vivien | Halloween Countdown - Things That Are Scary #6 (Reply)

Things

in the walls

I grew up in warm climates, and I lived in old houses. In warm places, there are often critters. In old houses, there are ways for critters to get into walls. Squirrels, bugs, little rodents - they can all get into the walls and rustle around.

At least, you assume they are critters.

You

hope

they are critters.

My BFF lived in a house that was, according to him, haunted. His older brother's room had been an epicenter of odd sights and sounds when he was still at home, but by the time C & I were in high school, he'd left home. So his empty room became our TV room.

Our favorite hobby (when not hanging out at Crybaby Bridge, ha ha) was watching movies. Video was still a fairly new thing, and it was a cheap way to fill a weekend. We watched pretty much every horror movie Hastings video stocked. In the haunted room. Of course!

One night we were watching The Unnameable, which was loosely based on something H.P. Lovecraft. All I remember was it was slow and not that scary and THE BIG REVEAL - this beast guy:

made me laugh in mocktastic hilarity. Yes, even back then I laughed at the monsters. The build up was SO serious and the costume was just awful.

I stopped laughing when we heard something frantically scratching at the top corner of the wall behind us. It stopped and started right back up again, this time at the bottom opposite corner. I looked at C, C looked at me, and I turned to the wall and apologized for mocking the Lovecraftian horror.

The noise stopped.

For that night.