Last night, our rocker bench got drunk. It’s the only explanation for why it dragged its sorry chipped ass across our back porch before throwing itself into the arms of a lounge chair. Sure, it was raining, but the hard stuff had blown over and the wind had calmed to a whisper. We heard it first, a knock on the back door then a crash and the sound of concrete screaming. Our first thought: The dogs tipped something over, or they were nosing around and nudging a chair along the wall. When we made it to the window, the bench was gone and the dogs were standing in the rain with wide eyes and ears raised.
Now, Cujo and Baby are big dogs — they carry almost 300 pounds between them — but there’s no way they did that. One, I’ve never known them to flip the furniture over, even though they could. Two, they couldn’t have flipped it other, pushed it against the wall, scrape it past the door, then flip it forward, up and over another chair without pulling a shit-ton of junk (cardboard boxes, a small trash can, their water bowl) along with it. Neither could the wind, for that matter. If the wind had been strong enough to pick it up and toss it, that would be one thing. But then we’d be talking about wind capable of lifting something that weighs more than I do yet leaves papers and cigarette butts and spindly tree branches behind.
The dogs were scared. We were paranoid. Stuff like this always happens when we start packing. Three houses and countless cases of furniture moving, pipes bursting, and photos vanishing from their frames. My mother blames it on gremlins she’s only read about. I blame it on ghosts I can see.
That, or the bench was drunk. I just hope the tread marks were worth it.
The Brick House, as we call it, may not have actually been brick. I can remember riding the bus home from school and getting off at a friend’s house across the street where I’d wait for my mom to pick me up. I don’t recall her working then, so I’m not sure why I did that other than to play with my friend’s awesome Video Painter. But every day as I stepped off the bus, I would look to my left toward my own house, perhaps checking for my mom’s car, and I swear to this day that it was brick. Not that it matters. It’s amusing to talk about around my parents, though, as the only brick house they remember is the one beside my Aunt Elaine’s, the only two houses on a dirt road with no name that ran alongside a railroad track. I suppose I’ll talk more about that in another post.
So, the Brick House. Apparently, we were renting it from a sketchy old man who would routinely sneak into the unfinished attic and smoke cigars while flipping through Playboys. Imagine our surprise when my dad told us this while we were discussing the cigar smoke we often smelt there. I guess he thought that would explain things. My mom glared at him for a moment before launching into a series of questions like “How would that old man even get up there?” and “If you knew he was doing it, why didn’t you say something?” The only way to access the attic was via a stairwell behind a door that we weren’t allowed to open – it was full of black garbage bags bursting at the seams. There was a window upstairs that faced the front yard but if anyone had tried to climb up there and slip in, especially a humpbacked old man, hell would have been raised. Unless he did it after nightfall, in which case … ew. I was five at the time, my sister would’ve been three or four. Alone all day with our mom sound asleep, our tuckuses parked in front of the TV with only three easily spooked cats and a hyperactive poodle to protect us.
Yeah, no. I don’t buy it, but it’s been the most logical explanation for the smoke smell thus far.
I watched a lot of TV back then. Besides standing in place and spinning in circles, it’s about all I did. I would set my clock for five till five so I could catch Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers every morning. David the Gnome followed, and I’d spend the afternoon watching Captain Planet and Pirates of Dark Water (now that I think about it, Dark Water had probably stopped airing by then – I would have watched it the year before). With a few exceptions – Sonic the Hedgehog, a fluffy white cat with a big blue bow featured prominently on the cover of some kids book, Barbie – all of my imaginary friends were swiped from cartoons or horror movies I was too young to be watching.
This has a point, I promise.
I have two very vivid memories from our brief time at the Brick House. The first is of staying up till sunrise, watching TV, and my dad coming home from work and fixing himself a bowl of wheat cereal. He worked nights, and most of the time he’d come in and change out of his boots and head for bed without me ever noticing. I was too enamored with whatever was on the tube. But one morning I noticed, and he sat down on the couch beside me and ate his cereal and neither of us said a word. I was laying on the same couch when I found myself flying around the living room, looking down at myself, my back pressed to the ceiling.
