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The Undeniable and Unexplainable Event

My mother professes to see minions of the devil, and while many people call them demons or evil spirits, the term authorized by our former church, and adopted by my mom, is devil spirits. Ghosts, phantoms, apparitions, disembodied spirits of the dead—they are all generally thought to be of human origin and not in league with Lucifer, but to my mom, they too are just devil spirits in disguise with the intent to trick people into worshiping in Satan via the logic that if you believe in ghosts, and ghosts are actually devil spirits, you believe in the devil and therefore worship Satan, which doesn’t exactly make sense to me, but many things don’t, it’s just the way they are to the people that believe them. My mother also believes she has the power to sense the presence of devil spirits even if she can’t see them. Signs such as ungodly foul odors are a clue to devil spirits in the vicinity. Once she was convinced a department store was infested with devil spirits until my former stepfather confessed he had evil smelling gas and was blowing his ass out as they wandered through the aisles.

But on many occasions, my mother did see devil spirits in the shady flesh, but always appearing in the night over her bed after a nightmare. One night, when we lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, she woke from a dream only to find cats kneading her body through the covers. These cats were only in the square of light projected on her body from the full moon shining through the sky light in the room. She knew these cats were familiars and when she screamed, “In the name of Jesus Christ get out of my house,” the cats vanished.

I, on the other hand, profess to no such powers and in fact, I’m highly skeptical of any ghost stories I read of or watch on television or in film. But in 1978, in Wichita Falls, Texas, I did have one event which I can’t deny and can’t explain in any way.

I was nine years old, living in an older house with a staircase running dead center through the middle of the house. If you stood at the top of the stairs on the second floor, the staircase went down to a landing, and from the landing, you could go down a several steps to the left and into a sitting room, or to the right and into a dining room. The stairs were wooden and covered with black plastic no-slip protectors and were noisy when you walked on them.

On the day the undeniable and unexplainable event occurred, I had several negative encounters with a new kid at school who had an unusually shaped head that protruded backwards off the base of his neck much further than most people’s do and he looked somewhat like an alien. And coupled with this, as I observed his initial behavior, I wondered if he wasn’t retarded, but he wasn’t in a special class, so I didn’t know what his problem really was, but regardless of what his problem was, on that day, I decided I didn’t like him, and in fact, he gave me the creeps the way he wouldn’t stop trying to touch certain girls in certain ways. Later I’d get paddled for beating him up on the playground after he tormented two girls in such a way that when they screamed for help they sounded truly frightened. It was after school and my buddy and I heard the screams while unlocking our bikes. When we saw who was chasing the girls, my buddy and I made eye contact, didn’t say a word, dropped our bikes, and tore off across the playground after him. My buddy reached him first and tackled him. I jumped on his chest, pinned his shoulders down with my knees, slapped off his glasses, and did my best to punch in the face as he tried to squirm out from under my knees. Then I heard my buddy say, “Oh shit!” I looked over my shoulder and knew it was time to go. Our principal was still very far away but he seemed to be getting very large very quickly. That moment etched in my mind in total silence and slow motion as I sized up this man—his tie blowing over his shoulder; his head back and chest out; suit coat open and blowing back; pants looking too short and showing his black socks from running so fast; and a trail of dust spewing from black shoes. I was surprised when I saw the look on his face wasn’t anger, but instead, fear. Still, even though he didn’t look angry, I felt like a locomotive was barreling our way and we’d better get off the tracks. My buddy and I ran to our bikes and I stole one last look before we fled the scene of the crime. I saw the principal rush straight to the creepy little bastard and not even look our way. I wondered if the man even cared who we were, and he did, but he waited until the next day at lunch to send a fifth-grade office assistant to the lunchroom to tap my buddy and I on the shoulders and tell us the principal would like to see us together in his office. We entered the principal’s office without waiting. There were two empty chairs sitting in front of his desk. We sat. He began by saying, ” Terry here, ” and he pointed to our right, and that was when we noticed the creepy little bastard kid sitting in a chair in the corner behind us, grinning, “tells me you two are the ones who beat him up on the playground yesterday.” We didn’t deny it. We attempted to defend ourselves, but fundamentally, you can’t beat up a kid just for what on the surface appears to be chasing girls, and I didn’t even try to explain that it was the way he was chasing the girls and the way he behaves around the girls and the way he gives us the creeps was the reason we beat him up. Bottom line, we knew we were beat the moment we stepped into his office so we just presented the cold facts and then rested our flimsy case. After procedurally listening to us, the principal explained our fate: “Well, Terry and I have decided that the proper punishment for each of you is three swats with the paddle.” When the principal said this, I looked over and the creepy little bastard was gloating and beaming and I got the idea the paddling was his idea more than the principal’s. My buddy went first. Hands on the desk and three swats with a flat wooden paddle about the size of a cricket bat. My buddy took the first two well, but the third one broke him and he sobbed without shame. Terry was delighted just shy of applause. That motivated me. The three swats hurt like being punched in the ass and icy hot poured all over it, but I was not going to give that creepy little bastard the pleasure of seeing me cry. Instead, he got a vengeful look from me as I choked down the pain. That settled him down quite a bit. After the paddling, we were free to go and I left with a scowl and my buddy sobbing as we returned to our class now in session.

