The Lights In the Sky

Chapter 6

The sound that woke me up that night was horrendous. It wasn't just one noise, but a collection of them, all ringing in my ear. They were piercing, so high-pitched I thought it might make me deaf. I was completely asleep, not even dreaming, when I heard it. My eyes popped open and, almost immediately, I started yelling. I placed my hands over my ears and rolled onto one side. I felt the shape of my cellphone roll under my chest and the blankets around me were thrown into disarray.

Like a hundred violins, all out of tune, the sound was a conglomeration of sharp squeaks. Longer than clicks; shorter than screeches. They seemed to bounce around my head, from one chamber of consciousness to another. There would be a scream, which would echo until it faded away. Then another would respond. But always more than one at a time.A symphony of them; a cacophony, all at the highest volume as if pressed directly against my eardrum.

My vision faded in the pain, but I don't remember closing my eyes. I know my mouth was open, though my yells warbled away into nothingness. Tears ran down the sides of my nose. My spine arched and my skin pulled back against my bones.

Suddenly,there was just one. A single call. Fading echoes. Silence. Then the sound again. It wasn't until then that I realized something that terrified me, but also somehow amazed me: the sound was organic. It was coming from a living source. Don't ask me how I know that,because I can't explain it. It's like when annoying people use that barking dog ringtone on their phones. How do you know the difference between the ringtone and a real dog? You just know.It sounds different. Well, this sound wasn't coming from some instrument or scraping metal. It was alive, guttural. The more I listened (though that implies I had a choice in the whole thing,which I didn't), the more I realized that this single sound was different than the others. It was at a different pitch; a lower one.And its call seemed to fade out in a slur rather than in brisk silence.

It sounded sad, like the cries of a whale pod deep in the black ocean.

I didn't move. I just knelt there with my head pressed into a pillow and my hands over my ears. After a few moments, the sound stopped. Once I was sure that it wasn't coming back, I looked around my room. It was empty. I was alone.

Light under the bedroom door caught my attention. I watched with a racing heart as a shadow cut across the yellow beams. The floorboards in the hallway creaked.  And for some unknown reason, I got to my feet.

When I poked my head out of the doorway, all I saw was a quick wisp of pink at the end of the hallway. Whatever walked passed my room was going down the stairs, almost silently. I took a step. The floorboard under my foot creaked so loudly that I almost darted back into my room. Maybe it wasn't really as loud as it seemed. The house was so quiet, though. From there, I could actually hear the grandfather clock downstairs ticking. I told myself that I was being stupid; that the floorboard wasn't loud enough to wake a mouse. But I stepped quicker the next time, hoping that passing over the floor without actually setting my foot down on it would make me stealthier.

I got to the staircase and it seemed like somebody built a few extra steps into it. It seemed longer than usual is what I mean. A light came on from the kitchen, the slanted, glowing silhouette of the doorway lighting up the bottom few steps. Something rattled. I ran for it, darting down the steps so fast that I missed every other one.The skin on the bottom of my bare feet barely touched the stairs.Before I could let the shadows of the huge, empty living room frighten me, I went for the kitchen.

My mom screamed. She raised her hands up in the air, a cigarette hanging from between her middle and pointer fingers. The coffee machine next to her started to gurgle. Some people laugh after being startled; not my mom.

She said the same thing she always says, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" I let out a long sigh and put my hand on my chest. I told her she scared me; she said, with more conviction, that I scared her.She put her hand up to her forehead. I sat down at the end of the table.