fpdorchak

We’ve all heard the unexplained sounds that always assail us in the weird hours of the night. Was it the house settling, a stud contracting from the cold, nighttime air…or something else?

And what really lives in-between the walls of a house or apartment?

Do we really wanna know?

This has never been published.

Plaything

© F. P. Dorchak, 1987

Mrs. Agnes Helderman lay in her bed, thick comforters her only guard against the night. Alongside her, the Big Ben ticked quietly away into the two-thirty a.m. morning. A waxing moon shone through the blinds, winds tussling branches outside her window.

In her kitchen dishes sat in the sink, bits of oatmeal crusted in a pot, several cups filled with dirty water adjacent to it. A nightlight dully illuminated the hallway leading into the living room.

The furnace suddenly hummed to life, preparing to spew heated air out into Agnes’s cramped living quarters.

Agnes snoozed.

Until the noises again woke her up.

This was the second night in a row. It was quite distressing, especially when she needed her sleep. She wasn’t young anymore, and what with a weak heart to begin with (ever since the death of her husband, Edgar, her health had been rapidly failing), well suffice it to say she didn’t need this.

Her eyes popped open.

The clock tick-tocked.

Clutching her comforter closer, Agnes scanned the bed-room.

Nothing.

Listened…

Nothing.

Klink!

She reached for the lamp at bed-aside, knocking it against the wall, and nearly off the nightstand. Her light now on (all the better to hear with…), she strained her ears—

There…inside a living-room wall…something…thudded!

Rats.

Had to be rats, they do that sort of thing you know, she told herself.

Wide awake, now, she sat up in bed, listening for more noises…but, nothing came.

She didn’t fall back asleep until nearly four in the morning.

Agnes got up about six.

Exterminators, that’s what she needed.

Throwing on her robe, she cautiously entered the living-room, a wooden backscratcher her only defense. She stopped in the entrance-way.

Peered about its walls… nothing.

Fully entering the living room, she began knocking on the paper-thin walls, testing their integrity, though she didn’t know what she’d do if she found something within them anyway…or something knocked back.

She’d probably have a heart attack.

Get to be with Edgar that much sooner.

It was about two that afternoon when someone finally arrived. “We kill bugs” was painted on the van’s side, an upturned cockroach with an “x” for each eye, emblazoned at the end of the words.

“Well it’s about time you fella’s got here!” she scolded the two thirty-something’s.

“We’re sorry ma’am, we got here as fast as we could.”

Agnes went back to her television while they worked.

The exterminators attacked every nook and cranny they could get their tools into, spraying all sorts of wonderful poisons into and around her place.

“Fred, I don’t think there’s anything in these goddamn walls,” one exterminator said to his partner.

“I believe you, Lou,” said the partner. “I think she’s just losing it, know what I mean?” he said, making coo-coo motions with his finger beside an ear.

Finished with poisoning the apartment, the men told Agnes to have a nice day and packed up. Agnes, relieved, sat down with a triumphant smile upon her wrinkled face, “Got you, you little bastards,” she said with more than a little relish.

After her cup of warm tea, Agnes crawled into bed and pulled the comforters up and over her deteriorating body. She lay there with the light on, not quite wanting to sleep.

What if they hadn’t gotten them all…or whatever they were supposed to have gotten had gone out for the day?

Or was immune to the poisons they used?

Opening her nightstand, she took out a romance novel. It occupied her mind for the next hour or so, however sleep won out in the end, her book falling to the floor.

Tick-tock, tick-tock went the merry, merry little clock….

Then from the linen closet it came.

A rustling.

At first she didn’t hear it…dreaming about her wedding night, fifty years ago. But the rustling…again…transmogrified into an all-out THUMP!

Agnes jolted upright.

Her heart raced.

She listened.

THUMP!

…and again…

THUMP!

The noise traveled along the hallway walls…getting closer.

As if something was looking for something…but was coming from the inside of the wall rather than outside….

Agnes had had it.

She’s paid good money (from her fixed income!) for those two bug killers to do their job and do it properly—but, that was the problem with today’s world. No one cared about quality and doing things right the first time. Always in a hurry, even though they’d spent two hours at her place.

Yes, Agnes had had quite enough.

Mustering her resolve, she crawled out from underneath the blankets and went to her bedroom closet. She emerged with an old golf club that belonged to her Edgar. The 1 wood, but she didn’t know this. He’d always been quite handy with “the sticks,” as he’d called them.

Edgar.

Turning on her main bedroom light, she went after the hallway noise, turning lights on as she went. The noise persisted…jumping around from top to bottom, side to side…wall to wall….

But her resolve never wavered. She’d had it. She’d show it what-for.

Finally at the entrance way coat closet, the noise ceased. She flipped on the closet’s light with the end of the driver. Agnes scanned up and down the closet, poked around inside among the coats, but found nothing.

Angered by her fruitless search, she closed the closet door and braced a chair up against it.

Damn this was getting old.

The next morning, she called the same exterminators, complaining they didn’t know their job from a

(18-hole...)

in the ground. Threatened to take them to People’s Court. The head bug-killer said he’d be right over to check it out personally. He arrived an hour later.

“Mrs. Helderman? Tim Spanner. May I come in?”

Without saying a word, Agnes hobbled aside to let him in.

“You gonna fix it? Get rid of the whatever it is?” she asked, eying him. She coughed, pulling a tissue from her wrist’s sleeve, using it, then stuffing it back into her wrist’s sleeve. “And I ain’t paying a penny more.”

