Bump in the night

VIEWPOINT

I ’m sure you all know someone who is afraid of the dark. I’ve never been one of those people. I am not afraid of the dark. I am not afraid of what’s in the dark. I will admit to being at least a little concerned about what could be in the dark, because that could be anything.

But still, I’m pretty OK when it comes to dealing with the dark, especially in an age where a handy cell phone can double as a flashlight with barely a second’s notice. My daughter, not so much.

She’s 14 but she’s not cool about extreme darkness.

My wife? Normally, she’s go nerves of steel, but if it’s dark and someone puts it in her head there might be frogs (yes, frogs) in the shadows, and she’s frozen.

Anyway, one thing that has always fascinated me about the dark is the mysterious noise. You know, that bump or clang or knock that comes from …

well, somewhere … somewhere in the darkness. I can’t even begin to count the number of times over the course of 27 years of marriage my wife has hit me with a late-night “What was that?” Which is almost always followed up by me with “What was what?”

Now, despite the fact that I heard no noise and even if I did, I don’t even know where to begin looking for it (how do you even look for a noise?), I’m the one who has to go launching a Scooby-Doo investigation at 3 a.m. Not once have I ever found any monsters or axe-murderers (this is not a complaint), as it usually turns out to be a cat or dog who has knocked something over. OK, actually it usually turns out to be nothing.

Still, my wife and daughter are champions of hearing strange noises (even if neither of them can hear me call for a towel from the bathroom when I’ve forgotten to grab one before my shower). My wife is convinced someone …

or something … is going to come after her one night.

In fact, I’m pretty sure she has me sleeping on the side of the bed closest to the door so that when the Thing That Goes Bump In The Night does finally find us, it will eat me first, giving her time to escape out the window.

If so, I hope it actually comes in the window …

Well, the other night, as the remnants of Tropical Storm Cristobal were blowing and a-going across the region, we were all sitting at home when … something … made a super-loud banging noise.

It was only about 8:30, so the things that go bump in the night weren’t out for their nightly rounds yet, but it was definitely something. The downstairs people thought it came from upstairs and the upstairs people came running down the stairs asking the age-old riddle …

“What was that?”

To be fair, it was a good question. It was, again, quite loud. It sounded like something had literally smacked into our house.

With the wind whipping across the plains, I began to sort through my mental rolodex, trying to figure out what all it might have been.

“That wasn’t one of you?” I asked the upstairs crew. They assure me it had not been one of them.

So, with that part of the mystery out of the way, I grabbed a flashlight and went outside. The wind was still gusting but the rain that had accompanied it was, thankfully, gone. I was expecting to see a tree laying on top of the roof, or someone’s mangled windblown trampoline leaning against the side of the house or, well, something … But there was nothing.

“Maybe it was a big bird?” someone suggested, which I mentally visualized as not a big bird, but as Big Bird from Sesame Street. I got a little chuckle out of that idea.

We gave it a couple of laps around the house, looking for tree limbs or some other type of debris (or, you know, Big Bird).

But we didn’t find anything. Whatever it was (and again, I can’t stress enough that it was something. We all heard and practically felt it … my son’s fiance even screamed) it was nowhere to be found. I developed a theory that there was a sudden straight-line gust that could have shot through the attic vents and possibly knocked over something in the attic…

maybe.

At this point, it seems like everyone has forgotten about it … whatever it was. But not me. I hate questions with no answers.

I hate not knowing something that I should know.

All I do know, though, is that whatever it was, it’s still out there… ready to go “bump” in the night again.

If does comes back to finish us off, I hope it comes in through the window.