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| Friday, January 13, 2006 |
| Rathouse |
KTF's spooky experience has reminded me of this story, loosely based on actual events*. Alright, it's a few years old, but I don't recall a rule that blog postings have to be current.
*Events have been altered to enhance interestingness of narrative.
It's the wrong sort of house for a ghost. I've always felt that ghosts haunted big, echoing, cavernous castles as a matter of preference, or deserted misty moors, or big old houses in suspiciously good locations. Which then get sold for a ridiculously low price, only to drive the new occupants insane as a matter of course. A ghost house must have two stories and a deliciously scandalous history, or at the bare minimum, a tragic love story in it's past. Not like my house. Okay, it's old, and it has some history. I'm told it was originally the residence for an almond plantation. But to my knowledge, there's no scandals or love triangles or black-hearted scoundrels or unsolved mysteries attached. Nothing more dramatic than what ordinarily occurs in the everyday lives of almond plantation keeping people. And it's small - two bedrooms. The back porch was enclosed at some stage and partitioned off to make a spare room (two beds, an upturned box for a bedside table, two framed, yellowing pictures of flowers left by the previous owner, and just enough floor space to stand on while you change clothes); my study (big desk, computer desk, wheelie chair and lots of empty cardboard boxes, kept in the anticipation of moving again); and an ex-junk room now serving as a bedroom (square of carpet denoting bedroom area, door leading to laundry off one side, assorted pipes from the bathroom & toilet sticking through down the other end of the wall). The place has just enough room for the three of us who live here, and very little left over. No gothic decorations, no trapdoors, no secret rooms or double walls, no nooks, crannies, or dark, dingy corners. Front room painted bright pink by the previous inhabitant. My brother's room is two shades of orange, mine is a beautiful blue, and the others - well, they vary. Most the house seems to have been built by a handyman extraordinaire. My doorway changes shape and size during the year. At the moment, my dressing gown hides an inch-wide gap between door and wall. I hang it from a nail in the doorframe. Anyone who wants to see me sleeping has to get down on their knees.
So anyway, the house is a cute little cottage. To tell the truth, it's more likely to attract rats than ghosts. It has plenty of what real estate agents call "character" and a brand spanking new bathroom, but it couldn't be a ghost house.
It just doesn't have the architecture.
This is what I told myself that night when I was all alone in the house, and there was an unexplained bang in the loungeroom. And a knocking sound at the door - an urgent rat-tat-tat-tat that would stop for a few seconds, then start again. As if someone was desperate to be inside. I almost got up to answer the front door - then reminded myself that no-one could get to the front door without going through the roller door, which was definitely locked. And besides - the more I listened to the noise, it could be some kind of bird, or a possum. I don't know what noise possums make, but from what I've heard, they're devious creatures. I'm sure they could make a noise like this if they wanted to. Or perhaps it was a rat. Rats are clever when it comes to noises, too. The bang could have been - well, I'm not sure what it could have been. But it didn't happen again, so I told myself to forget all these noises & go back to sleep. Eventually, I did.
When I got up the next morning and - brave by daylight - investigated the lounge, the grill in front of the fireplace was on the ground. That could have been the bang (but I couldn't duplicate the sound - the grill was too light and flimsy). And the CD covers, which had been stacked on the stereo, were scattered on the floor. A rat or something could have come down the chimney, knocked over the grill, and in climbing on the stereo knocked down the CD covers (but that doesn't explain the one I found under a beanbag, or the one which was broken). The next night I slept with all the lights on.
And there have been a few other things. A broken glass on the kitchen floor in the morning - I guess that could have been a rat. The back door, which seems to come miraculously unlocked while we're all out - a very clever rat, perhaps. Although I have noticed that the unlocked back door phenomenon only occurs when my brother's the last to leave the house. He swears he locked it, but he could just be... not so much forgetting as remembering wrong. And things go missing - the nail clippers I keep on my keyring, a pair of tweezers, the inevitable vanishing scissors, the cake I left in the fridge. There is the occasional strange noise in the night - bangs and thumps and so forth. A strange light shone in the window once - a bright light, like a chopper searchlight, which moved slowly along beside the house and vanished. My brother saw it too, so I wasn't hallucinating. It could have been a very quiet car (but there's a fence between the road and us). Or a rat with a really good torch.
Okay, that one couldn't have been a ghost. Ghosts aren't traditionally associated with bright lights. Anyway, all these strange noises and things breaking and falling and going missing is why I've just been in the ceiling looking for evidence of rats. I didn't find anything, but then, there were corners I didn't look in. As I exited, covered in a thick layer of dust & cobwebs, I thought I heard a snicker from one of those unexplored back corners.
I guess it could have been a rat. |
posted by Ata @ 10:26 pm  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Australian rats seem to be rather clever beasts.
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And well groomed, now that they have nail clippers, scissors and tweezers.
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Australian rats seem to be rather clever beasts.