Had I fallen asleep and dreamt the whole thing? I remember it well enough. My sister was playing on the floor beside me while our mom pecked away at the ancient computer in the hallway. The TV was off for once and the sound of clicking keys reverberated through the whole house. I was on my stomach with my right arm hanging over the edge of the couch, my knuckles brushing the floor, and I was thinking about my friends Chip and Dale and Zip and Gadget. They were passing around corn dogs, and for some reason Gadget was wearing a white muumuu. Golly, the things you hang on to. At some point, my mind began to wander and I sensed I was hovering over the couch rather than resting on it. Weird, I thought, before pressing my face into the cushion. Only the cushion was no longer there. I opened my eyes then, really opened them, and stared down at the room from eight feet above. I was snaking around in a wide circle with the hideous popcorn ceiling snagging my hair and the back of my shirt. I was smiling but I never laughed. I was quiet, so quiet my sister hadn’t noticed the transformation despite sitting right next to me. Too quiet.
I blinked once and raised my head from the couch, my arm numb and my eyes dry, my toes starting to tingle. My sister chirped something unintelligible and our mother stepped into the room, swinging a heavy book at her side.
My earliest memory is of wee me, about 6 months old, tumbling over the collapsible rail of my crib and landing on my head. This would happen again many times, enough to warrant a pile of stuffed animals being strategically placed at my bedside to cushion my fall. I learned that if I held onto the railing and swayed (I’m sure I was mimicking the animated monkeys I had seen swinging from branch to branch on early morning cartoons), the side would drop and out I’d spill. But the first time I wasn’t prepared, so I knocked myself silly and shrieked as if I’d fallen onto a bed of nails rather than the floor. My mom rushed in wearing the satin blue nightgown she always wore in those days, scooped me up and carried me into the living room, still a blubbering mess. What followed is most likely a series of events that over time my mind has molded into one, but for the sake of a good story we’ll say this is how it happened.
The TV was on. I want to say we were watching a Saturday Night Live skit but for the life of me I haven’t been able to find a clip online. A young couple, the jock boyfriend and the pretty blonde with her hair pulled into a ponytail, stood looking up at the Lincoln Memorial. They turned to leave when the statue lifted one hand then the other before rising from his seat, glowering down at them like an angry god. Naturally, they screamed and ran away. But they weren’t quite fast enough. I don’t remember what happened to the guy, only that he died first. The girl must not have been very bright because she just stood there aghast. Abe reached down and made a fist and then he was holding her up to his face. She screamed one last time before her head disappeared in his enormous maw. He spit it out – close-up shot of her head rolling across the ground – and the audience went wild with laughter as he shuffled away to wreak havoc on the Washington Monument.
Now, this did nothing to soothe my cries. I’m fairly certain I puked.
Sometime before dawn, I heard a woman’s scream followed by a crash. I opened my eyes and stared at the window on the other side of the room. I didn’t move. If I had been capable, I would’ve pulled the blanket over my head and cried myself back to sleep. Instead I was forced to watch through the dingy glass as a pair of legs, stone white and as big around as tree trunks, strode past and out of sight. Something downstairs shattered. A chair or other wooden object was dragged or pushed across the floor, punctuated by audible wibbling. I knew then Lincoln had forced his way into the building.
Let’s be real, you’d have shit your pants.
It turns out that a drunk had broken into the apartment below us. Besides smashing a window and frightening the female half of the couple who lived there by exposing himself (it’s my understanding that this was the same drunk who spent nights singing in the street, sometimes clothed but most often not, sometimes with a guitar and other times with a harmonica), no real harm was done. So what the hell had I seen moving past my window at the height of the ruckus?
Maybe my mom had spiked my formula to lull me to sleep. Maybe it was the first of many hypnagogic hallucinations to come. But I saw something, something that looked an awful lot like a large marble statue’s large, stiff marble legs.
