The Ghostly Chronicles: Chapter 7 Boogey Nights

Sam

As far as I was concerned, the vacuum cleaner incident was the ultimate intimidator.  There was no explanation for it; there was no trying to reason that I didn't see whatever that was, and there was no forgetting it. It was a first-class contender for an awesome Twilight Zone episode.  Having watched Twilight Zone as a kid, I wondered where the plot of this story was going.  Were we going to be zapped into a time in the past? That didn't make any sense.  But what did?  Was part of this house built on some kind of a two-dimensional fault, teetering on the edge of falling into the past or just barely leaning on the brink of the present time?  It was hard to get it out of my head.  It was making me very nervous and jittery.  It was really beginning to get to me.  Every night was a real-time nightmare and each night added a little more or something new to its repertoire.  I didn't want to be around for the grand finale.

My mom had my aunt come and get my grandmother, she was too old to be around all of the craziness, and she didn't see or hear well enough to keep away from any danger such as the dog running wildly around; she could fall easily and get hurt.  I never speak of my aunt much.  She was married to a colonel in the Army, and you would have thought she was married to Eisenhower.  She was a snob, a goody-two-shoes, and I just wasn't crazy about her.  She had been told about the house and wanted a tour. She was taken throughout the house and given a blow-by-blow explanation of what transpired in certain areas.  Of course, she was given a daylight tour.  After she processed all of the details, she proceeded to walk through the house and invite the "others" to come out.  In fact, she was double-dog daring them, taunting whatever was there.  I told her to knock it off.  "Look, you get to go home to your nice little house on the cove; we have to live with this all of the time."  She gave me a dirty look and continued with her game. Eventually, she got tired of teasing the unknown and took my grandmother and left.

That evening began as it normally did, with the doorknob twisting and banging on the door.  I had put a blanket over the vacuum. I wasn't up to any more sideshows from the unknown.  We ate sandwiches and chips, something quick that didn't keep my mom in the kitchen away from the rest of us.  We were sitting around and had the TV on more for the noise value than the entertainment value.

It was mid-week, and I only had one more day of anxiety to go through before I left for Ohio.  Mike would be back tomorrow, and we would leave Friday morning.  He was getting a ride from one of his friends from Camp David.  I had started packing things early in the day with the help and company of my uncle.

I was folding and packing baby stuff that evening, almost counting down the minutes until we would be leaving.  I was sitting on the sofa with the bassinet beside me, and Glen was in a baby swing right in front of me.  Massive amounts of formula were being sterilized in the kitchen, and more clean bottles awaited the same process.  My mom and uncle were sitting at the dining room table, and my brother was in "his chair."  He was shining his boots.  Sam was lying at the top of the steps eyeballing the door and growling softly.  I looked up as I was folding clothes, and right behind my uncle's head and somewhat above it about 3 feet, something glittery looking was falling.  It was transfixing, it was eye-catching, and it looked like it was in slow motion.  It reminded me of tiny snowflakes just barely coming down.  I couldn't look away, and then the area of the falling glittery looking stuff started to spread out and get wider.  Then an alarm bell went off in my head; that was how my great grandmother had looked as I was walking towards her right before she vanished.  Holy shit.  I yelled at my uncle to get up, move away from the table.  He and my mom both got up and moved a few feet away, and now we were all watching that stuff floating around.  Ronnie took pictures of it, shot after shot.  He had three costly cameras that he had brought back from China, and he could take rapid-fire pictures.  The stuff was starting to stick together in little tiny clumps, and the area was about 4 feet wide.  Ronnie knew what that stuff looked like too.  Now the dog was charging the area, jumping up at it and snarling.  My uncle took a cushion and fanned it violently through the particles.  Instead of them free-falling and scattering, they just vanished.  Poof!

Now we were all in the living room, and everyone was talking at once; it was pandemonium.  The dog was put on his leash and held by my brother.  Our attention was diverted by the banging of my shower door being opened and closed, over and over.  I took Glen out of his swing, put him in the bassinet, and pulled it as close to me as possible.  The noise in the shower stopped abruptly.  The chain on the stairway door was moving, and again the dog was ferociously trying to get to the steps.  All of the noise stopped, even the barking dog.  It sounded like feet shuffling at the bottom of the steps on the landing.  It sounded like someone with house shoes on scuffing their feet on the floor over and over, but many feet.  That was a new activity, too—glitter and shuffles all in one night.  Ugh, oh, and now the glittery stuff was in the air coming up from the stairs.  I think we were almost ready to meet the Jones's.  I didn't want to meet them.  I told my brother to let the dog loose.  Sam ran to the stairs and started down them and jumped from halfway down the stairs through that sparkling downfall, and it shattered into a million pieces and then vanished.  The poor dog hit the door when he propelled himself down the stairs with a big thud.  As soon as he did that, everything stopped, total silence, except for us, and we were all breathing like we had just run a half-mile.  Sam came back up the stairs limping a little.  We let him get up on the sofa, and we petted him and tried to calm him down.
He was the hero of the night.  But the night was still young.  Looking back on this now, I wonder if a black light would have shown a more definitive form or forms, but I'm also glad that we didn't have one.  

It was deafening in the house all during the dark hours.  The shuffling noises could now be heard back in my room and the hallway and the stairway.  Every once in a while, those sparkling, glittery looking things would float through the air.  Every time we saw them, Ronnie or Uncle Jerry would scatter them with a cushion, and they would vanish.  The dog was being kept on his leash on the sofa, and he would growl and snarl and bark at all of the happenings.  He was a valuable pup; we didn't want him hurt or hurt himself; he obviously valued us more than he did his own safety.  I thought maybe he and I might have a nervous breakdown at the same time.  

Was it a coincidence that the activity increased after my aunt walked through the house and made a fool of herself, daring the things that went bump in the night to come out and play?  Personally, I believe her invite made everything worse, or maybe it just sped it up.  She should have kept her big mouth shut or at least stayed around for the show.  

One more day and night left of show and tell before Glen, Mike, and I escaped.  And it was going to be at the perfect time; we just didn't know that yet.