I am almost asleep. My head nods and my eyelids regularly drop down while I fight to stay awake
until I finish this work. I can see the hall from my studio, it is dark.
Everybody at home is sleeping, and I should be too, but the deadline for this
assignment expires tomorrow, and I must have it completed tonight – well, today
in the morning, in fact. The only sound in the house is the cadenced clicking
of my keyboard, which, however, diminishes its rhythm as I feel more and more sleepy.
I raise the volume of my headphones, play some 80s disco music, and hope this
does the trick and keep my eyes open.
Suddenly, a swoosh coming from the hall makes me
jump on my chair. I look down to the hall, stretching my neck over the
computer’s screen, but the light of the reading lamp blinds my eyes and I can
hardly see nothing but darkness. By now, silence seizes the house. Nothing can
be heard now. A little bit unease, I try to concentrate again on the text but I
feel Mr Sandman is near, because my eyes do not obey the stay-open orders my
brain sends them.
‘Maybe some coffee
could be helpful. I’ll finish this paragraph, go down to the kitchen, and have
one cup.’ That is what I think as words run through the screen. But before I
manage to reach the full stop, I hear it again. Well, not exactly the same. I
hear a quick tapping on the wooden floor, just like a giant telegrapher sending
out a Morse coded message on the hall’s parquet, and comes suddenly to an abrupt end. I do
not feel so brave as to have another look at the hall. I make a ridiculous try
to hide behind the screen, and stop typing. I carefully listen to the silence.
Nothing but the sound of the heating pump. ‘Well, the good thing is I don’t
need that coffee anymore’, I say to myself. I am fully alert indeed, and I try
to type a little bit more softer, in order to be able to detect any possible
noise.
Once again. Something
rattles against the wood. Then, a dull bump, like something crashing against
the soft cushions on the couch. Thud.
I do not feel comfortable. I do not know what these sounds are. ‘I’ll wait for
a minute and, if this does not stop, I’ll go downstairs’. But I am stuck to the
chair. I dare not even to blink or breathe. I am not bold enough to go downstairs,
so I decide going upstairs and lock myself in the bedroom. But I remember Panic Room, and decide I had better stay
where I am. Maybe it is just my tired mind playing dirty tricks on me. The
truth is that sounds become enormous when silence is all around. Yes, everybody
knows that silence magnifies sounds. Maybe there are something just side by side
with the keyboard, and my own typing makes it vibrate and sound. ‘See? Nothing
at all now.’ I must settle this task. It is two in the morning, and I need to
sleep some hours before going to class, although it seems Mr Sandman is not
going to knock at my door this time. ‘Mister
Sandman, bring me a dream…’
No sounds. Absolute
silence. Just my fingers hitting the keyboard. Three in the morning. It seems
what I had heard was just my imagination, or maybe the fallen leaves outside
were being swept by the wind, brushing the floor. It is windy tonight, so it
would not be surprising that all these noises were coming from outside. I keep
on typing, more relaxed. It appears that I will be able to get through this
paper before the dawn comes, although I am beginning to feel a little bit sleepy.
Now it is time for that coffee.
Just when I stand up
for going downstairs for my cup of coffee, I hear it again. My legs tremble and fail, my whole body starts to shake uncontrollably. Tap… tap… tap… taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.
My imagination recalls The Tell-Tale
Heart, and my imagination goes wild and creates absurd horror stories about this house:
someone killed here, someone buried under it, someone killed and hidden under the floor. That’s it! It must be
someone's soul that cannot rest in peace for life having been taken before it was completed! I am totally frightened and unable to think clearly. The scene of
the television white noise in Poltergeist explodes into my brain. I cannot bear this situation anymore, I am
absolutely panic-stricken, and my body does not obey my orders. I say to me,
‘Gosh, girl, you gotta take it easy. Don’t let the dark side of the moon catch you.’ Useless. I cannot move. Meanwhile, I hear the tapping, sometimes in a
slow cadence, sometimes in a quick rhythm. All of a sudden, the noise ceases,
but I do not believe this quietness will last much longer, as it is regularly
broken by those cracking and sizzling sounds. I will wait for some more minutes
and try to look out off the glass balcony, in order to see if there is anything
out there. But I do already know I will not be able to do it. I am too
frightened to face anything, if there is something to be faced out there. Anyhow, it is
foolish to wait for the sunlight before daring to make any movement. It is
grotesque. I long to go to bed, I want to have some water, I need to go to the
bathroom: I must bite the bullet, I am an adult person, am I not?
I am afraid I am not
that adult, at least not now. Sssshhh! I think I have heard it again. The swoosh. A long, hissing, thrilling
sound. Swoosh. Yes, I have heard it.
