Family Values (Chapter 5)

Chapter 5

        Why didn't she tell Ray what she had experienced down in the basement? Their relationship was built on open honesty. This wasn't the same though. How could she tell him that she thought she had encountered an old childhood nightmare? He would think she had completely lost it! Whether or not he would say anything actually to her, didn't matter, it was what he would THINK about her that worried her the most. Yes, she knew that he loved her and would never leave her, but she couldn't stand the thought of him thinking she was a lunatic. Ray all the time tells her how proud he is of her intelligence and to go around and tell him that she saw some sort of boogey man in the basement, will take that intelligence and flush it right down the drain along with her credibility.
          But he had seen the door jump didn't he? She saw the look on his face when it did. He probably wrote it off as some kind of draft or something, like maybe she should. It was a little harder for her to do such a thing because she knew. She KNEW that she saw that THING down there. It was NOT her imagination and it sure as HELL was not a damn DRAFT. That hand. It reminded her of a burn victim. Third degree burns can take a human's skin and shrivel it up like a hot dog forgotten on fire. Some points it will actually flake off and even peel off in whole sections. She should know. Before she took her job as an Emergency Dispatcher, she worked for almost a year as a Coroner for the State Medical Examiner's office. She could tell people stories that would give them nightmares, throw-up, or both. So when she says that the hand looked burnt, she has experience to back it up. Not only as a Coroner, but as an EMT when she worked for the Rescue Squads.
          She had left the house after exchanging her good-byes with Ray. He almost seemed kind of nervous about being left at the house alone. Ray could take care of himself when it came to people. He has proven that he can hold his own. What about against something that shouldn't exist? How could he hold up against something like that? Maybe that's why he was nervous, maybe the same thoughts were going through his head.
          What would her being there have to help him anyways? She's the one that ran away and started crying like a little baby. It churned her stomach knowing how she had reacted down there. There was probably a simple explanation to everything that had happened, yet she freaked out and ran for the hills before even trying to figure out why things were happening the way they were. Maybe some kind of animal had climbed through the dryer hose trying to keep warm. It could have been a nocturnal animal that doesn't like light. That was it. It very possibly could have been a bat. The hand that she thought she had seen could have actually been a bat attacking the flashlight because of it shining. Morgan let in a deep breath and let out a relieved sigh. Her chest felt like a huge weight was finally lifted off and she actually smiled.
            Lighting herself a cigarette she turned the radio up a little for her drive to work. Another thought made her turn the volume down once more. That sound. There was no mistaking the sound of that thing. She had heard it before. Last time she had a witness to the thing that she had seen. This was no bat. She didn't want to admit it. She didn't want to face it. She had no choice. Somehow, someway, and for some reason, it came back.


          She and Jaime were about eleven years old when they actually saw it. They had been hearing it for a long time before that. Even Morgan's parents had heard it. She knew that because of the nervous looks they exchanged each other when they didn't think she was looking. They had even called an exterminator in at one time. It never even missed a beat. It had started out as a soft scratching sound in the attic. Almost like the sound that a small twig will make when the wind brushes it against the house. Very faint, but constant. You could only hear it at night when everything was still and quiet. She was sure that it happened during the day, then, but you just couldn't hear it over the every day noise of people living in a house.
            At first it was dismissed for just one of those noises that an old house makes. "Settling" is what her parents would call it. Over the next few months, the scratching sounds started getting louder, almost more abrasive. The night that none of them ended up getting any sleep, the next day her father called an exterminator. Mice. He was sure of it. They had gotten louder simply because they had bred. The exterminator had come and informed her dad that there were no signs of mice living in the attic. No feces, shredded nests, nothing. Her father insisted on setting traps anyways. The sounds never even paused, if anything, they got worse. They had gotten loud enough that you could be sitting in the living room watching television and you would constantly have to turn the volume up to cover up the noise.
            Morgan's parents were getting very annoyed with the situation and called in another exterminator. Though he had not found any evidence of mice, he did find something that was curious enough to ask her father to go up into the attic with him, in order to show it to him, instead of explaining. Her and her mother stood at the large opening together, waiting for the men to return. The access was in the large hallway. The hallway held the doors to the bathroom, two bedrooms, the living room, and the dining room. Unlike a lot of hallways, this one was square in dimension, not long and rectangle. You could gain access to the kitchen through the dining room, or through the living room. Her parent’s bedroom was at the back of the house, oddly enough, through the dining room as well.
        The attic door didn't have an stairs that pulled down like Morgan had seen on TV a lot. This was the older style where you had to get underneath it, lift the sheet of wood up, and over, to remove it from the entrance, then you were left with your opening. She never actually realized how large the opening actually was until she had grown up and seen "normal" sized attic accesses. This was at least three times the average size. Their whole family could fit through it at the same time and not even have to rearrange to make it through.
