Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Yellowstone Day 19

Scary Huh? O.K here goes! I have a lot of things to wear that are 100 percent cotton. Environmentally friendly and organic, does it qualify? Washes great, soft to wear, does not need ironing. Think I have a cape in my back pack to wear over hiking clothes, that is really light and colored camouflage for bird watching and taking pictures of animals.The cape should be witch. Rat my hair and mud my face. Just as good for telling ghost stories and keeping the bugs at bay.

One night when I was about 12. My parents were driving to town to see the in laws. I really did not want to go with them. Most of the time if I begged to stay home my presence at the gathering was enforced but this time Dad gave me permission to stay at home by myself. The house doors did not have sturdy key locks but they did have dead bolts on the inside so if I promised to lock the doors from the inside and get up when they came home at 2 a.m. to let them in I could stay home. It was fall, school had started and the next day was a school day.

The house was old. It had a parlor, pantry, wood cook stove, pump room for running water and more. When it was first built it was probably considered ritzy. Today no one would want to live in it.

Behind the kitchen was an old unfinished room that had a door that led to the outside and a stairway that let to the upstairs. The door was never locked. The room was filled with boxes of things no one was using. The stairway led to an attic room also filled with things no one was ever going to use. Actually I don't think anyone had been in the room for many years. It smelled like wood smoke from the many fires in the potbellied stoves that heated the house. Cobwebs and black walnut hulls were everywhere.

As soon as darkness fell I could hear the house sounds. I never noticed them before. Was that a door closing? There was a small room behind my bedroom in the upstairs.It had a door in it that led to the attic and the stairwell to the downstairs. It was after dark that I remembered the door in the room at the bottom of the stairs leading to the outside did not have any lock.

Now, the sounds were like someone rolling marbles across a floor. I did not have a flashlight either. Then I remembered there was a window in my parents bedroom that did not have a lock. It was only about 3 feet off the ground because us kids used it to climb in and out of it sometimes.

I was not about to check out rooms that did not have any electric lights so I took my snack into my bedroom locked the door and waited. All night the sounds continued. Shuffling sounds, low screeches, fingernails scratching on the windows, windows rattling as the wind and rain from a storm picked up. And, the marble sounds rolling across the floor like someone chasing a ball. Footsteps were those footsteps?

I was so relieved when my parents came home early that night they only stayed out until 1 a.m. But, I had to unlock my door and go down the stairs to let them in. I forgot to leave the lights on in the dining room and the stairwell so I had to go downstairs in the dark. They were pounding on the door before I got down the stairs. So my brother went around the house and in the bedroom window and let them in the door.

After that when I stayed home alone he always climbed in the back window and let them in so I did not have to leave my room.

Well I'm looking forward to Mammoth tomorrow. There is still so much to see and do at Yellowstone.