The Ghostly Chronicles: Chapter 9 Living On the Edge

My uncle was right. I didn't want to leave in the car.  It was in the carport.  We had an incident one night on the carport.  We had been in my brother's car with him driving—my mom. Grandmother, uncle, Glen, Sam the dog, and myself had driven to Fort Meade, Maryland to pick my brother up.  We had been going through long nights of noises and door beating, and we were all tired. We knew that we couldn't get home before dark because of the distance involved and the never-ending, always heavy traffic.

We decided to go to the grocery store and then stop for something to eat.  We really were not in a hurry to get back home; in fact, if we had somewhere else, we could have gone and stayed, we would have.  But we didn't.  Walking into that house had become the most depressing and doomed feeling that you can imagine.  We all hated the place now.  And we had that 2-year lease we were stuck in.  I knew that I couldn't stand staying there for 2 years. My only future plans were to get out of there by any means possible.

We went to a grocery store in Laurel and picked up "quick eats," something that didn't require much preparation and didn't make a mess.  It just wasn't practical to be isolated for any length of time.  It didn't matter that you were just a room away from everyone else; you just didn't feel secure in a room by yourself.  The kitchen is where I had felt so uncomfortable late at night when everyone else was asleep.

After getting groceries, we stopped at a McDonald's.  That would kill another hour at least.  As we were eating, the conversation turned to what was going on in the house.  Trying to rationalize something that you didn't understand was difficult.  Everyone had a theory or two.  And that was the discussion.  I stayed out of it; I didn't know what was happening or why or how, and it really didn't matter.

And now we were on our way home.  I dreaded it.  I checked on Glen; he was sleeping in his baby carrier wedged onto the car's console.  I was sitting in the back to the right of him.  My brother was driving now, my grandmother was riding shotgun (funny), my mom was behind Ronnie and Uncle Jerry in the middle, and the dog crowded in wherever he could squeeze.  I dozed off for a bit.  Any opportunity for peaceful, safe sleep was welcomed.

I woke up when we made the turn onto the street we lived on.  It was absolutely silent in the car now. We pulled into the driveway, all the way up into the carport, and then backed up enough to get my grandmother out without banging the door.  Ronnie turned the car off and walked around to the trunk to open it.  As soon as he got back by the taillight, the car started moving.  Slowly it was moving to the end of the carport.  The end of the carport had a wrought iron railing; on the other side of that railing was a 15 to 20-foot dropoff.  We were packed in the car like sardines.  My grandmother was in the front, and she had never learned how to drive; there was no way she could try and stop the car.  Ronnie was trying to catch up with the car, but he was so big and awkward that it seemed like he was moving in slow motion.  My uncle and I were trying to get through the console where Glen was to get to the emergency brake or regular brake.  We were frantic; there was pandemonium in the car. All I could think of was Glen being hurled out of his carrier and flung out of the car.  Everybody else didn't really matter at the time.  I reached through the console and grabbed him.  We actually hit the railing, and the car was pushing against it. My uncle got to the front seat and put the brake and the emergency brake on.  Ronnie had fallen and had ahold of the door and was being dragged.  We were all frozen with fear; nobody could move.

Ronnie got up, and he had brush burns all along with one of his arms, and it was bleeding.  He had the car keys in his hand.  The motor was turned off before he ever got out of the car to open the trunk.  He gave the keys to my uncle, and he backed the car completely off of the carport, set the brake, and got out.  He was shaking like a leaf; we were all shaking.  This was a whole new deal now.  Whatever this was could actually cause harm, not just scare you.  This was a whole new ballgame now.  Now we knew that we were not really safe, that whatever all of this stuff was, whatever you want to call it, it was evil.

We all got out of the car.  The ladies and the baby stood outside in the driveway while Ronnie, my uncle, and Sam went into the house to make sure it was "safe."  We had left lights on before we left, so we were not walking into darkness.

They came back out, and we all got everything out of the car and went in at the same time.  The car was left sitting in the middle of the driveway.  As soon as we walked into the house, the stairway door was being targeted.  I guess that was our "welcome back fools" signal.  We were all so upset over what had just happened that the door incident seemed minor and irrelevant.  That was when my grandmother's decision to be taken home and not to come back was made.  She couldn't move fast enough if she needed to, and her hearing and vision were poor.  She was the least safe person there.  If anyone had asked for volunteers to leave, I would have been more than happy to oblige them, but I had to stay.

It was a boisterous night that evening, but like I said, that all seemed like small potatoes now.  At least it generated conversations about trying to do something to get out of the house, to try and get out of the lease.  I had already made up my mind that I wasn't going to stay and tough it out.  I'd be drooling, the eye-rolling mental case, if I didn't get out of there.