          When her father returned with the exterminator, his face was flushed. When her mother asked what was up there, he simply stated.
        "Raccoons. Damn Raccoons. Mighty big ones at that. They have the whole attic scarred to hell. The only thing we can try is to set up traps through the wildlife people. They can't be killed inhumanly he says. They have to be caught and released somewhere else."
        "How bad is it?" Her mother asked.
          "Some of the scratches are so deep you can see daylight outside."
          "Oh my gosh, Doug. That's awful!"
          The exterminator not only looked very pale, but even sick, and he got out of the house in a hurry, saying he had other engagements to tend to.
          The traps were set. After a week of checking on the metal cages, her father went back up to remove them so he could return them to the animal shelter. Each cage was worth about forty dollars. There were five cages. Morgan's father ended up having to give the county's animal shelter two hundred dollars to replace the loss of the traps. The final day that he went to retrieve the cages, he had found them all thrown into the corner of the attic. He was nervous enough at finding them in that state of condition, but on further investigation, he was out right scared. Whatever had thrown all the metal traps to the side, also shredded through them all. It was not a pile of traps at all, it was a pile of twisted metal.
            He never even bothered removing them from the attic. When he reached the attic door, he didn't use the ladder. He jumped the eight feet from ceiling to floor until he realized he left it open. He clumsily climbed the wooden ladder and hastily slammed the board back into it's cradle, shut the ladder, and threw it into the hall closet.
        "Nobody is to go up there again. For ANY reason." He demanded to both of them. "I will have anything that is up there for storage, brought down and the door will be nailed SHUT!"
        "Why?! What's wrong, hun?!" Her mother asked flawlessly.
Morgan's father glanced down at Morgan and hesitated.
          "It's nothing, Leigh. I just don't want the raccoons messing up any of our stuff and they can carry rabies, so I don't want anyone getting bit."

          Even though she was only ten years old at the time, she knew her father was lieing. Morgan was never worried about the situation when it all started. Even then she wasn't scared... a bit curious though. The night that her parents made her sleep on the floor on an air mattress in their room was the night that Morgan knew something was wrong.
        True to his word, her father took everything out of the attic and nailed the door shut. After a couple of weeks of being satisfied that nothing was going to get in or out of the access, he allowed Morgan to sleep in her own room again. She asked for a night light.
        The following weeks were awful. The scratching had graduated to actual moving around. You could sit in any one room and here whatever it was actually walk from one end of the attic to another. They tried to ignore it and pretend it was nothing out of the ordinary. That didn't last for very long.
        Morgan enjoyed helping her mother make dinner. The two of them were in the kitchen that day, she was helping her mother roll out the dough for biscuits. Her mom always had to go back over it when she was done, but they both knew that Morgan enjoyed it. She was sitting at the kitchen table on a wooden stool when the scratching started. Her mother visibly dropped her shoulders but didn't otherwise acknowledge that she had even heard anything. Then it moved. It was right above them. Both Morgan and her mother stopped and were completely still. Almost as if they were waiting it out. It knew they were right there. That's why it stopped. Bumping noises started after that, followed by a thump. Silence. They held their breaths, hoping that was it.
            SCRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPP. Her mother gasped and Morgan almost fell off the stool. Right there in front of her, in the wall, something was trying to scratch through the sheet rock. Not only could they hear the clawing, they could SEE. The wall moved underneath the weight of the demanding pressure. Her mother grabbed Morgan by the arm, knocking the stool down and ran into the living room. So did it. They could hear it scramble back up the wall into the attic and then it scampered above them and stopped. Morgan started to cry. Ushering her daughter outside, Morgan's mother grabbed her keys and purse along the way and almost RAN to the garage. Strapping them both in, she then pulled out and left the driveway.
          They drove to the nearest gas station and called her father. Morgan couldn't hear anything that her mother was saying. She stayed inside the car while her mother used the pay phone. Judging by the movement of her mother's hands, she could tell that she was explaining what had just happened. Leaving the receiver off the hook, she walked over to the car to talk to Morgan.
          "You're daddy's going to stop by the house when he gets off work. We are going to stay at your grandmother's house tonight. Is there anything in particular you want from there, sweetie?"
          "My doggie." Was all Morgan could reply. Her mother looked at her with sad eyes and went back to the phone. When she was about six years old, her grandmother (her father's mother) gave her a stuffed animal dog. It was the last gift she had given Morgan before she died from a massive heart attack. There was nothing special about the dog, nothing that stood out. However, she was immediately attached to it. She could not sleep without the thing attached to her side and couldn't go anywhere without it. When she reached about nine years old, she tried to wean herself off of it in avoidance of being made fun of by her peers. They could not understand the importance of a "security blanket". She still slept with it, but she would leave it in the car when her mom took her to school. If it was not there waiting for her when she got back in the car, she would get upset. When she would spend the night at a friend's house, she would take the dog with her, but keep it in her book bag so she would know it was there, but her friends didn't.   
