Halloween

There’s been a spate of burglaries in our area. With a lot of retirees in the neighbourhood, many of the break-ins are happening during the day when there are people at home. Lately though, there have been more incidents at night. I guess someone figured if there’s going to be someone in anyway, darkness is preferable to daylight.

A few nights back, the weather was unsettled, wind rattling the shutters and moaning intermittently against the sides of the house, and the cats were restless. We have too many cats. At night they have to be kept apart so they don’t fight. We close one in the living room, one in the basement and the other roams the corridors. We’re used to their nonsense and generally sleep through it. This night however, there was a louder than usual bump in the night. My wife and I both woke up.

“What was that?” she said.

“Cats?” I offered trying to wake up as little as possible “Probably definitely cats”. We lay there a while longer, straining to hear something. And there it was, a cat making aggrieved-cat noises somewhere in the house, hissing and yowling at something.

“I’m going to see,” said my wife. She got out of bed, the mattress rising as it was relieved of her weight. “Can you turn on the light?” We only have the one lamp and it’s on my side.

Eyes closed, I snaked out my arm from under the duvet and switched on the bedside lamp. I heard her footsteps pad across the bedroom, the door opened and closed. I lay there, trying to hold on to sleep, my eyes squeezed tight shut against the light. I could hear other doors open and close, she said something to a cat and there was an answering yip and purr. I heard the rattle of munchies in a bowl, a pause, and then the bedroom door opened, closed, and footsteps came back to the bed. The other side of the mattress sank back down. There was a brief tug of war with the duvet, then I reached out and flicked off the light.

Lying there in the dark, I was drifting off towards sleep when I heard from the far end of the house, my wife say with a rising inflection of concern “Well who left this open?”

My body went cold. I couldn’t even draw a breath. I lay there in the dark trying not to exist. Very, very slowly I reached my hand across the chasm to the far side of the bed.

There was nothing there, of course, but for about ten seconds I was in my own little horror film.