“Mrs. Helderman—”

“—don’t ‘Mrs. Helderman’ me,” she said, shaking a crooked finger at him, “I don’t need double-talk, I need results. Now are you going to kill this thing or not?”

Exasperated, the exterminator said, “Where were the noises coming from?”

Humphing, Agnes led him to the linen closet in question.

“It started in there,” she said, pointing the golf club she picked up from against the wall, “and ended up at the coat closet up front,” she said pointing to where they’d just come from.

“Thank you, Mrs. Helderman,” Spanner said, stepping past her for the closet. He opened the door and took out a flashlight, poking around inside and in between the folded and ironed linen. It smelled as if none of the linen hadn’t been used in years and looked as if they’d all contained permanent folds. Spanner started to feel sorry for the old lady. Thought about all the life she’d been through and the fact that her husband was dead (she’d mentioned three times over the phone…how if her deceased husband, Edgar, had still been around she wouldn’t have needed their services) leaving her all to herself.

Lonely.

“Find anything?” she asked. She got right up behind him and he could smell a really sour smell coming from her. “Anything?”

“No, Mrs. Helderman, nothing yet.”

He banged about the walls, checked the shelves and anything else that could have the possibility of making a sound…movement…anything. Nothing. For another hour or two, with Agnes in tow, they searched the entire collection of corners and dark places the apartment had to offer.

Not one trace of vermin.

Not one.

They had, however, found an old neckless Agnes had thought forever lost. Why hadn’t the first group found this, she wondered?

Because they hadn’t properly done their job, that’s why.

The bug man left. He was glad to be rid of her. Some people can really get on your nerves, and others can really get inside your skin. Mrs. Helderman was the latter.

And she smelled.

Before turning in, Agnes took one more look into the closet before closing it. After her tea, it was beddy-by time. Lights out.

And as usual…2:30 in the morning…the noises again did their thing. This time they were much closer…in the hot-water heater’s closet.

Agnes arose quietly this time…tried to sneak up on it. She got up to the door of the unit, put an ear to it…when the sounds stopped. She stood back up, grasping her club and reaching for her sore back. Mustn’t do that again.

Childlike laughter erupted from the water heater’s compartment!

Kids?

What and how would kids be in there—and at this time of the morning?

“Get out of here, you rascals!” she said, shouting at the hot-water heater’s closet door, “Get out and get back home where you belong!”

But the giggling continued…only to fade out a few minutes later.

Agnes went to a window and looked out into the night-time parking lot.

Had some hooligans actually gotten into her apartment?

And how had they done so?

That must be why no one had been able to find anything—kids…it’d been kids all along! Coming out to harass her!

Well, at least now she knew.

Rats of a different sort.

She’d get them for what they were doing….every last one of them….

The next day, Agnes kept a wary eye on every child that looked at her or her apartment…telling them to shoo and be-gone. Some of the much younger ones she’d actually made cry.

Served them all right. All of them!

A rat was a rat.

Agnes hadn’t always been such a bitter person, but ever since the death of Edgar she’d taken a big dislike to youth and life in general. She secretly wished she could join her husband.

Why had he left her?

They’d been married almost fifty wonderful years! How dare he leave her!

Growing old was scary and hard…and doing it alone….

She’d lost sight of the former person she once was. Fun loving, friendly…attractive. She used to catch the eye of many a man in her day….

But not now.

Now she was old, withered, alone…and bitter. Had a bad case of IBS.

Well into the night did Agnes keep her vigilance. Tonight was the night. She was going to catch them come hell or high water.

Well, she was going to…but sleep has this unnerving way of sneaking up on you.

Again her book fell to the floor.

Two-thirty.

And again the noise.

This time, it came from her very own bedroom closet.

Agnes lost no time in getting out of bed (damned back…she tweaked it again). She fumbled for her club, alongside her bed, but in her sleep must have knocked it over, because it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

She’d moved just a little too fast in getting up and was already out of breath…and she couldn’t seem to get it under control, her heart rate increasing. She pushed away from the headboard and lay back down, comforter yanked back up around her neck, eyes bugging, struggling for a breath.

The panic rose in her chest and she was unable to stop it.

“Go-go away! Go away, I said!” she said, wheezing, “Leave me alone!”

Her heart-felt like a brick in her chest. Felt like she was trying to breathe through a plastic bag.

“What do you want?”

The noise continued, now sounding more like rummaging than anything else. Child-like giggling filled the air, she could hear boxes and things tumbling about—

Golf balls came rolling out of her closet.

Agnes clutched her chest, panting.

Air felt like so much mud in her lungs.

More scrambling and giggling came from the darkness, bits and pieces of her things—her things!—came flying out of her closet.

Agnes bicycled her varicosed legs, trying to get away from whatever it was in there that was trying to get out…and knocked over a nightstand picture of her husband, shattering the glass.

Edgar..!

“G-go awaaay, I say!”

The child-like laughter continued getting closer with each giggle. She swore she saw something move in there—

The shadow now threw entire boxes out into the bedroom, laughing.

“Please, please…leave me alone! I-I c-can’t take this, please—”

From out of the closet bounded a creature the size of a large stuffed animal. I flew high through the air and onto Agnes…landing square on her chest. It stared down at her and looked a cross between a gremlin and a teddy bear, with big brown eyes. It’s head twisted back and forth, then it jumped up and down on her chest.

“Let’s play! Let’s play!” it squealed, “Let’s play! Let’s play!”

Agnes had her heart attack.

“Let’s play!”

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.