The Ghostly Chronicles: Chapter 2 Boo!
Most of the time, I was alone during the day with Glen. I would roll his bassinet out into the living room in the morning, and we stayed out there most of the day. We, he and I, would watch TV, well, mostly it was me watching it; he just slept and ate and stared at nothing when he was awake. When he would fall asleep, I would go downstairs to the laundry room to wash his clothes and bedding. When I was the only one home and downstairs, I felt that old uncomfortable feeling again. The family room was just outside of the laundry room. It was quite large and had sliding doors that opened up to a small patio and yard and then dense woods beyond the yard that ran the street's length to the end of the housing area. The woods were very thick; you could not see past the edge of them at all. On the far side of them, eventually, you would come out on Allentown Road, one of the main roads in that area. There were no houses back there at that time, just woods.
The downstairs was never used unless my brother was home, and he had a self-contained master bedroom. The family room and storage areas were never used, only the laundry room and my brother's room. When I would get that weird, uncomfortable feeling, I would bravely walk around the basement and make sure that everything was locked, and it always was. I would look out of the patio doors and check the yard. I would cautiously open my brother's door. Everything was always exactly as it should be. Then I would run back up the stairs, and that feeling would go away. There was no explanation for it, and I didn't say a word to anyone about it.
In mid-August, we had reservations to go to a special performance at 8th and I. A military group from Canada would be there along with the Marines for a once a year performance. We didn't take Glen because part of the show was reenacting the Redcoats battle and our military way back in the day. They would be shooting cannons and firing muskets, so it was no place for a tiny baby. My mom had my grandmother stay at the house with Glen. He slept most of the time, so I knew there would be no problems. We came back right after the show, and it was about 10pm. As soon as we opened the door, my grandmother met us carrying a sleeping Glen. She was scared beyond reason. She was on the verge of crying. She said that somebody was trying to break in the door at the bottom of the steps that led into the family room area. That door had a lock and a chain on the side of the door coming back up the stairs. My brother and Mike went tearing down the steps to investigate. Everything was locked up, and there was no sign of intruders.
My grandmother said that someone had been twisting the door handle and beating on the door. Our collie dog, an excellent watchdog, stood at the top of the stairs raising hell, barking and running in circles, and snarling. She said as soon as it turned dark, the banging on the door started, and it stopped right before we walked into the house. She didn't call the police; she said she wouldn't put Glen down and couldn't call while holding him. Mike and Ronnie called the cops. Several cars came out, and they inspected the perimeter of the house and even walked to the edge of the woods and shined their flashlights into the dense woods. Nothing was weird.
My mom thought maybe someone else had a key to the house. She called the owners, who were in Hawaii, a Navy family. Nope, they had never rented the house out before; all keys were accounted for. So much for that theory. We didn't know what was going on.
My uncle came over with his little girl, who was about five at the time. She wanted to play out on the patio with the ball that she brought over. We could look out the window and see her, so we thought it would be okay. He visited with us for a while, and then it was time for him to leave to pick his wife up. He called his daughter through the window to come in. She was laughing and having a good time apparently, and she didn't hear him. He went downstairs to get her. She was playing with the ball and laughing. He told her to bring the ball and come in, which she did, and then he locked the patio door and the door at the bottom of the stairs. When they came upstairs, she asked him if she could come back and play with her friend again, and he told her she could.
I guess on the way home, they had been talking, as a five-year-old does, about their little world. Lana, that was her name was pleased because where they lived, there were no kids her age that she could play with. After they got home, my uncle called and asked me who the little girl around Lana had been playing with. I told him I didn't know that I had never seen any young girls or kids under the age of 10 or 11, and the only kids that I ever saw were a couple of boys. Maybe she was confused. No, he said that she described a little girl with white hair, blond, I guess, long, curly hair and wearing a long dress and that her face looked funny. I told him I didn't know and had never seen anyone like that. After we hung up, I didn't think any more about it.
My brother started having wild nightmares, yelling and screaming himself awake. He never remembered what he dreamed; we figured it was war nightmares. It was happening every night when he was at home, and when he went back to Ft. Meade, he said he was fine. Maybe he just didn't remember dreaming at all.
Before we moved into that house, my brother-in-law, wife, and a married couple had come to DC to visit us. Larry was a plumber and suggested we go by the house, and he would inspect the plumbing before we moved in. It had been party time for them and my husband the whole time they were there, everyone drinking heavily. We went to the house, and Larry went down to the basement and the bathroom and storage areas and came back and said everything looked fine. He said the only thing wrong was somebody almost knocked him down the stairs as he was going down them. We just all started laughing at him and told him he was drunk, but he was adamant that it had happened. So that was that. Silly guy. That was July 4th weekend.
I was bending over the bassinet one night, changing Glen's diaper. My mom was cooking, Mike was at Camp David, my grandmother was sitting at the dining room table, and Ronnie was in the living room shining his boots about 15 feet behind me. I was bending over taking care of Glen, and damn! "Who grabbed my ass?" I spun around, and my brother was in the living room, and everyone else was where they had been. "What's wrong with you, Ronnie?" "Are you crazy?" "Don't you ever do that again?" He looked at me like I was the crazy one. He said he didn't do it. I went and looked, and I had a big red mark on my butt. I went out and showed my mom. "What's wrong with you, Ronnie?" My grandmother said he never got out of the chair. Okay, I imagined it and willed my butt to turn red. "You just keep your hands to yourself and stay away from me." Those were the last words I said that night; I took Glen's bassinet, rolled him back into my room, and stayed there until everyone else went to bed.
When it was quiet, I had to go out and get Glen's last bottle for the night. Everyone else had gone to bed. As soon as I went into the kitchen, that old familiar feeling that I was being watched started up. This time, I was shaking like a leaf and shifting from one foot to another while the bottle heated. "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, bottle." It was done, and I took off, this time, looking back over my shoulder. That was a big mistake. No, it was a huge mistake. Somewhere, somehow, a scream came out of my throat, and doors flew open as I ran towards them.
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