            Jaime was the only one that knew she still had a childish habit. She had gotten a lot more comfortable with leaving it behind when she went places, but could still not stand to sleep a single night without her dear friend. At age ten, she needed her stuffed animal more than anything right then. She was scared that whatever was in the walls, had already eaten her doggie. She needed to protect her friend, and she needed his reassurance as well.
            Driving to her mother's house, Morgan's mom had made sure that Morgan did not tell the real reason why they were staying on such short notice. Apparently her mother had told her grandmother that they hadn't realized it was THIS week to get the house fumigated and they couldn't stay in the house for a few days until it was all over with. Morgan didn't care if she had to tell her grandmother that they just flew back from the moon today to find that the aliens had already moved into their house and was turning it into a Western Dance Club. As long as she was out of the house.
        She knew that her family could not stay gone forever. It was only a couple of days and they had to come up with a game plan to how they were going to deal with their situation. What her mother did not realize, however, is that Morgan was sitting closer to the wall when it happened. She was only about two feet from the thing when it tried to break free. She had heard it. Yes, the scratching, they had both heard that. Morgan had heard it breathing. It didn't sound like an oversized, rabies-bitten, raccoon to her. It sounded like it was mad. It was mad that it could not reach Morgan and her mother. It's breathing was raspy and "wet" sounding like it was coming from the back of it's throat. When it exhaled and sounded like it was growling. Skkkkttttt. Skkkkttttt.
          A week later, they could no longer prolong the inevitable and had to return home. Not sure what to expect when they returned, Morgan's father entered first and cautiously. He had been returning everyday when he got off work to feed the cats for Morgan, but he had not stepped inside. When he gathered the things for his family for the stay at his mother-in-law's house, he had cleaned up what they had left behind in their hurry so as to not attract any bugs. After he was sure that there was no immediate danger, he allowed his family to enter the house. It did not stink, but it had the distinct smell of being closed for a week.
          Everything seemed quiet and calm as if they were just returning from a vacation, not a hide-out. Who knows what they were actually expecting, they weren't sure, but they all looked around as they entered as if taking inventory of everything. There were no holes in the wall, the ceiling was still intact, furniture standing, it was all in place. They all physically seemed to breathe a little easier. The night was one of the best nights they ever had since the scratching had first started. It was perfectly normal, no scratching, no growling, nothing. By the time they were all calling it a night, each one of them seemed to have forgotten the events of last week.
          Several weeks went by and it seemed like everything was getting back to normal. The dark circles that had been forming under her mother's eyes were now disappearing. Everyone seemed to be in a better mood and life was easier than it had been in a long time. Jaime even started spending the night again, instead of making excuses to why she couldn't visit. On Morgan's 11th Birthday Party Jaime was going to stay over so they could stay up late, eat pizza and watch movies. 
          Even at such a young age, Morgan was very insecure about her body. She always thought that she was overweight, which was not the case at all. Up until High School she was always the tallest person in her class and she felt like a giant beside any of her peers, which made her perceive that she was actually bigger, not just taller. She was always jealous of Jaime. Jaime was popular, everyone liked her, nobody hated her and she was gorgeous. Even at eleven years old, she was obviously a beautiful girl. She had the light brown hair with natural highlights that hung down her back in large, loose, wavy curls. Her teeth were awesomely white inside a perfect smile, and her face had a tiny splatter of freckles on each side of her nose, underneath her large baby blue eyes. Her mother always made sure she had the trendiest clothes, even when she didn't know what brand she was actually wearing.
        Morgan always wished she was pretty like Jaime. Granted, she wasn't ugly, not by any means, but it would be many years before she would ever notice that she was a beautiful person. Jaime was already shaving her legs, and Morgan's mother wouldn't let her yet. Jaime even wore contacts! Morgan didn't even wear glasses, but she wanted contacts! At this time, Morgan was still wearing shorts outside. She had already started not wearing them in public, but she would still run around her house with them. Soon that grew into never wearing shorts, even in her own BED. It's amazing what childhood teasing would do to a person's self esteem, even almost ten years down the road. That was probably why she grew up being the girl that wore baggy, guy jeans and t-shirts that were three times her size. She was trying to hide her body from the rest of the world, and was actually just making it worse. She just couldn't see that at the time.
          It was about ten o' clock at night and they were both sitting cross legged on the floor next to a box of pizza, playing Trouble. Morgan's parents had already gone to bed. She hopes she never goes to bed early on purpose when she gets older. She hated her bed time and fought it all the time. They had watched the movies her mother had rented for them so they had turned the radio on while they played. It wasn't a game that required much skill, it was mainly luck, and all boring. There was a plastic bubble in the middle of the game board that had a die in the middle. When you pressed down on the plastic bubble, the die would jump and then land on a number. That was how many spaces you were allowed to move. Very cut and dry. The only reason why the two girls were playing the simple game was to stay awake. There was no reason to be up so late, they just enjoyed knowing that there bed time had passed hours ago.
