The Bump in the Night
By Conrad Lawrence
When his wife had dispatched him downstairs in the middle of the night, he had prayed not to meet a burglar. But he wasn’t prepared for what he did find . . .
-Bump!-
. . .
-Thunk!-
. . .
I opened my eyes. Slowly, begging whatever unseen powers ruled the night: Stop! Don’t! If Mary hears, she will . . .
-Whump.-
-Moan.-
A small quake of about .005 on the Richter scale rolled under me. Beside me, the epicenter of my life wriggled impatiently. The tremor was one of those forms of marital communications assumed to be succinct. I was, after thirty-five years, supposed to understand what a mild, but insistent, bed jouncing meant. I knew. I closed my eyes, leaping off the precipice of a midnight waking, toward an illusionary pool of instant slumber.
-Thud!-
Then, came the soundless -thunk- of my wife’s elbow squarely against my kidney with a precisely measured pressure to insure I couldn’t invoke the marital survival skill of faux sleep. I moaned. Once again came the elbow, followed by hissing speech. “Doon-chew-heer-that?”
“Wha….”
-Thud! Thud! Thud! Whump! Whump! Thunk!-
Don’t say it, Mary. Oh please don’t say . . .
“That!” She said it.
-Da dee daaaah…! Da dee dee dee dum dum-
Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor?” In my house? Played on a pipe organ? When did I get a pipe . . .
“Rrrr.” A past canine companion, who’d never wasted affection on me, had taught that growl to Mary; or, perhaps she had taught it to him. I contemplated. Suddenly a chill passed through me. Not the hair raising, skin crawling chill of whatever unknown that is out there, but the autumn chill of a programmable heating system getting a better night’s rest than myself. The covers were gone. Again, came the hiss-whispering “The cat hass turrrned on thatttt dammmm shtereo of yersss. Whasss wi-chew men ‘n yer tooysss?”
I endeavored to play the possessive attachment is nine-tenths responsible for behavior card. “I thought Precious was your –”
“Now!”
I was upright. Mary was prone. Precious had taken a seat in the threshold of the bedroom door. She blinked at me, turned to look down the stairs, then back to me with a you-best-look-into-that flattening of the ears. Her pacific demeanor made it a sure bet that she hadn’t acquired a proclivity for Bach organ music. Precious and I swapped places. I made for the door. She made for the warm spot. While I tied my robe, she plied me with a I’ll-be-right-here-and-thanks-for-the-latent-body-heat eye squeeze. Perhaps Precious was not so stereo challenged.
The Fugue swept up the stairs to fetch me. I was drawn into the music, floating down the steps towards it’s core, suffering that same disjointed feeling when I’ve had one too many more than one too many. The music grew, as if I were standing directly before the organ pipes of Münster Cathedral. A fist knotted in my chest, compressing my heart. I stood before the door to my den.
Shock slammed into me in an all stops pulled, all pipes blasting D Seventh Major chord. The hand in my chest suddenly gripped my heart, arresting its beat. I had the dizzying sensation that I had been knocked to the ground. My feet lost the sensation of a floor beneath them. Music rushed at me like the exhale of a giant dragon. I stared into the gale of music.
My den, normally a modest sized room with Victorian furniture, had become the Münster Cathedral, teeming with fluted pipes including antiphonals, all tuned for a twelve-octave range. It was a spatial impossibility, but there it was. Seated at the console, a man in a powdered wig, legs, encased in 18 th century stockings under pantaloons that ended at the knees, pumped and stomped on the pedals with a vigorous action matched by arms, sleeved in a silk waistcoat and the lace cuffs of aristocracy. He attacked the keys with the ardor of a composer playing his own music.
Between us sat an Indian of the Native American variety in the reading chair I normally occupied. Blood red feathers hung down the sides of a face painted pasty-white. Thick black paint around his eyes and again around his mouth gave the illusion of a skull. The skeletal illusion carried on down his body, also painted pasty white and thick black. Streaks, matching the red of his feathers, ran down his cheeks from his eyes. He hoisted a snifter to salute me, then swirled and drank from it. A glance to my own crystal decanter of Benedictine betrayed a liberal attitude toward helping himself.
The whole room, cathedral — whatever — was surreal, as if lit by — by — itself. It was as if everything was its own light source. It was like looking into a painting. Colors were muted, almost shrouded in a gray. The Indian smiled at me, which with the faux skull face gave him a garish Halloween-esque presence. He sipped from the decanter and glanced over his shoulder with the wave of a hand. “Johann!”
