbage cans beside the house in a little pyramid, dug a few holes in the little garden we had next to our front porch, and basically behaved strangely. When my parents came home they found me shuddering on the front steps in the rain, refusing to go back into the house. They asked over and over again, was someone in the house? Had someone hurt me? I was unable to respond to any of their questions. My dad fetched one of his guns and searched the house. There was, of course, nothing there. Eventually they took me inside and put me to bed.
End of story.
Looking back on this experience with my adult mind, I have conflicting thoughts. When I think about it analytically, I realize that in all probability, nothing happened. I likely freaked myself out on a rainy day, and the dogs simply reacted to my fear. I had a panic attack, nothing more. But I don't believe that. Not really.
If I'm really being honest with myself, I have to admit something. I believe I was attacked. I'm unable to say by whom (or what). I have no idea. But I was attacked. Deep inside, I'm certain of it.
I have considered many times over they years going for hypnosis, or therapy, in an attempt to recover what people sometimes refer to as 'lost time'. But really, do I really want to know what happened in those few seconds, or in the hours afterwards?
Did I experience something supernatural? Was I attacked by an intruder? Did some neighbor make their way into my house and molest me and this is just the way my 10 year old mind covered up the tracks of some traumatic event? Or was something else there?
I don't know, and I don't want to know.
I do know this: I never felt safe in that house again. Even in high school, living there on my own, I slept in the middle of the living room floor, close to the door. I slept with one eye open. Hell, I hardly slept at all. I think part of why I drank so much in high school was because I couldn't sleep. I was afraid.
And I never listened to that damn Culture Club tape again, outside of eventually working up the guts to test it in another player to see if it was messed up. It was fine. Then I smashed it.
I always resisted being alone in the house after that day. My sister used to torment me about it a bit, but there were also times that I felt that she was a bit freaked out in there as well. Now when I'm at my Mom's house, it just makes me sad. Too much has happened there, too many memories haunt the place. It would be good to leave it behind and never go back. It would be even better if no one else ever moved into it. Better still if someone knocked that fucker down and salted the ground it stands on.
I don't subscribe to any particular beliefs about a higher power. But again, if I am being honest with my true feelings, I know that there is one. I also know that on that rainy day he (or she) came to my rescue.
Did I ever have any more experiences like the one I describe here?
Well, those would be other stories, for another rainy day.....