Whack.
Both of the girls froze and stared at each other with large eyes, searching for an explanation of the source of the sound in the eyes of the other.
Whack. Whack.
Their stares turned towards the hallway. Since Morgan's parents' bedroom was so far away, they left the door open, not worrying about waking up the adults. The sound was coming from the hall, but neither one of them could see anything.
Whack.
Both Morgan and Jaime stood up and backed against the bed, making sure not to break eye contact with the doorway.
Whack. Ting!
Something falls from the ceiling, but the hallway is so dimly lit that Morgan can't make out what the object is.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK-WHACK! Ting!
        When the noise became louder, and something else fell to the floor again, Jaime reached for Morgan's hand. Their heart beats started racing a little faster and their breathing was now audible enough for each other to hear. Morgan wanted to scream for her parents. She kept opening her mouth looking for the breath to supply her voice, but couldn't find it in her chest. She felt like she was in a nightmare. Only there had she ever experienced the inability to scream when it was called upon.
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK-WHACK-WHACK! Ting!
        Following each, 'ting' the smacking sound seemed to become more desperate. All of a sudden Morgan realized what was falling from the ceiling. Nails. When her father had closed the attic access, he had hammered nails into the wood to secure the door. Now they were falling to the ground one by one as the girls watched with shock. There was no where to go. If they ran out of the room, they had to pass underneath the cause of the banging, and that was not an option neither one of them wanted to test out.
Ting! WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK WHACK! Ting-Ting-Ting!
Silence.
      The next few seconds seemed like a few hours. The friends were both holding their breath and squeezing each other's hands hard. The last succession had resulted in several nails coming loose at the same time. Morgan knew that was probably the last bunch that held the door to the ceiling.
Scccccrrrrrrrrrpppppp. The girls jumped at the silence breaker. She knew exactly what the scratching noise meant. The wooden board was being moved.
      Morgan tugged at Jaime's hand and pulled her to the other side of the room. The walk-in closet was the only place to go. Slinging the doors open, they both fell to the floor and slammed them shut. The slats in the two door closet provided a large view of the room. Morgan placed one hand on the door to keep it shut, her other hand over her mouth in hopes to muffle her heavy breathing. When something walked past the closet it was all she could do not to scream. Funny how that works.
      She tried to scream earlier and nothing could come out, now she was clinching her eyes together to prevent one from escaping her lips. Jaime had her eyes closed and silently muttering what Morgan assumed was a prayer. Both girls sat silent, waiting for the creature's next move. Time slowly passes by, helping the two friends slow their breathing down.
      "Do you think it's gone?" Jaime whispers, face close to Morgan's.
        "I don't know... I think so." Was the only reply Morgan could think of.
Hooking her fingers over the edge of the slats, Morgan leans closer to look out across the room. Eyes darting from side to side, she quickly scans the bedroom for any signs of movement.
        "I don't see anything." She reports to Jaime.
Morgan leans forwards one more time to confirm her initial conclusion. Everything seemed to be in order, nothing moved. She lets out a sigh and starts to push her side of the door open, slowly creaking, letting light filter into the dark closet.
WHAM!
      Something slams itself against the door, forcing it closed fast. Brownish fingernails loop themselves into the cracks of the door and yanked. When they inhaled sharply to scream, all they smelled was rot. Once Morgan's father had set some mouse traps in the garage. When they had come back from vacation, they garage smelled like month old garbage that had been left in the burning sun. The smell that had greeted them from their trip was the worse thing she had ever smelled in her life. Decay, bloated gases, death. That's what she smelled from their attacker.
      Gagging on their air intake, tears filled their eyes as they covered their mouths. Cautiously inhaling, once again, the girls screamed. The high-pitched noise seemed to do nothing but enrage the thing even more and it shook the doors even harder. The two friends were struggling to keep the doors shut. Hearing footsteps approaching, the creature paused and looked through the slats before letting go of the closet. His eyes were gray. Dark gray, almost black, the slanted pupils were the only thing proving that there was a darker color. Where the whites would be found on her own eyes, a pale yellowish-brown could be found here. It's leathery skin seemed to wrinkle up around the eyes as if it was smiling at her.
      This was not a creature. It was human. At least something that USED to be human. She could see that patches of it's coarse skin were missing, baring the dark, moist tissues that lie beneath. It's nose was almost decomposed causing it to merely have a small lump above two large holes. It's mouth was the worst case of chapped lips she had ever seen. Large open sores were spread across it's lips and seemed to seep some sort of brownish cream.
Morgan screamed again.