BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The thunderous noise ripped through our sleeping house.
Something in my brain was commanding me to open my eyes.
What in the
world was that? I thought to myself. I rubbed the crumbs of sleep out of
my eyes as I slowly opened them to the darkness. I lay there silent and listening,
curled in against the small of my husband George's back. Had I heard
a booming noise or did I dream it? Maybe I had just drifted off into
that shimmering sea where we seem to float between sleep and consciousness,
that often jolts us with the alarming thought that we're
falling or that we've missed our step.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The sound tore into my ears like reverberating
thunder, but I knew it wasn't thunder. It had been a beautiful clear
evening in May, with not a cloud in the sky.
George stirred from his sleep. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.
“Of course I heard it,” I whispered directly into his ear. I was too
scared to speak any louder and even more scared to move. “What do
you think it is?” I asked anxiously.
“I don't know. Are all the kids in bed?” he murmured under his
breath.
I released my bear hug on George and quietly, so as not to even
have the bed squeak, turned away from the security of his body just
leaning over to the other side of the bed enough to see the amber
glow on the alarm clock-1:05 A.M.
Speaking rapidly and barely audibly, I replied, “They were. Before
all this racket started. In bed and sound asleep.” I had completed my
routine bed check before turning in just after midnight. George and
I had laid in bed talking about our new house, a very old Victorian
style house we had just moved into two days before.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The splitting noise intensified, again blasting
my momentary pleasant thought through the rooftop.
“George, the noise is inside the house,” I exclaimed in a whisper.
“It's coming from downstairs.” He could hear the anxiety in my voice.
Without saying one word, he quietly slipped out of bed and pulled
his trousers on. Sliding his hand under his side of the mattress he
retrieved his handgun. If he was expecting my usual argument about
the handgun, he was wrong. I hated his keeping a loaded gun under
the mattress, but I hated the idea of an intruder even more. George
tiptoed barefoot to the landing of the stairs and didn't utter a word for
what seemed like five minutes. After those few agonizing minutes of
dark, dead silence, the crashing booms echoed again. He turned on
the light at the top of the steps and that gave an illuminating yellow
glow to the downstairs entryway as well as to the upstairs hallway.
The loud booming continued.
I bolted straight up in the bed, breathing heavily from the uneasiness
of what George might encounter. I waited for George to say
something. Finally, I called out in a loud whisper as if trying to shout
in a lowered voice.
“What is it?” All I heard was silence. After three
separate successive occurrences of those deafening booms, I figured
whoever was causing all this commotion wanted to make sure we
heard them, so why whisper? Common sense told me that it wasn't a
burglar. Intruders, who break into other people's homes in the middle
of the night, try not to get caught, but who was it? And where
the heck was George?
“George?” I called to him sharply, no longer whispering, but in a
perfectly audible voice. Still there was no reply.
A little concerned for George's safety and a little annoyed at him for
not answering me, I threw back the sheet and bedspread and got out
of bed. As I approached the doorway, I cautiously peeped around the
door frame and looked down the hall to see George still standing silent
on the landing and completely motionless. He was frozen to the spot,
leaning against the wall, his left hand holding his handgun limply, his
right hand gripping to the banister so hard his knuckles were white.
His gaze told me he didn't hear me when I had called out to him. His
stare was glued to the entryway below. All the while the drumlike
booms continued. What did he see? What was down there? As if in a
trance, I grabbed hold of the banister with a firm grip and slowly
walked the length of the hallway, standing beside George. I looked
over at him, but he didn't look at me. He never took his face away
from the entryway below us. I was afraid to look downstairs. I lowered
my eyes to the front entrance and instantly became as paralyzed as he
by what I witnessed.
The old house has double doors, both outside and inside. The
outer doors were screen doors and inside are finely finished, sturdy
hardwood double doors. At the bottom of the stairs, in the entry, our
eyes were fixed on the inner double wooden doors. Finally, and for
only a moment, we looked away from the doors and at each other in
stunned disbelief, my eyes questioning George for an answer. Both of
us hoped the other would say that our eyes, the house, our imagination,
something or somebody, was playing a trick on us. But we
knew better. We knew. There was no way that what we saw could
have been anybody's trick and certainly not our own imaginations.
The outside doors remained closed. We could see the metal hooks
latched tight on the screen doors as the inner double doors were
slamming back and forth. Those solid wooden doors swung open
wide, all the way to the wall-then
Boom!, they would slam shut
with deliberate force. We saw nothing, nobody was to be seen. Our
bare feet might just as well have been nailed to the floor of the landing,
as we stood spellbound gazing down at what we saw. Dumbfounded,
we watched the doors open wide and slam shut for three or
four more performances.
After it became obvious that we had seen the show, it stopped.
We stood there waiting for an encore, but the show was over. I was
trembling so hard I grabbed onto George's right shoulder for some
support. Without speaking a single word to each other, we both
walked in dazed disbelief back to our bedroom. George returned his
handgun to its hiding place beneath the mattress and we got back into
bed. We neither one knew what to say, so we didn't say anything, not
a word all night. Soon enough I heard George's soft familiar snoring,
but sleep did not come as easily for me.
I lay there in the dark with my eyes wide open, thinking about
what had just happened. I knew what it was. When there is no explanation
for something so bizarre, then the only explanation is not
only simple, it's obvious. And whether George would ever agree, it
didn't matter. How I wanted and loved this house! Now two days
after we moved in, I find it is already occupied-
by ghosts!
The house was built like a fortress; even the inner walls were brick.
George liked to brag that you could tear this house down one room
at a time and all else would remain in tact, right down to only one
room standing, and that one room would be unharmed. Before we
moved our family here, we had taken two months to do some serious
cleaning and remodeling. Our new house had no central heating system
before we added it. Nearly every room had its own fireplace.
How in heaven's name could George be snoring? He saw the same
thing I did and yet he crawled back in bed and managed to fall right
to sleep. I needed to get to sleep too, but I couldn't sleep. How was I
supposed to sleep after what happened? My brain was telling me we
were going to have to move and my heart was telling me everything
would be okay. But
how?
As I lay there in the darkness, I thought about the first time I saw
this house. I fell in love with this piece of history eight years ago,
before I ever knew George McConnell. I was nineteen years old. I
rode the city bus from New Albany, Indiana to work just across the
river in Louisville, Kentucky. One particular summer, repair work
was being done on the old K&I Bridge, so for a time the bus had to
use the new bridge and travel through the old Portland area of
Louisville en route downtown. That's when I first took notice of this
house. That whole summer I always made sure I sat on the righthand
side of the bus so I wouldn't miss a chance to get a glimpse of
“my house.” As soon as the house came into sight I sat transfixed
with my face to the window, and I would watch it as long as I could.
It is a splendid old Victorian house. I don't know what drew me to it,
but every day it beckoned to me and I was captivated by its stateliness.
The house has an air of dignity all its own. Eight years ago I
wondered who lived in this wonderful place, never dreaming that
someday I would.
Many times I saw a little girl standing at the upstairs window. She
always waved as the bus went by and I'd put the palm of my hand
flat against the bus window. I knew she couldn't see me that far away,
but I'd made the gesture to return her wave.
I ordered my brain to stop thinking, but it kept up its constant
bombardment on my efforts to sleep. My mind was flooded with
memories of this house and how we came to live in it.
The house had been for sale a very long time before George and I
bought it. Actually, I think it had been for sale when I watched it
from the bus those eight years ago. George ...