The organist was released from his seizure-like assault of the organ. An intense face with thick slanting eyebrows considered the Indian with dull inquisitive eyes. The Indian indicated my entrance with the snifter “Danke schön, Johann.”
“Gudt!” The organist pulled out one last stop. The organ and cathedral deflated with a ghostly wail that echoed like a death wind through a night in the Black Forest. When it had completely exhausted, Johann gathered up the deflated cathedral, wadding and tucking it under his arm. With a simple nod of Germanic precision, he exited through the fireplace. I leaned into the room, sure that I had never seen the fireplace lead anywhere before. The organist trudged down a forest path, arched by tall elms and oaks. He dragged a corner of the deflated cathedral behind him.
-Thunk!-
-Thunk!-
I shook my head to rattle loose any fantasies stuck to the walls of my cranial cavity. The Indian was still there, but he was muted like a washed out photo, with a glow about him that didn’t illuminate anything else. With a lazy hand, he lifted his hatchet, a pointed wedge of stone lashed to a stick, while he sipped from his — my — Benedictine. He let the hatchet fall to the floor, then lifted it again. I brought my finger to my lips. “Shhhh. Please don’t do that. You’ll wake my wife.”
The Indian rolled his eyes. With overly conscientious care, he placed the hatchet on the reading table. “She’s already awake. She sent you down here, didn’t she?” He suddenly grabbed the hatchet and flung it, a smile spreading across his face. It fell through my outstretched hands, but never hit the floor. It disappeared. “Took you long enough to come down here. I was about ready to light something on fire. I don’t often have to call on Johann to help me. I mean what if I had been a burglar? While you and your wife were locked in one of those senseless marital pissing matches about who should get up, the whole house could have been cleaned out.”
Would that have been worse than an Indian who was an apparition and a pipe organist who was really a –
“Was that . . . ?”
“Bach?” The Indian eyed the cut crystal decanter across the room and squinted. The volume of Benedictine decreased by two fingers. “Yep. That was ol’ J.S. himself.” He eyed the snifter in his hand. It filled two more fingers. “Strange fellow as far as phantasms go. Never opted for another life on good ol’ terra firma. Has this thing about ‘setting the heavens straight.’ Marginally arrogant, but he achieved a lot, so Management lets him hang around.”
I feigned nonchalance. “Doesn’t seem like there was any need for myself or Mary to rush down here to investigate you guys. You make a little noise, some loud music. But otherwise, like most ghosts, you seem harmless. Annoying, but harmless.”
The Indian tipped his head down. A pair of glasses appeared on his face, just so he could affect a look of cynical admonition over the top of the rims. “Really? Harmless, you say?” He leveled his head. The glasses disappeared. “I can guarantee that this is a moment you have already remembered for the rest of your life.”
The lights on the stereo flared on. Various floor and table lamps flashed with lightening quickness in non-syncopated disunity. The tempestuous strings and thudding brass of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Night On Bald Mountain swirled about the room with a storm’s fervent anger, whipping the drapes and the edges of tablecloths. The room was a cyclone of light and sound. The hatchet appeared again in the Indian’s hand which he cocked back, held for a perfectly precipitous moment, then let fly. The hatchet tumbled, end for end, directly at the antique mirror above the fireplace mantle.
“Wait!” I cried. “Okay! Okay! You’re dangerous! I was wrong!” The hatchet halted, suspended two feet before impact. Though I had little fear for my personal safety, the thought of shattering the mirror threatened bladder control. The mirror was an heirloom of Mary’s. “Just who are you?”
“It’s me!” The Indian opened his arms, ready to embrace my recognition. “You know me.” I didn’t. He picked up the Bible I kept on the reading table more for effect than intent. I shook my head. He nodded at the Bible, then to the corner.
The stench hit me before I looked. It was foul and fecal. In the corner stood a horse. I can’t say that it was a white horse. The best way to describe it would be pale. Like the Indian it seemed to have a glow about it. From its rear came the only product ever produced by the service-oriented animal. I moaned. “Nooo! Not on the Persian!”
The Indian shrugged. The horse pie disappeared. Though the horse chomped away on the ferns Mary kept on a stand, the fern remained intact. The Indian held his expectant pose, gesturing toward the horse with the Bible, waiting for recognition. Alas, I couldn’t indulge him. I shook my head. He shook the Bible. “You know? The Fourth Seal?” I shook my head again. He shook the Bible again. “You have read this haven’t you?”