So on the day of the undeniable and unexplainable event, I had several encounters with this creepy new kid right up to my last moment at school as I exited through the school doors right behind him. As I walked out of school looking at the back of his weird head, I thought about how something was wrong with him. Something more than the shape of his head. I don’t know if the uncomfortable feeling that stayed with me as I walked home alone on that day was from my thoughts about him, or from the overcast sky in early spring, but when I entered our empty house, I still didn’t feel at ease. Our roommate’s gray poodle, Blue, greeted me affectionately at the door and helped dilute the creepy mood I was in, and together we went upstairs to my bedroom where I planned to turn on the TV and watch Gilligan’s Island. Before turning on the TV, I sat down on the bed and gave Blue a few more scratches behind the ear and stroked her fur a few more times but as I sat there petting Blue, I heard an anomalous noise. I heard someone coming up the stairs from the side of the sitting room. My scalp tingled and my hair stood up on the back of my neck. I knew I was alone in the house. I was always alone in the house when I came home from school, and no cars were in the driveway when I came home today. If you looked out the doorway to my room from the perspective of sitting on my bed, you saw green carpet, several spindles and some railing making up the banister around the open stairwell, and the far wall of the stairwell. I sat very still, staring at the vista of my doorway, and listened with fine tuned ears made sharp by fear. Slow, heavy, deliberate, sounds of someone stomping up the stairs were definitely coming from the stairwell, and they were almost at the landing where you would turn to climb the longer flight to the second floor. When they reached the landing, they stopped. And I listened. But I noticed it wasn’t just me looking at the doorway listening, Blue was looking and listening to. And at the same time we jumped off the bed and ran to the top of the stairs to see who was in our house uninvited. But when we reached the top of the stairs, no one was on the landing. The house was empty, save Blue and I. Then, the footsteps started again. Slow, deliberate, heavy, stomping, steps started at the landing and began coming our way one slow step at a time. My whole body tingled as the chemicals produced by terror rushed through my bloodstream and into the muscles and organs. I was half terrified and half in a state of disbelief attempting to rationalize what was happening. Why were there sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs but no one was there? Was I really seeing nothing yet hearing something? I would still ask myself this question and doubt this event to this day had not been for Blue. She lost her mind. She became a ferocious and frightening poodle, showing her teeth and barking bloodcurdling warnings while she hunched down and challenged whatever was coming up the stairs to come all the way to the top and take her on. I didn’t let that happen though. When the heavy steps were about six from the top, I picked up Blue—still snarling and growling—and carried her back to my bedroom where I held her down as the heavy steps continued upwards one, slow, step, at a time. And when they made it to the top, the sounds stopped. Maybe it was still walking and the carpet muffled the sounds, but for what ever reason, there was silence. Boo quieted and listened intensely and I did the same, staring at the banister through the doorway. For nearly a minute we sat there but the footsteps didn’t start up again. Then, I thought I saw a gray apparition with a gauzy texture float past my doorway from the direction of the top of the stairs and traveling down the hall. That, however, I decided was my imagination. And the lack of reaction from Blue validated my suspicion, but I did decide that what I did hear but did not see coming up the stairs was real, and I wasn’t going to stay at home alone with it, and I wasn’t going to let Blue stay at home alone with it either. So I bravely left my room, carried Blue down the stairs, grabbed her leash, and left the house.

I waited in a laundromat down the block where I could step out the front door and look down the street and see the house. I had no way of telling time so I played with Blue for what seemed like an hour before I decided to look down the street and see if anyone had come home. And to my surprise, my mom’s car was in the driveway. When I entered the house with Blue, it was completely silent and I was confused when I found my mom dead sleep in her room and the clock at 4:10. I guess I expected to find her in the middle of an exorcism, ridding the house of the evil entity on the stairs. She did claim she was capable of extrasensory perception of beings from the spirit world and possessed the power to banish them from our lives using her faith in God and the power of the name, Jesus Christ, so to find her comfortably asleep in our haunted house troubled me for the moment.

I woke her and she winced and said a tired hello and I asked her why she was home early. A headache. I asked her if she felt anything devilish in the house and she told me no, and so I told her about the sound of someone slowly, deliberately, and heavily walking up the stairs, and how it wasn’t just me, but Blue went mad. Despite her headache, my mom listened intensely and seriously, and when I finished, she didn’t ask a single question, she said, “Let’s pray.” We closed our eyes and held hands. “Father, by the power of attorney vested in me and the name of your son, Jesus Christ, I command in the name of Jesus Christ, that the devil spirits who followed my son home leave this house immediately in the name of Jesus Christ. And Father, I commanded in the name of Jesus Christ, a hedge of protection around our house so no devil spirits can enter it again. And Father, I thank you for this spiritual cleansing and command it in the name of your only begotten son, Jesus Christ, amen. “

The prayer was almost as frightening as the apparition, but afterwards, I felt safe again. When we opened our eyes, she asked, “Were you around anyone unusual at school today?” I told her about Terry. After some discussion, she determined he was the source of the devil spirit in our house, and I should keep my spiritual guard up when I’m around him. I promised I’d be careful around Terry, and thanked her for casting the spirit of the house. She gave me a kiss, and all was normal again.

And later as you are in know, I decided to ditch my spiritual guard and beat that creepy little bastard and whatever spirits he had with him into submission. And I may have gotten paddled for it, but they never bothered me again.

END
© 2005 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on October 23, 2005 in
Emotion: Fear, Type: Creative Nonfiction