I switch off the reading lamp and try my eyes to get used to darkness, but the
computer screen is yet too bright. The sound. Once more time. My heart beats
faster and faster, and a cold sweat flows from my forehead and drips onto my
lap. I try to reach a paper tissue without moving the chair, just by stretching
out my hand, and in the very moment I am about to get it, the noise pierces my
ears. I get paralyzed in sheer panic, and I feel my heart pumping adrenalin
into my veins: an ancestral and instinctive reaction which is supposed to
prepare humans to repel or initiate an attack. Despite this chemical alarm, my
brain is absolutely unable to send the necessary orders for my muscles to move.
Even in the event that I would know what to do, I am very much afraid that this
old bag of bones would not make the slightest movement.
I feel again like when
I was a child, trying to convince myself that there were no monsters under my
bed. ‘I cannot hide under my bed, because I’m too big for it, so no monster
bigger than me could. There, if it’s not bigger than me, I’ll be able to deal with
it’. But the hall is bigger than the gap under my kid’s bed. In fact, the hall
is bigger than any other room in the house. ‘You’re going nuts, monsters do NOT
exist! And what if someone has entered into the house?’ That thought scares me
more than any horror coming from an unknown netherworld. As my Grandma used to
say, ‘You’d better take care of living people, instead of thinking on ghosts
and ghouls.’ Yes, I will try to protect me from the living ones.
The fact is that a collection of sabres,
swords, knives, and the like ornate some of the house’s wall, but they are out
of my reach and just for decoration. In fact, I have never bothered to verify
their blades. So, what could I use for defending myself?
In the precise second in
which my mind was going through any possible near weapons, I hear the sound
again. Swoosh. And again that
maddening tapping and bumping. Tap…
taptaptaptap – thud – taptaptaptap – swoosh –. ‘No, no, no… this is not human.
No human being could sound like that. It’s soft and hard at the same time. Oh,
dear, no time to analyse!’
I have made up my mind
now. This time is going to be different. I am going to stand up now, go
downstairs, and see what the hell is happening there. I hesitate. Should I call
my husband? He is sleeping upstairs, I’m sure he could help me. Nevertheless,
whatever I would decide, I should have to abandon the relative security of my
chair behind the desk and the computer screen, and run upstairs before the
‘thing’ grasps me. I stand up slowly, trying to make no noise, and just when I
am about to stand on my feet, the bloody chair goes squeaking. My heart loses a
beat, my legs fail, and my backside bumps the seat. ‘This cannot be happening.
I must think as the adult person I am… Wait, I think I have already said that
and it didn’t work.’ I am paralyzed. I can hardly breath, trying to make no
sound. ‘C’mon, one, two three and stand up, will you?’ So I go one… two…
Before saying ‘three’, I
hear a strong whack against a wall,
so powerful that I can identify that the ‘thing’ has crashed against the wall on
my left. I know that whatever-it-is is downstairs left. The stairs are on the
right side of the hall, so if I hurry up, I could go downstairs, stick to the
right wall, and try to see what is happening. The light of the lamp in my studio
blinds me so I cannot see from upstairs, but its light illuminates sufficiently the whole hall.
In a second, I stand up
and run downstairs, but I miss the last step and fall on the floor. I can
hardly hold a cry, but I manage. My wrists hurt and my knees will have
beautiful violet bruises tomorrow. Now, I must try to scan the hall with a
reasonable detachment. Look! Something has moved just in front of me. A little
shadow dizzily passes before my eyes, going swoosh
again, and stops suddenly, but it falls out of my field of vision. Still on the
floor, I try to scrutinize that corner of the hall, but it is too dark. I wait
for some seconds, which seem hours, and the shadow moves again. I can see
it coming towards me, slowly, deliberately, calmly. As it approaches to me, I
hear my husband asking ‘What has that bump been!’, and I can see him on the top
of the stairs while the shadow gets closer to me, little by little, step by
step. In the brink of a heart attack, I see a green, phosphorescent light in
the centre of the advancing shadow, something coming from the outer limits of
reality, getting near, and quite near, and even more near…
Suddenly, a tenth of a
second before I start yelling, the shadow jumps on my lap and goes purring and
rubbing his head against my tummy. The shadow looks at me right into my eyes,
and says ‘Meow’, then leaves my lap, and the sounds start all over again: she
restarts playing with a bottle cap, sending it to the other side of the hall,
running after it as if it were going to escape, hitting and jumping over it
with his back bended as an arch, just to start over with the same game once again.
She looks at me again, I take a deep breath, now completely relaxed, and, still
sitting on the floor, I look at my husband, with a faint and silly smile on my
face, and prepare myself to explain him the whole chaos that little Nana and I
have created tonight.
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