“Yes.” I shrugged. “Well, parts of it.” His frown infused a certain guilt in me that I hadn’t felt since the kids had graduated Sunday School. “Okay, no. Not really.”
The Indian drew in a breath. “Oh fer Christ . . .” His eyes rolled up to the heavens. “Sorry.” He opened the Bible with one hand. “Revelations six, verse seven.” His eyes shifted to me. The reading glasses reappeared. He cleared his throat. “When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!’ I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named –”
“Death.” I wasn’t sure if I had read enough of the Bible to finish the quote, or had just seen enough television. My mind turned into a gel of confusion, floating in a Jell-O mold of denial. “What are you doing? Here? Tonight?”
The Indian indicated himself. “I know I’ve mixed a couple of cultures here, but . . .” I shook my head, refusing to comprehend. “Okay,” the Indian relinquished. “Let me try a persona I know you will understand.” He stood, rising out of his form as an Indian, becoming a form cloaked in a heavy, dark, hooded cape. His face was hidden in the hood like a predator in a cave. In his hand formed a sickle. His voice took on a deep, distant echoing tone. “It’ssss tiiiime.”
“Time?” I denied what I knew.
“Yesssss.” His voice rattled softly, but its gravity vibrated through every loose artifact in the room, including my fear. He moved toward me. “Tiiiime.”
I turned away. “I’m going back to bed. I’m . . .” I froze, nearly tripping over what was spread before me. “I’m — lying on the floor?”
“Dead.” Bones clattered in my ear. The Grim Reaper set assuring, possessive fingers upon my shoulder. “Yesssss.” His voice hiss-whispered like the last breath of life. “It issss your tiiiime.”
I turned. He nodded. “Wait,” I countered, “this is pretty haphazard. I mean, what if Mary had come down instead of me?”
“Thennnnn,” his voice trailed off, “it would have been herrrr tiiiime.”
“You mean, the fact that I’m sprawled on the floor dead, is just the luck of the draw?”
Inside the hood, the bare skull nodded. “Mooore or lesssss.”
I could have sworn I saw a smile. “That’s not right! When you hear that ‘your time is up’, it’s your time, not anyone’s time . . . Isn’t it?”
The exhale of his voice wrapped around me, lifting the small hairs on my neck. “Nooo. Weeee haaad an openingggg. Yoooou and Marrryyyy werrrre near the top of the lissst and I wassss in the neighborhoooood.”
The soft, lingering resonance of his words chilled me to the soul. I went rigid. The world was supposed to work by some design, not by some random chaos theory-like series of events. A dainty hand fell on my shoulder, manicured fingertips plying the back of my neck. A soft voice, the most sensual I could have ever imagined, spoke in my ear exuding so much promise of unimaginable pleasure. “Come, dear. We must go. It’s time.”
Thin, feminine fingers laced between mine. I turned, then turned back to the Reaper. “Morgan Fairchild?”
“It issss said that life isss whaaat you make it. Ssssooooo it isss with the afterworld.”
Morgan squeezed my hand and laid her head on my shoulder. The front door opened. Outside was a placid, north woods lake surrounded by idyllic pine trees, complete with a log cabin and birch bark canoe. An Irish setter bounded around the corner of the cabin. It stopped, head up, barking. It was Archie, my childhood dog.
I moved toward my life after this one, Morgan Fairchild at my side, in the accompaniment of the Grim Reaper. Then, I looked back, up the steps. Morgan gently touched my cheek. “It’s okay. You and Mary will be together again.” She coaxed me forward. “You want to say goodbye?”
I nodded. Morgan peered at the Reaper, who lifted one fleshless, benevolent hand toward the coat rack mirror. In it was reflected my twenty-five year-old self. The mirror clouded. Morgan blew at its center and the cloud dissipated.
Mary had fallen back to sleep. I reached to the reflection, where I saw her cheek. She smiled. “Mary, I will always get up in the cold of the night for you. But the next time you hear a bump in the night, you will have to fend for yourself. Don’t cower in the covers. Get up. It may be me. Goodbye, Mary. I love you.”
Mary smiled and nestled her head contentedly. Light fingers caressed my chin, turning my face. Morgan Fairchild kissed me. The mirror had cleared, reflecting only the night filled hallway; no reflection of the Reaper, nor Morgan Fairchild, nor me. We stepped through the door.
