THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

It was a big crash that woke me up at 2:30 in the morning, a crash that seemed to go on for a long time and echoed throughout the dark house. Then… nothing. I lay still, my eyes wide open, staring at the open bedroom door. If it was an invader, it was a very noisy one. Probably the cats, I thought, knocking something down, though I could not imagine what. It sounded as though it came from the kitchen.

I hesitated: should I go investigate or not? If Bill were alive, he would have gone. I turned on the bedside lamp, opened the nightstand drawer, and dug out the security system fob, the one with the red panic button. I had paid for the installation of a security system six months after Bill’s death, after a teen-age pet sitter had thrown an overnight party in my home.  Now I set the alarms every night.

Fob in hand, I went down the hallway, turning on overhead lights as I went.

I met the two Siamese cats in the kitchen, apparently on their way to investigate the noise, too. One of them meowed at me, as if accusing me of disturbing their sleep. I knew if they had set off the racket, they would be long gone and hiding in the family room. I did not see any disturbance in the kitchen or the living room. I checked the kitchen door: locked as I had left it. The kitchen windows were locked.

I turned on the lights in the family room. Nothing out of place there, or in the bathroom. The long dark utility room was the last place to check, just the sort of place someone might hide in. I screwed up my courage, reached inside, and snapped on the lights: nothing disturbed, everything in place.

Puzzled, I turned off all the lights except for the hanging light in the kitchen and went back to bed. My old dog was still snoring on her bed; she had slept right through the crash. Some help she would be! I put the security fob on top of the nightstand, within easy reach. I lay in the dark for a few minutes and then grabbed the cordless phone on the nightstand. I wondered if I could dial 911 in the dark. I peered at the phone in the light of the moon, trying to memorize the location of the four necessary buttons. I put the phone on the bed next to me, on top of the duvet.

The bedside clock now said 3:30 am.  I got up, went down the hall, and turned on the outside light for the kitchen patio. Perhaps the raccoons had knocked down the large birdfeeder, creating the crash that I had heard. I peered through the glass of the door but could not see the feeder.  I was not going outside to check. The mystery would just have to wait for morning.

I went back to bed and thought about the metal baseball bat that I knew was leaning in a corner of my bedroom closet.  It had turned up in the house when we returned from three years in England; our last tenant had been a single woman. I kept the bat, not saying anything to Bill.  I considered getting out of bed and getting the baseball bat; it could keep the telephone receiver company on the bed. But I lay still and fingered the buttons on the phone.

The glowing face of the bedside clock said 4:30 am. Surely if there were an invader he would not have waited around for two hours to make his move. At last I drifted to sleep into a beautiful dream set in a Buddhist temple filled with delicate music and light. Perhaps my distraught brain was trying to comfort me.

In the morning I got up and looked out the kitchen window; the bird feeder was on its post. The raccoons had not knocked it down. Then I noticed the pile of round trays on the kitchen floor near the door. I somehow had not noticed them in my nighttime search. The trays were a mix of metal, plastic, and wood, and normally were contained in a fabric strap that hung from the wall between the windows and the door. I had knocked them down a few times myself and knew they made a terrible racket.  Did the trays leap out of the holder by themselves or had some vibration on the door or window knocked them down?  Or were the cats responsible? I will never know.  It’s a mystery.